I. Introduction

This guide serves as an overview of what Twitter is (specifically the “new” platform) and how it can help a company reach their business objectives.  The appeal of Twitter and one of the reasons why it has become very popular is that it is extremely simplistic yet personal (provides a human element) when comparing it to other social media websites. Additionally, part of its appeal is its ability to quickly and effectively distribute information to a large audience.  Building up the popularity of a Twitter account requires a substantial amount of effort and maintenance, but the results that can be achieved by utilizing this social media website are extremely significant.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging website that allows a user to write about pretty much anything.  The user has a 140 character limit when posting (or “tweeting”) and is able to include links to particular articles / webpages of interests.  A user can “tweet” about anything ranging from what they had for breakfast to a website that provides valuable SEO advice to a question to another Twitter user.  Twitter allows each user to follow other users and interact with these individuals by sending them direct messages or by replying to one of their “tweets”. Other features of Twitter include the creation of a profile (name, website, “about me”), a profile picture, an easy to use internal search engine, custom background design,  integration with various 3^rd party applications, and the ability to “tweet” via a mobile device.

II. Benefits

If used frequently, Twitter can offer a variety of benefits for a business including:

• Increases in brand awareness
• Effectively targeting a specific demographic
• Referral traffic
• Providing a “human element” to a company
• Generating buzz about a company or a new product/service.
• Directly interact with potential  and current consumers
• Easily distribute information

III. Process

1.  Creating a Twitter Account

2.  Building Up Your Account

3.  Guidelines of “Tweeting”

4.  Interacting with your Target Audience

5.  Functionality - Location of Features

6.  Tips and Tools

Creating a Twitter Account

1.  Select a username and profile name that represents your business.

• The username becomes part of the Twitter URL (i.e. twitter.com/companyname).
  • Twitter often shows up among the first page of Google for brand-related searches.

• Allows people who are looking for your account to easily find you via Twitter’s internal “find people” feature as well as through Google searches.

2. Create a profile that provides information about your company.

• Cater to people who might not know what your company does.
  • Increase brand awareness and potential consumers.
• Include a link to your website.
  • Increases total referral traffic.
• Include a profile picture.
  • Increases the chances that a user will view/interact with your account.
  • In most cases, should be either a company logo or your actual picture.

3.  Do NOT protect your updates.

• Decreases the number of followers to a particular account.

Building Up Your Account

The key to building up a successful Twitter account is obtaining a large amount of followers who are actually engaged with your brand.  Simply following a bunch of random people will decrease the probability that you will obtain a large number of followers, not be effective in reaching your target market, possibly result in a banning of your account if enough people report you, and is a complete waste of time. The following is a step by step approach of successfully building up a Twitter account.

1.  Send an E-Mail Blast to Your Existing Customers

If you send e-mail blasts, you should dedicate a blast informing your customers about your brand joining Twitter. It is substantially easier to get an existing customer to follow you on Twitter than to get an individual who isn’t as engaged with your brand to follow you.  To increase the success rate of this blast, offer them an incentive for following you (i.e. “All Twitter followers receive 20% off their next purchase).

2.  Add a Twitter Logo To Your Website

It is becoming increasingly commonplace for a brand to add Twitter and Facebook logos on their website that link up to their accounts.  This is another simple, but effective, strategy in obtaining qualified followers. You can draw further attention to the button by creating a unique design. Instead of having the standard lowercase t or the Twitter bird, design a “follow us on Twitter” button that is pertinent to your industry. If you are a restaurant, for example, create a Twitter bird with a chef’s hat.

3.  Follow People Who are Mentioning Your Brand

Twitter has a internal search tool (http://search.twitter.com) that allows users to search for keywords contained within recent tweets. If you discover that a user is positively mentioning your brand within a tweet, retweet their post and then follow that person. A user who already has a positive perception of your brand is likely to follow you back.

4.  Join Twitter Directories

There are numerous Twitter directories that allow users to submit their Twitter accounts to various categories. These directories are utilized by individuals to find Twitter accounts pertaining to their interests. It is highly recommended that you submit your Twitter account to the following directories.

• • WeFollow
  • Twibes
  • Just Tweet It
  • Twellow
  • TweetFind

Most of these directories allow you to submit your account to multiple categories (Twibes, for example, allows 10 category submissions). It is recommended that you submit your account to as many categories as possible to increase visibility.

