Twitter Tools, Part 1: Get in Touch

July 1, 2009 by yelena
Filed under Articles, blog

As a social media virtual assistant I get asked a lot of questions about Twitter, including what are some tools and applications that help get the most out of Twitter.

Some time ago I set out to track and catalogue Twitter applications. I gave up on the project after a few days since it was taking way too much of my time. There were hundreds of applications to sort through and the new ones were popping up like mushrooms after a good rain.

The three main challenges of Twitter, at least the way I see them, are searching for people to follow, then keeping up with the torrent of their tweets and finally contributing my own two cents.

Finding people to follow might seem like a no-brainer until you realize that following just about anyone doesn’t do you much good. Personally, I don’t have time to maintain quality conversation with a large network. Since most days I can spend only 15-20 minutes on Twitter, I tend to interact with less than a quarter of my network. Most of the entrepreneurs are in the same boat.

The more people you follow, the more time you end up spending reading through their updates, following their links and responding to interesting tweets.

And once you realize that, you start putting a premium on finding just the right people to follow, whether your clients, competitors or potential partners.

Fortunately, there are several Twitter tools that can help with a more targeted search.

Twitter Search – this is the most obvious one to start with. You won’t even have to leave Twitter since now the search box is conveniently located in the side bar on the Home page of Twitter. Or you can use Advanced Search for more targeted results.

Mr Tweet - will help you find people relevant to your interests. It is not a quick solution – first you sign up simply by connecting your Twitter profile to DrTweet. Then you wait for direct messages. Each message will have a list of recommended Twitter users based on MrTweet’s analysis of your existing connections and their conversations.

TwitterLocal – if you are interested in connecting to people in your geographic area, you can download and use TwitterLocal that will allow you to filter tweets by location.

Twellow – this service works like the Yellow Pages allowing you to search for any number of different tags, such as CEO, entrepreneur, stay-at-home-mom that Twitter users tags their profiles with. And now they added the Twellowhood utility that allows you to find local tweeple. Personally, I like it better that TwitterLocal since it requires no downloads and is very visual.

Who Should I Follow? – simply enter a Twitter user name (yours or someone else’s) and get a list of recommended users. You can customize the results somewhat by adjusting popularity and location options.

How do you find people to follow? Do you autofollow? If no, how do you decide whom to follow on Twitter?

Next week – Part 2 – all about tools that help you keep track of Twitter conversations.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twellow, MrTweet, Twitter tools, social networking, social media