Are you ready to learn more about your Twitter strategy? Do you want to keep a gauge on how it’s doing? There are Twitter tools that will show all the important engagement information you need to know, including things like:

• Your follower history
• Who has retweeted your latest blog post
• How far your latest tweets reached
• The analytics of individual tweets
• Who are your most engaged followers

If you’re ready to dig into some great analysis of your Twitter world, then check out these 6 awesome tools that will help you learn how to get even more out of Twitter.

1. Topsy: Twitter Analytics for Your Website

Are you curious how your website or blog performs on Twitter? Then you might want to check out Topsy’s Analytics. By plugging in site:yourdomain.com, you can get the following graph about the past 30 days worth of Twitter activity for your website.

When you hover over each dot, you can see the top story from your domain for that day which will likely be your latest blog post or other piece of content that you are promoting. If you click on that link, you can see more detailed information. Halfway down the page, you can see all the tweets about that particular link on your website. Check the box for Show influential only to see the top Twitter people who tweeted it.

Hovering over each Twitter user’s name will give you more details about each of them, as shown above. Seeing influential users who retweet your content can give you a pretty good idea of who you should be following on Twitter as well.

Want to see this kind of data for any webpage you are browsing? Grab the Topsy bookmarklet by dragging this link > Topsy Trackbacks < to your browser's bookmark toolbar (go to this page for browser specific directions). Then click on it whenever you are viewing a webpage you would like to see tweet details for.

2. TweetReach: Know The Reach of Your Tweets

Curious to know how many impressions your latest tweets have received beyond your own audience? If so, TweetReach is the tool for you. Just enter your Twitter username and click Go to see the following data.

The free version of this tool will give you analytics for your last 50 tweets. The Tweet Types pie chart shows you the breakdown of types of tweets you send (regular tweets, @replies to other users, and retweets (RT @user). The list under Impressions Contributed by will show you the latest people who have retweeted those latest 50 tweets. If you want the full analysis of the total tweet count displayed, it is $20 USD.

Another great use of the free version of this tool is to run reports on other Twitter users in your niche. This will show you the same breakdown of the types of tweets they send, the number of impressions their tweets receive, and who the top people retweeting them are.

3. TwitterCounter: Follower Stats

Curious how many followers you are gaining for your Twitter account? Check out TwitterCounter for the answer. Without even logging in to their service, you can see the graph for your number of followers, the number you are following, and the number of tweets you send in a weekly to three month view.

Seeing a large change in the graph can help you determine if a particular activity you have done recently has affected your following or clue you in to something significant that might have happened on a particular date. You can see basic stats about your Twitter followers, following, and tweets at a glance beneath the graph. You can see a how many followers you could have in 30 days, or how long it will take you to double your current following using the prediction sliders.

Want to find more targeted followers who just might follow you back? Twitter users who use automated systems to follow everyone who follows them back can usually be spotted by the close ratio between the number of people they follow vs. the number of people following them. Use the TwitterCounter search to find Twitter users with a particular keyword in their bio. You can also see the top Twitter users by location when you visit the Top 100 Users page and then use dropdown to filter the list.

Then browse through the list to see who has a close followers / following number. Sign into TwitterCounter with your Twitter account and follow these users from the search results page.

4. Tweet Grader: Grade Your Twitter Account

HubSpot has several grader tools, one of which is Tweet Grader. This tool will tell you some basic stats about your account, ranking compared to other Twitter users based on the number of people following you, and an account summary that shows your profile details, including when you began tweeting.

Further down the report, you will see a Tweet Cloud of the words most often mentioned by your account. If your Twitter profile has any significant issues, they will be noted in the Tips and Suggestions area.

Another area to check out on Tweet Grader’s site is the Top Twitter Cities. This list will show you the users with the top scoring profiles in different locations.

5. Buffer App: Analyze Tweets You Send

If you are curious about the performance of tweets you send from your Twitter account, then send your tweets using Buffer App. Buffer not only allows you to easily schedule your tweets, but also includes some nifty analytics about each of your tweets including number of clicks, potential retweets, retweets, and number of times the tweet has been favorited.

You also get to see who retweeted and favorited your tweet with the option to thank them, reply to them, or follow them. It’s a great way to build Twitter engagement with people who are already into what you are sharing. You can also see when the best time to tweet for your audience is by tweeting the same thing at two different times of day, then comparing the analytics for each tweet!

6. Commun.it: Build Relationships

It’s not often I receive requests to review beta tools that really wow me, but Commun.it is an impressive community management tool that does. This tool will show you everything you need to know about who you are following, who you should be following, and who you could probably live without following.

If you’ve ever been curious about who the most engaged and influential members of your audience are, then this is the right tool for you. It also lets you see your latest number of followers, unfollowers, and those you should consider to follow / unfollow. It’s currently invite only, so be sure to get your name in so you can get access as soon as possible!

These are just a sample of the many useful Twitter tools out there. Now it’s your turn – what tools do you use to measure your Twitter analytics?