5.  Use Relevant Hashtags

A hashtag refers to adding a # symbol in front of a word within a tweet. When this is implemented, it transforms the word into a clickable link. This link reveals all other tweets containing that specific hashtag. Hashtags are mainly utilized to categorize tweets. If I’m tweeting about a new Google feature, for example, I might say “Google changes their ranking algorithm. #seo #internetmarekting”.  These hashtags are used by numerous users to find accounts relating to their interest. By adding relevant hashtags to your tweets, it can help increase exposure to your Twitter account.

As a general rule, no more than 2 or 3 hashtags should be utilized per tweet. Additionally, it is recommended that you search for the hashtag before you use it to ensure that others are also using it within their tweets.

6.  Identify and Interact with Key Influencers

Chances are, there will be numerous influencers pertaining to your industry that have a presence on Twitter. An influencer is described as someone who has a large number of followers and has an account that is being frequently interacted with by other users in the form of replies and retweets.  By retweeting and replying to these influencers posts, it helps to put your account within their radar, increasing the chances that they will retweet your posts in the future.

7.  Include Twitter Account in Press Releases

If you are launching press releases, make sure to include your Twitter account within the content. Inform readers that by following your brand on Twitter, they will be receiving updates about your company, discounts, and whatever else you are communicating regularly through your Twitter account.

8.  Create Twitter Lists

Another way to draw attention to your account is by creating industry specific Twitter lists and adding relevant users to it (including your account).

Guidelines of “Tweeting”

You might be able to build a large amount of followers, but how you are actually utilizing Twitter will determine whether these users will continue to follow and engage with your account.  There are many methods that can be implemented that will help to ensure your Twitter account continues to grow on a regular basis.

1. Tweet frequently

Your account should not go longer than three days without a tweet. The longer you go without tweeting, the higher probability that people will stop following your account. Do not overdue this. Tweeting too much could “annoy” users and cause them to stop following your account.

2. Convey the appropriate types of messages within your tweets

The more “successful” Twitter accounts usually have an adequate balance between conversational, self-promotional and industry-related tweets. Typically, conversational tweets should encompass the majority of your tweets in most cases. Tweets should reflect your business, industry and/or company culture.

3. Don’t include links with every tweet

Makes an account look “spammy”. Reassures followers that the account is not entirely self-serving.

4. ReTweeting

If an individual has tweeted something relevant to your industry/company, you should “ReTweet” the post. To “ReTweet” a post, type in RT @username tweet you wish you repost. You can opt to click on the “retweet” button directly underneath the tweet, but the RT @username format tends to get noticed more often. The individual whose “tweet” you are “retweeting” is more likely to post about your account/”tweets”.

5. Offer an incentive/deal

Promote a discount that will benefit your consumers. People often respond to “tweets” that will benefit them in some way. Inform individuals that future incentives for Twitter followers will also be promoted. Will also entice users to keep following your account.

6. Promote a new product / service well in advanced

Generate buzz/word of mouth by discussing a new product or service well before its launch date.

7. Avoid direct messages in most cases

Direct messages used to have value in their infancy, but now are considered a portal for spam. Most direct messages that an account receives are automated and only serve to promote a website, brand, or Twitter account. Additionally, there are many users who will unfollow a user if they receive an automated direct message from that person.

It is recommended that direct messaging only be used to distribute information that you do not wish to make public. Example:, if you launch a contest through Twitter and need the winner’s phone number, you would most likely use direct messages over public tweeting.

8. Shorten URLs

Shortening a URL in a tweet is not only common, it is expected.  A shortened URL makes a tweet look a lot “cleaner” while providing the ability to add more characters within a tweet. http://bit.ly will not only allow you to shorten any URL, but will provide analytical information such as the number of individuals who clicked on the link. Additionally, you can create custom bit.ly URLs for your website.

Interacting with your Target Audience

1. Reply to “tweets”

Hover over the tweet you wish to reply to in order to reveal the “reply” button on the bottom.

Replies should be directly correlated with the particular “tweet” and type your reply after the @username.

This is an effective account building method.

2. Start a Conversation

Asking a question is a great way to draw attention to your account

For example: A discount travel website asking “How has the economy affected your ability to go on vacation?“

Incorporate the user’s response with your business.

Using the economy question, if a user states that they are no longer able to go on vacation because of the associated costs, you can reply telling them all about the great travel deals your website offers. It is important to note, that this should only be implemented occasionally to avoid being perceived as a “self-serving” account.

It may take multiple questions to obtain a large amount of responses.  Do not give up if your first attempt does not yield the results you desire. The amount of responses will increase as you continue building up your account.

