Using TweetDeck to gather news? Here's how to do it right

TweetDeck lets you see multiple timelines in one interface, which comes in handy when you need to monitor multiple accounts and build connections.

Whether you’re a seasoned journalist or just fresh out of uni, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you can find through this platform. When I first used Tweetdeck, I knew what I wanted to find but could not make sense of all of those individual search columns.

If you too are struggling to see the forest for the tweets, don’t despair. Here’s how you can organise your deck to find the best stories.

To access the features below, click on the plus icon in the navigation bar to select ‘Add column’.

Search

It’s Tweetdeck’s most basic column, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

‘Search’ works how you expect it to. It finds tweets that include a word, phrase or hashtag, and shows you every tweet with that item.

You can also use words like ‘AND, OR’ to search for multiple phrases. For instance, if you’re monitoring crisis news around the world you might type:

“gunshots OR fire OR earthquake”

But, the fun doesn’t stop there. Filtering the column lets you be picky about what you see in there. You can filter around a specific date range, language or the amount of engagement tweets have.

Now, you can get tweets about news that you can’t afford to miss early on.

List

Creating a list is a great way of finding out what a particular group of users are saying. When you add users to a list, your column will show everything they tweet.

You could follow entire political party or just a group of local restaurants.

I use this function to monitor local authorities for breaking news by grouping them together, but you can refine this further by customising from the columns dropdown menu. Again, ‘AND, OR’ functions apply.

Collection

It’s a group of tweets that you’ve decided to collect. You can add to this list by dragging in any tweet you spot.

It’s especially useful if your team has access to the account. As a group you can add tweets in for the whole team to see and generate story ideas.

Instead of having to remember which column a tweet appeared in, now you can save the tweet in there for future reference. It might not cut down on information, but it will mean you won’t have to go searching for too long.

Likes

If you’re looking for news about a specific topic, you can let another media group do the work for you. Charities and specialised news organisations will often ‘like’ news relevant to their field.

By delving through what they’ve liked you get a glimpse into their media centre, and see twitter vicariously through their eyes. You can find out what they’re interested in and consider new angles to your stories.

It’s also useful for finding new contacts. They’re much more likely than you to be following smaller, niche organisations or public figures.

Mentions

This column helps you find tweets that mention any specific user. It’s good for monitoring public opinion about a person.

But why not take it a step further by filtering out tweets with only a couple of likes or retweets? Now you’ll be able to see what public figures are saying about one another.

Do you have any Tweetdeck tips? Tweet us at @journalismnews and we’ll feature the best ones.

To learn more about social media, join our popular Social media content strategies course with former BBC journalist Sue Llewellyn. See details

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