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!

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.

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!

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.

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!