3. Use Twitter for Customer Service Inquiries

A Twitter user that asks a public question about your brand on Twitter, should receive a public response (even just to say “I’m not sure, let me get back to you on this”).  Often times, companies will avoid responding to negative inquiries (i.e. “I am dissatisfied with your company and your products”) because they are considered adding “fuel to the fire”. However, by responding to these negative tweets, it can help turn a negative situation into a positive one and can help retain a customer. For inquiries that require a substantial amount of back and forth interaction, it is okay to inform the person to contact someone via e-mail or phone.

4. Retweeting

I prefer to use the “reply” feature to retweet other users’ posts, but Twitter does offer the ability to retweet by simply clicking a “retweet” button.  To implement this action, hover over the tweet and click on the “retweet” button located on the bottom of the tweet.

5. Search for Relevant Tweets

Use http://search.twitter.com to find relevant tweets pertaining to your brand or industry.  This will help to find Twitter users to interact with.  If you prefer not to implement daily searches, you can set up Twitter alerts through a program like TwitterAlerts.net or you can set them up through a 3^rd party software like TweetDeck. This way, you can carry on with your daily tasks and receive automatic notifications every time a new tweet appears relating to the specific keyword phrase.

Functionality - Location of Features

This section is especially important for individuals using the “old” twitter as you will eventually have to start using the new platform. Below is a list of the various functionality described earlier in the document and where they are located.

What’s Happening? - This will be the box that you use most often on Twitter. If you are posting from Twitter.com, this will be where all tweets are implemented. You also have the ability to add your location to each tweet if you prefer.

@Mentions - @Mentions is where all replies to your account are located. If a user tweets “@(yourusername)” their tweet will appear in this section. This is located underneath the “what’s happening” text box.

Retweets - The “Retweets” link displays 3 options: Retweets by others, Retweets by you, Your Tweets, retweeted. “Retweets by others” will display any tweets retweeted by users you are following, “retweets by you” will display any tweets that you retweeted, and “your tweets, retweeted” will show any of your tweets that have been retweeted. This is located directly to the right of the “@Mentions” link.

Search - As mentioned, you can use http://search.twitter.com to find tweets by specific keywords. However, you can also utilize Twitter’s internal search by using the “search” tool bar directly on the home page. This is located towards the top left side of the page. The difference between this internal search bar and http://search.twitter.com is that http://search.twitter.com has an advanced search feature that allows you to breakdown tweets by location, links, and other categories.

Searches - Twitter provides the option to save individual keyword searches. After you save a search, it will appear in the “searches” link located to the right of the retweets. It is recommended that you save searches for keywords that you are commonly searching for like your brand.

Lists - Lists are a way for Twitter users to organize other Twitter users by category. If you’re following more than a handful of people, it can be difficult to keep track of all tweets by sorting through your timeline. With Twitter Lists, you can organize these users any way you wish (i.e “Industry Experts”, “Employees”, “Friends”, etc.). The lists link, which is located to the right of “Searches”, is organized by four categories: “Lists by You”, “Create a List”, “Lists You Follow”, and “Lists Following You”. “Lists by You” will show any list that you previously created. “Create a List” will bring you to the page to create a new list. “Lists You Follow” shows lists that you are following, but that you did not create”. “Lists Following You” displays any list that has added you.

To add someone to a list you created, access their profile, select the “list” icon and check off which list you’d like to add them to. Something to note, other users cannot add people to a list you created, but can follow your lists (unless you set it as “private”).

Trends - The 10 most popular tweeted keywords will be displayed under the “trends” category (located towards the right side of the page). You can sort these tweets by worldwide or by a specific location. This is useful in assessing what are the “hot topics” for that particular day on Twitter.

Messages - The “messages” link (located towards the top of the page) shows any new direct messages you have received on Twitter and will also allow you to send direct messages to other users.

Who to Follow - Twitter will list some accounts that they recommend you follow based on who else you are following and the type of tweets you’ve been posting.

Favorite - Just like you can save a search term, you can also save a tweet as a “favorite”. This is useful if you want to reference a specific tweet at a later date. In order to save a tweet, hover over the tweet and click on the star next to “favorite”.

Settings - On the top right corner, your twitter name and icon will be displayed along with a dropdown menu. Clicking on the “settings” link will reveal a variety of different settings related to your account.

The “settings” link will allow you to do the following:

Account: Change your username, change your e-mail address, let others find your e-mail address, change language setting, chage your time zone, automatically add locations to your tweet, show photos and videos from other users, and “protecting” your tweets (keep them private from users who you don’t approve. This is something that should not be checked if you are looking to grow your Twitter account).

