Monday, October 15, 2012

Twitter Tools And Techniques To Power Your Marketing

Twitter is emerging as the lead dog over Facebook in many mobile marketer minds. It is a no-win argument, though, because there?s value in each platform.

I?ve created this Twitter tools slideshow that includes 4 tips to make your time spent tweeting more meaningful and productive. Plus, I?ve included 9 more apps or tools to help you analyze your Twitter experience and tweets.

Twitter Tools

Like many of the lists I create, there is a lot of overlap. Some tools or apps will work better, depending on how you like information displayed, for instance. All of the nine tools have a free level, but quite a few offer premium paid levels and include more powerful results.

The first four slides are tips and the tools follow those.

After viewing the slideshow, share in the comments the tools you are using to manage and track your Twitter activity.

Let?s get started, click the blue ?Start Gallery? button below to begin viewing the slideshow.

Twitter Photo via Shutterstock


1. Post A Tweet From Chrome

My first tip is to tweet directly from the Google Chrome browser.

Go into the Settings (upper right part of your browser window), click Settings, then Manage Search Engines, then create a name for your new ?engine?, add a keyword, and add this exact URL string in the URL box:

?https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=%s?

Save it, then go to your address bar and type in your keyword, in my case I entered only the letter ?t,? then hit the space bar. You can now add your tweet content, then press the return or enter key, which takes you to the tweet window within Twitter, nothing else. No distractions.

I know this may not be perfectly clear, so I created a short setup tutorial, with screen by screen explanations, to walk you through:

Instructions to Post A Tweet Directly From Google Chrome.


2. Use Advanced Search

Most people don?t think of Twitter as a search tool. But you can get a lot done by a few simple commands via the Advanced Search function.

You can figure out some good stuff:

  • Find the top trending topics, only the most current or all of it, and just pictures, too.
  • If someone is mentioning you, without the @ symbol, you can see that via this advanced search option.
  • You can track multiple profiles
  • Eavesdrop on your competitors
  • Follow links from certain people

For example, you can search a topic with or without links that people retweet by checking the box at the bottom of the advanced search form. ?You can read Twitter?s guide to advanced search.


3. Create A Recommend Follow List For People Who Sign Up

This is a little known tip. ?Warm Sign Up? is a feature that enables you to present your own list of Twitter friends or allies to brand new Twitter users when they sign up specifically through your Twitter URL.

Here?s how you do it in a few short steps. If you need more info, visit this Twitter help file that explains how to promote your profile.

A. In your account, create a?Twitter list?of accounts you recommend. Name the list.

B. In the description of the list, include the term #WelcomeToTwitter. This lets Twitter system know to present it to new users. See example here of the Top 100 Small Biz Bloggers that I created.

C. To validate that this is working properly, log in to Twitter from another account and follow the account where you just created the list (e.g., in the example above, you?d follow @tjmccue from your other account).

You should now see users that are on that list presented as ?People You Should Follow.?


4. Hash Tag Tracking

The beauty of hashtags is you can add a simple term along with the hash mark # and easily track the conversation.

Here?s another article for American Express OPEN Forum on how to use hashtags.

Simply append #SmallBusiness or whatever term you want to track. No space after the hash mark and your term, though.

Hashtags.org lets you quickly jump to trending hashtags on its site.


5. Followerwonk

I have to say that I love the reports from Followerwonk. This one shows where my followers reside.

This service lets you analyze your followers by different criteria: location, who they follow, and more. It allows you to compare Twitter accounts and search bios.

It was recently acquired by SEOmoz, the search engine optimization software folks.


6. Tweet Archivist

This powerhouse web service (also available as a desktop application) allows you to search for a Twitter user, a keyword, or phrase. It states you can find, analyze, and archive your tweets.

That?s the key: Archive. It lets you download the search as a spreadsheet. For this sample search, I looked up ?small business? as a term and it returned almost 1,500 tweets and the usernames of who tweeted it, the tweet itself, and other details.

Pretty useful if you are searching for people to follow or potential clients, perhaps.

Another part that I liked: When I searched for my name without the @ symbol, it showed me tweets where my name was not mentioned in the tweet itself, but the underlying post or link contained my name. Pretty savvy.

Tweet Archivist is one to use.


7. Foller.me

Foller.me is a beta offering that will give you a profile glimpse of your or someone else?s Twitter life.

In this slide, I?ve selected the @SmallBizTrends account profile to see which terms and hashtags would show. Naturally, entrepreneur, small business, and a wide range of events that benefit small business owners dominate this profile.

The service gives you stats and figures like how many tweets, when the account profile was started, tweets with @ mentions, tweets with #hashtags, tweets with links, to name just a few of the insights you can glean from this service.


8. Tweriod

Tweriod?wants to help you understand the best time to send your tweets. It works in conjunction with Buffer (an app where you upload your tweets and they parse them out at an even interval, or at least not in a rapid fire procession, which is generally considered better form).

Tweriod reveals the best times when your tweet will get the most exposure, based on your followers and when they are online.


9. Twellow

Twellow is really similar to a phone directory, but the nice thing about the service is it looks at your profile and breaks it up into categories, based on the content in your profile bio.

At a fast glance, it gives you a sense of what you have been sharing on Twitter.

Sometimes, of course, the categories it selects don?t quite represent what you think of yourself, so it offers a way for you to self-edit those categories.


10. TwitterMap

TwitterMap is exactly what you?d expect from the name.

Enter Twitter Search Terms, and visualize tweets by a user?s location on a map. It is a super simple app that just gives you an idea of where a topic is more popular geographically. It is leveraging Google Maps combined with Twitter data. It takes a little while to populate the map, so do a search, then stop back in a few minutes.

When you hover over the red pushpin, it reveals the actual tweet at the top of the screen.


11. Twitter Counter

TwitterCounter offers a free level, but you really need premium paid levels to see much data.

The one cool thing that I like about it is how it shows your follower growth. It even forecasts how many followers you will have 30-days out, based on your current growth trajectory.

If you are into growing your follower base, this fast estimate may allow you to figure out how to improve.


12. Topsy

Topsy is a real-time social search engine. They recently started offering a pro analytics account that I tested, but haven?t posted on yet. But just using their search engine you can find new users to follow, and dig deeper into a topic.

I like that it gives you the stats (on the left side column) of how many times a term has been shared or mentioned over different time periods.

So, in this example, ?entrepreneur? is mentioned 73,000 times over the last 30 days.


13. Twitonomy

Twitonomy is one of my favorite tools on this list. They offer a very fast web interface for seeing your statistics in ways you may not have before.

For example, I can pull up a summary of how many times my username was mentioned, how many of my users mentioned me, and who mentioned me the most, on one page. It will also let me see this on a map. The map option takes a bit of time to load, but you see the pushpins dropping onto the map itself, and it bounces around the world if you have a decent follower count.

I had 458 mentions in 225 locations. Kinda cool.


Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/10/twitter-tools-techniques-power-marketing.html

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