Twitter Tools
Some of you may have noticed that I have a few new tools going on. Some of the tools are right here on my site, while the rest are on my twitter feed! Heck, two of them are “hidden” tools that you never see me interact with! Today, I’m going to talk a bit about my cool new tools.
The first tool is Buffer. You may have noticed the button up top, next to the tweet button. Buffer is a, well, buffer of your tweets. You put tweets in the buffer, and it posts them to either Facebook or Twitter at a set time.
During the set-up, you choose what times you want it to tweet, and as long as you have posts in your buffer, it’ll shoot ‘em out at the right time. There are tons of goodies available, like the Buffer button up top. But you can also install a plug-in for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, & Twitter! Heck, there’s a generic bookmarklet, if that’s more your style. Don’t forget to get the iPhone or Android app, too!
If you’re interested, here’s a link to get started! The basic, free, account only has 10 slots. If you sign up with my referral link, we both get one more, free!
Ok, so buffering is pretty cool. But how do you know when to have it blast your tweets?
SocialBro does so many things. To be honest, I’m still learning it. The main thing I use it for is scheduling my Buffer tweets. It analyzes your Twitter stream, and lets you know when most of your followers are on, and helps you set up the most opportune Buffer times!
It also keeps track of your followers, friends, who you follow, your new followers, and a whole host of other things! I can’t possibly name them all! Heck, why would I? Just go to their website, and find out for yourself!
Another new addition to my site is m Tywlah-powered page. It’s in the menu bar, labeled My Tweets. It’s my “brand page” that shows what I’ve been talking about, and lays it out very nicely.
One of the best things about it is that my tweets don’t just disappear in the onslaught of other tweets in your stream. It’s organized by category - not just a long list. It shows pictures and embeds videos. It’s seriously sweet!
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s still a start-up company, so they don’t have many employees. I’m only mentioning this because it took me about 3 or 4 days to get my Twylah page up and running, and a few more days to host it on my site..
This isn’t a jab at them, it’s so you know to be patient. Kelly, the voice of Twylah, was very helpful and willing to talk to me when I was going through the setup process.
The last tool is Summify. I hesitate to bring this up, because they’re currently not open to new users since they got bought out by Twitter. However, it’s still an awesome service that I hope opens up to the general public soon.
In a nutshell, it aggregates my Twitter feed over a span of time - I chose every 4 hours. So what does it do? It summarizes the most popular tweets in my feed, judging by retweets, favorites, etc. So the more something gets retweeted, the more likely it is to show up on my summery.
It’s really nice for days like today where I’m not at work, so I don’t have a Twitter client open most of the day. Summify makes sure I don’t miss a beat!
Closing Remarks
So those are the tools I use to keep my Twitter life in check. What about all y’all? What Twitter tools do you use?
