This is the fourth post in a series designed to help you set up and fine tune your Twitter account. It’s geared for business people who use Twitter either for a company or as a professional networking tool. However, most of the information applies to the person using Twitter just for fun.

Without a Twitter goal, you can't hit the bulls eye.

Twitter is fun and the latest trend, but using Twitter takes time away from running your business. If you are serious about your success, you understand that it is important to manage your time so you get the important things accomplished each day. Without a Twitter goal, you may see some benefits from your time, but you won’t begin to harness the value Twitter can bring to your business.

Your Twitter Goal

Before you take one more step, stop to figure out your Twitter goal. The reason you use Twitter plays a major role in the rest of the decisions you make about your Twitter account.

To figure out your Twitter goal, ask yourself the following questions.

• Why am I considering using Twitter? (Or, why did I start using Twitter?)
• Will I be talking to friends and family on Twitter?
• Am I looking to find my customers on Twitter?
• Am I hoping to connect with peers and create a professional network?
• Am I going to use Twitter mostly to receive information, or do I plan to send out information on Twitter?
• What do I plan to talk about on Twitter?
• Do I want to connect with potential customers?
• Are my potential customers located in my geography or anywhere Twitter goes?

Write down your answers to these questions. This is the raw information that you will use to build your specific Twitter goal.

Define Your Twitter Goals

You can have more than one Twitter goal. However, your Twitter goals must be compatible for you to combine them in the same account. When you have goals that are not compatible and you want to use Twitter to meet them, you will need more than one Twitter account.

For example, you may identity these two Twitter goals:

• Talk with my bowling buddies and plan parties with them.
• Teach my customers and potential customers about my business.

If you run a bowling-related business, these two goals may be compatible. However, for most businesses, these goals are incompatible. Your customers who want to learn about your products and services don’t want to hear about your bowling plans. And your bowling buddies may not want to wade through your business communication with customers.

Here are some examples of good Twitter business goals that may work well together.

• I use Twitter to share information with my existing customers about my products, services, and industry so they are well-informed consumers.
• I use Twitter reach out to potential customers who could benefit from the product, service, and industry information I share with my customers on Twitter.
• I use Twitter to direct my followers to information about my products, services, and industry that appears on my blog and website.
• I use Twitter to allow my existing and potential customers to ask me questions about my products, services and industry.

Here are some good Twitter goals that may not be compatible with these goals.

• I use Twitter to ask and answer questions with my peers so I can learn more about my industry, recent trends, and best practices.
• I use Twitter to communicate with my contractors and vendors to make sure that my projects and supplies stay on schedule.
• I use Twitter to communicate with my business partners about new and existing business we work on together.
• I use Twitter to solve customer service issues with my existing customers.

Here’s one way to figure out if your Twitter goals are compatible. Imagine you have a room full of the people that make up your Twitter community. If they were in the same room, are there some conversations that you would not feel comfortable having in that mixed group? If so, you may need more than one Twitter account.

However, if your goals drive you to set up multiple Twitter accounts, ask yourself if each goal is best met on Twitter. There are many conversations that should remain private and should continue to use your existing communication channels, such as email or telephone. Twitter isn’t the solution for every business goal. That’s a bit like only having a hammer in your toolbox. Don’t let every business problem look like a nail!

Twitter Goals and Profile Setup

Your Twitter goals determine the choices you make for your Twitter account setup.

• Set up one or more than one Twitter account. You can have more than one goal for an account, but the goals must be compatible.
• Decide the best user name for your Twitter account. If you set up multiple business Twitter accounts, you need to give them slightly different names so you and your community can identify the account’s purpose from the user name. For example, the New York Times has a separate account for major paper sections.
• Identify the best web link for more information about your Twitter account. If you create multiple Twitter accounts, you need multiple Twitter landing pages. You should also include information about the other accounts in each landing page, along with information to help potential followers find the best account for their needs.
• Create the appropriate bio for your Twitter account. Your Twitter bio should explain your Twitter goal to potential followers. If you need more space, you can expand this explanation in your Twitter landing page.
• Select the appropriate avatar for your Twitter account. If you have multiple business Twitter accounts, you may want to modify your logo for the avatar to support the account user name and goal. For example,  if you have separate Twitter accounts for different products, you might use your company logo with the product name for your avatar, or you might use the product logo instead of the company logo.

