“Consolidate your debts and grab your copy of the Sexy Twitter Secrets at www.bz9.com/debtconsolidationunsecured” (Sexy Twitter secrets? Really, hmm, I’ll have to head over there immediately!)

“Don’t worry about managing your debt payments individually. Visit www.personal-loans-united-states.com and learn how” (Seems to be a recurring debt theme in this country these days eh?)

“I’ve enjoyed your tweets! I’m looking for help! Please refer your friends to http://GreatAgentsWanted.com if they want to make more money!” (Who doesn’t want to make more money? Good tag line, I’m there and so are all of my friends that I’ll refer!)

“Step Towards a Better Financial Future @ http://www.kooko.ws” (Not as good as make more money, but wow, sounds great!)

“Please join me. I’d like to recruit you as a spymaster to my spy ring – http://playspymaster.com” (I spy something very annoying. I don’t want to play, please stop asking.)

“good morning an thank you for the follow. please review my website at www.attainresponse.com/javau. tell me what you think” (just a bad attempt to drive traffic in lowercase. my thoughts: you should try using some capital letters and proof reading your tweets.)

“Join me on Blip.fm, it’s like Twitter for music” (I wasn’t sure if Blip.fm was like Twitter for music after getting this a thousand times. Now I’m convinced. Thanks!)

“Your small business can grow much larger if you had a bigger client base http://twttr.me/dS4″ (It’s always about size isn’t it?)

Sorry for the little rant (again), but if you want to be effective at marketing or getting me to visit your website, try building a relationship instead of getting in my face as soon as we meet. You wouldn’t do that in person (I hope), so why does it seem alright to do it on Twitter?

Profile Dashboards

For each of your multiple-profiles that you manage with HootSuite, you can view an individual profile dashboard:

There are some basic tabs in the dashboard that allow you to view all of your updates, replies and direct messages related to each profile. For each Tweet in the list, you can reply, direct message or retweet easily using the small icons on the top right of each Tweet. You can also view all of the updates you’ve sent and filter the results by those you sent today, this week, this month or this year. And, you can filter the Tweets you see in the Sent tab by specific date ranges.

SCHEDULED TWEETS

You’ll notice a Pending tab in the profile dashboard. This allows you to see all of the pending scheduled Tweets related to this profile. You can see what time the Tweet is scheduled to be posted and you also have the ability to edit the Tweet before it is sent, set an e-mail notification for a scheduled Tweet or delete it before it’s Tweeted.

Speaking of scheduled Tweets, yes, you can schedule Tweets with HootSuite. It’s very easy. Simply create a new Tweet from a profile. In the new Tweet dialog, enter the text for the Tweet, enter a URL to shorten if you need to, and then use the scheduler at the bottom right. Click the Later radio button, set the date and time for your Tweet and if you want an email notification when the Tweet is sent, check the alert me box. Click submit and you’ve scheduled a Tweet to be sent. The newly scheduled Tweet will now show up in your Pending tab on the profile dashboard. This is a great feature if you have specific times you’d like to send Tweets. I’ve used it to send Tweets at times when I’m flying. I can still Tweet even when I’m not there!

TWEET STATISTICS

One of the coolest features of HootSuite is its statistics about each of your Tweet’s click-throughs. When you create a Tweet, you have the option of using HootSuite’s URL shortener ow.ly. If you shorten your URLs with ow.ly, HootSuite can track the number of clicks each of these shortened URLs receives once it’s been Tweeted. When you click on the Stats tab in the profile dashboard, you get a view of of the aggregate statistics for all of your Tweets. These can be filtered by stats for today’s Tweets as well as Tweets from this week, this month, and this year. You can also filter Tweet statistics by specified date ranges.

You get some cool stats like total daily clicks on all of your Tweets, where those clicks came from, and what the top referrers were. It’s not overly robust, but if you’re looking to get an idea if your followers are clicking through on your URLs, this will get you there. By the way, thanks to the Twitter army for clicking some URLs for me so I could show you this sample click data (you know who you are, so, thank you). In addition to getting some basic stats, HootSuite also shows your most popular Tweets based on clicks.

If you want to dig in deeper on your Tweet stats, you can get statistics for individual Tweets as well. First, go to the profile dashboard, and click on the Sent tab. On the right side of each Tweet you’ll notice a little blue bar chart. Clicking on the bar chart brings up the statistics for each individual Tweet. In this example you can see a few days worth of data for a single Tweet.

You can mouse over the days to see specific stats for each Tweet. You can also click and drag over the chart to dynamically define the date range on the statistics chart.

TWEET SEARCHES

HootSuite has integrated Twitter’s search functionality. You can use the HootSuite search to search through your own Tweets or the entire public timeline. If you’ve used Twitter search before, this shouldn’t be too foreign for you. The nice thing is that HootSuite saves your keywords as buttons so you can use them again for future searches. It also provides some out-of-the-box buttons for replies (@yourprofile) and Tweets from your profile (from: yourprofile).

If you’ve never used Twitter search, here are some ways you can used Twitter’s search syntax to find what you’re looking for:

The HootSuite Hootlet

The last cool feature of HootSuite is its Hootlet bookmark toolbar applet. To install the Hootlet, just drag the Hootlet logo to your bookmark toolbar. Currently, Hootlet works in FireFox, Safari, and Internet Exporer.

Once it’s on your bookmark toolbar, just click it to quickly Tweet about the pages you’re browsing. When you click the Hootlet, it will open a Create Tweet window. First, select the profile you want to Tweet from if you have multiple profiles.

After selecting your profile, HootSuite pre-populates the Tweet dialog for you with the title of the page you are browsing, it automatically shortens the URL with ow.ly and appends it to the end of your Tweet. You can edit the Tweet and the URL if you want. You can also decide if you want to send the Tweet now or schedule it for later. Click on submit and you’re done.

So, there you have it, a guided tour of all of the features in the current version of HootSuite. Hope you start using it soon.

GUEST POST FROM OLIVIA MITCHELL:

Olivia Mitchell

Audience engagement and participation is a common goal for presenters. But participation in particular can be hard to get by traditional means. People enjoy the comfort zone of being passive in the audience and often need significant prodding to do anything.

But now we have a new tool to get engagement – that’s Twitter. Many presenters are scared of presenting while people are twittering. But as Dean Shareski says:

The more I’m allowed to interact and play with the content the more engaged and ultimately the more learning happens.

Twitter makes it easy to engage. There’s not the risk of humiliation which is always present when you say something out loud. And if there’s a power heirarchy in the room, it gets flattened somewhat – everybody has 140 characters to have their say.

So rather than seeing the Twitter back channel as an intimidating third force in your presentation, embrace it.

