Operation: Twitter Automation, not autopilot, but a time saver.

I mentioned in my post, Searching Through Web Content, Part One of Three, RSS Feeds, that I search through a lot information looking for things to post to my LinkedIn Group, In House Designers and my Twitter accounts, @YourArtDirector and @IHDesigners. Well it just became too much and I had to figure out a way to automate it.

I took what I had learned from searching through all those blogs and websites and automated it. I choose what I let go to Twitter automatically very carefully. If the site or blog becomes a constant sales pitch I drop it. I also follow some great designers on Twitter and use Google Alerts to find blogs and sites to automate.

First I use a program called SocialOomph. What it does is follow everyone that follows me, and rotates automated messages thanking them for following me. Why in the world would I want to do that? Following others is a fast way to get more followers. I use lists to follow the people I'm most interested in, the rest I glance at from time to time to see if I want to ad them to my lists. It took me about 9 months to get 400 followers. Now that SocialOomph is turned on it has taken me about a month to go from 400 to about 650.

I use TweetDeck to monitor Twitter. I used to use HootSuite, but I switched for reasons I will explain later. I use multiple columns in TweetDeck to follow my lists, direct messages, mentions and other things. One column is monitoring what I tweet so I can make sure the automation isn't getting too salesish. This isn't an obvious function in TweetDeck. Here's what I did to set up monitoring myself. I made a private list of all my Twitter accounts in Twitter, then in TweetDeck I made a column to watch that list. That's where I find my posts for my LinkedIn Group, In House Designers. It allows me to look at only the posts that have gone out in the last day. I can also use TweetDeck to schedule tweets for a time I want them to go out. I use that feature to send out things I want to Tweet about that aren't automated.

I use a site called TwitterFeed to do my automatic posts. I know a lot of people think automating Twitter is missing the point of Twitter, but I was spending two hours a night to search through RSS feeds and posting them to go out the next morning from 9:00am to around 1:00pm my time. Now I enter those same RSS feeds into TwitterFeed and they go out all day and night, which exposes me to a much wider audience, and I post more information. I was doing the same exact thing manually as I do now automatically only I'm doing it better. TwitterFeed also has some filtering you can use to limit some posts. Like I mentioned above, I mix in tweets about my company, products, trade shows, webinars using TweetDeck, but because I am growing my followers, the messages I care about are going to a lot more people.

Lastly I use Bit.ly to track clicks and make URLS smaller for Twitter. Bit.ly ties in directly with TweetDeck and TwitterFeed to shorten URLs automatically. I also have a bit.ly widget in my browser's bookmark bar to quickly post anything I see while surfing sites and blogs. I also recently saw that Bit.ly has Bit.ly Pro in Beta now. It has more features and allows for custom URL shortening.



Best of all, all of these sites and programs are free. I could do the same thing, (except SocialOomph), in HootSuite for $20/month, which is why I stopped using it; I'm not making any money doing what I do in Twitter and LinkedIn. I do it to build resources for other designers and myself.

Take some time to set it up, watch what it is doing, so you don't become a sales tool for someone else. It isn't exactly autopilot, but it is a lot less time than it could be.

Searching Through Web Content, Part Three of Three, Google Alerts

This is the last of my three part post on Searching Through Web Content. The three parts were RSS Feeds,  Twitter and now, Google Alerts. It's taken a while to write this because between the second and third post I completely changed the way I post information to my Twitter feeds, @YourArtDirector and @IHDesigners. I still use these ways to find content online, but I am letting Twitter do the work instead of me. I'll be writing about automating Twitter soon.

What Are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are a good way to get content delivered right to your inbox. Basically your telling Google to save a search and send you an email when it finds results. Google Alerts are still in Beta, but already it's a powerful tool.