Twitter Goals And Community Management

Your Twitter community management is everything you do to maintain your list of the people you follow. It involves finding new people to follow, deciding whom to follow back, and occasionally weeding out people you follow.

Your Twitter community, the people you follow, determine your ability to meet your Twitter goals for the account. Each week as you perform community management tasks, you should make your choices based on your Twitter goals. Seek out people on Twitter who can help you meet your Twitter goals and follow them. Many of them will follow you back, making your community stronger.

You may find that someone follows you who does not obviously support your Twitter goal. For example, you may focus your Twitter account on new and existing customers, but you discover that a stranger is following you, or a vendor has started following your account. It never hurts to have extra community members. However, if you have a different Twitter account that you think they should follow instead, send them a direct message with your alternate account information. You can’t stop them from following any Twitter account, but they will appreciate if you help them find the most appropriate account to follow.

Twitter Goals and What You Tweet

Your Twitter goal also determines what you tweet. If you have multiple accounts, your goals show you which account should send each tweet. What you tweet is only part of the communication process. You should also read the incoming tweets and make the appropriate replies according to your Twitter goals.

The same advice applies for retweets. I often read tweets on my personal account that I know my business Twitter community would love to hear. In those situations, I retweet on the business account because the tweet meets the goal for that account.

Your turn: Do you have Twitter goals in place for your accounts? If so, how did you determine them, and how do they help you manage your Twitter communication. Share your insights with the community.

Related Posts

• The Twitter School
• Twitter Your Time Away
• Twitter Landing Pages
  

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Many new users are swimming in the Twitter pool and looking for help.

Over the last few months, an avalanche of people have joined Twitter thanks to some celebrity endorsements and mainstream media coverage. This influx challenged the Twitter team to make sure the application could keep running with a huge increase in traffic. They have done a great job with this.

This also meant that an army of new Twitter users were working to integrate themselves into the Twitter universe. They needed basic training on the Twitter features and use, and they needed an introduction to the shorthands and conventions in use by the existing Twitter community.

Unlocking The Twitter Secret Menu

If you live on the west coast, or if you’ve vacationed in California, you may know about a local burger chain, In-N-Out Burger. This restaurant, operating since 1948, has a cult-like following. While its menu is simple, over the years customers have created customized items that are available in every store. These items make up the secret menu which the company publishes on its website, but not on it’s menu board at the restaurants. In other words, you have to know there is a secret menu before you can order off it. Someone has to initiate you into the secret menu.

New Twitter users have the help portal for reliable details, and can crowd source answers to their questions. Every day, new users ask for help in their early tweets, and many of them get responses from community-minded people. Things like hashtags, retweets and their notations, and events like follow Friday all need explanation to the incoming users. Twitter has its own secret menu that only the initiated can appreciate and enjoy.

Twitter User Retention Challenges

Recently, a statistic from Nielsen Wire said Twitter retains  less than 40% of its new users. That’s a very low user adoption rate. For comparison, Facebook retains about 70% of its users, and new software introduced into the work place expects 100% user adoption. (In other words, the company says you use the new software or else you don’t have a job anymore.)

There are several aspects of Twitter that together make it a challenge for new users. Any one of these is an obstacle for new users, and taken together, they make joining the Twitter ranks a real obstacle course.

