Some people have questioned my use of multiple Twitter accounts, saying I'm being dishonest. I disagree. Twitter is about online relationships with others who have similar interests and if you mash all of your interests into one, you'll end up following more than you can digest.
I've broken my accounts down so my followers who don't care to hear about food won't be receiving my ChipDipper tweets, same goes for my other accounts.
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I've been experimenting with 3 different tools over the past few weeks to find which program is best for managing multiple Twitter accounts. I tried HootSuite, Splitweet, and Twhirl.
HootSuite
- Pros
- Organizes easily
- Everything is separated by account
- Sending Feature
- You can send to one or all by just selecting each account the tweet applies to
- Pending Feature
- This is especially good if you have a schedule you like to stick to for a blog. You can write the tweet in advance, select your time and then it automatically sends it out.
- Separation of DM and Replies and Sent
- Easy to pull up just the DMs, Replies or Sent tweets
- Stats
- If you use the URL shorten feature within the program (owl.ly) it will keep statistics on who clicked on the URL and how many times
- Cons
- Sending Feature
- Maybe it's only me, but sometimes when I would click to send it to one account, it would send it to a different account or all 3!
- Web Browser must be kept open
- Sometimes I like to put the internet away but would like to still receive updates without needing to continuously check my web page
- No notices
- I like receiving little pop-up notices
SpliTweet
- Pros
- Dashboard
- Has everything on one screen
- Color Coding
- Each account is assigned a color. When tweeting you select all or just one and when you receive tweets they have the color next to it to indicate which account received the message.
- Updates Fairly Frequently
- Separates your Replies, DMs and Favorites
- Again, always a nice feature to be able to just pull-up messages and tweets specifically for you
- Brand Mentions
- Enter in brands that you are interested in and mention of those keywords will be put into this separate category for your reference.
- Cons
- Lay-out
- I don't like the way the page is formatted. This lay-out is the exact reason I don't keep just one account. I like having my topics a little more separated than a colored square along the side of each tweet.
- Web Browser must be kept open
- Again, sometimes I like to put the internet away
- Colors
- Maybe this is me being girly, but I like being able to select the colors for each of the accounts
- Pros
- It's a downloaded software
- You download this program and it functions on your computer without keeping a web browser open all the time!
- Accounts have separate box
- Each account has it's own separate box letting you pull-up an individual box or all 3 at a time. To those of you who IM (which I assume is a majority if you're on social networks like Twitter or Facebook) it's set-up like an IM box
- RTs, DMs and @s appear in a different color
- To make sure the messages stand out among the others, the tweet directed at you will be another color (varying upon the color scheme of your choice)
- Minimize but still receive alerts
- Little messages pop-up at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen when you've received tweets
- Buttons along the bottom and side
- Each box has it's own set of buttons along the bottom and side of the text box. The boxes allow you to pull-up your Replies, DMs, Favorites, Friends/Followers, your personal message Archive, Profile LookUp and Twitter Search. You can also Shorten a URL, Upload a Photo, Send a Tweet or Refresh your page.
- Fades when not in use
- When you are in another program, the box becomes clear or a "ghost" in the background
- Cons
- Several boxes are open at once
- If you don't like having a lot open on your screen at once, this can be a problem, however I just minimize mine. Then when I want to write, I can pull the box up whenever.
My choice is Twhirl. I love it! It's everything that I want in a multi-account managing tool. It's really easy to use and keeps me in the know. Let me know your thoughts!
Psst! Rumor has it that TweetDeck will hopefully be expanding into the realm of "Multi-Account Managing." If/when that happens I'll have to re-evaluate my choices. I really like TweetDeck when managing just one account...hmmm...
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