Here’s a quick list of 5 that have enhanced my own use of Twitter this year and why:

1. TweetDeck

TweetDeck has become my primary Desktop Twitter client over the last 6 months of the year and has quite literally changed the way that I Tweet on a number of levels.

One of the biggest impacts that it has had is in the way that it builds ‘groups’ into my twitter workflow. This has helped me immensely to manage the noise that is associated with following and being followed by thousands of people.

Groups enable you to select any number of Twitter users to follow in a special window. This means that if you miss their twees in the ‘all tweets’ timeline you are likely to see their tweets in the group you’ve set up.

Also powerful in TweetDeck is the ‘Search’ feature which enables you to track keywords and who is using them right from within your Twitter Client.

I’m also a big user of TwitScoop so having the ability to have it included in a window within the client is handy too.

I guess as I think about it – the reason I like TweetDeck is that it enables me to use a variety of tools that could be accessed by a variety of services – all within the one client. I’m not constantly having to run to a search tool, logging into TwitScoop, checking individuals twitter pages – it’s all happening on my desktop in the one application.

I also love that it can be run quite effectively in a single column view or opened up to a more comprehensive one across the full screen.

The fact that TweetDeck is still only at version 0.20b excites me – there’s obviously a lot more to come!

TweetDeck is my Twitter application of the year!

2. Twitterlator Pro

Another massive change in my use of Twitter mid year was when I started using the iPhone as my primary mobile phone. I’d been looking forward to this for a long time (Australia only got the iPhone with the new 3G version.

Being able to Tweet from the road, local cafe, while waiting for the Train, at the football…. etc was quite a new experience and so I needed an iPhone Twitter client that was up for the job.

I tested them all – starting with the free applications and then progressing to the paid ones. I settled on Twitterlator Pro (itunes url) for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the biggest reason was the ‘replies’ page. Again – my biggest challenge with Twitter is that I am following a lot of people – so to follow the timeline for everyone that I follow is just not practical. When on my iPhone I tend to live more in the ‘replies’ section and Twitterlator Pro has one of the best of these.

I also love that you can manage multiple Twitter accounts from the one application, that you can see Twitpic pictures within messages, that it has a ‘nearby’ feature to find out who is twittering close by – etc. Many of these features can be found within other iPhone Twitter clients but for me Twitterlator Pro simply ‘fits’ with my Twitter workflow.

Note – there is a notable up and coming iPhone Twitter client that could just take the place of Twitterlator Pro.

In the last month or so Tweetsville (itunes url) was launched and while I’m hooked on Twitterlator Pro Tweetsville (website) has been getting more and more of my iPhone Twittering attention because – well, its got most of the features that I use on Twitterlator Pro but just seems more intuitive.

It’s in its early versions so still has room to improve but I suspect will become my #1 iPhone application in 2009 – the only reason I didn’t name it in my main list is because I’ve been using Twitterlator Pro for six months and so it’s really been more useful to me this year than the one month I’ve had with Tweetsville.

3. TwitterBar

I almost overlooked this application when planning this list – simply because it’s become such a part of my Twitter workflow that it has almost become invisible.

TwitterBar is a Firefox Add-on that allows me to share links on twitter from the address bar of Firefox.

As I’m surfing – if I find a site that I like and want to share all I do is simply add a few words that I want to include with the link to the address bar (before or after the URL) and then click a tiny little grey button to the right of the address bar. Doing this posts the URL and my message to Twitter.

If I’m not sure if I have enough characters left I hover the cursor over this little grey button and it tells me how many I have left.

There are other tools for sharing URLS on Twitter and I’ve tested many of them – but this little add-on is quick, easy, quick and unobtrusive…. and I use it 10-20 times a day!

4. TwitterFeed

I know some on Twitter don’t like tools that automatically post links from blogs – but…. well I’m a blogger and my Twittering centers around blogging. Add to that that most of my followers are online when I’m asleep because I live in Australian and I needed a tool that would do what TwitterFeed does.

In short – TwitterFeed checks the RSS feeds to my blogs every hour (you can change this frequency) and if something new has appeared in the feed it takes the link and tweets it for me. It allows me to customize the tweets so I can add a little message (“New from TwiTip:” for example) so followers know what the link is.

There are options for what is shown (you can show the title, title and description and description only) and you can even filter your tweets by keywords (so that only some links get posted).

TwitterFeed offers you a range of URL shortening services – I use Tweetburner (twurl) which allows me to go to Tweetburner and check what links are being clicked on most (handy to know as a blogger interested in tracking what posts are connecting with readers most).

Again – there are other tools out there including some good WordPress plugins that do it from your blog – but I use TwitterFeed because…. well it works (99% of the time).

5. TwitScoop

This is another tool that I’m constantly looking at (more than I realize). As mentioned above – I use it largely because it is built into TweetDeck but do use the actual site too.