Later this month, I’m going to be presenting remotely from New Zealand at PresentationCamp in San Francisco. I’m going to experiment with using Twitter as a channel to get active participation from my audience.

Here’s a variety of ways that you could use Twitter to engage your audience.

1. Introductions

If you would normally get people in your audience to introduce themselves, why not do it via twitter. Many people dread the round-robin introduction – doing it on twitter is quicker and less onerous.

2. Poll your audience

If you haven’t been able to find out about your audience before the presentation (which I do recommend), then ask a question and get them to respond on Twitter. In the past, I’ve seen presenters ask their audience what they want to get out of the presentation by going round the room and writing it up on a flipchart or whiteboard. This can get tedious. Ask out-loud, but get the responses on twitter. Ta-da. Instant recorded feedback.

3. Encourage questions through twitter

Instead of waiting till the end for questions, encourage people to tweet their questions as soon as they occur to them.

4. Active engagement with the substance of your presentation

My session at PresentationCamp is on developing the core message of a presentation. My plan is to have people tweet their core messages (which conveniently should be under 140 characters long) as they develop them through the session. How could you get your audience engaging, rather than just listening, with the substance of your presentation?

5. Encourage audience members to add their own ideas to yours

The best presentations are the ones that spark insights and ideas for your audience. Encourage them to tweet these ideas.

6. Get input and feedback from your audience

Consultation-type meetings have always been tricky. I’ve used flipcharts, post-it notes, forms for people to fill in. With a twitter-enabled audience, all that paraphernalia will be a thing of the past.

7. Gather evaluations

Presenters have already realised that twitter is a great way to get real-time evaluations by reviewing the stream of tweets that happened while you were presenting.

Paul Gillin Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful.

So make it official – at the end of your presentation – ask your audience to tweet their evaluation of the presentation.

Practical stuff

To create a stream of tweets just for your presentation, you’ll need to create a special hashtag for your presentation and then use an application that tracks just those tags (hashtags.org, spy, eventtrack, twitter search).

You may also want to display the tweet stream on a screen so that everyone – including you – can easily see it. If you want the stream to be on display all the time, you’ll need a second laptop, datashow and screen. But you could also display the stream at certain breaks in your presentation, in which case a second laptop plugged into the datashow will do fine.

Your thoughts

Have you used Twitter to engage your audience? What ideas do you have for how it could be used?

About Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell is a presentation trainer and blogger from New Zealand.  Olivia blogs at Speaking about Presenting. Visit her blog for more tips on how to prepare and deliver an engaging presentation.

Manage Multiple Twitter Profiles

One of the first things you’ll notice about my HootSuite dashboard is that there are multiple Twitter profiles being managed from my HootSuite account (two are fakes I’m using for this demo).

From, the HootSuite dashboard, we can get a quick glimpse of the recent activity on each profile. You can also quickly create a new Tweet from any of the profiles by clicking on the Create New Tweet button on each profile. Adding a new profile to your HootSuite account is as easy as clicking the Add Twitter Profile button in the upper right and filling in the short Add New Twitter Profile dialog:

You’ll notice that the dialog allows you to select multiple-editors for the profile, a feature I’ll discuss a little later. The ability to monitor and manage several Twitter profiles from one centralized location is great, especially if you’re managing a personal profile and other profiles for your company, blog or website. You can manage your profile settings in the Settings area. Simply click Settings in the upper right, and then click on the Manage Profiles tab. From here, you can synchronize your profiles with Twitter and synchronize your avatar as well (something you’ll have to do the first time you set up a profile, unless you like the default Twitter avatar 0_o). You can also edit individual profile login credentials and the editors on the profile. And finally, you can add a new profile or delete any existing profiles from here as well.

Multiple Editors/Users

While we’re on the settings screen, let’s take a look at the multiple editor feature in HootSuite. This feature allows you to create multiple users on your HootSuite account. Once a user is created, they can be assigned to any or all of the profiles on the account. Again, this is particularly useful if you manage a personal profile and a corporate profile. For instance, I may want to manage and track my own personal profile as well as one that I Tweet on for my company. But, I may want other people from my company to be able to Tweet and see stats, etc., for the corporate account, but not my personal account. No problem with HootSuite. Just add them as users and assign them as editors to only the corporate account. Here’s how it works. First, go to the Settings screen and click on Manage Users tab:

Adding a new user is as simple as clicking the Add User button and completing this dialog:

And voila, a new user on the account:

You can now see we have an account Admin (Chris Spagnuolo) and three editors (Dave, Ted, and Luke) that we can assign to our profiles on the account. The account admin by default can Tweet from and access all profiles on the account. So, let’s assign some editors to the profile called 101_owls. We simply return to the Settings screen, click the Manage Profiles tab, click Edit on the 101_owls profile and check the boxes next to the editors we want to allow for the profile.

Done. Now, just Save Changes and Dave and Ted the Editors can now send Tweets and access stats and other information for the 101_owls profile.

Let’s stay on the settings screen and check out the other features you can manage for your entire HootSuite account.

General Account Management

Clicking on the Account tab gives you access to your general account settings. No big surprises here: manage account name, profile info, time zones, email addresses, etc. But one cool feature you’ll notice is the little checkbox that says Enable Auto Initial. This is a nifty little feature that comes in really handy when you have multiple editors. By checking the box and adding your initials, HootSuite pre-populates your Tweets with your initials. If you want keep track of who Tweeted what, definitely use this feature.

Google AdSense Support

The other cool thing you’ll find on the Account tab is support for Google AdSense. You can generate money from your tweets by adding Google AdSense code to enable ads on your Tweet links when you use HootSuite’s ow.ly URL shortener. Simply set up a Google AdSense account if you don’t already have one, set up a 234X60 banner ad, copy the AdSense code and paste it in your account settings like this:

After you enter your Google AdSense code, you can select which profiles you want to apply AdSense to. When you add your Google AdSense code and use the URL shortener from an active AdSense profile, HootSuite adds a banner to the linked website with some ads from Google. Half the time, the banner contains your ads and half the time, it will contain HootSuite’s ads. The banners look like this when linked to from the ow.ly URL shortener:

Tweet Your RSS Feed

The last tab in the settings area is the RSS/Atom Feeds tab. This tab allows you to send automated Tweets when your RSS feed is updated. This is really great if you’re a blogger and want to send a Tweet out to announce your latest blog post. To add your feed for auto-Tweeting, simply click the Add Feed button and fill in the requested information.

