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Posts tagged tool
Manage Your Twitter Followers With Three Simple Tools
Feb 20th
When you’ve been on Twitter for some amount of time, the number of people you follow can quickly mount up.
This is especially true if you subscribed to the etiquette of returning the favor to everybody who follows you when building up your social network.
There’s certainly no problem in following several thousand people if that’s what works for you, but if you’re anything like this writer, you’ll probably find a smaller number much more manageable. It may be that, in following every tweeter in existence, your stream has been clogged with all manner of tweets which, whilst interesting in their own right, don’t add as much value to your Twitter stream as you’d like
It could even be that some of those irrelevant tweets come from people you only followed as a courtesy and who no longer follow you anyway, or it could just be that you like to keep on top of these things. Whatever your reasons for wanting to manage your following/follower ratio on Twitter, here’s three simple tools to do the job quickly and simply.
Friend or Follow
Friend or Follow is a nifty little website which breaks your followers down into three simple categories:
- Following: Those you follow who don’t reciprocate.
- Fans: Those who follow you, yet you aren’t following them.
- Friends: Those with whom you share a mutual following/follower relationship
There are a couple of tools floating around on the Internet which provide a similar function, but where Friend or Follow’s beauty lies is in its utter simplicity. Head to the website (www.friendorfollow.com) and in the nice friendly box on the homepage, type in your Twitter username and submit. From there, the site displays the avatars of any users you follow but, for whatever reason, don’t follow you back in a handy grid.
Where it lets you down is in the inability to unfollow people direct from the site, but if you do want to unfollow someone, it’s as simple as clicking on their avatar to load their profile to handle unfollowing via Twitter. Hit the fans tab, and you’ll be presented with those folks you’re not following back. There might be a good reason for this, but if you lost track of who to follow back, this tab comes in pretty handy. As for the friends tab, I’ve yet to find much of a use for this yet, though I’m sure there must be one.
Qwitter
If you’d rather not have to remember to visit a website to manage your Twitter followers, Qwitter, one of the longest-serving and arguably most popular services of its type, rounds up a list of who stops following you and e-mails said list to you once a week. Again, the website (http://beta.useqwitter.com) is incredibly simple to use:
Submit your username on the homepage and you’ll be asked to hook up Qwitter to your Twitter account. Once that’s done, enter and verify your e-mail address and each week you’ll be given a list of everyone who’s abandoned ship in the past seven days.
This is a few more steps than the first site we looked at, but once you’ve completed these steps you never need visit the site again, just wait for that weekly e-mail.
Untweeps
Again, there are a number of services out there which do a similar task to Untweeps, but since we like things easy and simple, this one gets the nod.
The idea behind Untweeps is very straightforward; seek out any inactive accounts you’re following on Twitter and learn how long they’ve been inactive for. Head to the site (http://untweeps.com) and authorize the site to access your Twitter account. Next, simply enter how many days back you’d like to search for inactive accounts. You’ll be presented with a list of those inactive users, along with the last date they tweeted.
Where Untweeps triumphs over other services is that you can take care of any unfollowing you’d like to do from right there in the site. Useful,right? After all, who wants to be following someone who never tweets?
Conclusion
These three tools should be everything you need to keep tabs of your Twitter followers, though it would be great to hear some of your suggestions for alternatives below.
(Photo credit: Black keyboard with blue Follow Me button via Shutterstock)
Searching for the Perfect Productivity Tool
Jan 27th
How many productivity systems, methodologies, strategies or tools have you tried so far? Do you already use something that fits your needs perfectly, or are you just doing OK, still have a feeling that something could be better?
Many people want to find the perfect productivity system or tool. Having such goal, they consider the “searching phase” as something bad. They think about it as time they have to waste for experimenting.
If you still haven’t found your Holy Grail of Productivity – don’t worry. No one said you have to. Maybe there’s even no such thing in your case. That’s perfectly fine and doesn’t mean you cannot be more productive than others.
Searching is not a waste of time
Searching for the perfect solution may be frustrating (that’s completely normal), yet it doesn’t have to be. Even changing your attitude may work – turning “wasting my time” into “getting experience” can do wonders. Think that all this trying, searching and experimenting is in fact learning about yourself, your habits, what solutions fit you, and which methods are good.
Of course this is a perfect example of truism. People know these things, but unfortunately they make use of such hints rarely. I always remind others (and want to be reminded as well!) to think in a way that will make them search for opportunities and “lessons learned” instead of wining that something didn’t turn out as expected.
