The number one reason why business owners are not including Twitter as a part of their marketing strategy is that they simply can’t find the time.
Luckily, there are a number of tools out there to assist you with this very conundrum, and offer you the ability to be a star tweeter without having to spend hours a day sourcing and sharing content. And even better, each of these tools has a free version!
Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck has been around for a long time, and was one of the most popular Twitter iPhone apps before Twitter itself launched their own. These days its desktop app is what draws users from across the globe.
Tweetdeck allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts at once, as well as other social media channels. The customizable tool allows you to set up columns, which means you can see your feed, mentions, direct messages and search terms all within the same screen. Tweetdeck also has the ability for you to schedule tweets to be posted in the future, which is a nifty time-saver.
Bit.ly
This link shortening service is one of many, but is by far the most popular. With only 140 characters available to you in each tweet, bit.ly is a great way to not only ensure your tweets are concise, but it also monitors the number of clicks each of your links receives.
By viewing you bit.ly analytics on a regular basis, you can see which links are being clicked on and which aren’t. This gives you great insight into what type of content you should continue to share and what content is simply a waste of time.
Feedly
Sourcing content is one of the toughest gigs when it comes to social media marketing. I love to share relevant and valuable content with our social media community at MYOB, and it wouldn’t be possible without the use of an RSS reader such as Feedly.
Feedly crawls all my favourite blogs such as StartupSmart, and pulls their content into a single stream. When you follow as many blogs and news sites as I do, only visiting one place to read them all saves me oodles of time.
The other great thing about Feedly is that you can discover new websites from within the platform. Interested in articles about entrepreneurship? Type this term into the search box and Feedly will suggest some blogs for you to follow.
SocialBro
If you’re using Twitter for business purposes you really need to be using some sort of analytical tool. Social Bro has a fantastic free version, as well as a modestly priced paid version.
My favourite feature within SocialBro is its ‘Best Time to Tweet’ report. SocialBro analyses all your followers, and gives you a report that tells you when the best times for you to tweet are, based on when your followers are online and active.
So, rather than wasting your time tweeting when no one is listening, you can get the maximum reach for your tweets.
Buffer
Finally, Buffer is my number one social media tool.
When you sign up to Buffer you have the option to install the Buffer plug-in to your browser. This means that when on any webpage, all you need to do is hit the Buffer button, and you’re already on your way to tweeting about that page.
A box comes up with the title of the page and the link pre-loaded, all you need to do is annotate the tweet (should you wish to) and then you’re done!
You will have already chosen times of day that you’d like your tweets to be posted at, and Buffer lines up all your content and fills the timeslots.
Even better, you can link you Bit.ly account so all the links are already shortened and your Bit.ly analytics get imported into Buffer!
So how do all these tools work together?
I would recommend using Tweetdeck to do your day-to-day management of your social media accounts, Bit.ly to track your links and monitor what content works, Feedly to discover new content and trawl through your favourite sites, SocialBro to know what times are best for you to post, and then Buffer to do all your posting (at the times that are best for you!).
Have you used any of these tools? Are there any others that you’d add to the list?