There are a number of things that I use it for including:

1. It’s my newspaper in the morning – one of the first things I do in the morning is to check TwitScoop to see what is ‘hot’. I’m amazed how much news I find through it over my morning coffee.

2. As a blogger is is a fantastic tool for watching for hot trends and topics that are being discussion right now. A number of times I’ve been able to break stories simply by watching what is ‘buzzing now’.

3. Conferences – it’s also quite useful when you’re at a conference, listening to a speaker or tracking a live event to see what people are saying about it.

Other tools that I’ve been using:

There must be hundreds of Twitter Applications and Tools available now so the above 5 just scratch the surface. I’d love to hear your own Top 5 list in comments below.

Before you do – here’s a few others that I use from time to time.

• TweetBurner – as mentioned above, I use this to shorten urls and track what gets clicked on (TwitClicks is another of these).
• Twhirl – I used this a lot at the start of the year and still do on occassion – but TweetDeck has taken it over.
• Tweetlater – I only use it occassionally but it is useful if you need to set a Tweet to go off later.
• MrTweet – everyone’s been raving about this new service lately – it recommends people for you to follow based upon your network.
• TweetBeep – free twitter alerts for keywords
• TweetScan – another alerts tool
• TweetStats – interesting stats on your twitter useage

OK – so it’s over to you – what are your Top 5 Twitter Applications and Tools for 2008?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Twitter Applications and Tools that Made Me a Better Twitter User in 2008

We have all been there. After I registered with Twitter in 2007, I sat down looking at the screen, didn’t know what to do next.

“What the heck am I going to do with 140 characters?”

I didn’t understand why people want to know when or why I just took a can of Coke. (After all, the question on the Twitter page is “What are you doing?”)

I still don’t claim to know everything about Twitter until today, even though I learn hard to understand it. Well, perhaps that is the awesomeness of Twitter. Right now, if you go to TechCrunch, starting from their home page and browsing through the archives, almost in every page you will see a mention of Twitter or one of the myriad number of Twitter-related services / tools.

It seems like every day there are new ways to use Twitter. Some of those tools stay, but a few of them are no longer with us.

There really is something in the 140 characters.

Out of those fun things to do with Twitter, one thing that I personally think most useful is using Twitter as a research tool.

Even if you just heard of Twitter right now, you can start using the data if you know where and how to get them.

This article is written to help. Because there are so many things you could do with Twitter, I will only give a few examples of using various tools for research, and leave the rest for you as an exercise of imagination.

Twitter for Historical Research?

With millions of Twitterers who mostly are making their tweets public, we are actually building a database of information. Remember that once tweet, those tweets will be archived, probably in multiple places. FriendFeed is an example that immediately comes to my mind.

That could only mean one thing. Twitterers are writing history in real time. As more data become available, and as more people tweet in the future, anyone will be able to fetch historical data from any point of time about any topic.

For instance, forever the 2008 US President election is going to be recorded in Twitter. In the future people would be able to dig into the Twitter accounts of both Barack Obama and John McCain to see the schedules, summaries, opinions, etc. about the campaigns and debates.

A big difference between Twitter and a personal diary is that people are able to interact or witness the interaction live or anytime in the future. Another great thing is, everyone is now able to participate as part of the history and be read by interested people.

If that doesn’t impress you a bit, I don’t know what will…

Know How to Use Twitter

Fortunately, using Twitter is just easy. There is not much convention to remember. Basically you can just type in and send, just like instant messaging or short message service.

The difference is, to get the most out of Twitter, you need to know the following syntax:

• @username – Reply. Tweets that start with an @ and then a username is a reply to that user. If you follow someone and want to reply to her, using reply is the way to go. Of course, this presumes that you don’t mind the message is available publicly.
• #tag – Hashtag. Hash that is immediately followed by a tag (hashtag) in Twitter is a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. The contexts could be events, disasters, memes, or others.

As more Twitterers use the right syntax, they will add to the repository of data, which in turn return more useful results for future searchers. Right now, a lot of people forget to use hashtags for a particular event, and that increases the likelihood that their tweets will not be seen by others — or various Twitter tools that use hashtags.

Two Main Ways to Perform Research with Twitter

Twitterrers with a lot of followers certainly have an edge here. It happens everywhere. If you have a group of people who are willing to hear what you have to say, or if you have friends who you can call anytime, you can just do that and ask them for opinions or anything.

This leads us to the first way to perform research with Twitter, which is to…

1. Ask. If you follow Darren, you will occasionally find him asking questions. Not only does that encourage participation from his followers, but he also gets the information he needs to write the next blog post, or just as an insight to understand his audience better. What you could ask the followers is limited only by your imagination. Questions that can be answered quickly are winners. With the right engagement, results will pour in soon after you tweet. Directing the followers to a series of questions, such as a survey, on the Web may work but I haven’t tested this yet. To get more responses from your questions, you might be interested to learn how to ask effective questions on Twitter.
2. Search. By using publicly accessible data, you can also learn a lot. For instance, if I search for tweets from Darren and his followers, I’d be able to find out answers from his questions and use those for writing ideas or for other things.

