Hello, my name is Dan McDonnell and I am a Community Manager for the American Evaluation Association. As someone who uses Twitter extensively both in a personal and professional capacity, I have found that, while powerful, the basic client is occasionally lacking in functionality. In this post, I intend to provide a brief overview of a few tools that can make for a more feature-rich and convenient Twitter. As more and more evaluators look to Twitter as a potent avenue for knowledge share, my hope is that this list provides some valuable information on how to improve that experience.
Rad Resource: Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a powerful social media management software that offers both free, paid and enterprise versions. This software puts a social media dashboard at your fingertips with access to behind-the-scenes data on follower interaction, gives you the ability to create and schedule tweets and other social media posts and allows you to customize how you visualize different hashtags and Twitter feeds. Hootsuite is best used to keep track of who mentions you on Twitter, retweets your tweets and to organize the type of information you want to consume on Twitter. Think of it as your enhanced Twitter homepage!
Rad Resource: Buffer
Buffer, quite simply, makes it easy to schedule tweets. By adding Buffer as an add-on to your Browser or app on your mobile device, you can automatically tweet out any article or blog post. Once installed, you’ll see Buffer added to the ‘Share on social media’ option across the web. But the best feature of Buffer? It automatically schedules your posts at an optimal time for your followers to read, helping you space out your posts, plan ahead and make it easier for you to share great knowledge and content.
Rad Resource: Pocket
Found a blog post that you’d love to read, but don’t have time right now? Pocket has both an app and a browser add-on that gives you the ability to save interesting posts and content for later with one click, similar to the bookmarking feature on most browsers. What makes Pocket different? Any pages that you save to Pocket will be available offline (and on any device that you can use to access your Pocket account) so if you’re on a plane, airport or another location with a limited internet connection, you still have full access to your Pocket-ed content. I love using it while on the subway!
Do you use any of the above tools, and if so, what are your favorite features?
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.
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