Table of Contents
Twitter…you either love it…or you’re indifferent. I have yet to hear someone who is actually using it a decent amount and hates it. Businesses of all sizes and across all industries are using Twitter to reach new customers, build relationships with loyal customers, create new customer experiences and increase brand awareness. As far as social media goes, Twitter has a lot to offer. It can be a lot of work to get a handle on it. A social media dashboard like Hootsuite should help get your Twitter feeds organized, but there is still a lot to manage. Here are my top five Twitter programs.
1. Mr. Unfollower
Mr. Unfollower is a great little Twitter account. All you have to do is follow @unfollowr from your Twitter account and follow directions. Each week you will get a digest of all the accounts that have unfollowed you. I like it as a means to see if I’m still interesting to people. I check to see that nobody I am REALLY connected to has unfollowed me because that would mean I did something really wrong probably. Most of the time it is businesses who are looking for a follow-back, but are out of my area (why would I want to follow a caterer in Ottawa when I clearly live in Halifax?) A lot of the accounts are suspended users, meaning they were probably bots or spammers. I don’t worry about who’s in the list too much, but it’s nice to know I hardly ever lose a real friend.
2. Tweriod
Tweriod will analyse your Twitter account and tell you the best times to tweet based on when most of your followers are online. You can get a free Tweriod analysis once a month and there are paid upgrades available. This is useful for everyone, but especially for businesses who want to tweet out today’s specials. You want to hit as many followers as possible to spread the word. Once you’ve got your Tweriod analysis, you’ll want to check out my next tool.
3. Buffer
Buffer helps you spread out your content-based tweets so they are posted at optimal times. A quick set up tells Buffer when you prefer to tweet (perhaps based on your Tweriod analysis) and then you simply add your tweets and RTs to your Buffer queue from a button in your browser bar. I don’t use this nearly as much as I could, but it is a great program. They are unveiling Buffer for Facebook soon, too.
4. Twilert
Twilert is like Google Alerts for Twitter. Get e-mail digests about what is happening on Twitter for keywords, competitor accounts, events, or anything else you can search for on Twitter.
5. Manage Flitter
Manage Flitter is my most recent discovery, ironically thanks to Facebook guru Mari Smith. This app helps you organize and clean up your Twitter account by looking at who is not following you back. Let me be clear…I do not follow everyone back and I do not expect everyone to follow me back. Manage Flitter was easy to use to find inactive accounts. You can simply unfollow everyone, but that’s not how I use the program. I find Manage Flitter much more user friendly than some of its competitors and everything I need from it is free.
Are there other fabulous Twitter apps out there that I’m missing? Let me know so I can check them out.
