Tweetlater is now called SocialOomph!

This is a brilliant tool created to save time, increase productivity, and definitely ease the ability to market and drive traffic to your website(s). I’ve been using this for most of the year along with a variety of others to assist in the management and development of my own, and client Twitter profiles. This ensures we are better able to focus on our business. As a social media educator, tools aside, myself and clients must still take a few moments each day to login and ensure we’re engaging in conversations and @replies.

The Busy-ness of Business

No sane business person has the time to spend the number of hours necessary in the early stages of establishing a Twitter profile to increase their Follow list; their business can’t afford the distraction! As such, many of my clients and business peers (not industry) were initially hesitant to jump into using Twitter. In their eyes, Facebook was enough of a drain on their time, not to mention other social sites that come highly recommended for their industry.

In Comes SocialOomph

The sweet-spot of SocialOomph is with the User Interface (UI) that offers a variety of account management features and views for managing the volume of twitter traffic and tweets. Managing client Twitter Accounts, for example, whether monitoring, tweaking, or re-strategizing, SocialOomph becomes very useful with streamlined means to navigate profiles without constantly logging in and out of Twitter.

Advantages

Read their home page and you will see a host of benefits they talk about. Listed below is my own list of useful pieces of the puzzle, and my personal recommendation with it. 

• Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget!
• Track keywords on Twitter — Empower yourself!
• Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing!
• Bit.ly URL shortening — Track those clicks!
• Follow those who follow you — Automate!
• Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate!
• View @Mentions & Retweets — Multi-account efficiency!
• Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy!
• Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine!
• Unlimited Twitter accounts — No charge!
• Manage all your Twitter accounts — One integrated console!
• Integrate all timelines & keywords — Boost your productivity!
• Filter your timelines — Tune in only on favorite friends!
• Do the same action on multiple accounts — One click, save time!
• Mute annoying tweeters — Avoid frustrations!
• Hide read tweets — Unclutter your view!
• Delegate your Twitter account management — Free up time!
• Schedule recurring tweets — Without them being repetitive!
• Pause & unpause recurring tweets — Fine-tune campaigns!
• Bulk upload & schedule tweets — Save time!
• Get all new enhancements — No extra charge!
• NEW!! Monitor Channels – System default channels & Your Own Custom Channels!

Disadvantages

That’s quite a list of advantages, and it is necessary to speak to what I perceive as disadvantages. First, It is important to recognize that software services evolve as the demand for certain features increase, and SocialOomph continues to evolve, bringing new enhancements, features, and controls; something that is necessary to combat some of the negative aspects of Twitter Users inappropriate Tweet-Behavior.

Recurring Tweets: A great idea with a pitfall if relied upon too heavily. It becomes apparent to your audience when you rely too much upon this feature and can cost you followers who “give up” on following a non-person entity. This is not to say there isn’t the right time and place for the feature.

Follow / Unfollow: This simple drawback has a management feature that offers some protection. The issue with it is the limits placed upon API requests by Twitter. Were abusers to follow / unfollow repeatedly, their actions affect the number of interactions that become successful for building your list. That said, my observations suggest SocialOomph has some controls implemented to attempt to counter this, though the systematic tools have limitations over the creativity of the human animal’s unpredictability. Overall, a minor disadvantage.

Recurring Tweet Management: As a power-user of systems, databases, spreadsheets, the one-by-one management of scheduled tweets, retweeting them, recycling for scheduled tweets, can be a tad tedious. Rather than get bogged down online, the counter-recommendation is to begin the practice of offline tweet management and using their Bulk Upload feature.

Deleting / Cleaning Up Tweets: Reviewing history, or adjusting scheduled tweets, multi-select and taking action upon them in bulk is not an option. It’s a one-by-one process, and if deleting, editing, etc., this can be tedious. Recommendation: Get it right the first time.

OVERALL RECOMMENDATION

This is a great tool, and I highly recommend its use for managing your Twitter Account(s) and your client’s Twitter Accounts(s). With the affordable monthly cost, I definitely suggest the Pro Account for Increased Productivity while improving your Time Management significantly.

As a Pro Account user, all upgrades and additional features are available for life.; another serious benefit.

I phoned their toll free line 1-866-267-9825 and ended up speaking with Linda Baxley at extension 438. If you call, use her extension and tell her you found out about her from Lee Down. I can’t commend her enough for her superb manner, expertise, and service. You can also visit CopyTalk.com directly and sign-up.

Speaking with her I had my questions promptly answered, and she helped set me up right there on the spot. CopyTalk.com has trial offers and I was considering the “Buy 1 Month, Get the 2nd Month FREE” option. She gave me the afternoon to play with it since I was working on a book that afternoon.

Here’s How It Works

• Call the toll-free line for the subscription (not customer service) and enter your PIN
• Say “Subject: _______” and then start talking.
• At the 4-minute limit warning, quickly end speaking, follow the prompt to accept this recording.
• TRICK: each phone call is permitted FIVE four minute recordings, so stay on the line, speak the subject at the prompt again as you did previously.
• After the Five four minute recordings are captured, dial back and continue.
• Within 24 hours, you should receive your transcribed recordings via email.

Now that you’ve got this great content in your email, now you can cut/paste, organize it however you need it for web copy, for ebooks, brainstorming, and so forth.  This is a great time-saver, really well suited to auditory thinkers/doers and creative types.

Annoying 4 Minutes?

It seemed annoying to have to limit my time, though I do understand from a technical standpoint that setting a limit aids in the processing behind the scenes. Giving it a try, I found myself initially dialing back after each 4 minute recording until I clued in that I was being asked to continue after my first recording. This made a huge difference. That’s a lot of good content written in 20 minutes, but there’s a catch.

What’s the Catch?

I tend to speak, explain, teach, and sometimes even write in a conversational tone. Speaking is obviously worse than writing as I’m able to edit on the fly. So I learned quickly that if I want to maximize the return on this tools potential, I would have to ease up a bit. That was the problem: Trying to get it all said in four minutes.

Now that I’m signed up and no longer testing, slowing down the thoughts, the dialogue, and my emotional energy, I can focus more clearly upon each item I wish to capture and speak it out as though I’m reading a book. Slightly different voice, better use of words, appropriate grammar, etc.

Good News

With practice, the transcriptions received back via email the next day are often ready-to-go with very minor editing. Previously, I’d stitch together the copies, have to do major edits around my conversational style when I recorded the call, and I’d lose all interest in using the service. So the good news is with practice, and realizing there’s no limits which allows so much more time to relax and do this well, great content creation with minimal effort no matter where you are.

My Recommendation

I find it an incredibly useful tool. While the monthly fee seemed pricey, the lack of limits and the potential to get enormous value from that far outstrips their monthly rate of approximately $80.00/month. It’s cheaper than hiring a temp, and when you experience how much you can get out of it when you use it, you’ll see the incredible value it offers immediately.