13 Essential Tools for Twitter Management

During my recent Social Interview one of the questions was “What are the essential tools for Twitter management?“.  I’ve been using Twitter for about 6 months now and have tried many different apps and tools.  Here are 13 tools and resources that I find valuable when using Twitter.

Clients

Twhirl – I use Twhirl when I just want to let the Twitter stream flow by without paying constant attention to it.  Mostly I use this when I’m busy working and just passive Twittering.  Twhirl also has the advantage of letting you manage several Twitter accounts.

Tweetdeck – I started using Tweetdeck once I began following more than a few dozen people.  Some of the users I followed were quite prolific (Chris Brogan, I’m looking at you) and I actually had to unfollow a few of them until I discovered Tweetdeck.  Once I set up my Tweetdeck columns so that the most important people to me weren’t drowned out it became a lot easier to follow more and more people and manage conversations when I’m actively Twittering.

Blog Integration

Twitterfeed – I set up Twitterfeed to automatically Tweet my blog RSS feeds.  There are other alternatives that also do this but I am sticking with Twitterfeed for now.

Tweet This – This WordPress plugin adds a “Tweet This” link to your blog posts so your readers can easily Tweet your posts to their followers.  A great way to draw more traffic.

Stats/Tracking

Tweetburner – I use Twurl.nl to shorten all my URLs (including those posted by Twitterfeed) and can then check on their performance using Tweetburner.  Its great to know which links are getting clicked and which are not if you’re trying to use Twitter to attract visitors to your blog.

TwitterCounter – being able to see trends in your follower count is important if you want to know how your Twitter usage and other techniques are working.  For example, my follower count suddenly increased after I added my recent Tweets to my blog sidebar.

Followers

Friend or Follow – On more than one occassion this service has found followers of mine that I thought I was following back but was actually not!

Mr Tweet – This service suggested a lot of really useful Twitter users for me to follow.

Twitterholic – the idea of seeing your Twitter “rank” appeals to some but I found this more valuable for the ability to find other Twitter users in your geographic location.

Blogs/Websites

Twitip – Darren Rowse’s blog about Twitter.  Loaded with valuable tips and an incredible range of guest posts, you’ll find new ways to use and think about Twitter that would never occur to you otherwise.

Official Twitter Blog – it pays to keep up with the latest from the people behind Twitter.

Other

This isn’t really a Twitter tool so much as a general tip – set up a filter in your email program (I use Gmail) to send all of your Twitter “new follower” notifications to a folder somewhere.  It becomes a real time sink dealing with each one as they come in, but is much easier if you have them all in a folder and just set aside a few minutes each day to batch process them.