About the Authors: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

When it comes to social media, there is not that much hidden about how it all works. The issue is that sometimes the information is hard to find in one place. So in this post, we are going to unearth some commonly unanswered questions in standard Twitter how to posts when it comes to getting the most out of your Twitter experience.

What is the New Twitter Activity Stream?

You may not have noticed it yet because you spend a lot of time in a Twitter management tool instead of on Twitter itself. But one of the new additions to Twitter is the Activity feed. You can find it when you log in to Twitter as a tab underneath your What’s happening box.

Here you will see something similar to the news feed in Facebook. It shows the latest activity by people you follow including who they have recently followed or added to Twitter lists, what tweets they have sent or “favorited”, and other activity. If you are following a huge amount of people, it may not be that helpful, but if you only follow a small amount of people, then you might learn more about them.

How Do Recent Images Work?

When you go to your Twitter profile (again, actually on Twitter), you might notice the Recent Images strip in your sidebar.

I assumed this would only show your recent images, but instead, it shows any images you have somehow interacted with. This means images you have shared through mobile uploads, images you have tweeted (or retweeted from others), images you have commented on, and so forth.

So don’t expect it to be like the photostrip on Google+ or Facebook – your only option to get these out of your recent images is to delete the tweet associated with the image. You can do this if you click on a recent image and then the Delete link under the tweet.

Be sure to use the View All grid display of your images at the top right of the Recent Images viewing browser to see all of your images. You might see something you didn’t mean to come up as a part of your public profile!

How Can I Use RSS Feeds with Twitter?

For those who love RSS and subscribing to virtually anything in their favorite RSS reader (mine is Google Reader), Twitter offered RSS feeds for user updates, Twitter lists, and Twitter searches. During the last few updates of the Twitter platform, those easy to find RSS links disappeared. But you can still monitor these things using RSS.

Sociable.co developed a Twitter RSS feed creator that will generate RSS feeds for you based on your input of usernames, Twitter list names, or search queries. If you’d like to manually create the feeds, use the following formats.

For a Twitter User

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=username

To create a RSS feed URL for a Twitter user, you will replace username with the Twitter user’s account name. For example, if you wanted to follow tweets originating from KISSmetrics, you would change the above URL to:

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=kissmetrics

For a Twitter List

http://api.twitter.com/1/username/lists/listname/statuses.atom

To create a RSS feed URL for a Twitter list, you will replace username with the Twitter user’s handle, and the listname with the name of their list. For example, if you went to Listorious’ Top 140 Lists and wanted to follow the Social Media list by Mashable, you would change the above RSS URL to:

http://api.twitter.com/1/mashable/lists/social-media/statuses.atom

For a Twitter Search

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=keyword

To create a RSS feed URL for a Twitter search, you will replace the keyword with the keyword you are searching on Twitter. For example, if you are searching for tweets mentioning the keyword blogging, you would change the above RSS URL to:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=blogging

If you are searching for mentions of a particular username, you would change username to the Twitter user’s handle and the above RSS URL to:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%40username

If you are searching for mentions of a particular hashtag, you would change hashtag to the hashtag keyword you are searching and the above RSS URL to:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%23hashtag

What Can I Find Out Through Advanced Twitter Searches?

Twitter Advanced Search offers users a lot of options when it comes to finding just the right tweets.

Local businesses can use it to find tweets in their area from people who might be interested in their restaurant, retail store, or local office. Anyone can look at conversations between users which can be helpful if you see parts of a chat and want to know what the full conversation looks like.

You can also use the following advanced search operators in the search box on Twitter.

Be sure to save your favorite searches using the Save this search button at the top of the results on Twitter.

And access them in your Searches tab when logged in to Twitter.

You can also use some of the advanced search operators for Twitter searches and save them as a stream in Twitter management tools like HootSuite.

Can I Search Twitter Using Google?

Sure can! You can look up the top ranked profiles, status updates, official Twitter blog posts, and Twitter lists using the search query site:twitter.com keyword on Google. If you would like to exclude status messages, change the search query to site:twitter.com keyword -inurl:status.

An added bonus if you are on Google+ – when you search a keyword on Twitter (such as I did in the example above with SEO), you will see Twitter handles from people you are already connected with on Google+ first with their avatar underneath the result!

Can I Change My Username?

Before you create a new username and try to migrate all of your followers over to it, remember that you can change your username on Twitter! Just go to your Account Settings and enter a new username.

If that username is available, you can just change it without losing your followers, tweets, @replies, direct messages, favorites, or other related data. Just be sure to let people know so they will start tweeting at your new username and change any places you have referenced your old one such as your website, other social profiles, email signature, and so on.

What Chrome Extensions Are a Must for Twitter?

I’m sure that Firefox also has a lot of great add-ons for Twitter, but since I’m a Chrome user, I thought I’d share three great extensions that would help you with your Twitter experience.

