Fortunately, social media masterminds at companies like Seesmic, TweetDeck and HootSuite — to name a few — have developed tools to make our Tweeting lives easier. Or at least more efficient.  We use such tools here at @toprank to grow own Twitter presence as well as for clients on a daily basis and have learned quite a bit about Twitter best practices and which tools work best.

Here are five Twitter account management tools to help you keep your Twitter activity in check – whether you tweet for one account or many.

1. HootSuite.com

HootSuite is a great – and free – tool for managing multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm accounts.

The Twitter and social media management tool allows you to personalize columns, so you can view multiple feeds from the same social networking account or multiple feeds from different social networking accounts. For example, with my personalized Twitter tab (shown above), I can view my Twitter home feed, Twitter mentions, sent Tweets and a saved search for “online marketing” – all from one screen.

Plus, HootSuite allows you to create a message and choose which social accounts you want the message to be automatically posted to.

2. CoTweet

Like HootSuite, CoTweet is a free and easy tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts – up to five – with a single login. It also allows brand and keyword monitoring through Twitter search.

This Twitter management tool’s true distinguishing feature is its workflow management capabilities (shown above). When an @ reply comes in to an account, you can assign it to a person on your CoTweet task to respond to.  They’ll be notified via email and on their own CoTweet page. Plus, the tool allows you to take notes on Twitter users for your co-users to see.

3. EasyTweets

EasyTweets is a low-cost Twitter management tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts – the more you pay, the more continuous searches, feeds and accounts you can track.

With this tool, you can automatically post RSS feed content and track RSS traffic in Google Analytics. That way, you can easily track traffic from Twitter and understand what users do when they get to your site.

Another useful feature, the Twitter management tool lets you set up continuous searches for brand mentions (shown above), and auto follow some or all users who mention your brand. Plus, you can be set up to send SMS or email alerts when people mention your brand. So wherever you are, you won’t miss your chance to respond to a prospect.

4. TweetDeck

This free desktop browser helps you keep track of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace activities from multiple accounts. Like the other tools mentioned here, you can update your accounts, follow topics with saved searches, and manage conversations with @ replies and direct messages from within TweetDeck.

But the social media management tool offers some more advanced features as well. TweetDeck allows you to record, share or watch video clips, and view YouTube videos, from within the tool (shown above). Plus, you can share and view photos, as TweetDeck now supports Flickr, Twitgo and mobypicture.

5. PeopleBrowsr

This Twitter and social media management tool, currently in Beta version, offers a very simple, visual browser-based dashboard view of social activity. PeopleBrowsr uses an interface similar to email, with the Twitter or other social feed appearing as a list in the center of the screen, and additional options in the left nav (see above).

PeopleBrowsr allows you to create and manage groups by adding public or private tags to any users from any of your different social sites. Then you can view everyone in a group in a widget of their own.

Whatever time you dedicate each day for Twitter – whether its hours or minutes a day – there’s a tool available to help you better manage activities. Try out some of our suggestions, and let us know what you think.

Of course there are more Twitter management tools than what we’ve mentioned here including: Seesmic, Tweetvisor, Splitweet and others. What’s your favorite Twitter management tool?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Twitter Management Tools You Can’t Live Without | 19 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’ll venture to guess that you could immediately name five to 10, if not many more. From Ford to Dell to Zappos to Best Buy, B2C social media winners – those organizations that caught on early and created a cult following of brand cheerleaders via the social web – are hard to miss.

But how about the B2B social media winners? I’m guessing these weren’t as easy to name.

And yet, there are just as many B2B organizations successfully conquering social media. While their stories might not be as well-known, we think these 5 B2B social media winners are doing a pretty doggone good job. Tell us if you agree.

1. American Express OPEN
American Express OPEN is the company’s division dedicated to helping small business owners succeed. It has based its marketing strategy around the social web, realizing that social media has become a priority for small business owners.

Since 2007, AMEX OPEN has relied on its OPEN Forum to provide business advice and insight. The social site includes a blog with frequently updated content, and a large collection of videos that users can rate and share via other social networking channels. In the site’s “Idea Hub,” forum members can network with one another and with industry experts, as well as customize topics to their specific interests.

The social site has been extremely successful, increasing unique visitors 525% over the past year – from 160,000 in December 2008 to nearly 1 million in December 2009.

2. HSBC
To target business entrepreneurs and provide them with an active forum to share and gain knowledge, HSBC has created The HSBC Business Network for both customers and non-customers.

It’s evident that the HSBC Business Network truly thrives on its members.

The site includes a network of blogs, and invites members to create their own blog to share their personal experiences with other entrepreneurs. Currently, the network is made up of 148 blogs from members.

The site’s homepage is populated with content from users: the most popular recent blog post, forum post and user profile.

3. Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has been using social media as a vehicle to listen to, educate, support and market to their customers and potential customers since 2006. However, the past year has seen a distinct effort from Microsoft to reach customers through social web participation.

An adCenter Community site as well as blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook presence, videos, photos and social media coverage of industry events along with proactive listening and community manager participation have been instrumental for growing the adCenter community and providing customers with an opportunity to be involved with how Microsoft does business with them.

Here’s a white paper (pdf) by Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising that documents their foray into social media as a B2B company. Great insights.

4. Archer
The social media strategy for Archer Technologies, provider of risk and compliance solutions, and a 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award winner for B2B social media, revolves around two components.

First, the Archer Community is an online social network that gives customers a forum to interact, share best practices and provide feedback to help drive Archer product development. The second component is the Archer Exchange (pictured above), an online marketplace that enables clients to download applications developed by other clients or by Archer.

The two social sites have been successful at driving website traffic and attracting new members: The Archer Community receives 20 new members, 4,000 unique visits and 400+ downloads every week, while the Archer Exchange boasts 17,000 unique visits, 90,000 page views and 1,200 downloads.

But the real benefit has been enhanced product development as a result of user feedback and sharing. Archer tells Forrester that its Archer Community directly helped form its Business Continuity Management, Mobile GRC and Data Feed Manager applications.

