Twitter Tools That Will Change Your Life

My headline might be a little over-dramatic, but it got your attention, didn’t it?

Twitter is such a powerful social media tool.  At some point, though, it can become overwhelming because of the sheer volume of information you have to look at each time you log into your account.  Here are a few tools that can help you streamline your Twitter account, build traffic, and enable account management collaboration with other team members.

1.  Hootsuite
Hootsuite has been a total game changer for me.  It has helped me manage multiple social media accounts in one location (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook), and I don’t want to remember what my life was like before pre-scheduled tweets.

Hootsuite is a web-based application.  You can use the free version, but there is also a paid version that is especially useful if you have more than one person on your team who will be managing your social media accounts.  The following features make Hootsuite ideal:

• Scheduling function: Schedule your tweets in advance.  You can use this to post event announcements, links to key sections of your website, quotations, etc.
• Team management: Hootsuite will tell you who sent/scheduled a tweet, and it will also tell you when a team member has responded to a tweet.
• View multiple streams at once: Instead of having to click around to view mentions and direct messages, all of these streams are available in one screen.

Hootsuite also offers statistics reports and a whole host of other features – I’ve only listed my top three favorites.  Mashable has a very useful guide for getting the most out of your Hootsuite account.

2. We Follow
Want to find other Twitter users with similar interests as you? How can you tag your own Twitter account to enable folks to find you? We Follow is a free tool that allows you to use hashtags to label your Twitter account based on relevant keywords. For example, #personalfinance, #feminist, #freelancewriter, etc. After you tag your own account, you can find out who else is tweeting about the same topics.

3. Follow Friday Helper
Follow Friday (#ff) is another way to find related Twitter accounts. On Fridays, tweeps will put out a list of people they like to follow. You can see who other tweeps you respect are following, and then follow their lead. You can also generate your own list of #ff suggestions. Follow Friday Helper is a free tool to help you decide who to include in your #ff list. It will identify tweeps who have retweeted your links or mentioned you throughout the week. Why list someone on #ff if they’re not helping you toot your horn?

4. Tweepi
And speaking of reciprocity, want to slim down the list of people you follow, or reciprocate when people follow you? Don’t have time to wade through your list of tweeps? Tweepi is amazing timesaver – and it’s free. Tweepi will help you flush out dead weight, as well as tell you when you need to reciprocate a follow. I generally use Tweepi once a month to streamline my Twitter accounts, but the frequency issue is entirely up to you.

These Twitter tools may or may not change your life (those types of changes are best left to the philosophers, or a particularly moving episode of The Real Housewives). However, they will certainly change your social media game. If you’ve got additional Twitter tools that you like to use, I’d love to hear your suggestions.