Twitter Notifier

Stop jumping between tabs to see if you have any new mentions or direct messages. Twitter Notifier will send a little desktop notification when you have new activity!

Klout

The Chrome extension for Klout will place a Twitter user’s Klout score next to their username anywhere on Twitter.

WiseStamp

WiseStamp is not for Twitter, but rather for your email. It creates a nice email signature that will be auto populated into your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail emails. You can use this extension to create an email signature that includes a link to your Twitter profile and even a well-formatted display of your latest tweet with Twitter controls built right in to follow, reply, or retweet you!

How Can I Get More Out of My Twitter Bio?

Whenever someone views your full profile, they will see your bio information and website link. But in places where Twitter lists just the bio under your username, your link will be lost.

This is how a status update looks when several Twitter names are mentioned. You can see that only links included in the bio will be displayed, so if you know that people might recognize you better by your website, you might want to consider adding it to your bio itself. Also note that if you add another Twitter handle in your bio and a link with http:// before it, both will automatically linked inside Twitter.

Why Do People Follow Me on Twitter?

Curious what topics you are well known for, but not that into checking your Klout? Look to your Twitter lists instead. People will put you into Twitter lists for particular reasons, and you can see those reasons by going to your Lists following your page by clicking on the number Listed on your profile.

If you’ve got some time on your hands and have a love of spreadsheets, you can use the directions in this post on creating a word collage of your Twitter lists. If not, just scroll down the Twitter lists following you and you’ll probably notice some keywords repeated more often than not.

The common words for my lists include social media, blogging, and SEO. If you find that there are an abundance of keywords that do not fit your profile, you may want to rethink your bio information and tweeting strategy.

When is the Best Time to Tweet?

The age old question that most people ask is when they should be tweeting. You can try tools like When to Tweet which tells you when your followers are most active by analyzing when they tweet.

Of course, with all of the automation tools out there, it can still be hard to determine which of your followers are actually online when they are tweeting. Another way to go about it is to look at the analytics for your tweets and see which times tweets you send get the most action.

Buffer (one of my new favorite Twitter tools) will show you analytics for your tweets, including retweets, clicks, and favorites.

One of my suggestions to makes sure you reach more of your audience is to tweet your most important message a few times per day. For example, if you have a great blog post you don’t want anyone to miss, change up the description for it each time you tweet. For this post, I could do the following.

• 7:00 AM – Check out my latest post @KISSmetrics on Twitter Strategies!
• 1:00 PM – The Hidden Guide to Using Twitter Effectively
• 6:00 PM – Answers to Uncommonly Discussed Twitter Questions

Then, I could take my Buffer analytics to see which time slot gets the most response.

How Should I Use My Favorites?

Favorites are often the most overlooked featured in Twitter, but it is one of the greatest features. Have you ever wanted to go back to a particular tweet, but not been able to find it because you forgot who sent it or it was sent too long ago? If you see a tweet you want to be able to find later, then use the Favorite link next to the star symbol to save it.

Then go to your profile and click on the Favorites tab to see your favorited tweets.

Aside from links I want to review later, I also favorite tweets that I want to remember like compliments on a post or a retweet by a popular user. Saving these can simply cheer you up on a rainy day, or even be used as testimonials. The best part is that your favorites will stick around. I can scroll back and see my favorites from two years ago!

Where Can I Find More Information on Twitter?

If this post hasn’t answered some of your questions, then don’t worry! Check out these other Twitter guides to find out even more about Twitter!

• Twitter Marketing Guide
• 7 Sneaky Ways to Use Twitter to Spy on Your Competition
• 10 Twitter Tools Used by Social Media Experts
• The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks
• 5 Tips To Make Your Startup’s Twitter Account Stand Out
• 10 Great Twitter Tools To Transform Your Tweeting Experience

Do you have more questions that are uncommonly answered about Twitter? Please share them in the comments below!

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing, including social networking strategies and blogging tips.

Being on Twitter all day can be a huge time suck. Yet, at over 250 million Tweets posted each day, and over 460,000 people that are signing up daily, one has to find a way to make Twitter work.

So how are the Guy Kawasaki’s and TweetSmarter’s of the world doing it? The answer I have found is to make use of Twitter tools. There exist a lot of them out there and they are the absolute key for me to make Twitter work.

At over 1 million apps and one new one being registered every second, it is very hard to know which one to pick. So here are my top 10 tools to help you transform your Twitter experience into something a lot more efficient and powerful:

#1 TweetStats – Full analytics for all your Tweets

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” said Peter Drucker a long time ago. With TweetStats, you have a powerful tool to measure all your Twitter behavior in one place. It shows you your Tweet timeline to understand how much you are Tweeting each day and each month. It also dives deep into analyzing your best times to Tweet via a Tweet Density report and follower comparisons.

Pro Tip: What I like best is the @reply and Retweet analysis. It gives you a clear picture if you hit the right balance of engagement and content Tweets.

