TweeMaid

TweeMaid is a paid service that cleans out people that you are following but that are not following you back. Or you can ask them to have them unfollow everyone. It does not matter if you have one follower or a million, it is a set price of $15.95.

You can add exceptions for people that you want to continue to follow despite the fact they are not following you.

It is a nice housekeeping tool to order from time if you don't have the time to go through your list yourself.

Twitter humor

I have not had time to post this week, but I found a great post from Tera of Tera's Tips, she has found some great photos that illustrate people's Twitter addictions, go check them out!

Twitter Wit

Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less is a new book out edited by Nick Douglas that is a must read if you need a laugh! Nick put together tweets from all over the Twitterverse and there is something for everyone! Grab yourself a copy and have a chuckle today!

Twittontime

Twittontime is another tool (like Twaitter and Tweetlater) that allows you to schedule your tweets ahead of time - like when you go on vacation or you can't be near a computer and still want to share info. It's free and easy to use.

Simply sign in by allowing access. Then select a time zone. I nice calendar will appear, click on a date and you will get a box that allows you to type in your tweet/twitt, re-confirm the date and add the time. Don't be confused by the labels for the date and time fields:


They are in Turkish, but works all the same!

Twtjobs

Twtjobs, developed by twtapps is an application that allows you to crate an post a resume on Twitter. You fill in some basic information about yourself as well as a 140 character summary (of course!). This allows you to connect with people looking for candidates. [Companies can also post job openings as well.]

According to the Founder Felipe Coimbra "the idea revolves around you sharing your post with your network, and they retweet it."

I did not complete a post (I am quite happy with my current job!), so you can see a sample of it here on ReadWriteWEb.

They are on Twitter @twtjobs

flick.to.twitt

flick.to.twitt is a service the lets you post a photo to your Flickr account and automatically announce it on your Twitter account.

What is different about this service in comparison with other photo sharing tools is that your photos stay on Flickr.

Easy to use, safe and secure.

Twitter Success Blueprint

I had mentioned this on Your Online Go To Gal, but thought it might be worth while to post here as well.

A lot of people ask me about good books to read to help them get started with Twitter. There is a lot of content out there on the web, but you have to hunt and peck to get good material. As you know, I do have my Twitter Tips & Tricks blog where I post tools and tips a couple of times a week, but to get started, I usually do one-on-one or group coaching.

However, there are some people who like to read books. As a bookworm myself, I totally get that. With social media, I always caution people to look at the publishing date to make sure they are getting the most current information as things change quickly (such as interfaces and tools). One way to avoid this is to use ebooks which come out all the time and are usually far more up-to-date than any published book.

Sarah Prout, the publisher of the e-book that I am currently featured in, has just released an e-book on Twitter that I think does a decent job of explaining the fundamentals. While there are a few things that I don't completely support in the book, the majority of it is very educational for persons who are more DIY types.

If you want to build your brand and attract more followers then the Twitter Success Blueprint contains all of the information you need to enrich your business with social media. Award-winning entrepreneur, author and online socialite, Sarah Prout shares her buzz building, eye-catching strategies that will make Twitter time better for business.

The ebook contains:

- How you can attract thousands of targeted followers FAST!
- Setting up your Twitter page for success
- How to automate your social media time
- Connection strategies
- A new twist on #followfriday
- How to attract attention with your tweets
- Dealing with spammers, stalkers and porn-bots
- And more

Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer is a tool that allows you to evaluate the activity of any Twitter use. You can get a report on: influence, signal, generosity, velocity, and clout. There are definitions for these terms on the site. You just enter a Twitter id and after it calculates you can view trends, historical information etc.

It is an interesting tool. I like the definitions for each of the 5 aspects. I have to say they are grading on a very aggressive scale, my rankings aren't that impressive - but that gives me room to work on!

How did you do?

Twitter Ribbons

Twitter Ribbons brought to you by Twitter Know How is a cool little widget that allows you to create a ribbon for your website or blog.

To create one, simply:
- Go to their website
- Type in your Twitter name
- Select the color scheme and version you want
- If you tweet about Twitter Ribbons you get access to 60 more templates
- Click submit
- They will create code that you need to add into the HTML of your site
- You are done and you have a cool way to attract new followers!

