Feb 13 2013

The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Tools

Twitter has become an invaluable resource for marketers looking to keep their finger on the pulse of social media and the industry has responded with a plethora of tools to help enhance and quantify the experience.

But with so many great options out there, it can be hard to narrow down your choices. In this guide, we’ll take a look at some of the tools favoured by marketers and what makes them so useful.

TweetDeck

This dashboard application enables easy management of Twitter (and Facebook) accounts. It interfaces with the API, enabling users to view profiles, follow discussions and send or receive tweets. It’s simply a must-have for power users and has consistently been one of the most popular tools of its kind.

Competwition

Offers and promotions are a great way to attract followers and Competwition provides an easy way to manage these on Twitter.

Following a quick signup process, you can easily set up a competition within a matter of minutes. You can easily direct people to the site and stipulate a range of variables (e.g. setting up automatic following for entrants). Competwition’s random winner generator will keep things fair and you’ll easily be able to monitor the surges in followers you accrue.

Buffer

This amazingly ergonomic tool is a valuable aid in keeping your tweets timely and relevant. Buffer enables you to interact with Twitter more efficiently, while simultaneously preventing you from overwhelming your followers.

By dropping tweets into a custom queue, you can specify the best times for posting or leave it up to the app. Instead of jumping on and off Twitter all day, Buffer enables you to spend a few minutes deciding what to post that day – leaving you free to move on to other tasks.

Nixon McInnes Retweet tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media efforts is a perennial consideration, but thankfully, those enterprising folks over at Nixon McInnes have got you covered on the Twitter front.

Their Retweet tool does exactly what it says on the tin – measuring retweets. You can specify a range of data to examine, including the total retweets for an account or for a single tweet. It also enables you to download and display the results in the spreadsheet application of your choice.

Tweriod

Timing your tweets for optimum effectiveness is no easy task, but this analytical tool will help you get to the bottom of the issue. Tweriod will analyse your tweets and those of your followers and offer you the best times to communicate.

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter is a must-have for anyone looking to accrue stats on social media usage. It tracks more than 80 million users and has become a go-to app for many power users.

As well as its free offering, Twitter Counter users can upgrade to pro status to unlock even more data. In addition to highlighting figures, Twitter Counter has also released a range of widgets and plug-ins that can be added to blogs, websites and social network profiles that will showcase your recent statistics.

dlvr.it

If content is king, sharing content must at least merit a Dukedom. Whether you represent a brand or a one-man blog – dlvr.it provides an easy way of syndicating content and promoting it on social media.

A simple sign-up process enables you to link the flow of your content and puts it firmly in front of your target audience.

Brand Watch

Brand Watch enables you to step into the shoes of Big Brother and start monitoring social media channels for chatter about your brand, products, industry or competitors.

The company’s crawlers go far beyond Twitter – indexing content from myriad corners of the social web and constantly updating data to keep you in the loop about developments.

That Can Be My Next Tweet

In the ‘just for fun’ category, this remarkably prescient tool will predict your next tweet. It bases its forecasts on “the DNA” of your existing correspondence.

Its recently-released mobile app also lets you combine Twitter streams to create some bizarre amalgamations.

Vizify

If a picture paints a thousand words, an infographic must at least double that. Vizify will help you put together an online personal profile, showcasing what you talk about most, media you post and your interactions.

Vizify incorporates Twitter, as well as a range of other networks you’ve connected to and converts all your data into an easy-to-browse presentation.

The social web is growing and tools like these will only increase in importance to those trying to get a handle on the sector in the coming years. Quantifying return on investment for social efforts has historically been one of the most difficult issues in new media marketing, but more and more people are coming together to tackle this task with terrific technology.

This article was written by Gerald Heneghan on behalf of Custard, one of the leading UK online marketing agencies