5. Cree
LED Manufacturer Cree is embracing social media to build awareness and promote the benefits of LED technology, rather than directly sell products.

At the center of its latest campaign, “LED Revolution,” is an interactive social website. On the site, visitors can submit their bad lighting photos (think bad 1980s office fluorescent lighting) to win LED recessed downlights. The site’s blog is posted to almost daily, and humorous videos encourage visitors to, “Break Your Fluorescent Shackles!”

Cree also leverages Facebook and Twitter in a push/pull approach for the website.

Hear from Ginny Skalski, Cree social media specialist — who happens to have a background in journalism and community management rather than marketing – in this video on the Social Media B2B blog.

Of course, these five B2B social media winners are only part of a much longer list of companies that are successfully interacting with customers, building brand awareness and driving traffic to their websites through the social web. What are your favorite B2B social media success stories?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 B2B Social Media Winners | 17 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

With my guacamole, I carefully strategize on the right mix of each ingredient to achieve the perfect flavor and consistency.

Not enough lemon and lime juice, and the avocados brown too quickly.

Too much garlic salt, and the guacamole gets a pungent taste.

Twitter as a marketing tool is much the same way.

Too much product pushing and self-inflation, and your followers head for the hills in droves.

Too little interaction and communication, and your followers forget you exist altogether.

A successful Twitter marketing strategy must include a balance of different but complementary elements. Ensure the right mix with these 5 ingredients for the perfect Twitter Marketing recipe:

1. Relevant, informative content
You don’t always have to go out in search of new, interesting content to promote on Twitter. Your company likely already has produced a host of existing content that can be leveraged.

Twitter is the ideal medium for sharing and promoting:

• Tips leveraged from a blog post
• Information on upcoming events
• Research from a recent whitepaper
• Webinars with industry thought leaders
• Interesting statistics from press releases

For example, TopRank implemented a Twitter marketing strategy to help promote blog content for a client that provides syndicated content to media outlets. Each day, TopRank crafts 3-4 tweets highlighting the most interesting and intriguing elements of new blog posts, with links to the posts. In just three months, the client has increased its followers by nearly 64% to more than 1,500. The tweets were responsible for more than 1,000 visits to the blog during the same timeframe.

2. Relevant, informative content … that’s not yours
In addition to sharing your own content from blogs, whitepapers, press releases and the like, leverage content from outside sources as well.

The good news: Staying up-to-date on the latest news from across an entire industry doesn’t necessarily have to consume a lot of extra time:

• Subscribe to industry publications’ e-newsletters to receive the latest content in your inbox
• Sign up for the RSS feeds of several prominent industry blogs to get notified of fresh content
• Set up daily Google Alerts for a few relevant terms to receive the latest news articles and blog posts

It’s as simple as highlighting the most interesting part of the article or blog post – i.e., a surprising statistic, a quick tip – and offering a link to the original source.

3. Product offers and promotions
Twitter can be an effective marketing channel for sending promotional messages – when combined with other types of content.

Offer timely sales information and coupons, since the nature of Twitter allows followers to respond to promotions quickly. Provide exclusive offers to build a sense of ownership among followers, and give Twitter users an incentive to follow your brand.

Dell, for example, uses Twitter to post product coupons and new product information on a daily basis. Complementing these promotional tweets, Dell also uses Twitter to provide immediate service and elicit customer feedback. So far, the company attributes $3 million in revenue to Twitter efforts.

4. Customer service
Using Twitter to provide customer service and support empowers brands to address issues quickly, supplement formal call centers, and improve brand image. Offering customer support via Twitter involves two elements:

• Monitoring and responding: Use a service like TweetBeep to be notified by email of any brand mention – positive or negative. Then respond accordingly, but quickly and transparently.
• Eliciting feedback: Ask questions like: What features were missing from our latest software release? What subject would you like to learn more about in our next webinar? Don’t forget to acknowledge responses.

5. Retweets
Don’t underestimate the usefulness of the retweet, posting the same tweet of others that you think will be useful to your own following. Retweeting can help you:

• Increase your following
• Get your own content retweeted

Then again, don’t overestimate retweets either. If all the content you are providing can be found elsewhere, what’s the use of following?

Take some time this month to reassess how you and your company use Twitter. Is there too much of one ingredient and not enough of another? Where does Twitter use fit within your overall social media marketing strategy? Tweak the way you use Twitter until you’ve got the perfect recipe for brand engagement, interaction and awareness.

What ingredients do you include in your Twitter marketing strategy?

Be sure to connect with TopRank on Twitter!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Ingredients for a Perfect Twitter Marketing Recipe | 26 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The irony here is that there’s been speculation as to whether the growing popularity of Twitter has reduced the effectiveness and popularity of blogging. The reality is that Twitter and blogging compliment each other exceptionally well. Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter to do just that:

Polls – Ask And You Shall Receive

Active participants on Twitter that have developed a certain momentum of followers and conversations can offer their Twitter network the opportunity to interact and engage on topically relevant poll questions.  Polls are a great opportunity to ask for help and recognize participation.

Some guidelines on Twitter polls:

1. Announce that you will be asking a series of poll questions.
2. Use an intuitive #hashtag after each poll question to thread them together
3. Make sure you ask questions relevant to your Tweeting history
4. Thank particpants and let them know what you will do with the answers
5. Acknowledge participants in the blog post. If there are a nominal number of participants, cite them in the post itself. If there are many participants, you might consider creating a Twitter list just for the poll and link to the poll from the blog post.

Annotated poll results can be published alone or the answers can be incorporated as supporting points to a post on the topic being polled.

#TwitterChats – Make a Date to Tweet

The conversation aspect of Twitter is one of the most powerful. Hidden amongst what appears to be an ongoing dinner party conversation, one can find threaded discussions amongst some of the smartest people in their fields.  As mentioned above, the use of a #hashtag in tweets threads conversations together.  Interested parties agree upon a set time and topic then start the conversation.

