Twitter-ganize! How to use all the Twools.

Ok, I’ve got to admit, after getting my blackberry and then diving into Twitter, I am an official crackberry/social media addict (and this was less than a month ago). And after reading a lot of suggested tools I started accumulating more tools that I could imagine using, so I’ve categorized the different twapps (twitter applications) into a few categories to make it easier for all of us to figure out what is needed and how to use them.

Stats - use these tools to get a good idea of how you and others are doing in terms of tweets, followers, friends, etc.

TweetStats.com – gives a good overview how serious your addiction… I mean it shows you visually what your Tweeting habits are, like when and how much you tweet. Or who you reply to the most, like the graph below:

Who are you stalking?

Twitter Grader – since you do all this Twittering, you’ve got to have earned something, right? Well, I’m happy to say I got an A (96.7%), woohoo. One thing I really like about the Twitter grader is the tweet cloud of the words that come up in my tweets often. Very good visual:

Oooh ooh, I got an "A"

Twitterholic – now this won’t give you specifics on your own twitter account, but you can see who’s the who’s who of Twitter (Get it? Owl, whoo whoo? nevermind….)

All these people's thumbs must hurt!

Twitter Counter – For those of you that like stocks or charting, this one is a good one to see your follower trends and somewhat predict where you’ll be in terms of friends in the future:

I wish the stock market did that.

Trends - keeping track of what is popular is pretty easy with the following tools.

Hashtags – Those are the #this #that on Twitter. It allows people to track and keep track of popular terms/topics on Twitter.

Pound, Hash, whatevr u want to call it.

Twitscoop – This is a great visual tool to see what the conversation surrounds on twitter through a ‘word cloud’:

Look into the clouuudddd....

Monitter – This one is cool. You can key in a keyword and then see a realtime update in a sleek format of the exact tweets occuring live on Twitter:

Keywords Live from Twitter!

Tools - Here are a few tools to help on the tweeting, replying, checking direct messages and manage followers/friends.

Tweetdeck – This is my top choice so far for a Twitter desktop application. It works like an outlook of Twitter where you can see Tweets, responses, and dm’s all in one window. The best thing is you can add views for groups (like “close friends” or “work”, etc.) and see just Tweets from the people you add to those groups. Check it out, it doesn’t hurt to try.

Twitter Karma – Many people don’t know there is a 2000 following limit on Twitter until you get enough followers. So you might want to use this website to quickly view those that you follow who don’t follow you and un-follow those to make room for other people you wish to follow. I haven’t used it yet because I just feel bad unfollowing someone. So if you want to help me (@visiondecor_evl) out, follow me so I don’t have to un-follow others and I’ll also follow you back .

Twitoria – Now if you want to be more meticulous about who you follow, you can use this website to find those that you follow who are inactive. Like the old saying goes, why follow someone if they have nothing to say?

Tips & Tricks - here are just a few more links on great sites I came across with tips and tricks on twittering, getting followers, and just how to really participate and make friends on twitter:

Twitip on Twitter Tricks
Guy Kawasaki on Retweeting

Leave me a comment if you have any questions, suggestions, or if this was helpful to your or not. Thanks for reading! Oh yeah, if you want to follow me on twitter, I’m @visiondecor_evl, or http://twitter.com/visiondecor_evl

Happy Tweeting!