Social Media Tips 2 - Tweetdeck Pros & Cons

TweetDeck is twitter’s own twitter ‘client’ - a program which acts independently of the website itself, yet pulls in twitter content and allows you to interact with it. It also acts as a sort of social media dashboard for other platforms such as Facebook, allowing you to view aspects of all your accounts at a glance and post across them all simultaneously.

It is a popular social media management tool for companies, agencies, community managers, or even just individuals with many social media accounts. There are many benefits of the platform, but it isn't for everyone, so I have summarised the key points below:

 Pros

• Notification pop ups - you can adjust settings so that Tweetdeck will run in the background but still alert you via a pop up window when your brand is mentioned.
• Scheduling facility - this function allows you to ‘schedule’ a tweet, which will post automatically at a set point in the future, so you needn't worry about missing optimal times to tweet.
• Customisable - its quick to set up customised columns within the 'deck' layout. You can then create a 'control panel' with columns displaying search terms, mentions, messages etc. how you would like them.
• Relatively easy to use - support documents and video tutorials exist and because Tweetdeck has been around for a few years there are plenty of free tutorials and articles online.

 Cons

• Speed - whilst generally quite fast the Tweetdeck platform can slow down when dealing with large volumes of tweets, which can make it harder to monitor multiple search terms in real-time.  
• Installed locally - Tweetdeck has to be installed locally on your machine, meaning all functons (including scheduled tweets) cannot work unless Tweetdeck is actually open and running on your computer. Not ideal for those 4am tweets to your followers overseas! 
• No analytics - Tweetdeck has no inbuilt analysis package, meaning that to analyse the success of your social efforts you will need another application. This is a big negative point for Tweetdeck as most users not prefer the simplicity of being able to create and analyse posts from within one platform.

Social Media Tips 1 - Some LinkedIn Pros and Cons

Pros Professional information. Of all the social networks, LinkedIn is the most focussed on professional interests.	Cons Smaller Audience. Although LinkedIn has a huge user base, it is still not as popular as Facebook or Twitter.
Aids offline networking. After a networking events you can add people you've met on LinkedIn, reinforcing the relationship. Some people even have LinkedIn details on their business cards.	Lacks a personal touch. Online 'introductions' lack the depth of a personal meeting, and some people may prefer not to be put in touch without having met first.
Creates a forum for expertise. Taking part in LinkedIn discussions is a good way to demonstrate individual expertise.	Not as suitable for B2C/leisure&lifestyle As a more formal/professional environment, users are less susceptible to marketing and advertising concerning leisure time products and services.
Highly targeted professional advertising. People on LinkedIn are already in work mode so it's more acceptable to advertise B2B products. Adverts can be targeted by age, gender, seniority, job title and even company.	Not as fun! No farmville to see here people...move along now. As the most professional of the networks, LinkedIn lacks appeal for those who want  entertainment.
Competitor Intelligence Despite a general tightening of employee social media policies sensitive information can sometimes be gathered from CV's on LinkedIn.	Charge for some services  Some 'extra' services such as Jobseeker Premium, ask for a subscription fee.
Analytics Company page admins get data on visitors by industry, title, function and company, page views over time, clicks on jobs, clicks on employee Profiles, and clicks on job "Apply" buttons.