A few examples relevant to Online Marketing Blog readers include: #blogchat on Sunday nights run by @MackCollier that discusses all things blogging (example archive).  Another example is #journchat on Monday nights run by @prsarahevens and it provides Public Relations professionals and journalists an opportunity to discuss issues and how they can work together more effectively (archive).

To source these threaded discussions into blog content, a search on the hashtag will present discussion as search results and can be copied into a post. There are also services you can use to automatically archive these kinds of scheduled Twitter chats. 140 characters keeps interaction succinct and often very tips focused.

Crowdsource – Wisdom of the Twitter Crowd

One of the major reasons people network is to interact and be helpful. When you have a good rapport with a Twitter network, blog topics and information can be crowdsourced.  Topics can be solicited as well as sources of facts, research and other information. Followers are often happy to provide suggestions or even links to facts that can be used in a blog post.  These solicitations can be public but can also be sent via direct message to specific individuals.

For example, you might post a question about which of 3 topics to post on your blog next.  You can ask this directly or frame it with the context of something currently being discussed in your industry. Asking provocative questions to see what the response is can provide great feedback as to what people are interested in and can develop discussions that will help inspire the writing of a blog post. It’s important with any kind of take that there is give as well. Recognition goes a long way as does being helpful back to other Tweeple.

Search.Twitter for ?’s – Seek and You Shall Find

Being helpful is a key piece of what makes the social web go round. Twitter provides a platform for easy questions and answers.  As a subject matter expert, you can use Twitter search to find out what people are asking in your area of expertise.

For example: “blog host” ? Then aggregate some of the best questions into a blog post, with answers of course.

Search.Twitter for Tips – Search for Twitter Smarties

On the flip side, you can use Twitter search to find useful tips being offered by other Twitter users. The best tips on relevant topics can be aggregated summarized in a blog post. With credit/attribution of course.  Also look for tweets that include links, since 140 characters is pretty limited for useful tips. For example, “iPhone apps camera OR photos“.  Pick out the best tips being offered and you have the beginning of a niche list, large list linkbait or simply a set of resources that can be cited throughout a regular post.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with following individuals that offer useful tips and ask them if it’s ok to repost on your blog.  Not only is this courteous but it develops goodwill and creates an introduction to discussion with that person.

So now you have 5 ways to source content using Twitter. Most people using Twitter have seen these tactics in practice, not as many have implemented them or found a way to do so effectively.  How have you used Twitter to source content? Have you used any of the tactics above? If so, how did they work for you?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | How to Source Content on Twitter | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The proof is in the numbers: 34% of consumers use social media to search for health information, according to research data from How America Searches: Health and Wellness.

While it’s easy to identify demand, many healthcare marketers are not exactly sure how they might tap into the social web to reach business goals. To help understand the possible applications, consider these five examples of how the social web can work for hospitals and others in the healthcare industry:

1. Tweet Live Procedures
In the past year, social media channels have helped open up an area of healthcare previously only available to a select few: the operating room.

Last February, Henry Ford Hospital became one of the first hospitals to Tweet a live procedure from an operating room. Doctors, medical students and curious non-medical personnel followed along as surgeons tweeted short updates on the kidney surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.

This healthcare marketing tactic can effectively create excitement and raise public awareness for a healthcare organization. In the case of the Henry Ford procedure, Twitter was abuzz that February day with users both re-tweeting the messages from Henry Ford and adding their own thoughts on the event. That buzz can help healthcare organizations both attract new patients and recruit medical personnel.

2. Train Medical Personnel
Some healthcare organizations are beginning to recognize the potential impact of leveraging social media channels to complement training efforts. Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager Lee Aase, for example, incorporated social media into a recent training presentation for local chapters of the American Heart Association. (Check out Lee Odden’s social media interview with Aase for Online Marketing Blog.) During the presentation, Aase leveraged Twitter to encourage participants to contribute to the discussion using the #AHAchat hashtag.

Weaving social media into healthcare training initiatives can provide multiple benefits, including:

• Giving trainees a forum to ask questions and quickly receive answers
• Providing presenters with immediate feedback from trainees (i.e., if trainees have mastered a concept of if more guidance is needed)
• Enabling organizations to complement healthcare marketing efforts by sharing slideshows, video or pictures from training sessions on social sites like YouTube or Flickr

3. Reach Mainstream Media
70% of journalists now use social networks to assist reporting, compared to 41% the year before, according to a  Middleberg Communications survey reported by PRWeek. With numbers that high, it only makes sense for healthcare marketers to leverage social media channels in order to achieve coverage by both mainstream media and industry publications.

As part of healthcare marketing efforts, organizations can use social media channels – including blogs, forums and microblogs – to share success stories from out-of-the-ordinary operations or treatments, medical research or other significant achievements. For example, when Aurora Health Care tweeted a knee operation in April, it received significant media attention, both from mainstream media and industry publications including Good Morning America, the local Milwaukee public radio network and Hospital Management Magazine.

4. Communicate in Times of Crisis
When disaster strikes – whether it be a flood, an earthquake or a terrorist attack – hospitals and healthcare providers are at the center of it all. Healthcare providers can leverage social media networks to provide real-time updates both for those directly affected by the crisis and those watching from afar.

During the November Fort Hood shooting attack, Steven Widman of Scott & White Healthcare – one of the hospitals that treated Fort Hood victims, used Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute news. Through Twitter, Widman provided updates on emergency room access and hospital operation status, re-tweeted news from Red Cross and communicated with reporters.

Widman shared with Found In Cache Blog the results of the social media crisis communication efforts:

• Twitter followers increased 78% in just three days
• Scott & White Healthcare was listed on the front page of Twitter as a “trending topic”
• The hospital’s YouTube channel was ranked the 79th most viewed non-profit channel during the entire week surrounding the crisis

5. Provide Accurate Information to Patients
73% of patients search for medical information online before or after doctors visits, according to this video from the HealthCare New Media Conference. With the magnitude of health information available on the web – both accurate and inaccurate – it’s likely that these patients can easily be misinformed.