With so many useful Twitter tools, searching is more complex than you might imagine. Using Twitter Search is useful to find event-related tweets, but if you want to get information about the trends, #hashtags is more useful though.

Knowing what is possible and which tools to use at the right time are two critical keys to save time and retrieve wanted results.

Essential Twitter Tools You Should Know About

This list is by no means complete. As of this writing, there are hundreds of Twitter tools out there but here are a few of them that I frequent. With these tools under your belt, you should be able to get started in using Twitter’s data effectively and expand your toolbox as you see fit.

• Twitter client. Your mileage may vary but I find it easier to use Twitter client such as Twhirl to post updates. Not only that but you will be able to perform search inside Twhirl because of its integration with Twitter Search and TweetScan.
• General search. Both Twitter Search and TweetScan provide reliable search for Twitter’s data, but the former allows you to drill down your search queries using the Advanced search feature.
• Tag search. Twitter Search is also able to search for tags, but #hashtags returns a graphical representation of the trend for a specific tag. The downside is currently #hashtags is a bit slow and incomplete.
• Conversation search. If you want to search for previous conversations, again Twitter Search is able to provide you with the information. If there is a conversation related to a tweet, you will see a link to Show Conversation.
• Location search. TwitterLocal is a useful tool if you want to perform a search for tweets within or around a specific geographical area.
• Keyword search. Monitter lets you monitor 3 keywords live at the same time with the ability to nail down geographic area. Use this to get a hint about current trends (how popular one keyword is).
• Topical research. If you know someone who is an established expert in an industry or niche, use TweetStats to see which keywords he uses most often. TweetStats represents the data in TweetCloud, which is much like tag cloud but for Twitter.
• Popular URL search. Twitt(url)y sorts URLs by how frequently they were mentioned in tweets. Think of a mention as a vote in Digg. The more people talk about a URL, the higher the rankings in Twitt(url)y will be. This tool is useful if you want to spot popular topics using aggregated Twitter’s data.
• Data aggregation. This is not specific to Twitter, but a lot of people syndicate their Twitter feeds to FriendFeed. With it, feeds from Twitter and other social media sites are aggregated in one central location for followers to consume. FriendFeed also has powerful filtering and search feature.
• Search result monitoring. Again, this is not directly related to Twitter, but often times conversations shift back and forth between blogs and Twitters. If you monitor the the Web and news, using Google Alerts or the blogosphere with Technorati, among others, you would be able to track the whole conversations.

Many of the tools above also publish feed related to the search queries. The only effective way to keep up with all of them, in my opinion, is through an RSS reader. While you can still receive Google Alerts via email, I find it more convenient to use an RSS reader because of the amount of information I track on a daily basis.

Use whichever you like most because there is no right or wrong way to do this.

Successful Twitter Stories

Of course, the following stories or case studies are related to using Twitter for research, basically anything from getting information to understanding a bit better about your target market.

1. @bbgeeks builds 500+ loyal followers in 8 months (as of this writing there are 1,114 followers). Those followers are people who are interested in Blackberry. Not only they able to get free brand exposure and traffic, but also tons of content ideas and direct feedback from informal polls. How do you like your audience to tell you what to write instead of you struggling to come up with ideas to write next? Click here to read more about bbkgeeks case study.
2. Just last week, offended moms took revenge over Motrin ads through Twitter by uniting and voicing their displeasure with the ad. The key is in the term “uniting” which in Twittersphere (Twitosphere?) can be as simple as using a uniform hashtag (#motrinmoms). Motrin’s web site was crashed by the rush of traffic. People were using Twitter Search to monitor conversations in real-time. Miss the entire story? The same tool tool also allows you keep up with the conversations. To be fair, after J&J apologized, Twitterers also twittered about it.
3. David Murray (@DaveMurr) reached out to his followers and publicly announced that he was looking for work. He did a research in Twitter Search and keep track of conversations with RSS feed. He landed a job that had not even been posted. (Read full story.)
4. If there is one company that aggressively — in a good way — uses Twitter, it is Zappos.com. Zappos jumped on the Twitter bandwagon early to engage with their prospects and customers. They currently have more than 20,000 followers. Zappos encourage their followers to participate by holding a contest, in which they asked their followers to help them rewrite confirmation email. CEO Tony believes connecting more deeply with customers is important, although Twitter takes up a lot of his time.
5. Businesses of different sizes are using Twitter for different purposes. Tapping into the minds of their customers through Twitter is a great way to research the market. But, what if you are a solopreneur who works from home? How could you use Twitter for research, with no followers? Just use those various tools mentioned above such as Twitter Search to find out what people are talking about in your niche. If you are a blogger, you could use it to get constant flow of ideas for blog posts or your next product.