So how exactly is searching for a productivity system good for you? The keyword here is “routine,” but routine cannot occur when you’re constantly changing something, right?
Here is how I see it: when you find a way to be productive, like GTD for example, you stick to the system’s or tool’s rules. Even if you are just using a tool, like a calendar or a web app that helps you organize your to-do lists. After we use a tool or process for some time we tend to not have to think about it as much. We eventually become productivity machines and do things automatically.
This may not sound very tempting when we put it that way, yet it’s what most of us would like to achieve; to become productivity ninjas. But when we fail over and over, trying out new patterns, tools, and strategies, we get frustrated or filled with other negative emotions. And that’s where I ask, “why?”
We’re all children – new things mean fun
When I was in school and had to do projects or homework I usually visualized myself sitting at my desk, getting bored and feeling like I’m wasting my youth. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re a kid. But I found a way to cheat; I simply bought something new that I thought would help me.
In such situations I went to a shop and got myself a new pen, pencil, notebook (not a laptop — we wrote directly on paper then), an eraser, a ruler and a compass (if it was math) or whatever I needed or wanted. All that stuff was cheap, but it was new and selected by me, hence I liked it. And I simply wanted to start using it; I just needed a reason.
This is the same thing that happens when a child gets a new toy and wants to play with it immediately. Who would waste time to say “thank you” to auntie who bought it? Let’s play NOW!
How’s this relevant? When you find a new tool or system, you’re excited and you want to use it. After all, you thought it over a few times and even if you’re not sure whether it’s perfect, you’re at least eager to find out. You’re full of optimism and happiness and you have fun organizing your work. Even if the tool isn’t perfect, there’s a good chance that you’re more productive than not using the tool or methodology at all.
Done is better than perfect
Of course you’d like the perfect methodology – we all would. But you won’t find it without trying. So, keep at it.
And in the meantime, just think this: you’re not wasting time if you’re already productive; it’s just that you haven’t found the perfect tool yet. You’re still on the journey to get to it.
Jan Makulec works as a copywriter in the online payments industry. He also does some guest posting and runs a few blogs himself, including Across the Board - his company blog, where he writes on various topics. Feel free to contact him on Google+ or any other way - you'll find all the contact info here: Jan Makulec.
The 12 Days of Giveaways: Day 11 – Helvetindex Cards
Dec 22nd
As we head into the final days of our 12 Days of Giveaways promo, we’ve got some cool analog tools to offer. Today we bring you the excellent design and craftsmanship of Helvetindex Cards, which will not only help 5 lucky Lifehack readers get things done — but will give them some quality looking material to do it with.
But before we get to that, let’s take care of announcing the winner of yesterday’s 12 Days of Giveaways winner. We had a ton of responses to this one, which was an Evernote prize pack and a copy of the must-have companion book to Evernote, Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials.
The question we asked was:
“How will you use Evernote in 2012 to stay more organized and become more productive?”
And the winning comment was left by Anne Geissman Cartwright, who said:
“My life is about to go topsyturvy–my husband and I are launching a complete remodel of our house. But the rest of my life will continue on: freelancing as a book editor; taking classes at the local college (I just finished up with some graphic design and Emergency Medical Technician training), working in Search & Rescue. I need to stay on top of my schedule, my finances, various sorts of information. The mere idea of having everything I need for my Search & Rescue and EMT work always available in one handy place makes me quiver with delight. But to have everything else at hand as well, and organized–oh, bliss! I’d love to make Evernote a regular, can’t-do-without-it part of my life.”
Congratulations, Anne — I hope you get as much out of Evernote as I have. I’m an avid user; it’s a mainstay on all of my computing devices. I’m sure it will help you give your productivity a boost — and with all you’ve got on the go, it sounds like a boost will come in handy in 2012!
Now…on to today’s giveaway!
About Helvetindex Cards
No matter how you slice it, paper is still a big part of a lot people’s productivity systems. There’s no compatibility issues, no software upgrades needed and it’s both portable and disposable. I’ve been using index cards as part of a Hipster PDA capture tool for years, and the cards I used were as cheap as they came. Oddly enough — or perhaps not — I treated the tasks on the cards as poorly as I treated the cards. Silly, perhaps…but it’s how it went. So I stopped using them and went to a different method of paper capture. I started using higher quality goods and stock, and soon everything I captured on them had more quality attached to them as well. But there were still no index cards that matched the quality of my other paper products, so I kept my binder clips in a drawer, unused.
