As many of you know, I’ve been hard at work these last few months getting a brand new startup off the ground. HelpAttack! is an idea that started to form during last year’s Movember drive on Twitter. It occurred to me (while sitting in traffic at 38th and Guadalupe) that there are:

a) lots of people out there who use social media and who are looking for ways to be more involved in supporting causes

b) lots of people out there who don’t have tons of cash to throw around but would still be willing to give, say, a cappuccino a week.

Other things occurred to me as well, like that traffic light at 38th and Lamar can be unbearably long, and Texans are terrible about turning left at a green light (why don’t you people pull halfway into the intersection like the rest of the world?)

So, I talked to one of the smartest people I know in the online nonprofit world, who luckily for me lives in Austin. Also luckily for me, he performed a thorough background check and decided I was a reasonable person to get into business with (I have contacts at the police department who hid all the incriminating evidence). Of course I’m talking about David J. Neff.

David brought in Ehren Foss, who is brilliant, hard working, loves nonprofits and has a shiny head. Ehren built the website from scratch in his kitchen, using eggs from his very own chickens.

And now, a mere nine months after my traffic light epiphany, and thanks to the tremendous wisdom and teamwork that Ehren, David, our Board of Advisors, our lawyers, our designers, our friends and family, and the Austin startup community provided, HelpAttack! has evolved from an idea into a product, and is ready for launch.

So I would be delighted if you would go to the website, sign up, pick a nonprofit to support, and start making your Twitter stream count for something!

“Absolutely, Sarah!” you say.  “But wait,” you ask, “WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?”

I thought you’d never ask. You can do these things:

1. Follow HelpAttack! on Twitter.
2. Become a fan of HelpAttack! on Facebook.
3. Offer feedback about the website and service on our Get Satisfaction page.
4. Write about HelpAttack! on your own blog.
5. And if you’re in Central Texas, come to the launch party! We’d LOVE to see you there.

Happy Tweeting and Giving!

I swear to Thor that HootSuite was eavesdropping on my brain last night. The title of the original draft of this post was “Dear HootSuite, I Love You, Please Change” – but an email arrived this morning that changed all that.

Here’s the story: As social media management tools go, HootSuite and CoTweet are both way up there in terms of team management of Twitter. CoTweet has some advantages for team communication. I especially appreciate the ability to “assign” specific tweets to other team members, and to toggle the on duty/off duty switch, allowing members to work “shifts” when managing a Twitter account. Here’s a screenshot:

CoTweet

But HootSuite has some major advantages over CoTweet, including:

1. Multi-Channel Management.

In addition to Twitter, HootSuite allows you to manage Facebook accounts and pages, LinkedIN status updates, Ping.FM, WordPress, MySpace and even FourSquare. CoTweet allows you to manage…Twitter. These days, I don’t have a single client who’s worried solely with team managing a Twitter account. At the very least they have a Facebook page that requires updating, and if you’ve spent any time trying to integrate your Facebook page with your Twitter account, you know what a tangled web that can be. HootSuite eliminates that problem quite neatly.

HootSuite Social Networks

2. Cross posting.

Not only can I send a single message to several channels (i.e. Twitter stream and Facebook page), I can send a single message to several ACCOUNTS at the same time. This isn’t a feature I take advantage of often, but I can see where it would come in handy in certain scenarios.

3. Attaching pictures.

HootSuite includes a button on the status bar which allows you to attach photos to any status update. CoTweet…doesn’t. Unfortunately, the photo comes through on Twitter as an ow.ly link. I’d like to see HootSuite offer integration of some of the more common Twitter photo sharing apps like TwitPic and YFrog, which would allow users to view the picture in a pop-up when using an external Twitter client, but they have their own self-serving reasons for holding on to your picture’s URL:

Ow.ly Twitter Image

Namely, product placement.

4. Bookmarklet.

Over nine months ago a thread was started on the CoTweet’s Get Satisfaction support page regarding the need for a bookmarklet.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

Astonishingly enough, it was started by CoTweet themselves. Several people (including me) chimed in saying they could really use a bookmarklet. But nine months later, nothing’s changed. Even more discouraging, there’s been no activity on the thread from CoTweet representatives since the initiation of the ticket, leaving the commenters to wonder if CoTweet is really listening at all.

In terms of my daily workflow (I manage one Twitter account that consists mainly of links), the lack of a bookmarklet has been a major PITA. My workaround has been to grab a bit.ly link first, then open the HootSuite Bookmarklet, and copy and paste the bit.ly link into the HootSuite bookmarklet.

Why didn’t I just go ahead and use the HootSuite url shortener, ow.ly?

Well, that was the original purpose of this blog post. Up until this morning, when HootSuite rolled out some very welcome changes, an ow.ly link created a “social bar” on the linked-to page. This “Evil Page Frame” as my friend Sheila Scarborough called it, created a bar at the top of the page which included sharing links and a ReTweet button. I, for one, prefer to send out links to my audience that are as unadulterated as possible. In other words, it seemed obnoxious and more than a little spammy to ask readers to click on a link that then asked readers to click on even more links. Thankfully, the folks at HootSuite have changed all that. They still have an opt-in social bar on a new url shortener, ht.ly. But ow.ly links from now on will be completely uncluttered. You can read about the changes on their blog.