You’ll notice that you can select the frequency of Tweets for your RSS updates. You can select 1 through 5 Tweets for selected time intervals that range from every hour to 24 hours. I would recommend not being annoying and doing no more than 1 Tweet every 3 hours. More than that and I think you start to look spammy. Aside from Tweet frequency, you can also prepend these automated Tweets with whatever you like. Just remember that your RSS item title is going to be the Tweet text so plan your 140 characters accordingly. I would recommend that you use something like Blogged: or Latest post: to prepend these Tweets if you want to. Finally, select which profiles you’d like to send these RSS Tweets from. Click Save and you’ve now automated your announcements of updates to your RSS feed.

That concludes Part 1 of our tour of HootSuite. In How to Use HootSuite: Part 2, we’ll cover how to schedule Tweets, Tweet statistics and tracking, date range searches and more.

Frankie Andreu

But the commentary itself is not really what troubled me. What troubled me was that during yesterday’s great stage from Merced to Clovis, Joe and Frankie did a short interview with Road Magazine’s Neil Brown. Neil gave a good interview and also spoke a little about his use of Twitter to provide cycling news and to engage the cycling community in discussion (you can follow him at http://twitter.com/neilroad). And that’s where it all fell apart. Joe and Frankie, in particular, began joking about and then criticizing Twitter and the use of it by some professional cyclists and managers. Then Frankie began dismissing Twitter as an invalid source of information. Frankie actually said (and the quote may not be precise, there’s no replay on the live stream) “It’s ridiculous that Lance Armstrong is Twittering and people are quoting his Tweets. That’s not a real quote!” Frankie’s tirade continued, bashing Armstrong and other cyclists for Tweeting nonsense and for the public wanting to follow it. Neil teased Frankie a bit and suggested that maybe he should try Twitter. Frankie’s response “Oh yeah, I could say Frankie ate breakfast! or Frankie took the kids to school!” Based on his argument and his tone of voice, I guess we won’t be seeing Frankie on Twitter any time soon.

Frankie is what my friend Bert Decker would call an Old Communicator. In his commentary itself, Frankie is not connecting with his audience. (And please, don’t say it’s because it’s a boring cycling race. Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, and Bob Roll have been doing it for years and people love them!) Aside from his unemotional commentary, the statements like those he made about Twitter would indicate to me that Mr. Andreu isn’t very interested in connecting with people at all. I’m really not picking on Frankie here. I’m just using him as an example of an Old Communicator. They see the world in their terms and don’t make the effort to connect and engage with people. More importantly, they don’t motivate people to action. And that’s the other problem with Frankie. The Amgen Tour of California has a goal to support the fight against cancer. Many times during the race, Frankie and Joe interviewed folks from various organizations who are helping in this fight. Because of the basic lack of connection to the audience, I’m really afraid that the call to action for these guests was probably lost. That is the real shame here.

Lance Armstrong

Now, let’s look at the flip side of this coin. And since Frankie brought him up, let’s talk about Lance Armstrong in particular. (Disclaimer: Yes, I’m a Lance fanboy, but this post has nothing to do with that.) Lance is an excellent communicator. All during his reign as 7-time Tour de France champion, he always communicated well with the media and the public. Sure, he had his ups and downs and was under fire numerous times. But, he always maintained his cool. Lance also connects with people. I’ve seen him speak at numerous events and watched him connect both onstage and off with people. He cares enough to take the time to talk with them and get to know them. And he really takes the time to connect with cancer survivors. But more importantly, Lance not only connects with people, he truly motivates them to action. So, according to Bert’s definition, I’d say that Lance Armstrong is a New Communicator.

But I’d like to define Lance as even more. I’d like to define him, in direct response to Frankie’s statements, as a “New” New Communicator. Lance has gone beyond the traditional forums of communication and has embraced the new world of social media to further his connections with people around the world. Lance, and other cycling stars including Lance’s manager Johan Bruyneel, have taken the big plunge into Twitter, blogging, TwitPics and more. And they’re good at it. Really good at it. We’re not seeing Tweets or blogs about taking the trash out or feeding the dogs. We’re getting a real insight into what its like to be Lance Armstrong, professional cyclist and cancer fighter, on a daily basis on Twitter. We’re getting inside photos of Lance’s travels as he trains, races, and spreads his message around the world on TwitPic. And we’re getting real information that motivates people to action from Lance’s own blog and videos on his Livestrong website. And in case you’re wondering, it is Lance who is doing this, not some PR firm. People are interested in Lance and Lance knows that. And he’s making connections with the people who are interested and motivating them to do something. So, if I can revise Bert’s definition, here’s my definition of a “New” New Communicator: “New” New Communicators don’t just provide information, they influence and motivate others to action through the emotional connections they make, both in-person and through a wide variety of other interactive media. And according to that, I’d qualify Lance Armstrong as a “New” New Communicator.

[Start of mini rant] As for Frankie Andreu and his statement that Twitter and other social media sources can’t be quoted, I have this to say: Yes they can. And they are! You don’t get to make the rules anymore.  Until the Old Communicators learn that these new mediums of communication are valid and important in our ever shrinking world, they’ll remain Old Communicators. As long as the Old Communicators believe that “information” can only come from certain sources, they’ll remain Old Communicators. And until Old Communicators realize that they DO need to connect with people to be successful and motivate people, they will remain Old Communicators. There is hope, but just know that there are still many Old Communicators out there to be converted. [End of mini rant.  I feel better now]

GUEST POST FROM NATE CHENENKO:

Part-time pedicab driver Nate Chenenko gives tourists a lift on weekends to supplement his full-time job as a contract specialist and says “Pay what you like!”.

(Photo credit: Richard A. Lipski – The Washington Post)

O.K., I confess: I’m a moonlighter. On weekdays I write and administer government contracts, but on the weekends I pedal a bicycle taxi, also called a pedicab, around the streets of Washington, DC. I really enjoy the physical and social aspects of the job, but it’s the economic and business aspects that truly intrigue me. I’m particularly attentive to the intricacies of pedicab ride pricing, and I’d like to use this opportunity (thanks Chris!) to discuss the theory behind pedicab pay-what-you-like pricing.

It’s tough to sell pedicab rides, and I estimate that I typically experience a failure rate of over 99%. When people visit a shopping mall, they visit because they are either interested in buying clothes, or interested in the idea of browsing, of seeing clothes to buy. When people visit the National Mall, they don’t come to buy pedicab rides, they come to visit the museums and photograph the monuments. Since I only expect one person out of one hundred to indicate any interest, it’s critical that I convert that an interested person into a customer.

The first question potential customers typically ask is “how much do you charge?” When I answer, they don’t realize how carefully I’ve crafted my response: “Whatever you think is fair. Pay when we get there!”