Then Aaron Mahnke created Helvetindex Cards.
These cards are made of high quality stock and are a pleasure to use. There are spaces at the top of the card to mark with dates, topics or whatever your system dictates. Helvetindex Cards don’t force you into a system, they let you bring them into yours. I’m still working through my pack of 100 cards and my binder clips now have something to hold on to again. My Hipster PDA is back where it belongs: with me at all times…along with the Helvetindex Cards that I use to make it.
How to Enter
In order to enter to win one of the five bundles of Helvetindex Cards, you need to leave a comment below or on our Facebook fan page that answers the following:
“When do you find yourself reaching for paper over digital tools — and why?”
Leaving a comment on both our Facebook fan page and here at Lifehack.org will get you 2 entries, so but you need to give us two items that you like the most – no copying and pasting!
The Fine Print
Employees of Helvetindex Cards and of Stepcase (including current independent contractors of both) are not eligible for this contest. The prize can only be shipped to addresses within the continental United States and Canada, so keep that in mind when entering. The winning entry will be judged by the Stepcase Lifehack editing team and winners will be notified on the platform in which their winning entry was placed (either on the Lifehack.org Facebook wall or by email through our commenting system here the website). For those entering contest with a comment on our site, in order to be considered eligible, you MUST leave a contact email when leaving a comment (it’s the only way we’ll know how to contact you). Entries must be submitted by 10 am Eastern the following weekday and winners will be chosen by 12 pm Eastern time on the same day. The winner will be announced the same day on Lifehack.org, and will be notified beforehand.
Good luck!
(Photo courtesy of Helvetindex Cards)
Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". You can follow him on Twitter, listen to him regularly on his podcast, ProductiVardy, and read more from him at MikeVardy.com and at Vardy.me.
Today’s Career Challenge: Start Networking Like a Pro
Mar 4th
You can’t afford to build a career in a vacuum. Even the most independent professionals still need colleagues, clients, mentors, and friends. You can settle with the network you already have, but meeting new people has its benefits. The more people you meet, the more opportunities you have to learn new things, take on new challenges, and exchange interesting ideas. With a broader network, you can even get better business opportunities. If networking has all these benefits, why aren’t more people doing it?
One problem with networking is that it is a broad, ongoing activity. It seems like a daunting task. This is why most people just give up and wait around for the “right people” to come to them. But what are the odds of that happening without any effort on your part? This is why you need to set up a system to make networking easier. Your challenge within the next 24 hours is to set up that system. Why a 24-hour challenge? So that you can take action now and get results as soon as possible.
With that said, let’s get started.
1) Set up a tool to capture and manage your contacts. Estimated task time: 15 to 30 minutes.
The first thing you should do is to pick the right tool. You’ll need something that will allow you to input, gather, and analyze information in each potential contact’s profile. While you can fiddle around with a spreadsheet or a database for hours, this solution isn’t ideal. Setup should be easy so that you have no room for excuses or procrastination. The quickest way is to use an online form management apps, since it takes less than half an hour to set up an account and get your forms ready. There are many options out there, such as the popular Survey Monkey or Survey Gizmo, but personally I use PandaForm which has more features available to free users so we’ll be using that in the example.
You will be creating a “Potential Contact Questionnaire”. It’s a simple form where you can input details about each person you want to meet, including how you plan to introduce yourself and other relevant information that can make the introduction easier. Here are the fields you may need for your form, with the suggested field types in parentheses:
Contact information. Of course, you should start off by creating text fields for basic contact information such as the person’s name, email, and phone number. Don’t worry if, when filling up the form later, you realize that you can’t find the email addresses or phone numbers of your potential contacts. You can add an extra text field for “contact page link” instead if there’s a contact page on the person’s website. Don’t forget to add other fields like “Company” or “Mailing Address”, especially if you want to send notes or greeting cards via snail mail.
Tip: When using PandaForm, you need to make sure that email notifications are off so that when you input a contact’s email, they won’t receive a message by mistake. You can do this by clicking “Save” at the bottom, then clicking on “Settings”, then the “Notification” tab. Finally, click the “Off” button under “Send Confirmation Email”. See the screenshot below for an example:
Primary website (single line text). Almost everyone has their own website or blog today, so it’s important that you know this. Apart from being a means of contact, their website can be a way for you to find ways to initiate contact.