Setting up a search

You have choices of the type of content you'd like to receive, news, blogs, videos etc. Then you can set how often you'd like to be notified—for example as it happens, once a day, once a week. Maybe you just want to see the newest information—you don't have time to wade through a giant list. You can limit the number of posts you receive in your email alerts.

Email is just the start of ways to receive Google Alerts. You can have your alerts come to your RSS feed reader. As I mentioned in part one, Searching Through Web Content, RSS Feeds, this is a good way to look through lots of content quickly.

You can receive your alerts as a CSV file, in other languages and as HTML or plain text. So customizing your alerts to fit how you want to work is very easy.

What can I use Google Alerts for?

Google Alerts are a great way to see who's talking about your company or product on the web. Just enter the name of your company, a product, a person or anything you need to keep an eye on. If you set it up to receive emails in HTML, like I did, it will look a lot like a google search result.

What does a Google Alert look like?

One of my searches is for "In House Graphic Designer". With this search I find a lot of job posts for my Linked in Group, Design Job List. A typical post will look something like this.

Journalist and IN HOUSE Graphic Designer Wanted (Midtown West ...

By admin

Journalists Wanted A weekly newspaper needs experienced journalists with strong writing background and unsurpassed editing skills, as well as very good organizational abilities. Minimum of 2-3 years of editorial experienced required. ...

Web Design Jobs - http://www.thesiteurl.com/

You can see you can get a lot of info very fast and easy. So go to Google Alerts, set up a search and see what you find in your inbox.

Some Related Posts

How To Get More From Google Alerts

Google Alerts: A Great Freelance Writing Tool

Searching Through Web Content, Part Two of Three, Twitter

It's not known how many Twitter users there are now. It is estimated to be about 18 million at the end of 2009. That's a lot of information flying around the web. So how do you sort through the tweets about what Ashton Kutcher's doing and what someone had for lunch and find information you can use?

I use HootSuite, but other popular programs like TweetDeck and Seesmic allow you to save a search. Here's how it works in HootSuite. I have the option to save a column in the window. I can have Search Term, KeyWord, or group users together. For example I have a Keyword column called Illustrator|Photoshop|InDesign. This finds all the Twitter feeds that have those Keywords in them. I find tutorials, and advice on the Adobe programs I use.

Search Columns can be very powerful. You can customize your searches to find words, exclude words and focus your searches.

Here are examples of ways to search for information on a company called Luxul Wireless:

"luxul" and "wireless" = searches for tweets that contain both words

"luxul wireless" = searches for the exact phrase

luxul or wireless = searches for one or the other

luxul -wireless = searches for luxul but not wireless

luxul since:2009-02-02 = search for luxul since the date entered

luxul until:2009-02-02 = search for luxul up to the date entered

luxul filter:links = searches for luxul tweets with a url in the post

With these options you can tweak your searches to find exactly what your looking for.

Another way to find info about a certain topic are Twitter HashTags. HashTags are words that follow the # symbol. For example #HomeAutomation is a HashTag used to focus information about Home Automation products and services. The idea is to let people follow subjects instead of people to find what they are looking for, or post to others with their interests. I use the site hashtags.org to find HashTags on subjects I am interested in. I then set up searches to watch Twitter and report to me when someone posts to those Hashtags.

So there you have it, with a little bit effort you can find the information your looking for, monitor what people are saying about subjects your interested in and really keep you eye on Twitter.

In part three I will discuss how to set a web search to deliver content to your inbox.

Searching Through Web Content, Part One of Three, RSS Feeds

I'm always searching the web for content for my LinkedIn groups, (In House Designers and Design Job List), Twitter, blog, design inspirations and just to keep up on the latest trends. Trying to sort through all the blogs and websites can be a real challenge. In this first installment, of my three part article, on searching through content I am going to focus on using RSS feeds to help you quickly go through content and find what your interested in.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically what it does is takes the text from a website or blog, strips all the formatting and gives it to you a text only, (sometimes text and an image), format that is the same for every site. This makes it easy to search the information easily and find what your looking for. This is particularly important for news sites, blogs and sites that have a lot of text that changes often.

