41 Twitter Resources for Small Business

This Twitter Resource list isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of everything available, instead it’s a list of tools and applications that I’ve used and liked.  If you know of something better or something I’ve missed, please add a comment and I’ll check it out.

Finding Available Twitter Names

• Tweexchange – checks names and availability and shows if .com is available.

Automate Following Twitter Accounts

It’s important to use discretion when automating following users.  Go for quality, not quantity.  I only automate following of people I have strategically searched for.  I don’t auto follow back anyone who follows me as I want to make sure that I only follow people that I’m actually interested in.

• Tweet Adder - Simple interface, 1 time fee.  Use the coupon code – IMCASHSAVER (20% off).
• SocialOomph -  More advanced than Tweet Adder with loads of options. Reoccurring monthly fee.

Tweeting – Scheduling and Management Consoles

• CoTweet – my favourite Twitter client.  Simple interface, allows you to manage multiple accounts and schedule Tweets.  The features I love about CoTweet are it tracks conversations you’ve had, so when you click on someone’s profile it will tell you all the Tweets that you’ve exchanged with them and it allows you to archive tweets easily.
• Hootsuite – a very popular management console.

Schedule of Twitter Chats

• Twitter Chat Schedule – Maintained by Robert Swanwick (@SpkrInteractive)

Client to participate in Twitter Chats (using hashtags)

• TweetChat – simple interface to follow 1 hashtag per window.
• TweetGrid – follow up to 3 keywords or hashtags in the same window.

Temporarily Unfollow A User

• Twick Twock – allows you to schedule an amount of time to unfollow a user when they filling your feed because they are at a conference or talking about something you aren’t interested in.  Options are 5 min, 1 hour, 8 hours, 1 day, 1 week.

URL Shortening

• Bitly – register an account and this great tool will not only shorten your URL, but track will also track how many people clicked on the link.  Most Twitter clients like CoTweet allow you to add your API Key so Bitly integrates automatically to shorten your links on the fly.

Delete inactive followers

• UnTweeps – Since Twitter make Twitter Karma remove the Bulk Unfollow tool, UnTweeps has become the next best thing. It will allow you to search for inactive followers and delete them.
• Twitter Friends – a tool with lots of interesting statistics.  Check out the Inactive tab to see who hasn’t used Twitter recently.  Unfortunately, there is no bulk select, so to unfollow you have to go to each Twitter user’s page and select unfollow.

Sources for Finding Content

• Delicious.com – bookmarking site allowing you to see popular and recent content that has been bookmarked.
• Daily RT – shows trending tweets.
• Twitt(url)y – tracks and ranks URLs that people are tweeting about.  Make sure you sort by language.
• Digg –  shared content that is voted on by the community based on quality.
• StumbleUpon – community that discovers and rates web content.
• Squidoo –  community generated pages (called lenses) on anything and everything.
• Google Alerts – emails you updates about keywords you specify in news and on the web as they happen, daily or weekly.

Alerts – tracking conversations and keywords

• Tweetalarm - free alerts for Twitter with options to receive emails as they arrive, twice daily, daily and weekly,
• Tweet Beep – this alert service is able to keep track of who’s tweeting about your blog or website even if they use a URL shortener.  Free hourly alerts and premium option available to be alerted every 15 minutes for a monthly fee.
• ListiMonkey - receive alerts for when a keyword appears in Twitter Lists you are monitoring.

Finding People to Follow

• Listorious – directory of the best Twitter Lists and their members.
• Twellow – Twitter Yellow Pages
• GeoFollow – user directory by location.
• Twibs – user business directory.
• Tweep Search – allows you to search by location and Bio

Research and Measuring Results

• Bitly – tracks how many people clicked on your links
• Twitter Advanced Search – options to search based on keywords, people, places, dates and more.
• Twitter Analyzer – includes graphs of daily tweet volume, RTs, reader reach, chats, mentions, subjects, hasthags and more.  Can give you insights into what your competition is doing on Twitter, or how you are stacking up.
• TwitterCounter - some pretty cool statistics and allows compare your account activity with others.
• TweetStats – graphs on analysis of your tweets.  With pretty colours. Win.
• Twitter Grader – Get your Twitter ranking.
• Tweetaholic – simple,but good statistics on your growth.

Back up your Twitter accounts

• Tweetake – backs up to .csv file your followers, friends, favourites, tweets, direct messages or everything.
• Backupify – backs ups Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and much more.

Create a PDF of all your Tweets

• Tweetbook – creates a PDF file of all your tweets.

Share pictures on Twitter

• Twitpic – share pictures on Twitter from your phone or on the web.

Share videos on Twitter

• VidTweeter – create a custom video profile that is synced with Twitter and and allows you to create and share video tweets, short bubble video messages, video greeting cards.

Stop Receiving Automated Direct Messages

• SocialOomph Opt Out – this will only work with auto direct messages that are configured with SocialOomph, so it won’t get them all – it’s still worth doing.

Create Twitter Coupons

• twtQpon – offer exclusive coupons to your followers.