• Lack of metaphor. Twitter is a unique communication tool that borrows features from several communication tools and melds them together into something new. The cocktail party metaphor explains most of the basic features, but doesn’t cover them all. Without a cohesive metaphor, users struggle to wrap their heads around Twitter.
• Information rich user interface. On the surface, Twitter appears to be a simple tool, but in reality, it has rich and complex features. Take the components of a tweet as one example. Encoded in the shorthand is a wealth of information about the tweet’s creation and its place in a conversation thread that are not obvious at first glance.
• Community conundrum. People get a new account and expect to start using Twitter. But you can’t really begin to use or understand the Twitter features until you have a fully fleshed out community of people you follow and people who follow you. The user interface is structured to support communication, not community building. There are no clues about where to start community building. For example, there’s not a hint on the front page that you have to have people following you before you can send a direct message. Perhaps most important, there is no way to tell users how to find the the quality community members they need to have a great Twitter experience.
• No real training program. If you use chat for the first time, you can observe what other people are doing to figure out how to chat for yourself. The same with Facebook and other communication tools. You can observe others to get clues about what to do. With Twitter, you can only learn informally through imitation after you complete significant community building. The help portal is constantly improving, and in some places, provides really good support for users. Unfortunately, most users are not willing to read through the help.
• Third-party atmosphere. As a company, Twitter’s policy seems to be that they don’t expect to do it all. They expect and encourage third-party companies to jump into the Twitter universe. There are third-party Twitter tools that performs tasks that seasoned users consider essential, some duplicate Twitter features and some enhance Twitter. As a result, it seems that Twitter defines itself as the provider of the basic service, and everything beyond that, including user training, falls outside their scope and in the realm of third parties.

Building New User Community

The greatest obstacle I see for new users is building community. Without a solid user community, you can’t see the type of interesting communication that is possible with Twitter. In fact, you can’t even use all of the Twitter features until you have community in place. And yet, this is the feature that is least supported by the user interface.

Twitter realizes this initial struggle for new users. A while back, they implemented a suggested user feature that gave new users a list of people to start following. This strategy helps new users build community from the start. By selecting successful users with a large following, new users gain the opportunity to have good content to read, and joined large existing communities. However, this strategy has two major limitations:

• Each Twitter user must create his own community. Jumping into an established community only helps new users begin listening. New users must still engage other users and find people who will follow them to have dialog. If they simply start following people with thousands of followers, even people who will follow them back, they are not likely to have dialog with them because of the size of the community.
• The user community didn’t support the strategy. Instead of realizing that this was an effort to overcome the biggest contributing factor to user churn, other people in the community complained because they were not selected to be a suggested user. They felt others were given an unfair advantage to build their communities based on a tacit recommendation by Twitter.

This strategy provided a partial solution and postponed the onset of the worst symptoms. It’s a decent first strike in my opinion. As users get more experience, it seems logical that they will find other motivation to stay on Twitter and overcome the community building obstacle.

The user adoption issue doesn’t impact Twitter’s effectiveness as a business tool, but it does provide an opportunity for people to jump in with Twitter training materials and programs to help new users through the early community building phase.

Related Posts:

• Twitter For Beginners
• Twitter Metaphors
• Twitter Community Management Tools

This post has been updated to the Twitter School page. I’ll keep it current with new blog posts, podcasts, and other materials to help you use Twitter.

It's easy to learn what you need to make Twitter a powerful tool for your business.

I talk and write about Twitter more than any other topic. It’s my favorite social media tool, and one that I believe can help most people with their business.

Here’s a listing of my Twitter resources, blog posts and ebooks, grouped to help you see which resource can help you the most right now.

Why Should I Use Twitter?

Here is some information to help you figure out Twitter and how to use Twitter for your business before you get your account. Of course, the best way to learn Twitter is to use it!

• New Ebook: Twitter For Beginners – A free ebook that explains Twitter for business use and explains how to begin using the many Twitter features.
  
• Twitter Metaphors – Helps you to understand how to think about Twitter.
  
• Celebrity Twitterati – There are several types of Twitter personalities you will encounter, and this blog post borrows from celebrity brands to illustrate these personalities.
  

I’m On Twitter, Now What?

After you get a Twitter account, it takes a while to really understand how to harness Twitter. These resources help you make sure you have a good account setup and that you have the key elements in place to have a great Twitter experience.

• New Ebook: Twitter For Beginners – A free ebook that explains Twitter for business use and explains how to begin using the many Twitter features.
  