This statement comes as a shock to some people and a surprise to most. Our economy, once so centered on bartering and trade, has in recent years become much more fixed in its pricing schemes. I’m only 22, but I remember when my father taught me how to haggle with the hot-dog vendors in Manhattan. That was ten years ago. Try to do that now and they’ll laugh you straight to the next block. But take a pedicab ride in many cities across the country. You’ll enter a scenario where you’re receiving a service with no concept of what you should pay the service provider.

The second question I typically receive from potential riders is “Why? Don’t you get cheated a lot?” My answer: “Very rarely.” Again, riders don’t realize the consideration behind that sentence fragment, but the response is completely true. I rarely get cheated. I rarely get cheated, but I do many rides where I receive less money than I’d like. Often I’ll take customers on a long ride and receive a four-dollar tip when I would have asked for ten or 15 dollars.

So if it’s common to receive low tips, isn’t that great justification to start charging a set fare? Absolutely not, and there are four reasons to avoid set pricing. The first reason is a loose application of opportunity costs. For example, if a family of three with a toddler asks for a ten-minute ride, they might be willing to pay five dollars. What if I ask for seven dollars? A six-hour shift yields an average of only ten to 20 rides, and an average of $150 in gross earnings. After a half-year spent on the pedicab, my gross fares average out to about 25 dollars per hour. With that data, I know my opportunity cost is $25 per hour, and I should engage in any activity from which I expect to earn more than $25 per hour. Theoretically, I can do six ten-minute rides in an hour. At $25/hour, this means that my opportunity cost for ten minutes is just over four dollars. This means the family of three who is willing to pay five dollars for a ten-minute ride exceeds my opportunity cost. I should certainly take their business and provide a ride. If I were to set a fare of seven dollars, I lose a hard-to-find customer. I’ve failed to consider my opportunity cost when making business decisions, and I’ve lowered my potential profit for the day.

A second rationale for charging a pay-what-you-like rate is purely related to marketing: I want people in my cab. I want the hundreds on the sides of the street to see that laughing toddler as his pedicab speeds down the road. I want people to see a cab not as a gimmick that no one actually uses, but as a legitimate, enjoyable mode of transportation. More rides at noon leads to more people in my cab for the rest of the day. This is why I don’t mind competition from other pedicabs – competitors help put the idea of a pedicab ride into the minds of pedestrians.

The third reason for avoiding set fares focuses on the entertainment aspect of pedicabs. At the beginning of the ride, that cute toddler’s parents were willing to pay five dollars. At the end of the ride, when the child says how much he’s enjoyed himself, that ride might be worth ten dollars. Setting a fare at the beginning of the ride keeps that additional five dollars out of my pocket. Ever buy a book and absolutely love it? If I get halfway through a John Grisham novel, you might be able to sell me the second half of the book for twice the price. Prior to purchase, my expected level of enjoyment was just that: an expectation. On page 200, however, I have a higher level of information about the product, and my demand adjusts accordingly. A pay-what-you-like pricing system accounts for that change in demand as one consumes a service.

But it’s truly the fourth reason that ensures I will never charge a set fare. This is a risk-management concern, and it’s heavily influenced by economics as well as observed evidence. Readers who invest in the stock market have no doubt heard of upside potential and downside risk. I think about these devices constantly while working on my pedicab. Let’s use the example of a fare for which I would typically expect (and typically receive, based on evidence): 15 dollars. A 15-dollar fare might take a customer from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. My downside risk on this ride is 15 dollars – it’s possible the customer could jump out and run away. This is highly unlikely, but it still represents the lower bound of the risk spectrum. My upside potential is infinite, as it’s possible I could get a multimillion-dollar tip. Unfortunately, this is also unlikely.

Let’s narrow the parameters based on the evidence. I’ve received four dollars for a 15 dollar ride, and, as a result, I’ve “lost” or “been cheated out of” nine dollars. I’ve also received 50-dollars for a 15-dollar ride. How many “losses” can that 35-dollar gain cover? About four, and that’s the reason I don’t charge a fare. Pay-what-you-like pricing allows for the possibility of that 50-dollar fare while reducing the opportunity for losses to five or ten dollars. In other words, I’ve tightly limited my downside risk while preserving my entire achievable upside.

Pay-what-you-like pricing maximizes the customer base because price details will never turn a customer away. This in turn contributes to my bottom line as well as my marketing image. It allows for the retrieval of otherwise-lost “demand” that occurs during service provision. Additionally, pay-what-you-like pricing allows me to capitalize on the big tipper, the guy at the top of my upside potential spectrum. But maybe it’s possible to make my system better. If you have suggestions or comments, or you simply enjoyed this piece, please post below in the comments. I’d also love to hear feedback directly. Please, email me at Chenenko@gmail.com.

Here’s my main TweetDeck screen:

I have 5 columns displayed: All Friends, The A-List, The B-List, Replies, and Direct Messages. Let’s take a look at each column and how I use them.

All Friends: This is my complete Twitter stream. All 21,540 of the people I follow show up in this column. About every hour or so, I scroll through this column and look for any interesting links or conversations to join in.

The A-List: The A-list is a TweetDeck Group Column. I use this group to pull a stream of people that I follow very closely. These are people that I work with, people that I have an established relationship with, or people that I find the most interesting to follow. I try to keep this group limited to no more than 25 people at any given time. Beyond that, I find it difficult to keep up with Tweets on a regular basis. Whenever TweetDeck detects a post to my A-List, I get a visual and audible alert. Unless I’m seriously engrossed in my work, or coaching a team, I usually check my A-List when my alerts go off. The visible alerts are small popup windows that look like this:

The B-List: The B-List is another TweetDeck Group Column. This is a group of people that I follow closely, but not in a critical way. This is a mixed group of people I’d like to get to know better, people who are top Tweeters (like Guy Kawasaki, Arleen Anderson (Aloha Arleen) and GaryVee), brands and companies that I’m observing to understand how they use Twitter, people that I find interesting or funny, and other friends. I get visual and audible alerts when Tweets are posted in this group as well. However, they’re usually not critical Tweets, so I read them whenever I have some free time. I try to check this stream about every half-hour or so.

The Replies Column: This is a standard TweetDeck column that searches Twitter’s public timeline for any @replies to your username. This is really useful to keep track of who is talking about you or with you. It allows you to quickly respond to any conversations directed toward or about you. I have visual and audible alerts set for this column and usually check these as they come in (unless I’m busy). It let’s me interact with the Twitterati effectively and I try to respond to anyone who @replies to me (unless it’s really Spammy).

