A so-called ‘web consultant’ told my boss recently.  I just listened and did not want to jump into talking about twitter.  That’s the problem with me sometimes, I like to listen and think but talk very little.  He went on saying that he managed to rake in interested people to buy his services just via twitter.. bla bla bla.

So – should any business start a Twitter account?  Starting a Twitter account is easy.  You just need to select a unique name and just register the account.  What’s harder than clicking a few buttons?  Its the maintenance that is difficult, not the starting.  I see Twitter as a tool that needs proper planning and maintenance just like any other marketing tool.

If you have a Twitter account, you have to integrate it with your entire marketing plan.  Because its ‘live’, it can give you feedback (positive & negative) that your other tools/channels might not be able to.  Therefore, you need to monitor your twitter activities closely.  Besides monitoring the conversation on your Twitter, there is also a need to check out what the rest are talking with regards to your brand / product / service and also what is going on in the industry.

Having a Twitter also means that your followers expect you to be online most of the time.  Something like >12 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.  This is especially for consumer products and services, as your customers could just mention you for a response.  While most are not expecting an instant response, a 2 day delay would definitely be not acceptable.

Most importantly, how to get followers to your Twitter account?  There is no point tweeting to no one, right?  Twitter has strict laws on following and unfollowing.  I’ve seen many going on the follow and unfollow frenzy (because I have a Twitter mechanism tracking this!), which I do not recommend.  If you get caught by the Twitter automated tool, the account will be suspended.  Its not a very pleasant thing to happen.  There are a bunch of ways to increase followers, one of it being the campaign method (do something to increase interest and have them follow you).  I’d also like to reciprocate the follow, after all twitter is suppose to be an engagement tool so it should be two-way traffic.

It is also important to get ‘Industry Influencers’ in your list of Twitter followers because they can bring your message further to your targetted audience.  Once they are in your list, then its time to engage with them directly.  It takes a combination of research and the use of tools to weed out these Influencers.

So – starting a Twitter account is just the beginning.  To maximize the use of it, its takes a bit of planning, reading, researching.  Sometimes it makes sense to just outsource it to a Twitter expert… like me..  Hahahaha..

P/S : If you are keen to find out a simple Twitter Grading tool – check out Twitter Grader at http://twitter.grader.com and remember to check my ranking

This morning, I searched for tools to do bulk unfollow because I have close to 1,000 followers and going through all these one by one is going to be a very time consuming task.  Here are the few that I found :-

Twitter Karma
URL : http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

This tool shows you the whole long list of those whom you are following & whom are following you.  You will instantly know whom you are following that are not following you and vice versa.  You can tick boxes beside the names to do a bulk follow or bulk unfollow.  Oh yes, you need to key in your twitter ID and your password to get this done.  Its simple, fast & easy.

Friend or Follow
URL : http://friendorfollow.com

You only need to key in your twitter ID and they will show you a list of (1) FOLLOWING – Those whom you are following but is not following you (2) FANS – Those whom are following you but you are not following them  (3) FRIENDS – Those whom are following you and you are also following them  .  From this list, you can then click on the respective icons that brings you back to their twitter profiles and you can make a decision to follow / unfollow.  Ok, so you can’t do a bulk unfollow or follow but you have instant information on your fingertips to make a decision.

Untweeps
URL : http://www.untweeps.com/

With this tool, you can see whom has not been actively updating their tweets.  This tool allows you to specify the total days of inactivity ~ so your report is customized according to your own criteria.  They call it ‘stale tweeps’.  With the whole long list, it is by default checked so you can just click on bulk unfollow if you want to.  I had a long list, and I was thinking to myself.. if they are not updating their twitter for 30 days, I believe they have permanently abandoned it?  If you have a long list of people you are following, you’d be surprised how big this pool of inactive tweeps can be!

