To make the most of Twitter, I highly recommend checking out some of the amazing applicatons that have been designed to make life easier.  I have a feeling that you’ll be rather amazed by what Twitter can do for your business, without bogging down your time.  Time is always working against us (or so it seems), and I love using anything and everything that will simplify my daily tasks and make my life easier.  In the first post of my Twitter series, we’re going to be looking at applications that allow you to send and reply to tweets, @replies and direct messages without having to visit your Twitter profile.

1.  Tweeting Applications

Twitter Application

My personal favorite happens to be TweetDeck and here’s why:

• send your tweets directly from TweetDeck
• view all of your friends new tweets in real time
• create your own personal TweetDeck dashboard by utilizing columns
• create groups of friends to make following conversations easier
• update your Facebook profile directly through TweetDeck (optional!!)
• view your @replies and direct messages and easily reply to them
• …. AND MORE!

On a side note.. though I can follow my friends Facebook status updates, there doesn’t appear to be  a way to reply to them which kinda sucks in my opinion.  I can retweet their update, but that’s about it ..

I have to tell you that I can’t live without my TweetDeck :)  I think the only thing that TweetDeck doesn’t do (apart from housework of course), is allow you to add multiple Twitter accounts.  I still have mixed feelings about having more than one Twitter account, however my other business is so far removed from the Wahm World that I deemed it necessary as I would hate to offend any Twitter friends with all the music content I tweet about ;)  To solve that problem though, and to incorporate a few more tools that I use, I discovered the next application on my list which is:

Multi-App Tool

Digsby

This is one impressive little application .. not only can I tweet and reply to tweets and direct messages on multiple Twitter accounts, Digsby also allows me track my Facebook acount, Linked In, MySpace and my Instant Messengers.  I can follow everything in my social networking arsenal right from the inobtrusive icons in my taskbar:

Digsby Task Bar

The features of this little sucker are amazing:

• Instant Messaging – AOL, YIM, MSN, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber & Facebook Chat
• Email Notifications – GMail, MSN, Hotmail, AOL/AIM, POP & IMAP
• Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter & Linked In

I will say that for my main Twitter account, I still use TweetDeck, but I keep an eye on my other two Twitter accounts with Digsby as I only post to them a few times a week or less.  Though I’m still learning how to use all the functionality available in Digsby – regardless though, Digsby is definitely high on my recommendations list ;)

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop for Twitter

This is one desktop tool that’s just caught my eye, and I will be testing it out (as it has multiple Twitter account functionality built right in).  Even without that feature though, Seesmic Desktop looks pretty cool – though it does look quite similar to TweetDeck with the column structure, and it has many of the same features such as grouping your friends and posting pictures directly to TwitPic.

The following video takes you through some of Seesmic’s latest features and you can get a feel for what it’s like.

It appears, through the Seesmic Feedback page, that they are taking user feedback into consideration and integrating many of the suggestions made into the software.  Seesmic is built on the foundation of another Twitter client, Twirl, which was the first application to take advantage of the Adobe Air platform.  More on Twirl next :)

Twirl

Twirl is actually the very first desktop Twitter client that I tried, and I used it for quite a while .. until I discovered TweetDeck actually.  Judging by the description on the Twirl website, it appears they’ve added more functionality to it since I last used it.

Twirl based on Adobe Air

• connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts
• displays notifications for new messages
• shorten long URLs (using digg.com, bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd)
• cross-post your updates to Jaiku and many other sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more via Ping.fm
• post images to TwitPic
• search tweets using Twitter Search and TweetScan, and follow topics in near-real time with saved searches
• automatically find tweets mentioning your @username
• record a video on Seesmic, and share it on twitter immediately
• get your seesmic updates in real-time using XMPP
• English spell checking

The final Twitter application that I’m going to mention in this post is:

HootSuite

HootSuite is an online Twitter solution that caught my eye for a few reasons:

Scheduled Tweets

1. Track multiple Twitter accounts
2. Schedule Tweets
3. Add multiple editors on each Twitter account – without giving the editors access to your main Twitter account!

The scheduling of tweets is interesting .. and can be a time saver if there are specific tweets that you want to send out at specific times (ie:  contest announcements, sales etc).  But it was the multiple editors feature that really caught my attention.  On my other two Twitter accounts, I work with a partner.  The HootSuite site allowed me to set my partner up as an editor with her own login information – she can now login to HootSuite and post to my Twitter accounts without having access to my main Twitter password.  From there, she can also schedule tweets, or post directly to the two accounts that we use.  Very cool!

OH .. and I forgot to mention that HootSuite also gives you the option of posting to multiple Twitter accounts all at once – so if you have multiple twitter accounts, you can choose which accounts to send your tweet too .. definitely a nice feature to have ;)

There are a ton of other Twitter clients available now too … from Firefox plugins to iPhone apps, and more desktop and online solutions.  Following is a short list of some of the others that I’ve come across:

• TweetVisor – http://tweetvisor.com/
• TinyTwitter – http://www.tinytwitter.com/
• PixelPipe – http://pixelpipe.com
• TweetGrid – http://tweetgrid.com/
• Titterific – http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific/
• Nambu – http://www.nambu.com
• Tweetie – http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/

For more reviews on Twitter Clients, be sure to check out Twi5.com!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Head-to-Head: TweetDeck vs Seesmic Desktop (mashable.com)
• Seesmic Desktop: A Threat to TweetDeck? (mashable.com)
• 5 Reasons Digsby’s A Must-Have IM Client (makeuseof.com)

6 Responses to “Twitter For Business – Tools To Tweet By”