Twitter Tools

Twitter Account Management

• TweetDeck: Desktop widget offering great functionality for posting business tweets, including the ability to sort tweets into direct messages, topics and keywords. It integrates with Facebook.
• HootSuite: Perfect for businesses needing multiple Twitter profiles and multiple users. It allows you to schedule tweets and switch back and forth between accounts. The service also includes a URL-shortening service called “ow.ly” that lets you see how many times your links are clicked.
• CoTweet: Multiple people from the same company can communicate through a single Twitter account, thanks to CoTweet. Each person maintains his or her own profile and activity record.

Contact Management & Directories

• FriendOrFollow.com: Find out which of the people you follow are following you back and which people are following you, but you have yet to reciprocate.
• Twitoria: See which of your followers are active on Twitter over the last week, two weeks, month, two months, etc.
• WeFollow.com: User-powered Twitter directory. Simply enter the tags you want to be known for (e.g. #socialmedia, #marketing, #measurement, etc.) and you’re finished.

Essential Twitter Tools for Business

• Twellow: Twitter Yellow Pages – search for users by a wide range of categories. You can also add yourself to the group so people can find you.
• Just Tweet It: Another directory service that notifies you of new additions to people in your particular industry.

Tracking and Metrics

• TwitterCounter: Chart the number of followers over time, from last week to last month.
• Twitalyzer: by WebAnalytics Demystified, Twitalyzer goes beyond basic metrics to show the influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity and a whole host of other metrics related to your Twitter account.

Monitoring and Alert Services

• Search.Twitter.com: Set up RSS feeds related to the words you care about.
• TweetBeep.com: Like Google Alerts for Twitter. Enter your keywords and receive regular updates whenever someone mentions those words in social media.
• Monitter: This new service provides a live streaming view of what people in your location are saying about your company or employees.
• Radian6 and Techrigy: These two enterprise-class monitoring tools help a company listen to conversations happening throughout the social media universe, not just Twitter.

Marketing Tools

• TwtQpon: Use TwtQpon to create exclusive deals for your products or services, and share them with your followers.
• TwitterHawk: A novel marketing application, TwitterHawk connects you with people actively talking about your product or service within your area. For example, if you own a sandwich shop and someone in town tweets about getting a sandwich, you can automatically send them a customized response. The service costs five cent per tweet.
• TwitBacks.com and TwitterGallery.com: Want more than the design options that Twitter provides? Use either of these services to improve the look and feel of your Twitter page. TwitBacks.com allows you to provide additional business contact information, and a photo or logo as well.
  

Twitter – rising above the chit chat

Uses of Twitter:

• Branding & Awareness—employing Twitter in creative ways to increase awareness around a product, person (celebrity) or business
• Building Community—creating a strong community of followers that ultimately help drive business objectives and bring in new customers
• Customer Service—using Twitter to successfully engage with customers needing help
• Prospecting—creating demand and pinpointing potential customers needing the type of solution your product offers
• Selling—driving online and offline sales by using Twitter to post promotions, discounts and offers
• Fundraising—using Twitter to spread the word about important causes

Measuring Twitter

• Analyzing Web traffic data
• URL tracking services (such as bit.ly)

Content for your email campaigns

When you are developing your email campaign, ask yourself if your content provides any value to your customers. Here are couple questions you can ask to yourself.

• What are the top 5 questions that your customers ask?
• What articles have you read recently that you found interesting?
• Who was the most interesting customer that you helped in the last 6 months?
• What make them interesting?
• What problems do you foresee your customers encountering this year?
• What will you be doing to solve this problem?