How do I find RSS feeds?

Most sites have RSS feeds and make it easy for you to subscribe to it. Look for the subscribe button. The icon usually looks something like this:

Some sites use services because maybe they have multiple feeds. Sites with a feed service may ask what reader your using.

If you can't find the icon you might want to try typing the site address then slash and Feeds, like this:

http://yourartdirector.blogspot.com/feeds

You might have to search a bit, but most of the time the feed is there.

I set up a list of design job feeds in my LinkedIn group call Design Job List. If you'd like to set up a search for design jobs you can go to the discussion tab of Design Job List and find a lot of sites that have design job RSS feeds. I'm going to use this as my example for explanation purposes here.

Here is an example of one site and it's feed address.

The site is: Talent Zoo

The feed is: http://www.talentzoo.com/rss.php

Once you have all the feeds entered you will have a large list of sites feeding you jobs, probably more than you can handle. You can set up searches for used cars, photoshop tutorials, scrapbooking, anything you're interested in.

Setting up a search

I use an RSS feed reader. I am on a Mac, so I like NewsFire. If your on a PC you can use something like NewsGator. You can use web browsers and even mail programs, anything that will track RSS feeds. The reader you use doesn't matter, but I like readers that will do Smart Searches, and/or Saved Searches because I make them do a lot of the work for me. I have a design jobs feed setup in my reader and receive about 500 posts a day, so I have to filter the RSS feeds to get it to a manageable amount.

Filtering the feed

Now that you have all your feeds you'll want to filter them so you can have a more focused search. This is the reason I like feed readers that supports smart searches. Keep in mind I am using NewsFire so my instructions may not apply to the feed reader you're using. The first thing I did was make a group called jobs and drop all my job list site feeds into the group. Then I set up a smart search. A smart search looks at all the RSS feeds and collects the posts that fit the search criteria or filter I've set up. I search for the city I live in, words like art director or graphic designer in the title and content of the post, and the date of the post. After the smart feed is set up I'll have a handful of posts to look through. If the smart feed is producing no results you may need to change the settings. It may require more than one smart search to get everything you want.

I can now look through all 500 posts quickly and see if there's anything I'm interested in. This is a lot easier than going to every job list site, everyday and searching for what I am interested in. If I had to do that it would be a full time job in itself.

In part two I will discuss how to use Twitter to search for content.

Green is making me Green

I like the idea of Green, who doesn't? But when Green is Green for the sake of PR and not for the sake of the environment who needs that.

I recently had the experience of working with a small company to put together First Article for a large customer. Now for those of you that may not know, a first article is an example of the product exactly as they will receive it when you start shipping your merchandize. The large customer had a lot of regulations on how things had to be put together, labeled, packaged. Much of instructions had to do with their green initiative.

Normal Procedure

Normally the product shipped in a cardboard box with no printing on it and a plain cardboard insert to hold the product. The small screws and cables went in a heat seal tube. The tube got sealed on one side, the products went in and the other side got sealed. Other than when you got to the end of the roll there was no waste. The Quick Install Guide was four pages long.

The Green Initiative

Every piece of packaging had to have a recycle logo on it. The box and its insert had to have two Recycle logos printed on it. Printing is not an environmentally friendly process. When a plastic heat seal tube with recycle logos couldn't be found, plastic zip-lock bags were purchased. The parts are slipped into the bags, the bags are heat sealed and about an inch of bag, including the zip lock, becomes waste. The User guide, after adding all the required legal text, was 16 pages long. In defense of the customer, most of the legal wording was because of government requirements.

It's not all bad news, circuit boards were changed to meet ROHS, (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) standards.

I am not advocating doing away with Green processes, I'm all for them. What I am saying is blindly following a Green Initiatives without seeing if it is truly helping the environment isn't Green at all.