1Don’t Panic!

Twitter Tools...for the Masses

C&M

August 2009

2Don’t Panic!

Fact: the Interweb is huge.

A quick Google search for “Twitter Tools” gives 83 MILLION results.

We’re constantly looking at new tools, so that you don’t have to...

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Finding People... http://www.twellow.com

Twellow is a Yellow Pages for the web (everything in Twitter land has a ‘Tw’ prefix). It allows you to search people’s *bios* (as opposed to just their Tweets). This is rather useful for finding people by location. It’s also a great way of discovering people based on their *interests*, as bios tend to focus on this kind of thing....

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Finding Conversations...http://search.twitter.com

Twitter search is a search index of all public Tweets. It’s a super-quick, Google-like way of discovering who’s saying what. You can also use standard Google queries to get more specific results, as shown here - ie, by using quote marks and the like. This is a bit black-belt, but worth the effort. There’s a lot of noise on Twitter, so it helps to cut to the chase.

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Finding Influence... http://twinfluence.com

Twinfluence is twerrific (groan) for understanding who’s really worth following and conversing with. Not all Twitterers are equal. Some have a greater following than others. If your goal is to spread your words as quickly and as far as possible, then you need to focus on building relationships with Twitterers who have a large ‘second order following.‘ This is a simple network principle and Twinfluence gives you all the stats you need to get a grip on these movers and shakers.

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Twitter Housekeeping... http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

This ‘Twitter Karma’ tool helps you to keep your profile fit and healthy. Over time you are likely to find that portions of your following (and the folks that you choose to follow) become dormant, and so it’s a good idea to periodically have a good old clean out. For one, this helps your following/follower count to remain balanced (and thus more appealing - nobody likes to see this out of whack). But, more importantly, it’ll help you to keep things manageable and focused. After all, how many of your followers can ever *really* matter to you?

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Tweet Tracking... http://bit.ly

Bit.ly is a URL shortening tool. It’s handy for stripping down the character count of your link-based Tweets, and it also provides a natty little tracking service so that you can analyse the performance of your Twittering. Simply plug your URL into the tool, get the shortened version back and then Tweet it ....and then check back later in the day to see how many people clicked.

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Twitter Tools... http://tweetdeck.com

Tweetdeck is the Daddy of Twitter apps. It helps you to make sense of the firehose of Tweets that appear in your Twitter.com interface. It sits on your desktop (or iPhone) and allows you to ‘strand’ your Twitter viewing. You do this by creating sub-groups (eg, one for ‘colleagues,’ one for ‘friends’, etc) and also keyword searches. These simple functions enable you to filter your Twitter diet more efficiently and, importantly, tune out from much of the noise that can often make Twitter a headache.

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Twitter Tools... http://seesmic.com

Seesmic is similar to Tweetdeck. It’s a client app that enables you to filter and strand your Twitter activity. It also enables you to run multiple profiles from one interface (eg, one for your personal Tweeting, one for your company account, etc). The interface is slick and easy to use. NB: Tweetdeck also now has this multi-profile functionality, but the folks around here swear by Seesmic when juggling Twitter accounts!

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Further Reading…

C&M Don’t Panic Handbook

C&M Blog and Resources pages