I think you now agree Twitter is a powerful business tool that changes how people reach and respond to the market. Best of all is how average people are able to use the publicly available tweets to better understand their target audience.

If you have used Twitter in one way or another for research, or if you have thought about how it should be used, please share with us here!

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about social media on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog – Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to the blogging e-course!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter for Research: Why and How to Do It, Including Case Studies

Image by me and the sysop

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, you might notice that some of the most successful folks on Twitter make a concerted effort to help out their friends / followers. And they seem to ask for nothing in return!

Many folks believe, including me, that this practice of selfless giving is central to all success, personal and professional.

The problem is that no matter how helpful you want to be, no one’s invented a way to get 25 hours out of a day.

Until Now

Using a combination of Twitter tools, you can practice enlightened self-interest without the need for prescription drugs.

Following are examples of how to save time with Twitter tools to find out 1) what your friends need, 2) collecting that information, and 3) giving them that information.

Note: Don’t try this with ALL of your friends, just a few – or you really will go mental!

What Does My Friend Need?

Most of us have a general idea of what our friends need, but may have missed the few tweets about problems with a client project or thesis.

TweetStats can be used to find out details about your friend (in a non-spying way, of course . After you’ve entered your friend’s twitter ID, Study the TweetCloud:

Mousing over the tweetcloud shows 49 mentions of “coffee” in Darren Rowse’s twitterings. Is this useful information? You decide.

How Can I Find It?

Once you know what your friend needs, use a combination of the following automated search methods:

• Test Keywords With Monitter.com – This snazzy tool let’s you compare the frequency of three different keywords. In Melbourne, Australia, “coffee” occurs more often than “cappuccino” or “tea”:

You can then subscribe to updates on your search using the RSS feed.

• TweetBeep works much like Google alerts, but you can combine keyword searches with location criteria. It also allows you to be alerted whenever a particular web-site it tweeted, even if the URL is shortened!

• Don’t Forget Google! Google alerts will pick up anything outside of Twitter. Set the alert to “as it happens” so that you can quickly send any valuable content to your friend.

How Can I Get It To Them?

Beyond TweetDeck, iTweet, Twhirl and Twitter.com, here are two pain-free ways to get information to your friends:

TwitThat: This is a firefox add-on that lets you quickly post the URL of a website you’re reading. The cool thing is that you can create a “reply list” of your friends in a drop down menu:

Clicking “twit” automatically posts the webpage in twitter as “@Problogger – found this:” Saves much more time than copying and pasting URLs and headlines. Also, having your friends listed in this drop-down keeps them foremost in your mind.

TwitterFeed is a utility that automatically posts updates of any RSS feed. Like TwitThat, you can also create a “reply to” prefix of tweets. In our example, we could post updates from the Starbucks blog and post them with “@Problogger – Coffee News:” at the beginning of the tweet.

This is perfect for those situations where someone is working on an urgent project and would love to receive helpful information from you, even while you’re sleeping!

If used thoughtfully (in a non-stalking way ), these techniques can help you be useful on Twitter without going mentally insane.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How To Be Useful On Twitter Without Going Crazy

• Twitter desktop clients (I’m a fan of Twhirl and TweetDeck)
• Twitter Applications for iPhone (I’m a user of Twittelator Pro)
• Twitter user ranking services (like Twitterholic)
• Visualization tools (like TweetWheel)
• Tools to import RSS feeds to your Twitter account (I use Twitterfeed)
• Tools for setting tweets to go off later (Tweetlater)
• Metrics tool (TweetStats – Twinfluence)
• Tools for sharing pictures on Twitter (Twitpic)
• Services to tweet to groups (GroupTweet)
• Twitter Directories (Twellow)
• Tools for finding new people to follow (Twubble)
• Tools for helping you to track Twitter Conversations (Tweet2Tweet)
• Trend Tracking tools for what’s hot on Twitter (Twitscoop)
• Tools to help Twitter integrate with other applications (TwitterCal – which lets you add items to your Google calandar by Twitter)
• Services for groups to tag and organize tweets (HashTags)
• Twitter updaters (Ping.fm – which allows you to update status on multiple sites like Twitter)
• Twitter backup services (TweetTake)
• Services to let you track which links people are clicking on in your Tweets (TweetBurner)

These are just some of the tools services I’ve used in the last few weeks and they only scratch the surface at the hundreds of Twitter tools that are released.

What Twitter Tools and Services do you use? Leave the ones you love in comments below.

I’m looking forward to finding out which ones get mentioned most and finding some new ones that I’d not previously discovered.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



What Twitter Tools and Services Do You Use?