By integrating social media into the healthcare marketing mix, organizations can share accurate, timely information regarding symptoms, diseases, medications, treatments and more. Social sites like Inspire are providing a forum for patients to share their health problems and questions about treatments with other patients, as well as qualified medical personnel. Inspire, for instance, partners with trusted health nonprofit organizations to ensure information is accurate and its community is safe.

The benefits of integrating social media into healthcare marketing efforts are priceless – from improving patient care to gaining media coverage to attracting new patients and staff. If your healthcare organization hasn’t already taken advantage of social networking channels, now is the time. If you’re having challenges getting approval, check out “Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case“.

How else can healthcare marketers leverage social media to complement their efforts?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Examples of Social Media in Healthcare Marketing | 15 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

If you’re “on Twitter”, no doubt you’ve noticed different Tweeple running polls from time to time. We ran our first poll on Twitter over 3 years ago which resulted in the post, “Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR“, offering insights from other marketing and PR professionals experienced with the Twitter web site.

Polls have been popular interactive tools on web sites as far back as Angelfire and Geocities. Polls have been popular widgets on blogs too. Polls on Twitter are effective for a variety of reasons including the real time feedback and mass, yet relevant, reach that can be achieved.

To understand how running polls on Twitter may or may not be right for you, read on for 10 benefits to running Tweet Polls:

1. Find new, smart people to follow. Connections are essential for a productive Twitter experience and that means connecting with the right people. Twitter polls should use a common hash tag (ex: #mypoll) that will tie the Questions and Answers together. In doing so, the followers of your poll participants will be exposed to the Q & A and potentially participate.  Others’ use of the common hashtag will reveal their replies and you may find new and interesting people to follow.

2. Collect great insights and tips from your followers. This is an obvious benefit for any poll. Asking the right questions can evoke some very useful tips and perspectives from your Twitter network that can be useful to you as well as the community at large.  You can get tough questions answered that many others are searching for.

3. Create an opportunity to engage with your Twitter network.  Connections are the Yin and Engagement is the Yang of social participation. They feed on each other. Polls can create an engagement opportunity that allows your network to “show their stuff” on topics of interest, teaching you more about who you’re connected to and vice versa.

4. Create an opportunity for your Twitter network to engage with each other. If you’ve successfully built a network or two or three on the social web, you know it’s not “all about you”.  Helping social network participants meet their needs is a cornerstone of effective social networking. Poll respondents and observers using the common Tweet poll hashtag will benefit from the same exposure to interesting insights and people as you will. Successful polls with this objective quickly spawn discussions on various threads related to the original poll questions.

5. Crowdsource blog, article or conference presentation content that rewards participants. Asking questions on Twitter and then using the answers in a PowerPoint or blog post is an easy way to generate content. Doing so in a way that recognizes those who contributed ideas via Twitter is even more powerful. Let you network know you’ve used their feedback and list them as contributors in the PPT deck or article. Often times, they’ll tweet or re-tweet links back to the content driving even more traffic and attention. People will work for a living, but they’ll die for recognition.

6. Identify potential candidates or consultants for hire or marketing partners based on their answers and interaction. It’s common to have casual connections with others on Twitter. I don’t follow everyone myself, but do follow about 2,000 people. I know just over a third of those people in real life. Poll responses show insight from followers that helps me get to know them better. Some of which, might be people that would be a great addition to our Social SEO Agency or whom we can hire for certain projects.

7. Build goodwill. Recognize certain Twitter contacts by dropping questions just for them to answer, then acknowledge their answers. This tactic isn’t for everyone of course and it’s effectiveness is based on real questions and real answers. Manufactured interactions are most often weak and of little value. If there is a person you’d like to hire, get hired by, or connect with in some other way, building goodwill can reduce barriers and provide an opportunity for dialog.

8. Attract new followers to yourself that notice the sudden use of a certain hashtag and the Q/A. The polls on Twitter that I’ve run have not been particularly effective for growing a quantity of followers, but the quality (as in relevance of connection) has been very good. The hash tag takes the “conversation” outside of the threaded discussion within your own Twitter network. It is essential though, that the text used in the hash tag make sense towards the topic being discussed. Ex: #blogseo or #veganrecipes or #crmsoftware

9. Attract new followers to your Twitter network through the smarts of their participation. As mentioned in benefit #4, you can help your Twitter network gain benefit from interacting with each other through participation on Twitter polls. When one of your connections answers a poll question, their response can catch the attention of other Twitter users following the hash tag. This extension can lead to more followers for the members of your network that participate.

10. Flush out survey questions on Twitter to see which questions to use, or what syntax to use in a more formal survey. If you are in the business of conducting research on a larger scale, sharing informal survey questions on Twitter can be a very useful litmus test for certain questions. Content, syntax, relevance and timeliness can all be tested so that the questions used in the formal survey are better suited for response.

Bonus: Build your own credibility. Show you’re a thinker with succinct, smart and timely questions on a topic your followers care about. If you can consistently show the ability to bring people together in a valuable way, it builds trust, shows leadership and boosts credibility with your network.

What benefits have you realized from running polls on Twitter?

Photo credit, olivepress.

Speaking of polls, please take and share this TopRankBlog Poll that studies the SEO effect of blogs.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Benefits of Running Polls on Twitter | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below.   Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll | 24 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.

Kodak is an excellent example of a company that’s put a face to the brand on Twitter. The company’s official Tweeter, chief blogger and social media manager Jennifer Cisney (@kodakcb), leaves no guesses as to who she is and what she does. Her Tweets strike a healthy balance between letting her personality shine through and offering too much irrelevant information (i.e., “Sitting on my couch watching Desperate Housewives and eating popcorn.”)

2. Show some personality. It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. Have some fun with your Tweets by telling humorous stories or poking a little fun at yourself every now and then.

Part of what makes Ford Motor Co. head of social media and Tweeterati Scott Monty (@scottmonty) so successful and popular is his ability to make followers feel like he’s an old college buddy or family friend. His bio tells his followers he’s “a generally nice guy.” But his genuine Tweets—a combination of marketing insight, Ford and auto news, and his own personal anecdotes—lets them know that’s the case. (Scott Monty video interview here)

3. Admit when you’re wrong. With the explosion of social networks over the past few years, bad decisions and unfortunate snafus are exposed sooner rather than later. So it’s important for brands to fess up first and show their willingness to rectify the situation. With that said, why not turn a negative situation into a positive one?