Buzzom
URL : http://www.buzzom.com/

Once I key in my twitter ID, it gives me an option to Flush, Grow or Reciprocate.  The idea behind it is quite similar to the rest – follow those who follow you stuff.  An interesting add on is that it has a Twitter Statistics to measure your influence, retweet efficiency, retweet rank.. etc.

JustUnfollow
URL : http://www.justunfollow.com
This tool lets your unfollow a maximum of 50 just by signing up using your Twitter id.  If you tweet their service, the limit increases by 100.  Its quite easy because it will tell you how many people are not reciprocating your follow and you can select one by one whoever you want to unfollow.
[Updated on 30 May 2010]

I used Twitter Karma, Friend or Follow and JustUnfollow to keep my list ‘clean’.

On the other hand, I’m now using Qwitter [URL: http://useqwitter.com/ ] to be notified of whoever is unfollowing me.  I just signed up for this service, whereby I only need to key in my twitter ID and email address to be notified of those who unfollow me.  I can stop the service anytime by clicking on the link that has been emailed to me.

For now, I just want to keep my Twitter list clean.

Twitter is now one of the most talked-about social media tool, and there is also a growing amount of tools that can help to monitor Twitter activities and conversations, especially if you are into promoting a product/brand/company.  I did a little research and below is my compilation :-

TWITTER TRENDING TOOLS
(1) Trendsmap [www.trendsmap.com]
It is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. Just type in the location and you will see the top trending topics in the specific location.  Alternatively, you can also move/zoom around the map and click on the topics for more information.  They also have a “Hot Topics from around the globe” and “Featured Cities from around the globe”.

(2) NearbyTweets [http://nearbytweets.com]
This is a geography-centric social tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring real-time buzz.  This tool can be used to monitor real-time buzz in a location within a specific radius, using specific keywords.  If you are looking for people in your area who are discussing on a specific keyword, this is a good tool to use.

(3) Twitt(url)y [http://twitturly.com]
The tool that track and rank the URLs people are talking about on Twitter.  It works on taking note of URLs people tweet and applies it as a vote for that URL.  The more ‘votes’ it accumulates, the higher its ranks on Twitturly’s Top 100.  Twittulry only shows the 100 most popular URLs over the last 24 hours, and uses smart algorithms to catch spams and robots on twitter.

(4) Breaking Tweets [www.breakingtweets.com]
Read world news twitter-style.  According to the website, it is seeking to prove the value of Twitter as a breaking news source and journalistic platform.  I don’t use much of this though.

(5) Tinker [www.tinker.com]
You can search for top news, events, topics and places in top conversations on Twitter and Facebook.  Just need to type in the search box.

TWITTER RANKING TOOLS
(1) TweetStats [www.tweetstats.com]
Curious about your twitter statistics? This tool gives you a graph to show the total tweets by month and also your tweet density by time.  The graphs also show your average hourly tweets, and the interface you use to post your tweets.  Interestingly it also show whom you reply to and whom you retweet to!

(2) Twitter Counter [http://twittercounter.com]
You can compare your stats with another two other profiles in their main page.  It gives you a prediction of total followers for tomorrow and in the next 30 days ~which I believe is calculated based on the historical data of your profile’s followers.  If you have a blog/website, there is a twitter widget that you can customize and used.  They offer a premium version that allows you to compare multiple twitter accounts, view larger graphs, download the statistics and more.

(3) Twitterholic [http://twitterholic.com]
This is really for fun, I believe.  It shows you your total followers, friends(whom you follow) and updates(total tweets) and then tells you your rank on twitterholic (my rank as of 23 Nov is 83,225…there are tons of people who are more addicted to twitter than me..hahaha..) and also your rank according to your location (my rank is 24 in Kuala Lumpur… *awww* come on, I’m just a nobody).

(4) TwitterScore [http://twitterscore.net]
You can check your profile score – and according to their page, the score is based on your followers and their popularity, the amount of people you’re following and the amount of updates you have and “other few things”(this is exactly what’s being said in the website!).  It seemed like every Twitter score has got their own calculation methods and styles.  How did I score? chewmeiling scored 5.1 out of 10.

