Twitter Tools

Image from Geek and Poke

I mentioned in my last post that I am using TweetDeck as my primary Twitter client. Now, I would like to share the other Twitter tools that I frequently use.

URL Shortener and Tracker

tr.im has recently become my favorite URL shortener. I used TinyURL and is.gd before but my main concern was how to track the links I shared if they were being viewed. This is where tr.im shines because it tracks the number of visits to the trimmed URL and the visitor's location. I previously used Tweetburner but I find tr.im's interface more usable and friendly.

Twitter Statistics

I track my Twitter usage statistics through the following tools:

Twitter Grader: You can get here your overall "Twitter Grade" as well as learn the top 50 Filipino Twitterers.

Twitalyzer: This is the tool if you would like to know your relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout to name a few.

Mr. Tweet: This tool acts as your personal networking agent by recommending relevant users to follow and improving your Twitter usage through relevant statistics.

Twitter Mobile

I own a Nokia e61i and I installed Twibble Mobile in it to track tweets when I am not in front of my PC. In my opinion, this is the best twitter client so far for S60-based phones.

If you want more tools, here are some links to illuminate your path towards Twitter nirvana.

7 Truly Useful Twitter Tools You Might Not Know About

Sanity check: 10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user

Twitter: Top 20 tools

And here are 4 insightful tips on how to use and not to use Twitter.

Ten Twitter Tips That’ll Take You To The Top

Be Careful What You Post

Branding Yourself with a Twitter Background

Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter

Twitter and TweetDeck

I started my Twitter account about 8 months when curiosity struck me based on the news and reviews I read about the service.  Within the first 2 months, I "lurked" my way through Twitter and found several great information about project management that I would not easily find in my normal blog searching process. Wow! I thought this could be a great source of information leads for my blogs.

On the third month, it suddenly dawned on me that I could evolve my Twitter usage from just a real-time "encyclopedia" to something more useful and relevant. With the new and profound sense of purpose, I started cranking the wheels so to speak and implemented my plans of using this great service more effectively.

Now, at this juncture of reaching more than a thousand contacts that I follow, I asked myself, how can I manage efficiently the sheer volume of real-time "Tweets" that I am getting from these contacts? I am bewildered to see some Twitter folks with 10,000+ following and followers and again asked myself how are they managing their's?

The answers to these questions lay on 2 great videos (which I embedded below) from Jesse Newhart where he shared his lessons learned on how to follow 15,000+ contacts in Twitter and on how to turn Twitter followers into friends. Great tips indeed! Another wonderful thing here is I have been using TweetDeck for 4 months now and it is only after watching Jesse's videos that I realized its full potential.

Twitter Visual Guide

Image by Applicant.com

If you are still wading through the thick muck of figuring out how to use Twitter, here is a great visual guide (from the folks at applicant.com) on how to use Twitter as a business management tool, a way to improve customer service or even as content trafficker between social media websites. Kudos to the folks at applicant.com! Click the image to view its original size.