socialbro insights

15 Twitter Tools to Boost Your Online Presence and Productivity

UPDATED: More suggestions at 21 Amazing Twitter Tools for Brand Visibility and Time Management.

Twitter is a valuable source of news updates. Without proper management, it can be a real time suck! There’s only so much time in a day, you need to make each tweet, each following count for something. Why not utilize some free Twitter tools to lighten your load so you can focus more on building relationship with your tweeps?

 

Twitter News Aggregators:

These apps summarize the most relevant and popular updates from your Twitter stream with very simple setup procedures. Best of all, you can subscribe to your friends’ to find out what is hot in their Twitter network too.

#1  The Tweeted Times

Tweeted Times creates real-time personalized newspaper from your Twitter stream and arranges them by popularity based on total mentions from your Twitter friends and theirs. You can then subscribe to the newspaper via RSS reader or promote it to your network.

 the tweeted times

Special Tip:

Customize your newspaper digests from public Twitter lists or search results. A great way to filter your stream if you are following a wide range of Twitter users.

 

#2  Summify

I was going to skip Summify because it had stopped receiving new registrations after acquired by Twitter. However, I can’t deny the fact that it helped tremendously in gathering social news feeds from various social networks: Twitter, Facebook and Google+, presenting them in one-page summary so one can catch up on daily news updates via web or mobile. Normally it takes 1-2 hours to collect the stories.

 summify

Special Tip:

Summify is visually appealing comparing to Tweeted Times and both give me slightly different results in their daily news updates. I love how I can easily share individual story without having to leave Summify.

 

#3  Paper.li

Paper.li offers more configurations when collecting trending news: optional to add photos, videos and to order the news by priority via drag and drop. You can add anything you read from the web to your paper and share it with your Twitter network. Being a publisher is all about providing content, which makes it all the more important to follow the right people in gaining valuable resources that interest you.

 paper.li

 

Declutter Your Twitter Stream:

#4  Slipstream

Slipstream works perfectly in Twitter web to eliminate irrelevant tweets without having to block or unfollow anyone. You can hide tweets containing a specific keyword, tag, either from a user or everyone in your Timeline, @replies or twitter lists.

 slipstream

Special Tip:

A huge time-saver if you don’t wish to get caught up by a trendy topic or hashtags you’re not interested in. My only problem with Slipstream is that it only supports limited browsers at the mean time: Chrome and Safari. We need more browser choices.

 

#5  StrawberryJam

StrawberryJam pulls in popular links shared by your friends and gives a clear overview of what’s trending in your Twitter network. You get to see the results ranging from last 8, 16 and 24 hours. Did I mention you can even see real time results too? Turn on the Preview and you can read the post excerpts, giving you some idea what is the story about.

 strawberryjam

Special Tip:

Enter specific keyword, tag or twitter list to find out most shared links in the mentioned category. Great app if you’re looking for popular links to share.

 

Twitter Following/Followers Management:

#6  ManageFlitter

It has been awhile since I cleaned up my Twitter account. Thanks to ManageFlitter, I was able to clear a few inactive accounts while discovering contacts I should communicate more. It allows Google+ integration so your public posts can be imported to your Twitter stream after configured.

 manageflitter

 

#7  FollowFriday Helper

I was able to jump on the FollowFriday bandwagon easily thanks to FollowFriday Helper which displays a filtered list of those we interacted most recently. You can choose to write personalized or multi-user recommendation tweets from within the app.

followfriday helper

Special Tip:

Various hashtag suggestions are given other than #FF. Add multi-user recommendations by clicking at their Twitter username; navigating from one page to another won’t affect your pending recommendations in the text box. Thoughtful.

 followfriday helper recommendation

 

I was meant to add Formulists and Conversationalist in this category but unfortunately their sites are shutting down soon. Still yet to find a Twitter app that supports smart lists updating. .