After you’ve admitted to a mistake, strike up some friendly competition by asking your followers to submit their own “biggest oops moment.” Choose—or better yet allow followers to vote on—the best story. Offer some sort of an incentive to the winner, whether it’s a coupon, a free product or a gift certificate.

4. Get to know your followers. Let’s face it: Your followers—and potential customers—have more on their minds than just your brand. Ask your followers questions about themselves, gain a sense of who they are and customize your responses to them based on their personal details.

In the end, not only will you be viewed as an authentic and trusted brand on Twitter, you’ll also obtain valuable information on customer demographics.

5. Don’t get carried away by your accomplishments. With trial-and-error, know-how and a little luck, you’re likely to find much success in your social media and Twitter efforts. But don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind that it’s your followers who gave you that success.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Twitterati that’s been more successful at using Twitter for customer service than Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) from Comcast. But what keeps them relevant and useful for followers over the long term is their ability to remain genuine and humble amidst widespread popularity. (Frank Eliason interview here)

While there are any number of ways to fail while trying to effectively market on Twitter, social media usage by companies has matured enough for a growing number of good examples to emerge. Being aware of what’s working for others can be priceless insight for how to develop your own genuine communications and brand experience with customers on the social web.

What are some brands that have done a good job at staying authentic and transparent on Twitter? What other Twitter tips do you have for remaining authentic and transparent?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Many companies are without confidence in how to use communication tools like blogs or Twitter and this presentation can serve as a good starting point for those tactics as well as for creating a social media strategy. There was good feedback at the event and I’ll do my best to turn it into a slidecast in the future.

I should mention for those that have a good feel for the basics of social media or SEO, TopRank has partnered with the Direct Marketing Association to offer a 2 day intensive workshop on social media strategy, tactics and SEO called “Social Media Smarts“.   We focus on building a social media roadmap for participants as well as understanding various social media marketing tools and how SEO fits into the social media marketing mix.  The next workshop is in New York, December 1 & 2 so be sure to check out the Social Media Smarts site and get signed up.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Making the Case for Social Media: A Roadmap | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

While I don’t have a million followers, or even 100,000, I’ve found out that for my purposes, quality is the key and the 13k or so followers I am lucky to be associated with are appreciated a lot more. Being strategically useful and helpful builds trust, attracts influential followers (vs bots and spammers) and results in a new channel for social networking.  Individual tweets may or may not be useful, but when you add them up over time, a bigger picture emerges.

Twitter Marketing tips are not hard to come by. Ease of use combined with the overall ease of publishing online makes available more than enough advice on using Twitter as a consumer as well as for brand monitoring, marketing, customer service, real-time search, competitive intelligence and even direct sales.

Yes, there’s plenty of advice on what you should do with Twitter, but based on increasing mis-behaviors, there are many ways to fail.  Below is a list of 10 “Don’ts” on Twitter from me, followed by 40 more provided by the smart Tweeple who responded on Twitter :

• Don’t auto reply follows with a link to your free piece of crap ebook. This sentiment is shared several times below.

• Don’t provide an obscure description of who you are and what you do

• No photo or an image that only makes sense to you and your imaginary friends

• Don’t mention a great resource with no link

• Not customizing your background

• Don’t post 10 messages in succession (also repeated below)

• Don’t follow over 1000 people in a 2 hour period

• Don’t write about the cat/hamster/potted plant over and over again

• Don’t swear often and expect business people to take you seriously (Unless you work for Outspoken Media)

• Don’t over-abbreviate.

Here are a few “Twitter FAIL” tips from Tweeple following @leeodden

• @glenngabe DON’T tell people on the public timeline that someone else is on vacation.  Saw this happen last week… Can get a house robbed!

• @glenngabe DON’T reply on the public timeline when you meant to DM (or when it should be a DM…)

• @cyandle don’t retweet EVERYTHING…

• @kholloway Don’t expect me to follow you if you have 0 updates

• @aimclear DO research content you recommend, add value to the bookmark, Success is gained by offering value, Friends made by being a friend.

• @aimclear Don’t compliment gratuitously in public

• @shelisrael  Don’t tell people not to do something on Twitter. It will just give them ideas.

• @kenburbary Obvious but annoying, DON’T auto DM spam (also mentioned by @CarrieHill @Justin_Freid @NicoleElise)

• @RonArden Twitter don’ts: don’t send spam and don’t send me ads for things. This is the quickest way to get me to unfollow someone.

• @doctordns Just don’t be stupid – some people will take whatever you write and use it against you. If not now, then when you least expect it!

• @JeremyMeyers “don’t” spend all your time on twitter talking about twitter (also mentioned by @timjahn)

• @thelostagency dont tweet broken links, and if you are retweeting check link is accurate and not spam/broken

• @rickburnes Don’t pretend that Twitter alone is a marketing plan (you only get referrals from Twitter if you have great content to refer to).

• @steveplunkett don’t ever argue.. in writing on twitter…

• @Aerocles Don’t tweet breaking news that’s more than one hour old, we’ve all heard/seen it already

• @brandonfritz@leeodden Don’t St@lk

• @KateOnline Don’t take credit for tweets that did not originate from you (also mentioned by @matthewdiehl)

• @glager Dont report on every piece of news you can get your hands on

• @kimgarretson Don’t tweet about your need for coffee in the mornings. This has moved past cliche to downright irritating.

• @Ms_Write Test links before tweeting them. Nothing worse then a dead link.

• @MBenti Before you use twitter for your business b/c it’s the “thing to do”, take time to observe and figure it out for yourself.

• @Zarniwhooper Don’t retweet something and leave off the original Twitter poster. Always give credit to those who wrote it first.