(5) TwitterAnlyzer [www.twitalyzer.com]
This toosl tells you your influence, signal, generosity, velocity and clout.  It has got all the explanation on what all these items meant ~ just too much for me to cover in this post.  It also tells you who your key influencers are.  My influence is just 3.5 out of 100, and is apparently ‘slowly developing’.

(6) Twitter Grader [http://twitter.grader.com]
My rank is 201,348 out of 5,705,454 on this one with a grade of 96.5 out of 100.  It gives you a short summary of your own profile.  Their algorithm depends on number of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio and engagement.

TWITTER ALERT & SEARCH TOOLS
(1) TweetBeep [http://tweetbeep.com]
The tool that allows you to keep track of conversations that mention you, your company or anthing at all with hourly updates.  It has the ability to keep track of who’s tweeting your website/blog even if they are using shortened URLs.  Amazing!  This is absolutely good for online reputation management.  If you know what Google Alert is, then you’ll know what Twitter alert is?   The free version offers you 10 free alerts by keywords (you can set the alert to be hourly or daily) and specify even up to by whom, to whom etc. More detailed that Google Alert.  Paid version gives you more alerts.  I’m using this to track the keywords I’m monitoring.

(2) Tweet Seek [http://www.tweetseek.com]
This is a Twitter search tool for keywords.  It works like a search engine except for its searching all the tweets for the keywords you are looking for.

(3) TwitterHawk [http://www.twitterhawk.com]
The tagline they use is “twitter targeted marketing” – in a nutshell the tool allow you to do keyword search automatically and you can enter draft responses you want to send which can be automated or manual.  It does real time searching and you can target your messages to the right keywords in an automated mode. I kind of like this but I’ve not used it.  Once you sing up, you get 10 free tweets.  [Paid Solution]

(4) ObjectiveMarketer [http://www.objectivemarketer.com]
Currently still in beta, this is a centralized campaign management system for social marketers.  According to the website, it offers comprehensive analytic on campaign and channel performance with actionable insights.  You can sign up for a 30 day free trial signup thereafter you can upgrade to a fully paid daccount. [Paid Solution]

TWITTER CLIENTS
(1) HootSuite [www.hootsuite.com]
This is a professional twitter client that allows you to tweet, monitor keywords, manage multiple accounts and more.  You can even schedule tweets ~ especially useful if you have time-sensitive tweet.  Thanks to Josh Lim for that tip   The current version allows not only Twitter, but also Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm.  It is currently a free beta version.

(2) Sendible [www.sendible.com]
It calls itself as a ‘complete messaging platform’ ~ and you can tweet and update your facebook status from this client.  You can schedule email, sms and social network messages ahead of time from one place.  They have a free version (which comes with an ad liner with every of your message) and paid versions starting from USD3 per month (I’m not sure if their prices differ by country as I notice the last bit of the pricing URL indicating country=MY).

(3) Social Oomph [www.socialoomph.com]
I just tried out this twitter client, and it offers more functionalities than the one I have used. You can still do the tweet scheduling by minutes & hours. At the same time you can track keywords, save and resuse drafts, schedule DMs to new followers (and even have a few versions), Automate follow & unfollow, amongst others.  I’m using the auto-follow function with rotating DMs to new followers-And this is the FREE version!  If you want more functionalities, opt for the Professional version, which gives you more keyword search funcitonalities, private tweet viewing, manage DMs with automatic spam control, manage multiple accounts with their integrated console.. and many many more.  You just have to go to their website to see the long list of functionalities.

The above are the tools I use currently, and I’ll update it as and when I find a tool worth using & mentioning.  If you would like to check up new tools, you can also go direct to One Forty [http://oneforty.com] which showcases the best twitter apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Web & More.

P/S : On my Android, I recommend using iTweet ~ which is fast & equally appealing to the eyes