Once you become familiar with www.twitter.com and decide that Twitter is for you, you will be wanting to explore some of the available desktop applications to enable your tweeting to be more efficient. Tweetdeck is still the most widely used after Twitter.com. The statistics for Dashboard Clients use can be seen here. We started using Tweetdeck but moved to Peoplebrowsr during 2009. We have now been using Hootsuite for more than 12 months and love it! The beauty of Hootsuite is that it allows you to import up to 5 social media accounts on the free version. This is adequate for me…for the moment! We have 2 Twitter accounts, Facebook Profile, Facebook Page and LinkedIn all set up here. When we have an update of a generic nature, we posts to any or all of the accounts by simply ticking off those we want to include. When we say ‘generic’, we’re referring to an update which would have no specific Twitter language e.g. RTs, hashtags, etc. Such tweets should remain on Twitter and not shared on LinkedIn or Facebook. Hootsuite also allows for the importing of Twitter “lists” which are neatly managed on Tabs – and we love Tabs!
There are numerous handy Twitter tools and resources to assist to manage your tweeting experience and below is a short list of some of our favourites:
Friendorfollow – Easily reviews those that you are following who have not returned the follow. Click on their avatar and it takes you to their Twitter page where you can unfollow if you wish.
Manage Flitter – Two of my favourite Twitter housekeeping tools included ‘Friend or Follow’ and ‘Untweeps’. Manage Flitter does what both of these tools do!
Nearby Tweets – Search for those in a particular location tweeting a keyword.
Socialoomph – Has a vast number of features but the most popular feature would be to set an auto welcome DM to new followers. Make it welcoming and not spammy! There is a small monthly fee for this feature. We also suggest you don’t set the auto follow. You don’t want to be seen following inappropriate accounts!
Twitpic – A very useful resource to share photos on Twitter.
Twellow – Register your business with the Twitter Yellow Pages directory.
Twibes – Join a Twibe or List for your industry or interests.
Twitalyzer – Is the market leading social media analytics application.
Untweeps – Reviews Tweeps that have not tweeted for more than a month or more and you are able to clean out stale connections. This is a free service providing you use it no more than three times per month.
If you liked this list of useful tools and resources for Twitter, you can find more helpful hints and tips in our ‘Social Media Support and Set Up Guides’ for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
We’d love to hear of your favourite tools and resources which make your social media time more efficient. Please share them below.
I’ve been using Hootsuite for over 18 months, and I’ve never looked back or even thought of using alternative.
I use it (among other reasons) to cross pollinate my personal Twitter account with business easily and have grown followers to both as a result.
Great stuff!
I don’t know too many who haven’t liked Hootsuite. We must have changed about the same time. Tweetdeck just irritated me … even when the sound was muted!
Hootsuite does look pretty spiffy. I love the tracking and reporting idea as well as the reassigning tasks. These are things that tweetdeck don’t yet have.
I’m an avid tweetdeck fan but I’m beginning to think hootsuite could be a better fit for my usage.
It will be interesting which adds G+ sharing first.
Hootsuite is very spiffy. Most start with Tweetdeck as it’s the most widely known but now that Twitter.com have bought it, it might be just a matter of time before it gets killed off! Hootsuite has recently introduced a great publishing (scheduling) feature. I’m even more in love with HS!
I’m another Hootsuite user! Twitcleaner is another great twitter tool, very useful for cleaning your tweetstream of peeps doing things like repeating links or no interaction.
Great article Kirsty – you always give such useful information. Your social media support and set up guide has saved me so much time!