Three Twitter Apps That Rock!

Do you feel like you are drowning in a social media tsunami? Whether your daily dose is mainly from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or the gazillion other social media outlets that seem to be propagating at a viral level, it feels overwhelming when all that data just keeps coming, and there seems little you can do to stop it – short of throwing your computer out the window.

Watch this video because the text below is not a transcript!

Since everyone is talking about Twitter [almost all the time] let’s concentrate on the little blue bird of microblogging. I spend much of my day digging around in social media so I have a few tools that I use that help me make sense of it all and I thought I would share three Twitter Apps [that rock] with you.

I first started managing my Twitter feed using the desktop based Adobe Air application Tweetdeck. It’s a good looking app and a Twitter [and Facebook] dashboard so you can see what’s going on it both worlds – very handy. You can set up multiple accounts which is useful but what makes it rock, and what you want in a useful twitter client, is that you can set up different columns so you can have multiple displays from searches, groups, replies (which are often lost in the deluge,) direct messages, and pull in photos from the like of twitpic. The pop up notifier can be a real distraction, so be warned!

I am also a fan of Hootsuite. Very much like Tweetdeck this web based app shines even brighter for two reasons – scheduled tweets and stats. You can spend a few minutes every morning and just schedule tweets to go out throughout the day which frees you up from doing it later, and then you can check up on how many clicks your tweets get and from which region they originate. Now that is cool. For more detail on whether a human or a bot is responding to your tweets check out budurl.com which gives awesome stat info for your shortened urls.

A new player, TweetGlide, is like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite on steroids. Mainly for extreme marketing promotions because it allows you to show paid sponsored ads in their network that look like tweets. This Adobe Air app will let you tweet unlimited characters [what?!] and shorten the url for you so that your sales message lives on. You can choose from several url shortening services and manage multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts. TweetGlide also tracks tweets, as well as clicks, but it also allows you to bulk follow and unfollow so you don’t have to use Twitter Karma.

Managing your social media yourself can be done but the easiest way to do it is to pick a few sites and stick with them. Don’t sign up for everything you see, take the time to work out what functions are available and then pick the site, or sites, that best fits your needs – especially if you are using social media for business.

All in all these three apps will get whatever Twitter job you need done, and done well. If you are tweeting for yourself Tweetdeck is great for managing your tweets; if you are tweeting for business and need to know stats and want to free up your time by scheduling tweets then Hootsuite is for you; want to take your business tweeting to another level? Then try on TweetGlide for size.

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Boomers Getting Sweet on Tweets

In March of this year there was a 131% traffic growth spurt for the micro-blogging site Twitter with tweets nearly doubling from the previous month and almost reaching the ten million mark. That’s a whole lot of tweeting going on!

But why did Twitter suddenly become even more popular earlier this year – with its popularity continuing to grow?

The elders of our nation are now getting on the Twitter bandwagon, that’s why.

Not only has Twitter been all over the media of late, [cast your mind back to the day Michael Jackson went to moonwalking heaven] but it has been embraced by the media as a channel of communication. CNN’s Rick Sanchez uses Twitter on his show to relay the feelings of his viewers and also have an off-air dialogue with them; and it also made news some months back thanks to celebrities like Oprah, who just started tweeting April 17^th, [pretty late for a big celeb] Ashton Kutcher racing against CNN to see who could top one million followers, and Hugh Jackman offering $100K to a charity who tweeted him the most deserving reason. Behold the Power of Twitter!

But I think the reason Twitter is doing so well is because it’s so easy. Setting up an account in Twitter is a breeze and once you’re in the options are minimal, and thus not confusing.

Many potential bloggers have a hard time getting into blogging because they don’t know what to write about, but twitter dispels those fears – you max out at 140 characters, so getting writer’s block while micro-blogging is pretty difficult.

With so many younger people using Twitter, older generations are also finding it an easy way to keep in touch with their younger relatives, and although texting rules the roost with younger folk, aging Tweeters in their autumn years who don’t like to text from their cell phones can essentially text tweets from their computers. They can also set up their cell phones to receive tweets from others, and by using the direct tweets only option only the followers they chose can get their messages through.

And let’s not forget that Twitter is free.

The simplicity and zero price tag make Twitter almost irresistible and over time, as the platform is embraced by more businesses, charities, churches, groups – you name it – Twitter will surely evolve into a communications outlet in a way that Google evolved for search: unparalleled.

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Behold the Power of Twitter

Finally the day has come – Oprah is now on Twitter, tweeting long with the rest of us. It took me a good while to get into Twitter. I just couldn’t believe that anyone outside my circle would be the slightest bit interested in what I have to say, but they are, and the power Twitter now has is a testament to all our continually inquiring minds.

Yes, Twitter is a great vehicle for us all, not just celebrities. But it works very well for celebrities and their much needed buzz. Now that Hugh Jackman has offered 100K to a charity who can “sell” their need to him in a mere 140 characters or less, I guess we have really reached the pinnacle of micro-sizing the important, as well as the unimportant.

How brilliant an idea it is to get a sales pitch as a tweet? That even beats the elevator pitch. Of course now Jackman has to find a way to read through the many thousands of hopeful tweets, but think – now even a small, underfunded charity can hit it big with just a couple of lines expended.

Companies like elance.com are using the platform to link to job postings, Dell gives its followers special offers and deals, and many large corporations now seem more personable and caring by using Twitter to help their customer service departments connect with the people that buy their products.

So, if you are a small business owner, are you starting to see why you should use Twitter?

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