 

Twitter Account Management:

#8  Tweetbackup

Tweetbackup allows you to run daily backup of your twitter posts which you can then export to be downloaded. Tweetbackup is the subsidiary of Backupify, a well known backup app for social media accounts.

 tweetbackup

Special Tip:

Although it says to backup people you followed but neither can I locate the backup file nor the setting for that purpose.

 

Brand Monitoring on Twitter:

#9  Topsy

Tracking your brand mentions on Twitter can be done easily with Topsy. Get real time search results over the social web from the past 1 hour to 30 days, sort them by date or relevance. Use advanced search to filter your results if need to.

 topsy

Special Tip:

Topsy adds Google+ in their real time results too. A good method to track who shared or mentioned your brand on Google Plus.

 

#10  Twubs

Twubs makes hashtags useful as it enables tracking for certain conversations, information, shared movements and memes. With Twubs, you’re able to view latest tweets of your preferred topics.

 twubs

Special Tip:

There is no official claiming of hashtags so anyone can edit the hashtag descriptions. This could be a risk if someone deliberately sabotages a brand by altering their hashtag content. Therefore, commitment is required to monitor twitter chats and events closely.

 

Smart Scheduling of Tweets:

Tweet-scheduling can be a hassle. Often times I wonder do those scheduled tweets earned a spot in followers’ streams or simply dropped off their radar? Here are the solutions to the problem:

#11  Timely

Update: Not Available Anymore

Timely analyzes your past tweets and schedules them at suggested time slots for your optimum exposures. The timing will adjust itself after you added more tweets. Later, find out how your tweets performed in stats (number of clicks, reach and reactions). You can also skip or limit weekend posting as well.

timely

Special Tip:

You can reply to those who mentioned you within the Timely app. Add a bookmarklet to your browser for quick and effective scheduling. No edit can be done on suggested time slots except deleting them.

timely replies

 

#12  Buffer

Buffer is often compared to Timely but if you want to have control over your scheduling time then Buffer is your go-to app. Set your time slots and add up to 10 tweets for one Twitter account (Free version). Personally, I love how Buffer is integrated with other awesome apps like StrawberryJam and SocialBro. As a bookmarklet or browser add-on, you can add content easily to buffer!

buffer

Special Tip:

Buffer button is also available for websites to encourage readers to buffer your content. Adjust your time slots not only in hours but on different days by ‘Change days’ option. Ability to post less on certain days is available for paid accounts.

Recommended Read: 6 Points To Ponder Before Using Automatic Status Updates

 

Innovative Use of Twitter Stream:

#13  TweetWally

TweetWally is great for both personal and brand promoting purposes. I’m a Facebook addict so thanks for TweetWally’s embedding feature, I can gather all my Facebook-related tweets and share it with my blog readers. You can claim a vanity URL for your account and customize its appearance to fit your brand.

tweetwally

Special Tip:

No edit can be done on displayed tweets. Require constant monitoring so no irrelevant tweets are included.

 

Twitter Analytics:

#14  Twitsprout

After hearing so many good things about Twitsprout I decided to give it a go. It takes about 7 days to collect data for a new account but it’s worth the wait. Twitsprout transforms your historical data into a beautiful infographic, showcasing the stats for your new followers hourly, number of people retweeting you and number of mentions received.

twitsprout

Special Tip:

TwitSprout works best in Chrome; upgraded Firefox and Safari browsers (both version 4 and up).

 

#15  SocialBro

SocialBro is a Twitter community management tool but I must highlight its real-time analytical feature: you can find out who are the most active users in your stream in the last 5 minutes (twitter timeline, public Twitter lists or any search terms). Although free version only provides monitoring up to 100 active users every 10 seconds but that’s good enough for me.

socialbro

SocialBro’s very own Insights is equally impressive where you get to track languages, timezones etc for your followers/following. You can export then save your data in PDF.

socialbro insights

Special Tip:

Always synchronize your account to get the most updated results. SocialBro can do a lot more than analytics alone, including managing following/followers, discovering best time to tweet (integrated with Buffer) and so much more.

