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?

auto dm is a waste of time

I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. I think it’s time to banish auto dm  on twitter or at least have a rethink. The dm feature is a great tool to connect in a private conversation with any of your followers but it becomes hard to do when your box is full of spam type message that say “thanks for following, I’ve got a gift” or something along those lines. A private message is something that should benefit a user in a way that adds immediate connection and value.

I’ve seen very few well done auto dm messages and the time it takes to remove them all or go through them to discern which ones are real is a vast chore.

One solution might include auto @reply instead, which would make a user consider the value instead of splashing out a message across the board that everyone can see. If a message doesn’t contribute it wastes time (in that instance). The other problem is how do you as a user choose the ones to reply to.

Maybe the follow process should be refined or a little more difficult. I go to great lengths to choose my followers and actually manually review most of them. I want to find users that not only have common interest but ones that create quality tweets and have a small enough community that it will allow them to interact with me on a regular basis.

share your solutions and thoughts

Curious then, what do you guys think about auto dm? Do you have any solutions and ideas to make it a more efficient and pleasurable experience? Should it be banished. I’d love to hear some thoughts and solutions, so please comment and retweet this article to create a dialogue that will provide an effective long term resolve.

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/

validation service for twitter

The Basics

True Twit is a validation service for Twitter. They will validate each user that follows you by sending an email for verification with a captcha.

What They Say

TrueTwit is working on a system that will allow TrueTwit users to check for bots and spammers without using direct messages

Pros

• good form of validation
• relatively painless for the follower – a simple captcha

Cons

• don’t have to wade through followers now, only emails

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

True Twit is a good way to screen for bots. Will keep on my follow list and fill in validations for people I follow too.

Visit True Twit to check them out: http://www.truetwit.com

discover if your follower is a fan or spam, bot or not!

The Basics

TwitBlock is a site dedicated to blocking spam and bots. Simply type the user name into the field and it will do the checking for you. You can check out an individual user or do a follower scan and decide who to follow or block.

What They Say

Blocking users will increase their spam score on TwitBlock, so don’t be too trigger happy and check they deserve it before you block. Think whether you really need to block – maybe not following them back is enough?

Pros

• very quick retrieval…nice overview
• gives you good guidance to follow or not

Cons

• painfully slow to check out one user at a time
• still leaves the decision to you

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

TwitBlock is a nice tool to help make a decision on spam. Will retweet those followers I’m just not sure about to help.

You can visit TweetBlock here: http://www.twitblock.org/

Manual Removal of Followers – this is by far my favorite and perhaps the most effective way to create a great community of followers and reduce your spam. Not only do I unfollow the users that send excessive self promotion and endless tweets manually but I also manually choose who I follow to reduce twitter spam dramatically from the onset of my relationship with a follower.

I simply go into my list of followers, once or twice a week and look through each user. The name and profile offer me a hint – if they are internet marketers with no location, no value added tweets, no URL or bio it gives me a pretty good idea.

simple siment – go into your follower list and screen all your recent followers. If you do this on a regular basis the payoff is a clean twitter stream.

Prevention is the best medicine!

Spam Cleaning Tools – there are plenty of spam cleaning tools that will help reduce though not eliminate all those spammers. If someone is a real person, they can still send you crappy tweets. Only by reading them will you be able to determine the quality.

two cents - Two tools great spam cleaners are Twerp Scan and Tweetblocker. There are many to choose from. If you have a large account it will take a while to tabulate and you will still have to manually review – nothing is perfect.

simple siments – pick a spam cleaner and run it. Go through the accounts with a low grade and mass unfollow. Only do this once you look at the account.

Report Abuse – many people don’t take the time to report abusers. Perhaps they don’t want to be a fink – which stems from school days. There is nothing wrong with making your Twitter experience a better  one – it helps your community. Twitter now has built in tools to block and report spam, which helps them determine what accounts should be banished. The downside is that users that get blocked will often set up another account and start the process again.

Without going overboard those three things along with basic common sense in looking for the warning signs of a bad follower will help you keep your spam down and remove the clutter from your community. It’s not foolproof but to reduce twitter spam takes a little bit of patience and persistence. You will thank yourself for making the effort.

Cleaning up the Twitterverse

The Basics

Tweet Blocker helps you figure out what followers are potentially spam, bots or inactive and sorts them in a grade from A+ to F. You can then check off the spammers and block them. It also shows a grade for your account.

What They Say

Tweet Blocker is a free resource for Twitter users and application developers. Using highly advanced filtering, we catalog and rank the top spammers on Twitter, allowing users to quickly and easily find spammers.

Pros

• click a button and review
• nice sharp interface with tabs for grades

Cons

• takes a while to go through your list
• not foolproof for rating people inactive users

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Tweet Blocker is a great way to reduce spam. Will retweet when managing followers.

Visit Tweet Blocker: http://tweetblocker.com/

The Basics

Group Tweet lets you post message to group using direct messages. You can set it to be private were only members of the group will see it or public where all followers of the group will see it.

What They Say

GroupTweet is a service that works behind the scenes with Twitter to allow users to form groups and communicate within those groups.

Pros

• good method to communicate with a select group
• private option
• expanded pay version for extra support

Cons

• lists could make this redundant

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Group Tweet is a safe way to tweet a select group. Will add to my list of followers.

Anti Fool Contact Management

The Basics

Twerp Scan is a follow management tool where you can review 100 followers and then follow, unfollow or block with a single action. The drill down feature lets you review each user in greater detail to decide if you want to follow or not.

What They Say

It’s never been so easy to weed out spammers, bots and, err, spambots!

Pros

• very quick and painless unfollow / follow tool
• drill down gives you a good overview of user

Cons

• would be nice to integrate with a desktop client
• need to provide login details but they are secure

What Fred the Toolman Tweets?

Twerp Scan is a great contact management tool. Will retweet this for my weekly account management.