#2 Nurph – The Ultimate Twitter Hashtag Tool

One of my most recent discoveries is Nurph. The App has received a revamp and is now more powerful than ever. It lets you invite friends into a private chat room via a simple Tweet. This is amazing if you want to take a brief connection to a new level and have a longer conversation. A great example for using Nurph is to keep your Twitter community engaged in longer talks. I also had great results using it for support purposes if you want to get feedback on your product or service.

Pro Tip: What I like best is that the App offers featured channels as well as an archive for your chat conversation.

#3 MarketMeSuite – Your powerful Tweeting dashboard

Although there are a ton of Social Media dashboards out there, MarketMeSuite is a great new solution that boasts a ton of additional features. You can connect multiple social networks and the App also supports PeerIndex and Klout support. On top scheduling and pulling in RSS, MarketMeSuite also allows you to white label your Tweets.

Pro Tip: A great feature of MarketMeSuite is to create reply campaigns which allows you to geo-tag and target users a lot more specifically than normal Tweets.

#4 ManageFlitter – Send tweet reminders for important events

Sometimes, finding those updates which are most useful on Twitter are buried somewhere amongst irrelevant Tweets. Whenever this happens, it is time for me to go ahead and sweep out all those Twitter accounts, which don’t add any value for me. With ManageFlitter this is super easy to do. The App displays all accounts which are inactive, don’t follow you back or are spamming your stream and you can unfollow them with just one click.

Pro Tip: What makes ManageFlitter most recommendable is that you don’t have to sign up for anything. You can sign in with Twitter, unfollow the people which don’t add value and off you go.

#5 StrawberryJ.am – Reading Tweets made simple

Seeing through the clutter on Twitter can be very hard sometimes. With StrawberryJ.am, there is no more searching through your stream for finding the good stuff. The app automatically finds the top mentioned Tweets and shows them in a new order beginning with most retweeted update at the start. You can also create lists and search terms that StrawberryJ.am filters for you with their goodness.

Pro Tip: If you really don’t want to sign into another new website each day, try StrawberryJ.am’s handy email feature. They will email you a summary every evening, which is super convenient.

#6 SocialBro – Managing your Twitter community made easy

If you are looking for a tool that tightly focuses on managing your community, look no further than SocialBro. The app lets you manage your lists, see your community in a map and browse your community conveniently based on their engagement. On top of this the app allows you to bucket your followers according to time zones which is very useful to know when to best reach them.

Pro Tip: What I like best here is that SocialBro shows you how fast your followers have been growing over the past and at which times you have lost most followers.

#7 Tweriod – Find your most valuable Tweeting times

This is one of my favorite Apps particularly for its simplicity. All you have to do is sign in with Twitter on the landing page and the App crunches the numbers for you to find your best times to Tweet. It will then show you the results on a beautiful graph and with all your key results in one spot. You can also go ahead and export your results via .pdf very conveniently.

Pro Tip: Tweriod also gives you some great additional analysis showing you different optimal timing for different days of the week. I found this very powerful.

#8 Klout for Chrome – Find top influencers with one glance

Despite some of the recent uproar for Klout’s changes in its algorithm, I believe it is a fantastic way to cut down on time spent looking for the right people on Twitter. With its Chrome extension, you will be see immediately who the best people are you should start engaging with right inside Twitter.com. Since it is often hard to decide which Tweets to pick up and reply to, this is very helpful.

Pro Tip: What I like best is that you can click on each score and get to their Klout profile page to learn more about what they are up to.

#9 Twylah – Beautiful Twitter brand pages

Twylah is an up and coming must have tool for anyone who wants to be serious about Twitter. The App turns all your Tweets into a new, self-branded landing page filtered by the top topics you are Tweeting about. I found this to give a much better overview about what the person is Tweeting about than only looking at ones stream. The rich media display and concise summary of topics turns your Tweets into a great visual experience.

Pro Tip: Twylah also boasts a great feature called Power Tweets. You can send special Tweets, which are surrounded by other relevant content and have proven to decrease bounce rate by over 4x.

#10 WhoTweetedMe – Find out who is Tweeting any article

Always wondered who those people actually are that make the count go up on the Tweet button? With WhoTweetedMe you have a powerful to answer exactly this question. You can drop in any URL and the app will display who Tweeted it, at what times and with what reach. It is a very powerful measure to understand the impact a Tweet can have across the Twitter universe.

Pro Tip: WhoTweetedMe also gives you a list of the top influencers that have retweeted that article. Via the “thank you” button you can thank them right from inside the app.

Making use of these tools has improved my Twitter experience significantly. Staying on top of Twitter, tweeting frequently and at the best times is what has been facilitated tremendously through these Apps for me.

Over to you now. Do you think any of these tools can be of help for your Tweeting effort too?

About the Author: Leo Widrich is the Co-Founder of Buffer. Buffer is a smarter way to publish your Tweets and FB updates that has shown to increase clicks on links by 200%. He also writes a lot more Twitter tips on the Buffer blog.