I still love CoTweet, and I still recommend it to clients. If your goals are to team manage a Twitter account, and especially if you have a lot of customer service or community management issues that need to be handled over the account itself, CoTweet is for you. But now that ow.ly is free of its social bar, I’m switching to HootSuite full time.

Last week, in my role as community manager for FeaturedUsers, I interviewed Guy Kawasaki for our #FollowFriday series. We talked about the startup economy, his books, Alltop, and how to get a standing ovation.

As if that wasn’t cool enough, I got to test out Wetoku, which is a sweet little embeddable app for doing online video interviews.

You can see the interview and read the transcript here.

Last April my friend Dusty approached me with an offer: he was too busy to handle the FeaturedUsers Twitter stream on his own. How would I feel about posting tweets, replying to followers, and generally monitoring the stream? It sounded like an interesting gig (and he was willing to pay me for it), so I agreed to give it a try.

Dusty had already set up the account with following/followers settings, so my only job would be sending out actual tweets. This has been something of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along gig for me, but after a few months I’ve got the basics of it figured out. I thought I’d share the process with you.

Twitter Stream

Flickr image by makelessnoise

A blend of tweets, sent throughout the day, is my formula for FeaturedUsers. This blend looks something like this:

1. Links. I send out about 5-8 links a day from interesting stories in my feed reader. Because my followers on FeaturedUsers and I have similar interests (Twitter, marketing, branding, web 2.0), I haven’t set up any special feeds for this account, but I would do so for a more specialized Twitter account. Most of these links are on those topics. At least once a day I try to send something that is more humorous or pop culture related. These are often the links that get retweeted the most, which helps to promote the FeaturedUsers brand across a wider audience. Also, it’s just good for people to have a laugh.

Most tweets follow the same basic format (as captured in TweetDeck):

This format ensures that I credit the author/site, add a little note of my own, and shows with the “^sv” that I am the personal sender of the tweet.

2. Retweets. I dip into the FeaturedUsers updates a couple of times a day to see what people are saying, and I retweet 2-3 people who have an interesting link to share (on topic!), or a good quote. This shows that you’re listening, and that you’re not just interested in talking about yourself or your brand.

3. Replies. I reply to all DM’s and @ messages throughout the day. If it’s a technical question that I can’t answer, I flag it for Dusty, but I still reply to the query, indicating that help is on its way. Prompt, good-natured responses are essential in customer service, and for now are quite manageable at around 6 or so a day. (I don’t reply to auto DMs.)

4. Follow Friday. Every Friday @FeaturedUsers gets a handful of #followfriday recommendations. Rather than thanking each of these people individually, I send out 2-3 batch tweets each Friday thanking those for mentioning me, and including the #ff or #followfriday hashtag.

5. Updates. Tweets are sent out to alert followers to new blog posts, updates to the service, or any other news related to FeaturedUsers.

6. Conversation. I admit, this is where I’m most lacking. Friendly conversation and engagement is appealing, and when I’ve spoken about more personal, general things, even the weather, it tends to get a response. But I usually forget to just “chit chat” on this Twitter account during the day. I’ll be working on that.

Tools

Flickr image by geishaboy500

Having an efficient method for sending and responding to Tweets keeps me from losing my mind. Here are the tools I use (Mac OSX/Firefox 3.5):

1. If there is more than one person on your Twitter account, you really should be using a group Twitter application like HootSuite or CoTweet. CoTweet allows for users to “assign” tweets (with optional notes attached) to each other for follow-up, schedule future tweets, and manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single page. It’s in Beta right now, so you have to request an invite, but last I heard these were being sent out pretty regularly.

2. Feed Reader. I’m addicted to Feedly right now, but Google Reader works fine for this. As I mentioned above, much of what I already read by default is relevant to the FeaturedUsers followers, so I haven’t had to create a separate folder. If I were tweeting for a real estate company or a wine merchant, however, I would have some unique feeds set up specifically for them. In the morning I go through my feeds and schedule links to be shared throughout the day. At the end of the day I’ll check Feedly again, and save a few links for the next day. That enables me to get rolling quickly the next morning with a few choice items. 2. CoTweet really really REALLY needs a bookmarklet for easy link sharing (they say this will be coming shortly). Otherwise, it’s perfect. For now I keep the HootSuite bookmarklet in my browser sidebar to send out links. This includes an option to schedule tweets into the future, which is great.

3. Link Shortener. A drawback to the HootSuite bookmarklet is it’s tied in with the ow.ly link shortener. This may or may not irk you. I replace all ow.ly links with an is.gd link, using the is.gd Creator for Firefox.

4. ShareThis. Another add-on I use is the ShareThis add-on for Firefox. This enables me to send all links to the FeaturedUsers del.icio.us account.

5. Twitter Search. CoTweet captures all @ replies and DMs on the website, but I still keep a FeaturedUsers search going on TweetDeck. This catches any mentions of the website or the service that aren’t in the standard @ reply format.

6. Google Alert. In addition to monitoring Twitter, I run a Google Alert for FeaturedUsers that sends results to my inbox once a day. This helps me capture any reviews or other mentions of FeaturedUsers on the internet, allowing me to thank the reviewer and link to the post the following day.

Anyone else out there Twitter for someone else, or Twitter for business? I’d love to hear about your process and the tools you use!