• Twitter for Beginners: The Basics (Part 1) – The information here went into the creation of the Twitter for Beginners ebook.
  
• Twitter For Beginners: The Basics (Part 2) – The information here went into the creation of the Twitter for Beginners ebook.
  
• Twitter New User Checklist – A great starting point for new Twitter users to fine tune your setup and your Twitter behaviors.
  
• Twooting It Up (New Twitter User Checklist) – A podcast interview about the New Twitter User Checklist.
  
• Twitter Mobile: Text Messages – Getting started using your text-message enabled cell phone to send and receive tweets.
  
• Twooting: Twitter and Text Messages – The podcast interview about Twitter and text messages.
  
• Celebrity Twitterati – There are several types of Twitter personalities you will encounter, and this blog post borrows from celebrity brands to illustrate these personalities.
  

How Do I Get More From Twitter?

After you start building a strong Twitter community, you are ready to dig in and add some finesse to your Twitter account and your Twitter behavior.

• Twitter Your Time Away – Some practical advice about how to focus your time on Twitter so you maximize your benefits and don’t lose track of time.
  
• Twitter Landing Pages – Here’s an idea for building a customized page on your blog or website for your Twitter account, and what you can include on it.
• Why Won’t You Follow Me? – Some of the red flags I see in people’s Twitter accounts that cause me to not follow them.
• Think Global, Tweet Local – How to harness the power of Twitter to connect with customers, peers, and other interesting people in your geography.
• New Ebook: Competitive Twitter Syndrome – With all of the Twitter ranking and analysis tools, it is easy to slip into competitive Twitter syndrome and miss the whole point of this important social media tool.
  
• Competitive Twitter Syndrome (Part 1) – The information here went into the creation of the Competitive Twitter Syndrome ebook.
  
• Competitive Twitter Syndrome (Part 2) – The information here went into the creation of the Competitive Twitter Syndrome ebook.
  
• Twitter Tools You Can Use: Steroid Edition – A comprehensive (but not complete) list of over 100 third-party Twitter tools that can improve your Twitter experience.
  
• Twitter Tools You Can Use – This information went into the creation of the steroid edition of the Twitter tools list.
  
• Twitter Tools You Can Use 2 – This information went into the creation of the steroid edition of the Twitter tools list.
  

What More Can Twitter Do For Me?

Every active Twitter user is looking for a new idea, a new way to maximize your Twitter experience. Here are some ways you can take Twitter even further.

• Organize A Local Tweetup – Use Twitter to meet up with other local Twitter users. Includes information about the very successful Tweetups conducted in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
  
• Multiple (Twitter) Personalities – Why your business might benefit from having more than one Twitter account and how to manage multiple accounts.
  
• One Twitter Account Or Two? – My experience as I started using two Twitter accounts.
  
• Twitter Community Management Tools – Your Twitter community is your most valuable Twitter resource. Here are some tools to help you grow a healthy Twitter community.
  
• Conference Tweeting – Most conferences today are integrating Twitter into the conference experience. Here are some tips for how to maximize your conference Twitter experience.
  
• Celebrity Twitterati – There are several types of Twitter personalities you will encounter, and this blog post borrows from celebrity brands to illustrate these personalities.

Your turn: What Twitter resources have helped you master your Twitterverse? Add them here in the comments.

Third-party Twitter tools can enhance your Twitter experience.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing Twitter tool lists organized by activity. It’s been fun compiling the lists, and you have enjoyed getting this practical information.

As part of my materials for the WritersUA conference this week, I’ve created a larger list of Twitter tools. This list is available to view or download as a PDF document. It includes more than 100 Twitter tools organized by activity, including:

• Communication tools for listening, talking, and sharing content with your community.
• Community management tools that help you organize and understand the people you follow and the people who follow you.
• Ego builder tools that allow you to evaluate your Twitter use and provide some valuable insight into your Twitter practices.
• Reputation management tools that allow you to hear the hidden conversations about your company, your products, and your brand.
• Timeline filters publish ongoing lists of tweets that meet specific criteria.
• Outside of the box tools use Twitter in a way it’s creators never imagined.