With so many Twitter tools out there, it’s hard to know which ones to trust with your Twitter account management. So why not take a look at what the social media and industry experts are using! Here are ten Twitter applications and tools used by some of the top Twitterers.

The following list is presented in alphabetical order:

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is just a URL shortening service right? Wrong! Used by @marismith, @techcrunch, and @problogger, a free Bit.ly account will give you access to a dashboard where you can shorten and share links to multiple Twitter accounts. You can also see the stats for any Bit.ly links you share through your dashboard and plug your Bit.ly API key into Tweetdeck, Twitterfeed, or Seesmic to get stats for links you share through those applications as well. As an added bonus, you can even create your own custom short domain to match your brand so you can have branding similar to Mashable’s on.mash.to and Amazon’s amzn.to custom URLs.

Buffer

Buffer is deemed the smarter way to tweet, and is used by @tweetsmarter, @jaybaer, and @askaaronlee. It allows you to simply schedule your tweets to be spread throughout the day so you don’t go through a reading spree and inundate your followers with 20 tweets within an hour. You can also get great analytics on your tweets which will help determine what your audience loves, or doesn’t, out of the content you share as well as the times of day you get the most action on your tweets.

CoTweet

CoTweet, used by @nealschaffer, @chrispirillo, and @emarketer, is considered a Twitter marketing tool for companies who want to engage, track, and analyze conversations about their brand. The free version allows you to manage your Twitter accounts, collaborate with multiple users, track clicks and limited analytics, schedule tweets, keep conversation history for 30 days, and more. The enterprise version (starting at 1,500USD a month) allows integration with Salesforce, advanced user roles and permissions, workgroups, and full analytics.

HootSuite

HootSuite is one of my personal favorites as far as Twitter management is concerned, and is also quite popular amongst the social media elite including @chrisbrogan, @tweetsmarter, and @tamar. It is a freemium tool, meaning that you can use the free plan if you have fewer than five social profiles to manage. But the Pro version for unlimited social profiles including enhanced analytics isn’t too steep at only 5.99USD per month.

Paper.li

Paper.li is a unique application that allows you to collect tweets and curate them manually or automatically in a newspaper-style format which can be automatically shared daily on your Twitter account. Used by @scottmonty, @guykawasaki, and @leeodden, this app is a great way to collect the top tweets from your followers, people on a specific Twitter list, or even anyone who mentions a particular #hashtag. It does drive a nice bit of traffic to sites mentioned by top users, so while some people may not like to be mentioned, others greatly appreciate it!

SocialOomph

SocialOomph is another freemium service used by @mike_stelzner, @smallbiztrends, and @jeffbullas that allows you to schedule tweets, track keywords, extend your Twitter profile, and much more with an unlimited amount of accounts for free. If you choose to go professional for 29.97USD, you get additional features such as Facebook scheduling, tweet via email, have others update via email, manage DM spam, broadcast DMs to all Status.net followers, and again, much more. Plus, for an additional 3.97USD you can automate following those who follow you and sending welcome DMs to new followers.

Triberr

Triberr is an invite only community used by @lewishowes, @seanmalarkey, and @nealschaffer that allows you to join “tribes” of like-minded bloggers in order to expand your reach on Twitter. Simply plug your RSS feed in and members of your tribe will tweet each new post. As a member, you can set yourself up to do automatic tweeting of other member’s posts or manual tweeting when you have reviewed and approved of the posts. I personally just copy my Triberr tweets into HootSuite for full scheduling control.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a desktop Twitter management tool used by @jasonfalls, @problogger, and @marshallk. It has features similar features to HootSuite in terms of creating columns to organize your Twitter activity as well as the ability to send longer messages using their Deck.ly service which creates a shortened URL that directs followers to the rest of your tweet beyond 140 characters. I love the interface of this one, but since I use multiple computers, it makes more sense to use a browser-based application instead of one you have to install on a local machine.

Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed, used by @sengineland, @amyporterfield, and @cindyking, allows you to add RSS feeds (yours and others) to be shared automatically through your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts each time there is a new update to them. You can customize the tweets to show the title of the new post, the link (shortened by your preferred URL shortener), and even add a RT @username or via @username so you let the blogger know you’re always tweeting their posts. It’s a great way to curate content for your audience automatically, but just be careful that the blogs whose feeds you use always publish quality content.

Visibli

Visibili is a free service used by @brett, @davepeck, and @denisewakeman that lets you create a custom sharing bar that goes with any links you share through their service. This custom share bar can have your name and social sharing icons as well as links to your website and even a Tweet button which recommends your Twitter accounts and Facebook Like button that connects to your fan page. It can be connected to your Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop apps, installed on your blog for outgoing links, and installed as a bookmarklet on your browser bookmark toolbar as a quick way to share with your customization at the top of every link!

What Do You and Your Favorite Twitterers Use?

Now it’s your turn. What Twitter apps do you use to manage and update your Twitter account? What apps do your favorite Twitterers use? Share your thoughts on these and other apps in the comments!