• @KaseyInCharge here’s a “don’t”: don’t talk about ways to increase followers. so annoying. people are here for conversation…

• @AmberGallihar Don’t repost the same tweet more than three times. We saw it.

• @Zarniwhooper Don’t say anything that could get you fired or prevent you from getting a job.

• @Zarniwhooper Don’t be boring. A simple rule is “Never tweet about food or the weather. And never your bathroom habits. Seriously. Never.

• @steveplunkett no foul language in same tweet as a URL. (SafeSearch Anchor text)

• @Saudiqua Don’t tweet emotional rants!

• @bobmutch ya don’t share stuff you are doing or going to do that is too personal

• @melaniemitchell don’t sell to people who don’t care about what you have to say.

• @michaelpearsun Don’t worry about your follower count. It’s about quality.

• @michaelpearsun Don’t let spammers into your feed

• @marrina Re-tweet of a re-tweet. So annoying.

• @patiomensch First, you must call it a list of “don’ts”  (ah, the spelling Fail)

• @EstrellaBella10 Don’t post multiple back-to-back updates on Twitter. Many people have complained about that.

• @myklroventine Don’t try to explain it to Letterman

• @imeldak Don’t join things that gets you thousands of ‘instant’ followers. Quality of followers is always better than quantity

• @anon Don’t post a link to a picture of yourself with a large knife, especially if you are a governor

• @anon Responses to ethics charges are probably best left for a forum where you can respond with more than 140 characters

Last, but not least: @marrinaHelp compile a list of “dont’s” for Twitter

That should get our “What not to do on Twitter list” party started. What are your Twitter dont’s?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 50 Ways to FAIL On Twitter | 53 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Here are a few resources for finding Twitter accounts for brands, companies, executives, analysts and journalists via directories and lists. Update: We’ve added the WeFollow Directory recently launched by Kevin Rose:

WeFollow – Kevin Rose from Digg started this user powered directory of Twitter users organized into categories with rankings based on the number of users. Inclusion is based purely on users submitting themselves by Tweeting an @wefollow and hashtags describing what 3 categories to associate that user with.

Twibs.com - Alphabetical Directory and search engine of 5,368 businesses on Twitter with a voting option to see which profiles are featured on the home page. Each business Twitter account has a profile showing latest Tweets and others’ Tweets about that user.

Twellow.com – Directory and search engine of Twitter users. Allows customization of profiles, categories and addition of links to other social services. Grabs publicly available messages from Twitter then analyzes and organizes them into the categories found at Twellow.com. Users can add themselves also.  Features “Twellowhood” to find local Tweeple.

Tracking Twitter - The Electric Artists Twitter Tracker is a real-time listing of the top media, entertainment, and consumer product feeds EA is following on Twitter  - Broken down into the following categories: Brands, Media, Television and Celebrities.

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples - This list published by Peter Kim shows much more than Twitter, but you can sort the list of brands using social media by type, then scroll down to the “Microblogging” section.

Media on Twitter – This is a wiki created by @PRsarahevans with the help of a few friends as a resource of contact information for journalists and bloggers around the world. 

Other useful Twitter user discovery lists and directories include:

Social Brand Index - Jonathan Kash maintiains this index of Twitter accounts sorted by: Business, Education, Entertainment, Executives & Notable Individuals, For Consumers, Government & Politics, Housing Market, Media, Non-Profit, Organizations, Service Providers, Social Properties, Technology and Travel.

Analyst Twitter Directory  - Listing of industry Analysts on Twitter by Carter Lusher of SageCircle.

Brands That Tweet – Collection of brand names Twitter accounts from Paul Dunay. Many of the accounts listed are squatters and not managed by the brands.

C-Level Tweeters – Another collection from Paul Dunay of CEOs, CTO’s and CMO’s. There are many more in the comments.

The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter –  Wendy Piersall has assembled this list of Tweeting moms plus many more additions in the comments.

Ultimate Small Business Twitter List – Anita Campbell and friends have compiled this list of  people and organizations to consider following on Twitter if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of small businesses.

Which topical or categorically specific Twitter directories, wikis or lists did we miss?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 12 Ways to Find Brands & Companies on Twitter | 30 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

There are so many Tweets and so little time. What’s a “Tweeple” to do? Twitter aggregator and trend websites use a variety of tactics to filter out what’s up and coming and of interest to the Twittersphere in contrast to the mass of mundane Tweets.  Twitter stream aggregators are useful for a variety of reasons ranging from discovery of news to competitive research. (Follow me on Twitter here @leeodden):

As a Twitter user, you can discover what kinds of Tweets are most often passed along (a “retweet” or “RT”) and use that insight for your own Twitter use. The same learning opportunity exists for companies using Twitter.

As a Twitter marketer, you can monitor up and coming stories as well as the Twitter users posting them to identify new connections. Retweet someone else’s stories and they may return the favor. Better yet, you may have topics in common and develop business connections.

As a blogger or journalist using Twitter, aggregator sites are priceless for finding news items early in their upward trend towards becoming buzz. With limited time and people resources, Twitter is an essential news sourcing tool for journalists, reporters, analysts and bloggers.

Building your network on Twitter can be facilitated by finding, posting or retweeting remarkable news. This will stimulate retweets from existing followers providing second level follower exposre and attract even more followers of your own.

There are many more reasons for using Twitter post aggregators but let’s get to the tools. Here are 12 of those services with our favorite 5 to start.