The Direct Messages Column: Another standard TweetDeck column. This keeps track of all of the Direct Messages sent to you and those sent by you. I really like this functionality. The only problem is, I autofollow anyone who follows me. So, if those people have automatic direct messages sent whenever someone follows them, you guessed it, they end up in this column. Unfortunately, that means that some important DM’s get buried in an avalanche of DM’s that say “Hey, thanks for the follow. And check out my website at http://IAmDesparateForSubscribers.com!” or “Great to meet you @<username>. If you’re looking for real estate in the Tri-State area, check out http://I’mALameRealEstateAgent.com!”. (BTW: Have you noticed that real estate agents seem to outnumber everybody else on Twitter these days?). Now, I have nothing against auto-DM’s, it’s nice to at least get some confirmation when you follow someone. Just don’t make them pushy, I hate that. OK, sorry for the mini-rant.

So, that’s my main TweetDeck setup. You can order these columns however you want to by sliding them left or right. I keep these 5 columns visible all the time on the left of my TweetDeck screen. I also have several other columns to the right of these that I can scroll to when I want to check them. So, here’s the other half of my TweetDeck screen:

On this side, I have a few search columns, another group column, a favorites column, and a TweetScoop column. Here’s what’s in each one:

Search EdgeHopper: This is a TweetDeck Search Column. It allows you to specify a search term and then scours Twitter’s public timeline for that term. It displays all Tweets containing that term to the search column. I use this search column to see who is Tweeting about my blog called EdgeHopper. It let’s me monitor the public timeline for people including, but not limited to, my followers who are discussing or commenting on my blog. It’s very useful and allows me to interact with people very quickly.

Search Chris Spagnuolo: This is another Search Column. This one searches for my name: Chris Spagnuolo. Unfortunately, after the NY Giants were eliminated from the NFL playoffs and their defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was shopping for a new job, a lot of people were talking about him…and they all showed up in my search column. And before you ask, no, we are not related.

Cycling Column: I’m seriously into cycling and am a cycling fan-atic. This is a TweetDeck Group Column that I use to keep track of several professional cyclists who Twitter (including Ivan Basso and Lance Armstrong who is a great Tweeter and TwitPic user). I also follow several cycling coaches, some bike shops, a few cycling news streams, and a couple of cycling political action groups. Very handy for keeping track of a special interest without doing broad search term columns.

Favorites: A standard TweetDeck column that keeps track of Tweets that I’ve favorited. Very nice feature as it let’s me go back to these Tweets whenever I want to re-read them or use a favorite link that was posted.

TwitScoop: This is a standard TweetDeck column based on an integration with TwitScoop. TwitScoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentionned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud in the TwitScoop column. It’s a really cool way to stay on top of what’s buzzing in the Twitterverse at any given time. It also has a Trending Topics section that shows emerging trends in Tweets.

The one column type I haven’t been using (but probably will) is TweetDeck’s 12 Seconds TV column. This keeps track of your 12 Seconds TV stream if you have one. Nice feature, I just haven’t done much in 12 Seconds TV yet.

In addition to breaking your Tweets into topic or group specific columns, you can filter the stream within a column based on one of several attributes including keywords in the Tweet text, Twitter user name, source, or even time frame. This gives you complete control over what you see in your TweetDeck columns.

In addition to the filter tool, there are several other tools at the base of each column. They enable you to slide the column left or right, mark all the Tweets in the column as seen, clear all of the seen Tweets, and clear all Tweets in the column.

Also, from any Tweet, you can click on the user name of the Tweeter and TweetDeck will display that user’s profile and Tweet stream as well as a follow button in case you’re not already following them. Here’s my buddy Bert Decker’s profile à la TweetDeck:

Other Cool Tools in TweetDeck

So, that’s the basic set up for columns and separating your Twitter stream. But, beyond breaking your information into easily digestible bites, TweetDeck has a great collection of tools built in to help you Tweet better, smarter, and faster. First, there is the nice Tweet Window:

Easy Tweet entry in the Tweet Window. It even has a spell checker built in. It also keeps track of your remaining character limit and turns the entire Tweet Window red if you’ve exceeded your Tweet character limit:

The Tweet Window also includes some cool tools for URL shortening. Just enter the URL in the Shorten URL window below the main Tweet Window and click the Shorten URL button. And, voila, a nice, short URL. You can also select from several different URL shortening services if you have a particular preference:

If that’s not enough, there’s a great little TwitPic integration. Just click the TwitPic button while your writing a Tweet and it opens a dialog box to select a picture from your desktop. After you select a picture, it automatically uploads it to TwitPic for you and adds the URL to the picture into your Tweet automatically:

There is also another nice integration with TweetShrink. TweetShrink tries its best to fit your text within the 140 character limit of a tweet by replacing common phrases and words with shorter representations. Kind of like running your new text through the dryer or sending it to fat camp. I don’t use this much, but if you’re from the cell-phone-texting generation like my 20-year-old niece, my guess is this works for you. In any case, with one click on the TweetShrink button you can go from this:

to this:

Another nice feature is the Twitter API Limit Tracker. The API Tracker allows you to see how much of your Twitter API limit you’ve used and at what time your API limit will reset to 100%.

And speaking of your API limit, you have complete control over how TweetDeck is using your API limit for each type of function. Within the TweetDeck settings dialog you can control what percentage of your API limit is dedicated to your entire Twitter stream, your Replies and your Direct Messages. This essentially controls how often TweetDeck updates each category:

And since we’re in the TweetDeck settings panel, you can control where you want your Tweet window, how you want update notifications to occur and your column widths from the General settings tab.

And finally, you can manage the appearance of TweetDeck to suit your personal style through the Colors/Font tab in the settings panel:

So, that’s my guided tour of TweetDeck. If you’re looking for a great client for Twitter, look no further. This is the only Twitter client. But don’t take my word for it, Guy Kawasaki says ” I swear by Tweetdeck and Tweetie.” You can’t get a better endorsement than that. And no, I didn’t build TweetDeck or have anything to gain by sharing this except to help you find an awesome client for managing your Twitter stream. Have fun and keep Tweeting!

UPDATE February 12, 2009: TweetDeck v0.21.5

From the TweetDeck Blog: Since this is a point release, rather than a full new version, it contains mainly minor functionality updates and bug fixes but there are one or two interesting new features:

TweetDeck v0.21.5 from Iain Dodsworth on Vimeo.

