HootSuite is our preferred tool for not only our Twitter activities, but also managing and tracking all our social media channels. Although there is a HootSuite Pro account upgrade, the basic free account will probably be all you need.

We are going to walk you through setting up a HootSuite account through your Twitter account and then we will provide a tutorial on customizing HootSuite to allow you to easily track and filter information via a quick dashboard view.

Step 1 – Go to HootSuite.com and click on “Sign Up Using Twitter”.

Step 2 – A popup window will open asking for permission to link HootSuite to your Twitter account. FIll in your Twitter username or email and your password and click “Authorize App”.

Step 3 – You will be redirected to the main HootSuite dashboard setup with the basic streams for your Twitter account. You will start to see Tweets from the people you follow in the “Home Feed” stream; anytime your Twitter account is mentioned in the “Mentions” stream; direct messages in the “Direct Message Inbox” stream; and any messages you send in the “Sent Tweets” stream.

Extra Customization Step – If you would like to setup a stream that pulls Tweets that include certain search terms, you can do that easily. Select “Add Stream”. With Twitter selected on the left column, select the “Keyword” tab and enter up to 3 words or phrases you would like to track.
 

Once you have your HootSuite account setup, you can add additional Twitter accounts (for example your firm account in addition to your personal one) as well as other social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and WordPress. We’ll cover that in a future post.