Password: Change your password.

Mobile: Allow users to find you by your phone number and receive text messaging notifications.

Notices: Notifications via e-mail alerts.

Profile: Change you profile picture, name, location, web address, and bio.

Design: Change your background theme or upload  custom theme.

Connections: Most 3^rd party Twitter applications will have you login via “Twitter Connect” (a way to automatically login to the program via Twitter without having to create a new username and password). Any 3^rd party application in which you implemented this action will appear under connections. You can also revoke access for any of these 3^rd party applications within this tab.

Tips and Tools

There are many different methods that a person can use to achieve great success on Twitter.   Make sure you frequently test different strategies to see what works the best for your particular account.  The information below serves as additional tips that will aide in meeting your marketing objectives.

1. Frequently test different strategies

Not every strategy works for every Twitter account.  Make sure you measure the results relating to every strategy that is implemented.

2. Analyze “important” metrics

People will often analyze Twitter followers and not much else when it comes to analyzing results from their campaign. While this is an important metric, it doesn’t necessarily tell the full story of how your account is performing. Below are additional metrics that can be used to analyze your Twitter success:

• • Engagement Levels: The number of replies and retweets related to your account. The higher the number, the more people are engaged with your account.
  • Brand Mentions: The total number of brand mentions on Twitter. If you’re increasing your popularity on Twitter, you’ll notice an increase in this metric.
  • Ratio of Followers to Following: In my opinion, an account that is following 100,000 users and has 10,000 followers is a lot less impressive than an account who is following 20 users and has 1,000 followers. An account that is truly successful on Twitter will grow followers naturally.  If you start to follow 10,000 people at random, chances are at least a few will follow back. However, if these people aren’t viewing your tweets or interacting with your account, they are not qualified followers.
  • Traffic from Twitter: Are people visiting your website from Twitter and has this number grown? Additionally, you should analyze the quality of this traffic in terms of page views, average time spent on site, and bounce rate.
  • Value Added Metrics: Some benefits of Twitter cannot be analyzed via hard numbers. Say, for example, a dissatisfied customer posted on Twitter about how they will never buy from your company again. If you reached out to this person, resolved the issue, and turned them into a future customer this illustrates success related to Twitter, albeit one that can’t be tracked through any sort of hard metrics.
    
    

3. Do not neglect your account

It is extremely easy to go a week or even longer without logging into your Twitter account.  It can take two months (or more) to restore the popularity of your Twitter account just by going a couple of weeks without “tweeting”.

4. Use 3^rd Party Applications

There are many 3^rd party applications that make it easier to post, search, and interact on Twitter. Below are some 3^rd party applications that we recommend to help get you strated.

• TweetDeck: Organizing @mentions, messages, keyword searches, and lists in one place.
• SocialOomph: Scheduling tweets to publish at a later date.
• HootSuite: Manage multiple accounts from one location
• Twitter for iPhone: Twitter application for the iPhone
• UberTwitter: Recommended Twitter application for Blackberry
• Twidroid: Recommended Twitter application for the Android
• CoTweet: Platform that allows you to assign tweets to other individuals. This is useful if you have multiple employees managing one Twitter account.
• TwitPic: Posts and organize photos on Twitter
• Dlvr.It: Automatically feed blog posts (and other RSS) directly onto your Twitter.
• Involver - Twitter: Create a custom Facebook Tab that organizes your Twitter stream.

5. Read your Direct Messages and @replies frequently

Make sure your messages and replies are checked on a daily basis.  You might miss a great business opportunity by neglecting them.

Now go get Twittering!!!

Share this Story:

By David Neuman

One question that always surprises me when people ask it is “What is the monetary value of a Twitter follower or Facebook like?”. Companies have tried to put a dollar amount on this metric (I’ve heard anywhere from $0.10 all the way to $200). Asking a question like this is the equivalent of asking “what is the value of a visit to my website” or “how much is an impression worth in my paid search campaign”. Forget about the fact that I think people who create a monetary value for this metric are likely running failed Social Media campaigns and are desperately trying to show some value for what they’re doing. The real problem with having this thought process is that every follower, like, website visitor, and impression is different and should be analyzed as such.