Also, if you want to find out what others are using, my method was viewing their tweets in HootSuite which lists what application sent the Twitter user’s update. It’s a great way to find out what apps are working the best for people your industry!

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing, including social networking strategies and blogging tips.

For the past 6 months I have been involved as Co-Founder for a Twitter App called Buffer. Being the non-technical part I am focused on writing blog posts and reaching out for coverage. Another vital point was to grow an engaged Twitter account to increase our distribution.

Along the way I have tried many different techniques and I believe the following 5 tips were most important to make things work for us:

1. Promote Others

The first piece of advice is to promote others?

Following the words of “If you want to get noticed, notice others” has proven to be the most important factor to grow our network on Twitter. Naturally, as you start taking notice in others tweets, they will start retweeting you too.

Now it is crucial not to retweet others for the sake of retweeting them. Be sincere and honest. Find the thought leaders in your niche and start retweeting thoughtfully if you believe it provides value for your following. It helps to add a short comment to personalize retweets and to show others you are truly engaged with that content.

In many cases this can simply mean to add the author’s Twitter handle and showing appreciation for the post:

2. Be Consistent In Order To Build Trust

I learned that building trust amongst your followers hardly happens if you can’t commit to a regular presence on Twitter. This doesn’t need to take up much of your time. Use simple Tweet scheduling tools to pre-write a few tweets to be sent spaced out over the whole day.

As you grow, you can increase your frequency and become even more active.  Creating a consistency of content tweets is fantastic, because you can provide value for others beyond your product. It allows you to be very active the space you are in, without referring to your own startup all the time.

3. Be Focused On Your Niche

A mistake I made early on is to start tweeting about every topic you could think off, starting with Social Media, startups, design and whatnot. Doing this left me faceless in the space, where no one could recognize what I was all about.

In order to get noticed I suggest you start tweeting about topics that are tightly interconnected with your products’ focus. The major benefit of doing this is that as you become known as an expert voice in your space. I found that if someone now learns about your product it can make a huge difference, as you have already provided them with knowledge about a very related topic beforehand.

4. Be Creative With Your Tweets

A technique I love to share is to genuinely see your Twitter account as a micro-blog. This means you think carefully about the wording of tweets posted. Of course, I wouldn’t suggest to tinker for hours. Yet tweeting something different than the headlines of posts that everyone else is tweeting about can help you to stand out.

Try rewriting post headlines or adding your thoughts next to them. Another way to do this is to find a quote from a post you enjoyed and turn that into your headline for the tweet. Doing this can spice up your tweets and shows your followers that you are truly engaged with the content you are tweeting about.

Someone, whom I love to cite for his very creative Tweeting patterns is @TweetSmarter, rewording the original title to show engagement and create tweets to suit his audience more:

5. Be Fast

Twitter’s fast paced nature makes it perfect to be used as a great support channel. What I found is crucial here is to answer tweets in a short time window of receiving them. In general leaving less than 1 hour between your response might be a good timeframe.

In order to manage your time well, collaborating and sharing the work on who is online can help a great deal. In our case, we change who is “on duty” every 3 hours. Providing such a fast customer service has  led to great praise and happy customers many times in the past for us.

What Are The Results?

As I am writing this the Buffer Twitter account has around 8,500 followers. This isn’t an insane number, but still very useful for our purposes. What I am particularly happy about is engagement happening. If we post a question, about 10-20 of our amazing followers reply. A Klout score of 66 seems to confirm engagement too.

Looking at our Tweets, you can see that we get between 20-50 clicks per Tweet sent. Posting at a frequency of 10 content tweets every day means we are able to generate about 200-500 clicks. Also, on average we get between 2 and 5 retweets on each of them. Blog posts on the Buffer blog, which we are solely promoted through the Twitter account get between 50-150 tweets each.

I hope these tips are helpful for you to get fully hooked on Twitter with your startup’s Twitter account. Taking it serious and investing a small amount of time each day can already make a big difference I learnt.

Which other techniques are you using to make your Twitter account stand out? Do you think the above tips can help?

About the Author: Leo Widrich is the Co-Founder of a Twitter App called Buffer. Every week he tweets more Twitter Tips on the Buffer blog, say hi @LeoWid anytime, he is a super nice guy.

While Twitter may not be as big as Facebook in terms of traffic, it has several advantages over Facebook. Not only is it easier to gain followers on Twitter, but you can engage with people before they become your friend on a personal profile or your fan on a business page.

The following is a guide to help you setup your Twitter profile and implement a successful Twitter marketing strategy. It gives suggestions and tips for those who are new to Twitter or are just looking for some new ideas.

Note: Although we refer to using automated techniques in this guide, by no means do we encourage you to spam on Twitter. Doing so will only subvert your own efforts. Automation is suggested as merely a way to increase the efficiency of certain repetitive tasks.