Check out the one I added to Twitter Go To Gal!

Tweet Blocker

Spammed by oily salesman or porn? Tweet Blocker can help stop spammers by reporting them. This tool is a listing that keeps track of spammers on Twitter.

Similar to TwitChuck, TweetBlocker this tool, you can:

- Report spammers

- Check a username in their database to see a ranking

Is Twitter Down?

Were you jonesing for a Twitter fix last week when Twitter was struck with the denial-of-service attack? If you are a total twitter addict this simple website will let you know if Twitter is really down and not that your corporate IT has blocked it out!

It allows you to find out if twitter is down for everyone else or just for you. The page displays a simple answer “Yes” or “No

Geo Chirp

Geo Chirp is a new Twitter application that lets you search tweets based on geographic results. It is an essential tool when trying to find contacts in your area. You can search on any key word you like to hone into to people in your niche, people who share your passions or target customers.

Looking to sell a particular type of product into a certain sales region? Geo Chirp will help you find people having conversations about it.

Traveling to new city and looking for like-minded tweeters, search in the area you choose, by topic that you choose and plan a meet-up/tweet-up or whatever.

Twittonary

Trying to figure what some people are communicating on Twitter? DM? RT? Look it up in Twittonary! That's right, an online dictionary of Twitter terms!

You can search for a specific word or just browse letter - believe that makes for fun reading!

Follow Twittonary on Twitter also.

TwitDone

Twitdone is great productivity tool that creates personal to-do lists which you can enter from their web-based tool on their website or by sending them a DM on twitter (dtwitdone) on Twitter or any Twitter publishing tool (like Tweetdeck).

As you plow through your list (on their site), you can archive them, e-mail them or post them to Twitter.

The interface is clean and simple and easy to use.

More Twitter backgrounds

Here are a few more sites that allow you to make or customize your Twitter background for free:

• My Tweet Space


• Free Twitter Designer


• Twitter Backgrounds

These tools are easy to use, so don't use a default background!

Twit Truth

Twit Truth is a statistics tool that show a table of stats including the average amount of messages to a user, chance of a reply, replies sent per day, direct replies, etc. The homepage lists the top 500 users on Twitter with these stats. You can submit your own user name (or the user name of anyone else) and see how you (or the other person) rank up.

Twitscoop

Twitscoop is a Twitter tool that tracks trends, there is a real time consolidation of topics that takes place in the form of a tag cloud on the right-hand side, which is constantly updating (unless you pause it).

You can also tweet from the tool, as well as search. Twitscoop's claim to fame is that you don't have to reload your page, updates are automatic.

Twitchuck

Got a new follower that you don't know? Before you follow them back, check them out to see if they are a spammer. Simply go to Twit Chuck, plug in the user's name and you will get a recommendation back telling you whether you should follow that person or not. It takes two seconds and it can save you a lot of work down the line.

Technorati claim post

Sorry, this was the easiest way to claim my blog on Technorati!

872uycqes9

TwitDiff

TwitDiff is a tool that notifies you when one of several events occur. These are when you stop or start following someone (less useful) to when people start or stop following you. Since Twitter already sends you a notification when someone starts following you, I recommend trying it out for the instances when people stop following you.

A more reliable solution to Qwitter, which has had it's share of issues, TwitDiff sends you a notification that indicates all unfollows and is produced at an interval you set (12 hrs to 30 days)

Free Twitter icons

It's a good practice to put a Twitter icons and badges on your blog or website. That doesn't mean it has to be boring! Make it cute and fun (if that makes sense). Here are some of the ones I like:

Hongkiat

Web Designer Depot

Sharebrain

Creative Nerds

Since the purpose of this blog is to give you info in digestible pieces, I am not going to list anymore. Just go to Google and search on Twitter icons, and you will find a ton more.

Sticky Twits

Going to an event and want to drive people to your Twitter page? Why not give them a cute sticker with your Twitter id? You can with Sticky Twits. Customize your sticker the way you want and get them sent out. Sticky Twits is an Australian company but they do deliver internationally.