Twitt(url)y - If you like the Digg interface and you like Twitter, then this is the tool for you. Rather than users’ votes, Twitturly counts links posted on Twitter to content in order to include and then rank the content.  The more votes an item gets, the higher it displays on the list. Only the top 100 items are shown at a time.  Twitturly also tracks the number of Tweets with links that a particular Twitter user has posted. This is a nifty feature that can help you see what a particular Twitter user likes and how ofter their Tweets with links get Retweeted by others.  Twitturly also gives you the full Tweet History of a URL including how many and who Tweeted it, plus the total estimated reach, regardless of how many URL shortening services were used to point to it.   By Joel Strellner

Retweetist - On this site you’ll see a variety of data aggregated all in one place.  There’s a list of the freshest, most often Retweeted items, the most Retweeted items in the past 24 hours and the most Retweeted Twitter users. You can also see the Retweet history of an individual Twitter user which shows their daily Retweet frequency and the most recent items they’ve linked to. Here’s mine.  By Mike Sheetal

Tweetmeme - Unique features with this service include segmenting the kind of content being linked to: Blogs, Images, Video and Audio.  There are mini keyword tag clouds for each Tweet.  Other features include: A river of news page with an RSS feed, individual RSS feeds for each category (e.g. images, videos) and historic pages so you can go back to any particular date at 5 minute intervals to see what tweetmeme looked like in the past.  By Nick Halstead

TweetLists - This service simply shows the most popular links over the last 24 hours found on the public timeline at Twitter.com. There are tabs for most popular Tweets of the day and week. There are also lists of the top Twitterati and domains being Tweeted.  A search feature makes it easy to locate specifics.   By Scott Rutherford

Twitter Search – Probably the most popular way to filter Twitter noise is to use the search tool. Trending topics are displayed and an array of search operators/options allow you to be pretty specific about what you’re looking for.  

As an example, let’s say I wanted to find: “people in Chicago that asked a question in English about social media in the past 24 hours”. No problem, here you go.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed of the search results as well.  There are amazing possibilites for connecting with the right people using Twitter search.

Additional Twitter aggregator and filtering services include:

• Twistori  - A sort of emotional Tweet aggregator: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Wish. By Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs

• Twist - This service shows aggregated data about what people are saying in Twitter and includes a chart of topical trends in Twitter (similar to Google Trends) that you can also use to view Tweets during different time periods. Mont  You can also do topic comparisons and drill down to see lists of what was hot today or the current week. By Diego Basch

• retweetradar - A tag cloud of Tweeted topics is what stands out with this service, showing current tags, today and yesterday for time intervals. Clicking on the tagged keywords initiates a search on Twitter itself.  The “What’s Happening Right Now” section updates in real time.  The top Retweeted links and Twitter users are also displayed along with a trend archive. By Minnesota’s own Ben Hedrington

• Twitturls - Shows popular articles, pictures and videos linked to via Twitter in the past 2 hours, today and also filters out any Tweets that don’t use Twitter vernacular. By Justin Palmer

• Twitlinks - Aggregates the latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users in a news story format. 

• Retailer Twitter Aggregator - As the name implies, this is a retailer Twitter aggregator showing an ”at a glance” view of  how brick and mortar retailers are using Twitter to connect with their customers including sales information advice. By Tom Sullivan

There are quite a few more, but none that do anything dramatically different than the services listed above.  However, there may be some I’ve missed. Are there any unique Twitter aggregation tools that should be added? We’d love to hear about them.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 12 Twitter Stream Aggregators To Make You Smarter | 39 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Update! We have a winner. Cli.gs received 26% (88) votes with budurl.com coming in a close second. Congratulations!

URL shortening services were initially popular because web addresses started to get long and links would break when sent in an email.   However, as microblogging services like Twitter have become popular, an increasing number of services and applications, including tracking & metrics, have been added to the basic URL shortening features.

Recently I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter about favorite URL shortening services and received a great response. Thank you to all who responded! So many people replied that the following mini-review was created of 11 different URL shortening services showing which offer customization options, statistics, 301 redirect and some of the other unique services like export to CSV, bulk shortening and displaying ads to monetize the traffic to links that are shortened. Enjoy!

Service	Customizable URL	Tracking	301 Redirect	Unique Features
tinyurl.com	Yes	No	Yes	Toolbar button
cli.gs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Stats are private, real time and very detailed, geotarget URLs based on country of visitor, bookmarklet.
zi.ma	Yes	Yes	Yes	Bulk URL shortening, registration not required for stats, download stats to CSV, bookmarklet, “popular” links page
bit.ly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Saves copy of page linked to, tracks “conversations”, Twitter search fo uses of shortened URL, bookmarklet, import to Google spreadsheets
twurl.nl (aka tweetburner)	No	Yes	No	Most popular items linked in last hour, bookmarklet, built in to Twhirl
is.gd	No	No	Yes	Really bleeping short URLs, bookmarklet, Firefox plugin, built in to Twhirl
snipurl.com (aka Snurl Snipr Sn.im)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Popular snips, snip search, RSS feed for snips, export to Excel, claim snips before you registered, edit snips
poprl.com	No	Yes	No	Most POPular links, top domains, public stats, search, must register with Twitter account – boo
ad.vu (aka adjix)	No*	Yes	No	Optional ads that share revenue, scheduled Tweeting, *use your own domain name as the link URLs, bookmarklet, option to use ad.vu
tr.im	Yes	Yes	Yes	Uses Twitter or identi.ca info for login, bookmarklet
budurl.com	Yes	Yes*	No**	Detailed, real time stats (*if you upgrade) this is the only service with fees but there is a free version, **uses 307 redirect

I give an honorable mention to Minnesota based culld.us from Garrick Van Buren as well. Culld appears to work well with basic shortening features and is in cahoots with the Cullect feed aggregator.

There are others that were suggested like bloat.me and URL.ie but I wanted to keep this review to 11.  If you really need a URL shortening, truncating or redirecting service fix, then check out this bigger list at Mashable: 90+ URL Shortening Services.

There’s also a great study of URL shortening services in terms of use and popularity on the cli.gs blog.

I do have a feature request for these services though. A URL shortening service that also posts to Delicious and/or StumbleUpon would be nice. A URL worth shortening is also often worth bookmarking and it would be a nice time saver to do both. Just a thought.

Now that you have an idea of the different types of URL shortening or redirecting services, perhaps you’ve tried a few and have a favorite?   This leads us to our Reader Poll:

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media Marketing Tools: 11 Best URL Shorteners | 68 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. In this session, industry experts Vanina Delobelle, Global Product Director for Monster, Erik Qualman from Search Engine Watch and Global VP of EF Education, along with Brnet Csutoras, Online Marketing Consultant offered some tips to successfully integrate social media into your search marketing mix.

