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What are some useful Twitter tools I should consider for my website?
I am in the process of trying to figure out how to best leverage Twitter to increase traffic to my site. I'm looking for an application to help me find followers and search for keywords. I want to be very careful to find a legitimate application that won't destroy the credibility of my site by bombarding my audience with unnecessary tweets, which may result in the banning of my account. I have a b2b content site and we take pride in doing our absolute best to provide our users with quality content.Thank you
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2 Answers
Bryan, You ask about "Tools... for my Website" and then go on to say you are looking for ways to add followers and promote your B2B content site without spamming.
I see those as 2 different questions and the 3rd Q probably ought to be ‘what is a good “Dashboard” to use' to monitor your accounts.
1) ON Website 'tools' -
1A) On your Blog(s), articles, RSS feeds set them up with both a “FollowMe” and a "tweet this" snippet to make it easy for twitter users drawn to the site to tweet about your content. A full scale Share bar is even better.
1B) Consider embedding a twitter feed on your site. You may want to set up another or 'alternative' twitter account for different 'interests.' For Example: As I work in multiple businesses and Non-Profits (with other experts), I tweet selectively through separate twitter accounts for Branding @PropelYourBrand & @PropelBranding, for Sales: @PropellingSales & @SalesmenTrainer, for Promotional Marketing: @UMarketingUS, Non-Profit - @NonProfitSteve, etc.
1C) When you have developed a large or even a “reasonable” base of followers, I suggest that you add/embed a “TwitterCounter” to show off the size of your Following/Flock. You can see how that looks on a home page www.7ksm.com. Full disclosure it’s an organization I refer business to and work with from time-to-time; 7K Social Media.
- I believe those to be some of the most useful right now. There are others, its ever-changing.
2) For Tools to effectively add targeted/appropriate followers there are several out there. NOTE: Twitter Terms of service officially forbid the use of automation tools,
2A) The list building function within Twitter is pretty good. For List building I used to use TweepML, as they had an approved relationship with Twitter, but the interconnect was cut cut-off in November by a Twitter change and Agora/TweepML has yet to resurrect their service in a manner that meets Twitter's revised functionality and requirements. Many who were active on that are substituting Tweepie and now Tweepie has added functionality. I may add that too, and may not even bother to do my now 1x a month check-in on TweepML’s status.
2B) On the outside the box approach, using Tweetadder is currently one of those I see in many Social Media toolkits. It provides many ways to search twitter profiles and build lists to follow and request follow-backs on. You can create multiple standard Direct Messages, Replies, Thank You, etc... It has highly variable settings to appear as ‘human’ as possible.
SPAM / Not SPAM - Many people insert a shortened URL (e.g. tinyUrl) in their thanks and direct messages (that is built into Tweetadder and some other programs with an API link). Some call that “SPAM” others do not. Handled discretely with good reasoning it can be an effective tool. Typical messages I get from following people that I consider effective and not “SPAMMY”
“Thanks for following me, I tweet on “(CONTENT DESCRIPTION)” and you can also find my blog/LinkedIn Profile/FB Page at [URL]”. Lots of ways to cut down that to 140, don’t forget the # hashtag.
3) As to the Dashboard: I like the look of some and not others and that's a personal preference issue. Look at Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, SocialOmmph, and consider the "Rockmelt" browser. Those are some of the most widely used.
The above should give you a great start and if/when you are ready, I have more in depth thoughts and recommendations, and with the speed of new application introductions it an 'ever-changing' story.
Hi Bryan - I'm learning new ways to use Twitter all the time - and I've been using it since 2007! Some of the tools I'm going to mention are third party tools, but they are great Twitter accessories.
1. HootSuite or TweetDeck - these are tools that will help you automate and aggregate not just Twitter, but your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts as well - maybe others too. I use the free version and so I'm only integrating my Twitter Feeds and a Facebook Fan Page feed. But they are so powerful because of their "grouping" functions.
You can create tabs in just about any configuration that you like. For example, I have several Twitter accounts and so I organized my tabs in a way that I can see all the sent tweets for each account and all the mentions, etc. Of course you can call the tabs anything you like! You can also search with these tools and create a tab for various searches. I look at searches like listening at conversations. So I have searches for topic areas I'm interested in or topic areas of my clients so I can stay current on their markets as well.
You can also schedule tweets and updates to go out into the future - this is very powerful because your audience isn't online when you are and they are global - so it's not a bad idea to schedule tweets out into the future - just don't make them the same- Twitter will slam you for that.
2. LISTS - this is a feature I just love - it's almost like the tabs on HootSuite - except that you can actually make them public and follow other people's lists - I love that. Read more here - http://www.diymarketers.com/2010/11/10/how-to-create-a-list-on-twitter/
3. Hashtags (#) are like a brand and a search term - create a hashtag for a topic you want to be known for and use it with your tweets. Search on hashtags that you're interested in and follow that conversation.
There are many more - But I'll leave those to other experts
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