Tweetizen

Tweetizen is a site that lets you create groups of people or groups by topic that you are interesting in paying close attention. You can customize the name and look and feel of your group to make it fun as well. They have a very easy how-to section.

To start you need to grant access to your Twitter account by filling in your user name and password and then you are all set to segment the people your are following, or the topics you are interested in to your heart's desire!

Twaitter

Twaitter is a pretty robust tool that allows you to schedule your tweets for later, among many other things. The interface is very simple to use. You can schedule tweets out whenever you like and can create recurring ones as well.

It can serve as your Twitter client as well - meaning you can send a tweet from here as well in additional to seeing who you are following (you can unfollow if you like) and who is following you. To use, just login using your Twitter user name and password and away you go!

Tweet My Bumper

An interesting way to gain followers - especially if you live in an area with bad traffic! For $5.00 Tweet My Bumper will create a bumper sticker with your Twitter user name and send it to you to put on your car!

NearbyTweets

Another really easy and fun one! Nearby Tweets allows you find and connect with people in a specific geographical area. Just type in an address, city, or zip code and click "Search Again" or hit enter and you will bee presented with a list of people within 100 miles. You can narrow down the mileage as well. In addition, you can get even more specific, by entering a keyword, you can see which people in that are tweeting about that topic. It's pretty cool. It can also help you to connect with your customers and promote your business by finding tweets in your local area.

Twitter Grader

Using 5 parameters: number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, the completeness of your profile and a few secret ingredients Twitter Grader assigns you (or any user name you enter) a grade from 1-100.

You can use this tool a number of ways:

• First, you can check out how you do and match it up to others.
• You can check out competitors to see what their scores are.
• You can check out new followers to gage what their influence is.
• You can use it to seek out key influencers to work with to raise your visibility for you.

The tool is easy to use, just plug in your username and in a few seconds you will get your score plus a few other goodies. You can also grade yourself on other platforms as well.

Twittascope

This is an fun and easy one. Just plug in your birthday (month, day, year) and then enter your Twitter username and password and you will have your horoscope, or Twittascope, tweeted to you every day.

Tweepular

I love, love, love this dashboard tool! Tweepular is a simple and fantastic way of seeing followers, people you are following but not following you, and people following you which you are not following. It will also have a tab of recent unfollows. Other tools offer similar stats put not in such an easy to use format.

Visually it is nice too, the colors allow you to very quickly and easily see where you are at. The dashboard is just plain cool. When I first used it, I realized that I had 2 friends that I had somehow missed following! They were following me, but I wasn't following them. I was able to follow them on the same screen instantaneously!


Easy to use and pretty, go get it!

Twit Logo - Capture your name as a logo

This on is incredibly simple and fun. Just go to Twitlogo and put any your Twitter id (or for that matter anything!) and click "make."

You will get back a twittified logo, like this one I did for my Twitter id:There are advanced options that allow you to choose the size, and colors. It is totally useless but fun!

Twitter Humor - a reflection of things to come!

I have seen this on a couple of blogs, it is hilarious!

It reminds me of a comment I read that John Mayer made about the Perez Hilton attack in which PH was allegedly being assaulted and asked for help on Twitter, JM said something to the effect of PH having time to log-in, type and send from his phone all while being attacked...odd!

Tweetcloud

Not sure if you want to follow someone, but don't feel like scrolling through their tweet stream? As you add more and more people to follow (there will be more and more content in your Twitter stream), one of the most important factors when deciding whether you want to follow a Twitter user is what sort of content they tweet about. If someone tweets mostly about topics you don’t care about, they might not be the best person for you to follow.

Tweetcloud creates a tag cloud of a person’s tweets so you can see what they tweet about.

Also you can use this tool on yourself to see what your areas of concentration are. If you start losing followers, it may be your topics!

WeFollow - tag yourself by interests

WeFollow is a very simple tools that allows users to submit their own tags by sending a tweet to WeFollow. It uses these tags to help users find other people based on the topics they tweet about the most. The WeFollow site serves as a ranking and search service that allows users to find other followers based on their interests or location.

Just click on the "+Add yourself to WeFollow." You can choose three tags - which describe you and your interests. Then the info is sent and added to their listing (and added as a tweet of Twitter as well.