Update:March 16, 2009: TweetDeck v0.24 Pre-Release

TweetDeck v0.24 Pre-Release is out today for downloading. Key feature: Facebook Integration http://is.gd/nz1V

Update: April 8, 2009: TweetDeck v0.25 Release

TweetDeck v0.25 is out today.  Key features/improvements:

• Major memory leak fixed
• FaceBook integration
• Short URL preview in TweetDeck
• TwitPic preview in TweetDeck
• Record 12seconds Videos direct from Tweetdeck
• Option to have usernames auto-complete in the tweet box.
• Option to automatically include hashtags when replying to messages.
• Removing the ability to DM yourself, and in so doing stopping many of you from feeling foolish.
• Updating the list of URL shortening services to the top 5 only and adding the Digg URL shortener.
• Making it easier to tab between the tweet box and the shorten box.
• Removing unread counter at top of each column.

The update will automatically be pushed out to everyone using TweetDeck today or it can be downloaded direct from http://tweetdeck.com.

Twellow: Allows searches by category. The category search is based on what people have in their Twitter profile.

TwitSeeker: From the same folks who brought you twInfluence, TwitSeeker helps you find others by allowing you to enter search terms and searching through actual Tweets for keywords.

Mr.Tweet: A lot of buzz around this one lately. Looks through your network and tweets and regularly suggests good people and followers you are missing out on.

Just Tweet It: Users enter their Twitter name and place themselves into categories within a directory. You can search the directory by category and find users that match your interests.

Find and Follow: This is a brand new one with a lot promise from my buddy Dave Bouwman. Users enter their Twitter name and tag their Tweets with categories. You can find people to follow based on these tags. Still in Beta so give Dave your feedback, he’s a great guy (and now he owes me $20).

Twubble: It searches your “friend graph” and picks out people who you may like to follow. Not exactly sure what that means, but it finds people for you?!?!

So that should at least get you started in the right direction. I thought it would be good to provide you with some other interesting starting points as well. I could just list the Twitterholic Top 100, but you can find that anytime. Instead, here are a few lists of some of the more “interesting” people that you can follow on Twitter. And, you can always follow me on Twitter too.

My Personal Top Ten

1. Guy Kawasaki: Yes, everyone follows Guy and for a good reason. He’s awesome.
2. Andrew Warner: Founder of Mixergy.com. Great Tweets and he’s always talking to interesting people.
3. Bert Decker: Founder and chairman of Decker Communications. Always interesting Tweets and just an all-around nice guy.
4. O’Reilly Media: They Tweet more useful information in a day than some people do in a year.
5. Ben McConnell: Co-author of the Church of the Customer blog. The blog is like “the word of mouth gospel”.
6. Jackie Huba: Ben McConnell’s partner in crime at the Church of the Customer blog.
7. Nancy Duarte: Author of Slide:ology and an amazing presentation designer
8. Kathy Sierra: Web developer, author, former blogger (we miss you Kathy), and another all around good person
9. 37 Signals: A few guys who know a thing or two about elegant interfaces, thoughtful features…you know, design and usability
10. Doug Ulman: The CEO of Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong non-profit that believes everyone has the power to make their life better.

The Cool Geeks (Technology and Social Media Experts)

1. Chris Brogan
2. Leo Laporte
3. Chris Pirillo
4. Jason Calacanis
   
5. Robert Scoble
6. Tim O’Reilly
7. Shannon Paul
8. Gary Vaynerchuk
9. Brian Carter
10. Pete Cashmore

Celebrities (If you’re into that sort of thing)

1. Tina Fey
2. Jimmy Fallon
3. John Cleese
4. John Hodgman (The Daily Show/PC guys from the Mac ads)
5. Elijah Wood
6. Demi Moore
7. William Shatner
8. Luke Wilson
   
9. Wil Wheaton
   
10. Yoko Ono

Athletes

1. Lance Armstrong
2. Andy Murray
3. Eli Manning
4. Jerry Rice
5. Kerry Rhodes
6. Michael Phelps
7. Natalie Gulbis
8. Shaquille O’Neal
9. Shaun White
10. Wil Carling

Politicians

1. Barack Obama
2. Al Gore
3. Joe Biden
4. Hillary Clinton
5. John McCain
6. Karl Rove (I guess he counts)
7. Chuck Grassley
8. James Demint
9. James Inhofe
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger
    

Musicians

1. Dave Matthews
2. Willie Nelson
3. Oasis
4. Colplay
5. Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)
6. Snoop Dogg
7. Pearl Jam
8. Bjork
9. Lil Wayne
10. MC Hammer (dated, but funny)

Tweeting Brands

1. Starbucks
2. JetBlue Airways
3. Carnival Cruise Lines
4. Comcast
5. Intuit
6. Best Buy
7. Home Depot
8. Whole Foods
9. Zappos
10. Dunkin Donuts

Agile Software Development (It’s what I coach)

1. Ryan Martens
2. Jean Tabaka
3. David Anderson
4. Martin Fowler
5. Mike Cottmeyer
6. Kent Beck
7. Jurgen Appelo
8. Brian Marick
9. Dave Bouwman (and GIS)
10. Esther Derby

And a few cyclists (I love cycling)

1. Ivan Basso
2. Team Slipstream
3. Dave Zabriskie
4. George Hincapie
5. Axel Merckx
6. Johan Bruyneel
7. Christian Vandevelde
8. Tom Danielson
9. Taylor Phinney
10. Michael Rogers

The Standards

Twitterholic ranks Barack Obama as number one with 223,909 followers, 227,134 friends, and only 264 updates. But at number 10 we have one of my favorites Guy Kawasaki with 57,240 followers, 60,436 friends, and an astounding 17,837 updates. Who’s more influential in the Twitterverse? Probably Guy. And me, I’m ranked 2,363rd with 2,208 followers, 2,197 friends, and just over 900 updates. So, according to Twitterholic, I’ve got some work to do.

TwitterCounter also uses number of followers to rank Tweeters. Once again Barack Obama is #1 with 223,923 followers. And again, Guy Kawasaki is hanging at #10 with 57,239 followers. And me, I’m 2,275. So, pretty consistent ranking across the two larger ranking sites based on followers. But is Barack influential in the Twitterverse? Popular: Yes. Influential: Maybe not.

Enter the Smart Kids

So, if you’re like me, you might be thinking “Is influence really all about the number of followers you have?”. Well, some of the smart kids think it’s about more than that and have pulled together more robust ways to measure your influence on Twitter using top secret algorithms (well, not really, but some of them wouldn’t share with me!). Let’s take a look at three of the newer kids on the block and how they work out Twitter influence.