Researching the Competition

If you’re just starting out on Twitter and need a few examples to follow, why not start by doing a little research on what your competition (or colleagues, if you prefer) are doing in the Twitterverse.

I can *almost* guarantee that there is a similar blogger, freelancer, entrepreneur, local business, or any-sized business already out there taking advantage of Twitter. You can find them by visiting their websites or using directories such as Twellow and Wefollow to search for Twitter users in a specific industry.

Be sure to find the best examples to follow – if you’re a local bakery, and your competition down the road isn’t on Twitter (or only has 3 followers), then try broadening your searching for a local bakery in a larger city. Once you’ve found them, follow them and see what they do. Note what seems to get a good response and what doesn’t.

For more tips on researching the competition, I wrote a post here a few months back called 7 sneaky ways to use Twitter to spy on your competition. Be sure to check it out to see what you can learn from others in your field!

Essential Profile Elements

Again, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re not seeing a lot of success, one thing you will want to look at is your profile itself before you start going and searching for followers. Particularly, you will want to make sure you have the following:

Custom Background Design – When someone comes to your Twitter profile for the first time, they should see a great design that reflects your brand.

Concise and Descriptive Bio – You get a whopping 160 characters to describe yourself and what people will get when they follow you on Twitter. Make it interesting and convincing!

Profile Picture – No one wants to follow the generic Twitter icons. And not a lot of people want to follow a logo (unless it’s a well recognized one). What they do want to see is a person behind the profile. Social media is all about engagement, and people want to engage with other people, not just companies or bots.

Great Tweets – Last, but not least, when people are deciding to follow you, chances are they are going to do so based on your most recent tweets. If you visit your profile, you’ll see your last twenty tweets at the least. Make sure that these tweets reflect your engagement level with your audience – you should be sharing great content and responding to others MORE than you should be doing pitches and trying to make sales.

For more about creating an effective social media presence, be sure to see the 10 elements of a successful social media profile.

Finding Targeted Followers

Now that you have your profile setup, and some great tweets, your next on-going goal will be to gain followers. Sure, there are lots of ways to get just any followers, but the key is to get targeted followers who are interested in your industry.

So how do you find them? And how do you get them to follow you?

While everything shouldn’t always be about numbers, there is a certain thing to be said about someone coming to your profile and seeing that you have a good follower count. I usually like to start a new Twitter account out by finding people who have a follow back policy in place, usually implemented by an online application. Basically, you will be looking for people who have close to a 1:1 ratio of followers and following count.

Some great places to search include:

TwitterCounter Search – Enter in your keyword and you will see users with their following and follower count. Connect TwitterCounter with your Twitter account and follow those users directly from TwitterCounter’s search results.

Twitter Lists via Listorious – Search for Twitter lists compiled by other members from your industry. When you view these lists on Twitter, go to the following tab. Then click on each of the users. In the new Twitter layout, you will see their profile pop out on the right side of the screen so you can see their followers, following, and have the option to follow them.

Of course, there are many more ways to find followers. You can use the Twellow and Wefollow directories mentioned above. There are also applications out there that automate the following process, the most popular being Twitter Adder which finds and follows new users regularly based on your customized searches as well as unfollows people who do not follow you back within a specified timeline.

Getting Followers from Your Own Online Properties

Do you have a website, blog, email newsletter, or other way to share links with others online? Then be sure to add your Twitter link to everything, down to your email signature, forum signature, and even other social profiles (such as your Facebook). This way, people who are already connecting with you online can easily find you on Twitter.

One great way to get more followers, specifically from your blog, is to use Twitter’s retweet button. It allows you to put a retweet button on each of your blog posts to make it easier for visitors to share those posts with their followers. But the bonus is that when you create the button, you can put in a Twitter account to recommend after someone shares your post.

This way, people who are already interested in your content are invited to follow you, and likely will because it is so convenient.

Direct Messaging Best Practices

Now that you have followers, the next step is to start engaging with them! One way to connect with your followers is through direct messages. Twitter users have a love / hate relationship with direct messages, as many of the ones sent seem like spam.

As you follow others, you will see examples of good and bad direct messages. The bad ones are those that are pitching a product or service right off the bat and those trying to get you to opt-in to their mailing list (usually through the temptation of a free eBook).

Think of that first direct message as the first thing you say to someone you have just met and shook hands with. You don’t want to put them off immediately. Think of your direct messages as a way to go above and beyond to connect with a new follower. Simply thank them for following you, or ask them what they would like to learn from you on Twitter. The latter can be especially helpful in surveying your followers to see what kind of tweets will keep them engaged.

The best way to do direct messages is by personalizing each one to your new followers. But of course, when you start getting dozens of new followers daily, it becomes a bit of a productivity issue to do so. This is where automation comes in.

Free services such as Social Oomph lets you register your Twitter account and send your new followers a direct message automatically. My biggest suggestion on this one is to remember not to pitch your new followers off the bat and ALWAYS try to reply personally to them if they respond to your message.

