There are many Twitter clients available, some robust and some with a single or limited purpose.

Learning what to look for in a twitter client can help reduce the number of hours and tools required for your social media experience saving you valuable time, energy and money.

This is very subjective, everybody has different tastes, opinions and requirements.

1. Does it support your O/S?
2. Is it high capacity? If you can’t access it quickly, what is the point.
3. Desktop, web based or mobile
4. Is it clean and simple to setup and use? Are the streams easy to follow?
5. Can you manage multiple accounts? Is it easy to jump between them?
6. Can you manage and view your followers? Block, Report spam.
7. Is there a spell check feature?
8. Can you shorten your url’s?
9. Can you customize it to create groups, lists, favorites, search, keywords and other parameters?
10. Can you schedule & manage all your tweets? Sent, DM’s (in and out), @ replies, Scheduled, etc.
11. Are the conversations easy to respond and follow? Threaded?
12. Is there search, keyword, hashtag and other application integration like audio or picture sharing?

That’s a lowdown list of what to look for in a twitter client. If you ask these questions you will eliminate all the clients that don’t meet your needs and hone in on the one that is right for you.

Let me know what you look for and share with me anything I might have missed.

1. it makes it easier to write (and practice brevity)
2. therefore it is easier to read (short and sweet)
3. it’s interactive (two way street)
4. makes self promotion obvious (too much means you will lose an audience)
5. you can choose your community
6. you can choose what information you want to reveal and when
7. the news is in real time
8. the reaction and feedback is in real time
9. is easily accesible
10. incredibly cheap – the only cost is your time

What do you think makes Twitter a great promotion tool?

1. Use it to create a brand image for your name or company
2. Find people with similar interests
3. Find local users
4. Discover great causes in your location
5. Give yourself exposure to people that you might not otherwise have found
6. Look up the experts and get some information
7. Use a directory for research and analysis

There ya go. There are dozens of directories for twitter – twitter list directories, twitter hubs, twitter by location and so on down the line. There really are endless reasons to use a twitter directory. What’s your reason?

The Basics

Refollow is one of the few fully functional follow management tools.  Lets you filter, unfollow and follow your twitter user effectively.

What They Say

Twitter relationship manager that was developed by Originate Labs. Most of that won’t mean much until you dive in and play with it, so give it a spin

Pros

• easy management of followers and non followers with great filters
• quick access to twitter api
• very up to date and detailed user info

Cons

• doesn’t find new “ideal” followers

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Refollow is one of the best twitter tools and one of a handful of effective follow management tools. Will retweet this one permanently.

Visit Refollow to manage your profile: http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html

The Basics

Twitter Karma helps you sort and filter your followers. Login and WHACK your profile and retrieve your follower list. After you’ve filtered you can do a mass follow or unfollow on the users you have marked.

What They Say

Twitter desperately needs page navigation on followers / following list. Also sort functionality by type (reciprocated or not) is a must.

Pros

• does an effective job filtering and sorting
• quick unfollow or bulk unfollow

Cons

• would be nice to integrate into a client or twitter
• profile views limited
• perhaps batches of 25 to make review easier

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Twitter Karma is an effective follow management tool. Will add to list of followers.

Visit Twitter Karma to manage your profile:  http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

add the twittley plugin to your website

The Basics

the twittley button is a simple way to have your users retweet your posts for all their users to see without even leaving your site.  The post will also appear on the twittley site with updated stats.

What They Say

Harness the power of social networks and viral marketing with the Twittley button. Millions of users use Twitter as a social network so it only makes sense to get your link out to those users.

Pros

• simple set up with code, integrated with some bookmark plugins too
• variety of colors to choose from

Cons

• need more variety in style and size of button

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

twittley button is an essential tool to add to any website. Am already following this one.

Visit twittley to find great communities: http://twittley.com/

discover and share with Twitter friends

The Basics

twittley is a perfect way to find info, share it and promote your article or ones you find on the web. A social site that helps you find great content and offers several ways to promote it online. Weighted index by “karma” with search, rss, commenting, url shortening and community type features.

What They Say

The more you participate on Twittley & Twitter – the more Karma points you earn. The “weight” of your vote is calculated using this system.

Pros

• no account setup with great community tools
• excellent search and quantity of content

Cons

• are there any?

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

twittley is an essential search, discover and share community. The toolman will follow this community.

Visit twittley to find great communities: http://twittley.com/

the official retweet plugin for WordPress

The Basics

retweet plugin for wordpress is a quick and simple plugin that adds a retweet button, large or small to the top or bottom of posts and pages. This allows visitors to automatically retweet posts to Twitter with a formated message that you create.

What They Say

The button has a brain of its own and will automatically grab the URL of the page it is placed on without you having to change a thing.

Pros

• very quick to install and set up
• does exactly what it says it does

Cons

• could use a few more skins

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

retweet plugin is a must for every blogger’s site. Will add a retweet button to my sites and try to retweet others.

Visit retweet plugin to see for yourself: http://www.retweet.com/plugin

keep your tweets short

If you leave people room to retweet they are more likely to do it. Things have to be easier for everyone. Think about it! You need to at least leave enough space for the characters in your user name plus 3 for the RT and space between. But…what if they want to comment too. Give them a chance to say something in return. Try it. I think you will find an increase in your retweets.

say things worth retweeting

If you just tweet fluff, nobody is going to retweet it. It reflects them too. So, take the time to think about what you tweet, blog, link to and share on the web as a standard rule of thumb. Adding a relevant #hashtag may help too. If you are retweeting something with a link, make sure it is from a reliable source.

Thinking about what you say will go a long way. While tweeting catchy titles and being clever might help, general quality content is also key. If you don’t know how create great sentences, check out the quality tweeters in your community and start to emulate the type of messages they get out. Practice will make it a habit.

retweet your community

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But if you don’t take the time visiting your community, checking out their websites, viewing tweets and sharing them with others they are less likely to pay attention to you. Gratitude goes a long way and relationships is what it is all about. A few simple tweets every day will help you build a reputation as a member that participates and shares.

simple siment – retweet 3 people every day this week.

Those three things will definitely increase your retweets. If you want to get retweeted more just practice them on a regular basis.

Are you tired of mass following Twitter users? Wouldn’t you rather build your Twitter Community into something that you can add value to. Here’s 5 great tips to build your Twitter Community:

1. Learn the lingo and etiquette. If you don’t know how to talk to people and don’t understand Twittering it is clear. People are patient but expect people to learn how to communicate within the realm of the community. Taking the time will show that you care and are interested in becoming a quality contributor.
2. Ask and answer questions. This creates a type of dialogue that is second to none. It gets people moving, acting, offering help, providing links. It also creates conversations that might never have been started and finds new people interested in the same topic, probably something you have in common, or at least a common interest.
3. Follow authentic people. Don’t be afraid to unfollow people on Twitter either. Quality is always the most important thing. It is a large and growing community, so there are always new people to find. Wouldn’t you rather have more people that are truly into your topic, it is after all micro-blogging. While cross functional followers is helpful, make sure they aren’t spammers or bots.
4. Change things up. Not only by time frame but also by the types of tweets. Different people will tweet at different times. You will have a greater reach if you schedule or tweet at a variety of times. It is also important to not just tweet links, but content, comments and retweet too.
5. Share Great Content! That doesn’t mean yours. Find content from your users and retweet it. Go to the best blogs and choose the best articles. When you find something that is synchronistic in your RSS reader share it. Look at the content your Twitter users are creating and retweet it. It will go a long way in building relationships and finding relevant and informative articles and tools.

That’s it. A short post but go out and do those things consistently and you will have a strong community of followers that you can rely on.