Twitter can be a great asset to your marketing strategy, but if you try and just use it by itself it won’t do much but take up your time. With these popular apps and tools, you can manage and use your Twitter accounts effectively.
Bit.ly – Short and sweet, and more than you expect
Many Twitter users recognize Bit.ly as a URL shortening service, so it would seem odd it comes up in a list of tools to manage your account. This service does much more than just produce a short URL, their API can plug into several of the account manager services for Twitter and start giving you vital feedback on your link stats. Even better, now they are offering branded links to further drive your recognition and increase followers.
Buffer – Scheduling and analytics
Buffer is a simple way to make sure you can manage tweets and interactions well. You can schedule tweets to hit the times of the day when your followers are most active. It also delivers solid analytics to help you grow and change your strategy.
CoTweet – Collaborate, track and schedule
CoTweet is obvious born from the desires of companies to be able to manage their Twitter accounts as a team. You can register multiple accounts, and then access it with multiple users. The app will track tweets and their activity, allows you to schedule tweets and keeps conversation histories for up to 20 days. This can help your SEO team develop their strategy, rather than leaving all things Twitter in one person’s hands.
HootSuite – The gold standard
HootSuite is the standard for Twitter management. It has a freemium structure that lets you only access the features you need. If you want to step into the professional side of management with full analytics, the cost is going to surprise you. Hootsuite Pro costs less than $6 a month to run.
SocialOomph – tracking and extending
SocialOomph is a freemium service. It allows you to do many things before you have to tap into the freemium features such as scheduling, tracking, extending and listing. What many people appreciate about the professional account on this service is that it has an effective DM spam management system. Getting spammed by Direct Message on Twitter can skew your analytics, and take up your time. It also has feature functions for broadcast DM and other features too.
Triberr – the tricky tribe
Triberr is an unusual take on Twitter management. It is focused on community based feeds that work to get your post exposed to more viewers. At this point, Triberr is invitation only. Once you are in, you connect with a “tribe.” The tribe is defined by their shared interests and content. You connect your RSS to the tribe and whenever you post, your tribe will pick it up and post it to their own feeds as well. This can be a very effective way to boost your views, shares and followers. If you are smart, you integrate Triberr with Hootsuite to make management of the cross feeding even easier.
TweetDeck – Home base for management
TweetDeck is very similar to Hootsuite but has three major differences. It is run as a desktop application, not an online app. It provides an integrated URL shortener, which also means that the performance tracking is automatically integrated as well. Last, but most important of all, while the two do look very similar, TweetDeck is rated as having a far more user-friendly and intuitive interface.
Twitterfeed – Automating relevant content
Having constant content that is relevant and interesting doesn’t have to be a challenge, or take up a lot of your time. With Twitterfeed you can connect RSS feeds to your accounts and it will handle the shortening of URLs, posting and tracking.