Something that can come in handy is to keep track of who direct messages you personally, past the initial welcome message. For example, do you have people who direct message you asking you to promote their blog content? Then the next time you have some content you really want to push, you can feel good about direct messaging them for a favor.

What Can Be Automated and What Needs to Be Personal

Automation can be a dirty word when it comes to social media, because there is no bigger turn-off on Twitter than realizing an account is nothing but an automated bot. But there are some forms of automation that can be helpful to incorporate for both yourself (to save time) and for your followers.

There are two automation services I use that usually get a great response from followers. The first is TwitterFeed. This service allows you to connect your Twitter account and publish tweets whenever your favorite blog adds a new post to their site using the blog’s RSS feed.

By using the advanced settings to add on the blog’s Twitter account in the Post Prefix or Post Suffix, you will be letting them know with every tweet that you are a loyal follower of their blog and sharing their content, which may lead to connecting with the blog owner for guest posts, cross promotions, and more.

Why is TwitterFeed so great? If you choose blogs which fit your industry that your followers will like, they will appreciate your willingness to share relevant content with them and likely will retweet those items to their followers as well.

The second automation plugin works specifically with WordPress blogs – Tweet Old Posts. This plugin will tweet posts in your blog archives to your followers, this way new followers can see content that they may have missed out on.

The best part of both plugins is that they will keep your Twitter account active when you can’t be actively updating it. But it is important to remember that these cannot be the only sources of tweets for your account.

The most important updates you can do are the ones where you directly engage with the Twitter community – not only your followers, but also the influencers in your industry.

Having a higher instance of conversations where you are directly @username replying to someone is key to showing your current and potential followers that you are more than just a bot but an actual human who wants to communicate directly with others. This means that you need to not just be tweeting, but also be listening.

Listening on Twitter through Searches and Lists

One of the best Twitter management tools that I highly recommend for setting up your listening strategy on Twitter is HootSuite. This tool allows you to setup multiple tabs with 10 columns to help you monitor your mentions, direct messages, searches and Twitter lists.

Twitter Searches

Twitter searches are very powerful in the sense that you can monitor any tweets including a particular keyword. For example, if you sell auto accessories, you can setup a Twitter search in HootSuite with the keywords best muffler? to see when anyone is tweeting a question related to finding the best muffler. If you run a food blog, you can setup a search for cookie recipe? to see when anyone is asking for a cookie recipe.

In both cases, you can @username reply to the person and share a link to your website where you have information that answers their question. I have tried this with my blog using searches related to WordPress, blogging, etc. and have only received thank-yous in return.

You can also use the advanced Twitter search to get even more detailed with your searches, such as finding out who has been tweeting a specific keyword within 15 miles of a particular area code.

Twitter Lists

Twitter lists allow you to add people (up to 500) to particular lists to help you monitor those users. This is a great way to monitor thought leaders in your industry. You can create lists easily in HootSuite by adding a new column to one of your tabs, creating a new list, and adding users to it. Follow them to learn what topics are most important in your industry, retweet their posts, and respond to them when they have questions to get on their radar.

Another way to use Twitter lists is to properly segment your Twitter following. A new online service called Formulists automatically creates new Twitter lists for you based on your followers’ location, keywords in their bio, latest updates, and so on.

You can also create lists to help you expand your following that cross reference people that your followers interact with that you are not yet following. Check out the lists that you can create (currently 15 types with tons of options) to see what can benefit you the most.

Monitoring Your Business and Brand

Another great listening / online reputation management strategy that you can implement via Twitter through HootSuite is monitoring mentions of your business, brand, website, blog, or products by creating keyword searches for those names. This way, you can thank those who are praising you as well as respond quickly to those who might have customer service issues or other negative commentary.

Handling it on a public platform will also show other users (and possible potential clients) that your number one focus is their satisfaction, which will lead to stronger positive sentiment towards your brand as a whole.

Trending Topics and Hashtags

This one may not apply to every industry, but one way to spread your Twitter message beyond your own followers is to attach it to a currently popular hashtag (#keyword) or topic. The top 10 most popular hashtags are listed on the right sidebar of your Twitter homepage. You can change it to show worldwide trends or trends specific to a particular country.

If there is a trend or hashtag that you can jump on board with, your tweet will be seen by anyone following the topic. This is a great way to promote relevant blog posts and content that will drive new traffic to your website and possibly new followers to your Twitter account as well.

Twitter Chats

Finally, a great way to get involved with the Twitter community is by participating in relevant Twitter chats. There is a great schedule of regular Twitter chats that can be found in this Google spreadsheet. Joining in these chats regularly usually leads to an increase in targeted followers, as well as a great way to increase new traffic to your website, assuming you have content that directly ties in with the topic of the chat.

Your Thoughts on Twitter Marketing

I hope that this post has given you a great start on ways to take advantage of Twitter for both engaging with your community as well as for online marketing. What other tips and suggestions do you have to make the best of your Twitter marketing strategy?

About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing, including social networking strategies and blogging tips.

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