TweetDeck - Pro-Tips

We have seen some ways by which TweetDeck can greatly enhance the stock Twitter experience. But there is still more than meets the eye. TweetDeck offers some neat ways to spruce up your daily Twitter work and if you happen to live your second life on Twitter, these tips could surely come in handy.

Search Tools

Twitter is a vast resource. Therefore, effective search tools are needed to get to the people and topics that matter most to you.

TweetDeck builds on the search capabilities of the native Twitter client by giving more options for refining searches. New searches open in a separate pane which allows for further filtering.

As you can see in the above screenshot, searching for Microsoft has opened a new search pane with many options.

• The Content function allows searching based on specific keywords. It allows for exclusion of certain words or phrases and allows searching for tweets in a specified time frame in any or a certain language.

• The Location function allows filtering of tweets matching the keyword from a given geolocation. It is useful if you want to follow topics relevant to a specific region. You can filter results up to a radius of 100 Kms from your chosen location.

• The Users function allows you to narrow down tweets on the topic from a specific user or as mentioned by a specific user.

• The Engagement function allows filtering of results based on the number of retweets, likes or replies. This is useful if you only want to see the tweets that have been popular for this search.

Of course, like other panes, you can also get notifications whenever there is an updated result for this search and embed the search on your website or blog, you can then share the search on your timeline. You can also search for a specific user and display a column for results from that user alone.

You can even take this up a notch further. As you type the search query in the Search box, TweetDeck runs a real-time search that will auto-suggest some of the matching terms. You can then select from the suggested results directly and open them in a new pane.

Here is the cool part. For example, you want to read a topic with a specific sentiment, just type a happy or sad emoticon followed by the search term. For example, ‘Microsoft :)’ will show only the positive results for Microsoft.

You can also filter keywords directly from the Search box. For example, “#microsoft filter:news” will show only the news topics having the hashtag Microsoft. Also, just like the good old command line on your PC, it is possible to add wildcards to searches. Searching for ‘Microsoft is *.’ will return all sorts of searches containing ‘Microsoft is…’.

For even more search tips and Boolean operations on searches, go to Settings and click on Search tips.

Embedding Tweets

You may want to embed tweets of interest in your blog or website. TweetDeck makes it easy to do so. Just go the desired tweet, click on the ellipses and select Embed this Tweet from the menu. Doing so opens a dialog box that contains the HTML code for the tweet along with a preview of how it will appear on your website. If the tweet is part of a conversation, you can choose to include the parent tweet as well.

Users who visit your blog or website can directly follow, reply, like or retweet this tweet from this embedded code if they wish to. This works great for news, marketing or for sharing information on just about anything.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Ask any power-user worth their salt and the first thing they would prefer learning about any software program are keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts increase productivity manifold and are especially helpful when you are living and breathing Twitter.

The following keyboard shortcuts are available for TweetDeck users –

From Anywhere Within TweetDeck

Tweet Navigation

Tweet Actions