TwitterRank uses a proprietary algorithm to determine your rank. Why don’t they just use followers? According to TwitterRank “That’s a little bit like asking, “Why didn’t Google just count the number of inbound links?” The short answer is, “there are many other signals.” Someone who has a lot of followers might be famous and interesting, famous but not interesting, or they might be sitting at home all night creating fake accounts in their parents’ basement. So, Twitterank currently doesn’t use your follower count or list at all, and uses other signals.” The algorithm apparently relies heavily on the number of @replies you get. You can read more about the algorithm here. So, who’s on top in TwitterRank terms? There is no Barack Obama or Guy Kawasaki in this list. Here’s the TwitterRank top ten:

1. briansolis (249.323)
2. pistachio (247.509)
3. jowyang (242.39)
4. iknowcalripken (240.742)
5. loiclemeur (239.624)
6. dweinberger (238.804)
7. ross (238.173)
8. tamar (237.6)
9. gaberivera (235.546)
10. TDefren (235.124)

And me, I’ve got a score of 162.98 (better than 97.98 percent of the known Twitterverse). That puts me much closer to Barack Obama’s 202.95 (at 99.72 percentile). And, Guy Kawasaki pulls ahead of the President with a score of 215.28 at 99.88 percentile. So clearly, Barack’s “influence” on Twitter has dropped when we go beyond followers alone.

Smart Kid #2 is HubSpot. HubSpot is more than just a smart kid though. They’re a major inbound marketing company who know a thing or two about ranking websites, blogs, FaceBook and now Twitter. Their TwitterGrader ranking algorithm is based on “The number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, the completeness of your profile, and ‘a few others‘. Here are the top ten according to TwitterGrader:

Not exactly household names, but if you’re a social media follower, you probably know them all. These are influential people with a lot to say. An now, Mr. President is ranked at 684th, with a score of 99.94, Guy Kawasaki is at number 14 with a score of 100, and little old me is at 2,083 with a score of 99.8. Clearly, we’re starting to see that the number of followers you have does not necessarily make you influential on Twitter.

Finally, we’ve got the latest newcomer to the rankings race twInfluence. I love the name. “Being Twinfluential“. Has a ring to it. The twInfluence ranking is based on a few really interesting metrics like social capital, first and second order networks, network growth velocity, reach, and network centralization. There is a whole lot to it and I don’t want to bore you with every last detail here. If you want to read everything about the algorithm, check it out here. So, who has the most twInfluence? Guy Kawasaki if you’re going by reach, @kb24777 if you’re looking at sheer velocity, and @17SyllableSales if you’re talking about real social capital. And sorry Mr. President, you didn’t make the grade on this one. As for me, I settled in at a respectable 270th.

And just for fun…

There’s TweetValue.  This one tells you how much your Twitter profile is worth.  Looks like it’s based on followers and @replies.  In any case, mine is worth $761 if anyone wants it.  Here’s the top ten from TweetValue:

1. barackobama, $41,150 (he is The President)
2. jasoncalacanis, $14,235
3. nprpolitics, $12,832
4. yobird, $11,871
5. itisnow, $10,971
6. guykawasaki, $10,011
7. scobleizer, $9,668
8. Astronautics, $9,632
9. osen, $8,752
10. shortyawards, $8,530

So what does it all mean?

So there you have it, the confusing world of Twitter metrics and rankings. I guess you can slice and dice the numbers in an infinite number of ways to get the results you want. I mean, if I wanted to impress someone who knew nothing about Twitter, I’d obviously tell them I’m ranked 270th (according to twInfluence). Really, it means nothing. But do you know what does mean something to me? Finding my name listed on a website or a blog amongst peers in my industry saying “This guy ranks”. I found out this week that I was listed at #25 on the “Top 100 List for Software Developers to Follow on Twitter” from NOOP. That felt good. And even more important to me is when someone just flat out Tweets “You should follow @ChrisSpagnuolo. Great stuff”. That feels awesome…the best! Providing something useful or valuable to someone else. Word of mouth (not rankings, not algorithms) is what really matters. Whether you have 100 followers or 100,000 followers, if people like what you have to say, that should be good enough for you. It’s not all about the numbers!

STEP 1: FOLLOW OTHER PEOPLE

Follow as many people as you can that share your interests or are in your industry. That’s where it all starts.

Follow people you know: If you’re just starting out on Twitter, use the Find People Tool in Twitter to help you find people you already know. When you find them, follow them. Since they already know you, chances are they’ll follow you back.

Follow the big names and who they’re following: Find the big names in your industry or area of interest and follow them. And then, click on their Following list and start following the people they follow.

Use Twitter follow tools: Later this week I’ll cover this in detail, but use any one of a wide variety of tools to help you find good people to follow on Twitter.

Know your limits: Technically, there is no limit on how many people you can follow on Twitter. But know and understand that Twitter puts a flexible cap on how many people you can follow. You can initially only follow up to 2,000 people on Twitter. Once you are following 2,000 people, you must bring your Follower count to within 10% of 2,000 to follow more people. Once you pass the 2,000 limit, the number of people you follow must always be within 10% of the number of people who are following you. For example, if you have 4,000 Followers, you can follow up to 4,400 people. Twitter does this to help cut down on Follow Spam: Follow Spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you’re actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention.

Look for good followers: When considering who to follow, look at content first. You always want to follow interesting people. And pay attention to how many updates people make. Low updaters are probably lurkers and not likely to help you expand your network very much. Take a good look at their followers to following ratio too. You want to follow people who’ll follow you back. So, if someone has 5,000 followers but they are only only following 25 people, consider the value of their content to you versus the chances of them actually following you back. If their content is highly valuable, follow them. If not, you may not want to bother following. However, someone who has 800 followers and is following 950 people is much more likely to follow you back. And if their content is valuable to you, it’s a win-win.

Follow those who follow you: It’s all about the network, so follow the people who decide to follow you. That’s just common courtesy right? If you have a hard time keeping up with following people as they follow you, consider using an autofollow tool like SocialToo. (I’ll have a post later this week about more useful Twitter tools)

STEP 2: GET TWEETING

OK, so now you’ve got some people following you and you’re following others. That’s good for a start. So how do you continue to grow a good following that you can maintain. Simple: GET TWEETING! Well, maybe it’s not that simple, but if you’re not Tweeting, nobody is going to keep following you. My best advice: Tweet and Tweet often. It takes a bit of commitment. When I made my resolution, I resolved to Tweet at least 10-20 good Tweets a day. I often do much more depending on what I run across each day. But make sure your Tweets are good. Nobody cares that you just changed the litter in your kitty’s box (unless you found something funny in there).

Provide value: Make sure that your Tweets provide value to the rest of the Twitter community. If you’re producing content, make it worthwhile and Tweet about it. Or if you like to comb the web or read blogs, find the most interesting items and share them with the community. Interesting, valuable ideas and links get ReTweeted. ReTweets increase your exposure to people in your extended network who may not be following you already. The more ReTweets you get of your original Tweets, the more followers you’re likely to gain.