List of other relevant links such as a additional websites or blogs (paragraph text). If your potential contact has more than one site, you can type them up here, one URL per line – after you’ve built your form, of course.
Additional reference links (paragraph text). These may include any relevant interviews, articles, and other resources that can help you learn more about the person.
Individual text fields for links to their social media profiles. You can add individual text fields for links to each of their social media profiles. In this example I only used one field for LinkedIn and another for Twitter, but you can add additional fields for Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media services you use.
Answers to “Why do I want to meet this person?” or “I hope this person will be my…”. List all the possible reasons you have for wanting to meet this person. Some options may include having them as your mentor, collaborator, contractor, or even just a friend to bounce ideas with. Since you can have more than one option per person, the best way to input this data is via checkboxes (see below)
A paragraph field for “How can I help this person?” Networking isn’t primarily about what other people can do for you, it’s about what you can do for them. By looking over a potential contact’s list of websites, blogs, social media profiles, and related links, you’re sure to find at least one way you can help them.
A paragraph field for your notes. You may need to jot down a few bullet points about the person you’re contacting. Include any “dealbreakers” that may turn off your potential contact. Some people may not like generic or template emails, extremely long emails, or unsolicited phone calls. They may also be vocal about the things they appreciate, such as courtesy or correspondence that gets straight to the point. If they mention any of these things, include them in your notes. Tip: An alternative for PandaForm users is to use the “Comments” text box that appears when you’re editing individual entries.
Create additional fields depending on your needs. You can create a few more fields and customize the form to suit your situation. For example, a simple text field for “Friend in common” allows you to write the name of a friend, relative, or other acquaintance that you and your potential contact have in common. You can also create an additional field for the date you’re planning on contacting them or even a draft of the first e-mail or phone call you want to make. Add as many fields as you need, but don’t overdo it.
Once you’ve finished your form, you can publish it. Then, bookmark a link to the published form on your browser for easy access whenever you think of a new potential contact. Click here to see what your published form may look like. Of course, it all depends on what fields you end up using.
2) Make a list of 5 to 8 people you’d like to meet. Estimated task time: 5 minutes.
Now comes the easy part – listing the people you want to contact. We all keep track of people we wish we knew, even if it’s just in our heads. Listing their names and basic contact information is a concrete step towards meeting these people in reality. You can write the list down in a sheet of paper or, better yet, open up your form and start creating an entry for each person – even if it’s just their names. The key to this task is just to start with your shortlist of potential contacts. You can fill up the rest of the questionnaire after you’ve listed at least 5 people.
3) Fill up your questionnaire for each person on your list. Estimated task time: 10 to 15 minutes per contact.
If you already used your form to list your potential contacts by name, edit the entries internally so you can complete the rest of the questionnaire for each contact. In PandaForm, you can do this by going to the “Forms” page and clicking on the form name. You’ll be taken to the records section where you can see all the data you already typed in when listing your contacts (see below).
Fill up the more difficult fields such as their contact information, list of websites, and anything else you haven’t filled up yet. When filling up the entry for “How can I help this person?”, make your answer as concrete as possible. Instead of writing something like “help them improve website”, write “send a quick email about the typographical errors you found on the homepage”. Having a concrete, action-oriented answer can make initiating contact easier.
4) Contact one person on your list today. Estimated task time: 10 to 15 minutes.
Now, go over the data you’ve gathered. In PandaForm, do this by clicking the name of the form in the Forms page and you’ll be directed to the list of records you’ve entered into your questionnaire. Choose a person from your list, open the record you’ve created about them, and start contacting them using what you already know. This is where your answer to “How can I help this person?” really comes in handy. It can be a great way to introduce yourself and provide value to the person you want to meet.
When completed, the time investment you spent on creating this system may only take 40 to 60 minutes. The rewards you get, however, will be reaped for a long time. Once you’ve created your questionnaire and get into the habit of filling it up every now and then, all you need to do is choose one of the people on your list and start contacting them.
Take on today’s challenge and start networking. You’ve only got today to make this happen – otherwise, you risk forgetting about it altogether. If you like my workflow, implement it with PandaForm and share your progress in the comments.
Leon Ho has a decade of experience in technology and the Internet. He was a manager of Software Engineering at Red Hat, Inc. and led an international team of software engineers. In 2007, Leon left Red Hat to launch Stepcase as an umbrella for both Stepcase Lifehack and Stepcase Apps. Recently, he won the #4 spot in BusinessWeek's Top 24 Young Asian Entrepreneurs.