You can change your tags when you interests change. You can search out people with a particular tag and you can see how they (and you) rank for that tag. It is also a good way to see trends.

Tweetstats

Tweetstats is a simple tool that allows you to get detailed stats of your tweets, who you sent them to the most and when you usually sent them. Simply enter your Twitter username, let the site do your calculations and then explore!

There are graphs to cover:

• Your tweet tineline - how often/how many tweets you do in a week/month


• Your tweet density - when you most often tweet


• Who your @ reply to's are


• Who you are re-tweeting


• others

But this is not limited to YOU. As long as you know someone's twitter id you can "study" what others are doing.

Twitpic

This is another simple tool that lets you share pictures on Twitter. You can post pictures directly from your phone or a computer.

If you have a Twitter account then you already have a Twitpic account, just login to Twitpic with your Twitter username and password and you will be ready to upload photos.

To upload a new photo, click on the Upload Photo link. You can also post photos with your phone.
Easy!

Hashtags

This one scares people, but in reality it is really easy. There is only one main rule, which can be said for most anything on Twitter - don't over use it!

This is simply any topic with a hash (#) in front of it. Why? So that people can (1) spread information and (2) categorize themselves or their conversations, making it easy to search and find other conversations on the same topic. For really hot topics, you can usually find them in the top ten searches trends in the right hand side of your Twitter home. Here is one from June 15th:

One of the most popular ones (to date) is #followfriday. And also anytime there is a social media conference you can be sure there will be a hash tag. In fact, following people who are at a conference is almost as good as being there. People keep you up minute-by-minute of what is going on!

One last thing to note. If you want to creat a hash tag you should first find out if it isn't already being used. Search first, then post - Go to http://hashtags.org/ and search for existing hashtags in use.

If it is already in use you can leverage conversations that are already ongoing around your desired topic. And if you're interesting, they will follow you.

For more information, there is a really great article from Mashable on this.

Twitter Humor

These are kind of old, but I still giggle when I watch them! Just wanted to give you a break from all the tools and take a moment to remind you the human face-to-face, voice-to-voice communication still works really well too!



http://current.com/items/89891774_twouble-with-twitters.htm



and the sequal:



http://current.com/items/90032288_celebrity-twitter-overkill.htm

Twitbacks - easy to create Twitter backgrounds

Twitback is a free, easy to use and customize Twitter background creator. The steps are easy:

1. You sign-up for an account.


2. You fill in the details that you want to appear on your Twitter background.


3. You Upload the background on Twitter.


4. You're done!

Easy - have fun!

FriendOrFollow - who is following you?

FriendOrFollow is a simple tool that gives you a list of the people you are following that are not following you back. You enter in your Twitter user name, wait for the list to generate and then see who isn't following you. You can sort by a number of parameters if you are looking for something in particular.

For the most part, you are probably following more people than are following, so don't get to worked up about it, but there may be some people that you decide to unfollow based on the fact that they are not following you.

Twitter Search

Twitter Search is part of the Twitter family, residing on their platform. When you use Tweetdeck, the search fields are in fact Twitter Search. When you search on keywords, the results come back with the most recent tweets with those words in it and then keeps going back in history.

You can also see the Top 10 keywords being "discussed" on Twitter at that time. You can also find this in the right side of your Twitter home, just under the search field, which is another way to access Twitter Search.

Qwitter - alerts when people unfollow you

You shouldn't get to hung up on people leaving you, but if you feel like you are losing a lot of followers and you quite figure out why maybe Qwitter can help. Qwitter is a simple tool that emails you when someone stops following you. In the email message that they send, they let you know what was the tweet that the person left you on.

Just a note that this tool seems to erratic from time to time.

Tweefind - search results by influence

Tweefind works differently than Twitter Search in that the results are sorted by tweets of people who have more followers, meaning more influence. So if you search on Ding Dongs and Ashton Kutchner or Guy Kawalski have tweeted about it, their tweets are going to be at the top of the search results list, with the people with fewer people in descending order after that.

This can be useful if you are a company with a product and you are looking to see who is talking about you and what kind of influence they have.

