How to use Twitter Apps

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Get a Twitter Account
3. Pick your app
4. 1. Hootsuite – Signing Up
   2. Hootsuite – How does it work?
5. 1. Tweetdeck – Signing Up
   2. Tweetdeck – How does it work?

 

Introduction

 

#eltchat is the hashtag used on Twitter for talking to other ELT teachers.

 

There’s an official #ELTChat Twitter account which you can follow (and you should) to see part of the conversation and keep on top of the blog, but to be able to see all of discussion going on you need to follow the hashtag.

 

Unfortunately you can’t do that in real time in Twitter, instead you have to use a third party app to help you track it.

 

This is a guide for how to set-up a third party app to follow #ELTChat.

 

If I’ve missed anything or it’s still not clear, post a message in the comments below and we’ll work out how to improve my guide.

 

 

1. Get a Twitter Account

 

If you just want to watch the #ELTChat and not take part then you can follow it on TWUBS here. But if you want to take part you’ll need to get a Twitter account.

 

2. Pick your app

 

We’ll be covering the two most popular ones here:

 

• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck

 

3.a. Hootsuite – Signing Up

 

The following link will take you straight to the registration screen for Hootsuite. Once you’ve filled in your details you’ll need to connect your Twitter account to it.

 

 

 

Twitter will then prompt you to connect your account, so you’ll need to sign into Twitter (if you’re not already).

 

 

 

Skip the rest of the steps and head to your new Hootsuite account. It should look something like this:

 

 

3.b. Hootsuite – How does it work?

 

Hootsuite works with streams. Rather than seeing all your Twitter information in a single big feed, Hootsuite allows you to split off chunks.

 

If you hover over any of the buttons, they’ll go green and pressing them will add the stream to your page.

 

For example: Clicking on Mentions will give you a stream of all the tweets of mention you and nothing else.

 

If you want to send a tweet with Hootsuite you type it into the compose a message box at the top of the page and press “Send Now”.

 

That’s all great, it’s all basic Twitter stuff. What we want to do however is follow the hashtag #ELTChat.

 

Click the add stream button shown below.

 

 

 

A new window will open up. Select the keyword tab and then type in “#eltchat” into the word phrase box. It should look like this:

 

 

Then click “Add” so the word appears below and then “Add Stream”. The window will close and you should now be looking at the main screen with a stream!

 

 

 

4.a. Tweetdeck – Signing Up

 

The sign up for Tweetdeck is on the homepage, so head to it here and you should be able to sign up using your Twitter handle.

 

 

Once you’ve signed up it’ll ask who uses your account, select “Only You” (it gives the option for more than one, because companies will often use these sort of apps.).

 

Click “Get Started” and you’ll be greeted with a home screen.

 

4.a. Tweetdeck – How does it work?

 

Tweetdeck works very similarly to Hootsuite. Rather than seeing all your Twitter information in a single big feed, Tweetdeck also allows you to split off chunks.

 

Unlike Hootsuite it comes pre-populated with some basic columns. Clicking the plus on the left sidebar will allow you to create more and clicking the blue quill at the top will allow you to write a tweet.

 

We want to follow the hashtag #eltchat so we’re going to click the plus:

 

 

 

 

And then select search. The window will close and search sidebar will open and we’ll type in “#eltchat”

 

 

 

It’s showing us the Twitter user #ELTChat, but we want to watch the hashtag not a single user so either press enter (Without hovering over the user) or click the search icon. A column should open up. We then click the Add Column button at the bottom:

 

 

Success, we should now have a new column with #eltchat at the top. If you can’t see it immediately you might need to scroll to the right.