Gallery: 20 Twitter apps for business
There are a few cardinal rules every seasoned Twitter user knows:
- Retweeting is an art where less is more. Retweets are also not necessarily an endorsement of the RTed content - in the same way that pointing to a hole in the ground doesn't mean you want to sit in it.
- @-ing another Twitter user means your tweet is definitely imparting something relevant to that particular individual. Otherwise you are guilty of spamming them - you and all the other spam bots on Twitter.
- If your avatar remains egg-shaped beyond your first tentative hour of lurking on Twitter, you need to work on polishing your brand image. Tip: upload a photo, preferably of your face or brand. The biog on your profile should be up to snuff too. Clear, focused and friendly info is good. Cryptic, emo and incomprehensible are for MySpace.
Seasoned Twitter users also know they can tap into a wealth of Twitter apps and tools to augment the microblogging experience - helping to search, mine and monitor tweets and trends, visualize Twitter data, analyse followers and engagement, and much more.
Indeed, there are scores of Twitter apps - many of them free. But to whet your appetite for what Twitter apps can do, silicon.com has rounded up 20 handy tools, in no particular order, that can help business users get more from Twittering.
Credit: Jeff Turner, silicon.com
For many, TweetDeck is the de facto standard third-party Twitter client. Features include customizable columns for more easily monitoring various search terms and the ability to tweet from multiple Twitter accounts.
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HootSuite is another feature-packed Twitter client and includes customizable columns, built-in analytics and the ability to schedule tweets.
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This Twitter search engine includes advanced options such as searching for tweets with particular attitude - positive, negative, or asking questions - so businesses can find out what users think of their product or service.
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Set up Twitter keyword alerts that are emailed to your inbox at intervals of your choosing with the Twilert app.
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Want to identify who is most influential among your followers? The Klout tool ranks Twitter users by a variety of metrics, including how often they are retweeted by their followers.
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The Trendsmap tool mashes up trending Twitter topics with Google Maps to produce a map of where in the world topics are encouraging web chatter.
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Another data-visualisation tool, Trendistic plots Twitter trends on line charts - with options to show the tweet frequency hourly, daily, weekly or over longer periods.
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Need a quick but potent image for a PowerPoint presentation? The Tweetcloud tool generates word clouds from Twitter search terms or Twitter users' feeds.
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Another trend-tracker tool, Twopular shows the most popular trends on Twitter in the past couple of hours, days, weeks, months or since the end of 2008.
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Analyze your Twitter stream to see how often you tweet, what time of day you send most of your tweets, and who you reply to most. TweetStats also generates a tweet cloud of your most used words.
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Learn more about the types of people who follow you by generating a word cloud made up of words from the Twitter biogs of your followers.
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Find out how powerful your tweets really are with the TweetReach app, which measures how far hashtags, links and brand names have travelled in the Twittersphere and who has helped them on their way.
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Another reach-tracker tool, BackTweets also displays a list of the tweets that helped your brand or content to travel around the Twittersphere.
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You can analyze your followers, archive Twitter DMs and filter them for spam, schedule rules-based tweets, and rotate your profile background with this CRM Twitter tool.
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Timely is another Twitter app that enables tweets to be scheduled. The tool also promises to analyse the performance of tweets and work out the best time of day to send new updates so your Twitter followers engage with them.
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SocialFlow is another tool that promises to take the pulse of the Twitter community and work out the optimum time to tweet. The buzzword here is resonance. Still in beta, the service has just raised $7m in Series A funding.
Image: SocialFlow
Twellow is a Yellow Pages of tweeters, listing a browsable who's who to identify Twitter users by topic.
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Holding an event and want a bit of social-media buzz to come too? TweetWall Pro is software for the tweet-wall generation - just add a projector.
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Nineteen Twitter tools not enough? Check out the OneForty software hub to discover scores more.
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