Localtweeps - finding people close by

Twitter is used all over the world, and it is a great way to extend your business's reach, but sometimes you may want to reach local customers. Localtweeps allows you to list your Twitter account in their database and attach a zip or postal code to it. You can look for users in a certain locale by zip, or browse by city, state (or province). Conversely, users looking for your particular service can enter a zip code and find you!

In addition, you can connect with other local businesses in your area for networking and partnership opportunities, etc. Right now the service is only supporting the U.S. and Canada , but they plan to expand service to include other countries in the future.

Get listed and get found!

Follow Friday - what's it all about?

Follow Friday is a way of recommending people you follow to other people in your sphere of influence. Recommendations take away the pain and gives everyone the chance to give their friends a chance to interact with more people.

Instead of just tweeting a list of people to follow, give a short description of why you think they are of intersts to others, whether it be their niche, that they are nice, that they live in Paris, whatever, just put context around why you are recommending them.

This concept was started by Micah Baldwin as a way to allow the "little guys" to get exposure. You can read about it here.

There is also a website where you can see the real-time stream of Follow Friday, that is, anyone putting #followfriday in their tweet.

How to do it:

DoesFollow?

As simple tool that does one thing: let's you know if the person you’re following is following you back.

Check it out at http://doesfollow.com/

Tweetlater - Essential Automation and Tracking Tool

If Tweetdeck is the quintessential Twitter tool, then TweetLater is like your Twittter production house. It is the ultimate in automation. This is a free tool (there is a professional version, but with the free version being so robust, it is unnecssary for me). There are a ton of things that you can do with this tool, it is very powerful with helping you:

• Scheduling Tweets that can be sent at a time when you are unavailable, even while you are sleeping or on vacation.
  
  > Sharing value-added content is an incredible way to raise credibilty with your followers who are also potential clients? Got a whole list of articles or books that you think are good resources? Spend an hour creating individual tweets about them and schedule them out for once per day (or as often as you like) for several days or weeks.
  
  > Got clients all the round the world? Make sure you stay top-of-mind by Tweeting when they are awake (while you may be asleep!)
  
  > Going on vacation and still want to stay top-of-mind by Tweeting while you are sipping that mai-tai? Prepare and schedule out your tweets while away and you followers may never know you were away!
  


• Set up Keyword Digests (reviews)
  
  > This is a great tool, much as I described for Google Alerts. If there are words, keywords, or topic conversations that you are interesting to "listening" in on you can set up a keyword digest and get them emailed to you as often as every 4 hours.
  
  > I sell a social media gadget called Poken. So I have set up a keyword alert for Poken so that I can understand the trends around what people are talking about it. It works really great, one word of caution though - make sure to select for English only, otherwise you will get may too many results!


• Get a digest of all of the @replies you have received
  
  > I think that Tweetdeck is more useful for following your @replies, but having it emailed to you is also a good prompt if you are not in Twitter as often as you would like.
  
  
• Manage unlimited Twitter accounts
  
  > If you have multiple Twitter accounts, this is nearly the only tool that allows you to view and manage all your accounts all in one location at no charge. A nice feature if you do have multiple accounts.
  
  
• Automatically “return-follow” your new followers or "return-unfollow" people who unfollow you
  
  >It is convenient, but I am not a big fan. I don't think you should automatically follow every person who follows you. There are a lot of "get rich quick" people out there who you just don't want to follow. Also, you have a follow strategy in place for your buiness which dictates that you only want to follow people within your particular niche. Whatever the case, I think that following and unfollowing should be done by you.
  
  
• Automated DM's
  
  >The one thing it does that I highly discourage my clients from doing is the creation of automatic messages when have new followers. This is the "thanks for following me, please buy my product" or "thanks for following me, I can help you make millions online!" These are awful and so spammy! If you really want to welcome new followers, do it individually with a customized message applicable to that user, or don't do it at all!

There you have it, TweetLater, a very powerful automation tool that can help you keep your tweeting strategy on track.

Twellow - Finding others in your niche

Looking to find people in your specific niche and industry? Twellow is great Twitter directory that can assist you with connecting to the right people for you. It is basically The Yellow Pages for Twitter. Twellow searches and analyzes millions of public tweets and associates them back to the owners, they then take the owner (user) and categorize them by topic.