For each tool, I’ve provided a brief description of the service it provides along with its web address.

I have included many tools that I do not use. The fact that a tool appears in this list is not a recommendation from me, or a testimonial about it. I provide this information strictly as a service to help you find useful tools that help you meet your business goals for Twitter.

There are many tools that don’t appear in this list. In fact, I’ve found over 300 Twitter tools exist. I plan to continue providing lists of Twitter tools over time. If you like one of these tools, please feel free to write about it in the comments. Or, if this list doesn’t include your favorites, please add them in the comments so other people can find and enjoy them.

I hold the copyright to this list, but I’m publishing it under a Creative Commons license that allows you to print, copy, share, and publish the list as long as you don’t change the document. For more information about the Creative Commons license, use the link in the document footer to learn what you can and cannot do with the list.

View or download the Twitter Tools list.

Community management allows you to improve your Twitter experience.

Twitter is all about community.

You set the tone for your Twitter experience when you decide whom to follow. If you follow people who tweet about mundane, boring things, your Twitter experience is boring and mundane. The quality of your Twitter experience depends on the people you follow. In other words, if you don’t like your Twitter experience, change the people you follow.

In the beginning, most people spend a great deal of time figuring out whom to follow. After a while, you settle into a routine. I want to encourage you to spend a little time each week on community management. Look for new people to follow. Review the people you currently follow. Mix it up a bit.

Here are five Twitter tools that can help you manage your Twitter community, and greatly improve your Twitter experience.

Community Categories Revealed

Twitter uses two categories to describe your community: the people you follow and the people who follow you. Twitual uses three categories:

• Friends, or the people I follow who follow me back.
• Fans, the people who follow me even though I don’t follow them back.
• Idols, the people I follow who don’t follow me back.

Twitual is a community management tool that divides your Twitter community into these three groups and lets you see where each user falls. These categories make it easy to understand the dynamics within your community, and let you see your community at a glance.

Who’s Your Neighbor

One of the things I adore about my personal Twitter community is the fact that I see most of these people on a regular basis. They are my neighbors, and they run businesses or work at businesses in my community. We tweet between real life meetups.

If you are looking for twitterati in your neighborhood, you need Nearby Tweets. You provide an address or a geographic location. Nearby Tweets locates people who tweet near that location, and provides a timeline of their tweets. You can also do a keyword search through this group of tweets, and change the size of the search area by setting the number of miles from the address.

Follow Friday Suggestions

Every Friday, you may notice people posting tweets with the hashtag #followfriday. This is a grassroots effort to point out favorite people on Twitter. You might want to check for #followfriday recommendations from your favorite people. You can also do a Twitter search for the hashtag to get more recommendations.

And now, you can use Top Follow Friday to get a detailed list of recommendations. The people behind this site compile the individual #followfriday tweets into a master list that shows the recommended people, how many people recommended them, and even more trivia about this informal voting process. There are some gems in this list, people that you might never hear about through another means.

Help feed the machine. Next Friday, why don’t you post your own #followfriday list of 5 or so of your favorite people to follow? I go through the tweets I marked as a favorite during the week to decide whom to put on my #followfriday list.

Is Anyone Home?

Many people get a Twitter account, start out tweeting, and then lose interest, or get too busy. How can you tell if you follow any abandoned Twitter accounts? Use Twitoria! This tool goes through the accounts of everyone you follow and identifies how many days since their last tweet. You can adjust the setting to determine how long before someone appears in the list. For example, a week or two might just be caused by a vacation. But a longer time might mean that the person has moved on and won’t be tweeting any more.

I work to keep my following list small so I can engage my community. If I’m following an abandoned Twitter account, I see it as a slot someone else could have. So I delete people when they go silent.

The Last Goodbye

Twitter doesn’t notify you when someone stops following you. But Qwitter does. Not only does it tell you when someone quits you, but it tells you your last tweet before they quit. Now, the timing of their quitting with your last tweet can be a coincidence, but it also can show you a pattern, especially if a lot of people quit after the same tweet.

