Using the right tool for a specific endeavor can save resources and produce better results. In the realm of Twitter, there are tons of tools out there that can provide these benefits – and knowing which tools to use (and what to bypass) can be essential to:

• Getting the most out of every Tweet
• Saving your precious time for other important endeavors – like following up on your Twitter leads.

With so many different types of Twitter tools out there, however, it can be difficult to know where to get started – and what to overlook.

So, to help you identify the best Twitter tools for you, below, we have provided a reference guide that highlights the top 5 different types of tools for improving engagement on Twitter, breaking up the discussion based on what the tools can do and the benefits they can provide.

For each type of Twitter tool, we’ve selected the best tools that we use and love, followed by a short list of alternative options.

1. Social Media Management – Scheduling Tools:
social-media-management-scheduling-tools

Hootsuite and Sprout Social are very popular, powerful social media management system tools that provide some more “global” control of Twitter by allowing users to:

• Track and manage their Twitter activity (as well as their activity on other social media platforms)
• Schedule Twitter posts to publish
• Automatically tweet (or re-tweet) across multiple profiles
• Monitor what others are saying about your business/brand on Twitter
• Directly reply to Tweets
• Evaluate Analytics reports for performance, click-through rates, re-tweets, etc.

Buffer, MassPlanner, EveryPost, EClincher are fantastic options, we use Buffer.

One notable difference is listening, which is available with Hootsuite, Sproutsocial and EClincher but not in Buffer, EveryPost or MassPlanner (yet).

TweetDeck, created by Twitter, is free and can do the listening and replying if you need to.

I prefer simply using my cell. It’s easy enough to switch from my multiple accounts a few times per day to reply back to people and clear my notifications.

Meet Edgar and the new Buffer Content Library can save you time and hassle, reposting selected or popular posts.

buffer

MeetEdgar took the social media app world by storm when it introduced an easy way to re-post your popular or certain selected posts.

You can say goodbye to Bulk Uploading with Excel Spreadsheets and save time by reposting on a schedule from your chosen library. It’s convenient, for sure, but I still like using spreadsheets to alter the copy on individual tweets for certain campaigns.

Buffer recently added the same feature and I’m sure the other major social media applications are not far behind with their own.

Which tool should I use?

It depends on the what you’re trying to do…

Who’s handling it, one person or a team?
Do you have multiple accounts or just keeping it simple?

If you’re a solopreneur or just getting started – trying to keep it simple and get results, I recommend Buffer to publish and your cell phone to listen.

If you’re a Small Business with maybe 2-50 people, I would recommend SproutSocial or Hootsuite as you’ll probably need the extra reporting or compliance to track your team’s responses.

Pro Tip: If you’d like to get more advanced, you can set up automation from IFTTT to your favorite Task management system and Lists to create actions for different prospects or situations from Twitter Search.

2. Twitter Analytics & Research Tools

Twitter Analytics as we discussed in more detail here, is a fantastic place to start.

It gives you an incredible amount of data concerning what tweets had the best engagement and information about your audience.

Simply Measured should be your next stop with great free reports for anyone in exchange for a tweet about them, which will give you detailed information about the demographics and interests of your audience.

In addition to using the analytics on the Twitter platform and Simply Measured, you can evaluate how well your Twitter strategies (and specific tweets) are doing with a number of different tools that essentially create visual images of analytics data.

These so-called visualization analytics tools can present data in various visual forms such as, for example, graphs, maps, charts, etc. Consequently, they can be very helpful for assessing trends and gleaning deeper insights from the numbers.

Two notable examples of these visual analytics and research tools for Twitter include:

• TweepsMap, which can map out the physical locations of where your followers (and influencers/competitors) are (across the U.S., etc.)
• Audiense (formerly SocialBro), reveals ideal times to Tweet while providing deeper analysis about content trends for different target audiences (only available for under 5,000 followers)

Possible alternatives: SumAll, Twenty Feet, Twitonomy, Tweetstats

3. Audience Management Tools for Twitter
crowdfire

Another important set of Twitter tools are the audience management tools, one of the most popular of which is Crowdfire. Crowdfire is a cleanup tool that allows you to clear out inactives/unfollowers so you can really connect with the users who are active and seem to share interests related to your brand/business. Here’s some other things that Crowdfire can do to help you dial into your target audience include:

• Revealing followers versus unfollowers
• Showing how different tweets impact follow/unfollow stats
• Showing you who your inactive users
• Pointing you to relevant users to follow.