Vanina kicked off the session this morning discussing what social media is and how, when used correctly, it can benefit your business.

So, what is social media?
- Social networks like MySpace, Facebook and Xing
- Forums such as Phorum and phpBB
- Microblogging with twitter or pounce
- Multimedia sharing sites like YouTube, Flicker and Slideshare
- Diggs with Wikio and digg
- Blogs and live casts
- Virtual Universes like Second Life

Social media is a user centric approach to online marketing and each of these sites are built with the user and community in mind.

Use social media to:
- Connect with people
- Maintain brand positioning
- Generate more traffic
- Enlarge the targeted segment
- Increase the user experience

And also…leverage current marketing results to get better brand awareness, get better brand management, get better user stickiness, get better quality products, and get more sales.

Requirement for social media include:
- Global means local. Because we deal with communities we need to be close to them
- Resources. Community managers need to get more focus
- Consistency. The effort should start and last
- Content. Content should get more focus

Because social content is updated more often and users link to the content, social media sites rank within the search engine results page, providing businesses another opportunity to increase visibility online.

Erik addressed the users specifically within the social media communities and lessons learned to launch a successful social media campaign.

Lessons learned:
1. Don’t treat social media like every other channel you use. Community members don’t want to be added to your database, they want to have a conversation.

2. Figure out what users want and what you offer, don’t provide irrelevant information, or applications if your customers don’t want it. Identify what it is that only your company can provider the user base.

Erik addressed some of the common questions businesses have regarding social media:

Where should I start?
Look at where your audience is, where you think you have the most chance for success and test one social site to see what works.

When should I start?
Today! Get out there, interact and figure out what people like and don’t like. Don’t push marketing right away, provide value to the community through conversation.

Can search engines crawl social media / networks?
Yes – absolutely! Social sites have a lot of inbound links and rank highly in the search engine results page

Does Facebook PPC work?
Test it out for your business, but don’t treat it like direct response ad. It’s better to build a community on Facebook first, send them to your Facebook page and include a link to your site.

What’s the easiest way for my company to use Twitter?
Start up an account, be transparent, and start to figure out what people are talking about. Start following people that are talking in a relevant context and respond to posts as you become integrated.

What else is new and exciting?
Search. The future of social media will include a search function, allowing you to search for ratings and reviews from your network base.

Brent Csutoras talked to the panel about how to use search in conjunction with your search marketing campaigns.

One of the most viable aspects of social media is to increase visibility, rankings and links by pushing content and services through your communities.

The biggest benefit social media adds to your marketing campaigns is organic links. Social media is a natural method to spread your content to others and gain natural links.

There are two main types of links coming from social media:
- Community links from the social media / networking sites
- Inbound links from other sites that ‘pick-up’ or share your content within in their networks

Social media tips
- Have a site that is social media friendly
- Pick communities you relate to
- Check what worked before
- Create high quality, link worthy content
- Understand how to submit and push social campaigns
- Understand what to do with success
- Be social!

How are you incorporating social media into your search marketing campaigns?

For more photos from SES San Jose, be sure to visit TopRank on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SES San Jose: Social Media Marketing | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I’ll be presenting along with David Snyder and Chris Winfield a hotly anticipated session called “Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?”. With the fast growth and uptime growing pains, debates about Twitter are plentiful so let’s settle it once and for all with a Twitter poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’ll be sharing the results at SES Tornoto, so be sure to pass along this post and see if we can break our poll response record.

Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter here: @leeodden

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Twitter Poll: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool? | 28 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

TweetWheel – You may have a 100 or even 1000 followers. Which of your followers know each other? Tweet Wheel helps you find out visually. Note, if you have a LOT of followers, this will take a while.

The account I searched on has around 1,400 followers and it looks like Tweet Wheel limits the display to 100 or so. There’s only so much room on the screen.

Who Should i Follow? – Whether you’re new on Twitter or an early adopter, there are likely people you should be following, but aren’t. Which begs the question, “Who should I follow?”. That’s where the tool, whoshouldifollow.com comes in. It looks at who’s following you that you’re not following back and has sliders for filtering by popularity and physical location.

One thing you could do here is find out really popular Twitterers that your competition is NOT following and follow them. This may provide an opportunity to connect with their sphere of influence while they’re not looking.

Twerpscan – Now that you’ve beefed up your list of people to follow, who shouldn’t be following you? If there are opportunistic marketers following everyone under the sun in the hopes those good souls will just automatically follow them back, this tool might help identify those whom you may want to block.

The thing about this tool is that you have to login, so you may want to change your password to something temporary before running the tool and then change it back when you’re done. Twerpscan checks the number of followers of everyone on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between them offering each follower’s name, bio, last tweet, a reputation thumbs up or down, followers, following and a link to block the follower if the ratio is over the threshold you set.

Summize – While other tools for searching Twitter have been around a while, they’re often not stable or consistent. Summize is FAST and shows trending topics plus different language searches.

There are also some nifty search operators like the one that helps you look for Tweets where people say “cool” but only Tweets that include links. Of course, there is an RSS feed for any search results page as well.

Twitt(url)y – Where do we find out about many of these tools and news before the rest of the Twittersphere? Friendfeed is first but after that, Twitt(url)y does a nice job of providing a Techmeme style representation of up and coming URLs that are mentioned in individual Tweets.

You can filter out Tweets by language and what’s neat is that the links are kept accurate whether Tweets use a URL shortening service or not by actually visiting each link. Twitt(url)y is a useful site as an early warning on news and trends.

That’s our five tools and here’s a bonus time waster if you haven’t seen it already.

Feeling like a Tweeping Tom? Then check out Twistori:

It’s probably good you can’t see the identity of who is writing because, well, that’s sort of obvious.

The challenge and opportunity with social tools like Twitter is that it can be very easy to fall into wasting a lot of time. But if you can find the right mix of 3rd party tools, Twitter can be a very productive and social tool.

Find some of the top Twitterati at Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop page for Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Five New Twitter Tools You Should Know | 72 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com