Conclusion

These community management tools make it much easier to tend your community garden. What tools do you use to monitor and maintain your community? Share them here and enlighten us with your strategies and tools.

Third-party Twitter tools can enhance your Twitter experience.

Last week, I started a new series of blog posts about Twitter tools. To help you organize them, I’ve arranged them according to my list of basic Twitter activities, which includes:

• Communication tools, broken into talking, listening, and content
• Community management tools, broken into follower and following management
• Reputation management tools
• Ego building
• Outside of the box uses for Twitter
• Timeline filters

Twitter Communication Tools

Talking Tools

Twiddict allows you to write tweets at any time, but especially when Twitter is down. It sends your tweets later.

Listening Tools

Tweet2Tweet allows you to put together tweets between two people in a timeline so you can see how they interact.

CrowdStatus allows you to change your Twitter timeline from a list to a series of blocks.

Twit Refresh performs an automatic refresh every 60 seconds.

Chirrup gives you a specialized Twitter feed as comments for a blog, website, or wiki.

Content Tools

Tweetcube allows you to share files up to 10MB through tweets.

Twit+ allows you to share files through tweets.

Twitter Community Management Tools

Follower Management

Tweepler allows you to review and then sort new followers into two categories, follow back and ignore.

Twitterless notifies you when someone stops following you.

Tweetake allows you to back up all of your followers.

Twimailer provides you with detailed emails about each new follower.

Following Management

Twitter Snooze allows you to eliminate tweets from selected users for a specific length of time without unfollowing the users.

Tweetake allows you to back up everyone you are following.

Twitter Reputation Management Tools

Twist allows you to create a graph showing the popularity of keywords over the last week. It also provides a list of current hot topics on Twitter.

TweetLists provides a list of the most popular links and domains in the Twitter timeline.

Twitter Ego Building

TweetValue calculates a dollar value for your Twitter account.

Twitter Grader evaluates your Twitter account and ranks you among other Twitter users.

Twitter Outside Of The Box

Twittez uses the power of crowd sources to answer your questions. Simply type a tweet with the phrase “does anyone know” and this tool publishes your tweet. People visit the Twittez site, read your question, and if they can provide an answer, it appears as an @reply to you.

Tweetake allows you to back up all of your tweets.

Twitter Timeline Filters

#Hashtags compiles information about individual hashtags (keywords preceded by a #) throughout the Twitter timeline and provides use analysis.

Filttr keeps track of tweets you like and don’t like and learns how to filter out tweets you don’t want to read.

3rd party tools enhance your Twitter experience.

In the course of my ongoing social media research, I’ve come across some really fun and useful Twitter tools. Here are a few of them. I’ve organized these according to the three general categories of Twitter activites I outlined in an earlier blog post, along with a couple other tool categories (see below). This is the first installment of on ongoing series. Check out the second installment of Twitter Tools You Can Use for 20 more Twitter tools.

Twitter Communication Tools

Talking Tools

Tweet O’Clock tells you the best time to find a specific user on Twitter.

TweetLater allows you to schedule tweets for a future time. (Also posted in Follower Management and Reputation Management)

Listening Tools

PollDaddy provides a way to ask your followers a question with single answer or multiple answers possibilities. The link to your poll goes out in a tweet. Easy response review. Requires your Twitter password.

TwtPoll allows you to create a survey and collect information from participants on Twitter, Facebook, and through email.

Content Tools

Twitt(url)y tracks the number of times a URL (or a shortened URL using TinyURL or SnipURL) gets tweeted. You can see the most commonly tweeted URLs, and break that down for a specific Twitter user.

TwitPwr provides a Twitter URL shortening service that tracks the number of click throughs on the line from your tweet and retweets. From your click-through rate, it calculates a power rating for your content. (Also posted in Twitter Ego Building)

Tweetburner provides a Twitter URL shortening service that also tracks if the link is retweeted and the number of click throughs.