 

Don’t just take my words for it, try them out. Not all Twitter apps are suitable for everyone. Find out what is your biggest Twitter challenge and incorporate some of these tools to boost your online presence and productivity. You’ll be surprised how well these apps could work!

 

Now Is Your Turn

Are you currently using any of these Twitter tools? Do you have more apps to add to this list? Feel free to share in your comment.

45 Comments

  1. Hi Ching Ya,

    Great roundup of twitter apps.

    I used Summify but they stopped since now are in Twitter.
    I use often ManageFlitter to clean up my followers and doesfollow to control individually.
    Need to try some of other mentioned apps 🙂

    Cheers,

    Gera

    1. Hi Gera, so great to see you here! Thanks so much for the feedback. So true, I remembered the time when I had to scroll though the following list and their timelines just to identify the inactive twitter accounts, that’s a TON of work! Now it’s much easier with ManageFlitter. A huge time-saver! Let me know how other apps are helping you if tried. Thanks again!

  2. I am surprised TweetDeck didn’t make it one here, even though they have been acquired by twitter, this is by far one of the most useful tools in monitoring and engaging a twitter audience.

    1. That’s why I love comments. 🙂 Thanks so much Nick for bringing up Tweetdeck. Actually I had purposely left out Twitter clients in this post so to focus more on the Twitter web apps instead. I may do a follow-up post regarding Twitter clients for a similar topic soon so be sure to see Tweetdeck up in the list.

      Thanks so much for dropping by, I really appreciate your feedback.

  3. I have tried installing StrawberryJ.am but it is a beta version and I am still waiting for an invitation code email… hope I will receive it soon because it will be indeed a useful tool to manage my account

    1. Hope you’ll receive the invitation code soon, Amanda. Let me know how StrawberryJam works for you then. Thank you so much for visiting.

    1. Thanks so much for the feedback, Hesham. From what I know, Hootsuite has improved tremendously. May I know which feature(s) you like best from Hootsuite and how it helped you in expanding your network? 🙂

  4. Hi Ching,
    Thanks for providing these huge lists of Twitter APP. I will check some of them now.

    I would like to include JustRetweet.com on your next list because am using it to get more eye balls on my blog.

    Thanks

  5. Hey Ching Ya!

    This is such a great list! I learned so much, I honestly didn’t know about any of these tools before reading this post. I really liked Topsy and Managefilter. I’m can never figure out how to get rid of unused accounts, and now I can.
    What I loved most about a lot of these sites is that it gives people and companies such great and easy ways of getting involved in their social media communities and reaching out to their audience. Timely and Buffer can come in so handy for this!

    1. I’m so glad the post helps, Torunn. So true, life on Twitter is much more productive when using the right tools, I love both Timely & Buffer too! Huge thanks for commenting.

    1. Great to hear this, Jo, be sure to share your thoughts after tested out other apps. 🙂 Thanks so much for commenting.

  6. Hi Ching Ya. Great write up of 15 Twitter Tools to Boost Online Presence and Productivity. I have been meaning to start using Twitter to increase the online presence of my blog and your list of Twitter tools will be a great help to me. Thank you 🙂

    Ellie

    1. That’s wonderful, Ellie. I hope some of the tools can be of great help when you started Twitter then. Be sure to give me a shoutout when you’re on twitter! 🙂

  7. Hi Ching Ya.
    Thank you for your great twitter tools in one post.
    I had been searching for a Twitter analytics the whole day and found your post via technorati, lucky me. Will try some of your suggestion and hope it will suits me.
    Thanks.

  8. Hi Ching! I found some nice tools here on your list. It’s a shame that Twitter purchased Summify and it’s going away soon.
    I agree with Valentine and another great tool is JustRetweet! I love using all these free Twitter tools.