Possible alternatives: ManageFlitter, Unfollowgram, Tweet Sponge, Tweepi

4. Image Designing Tools – Make Your Twitter Images Stand Out
image-designing-tools-make-your-twitter-images-stand-out

As we’ve previously discussed, using images on Twitter can be key to capturing an audience’s attention – and to getting them to read your post and, ideally, respond to your call-to-action.

When it comes to using images on Twitter, however, it may be necessary to edit them in order to make them as compelling as possible.

One powerful image tool for Twitter is PicMonkey, a dynamic image editor that allows you to:

• Edit single images
• Create collages
• Develop visual background designs

Possible alternatives: Canva, Pablo (provided by Buffer), Photovisi, BeFunky

5. Twitter Monitoring or Search Tools
While we’ve highlighted some of the most helpful Twitter tools above, monitoring your brand and your prospects is one of, if not the most important thing you can do. Completely free, Twitter Search is one of the most powerful, underused tool available.

If you’re willing to put in a little leg work, you can search for terms in your industry or for potential prospects and what they are saying in live time. If you have some basic people skills, you can jump into a conversation and start to develop a relationship with that prospect or move them down the sales funnel, turning them into clients.

You can even search buying terms for your business and reach out to prospects at just the right time, when they are trying to make a decision.

Pro Tip: Use IFTTT or Zapier to set up Twitter search automation – When someone asks a buying question for your industry the automation can put the tweet, and the person’s information into your favorite task management system to respond or follow up on.

There are, of course, other monitoring tools out there for Twitter that can serve your needs and goals, with just some of our top picks for being:

• Socedo – A lead identification tool that can highlight the most relevant leads coming from Twitter (to prioritize them for follow-up)

• Keyhole.co – A search tool that allows you to see what’s trending, hashtags and what your target audience is talking about on Twitter at a given moment

• Mention – A monitoring tool that can effectively monitor your brand for mentions and engagement opportunities. Not only for Twitter, Mention can deliver powerful information to nurture and move prospects down the sales funnel.

• Twilert – An alert/warning tool that can immediately send you an email when your brand is mentioned on Twitter. This can be an effective reputation management and customer service tool (as a lot of people like to go on Twitter to sound off when they are not happy with a brand).

Using Twitter Tools: More Important Information
Finding new Twitter tools
Given that new, powerful tools for Twitter come out fairly regularly, an effective way to keep your eyes and ears open to the latest Twitter tools is to monitor what your favorite Tweeters (and/or competitors) are using. Management tools like Hootsuite can be used to check out the tools others’ are using.

Using multiple Twitter tools
Various Twitter tools are designed to work with each other, and some may be more compatible with each other (than other pairings). So, if you’re already using certain Twitter tools, be sure to check the compatibility with new tools before diving in.

Also, when it comes to using multiple Twitter tools, we recommend:

• Staying open to new tools, as they may provide you with better ways to take your Twitter strategies to the next level.
• Getting rid of tools you don’t use so they don’t clutter up your dashboard/working space (or provide unnecessary distractions).

Contact Us Today to Position Yourself as a Twitter Authority
When you are ready to take your social media marketing on Twitter to the next level and become an online authority, it’s time to contact the marketing professionals at Digital Authority.

Skilled at optimizing and enhancing businesses/brands exposure online, we can identify solutions for helping your brand become a recognized expert online to help you gain more followers, more potential leads and more profits.

Let’s get started cultivating your online visibility and authority so you can grow your business and achieve the next level of success.

Jason DiNunno,
CEO, DigitalAuthority.co

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