TwitPic allows you to post pictures online and share them on Twitter.

Twiddeo allows you to post videos and share them on Twitter.

TwitterFeed automatically tweets every time you add a blog post.

Autopostr tweets each time you add photos to Flickr.

Twitter Community Management Tools

Follower Management

Twitoria identifies inactive followers and gives you options for filtering the list based on how long the user has been inactive.

TweepSearch provides a way to do a keyword search through the bios of your followers. (Also listed in Following Management)

FriendorFollow provides a breakout of your followers and which ones you do not follow back. I’ve found some errors in this information. (Also listed in Following Management)

TweetLater allows you to send automated messages to new followers, and to automatically follow the people who follow you. (Also posted in Communication Tools and Reputation Management)

Following Management

Top Follow Friday collects the recommended Twitter users from the #followfriday grassroots project and compiles them. If you are looking for top recommended people to follow, start here. (This is a new project, so results are building).

Twibs provides a directory of businesses using Twitter. Search for a business, or add your business here. Use the tags to search through a business category.

Nearby Tweets provides access to a tweet stream from users near a geographic location. You set the location, and you can perform keyword searches. (Also listed in Reputation Management)

Twellow provides a directory of Twitter users organized by category. Add yourself and fill out an extended biography.

Twitter Social Brand Index provides a categorized list of companies and agencies with their Twitter account information.

TweepSearch provides a way to do a keyword search through the bios all Twitter users currently indexed by this tool. (Also listed in Follower Management)

Mr. Tweet provides recommendations for people you can follow. You must follow MrTweet to use this service.

FriendorFollow provides a breakout of the people you are following and which ones you do not follow back. I’ve found some errors in this information. (Also listed in Follower Management)

Twits Like Me uses your tweet content to find other similar Twitter users that you can follow.

Twubble searches through your Twitter friends to see who they follow, and recommends people that you can follow. You must provide your Twitter login to use this.

Twitter Reputation Management Tools

SamePoint searches for your keyword (think brand, product, etc.) across several social media tools including Twitter. Really amazing finds.

Nearby Tweets allows you to perform keyword searches for Twitter users in a specific geographic location. (Also listed in Following Management)

Tweet Scan provides keywork searching across Twitter and other microblogging applications.

Twist allows you to search for a keyword and displays a graph of its use in tweets over a week. Also allows you to compare two or more keywords with overlapping graphs.

TweetLater allows you conduct keyword searches and emails you the results. (Also posted in Communication Tools and Follower Management)

Tweetbeep sends you email updates when your keywords appear in tweets.

Twitter Ego Building

This is not a category for Twitter activities. However, there are many tools in the twitterverse that seem (to me) to exist only to build the ego of a Twitter user. I’m not a fan of these tools, but I do think they have provide some value to a Twitter user who wants to look more objectively at his or her Twitter use.

Twitalyzer provides an analysis of a Twitter user’s influence, signal, generosity, velocity, and clout. It also shows trends since your last analysis. Very detailed statistical study of user activity.

Twitterholic provides a list of Twitter users in order by number of followers. It also provides follower and follower trends for individual Twitter users.

ReTweetRank provides a ranking of Twitter users based on how often other people retweet them.

TwitPwr provides a power rating for your content based on the number of link click throughs. (Also posted in Communication Tools)

Twitter Outside Of The Box

These tools allow you to use Twitter in a way that it was never intended to be used.

bkkeepr allows you to track your book reading and progress through each book using the book’s ISBN number. You must follow bkkeeper to use this service.

TweetDumpr allows you to export your tweets to a comma delimited file for archiving or other uses.

HelpWith allows you to crowd source answers to challenges you face, and to help others.

Twitzu allows you to create an event and promote it through Twitter.

Twitter Filters

These tools allow you to see tweets pulled from all users in a humorous or useful way.

TwittEarth allows you to watch tweets as they appear around the globe.

Twistori pulls tweets that contain the words love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish and scrolls them across the screen.

