Category: Twitter

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How Do You Know if Your Twitter Account is Hacked?

Twitter is an important marketing tool and you want to make sure to protect your followers from blocking you or not trusting you by watching your tweets. Having your Twitter account be hacked can create havoc with your ability to have an authoritative voice in your arena.

You will not always know your account has been hacked but here are some tips to help you keep tabs.

1. Use a Twitter application like HootSuite or TweetDeck and make one of the columns set to show all your own published tweets. You know what you’ve written, so if you start to see tweets that are not yours take immediate action. If you use a tweet ghost writer, make sure that you yourself periodically go to Twitter.com and check your tweet list and direct messages. Sometimes you will see problems or tweets with links that do not belong.

2. Guard your Twitter password and be very careful with the third party applications that you give access to your Twitter account and Twitter password to. If you suspect a problem, just immediately change your Twitter password to lock out potential problem applications.

3. If your blog is hacked and you are using any Twitter plug-ins, most likely your Twitter account has been hacked as well. Now’s the time to change your password on your blog AND on Twitter.

4. Watch your direct messages in Twitter. In many cases followers will let you know that you sent them something weird and out of the ordinary. Don’t blow that off, start digging as most likely you have been hacked. In many cases the tweets from a hacked account will go out in the middle of the night so you may not see them first thing in the morning unless you have a column set up as in number one.

I recommend vigilance. Just watch what is happening on your Twitter account. You don’t want to lose the loyal following you’ve created with a hacked account that posts garbage alienating your followers.

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SocialOomph More Than a Twitter Client

I have been using SocialOomph for quite awhile. It used to be TweetLater. Over time the application has morphed into much more than an excellent Twitter client. It has now become a social networking power tool.

Now SocialOomph allows you to schedule and post to Twitter, Facebook, your blog, and to even create a custom RSS feed you can use in a number of creative ways. With the ability to save drafts to reuse, scheduling capabilities, and the ability to use bit.ly API to track your click stats, SocialOomph.com has become a very valuable tool for professionals and those serious about promoting their products and services using social networking programs.

I use the free version, but SocialOomph.com offers a professional version. The professional version charges a small monthly fee but offers many unique “power tools”. They even offer a free test drive. One thing that I think may be worth the extra charge is the ability to bulk upload tweets. Even if all you use initially is the free version, make sure to check out some of the features that the professional version offers, they are really astounding.

I have been using SocialOomph for quite awhile. I like it for the ability to schedule tweets and reuse tweets you have saved. In fact before any other application offered advanced scheduling Social Oomph had that as a regular feature. Another thing I like and use SocialOomph for is to send a welcome message to new followers. I can even set up to automatically unfollow a follower on Twitter when they unfollow me. I have used the vetting system as well, but no longer vet followers as this can really slow the growth of followers in your Twitter account. With many unique and time saving features, SocialOomph.com may end up being the only Twitter, blog, and Facebook client you end up using.

Please note that if you click any of the links in this post and buy access to the professional application version I will be paid a small commission, enough to buy me lunch at McDonald’s. But truly that is not the reason for my post, I use and like the application. For some clients it is the application of choice over HootSuite and TweetDeck. I routinely use SocialOomph.com for the clients for whom we are providing ghost Twitter Executive services.

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HootSuite My Preferred Twitter Client

I have tried all kinds of applications for Twitter but I have ended up really using two HootSuite and SocialOomph. For most Twitter work and my own Twitter use I prefer HootSuite. There are a few reasons.

1. HootSuite is easy to use. You can have a master user and add writer access or other team member access.

2. HootSuite allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts as well as to Ping.fm and Facebook with one click.

3. HootSuite has an integrated link shrinker right in the posting control panel. It uses the Owl.ly URL shortener.

4. HootSuite has a built in statistics portal showing the important click and reader activity for your account.

5. HootSuite now allows you to save posts as drafts and reuse them – this was one of the features I really liked with SocialOomph and now HootSuite has it.

6. HootSuite allows you to schedule your tweets for any day or time in the future. Love that feature!

7. HootSuite shows you the full thread of a conversation when someone responds to one of your Tweets. Now you know what they are responding to when you get a DM or @reply.

Now just to clarify, no one is paying me for this review, I have been using HootSuite for a while and just really like the application. I used to use TweetDeck, but now with needing to manage so many Twitter accounts HootSuite is the perfect user and client-friendly online application for me.

Please note as of 1-16-11, as of today if you click my HootSuite links, they will pay me a small commission if you upgrade to a Pro account, but that is not my reason for liking their product.

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Twitter Lists – Making Sense of Twitter

Twitter lists are a fairly recent option on Twitter, but I have just not had the time to explore their use until yesterday. Now that I have checked them out I want to share with you how easy they are to use and why you should use lists on Twitter.

First it is simple to set up and add to a Twitter List. Here’s how:

1. Go to your follower page on Twitter. To the right you will see a few icons, one looks like a list. Right click on the icon and a menu drops down. From here you can create a list or simply tick next to an existing list to add that follower to a specific list. You will have the option to make the list private or public. Private is for your use only. Public allows others to actually subscribe to your special list and follow who you are following on your “short list”.

2. Set up list to group your followers. Some of my lists are clients, team members, SEO stars (people in my industry who are interesting to follow), and Interesting people. Those are just my lists, the ways you sort your own Twitter followers is totally up to you.

3. Then work your follower list and sort your followers by list. I have over 900 followers and it took me about 15 minutes to sort them. Not everyone is on a list. People who I really liked to read I have now been able to reconnect with as their tweets had been hidden in the “pile”.

4. Now this is the best part as far as I am concerned. Now add your lists to HootSuite with one click. Just select to add a new column in HootSuite and select the list you want to have appear in the column.

What Twitter lists do for me is to allow me to really watch people who I want to watch by pulling their Tweets into a separate section both on Twitter and on other applications like HootSuite.

Some of you who are reading this post may say “that’s why I use TweetDeck!”, but if you are like me and manage many Twitter accounts for clients TweetDeck simply doesn’t cut it. You can only see one profile at a time try to manage five or six full Twitter accounts with all the columns needed and you will see TweetDeck is just too restrictive. This is why for me HootSuite is best. I can set up a separate HootSuite account for each client and view all information when I want to and now can follow lists of top followers for each client.

If you are just managing your own Twitter account, TweetDeck is fine and in fact Twitter Lists are really a “knock off” of the features that have made TweetDeck so popular and the reason why many people have flocked to TweetDeck. With Twitter embracing lists other applications like HootSuite are now able to show this functionality that make sense of all the tweets you get when you are active on Twitter.