5 Twitter Tools I Can’t Live Without by Zoey from GoodGoog

Are you using Twitter via the website? Drowning in tweets? Feeling like you can’t keep up and have no idea what you are doing half of the time? Twitter might be about organic connection and being social, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need at least some kind of plan of attack to manage it all.

1) Tweetdeck

If you are using the twitter website to read and respond to tweets, you need to do just one thing. Abort! The website is the worst and most cumbersome way of viewing twitter. You won’t keep up with conversations, you’ll lose people in the ‘noise’ of twitter and you’ll constantly be clicking in between the feed and your mentions. There is a reason Twitter just bought Tweetdeck. It’s because it does everything. It has the functionality to have your all friends feed, your mentions, your DMs, your searches or your lists all set up as columns. It can automatically shorten urls for you, upload pictures to any photo service you might be using, schedule tweets, run multiple accounts and even view your facebook feed. If you need a web-based alternative Hootsuite is set up using a similar concept and has most of the functionality of tweetdeck. If you have an iPad use Hootsuite over Tweetdeck. I don’t know why but Tweetdeck on the iPad is bad. It makes me want to throw things.

2) Social Oomph

I don’t have time to go through all the people who follow me and figure out if they are an actual person or a spammer. So I use a service – Social Oomph to do that for me. I have it set up to auto-follow anyone who follows me. I find it easier to follow everyone and then unfollow as needed rather than the other way around. But Social Oomph does have the ability to vet followers as well. So you’ll find a list of new followers to go through and you can select which ones to follow and which one’s to ignore. When I signed up it was a free service and now it’s a paid one but if I had to pay for it I would.

3) ManageFlitter

Just like you need a good following tool, you need a good unfollowing tool as well. Manageflitter is one of the easiest ways of unfollowing people who are no longer following you. Don’t be too hasty though! Twitter has a habit of unfollowing people for you for no good reason, so if you have a good twitter relationship with a person who has unfollowed you check with them first. If I’ve followed someone who I think is pretty awesome and they haven’t followed me back I don’t immediately unfollow. I can see the list of everyone who’s not following me back and I’ll make note on that list of who I’d like to engage with more before jumping on the bulk unfollow bandwagon. ManageFlitter sorts your non-following people by the date you followed so the businesses that you follow (or famous people) who might never follow you back or all down the bottom of the list so you don’t have to worry about unfollowing any of those by accident.

4) Formulists

Twitter lists can help you cut down on the ‘noise’ of twitter and hone in on what’s really important to you. However, be warned because of the way @replying works you won’t see all of someone’s tweets if they are @replying soemone who isn’t also on the list. Formulists is a great way of automating lists. You can have lists based on almost anything but three lists you could think about are:

1. People who you have had direct contact with over a certain period of time. This takes anyone who you’ve had an @reply or DM conversation with over time. I have mine set up to look back over 365 days and not to include anyone I’m not following. Why? Because anyone who has spent a spammy DM that I haven’t reported and/or blocked is going to show up on that list if I don’t.
2. Most followed people by your followers. This gives you your second tier twitter network and might give you some great ideas for people you might like to follow.
3. New followers list. It can be all too easy to get pretty exclusive and just engage with your peeps on twitter. This list will help you to say hi to all the new people as well.

Klout

Ok, so I get that Klout is a little self-serving. I’m pretty sure that the whole +K thing to fine-tune people’s topics of interest is nothing more than traffic generation on their part. But it is fun nonetheless. I like giving cerain people authority on random, vaguely amusing topics as well as real ones. And it is something external that PR people can look at to see what your twitter network is really like.

But what I do like about it is it helps me to see what I’m actually doing on Twitter in a broader sense. I particularly like to look at who I’m influencing because I like to make sure I’m as engaged with them as they are with me. I also like their suggestions for people within my niche to follow. I find their suggestions are usually pretty spot on with my interests and it’s another way of finding new blogs as well, particularly blogs that might be outside my current network or even my extended network.

Note to self: I probably know too much about twitter and twitter tools and might need a 12 step program of some kind. And on that note, one final tool that I have disconnected to maintain some level of balance as far as my twitter time is push notifications. Those little pop ups you get on your phone? Yes, I’ve stopped using those. Sure, sometimes it means I miss a conversation or two, but it stops me from being pulled into twitter when I really want to be doing something else. What can I say? Twitter is shiny and I’m easily distracted.