I regularly get emails and direct messages asking me if I tweet myself or if use a team of people help me maintain my Twitter accounts. I have two @smallbizlady and @smallbizchat. Well, the answer is that I do it myself, and here’s some of the tools that I use to manage my online brand on Twitter. Hopefully you’ll be able to build your business using some of these great tools–some of them will work with Facebook and LinkedIn, too.
Twitter Monitoring & Automation Tools
- HootSuite (http://hootsuite.com)
- TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com)
- Seesmic (http://seesmic.com)
Backing Up Your Tweets
- Tweetake (http://tweetake.com)
- BackupMyTweets (http://www.backupmytweets.com)
- TweetBackup (http://www.tweetbackup.com)
Website link Shorteners:
- Bit.ly (http://bit.ly)
- Ow.ly (http://ow.ly)
- TinyURL.com (http://tinyurl.com)
Finding New Friend Suggestions
- Twellow (http://twellow.com)
- WeFollow (http://wefollow.com)
Finding Conversations on Twitter
- Tinker.com (http://tinker.com)
- TweetMeme (http://tweetmeme.com)
Participate on Twitter Chats
such as #Smallbizchat (Wed-8-9pm ET)
- Tweetchat.com http://www.tweetchat.com
- Tweetgrid.com http://www.tweetgrid.com
- Tinychat.com http://www.tinychat.com
Develop Polls on Twitter
- YouMatchUp.com (http://youmatchup.com)
Are there any other Twitter tools that you use for your small business? I am always looking for new resources.
For more tips on starting or growing your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog at www.succeedasyourownboss.com
Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. She hosts #SmallBizChat weekly on Twitter for emerging entrepreneurs and publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com. Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010) For more information http://www.becomeyourownbossbook.com
Thanks for this nice list! In terms of finding new friend suggestions, here’s another free resource — Twitter recently made this easier to by putting them in your right sidebar. At first, I didn’t like it because it pushed my list content down. But I have made good use of it by finding people in my lines of work that I didn’t know excited. I think it’s a great resource. If I wasn’t already connected to you, I be it would have made that happen pretty quickly! Thanks again for such a useful list.
Donna Maria–
Thank you so much for chiming in with your comment. I believe small business owners need to understand the power of twitter.
Melinda
Great helpful tips! I appreciate that you made it so concise and easy to follow.
Sean—
I am so glad that this information was helpful to you. I wrote this post because I was tired of hearing small business owners say they didn’t get twitter. Now there are no excuses.
Continued success,
Melinda
This is great! I’ve been struggling with twitter for a year now with monotonous tweets about our products and no time and ideas about personalization and effective managing of this social tool!
Thank you Melinda. you inspire and give many wonderful tips for my business.
Currently am using TweetDeck and loving it 🙂
Seems to me your real freinds would have already realized you’re going through some rough shit right now and would understand. it doesn’t seem fair at all for anyone to get mad or irritated with you. especially since you can never assume with ANYONE that they happened to see a tweet or read a post. i mean really, how many times do you need to say you aren’t reading blogs right now? You worry about YOU for now and fuck anyone who can’t get it. It’s all about surving til you’re thriving. you’ll get there. hug Reply:October 10th, 2009 at 3:59 pm, I’m gonna disagree with you a little here. Everyone is entitled to their own feelings. If something I’ve done (or not done) has caused someone’s feelings to be hurt, I don’t begrudge them that.All I can do is try to explain myself.