    1. Thanks so much Ileane, it’s always a pleasure to see you here. Yes, I’m sad too that Summify is going away, so many free apps come and go. Hopefully the good ones are staying longer on the web. Finger crossed.

  9. I’ve used quite a few of these tools in the past and have my favourites, thanks to your list I’ve also discovered some I haven’t tried, so I’m going to give them a spin over the next couple of days 😉

    1. Good to hear, Karen. I’m looking forward to hear your thoughts about the apps. Have a great week ahead, my friend.

  10. Socialoomph.com is a great FREE service to schedule your tweets ahead of time so you can post when you otherwise might be away sleeping, eating, or working on other things! Definitely worth a look!

    1. Sadly SocialOomph’s free service has been cut back a lot – no longer useful IMHO. And their pro version is $17 every two weeks – not worth it. They need a mid level pkg that is more affordable for average users.

    2. Thanks so much for bringing up socialoomph! I remembered testing out this app last year (or the year before), it was truly a handy app. Appreciate the comment, Greg!

    1. Thanks so much Adeline, oh that’s right! I should add Twylah to the list. 🙂 So many apps but so little time. I’ll be sure to keep it under my radar. Appreciate the suggestion. 🙂

  11. I have just started using socialreport.com – I think the struggle is not learning how to use it, but learning how to best use it for your business… Great list thanks for sharing!

  12. Thanks for sharing Ching. Lots of these tools coming out almost every minute. I just discovered SocialBro and I’m really liking it. I use EasyRetweet.com, Justretweet.com and retweet.it and sincerely, you really get results using them

  13. This is a lovely list of twitter apps Ching. I personally use ManageFlitter to unfollow. I will definitely use some of the apps you are mentioned above.

    Thanks friend for sharing this,
    Abhijit

  14. Hi Ching Ya,
    Great list of Twitter tools. Being online, we have so many different things pulling our attention. Learning different tools really helps us with productivity and being able to do more things in less time.
    Keep up the great work!
    All the best,
    Eren

  15. I was going to try Manage Flitter, but it sounds like it is a little limited for the free version. Someone else told me to try Tweepi which has been fairly decent even the free version. You can follow, unfollow, tells you who is not following, follow friends followers, and a bit more.

    I’ll have to look into some of the others you listed. It is tough keeping up with all these tools these days.

  16. Wow I was blown away by this list. There’s so much to learn about Twitter I was overwhelmed. I think I did not see in your list tweetchat dot com, I just read about it on another blog, didn’t look into it yet, but it looks like it might belong to your list.

  17. Ching Ya –
    Great list! I would like to suggest 2 more:

    1) Pluggio (http://plugg.io) for a web-based Twitter management tool. The Dripfeed and Friend Finder features in particular are amazing!

    2) Foller.me (http://foller.me) – this tool analyzes any Twitter profile and creates a word cloud of what they talk about – it really helps you identify the kinds of things your target market are posting, to help you search for and connect with them

  18. Thank you for this list! I have been away from twitter for over a year and returned to it to find that so much has changed. Some of the tools you’ve listed will help me get back into things!

  19. Ching Ya great list, do you know of any services that will offer reports based of keyword or @names we are using when doing our tweeting? I’m looking for another way to provide some of my higher paying customers with stats and it’s really hard.

    1. LOL, like I told Ileane: ‘I love to feature some of my social media buddies here/there in the screenshots’ — that’s part of the fun! tehe.. I’m so glad you noticed.

      Regarding the analytical report for keywords and mentions, Brian, great suggestion. I’ll let you know if I came across any.

  20. Manage Flitter I’ve found quite useful. Easy to use; Free online tool, with the option of paid membership. And offers great data – Easy to see who is inactive and who hasn’t followed you back etc. so you can target your tweets to a better and more specific market of targeted users.

    1. I agree with you, Anton. 🙂 Thanks so much for visiting and taking time to comment, I really appreciate that.

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