You can browse their site by topic looking for whatever peaks your interest, or you can drill down further into a specific category and find a more refined search results. For example, if I just look under the Green category, you will see there are more than 17,000 people, but if I look for people talking about or associated with Pets (in the Green category), than comes back with 49. That is much more manageable. After that you can scan people by location, what they are saying etc.

Don’t forget to add your profile as well. To do that first make sure you are not already there by entering your Twitter username in the search box. If it is there,make sure to complete your profile. If it is not there, add it by following the step-by-step process outlined on the Twellow site.

A very easy tool to use, so get out there and let your twingers do the walking!

Tweetdeck - the Quintessential Twitter Tool

my Tweetdeck screen

To start this blog, I wanted to begin with what I think is the quintessential Twitter tool, Tweetdeck. If you use no other tool, use this one. If you are going to be stuck on a deserted island and can only bring one Twitter tool, choose Tweetdeck.

This tool gives you a wonderful dashboard that breaks down the components of Twitter. You can have up to 5 columns of information available to you at all times, I usually use 4 unless I am doing something specific with groups (more on that later).

You can have a screen for "All Friends" - that's everyone that you are following. It is a constant flow of what everyone (that you are following) is saying. So if you are following a lot of people, but that can be a lot! But unlike viewing this stream on the web, you don't have to keep refreshing the screen, it does it on its own (although you can force a refresh if it is not fast enough for you!).

Next, you can have your "Replies" column (@replies). This is when someone talks to you or uses your name in a Tweet in public. This allows you to keep track of who is talking about you or with you. Of course, you can also do this from the web, but...not all on one screen. Remember, these are public tweets.

Next is DM's. These are Direct Messages. A message from one Twitter username to another. These are not public. A lot of people "auto-DM" when they get new followers. This an automatic message that goes out, something like "thanks for following me, buy my product". [By the way, I discourage my clients to do these, if you can't tell.] So if you follow a lot of people with these, you may got a DM column that is full of "junk mail." These can be deleted. I just mention it because you may miss authentic DM's if you don't pay attention.

Last on my dashboard is Favorites. These are tweets that I have tagged as a favorite for one reason or the other. I don't think most people use this one, so I will tell you about what most people do use, and that is either Groups or Search.

You can customize a group of people you follow. You can have several groups. If there is a group of industry people you want to watch, you can call it "Twitterati" (or whatever), add the people you want and you will see just their tweets in the Groups column. You can create a group of girlfriends, celebrities, whatever. The group allows you to have a filtered list of a subset of the people you are following.

I sell a social media gadget called Poken. So sometimes I use Search to see if people out there are talking about it. With the Search column, I can enter the word or phrase I am interested and see the results of anyone mentioning this term, and not just people I am following. It's great for companies looking to see who is talking about them.

Before I leave you, I just want to mention a few things about the Tweetdeck header.


From here you can enter your next tweet, shorten a url, upload a photo, open or close columns, as well as decide if you want your tweet to appear as your Facebook status. (I like this control rather than having every tweet show up on Facebook, I think it annoys people, it certainly annoys me!)

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air-based application that runs on PC or Mac (it requires that you install the software first).

And that's pretty much it! It is a global view of everything that is going on in your little Twitter-world!

Welcome and About this blog

As a social media coach and owner of Your Online Go To Gal, I receive a lot of questions about Twitter and how to use it. There is a TON of information on the internet about exactly that topic. Every week there is a new (and longer) list of tips and tools to help people use this social media tool to its best advantage.

The problem is, who has time to search that out, digest it all, and come up with the best ones to use?

I do! ...Okay,maybe I don't have that much time, but I certainly have the passion, so I am more than happy to figure it out for you!

Have you seen those lists of the top 25, 36, 48, even 100 Twitter tools? Do your eyes glaze over and head roll back when you reach 21 and 1/2? Me too! I decided the best thing to do about that is to take them one at a time. And that's exactly what I am going to do!

I have launched this blog, it's a place where I will go through and describe one tool or tip at a time.

This will be in small digestible amounts so neither you or I will get overwhelmed!


Look forward to sharing with you.

Best,
Andi Fisher
Chief Go To Gal