Since advertising campaigns were able to be tracked, the mindset has always been “bigger is better”. The more website visits, television commercial views (and now YouTube video views), Facebook likes, and Twitter followers the better. Why is this the case? I can buy traffic that will guarantee me 100,000 visitors in a month, purchase thousands of Twitter and Facebook connections, and pay hundreds of thousands of people to view my YouTube video. At the end of the day, this has very little value (if any value at all). If you pay $5,000 for 10,000 Twitter followers, will it produce over $5,000 in total revenue for your business? Chances are that it won’t.

The focus should always be quality over quantity. I’d much rather have 1,000 Twitter followers who are visiting my website and engaging regularly with my account than 20,000 followers who will rarely or never have any interaction with the brand. Yet to someone who places a price on a Twitter follower, the account with 20,000 followers is far more valuable. I think it’s perfectly okay to place some emphasis on the total number of connections your accounts have (especially if you’re growing them by natural means), but it should never be entirely what you base your Social Media success on. At the end of the day, if you only see growth in the number of your connections, but not anywhere else (website traffic, sales, social network interactions, etc.) what value do these connections really have?

Share this Story:

Question:

Do you have any suggestions as to how to make our videos more visible?

“We have over a dozen videos on youtube, but they are not showing up in the first few pages of google search results when we search by our name “Consignment Chic“. I have tagged each video with relevant keywords.

-Andrea of Consignment Chic

Answer:

Google is most likely viewing the pages that rank higher as more relevant for the term “Consignment Chic” than your videos.

If you’d like to increase visibility and rankings, I recommend that you promote your videos to various high level social bookmarking websites. These include websites such as Digg, Reddit, Propeller, StumbleUpon, etc.

When you submit the video, make sure the term “Consignment Chic” appears within the title and description of your post. This will help you increase total views to your videos and help to generate more external links pointing to your videos which are both factors in determining videos’ rankings on Google.

Wouldn’t you like to have all your web marketing questions answered like this?

Gain access to Traffic Vault’s Member Section - 14 days for $1.

Share this Story:

If you are using bit.ly to track your clicks from Twitter, you’ll notice a big difference  compared to Google Analytics.

Here’s an example-

Our Huge List of Twitter Tools and Applications registers well over 1,000 clicks.  This would indicate that  Google Analytics should show a similar number of Page Views.

Bit.ly’s Count of Clicks

Now take a look at Google Analytics… It is only counting 585 Page Views.  What happened to the rest of the clicks that Bit.ly counted?

Google Analytics Pageviews

This discrepancy can partly be explained by mobile users whose device does not run the Google Analytics script.  The huge growth in Twitter mobile usage verifies the possibility that a lot of the traffic is truly mobile.

Other contributing factors include: people who have scripts disabled in their browser and those who click off the page so quickly that the script doesn’t load.

If there’s a huge difference in your numbers, it might be mobile.

Food for thought:  How does your website look on mobile devices?!?

Share this Story:

We hate that too.

Below is a list of great SEO tools- almost all free!

SEObook Rank Checker
This Firefox extension allows you to check your search engine rankings in seconds. Simply enter your website URL, the keywords, and find out your positions for Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

SEO for Firefox
This is a great tool. It lets you see relevant data about the best ranked websites for a given keyword. Once you understand why others are ranking so well, you can copy their strategy.

SEObook Toolbar
Another great tool from Aaron Wall. It shows you very useful information such as PageRank, incoming links, and traffic data.

Keyword Difficulty Tool
This tool allows you to check how difficult it will be to rank for a certain keyword.

Page Analyzer
This tool allows you to check several vital SEO metrics at once.

Keyword Density Analyzer
Excellent keyword density tool.

Visual PageRank Tool
A great way to see the PageRank of all the pages on your website.

Backlink Checker
One of the most powerful free backlink tool available.

Keyword Competition Check Tool
You will love this one. Enter the keyword you want to rank for and you can see an analysis of your top 10 competitors.

Robots.txt Generator
Use this tool to control what pages you want the search engines to index from your website.

CopyScape
Very useful service that allows you to check and avoid duplicate content.

NameBoy
Having a keyword enriched domain name is very important. This application suggests available domains based on the keywords you want to rank for.

Search Engine Optimization Analysis Tool
A great way to analyze your pages and improve them for the search engines.

Search Engine Spider Simulator
This tool shows you a website just like the search engines see it.

Backlink Builder
Very useful backlink tool. Enter a keyword and it returns a list of websites where you can list your own site and get valuable backlinks.

Backlink Summary
See who is linking to your competitors and ask them for links too.

Google Keyword Tool
Find related keywords and find out the search volume of several keywords at once.

PageRank Search
Sort search results by PageRank. Very cool.

