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We know everything, don’t we – those of us who have been in this game for years – then you discover you don’t. Sometimes that discovery makes you feel a fool, sometimes it gives you great joy – that was what happened to me today. Most people probably know about this – but I didn’t, my delight may be tempered by a slight feeling of foolishness when I discover that everyone did know about it. It was also a useful lesson in not assuming anything.
Gathering information is one of the things we have to do on a daily basis, we have to be ‘all over’ our chosen market. You need information that is current as well, or your market will leave you behind. One of the best ways to get current information is Twitter, love it or loathe it, that is where the chatter is. Gathering that information is made easier by Twitter search and there are more twitter apps out there than you could shake a stick at to help you but today I discovered a way to make it even easier.
I use Google Reader for so many things, it is one of my favourite tools, in fact I would pay good money for it. Whenever I start a project for myself, or a client, one of the first things I do is set up all the search terms, feeds etc in Google Reader so the information is at my finger tips. I have used it for years. I know they have been making changes and doing a few things with it but I had grown complacent and stopped investigating it – it was like a comfy pair of slippers that I put on whenever I sat down with a cup of tea. I was setting up a new series of searches and went to ‘Browse for Stuff’ to set up some keyword searches to be greeted by rather more options than I remembered. Being unbearably curious I had to investigate them all and came upon an option to add a twitter search on the keywords of my choice to my feeds. Fabulous! Now I can have all the info I want in the one place I like to have it - and that wasn’t the only thing I found but more of that in another post (or two!).
To set up the Twitter Search feeds is simple – open your google reader and click on ‘Browse for stuff’
Next click on Search – you can come back to the other things later – staying focussed here is essential – I lost hours of my life!
Finally, go down to the bottom section, enter your keyword and click on the drop down box to select ‘Twitter Search’ – or any/all of the other options
There are lots of other options on the page as well – and I shall be visiting ‘Bundles’ in a future post.
If you already knew about it – you could have told me – and if you didn’t – enjoy and tell all your friends where to come and find out about it!
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I did a stupid thing yesterday. I didn’t practice what I preach. What did I do? Very, very foolishly I edited a file on one of my sites on the server. How stupid is that? I have lost count of the number of times I have railed at people for being so silly and then I go and do it myself. It is one of the stupidest things to do and I paid the price as I was greeted with a completely blank screen. Couldn’t get into the backend, site disappeared. Phrases like ‘Oh flip’ and ‘Botheration’ passed my lips.