Twitter Spy pulls tweets in real time and displays them on a world map.

You can use Twitter to meet your business goals in just minutes each day.

I’m speaking next month at a conference about Twitter. To prepare for this, I’ve been asking people in the community why they don’t currently use Twitter at work or for their business. The reasons reveal all sorts of misconceptions about Twitter and its use. It’s good to get those wrong ideas out in the open and let the light of day heal people with right information.

One of the most common misconceptions about Twitter is that is takes a lot of time. There’s a truth and a myth here. First, the truth is that some people can spend their whole day chatting on Twitter and never accomplish anything. That’s not a criticism, but it isn’t great behavior for the workplace, or for a small business person. Fortunately, it’s a myth that Twitter requires a lot of time. I consider myself active on Twitter with two accounts and I spent about 30 minutes a day on Twitter. The contacts I make and the information I gather would take me much longer than that to research and find through other means. For me, this is time very well spent.

So if you don’t use Twitter because you think it takes a lot of time, or if you are not comfortable yet with your Twitter routines, I’ve got some information that will really rock your world.

Basic Twitter Activities

In my opinion, there are three general categories of activities you should perform on Twitter to maintain your community and fulfill your Twitter goals. Each of these are equally important, but they take different amounts of time.

Communicate With Your Community

This is the biggest activity on Twitter, sending tweets and reading tweets. The whole purpose of being on Twitter is to engage your community to accomplish your personal Twitter goal. This is where you fulfill your goal.

Throughout each day, you perform these acts:

• Compose and send tweets.
• Read direct messages sent to you and reply.
• Read @replies sent to you and reply.
• Read (some say skim) the timeline.
• Follow interesting links in tweets.
• Reply to tweets.

I check Twitter after I complete a chunk of work, usually once every hour or two. In five minutes or less, I do the follow (in this order):

1. Check for direct messages and reply.
2. Check for @replies and reply.
3. Skim the recent timeline (one page) and reply to tweets.
4. Click on interesting links (sometimes bookmark them for later reading).
5. Retweet the really good or important stuff

I usually write tweets while I’m checking my email/RSS reader. I get a lot of newsletters and blog posts coming in, and when I find something outstanding or interesting for one of my two Twitter communities, I write a tweet. It’s my way of sharing the gems from the river of information that I skim every day. The time it takes to craft tweets gets incorporated into my email/RSS time, and most days adds another 5-10 minutes to my email time.

Community Management

In the beginning, it takes some time to define your Twitter community and figure out your follow policy so they fulfill your Twitter goal. But after you get those basics figured out, you can do your community management in about 10 minutes once a week. Here’s what I do to help you figure out what might work for you.

1. I review my new followers and decide whom to follow back. (I have different follow back policies on each of my accounts).
2. I use Twitter’s search function to find potential new people to follow. (I have a list of keywords that I’ve refined over the weeks to help me pinpoint people appropriate for my Twitter goals.)
3. I briefly review the list of people I follow and unfollow anyone who has generated more noise than signal (my assessment), or who hasn’t tweeted in a while.

Throughout the week, I perform one other community management function. As I skim the timeline, I notice whom my friends engage through @replies, and if I see the same name a few times, I check out that person’s archive. Occasionally, I add a new person to my community during the week using this technique.

Reputation Management

What are people saying about you and your company, products, and brand on Twitter? This is as important for a solopreneur or consultant as it is for big companies with famous brands.

There are many ways to tap into the hidden conversations about you, your company, and your brand on Twitter.

• Use the Twitter search feature and generate an RSS feed.
• Use one of the many Twitter alert services, such as TweetBeep or Twilert to send you an email.

I spent less than five minutes a week reviewing these findings. Based on how often you find something here, you may want to check more frequently and spent more time. Larger companies or companies with a larger public presence devote significant resources to online reputation management.

The Verdict

That’s it. That’s how I spent approximately 2:30 on Twitter each week. Your time and activities may vary because of your Twitter goal, your company size, and other factors.

What do you think? Have I missed something? How do you spend your time on Twitter?