I have written many articles about Twitter. You probably know that I look at Twitter a little different than most. I am not focused on getting more followers, but rather use Twitter as a real time search engine. If you want to read more about this topic you can follow the “related posts” at the bottom of this article.
Today, however, I want to discuss a great way to make your Twitter life easier. As everybody knows, tweets are no longer than 140 characters. So writing them is easy enough. But opening up a new tab and going to your account can become a distraction. I use Hootsuite to overcome that problem to a certain degree. But when I am browsing the web, and I find a website that has my interest I don’t want to have to switch to Hootsuite just to share this website with others.
When you use Firefox or Chrome as your browser there is a simple solution. A simple add-on makes it possible to stay on the page you want to share. You can use the URL navigation bar of your browser to type your message and send it off to your Twitter account. Actually, you can now even send a status update to Facebook or LinkedIn this way. The name of the add-on used to be Twitterbar, and since April 6th, the application was sold to Hootsuite, so now it is called the Hootbar.
Let me show you how easy this is. Just click on the link to install the add-on for Firefox, or use the Chrome add-on to get started. As soon as you have added the add-on, you will see the following symbol:
In Chrome:
In Firefox:
Just click on the symbol and a small window pops up, with the title and link of the page your are on will show up. You can make changes or add text if you want. Here are some of the most widely used options:
By adding ” – -@Twittername - -post” to the end of your message you can instruct it to post the message to a specific Twitter account of your choice. If you leave the Twitter name out and just use “- -post”, the message will be posted to your default account. This account can be set and changed in the option, which you can access by right clicking on the Hootbar Icon (
)
If you want to send a regular message using the navigation bar, than that can be done also. Just type your message and click on the Hootbar Icon and the message will be on its way immediately.
If you add – -hoot at the end of the message and click on the Hootbar icon, a small hootsuite window will pop up. You now have the choice to send your message to any of the accounts that you have setup within Hootsuite (provided you have a Hootsuite account, of course). In the below example I typed in ” It is the end of yet another week. I am getting ready for Monday – -hoot”:
This gives you the opportunity to select one or more accounts to send the message to. You can pick from all accounts that are setup in Hootsuite. Not just Twitter. This is a great way to send updates to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Ping.fm.
By clicking on the calendar in the bottom center of the window, you have the option to schedule the update for a later date. You can do all of this without ever leaving your browser window. A huge timesaver.
I hope this was helpful information for you. As always we appreciate your input, so please leave a comment below this post.
To your success,
