You already know about the @mentions column in Twitter that shows when people reply to your tweets or mention you.

However, that won't tell you when people are sharing links to pages on your website without mentioning you in a tweet.

You can set up a single search for both @mentions and links to your website. As an example, I'll use @BurgWeekly and the-burg.com, which are, respectively, the Twitter account and website for The Burg, a Lynchburg-area arts & entertainment publication.

Go to the Twitter search and enter your Twitter username and your website domain (I recommend leaving out the www), separated by OR:

And here are the results:

You can see a bunch of shared links to The-Burg.com that don't mention @BurgWeekly.

The best part is, even if the person uses a URL shortener like bit.ly or TinyURL, Twitter will check where the link goes and still include it if it goes to your website.

Now you can click "Save this search" in the upper right of the search results. Then you can pull it up at any time from your searches menu.

If you use HootSuite or Tweetdeck, you can set up a column with this search term to get the same thing. I even removed the default @replies column in my HootSuite and use this instead.

Sounds easy, right? Just keep it under 140.

Well, not quite.

The actual length you should be thinking about is different, and it varies based on your username.

Here's how to figure it out.

The magic formula for Twitter message length

Keep your messages at this length: 140 - ((number of characters in your username) + 6).

In my case, with a username of mbusse, that'd be 140 - (6 + 6), or 128.

What is the importance of this formula?

Your Twitter messages should be short enough that other people can re-tweet them without having to edit them.

Here's how that formula ties in to this principle.

What is re-tweeting?

For those new to Twitter: re-tweeting is the act of sharing another person's tweet with your followers -- it can be a way of saying "I agree with this" or simply "this is interesting, check it out." Twitter has a "retweet" button built in that does this for you.

But many people use the convention that was popular before the retweet button came along, and it looks like this:

Here, @digitalendemic is re-tweeting something I said. Note the beginning: "RT" for retweet, followed by my Twitter username (@mbusse) and then my message. He also added his own message at the end, after the two slashes.

Why does this matter?

What is important here is that I kept my message short enough that he could add in the "RT @mbusse" at the beginning without having to shorten my message at all.

Many people won't bother to take the effort to edit your message before re-tweeting it. They simply won't re-tweet your message at all, and this limits the spread of what you're saying. Worse, they might edit it for length and end up butchering your message and/or misrepresenting you entirely.

Remember, the formula was 140 - ((number of characters in your username) + 6). The six characters are for the R, T, space and @ symbol before the username of the person you're re-tweeting, and then a colon and another space after your username. Not everyone uses the colon (see the image above -- no colon) but some people do, so it's important to give them the space if they want it.

If you keep this formula for ideal Twitter length in mind, your messages and thoughts can be more easily shared with the world. And isn't that the point of Twitter?

Social Media News Pipe is now on Twitter! You can follow it at @SocialNewsPipe.

It's simply the original RSS feed with a few minor adjustments (adding hashtags) and published via TwitterFeed.

TwitterFeed is set to check it every half hour and publish up to five new items. This is the maximum allowed.

Original post: April 25, 2011

Social Media News Pipe is an RSS feed that combines more than 20 sources and filters them for stories about social media and social-media companies.

Sources include The New York Times, Wired, The Telegraph and a bevy of blogs.

Keywords  include  "Facebook," "Twitter," "tweet," "social media," etc.

The result is a good volume of stories about social media companies, products and trends in one feed, which saves you the trouble of checking 20+ sites or keeping 20+ feeds in your RSS reader.

Get the RSS feed here

Click here to add it to Google Reader or iGoogle

If you like it or if you have any suggestions, please let me know!