The Twitter dashboard includes the Twitter Prospector, an engine to generate leads.

 To open the Twitter Dashboard you can use either the Quick Start Menu > Twitter Dashboard, or by Clicking on Inbound > Twitter Prospector.

After a brief initial setup, you can start using the full Twitter feature set to track your successes and tag prospects for follow-up and conversion.

Finding potential customers is easy using the Twitter Prospector. Act-On provides custom search templates in a Twitter prospecting dashboard. Your searches yield potential prospects tweeting about your preferred search terms. Once you discover a prospect, you can keep track of your dialogs, save incoming tweets, and analyze your prospect's website activity.

• Inbox contains tweets from prospects that you've tagged for response or follow-up at a later date, as well as any direct responses to your tweets
• Dialogs give you the ability to view all of your ongoing dialogs in detail in a single area
• Prospects show prospects you've driven to your website and landing pages
• Prospector helps you search for conversations and tweets that contain your chosen keywords
• Setup guides you through setting up accounts, search terms, and Tweet templates

All of these areas are discussed below, as well as how to use them effectively for your social marketing initiatives.

Overview

When you first access the Twitter dashboard, the system displays the Setup area to get you started. There are three areas to configure: Users, Tweet Templates, and Search Terms.

To configure user's Twitter accounts:

• Click the Setup tab
• Click Add in the upper right corner and enter a Twitter username and password. A connection to that Twitter account will be established. This must be a Twitter account with tweeting privileges.
• Once the account has been accepted, the profile name and picture appear in the list of users, ready for authorization.
• To complete authorization of your Twitter account, hover your mouse over the profile picture and click Authorize.
• A pop-up window appears and asks you to allow or deny access from Act-On to the account
• Enter the Twitter account login name and password and click Authorize App

If the login account and password credentials are correct, the connection will be complete.

You can add more Twitter profiles by clicking the green Add button in the upper right corner.

To delete a Twitter profile:

• Hover your mouse over the profile image and click Delete. This will remove the profile from the Users area.

Once an initial Twitter profile has been specified, you can move on to the rest of the setup process.

Tweet templates allow you to save time on large-scale prospecting, by allowing you to issue many similar tweets without having to retype the content each time. Tweet templates will also automatically shorten URLs according to the preference established in your profile. This applies to any website, landing page, or form URL you’d like to promote.

• Click Add next to Tweet Templates

  

• You will see a field for a name and a field for the text in your tweet. Enter a name for the template and then enter the content you would like to promote.
• There are additional icons above the text box that allow you to insert content from other Tweet templates, as well as links to existing Act-On forms or landing pages
• Click Save

• Click Add in the Tweet Template area to create more templates.

Set up and use search terms to quickly identify good prospects. You can modify these search terms at any time, and create as many as you'd like.

To create your first search term:

• Click Add next to Search Terms.
• You see a field to enter a name for your new search term and a field to enter the search terms you want to use. Choose a name that’s very descriptive, so later you can tell at a glance what this search does.
• Once you've finished creating your first search term, click Save.
  
• To create additional search terms, click Add and repeat this process for any additional terms you’d like to use moving forward.

The Twitter Prospector is where you will use your search templates to find potential prospects. The Twitter Prospector executes your searches and displays all prospects who have used your search terms in tweets. To access the Twitter Prospector, click the Prospector link at the top of the Twitter dashboard.

To find prospects, use the drop-down menu at the top of each search column. The drop-down menu displays all of the search templates that you've set up. You also have the option of choosing -- select search terms --, which allows you to define your search terms without using a previously-created template.

Occasionally, you may want to make a one-time edit to a search template. In this case, simply choose your search template and notice that the search terms are displayed in the text box. Click on the search terms and modify them as you wish. Then press the Enter/Return key to execute the search.

The default display is to have two columns that accommodate two searches. If you'd like to expand your searches to include an additional search term, click Show 3 Columns in the upper right corner and an additional column is added to the interface.

Now that you've set up the Twitter Prospector to find individuals according to your search terms, you can scan through the tweets returned by your search and find prospects that look like good candidates for you. Hover over any tweet and select either Add to Inbox or Tweet Now to begin interacting with the prospect.

Clicking Add to Inbox marks the tweet for future follow-up. All marked tweets appear in your Inbox area, along with any replies to your tweets. You might mark a tweet for follow-up if the tweeter seems to be a particularly good prospect you'd like to track, or if you'd like to respond later. Tweet Now allows you to respond to a prospect's tweet immediately.

Use the From drop-down menu to select a Twitter profile from your list. Choose a profile and then you can either type a response or choose one of the templates you've already set up.

If you choose a tweet template, the template contents are inserted into the text box where you can make changes or modify the message.

Once a response tweet has been sent to a prospect, the original tweet still appears in your search. If you hover your mouse over the tweet, the options and the look of the profile have changed.

After you respond to a tweet, it will show a yellow caution icon (to help prevent multiple tweets) and the available options are changed to Add to Inbox and View Dialog.

Clicking View Dialog brings you to a full view of your interactions with the prospect and allows you to continue your conversation.

The Inbox allows you access to saved tweets that you marked while prospecting, as well as any direct responses you've received to your outbound messages. Saving tweets allows you to respond to them at a later time, and also allows you to identify prospects who are interested in your promotions.

Tweets are added to your Inbox from the Prospector area of the Twitter dashboard.

Marked tweets are designed to assist you in keeping track of prospects you've identified for follow-up. Once a tweet is marked you can:

• Tweet back to the prospect to finish a conversation or provide requested materials
• Remove the tweet if you're no longer interested

You also see the search term that you used to find the prospect, and the tweet they published.

Click the profile picture to view details about the prospect, including their bio, followers, and who they follow.

To tweet, click Tweet and:

• Choose which profile you'd like to use
• Choose which Tweet template to use. You can edit the contents of the template prior to sending out your tweet.

Prospects who have directly responded to your tweets are located in the Recent Responses area. A note indicates when they responded back to your initial message.

• Click the Profile Picture or the Twitter Name to view details about the prospect you are conversing with, including their bio, followers, and who they are following
• Click Dialog to view the conversation that interested the prospect enough to respond back to you. You can click to Continue Dialog with the prospect.

The Prospects page allows you quick and easy access to your prospects and their activity records. Using the same technology as Act-On's Website Visitors report, the Prospects page shows you the most recent and active Twitter prospects you've brought to your web pages.

A pie chart gives you an immediate overview of your Twitter prospects' level of interest. The right side of the chart provides more in-depth detail of those prospects and the number of pages they've visited – segmented out by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 or more visits to your website. Click any of the number-of-visit categories to sort your prospects for more in-depth analysis. This allows you to follow up with your tweet successes.

Whether you've sorted your prospects or are viewing all prospects, each individual has unique clickable information. This function allows you to research, follow up, or learn more about who your potential customers are and what they have been doing.

• The first column contains the Twitter name of your prospect. Clicking the Twitter name shows the individual’s Twitter bio so you can learn more about your prospect.
• Clicking the Tweets count (the actual number) lets you view your dialog(s) with this person, and continue the conversation
• Clicking on the Page Visits count of an individual lets you view the activity history of this prospect to get a feel for what they're interested in as well as the IP address they're visiting from. This is a great way to research a prospect and identify where they're located or what company they're with. The final column shows the date of the prospect's last visit to your website.

The Dialogs area of the Twitter dashboard allows you to view all of your ongoing conversations at a single glance. The Dialogs area is a great place to review all of your activities to locate the highest-rated prospects and learn more about your potential customers. When viewing your conversations, click on a prospect's profile picture to view their Twitter profile data.