Have an opinion: If you have an opinion, people are interested. And everyone has an opinion right? So feel free to join in the conversation and offer your opinion where you can.

Be an expert: Set yourself up to be an expert in a particular area of interest. Engage in conversations about that area of interest with an air of expertise (and hopefully you actually have some expertise). You can use tools like TweetDeck to help you find and filter those conversations you’d like to be a part of.

Ask questions: Use Twitter to engage the community to help you answer questions. Ask good questions and encourage everyone to pipe in. And use common courtesy and be sure to thank everyone for their help. “Please” and “thank you” go a long way on Twitter.

Just be involved: In general, just be active and involved. Participate in conversations with others. That would be the SOCIAL part of social media and it’s what makes this all so interesting. If you’re a one-way broadcaster, people will tune you out after a while.

Be yourself: Let yourself shine through in your Tweets. A constant stream of overly personal or completely impersonal Tweets can be irritating. Keep a good mix of your personality in your Tweets and let others get to know you a bit. And if you can provide a little humor every now and then, that always works too.

STEP 3: THE LITTLE THINGS

Avatars: Have a decent avatar. Don’t use a cheesy avatar. People use social media because it’s SOCIAL. They want to “see” you. If you’re confused about what a “good” avatar is, check out Dan Schwabel’s excellent blog post “11 Rules for Best Personal Branding Results with Avatars“.

Just ask: Sometimes, if you really want someone in particular to follow you, just ask them to follow you. Worst case: They say no.

More than words: Make your content about more than words. Try using tools like Posterous to Tweet using multimedia.

AND REMEMBER, IT’S NOT A CONTEST

There is a little bit of “Follower Frenzy” going on with Twitter these days. Please don’t take this post to be an extension of that frenzy. One of the worst things you can do on Twitter is build a huge following of irrelevant followers. If the people who are following you are not reading your Tweets, they’re useless. You want followers that are engaged with you and your content. To that end, don’t go “autofollow hunting“. That is, don’t trawl Twitter looking for people who will automatically follow you back no matter what. Work hard on your content, be sincere, provide value and follow relevant people. That’s the basis to building a good, solid, stable Twitter following. You can do it. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m at http://twitter.com/ChrisSpagnuolo

When it comes to organizations and team work, nothing is more important to success than communication. If your organization or team is is striving for continuous improvement, it’s imperative that really rich communication occurs between all team members, from top to bottom and everywhere in between. So why, if this is such an important practice for the success of organizations, do most of us choose to put some of the most important impediments to our success into emails or Wikis? Sure, we transfer the information that something is wrong and needs to be corrected. But that’s all we do, transfer information. Emails, Tweets, Wikis, and SharePoint don’t help us move others to action. Action, not information, is what moves us toward continuous improvement and success. And nothing moves people to action more than the spoken word.

I’ve been reading Bert Decker’s book You’ve Got to be Believed to Be Heard. It’s a fabulous book, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should. In his book, Bert asserts that the written word is the information channel and speaking is the action channel. According to Bert:

Speaking is like a multichannel Surround Sound experience, in which dozens of channels simultaneously feed information to the human mind. These various channels communicate a richly textured, multilayered message from speaker to listener. These channels consist of :

• Posture
• Facial expression
• Energy level
• Eye communication
• Vocal inflection
• Vocal intonation
• Volume
• Gestures and other physical actions
• And more

All of these non-verbal cues help transfer not just the information of the narrative, but the emotion and urgency of the message. They do so more effectively than any number of !!!‘s or URGENT‘s in an email can ever do. And it’s this emotion, this passion, this energy of verbal communication that motivates and persuades others to action. When you come to understand this basic premise, you then understand why communication, VERBAL communication, is essential to the success and improvement of any organization. Success and improvement require action, not just information. It requires that people in the organization are motivated to action to do the things that need to be done to improve the organization and their products.

I’ve written about the different levels of richness associated with different communication mediums, and I’ve also provided a list of tools to help distributed teams communicate more effectively, and I hope they’ve helped. But, please don’t misconstrue the message about the use of these tools for communications. Tools are good second alternatives for transferring information. But, when you need to transfer emotion and move people to action, don’t rely on tools for communication. Remember how to talk to each other and remember that face-to-face communication is the real power behind the most successful organizations and teams. So, the next time you find an impediment that needs to be removed for your team to be more effective, don’t send an email to your manager about the problem. Walk into his or her office and use your verbal skills to persuade him or her that something needs to be done, now. Move him or her to action today!!!

Ronica Roth, one of my colleagues here at Rally, recently suggested that our team try using Second Life to provide our team with a sense of collocation. Our team has several “remote” team members, and those that are “collocated” are frequently on travel. We rarely get to see each other in person. So, I find the idea of using Second Life for virtual meetings and collaboration intriguing. From the looks of it, we’ll probably give it a try and see how it works. I’ll keep you posted on our successes and/or failures with Second Life.

Ronica’s suggestion got me thinking back to a post I wanted to write some time ago on tools for distributed teams. One of the main challenges a distributed team faces is a barrier to good, collaborative communications. But, there are many tools and technologies that bring the level of collaboration between distributed team members to a higher level. Although these may never be as rich as face-to-face communications, I do believe they can help distributed teams perform better.

I’ve already written about how you can use Twitter to increase your productivity and there are tips in that post about how distributed teams can use Twitter to stay up to date on progress and tasking. In addition to Twitter, here is a brief list of other tools that I think distributed teams can communicate better:

• Adobe Connect: A really good web conferencing and eLearning platform
• Wikis: One of the best ways to share information amongst team members. There are tons of free ones out there that are easy to use. One I really like is PBWiki.
• SharePoint: Yes I know, it’s Microsoft, but it works pretty well and makes sharing of information very easy.
• Rally ALM: Not to be a fanboy, but Rally is really good for project management, planning, and tasking for distributed teams (disclaimer: I work for Rally, but I was a user before I worked for them)
• CardMeeting: A collaborative meeting space with virtual sticky notes. Great space for distributed brainstorming
• Windows SkyDrive: Again, yes Microsoft, but a good file sharing platform.
• Weave the People: Customized, private and focused networks enable conversations to be centered around what is important to your team. Check out a demo here.
• CrossLoop: Another good web conferencing and collaboration platform
• BaseCamp: Shared to-do lists, project plans and files
• Skype, and Babble: “Free” VOIP services
• QNext: Free audio, video and document sharing
• Convoq: Video, audio, screen sharing, presentation, IM,presence
• And of course the ubiquitous Webex…hopefully no description needed for this one

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a good starting point. If you have other tools or technologies that you use for distributed collaboration, let us know Sharing is always good.