Advanced Twitter Tools: Ten Tricks of the Trade

Twitter, the youngest in the brood of social networking websites, is changing the face of hospitality 140-characters at a time. As more organizations begin to tap into this phenomenon in a bid to directly connect with customers, operators may or may not be aware that there is a wide array of Twitter tools available at their disposal to aid in their social networking efforts. Hospitality Technology offers this round-up of ten Twitter tools.

TweetDeck: This free one-stop-shop offers users the ability to organize information and connect with audiences across Twitter, Facebook and MySpace through a personalized browser. Among TweetDeck's many functions, users can monitor their friends' conversations, follow topics in real-time, receive up-to-date notifications and avoid Twitter spam. What's more, TweetDeck is also available for the iPhone, allowing users to sync up their devices as a mobile option.

TwAitter: This free business and marketing tool, which was recently named a "Top 5 Twitter Business App" by PCWorld Magazine and CIO Magazine, allows users to schedule and set recurring messages, translate tweets into any language, spell-check, shorten URLs and more. And soon, users will be able to register their blog or business RSS feeds with twaitter.

Pay-Per-Tweet: This advertising application enables Twitter users to connect with advertisers to buy word-of-mouth advertising.

TwitterAnalyzer: Often referred to by some users as the "Google Analytics for Twitter users," TwitterAnalyzer offers more than 50 different statistical measurements that enable users to analyze themselves and their friends. Measurements are displayed in both 3D graphics and world view maps. Top features include the ability to track daily reach rates, follower activity, user mentions among friends, group demographics and more.

Tweet-U-Later: Interested in uploading multiple tweets for future deployment? Tweet-U-Later is a free application that allows users to create and schedule one or more messages in advance. Users simply need to create an account, log in to write a message, and then set their desired posting time.

TweetCube: TweetCube is designed for users who are interested in sharing files via Twitter. Users can blast images, music, PDFs and more through this application.

Widgets: Users can make the most of their social networking efforts through an array of Twitter widgets. These widgets are designed to allow users to cross promote their Twitter updates with other websites or social networking sites like Faecbook and MySpace. Users have the option to create a profile, search, favorites or list widget. Additionally, each widget can be customized in terms of appearance, dimensions and more.

Tweeps.info: This service tracks statistical information about Twitter users including average tweets per day, social participation ratios and most commonly tweeted words. Users can tap into this service to help them to decide who to follow or who they would like to be following them. Tweeps.info's statistics are updated several times a day.

Tweetizen: This web-based tool is designed to help users filter out the tweets that they want to read from the rest. Tweetizen's filtering mechanism goes through millions of tweets to come up with the tweets that matter most to users according to tags and keywords.

Hashwork: Hashwork is a social business tool that enables companies to connect with its employees directly, in addition to external audiences and groups. This application integrates bi-directionally with Twitter and users can attach files, images and wiki-style text if they wish.

 

Operators need to keep in mind that these are just some of the many Twitter tools and applications available today. Even more marketing, analytic and specialized applications are available on the Twitter fan wiki. And for those who are interested in creating their own app, Twitter also offers an application programming interface (API).