5 Ways To Automate Twitter

There are a number of tools to automate your Twitter and Facebook accounts.  They all have varying degrees of automation and fuctionality.  Depending on what you are trying to achieve, one of these many suit you better than the other.  Some of you may choose to experiment with them all.  While an automated Twitter feed gives a core of tweets, your social media accounts will need human input or you will loose followers and friends.  Here's my list:

TweetDeck - From TweetDeck you can post directly to Facebook and tweet directly to Twitter.  It also handles LinkedIn and FourSquare.  It is free to use.  You cannot schedule (set the time at which you want posts to be sent).  Its best feature is that TweetDeck has multiple columns so that you can search for multiple keywords or hashtags in real time.  This makes it an ideal listening tool.  Realistically its level of automation is poor but it lets you put all your apples in one barrel.

TweetAdder 3.0 - This application has to be purchased for a once off fee.  The price varies depending on the number of profiles you want to list. It starts at $55 for one profile and ranges to $188 for unlimited profiles.  It manages Twitter accounts only but it can manage a number of them.  Where TweetDeck is under-automated I feel TweetAdder is uber-automated.  It does not allow for any additional human input.  It allows you to generate a list of followers based on keywords, keywords in the tweebs' bios, hashtag keywords and location.  TweetAdder can be set to automatically follow this list, unfollow and follow back.  You can feed tweets from a bucket list or from an RSS feed.  You can also re-tweet based on keywords.  Automated "thank you" messages can also be set up.  While TweetAdder has all the bells and whistle, it reminds me of a visit I had aboard a submarine where crew were employed to oversee technology that automated everything.  The point is thats overkill.  But you might like overkill.

SocialOomph - By contrast again SocialOomph has a very dated interface compared to TweetAdder.  The professional version  costs roughly $36 per month.  You can post and schedule posts to Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn and our blog.  It also handles Status New, Plurk and Onlywire, if of interest.  It generates suggestions of people to follow on Tweeter.  This list of possible followers needs to be vetted before acceptance.  I didnt find any means to balance followers and following ie you can unfollow from SocialOomph.  It does handle automated direct messages to thank followers for following.

Hootsuite - This has a very user friendly interface where you can add many social media accounts and any number of them.  Your Twitter account will automatically be broken up into columns of home feed, mentions, direct messages and sent tweets.  Hootesuit creates live streams of individual subject matter which you can keep separate.  You can post to all profiles at once.  Posts can also be scheduled.  One nice feature is the use of a social bar where your posts can be sent directly to the likes of Digg and Reddit.  The possibilities are endless here.  If you are a social media manager then this one is for you. 

Tweepi -  Lists your Twitter followers in such a way that you can see how many they are following, when they last tweeted and where or not they are following you.  This allows you to flushout those that aren't following you and follow those that are following you.  Tweeti also allows you to follow a specific user's followers in order to grow your followers.  On the upgraded version you can force users to unfollow you.  All in all a power Twitter only tool.

Please let me know your views on social media automation and what you find to be most effective?

How Twitter Can Benefit Your Business

Many small and medium sized businesses are still resisting to use Twitter.  Generally the questions is asked who will be responsible for keeping the social media channels up to date, who will provide the content and who will deal with queries.  Putting these questions aside, here are a number of sound business reasons to use Twitter for business.

1. Use Twitter as a listening channel.  Using the "search" box on Twitter and type in the keywords for your own product for service. If you operate in a particlar area you can add "near:your_area" to the search.  The term "-http" generally removes marketeers active in that sector.  If you need to search to multiple search words simultaneously use the Twitter tool Tweetdeck.  This will give you a realtime listing of the tweets for your search words.
2. Use Twitter For Inbound Marketing. Having found tweebs looking for your product/service you can actively engaged these potential customers.    Send them a direct message (DM) with your website URL.  Ask if you can answer any queries they might have.  Gather information. Sure you can let customers find you through a Google search but you'll be one of many.  Twitter goes more direct engagement.
3. Promote Your Product Or Sevice.  Let the public know who you are, what you do and where you do it.  Bang that drum.  Use the hashtag followed by your keyword to get found on Twitter eg #socialmedia.
4. Keep Your Customers Informed.  Twitter is the ideal tool for announcing industry updates, news or events.  Let your existing followers knows whats newsworthy. 
5. Identify Any Unhappy Customers.  Unhappy customers cost sales.  You know the old story,  a happy customer will recommend you to 3  people and an unhappy customer will tell 11 people to steer clear of you.  Deal with them using a direct message on Twitter.
6. Twitter Makes An Ideal PR Tool.  Promote your product or brand, keeping customers informed and dealing with unhappy customers all fall into the area of public relations.  But does your PR department use Twitter?  Manage your communications with Twitter.  Communicate your company's successes without bragging or giving too much away.  Its all good for business.
7. Communicate With Employees.  Many companies have email free days and use Twitter to communicate instead.  Got something urgent use Twitter.
8. Recruit Employees Through Twitter.  Employment agencies use Twitter to annouce any vacancies.  Its a low cost way of getting the word out there.
9. Built Your Network.  Your "followers" are part of your network, build on them.  Be reciprocal with your followers' tweets and retweet them to help spread their message.  This will be appreciated. 
10. Virally Spread Your Message.  Likewise ask your follows to "Pls RT" or retweet your message to increase its reach.
11. Order Taking.  Some companies are equipped to take your order my tweet.  This is an automated error free way of doing business.

 

That should be enough to get you started using Twitter.