Ted’s Favorite Twitter Tools
I’m frequently asked what tools I use to make Twitter more manageable. There are no secrets here, but I realize I haven’t written about them all in one place, so… here you are. The following are the things that I use pretty much daily. If they work for you, awesome! If not? That’s cool too.
Warning: unlike my follow back policy, this post is purely tactical rather than principle-driven. If you’re looking for something deeper than that, you’re going to have to keep looking. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place in Switch and Shift!
Without further preamble, let’s dive in!
Tweetdeck (tweetdeck.com). I use this on my Mac at my home office. It allows me to view 4 different topics at once, plus a whole lot more if I just scroll over a bit. I have it set to refresh every minute: it makes Twitter the ADD nirvana it was meant to be!
BTW: in case you’re curious, my first four columns as I write this are Mentions, The Circle, #switchandshift, and IRL Friends (people I’ve either met face-to-face or at least had phone calls with). My fifth column over is #tchat, which Shawn and I will be writing about soon.
I’ll also soon be writing about that second column, The Circle, because that is my true secret to following over 100,000 people with at least a modicum of success.
Echofon (echofon.com). I’ve found Tweetdeck and a number of other “clients”* on my iPhone can be klugie. Somebody from Twitterland recommended echofon, and I’ve been relying on it for well over a year with nothing but delight.
Tweepi (tweepi.com). The main things I do with Tweepi are (a) make sure I reciprocate when someone new follows me, (b) find new and interesting people with similar interests to follow, and (c) unfollow people who don’t return that favor to me. There are a lot of other things you can do with this neat tool, too. I highly recommend you explore them.
One thing I have never done is clicked one of those “buy followers” ads that litter the site. What the hell, folks? Who thinks those are real people? I read Newt Gingrich paid for dummy followers a while back. That didn’t work out too well for him, and it won’t for you, either. Don’t waste your money!
Note: I try my best to reciprocate every Saturday morning.
Triberr (triberr.com). Okay, this is a really cool website. I belong to a few “tribes,” which are groups of bloggers who have been invited to the group by one person whose judgment we all trust: that is key, because the idea is that you retweet your tribemates’ blog posts and they do the same for you. A lot of the content you read in my stream throughout the day comes from my Triberr tribes. I’ve made some great friends this way, and deepened some already strong friendships.
I’m not completely sure how you can get invited into a tribe or start your own (again, because I’m too ADD to make a study of it), but I don’t have to know: the co-founders, Dino and Chris, are uber-helpful and 24/7 engaged. If you use one of the tools in this post to make your own online experience more rewarding, I’d say this is the one.
Buffer (buffer.com). You’ll notice there’s a button for Buffer to the left of this post – indeed, that’s how I originally found it, right here on Switch and Shift! Man, am I glad I did; now I have my own account, which I programmed to tweet for me about six times a day all month long. I keep my account topped up by loading tweets in there when I find something cool.
Say it’s five am on a Sunday, and I’ve already shared ten things I hope my followers will find interesting. Now, maybe my European and African friends will read these tweets, but most folks in the Western Hemisphere, Down Under, and in Asia are still asleep or just going to bed. So, I take a link to a cool blog post, add a few words of my own, and pop it in my Buffer. Then I move on to the next thing, and forget all about it.
Sure enough, a few weeks, a month, or so later, everyone’s reading this cool post. (If you like you can move posts around so they go out sooner or later or… it’s pretty interactive).
Now its your turn! What tools work for you? Let us know in the comments. I’m always on the lookout for new stuff to try, and I know our readers are as well.
*While we’re at it: why do we call them “clients?” Oiy. Never mind. I don’t want a real answer, I just wanted to gripe.
Graphic by Shawn Murphy
Author | Speaker | Consultant Ted Coiné is one of the most influential business leaders on Twitter, with a following of over two hundred thousand and growing rapidly. He has been ranked by both Huffington Post and Forbes for his business leadership and social media influence. An inspirational speaker, Ted is author of Five-Star Customer Service and Spoil ’Em Rotten! Prior to writing his first book, Ted was founder and CEO of Coiné Language School, a B2B company he brought from his living room to a $10 million valuation in four years by focusing relentlessly on customer service. He is currently writing his third book, about how social media is transforming leadership and business in this exciting new century. Ted and his family live in Naples, Florida, where he is active in the tech startup scene.