SEOmoz SEO Tools
One of the best collection of SEO tools in the market. Some of them are paid but most are free.

Now you’ve got all your tools in one place.

(Feel free to comment with additional tools!)

Share this Story:

Here’s some expamples:

Airlines boast about Lowest Airfare… but their customers prefer Cheap

Notice the giant difference in search volume? I bet you didn’t see that coming…

Branding Changed the Spelling of Breakfast Treat

This shows that we are terrible spellers, or Dunkin Donuts are brilliant marketers. Either way, DONUTS get more searches!

Spell it? I can barely say it!

Wait…I’m not even sure which is the correct spelling. The numbers show searchers aren’t sure, either!

When Pigs fly…Swine Flew!

Are they looking for Pigs Flying or H1N1 (Swine Flu)?

This short list proves that keyword selection should be approached with a very open-mind. Look for misspellings, or words that seem unconventional/illogical. You might surprise yourself by finding a gem of a keyword!

If you come across any other oddities in search- we’d love to see…

Share this Story:

One of the stranger concepts -  Once a username is created/claimed it can not be changed.  No type-o’s allowed.  No transfers.  No delete, and restart.  NO!  (That was a preemptive “No”)

The permanent nature of this system is odd.  Why haven’t they adopted  type of system that is similar to regular domains?  That brings up another point…

No generic URL’s.  You can’t tie up words like “flower” or “pizza”.  It will be interesting to see what they consider a generic word- and how they will make determinations.

In addition to these restrictions, there are criteria that must be met to secure the Vanity URL of a Fan Page.

From Facebook:  “Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must be live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have a minimum 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009.”

Stay tuned- I’m sure Saturday’s “Opening Day” will provide some very interesting stories.

Facebook’s FAQ

Share this Story:

To claim a vanity URL, you need to visit Facebook.com/username. On this page, you will be offered instructions on how to choose a URL or create your own. These new vanity URLs can only include numbers, letters, and periods - no hypens or underscores. You cannot change your URL once selected.

I am expecting a rush to secure the best/personal URL’s.   Better sign-up early to ensure getting the URL you want!

Share this Story:

Read ABC’s of Social Networking to learn about:

• Internet Forums
• Blogs
• Facebook
• Wikipedia
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Digg

The Social Media world can be daunting- start with the ABC’s

Oh….If you missed our Twitter Guide, you should probably check that out too!

Share this Story:

Here’s our list:

Twit This: http://twitthis.com/
Allows users to instantly twit with one click of a button on another page

Twitter Buttons: http://twitterbuttons.com
A button on a blog or site which allows visitors to follow on twitter the creators of that page.

GroupTweet: http://grouptweet.com/
Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.

Twitter Tool Bar: http://thetwittertoolbar.com/
The Twitter Tool Bar allows you to visit twitter in one click, update your status, search google, twitter, twellow, and twictionary.

Twictionary: http://twictionary.pbwiki.com/
The Twitter Dictionary

Twellow: http://www.twellow.com
Yellow pages for twitter

TweetCube: http://www.tweetcube.com/
Allows users to twit files such as .zip,.rar,.pdf,.jpg,.mp3,.txt,.png, and .gif.

Twit+: http://twitplus.com/
Allows users to tweet pictures, videos and files.

Twitteroo: http://rareedge.com/twitteroo/
Update twitter status from your desktop, url shortening, twitter notifications

OutTwit: http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/
An outlook tool, that sends the latest tweets from your friends as incoming email messages.

TweetStats: http://tweetstats.com
You can grab your Twitter stats including your tweet timeline, tweet per month, and tweet per hour

TwitEarth: http://twitearth.com
A 3D globe of Twitter public timelines

Twixxer: http://twixxer.com
Twixxer is a Firefox addon that allows you to post Twitter updates

Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com
allows users to shorten and hide url.

SecretTweet: http://www.secrettweet.com/
Post to Twitter anonymously.

TweetBurner: http://tweetburner.com/
Allows you to shorten, share and track urls.

Brabblr: http://alpha.brabblr.com/
Allows you to post to all your micro blogging services including Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr, Jabber, Frazr, and more.

Autopostr: http://www.autopostr.com/
Lets your friends in Twitter know when you post a new picture on Flickr.

EmailTwitter: http://emailtwitter.com/
Allows you to send tweets to Twitter from your cellphone without incurring SMS charges.

GroupTweet: http://grouptweet.com/
Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.

Hashtags: http://hashtags.org/
Allows you to add tags to your Twitter posts with this service.

HelloTxt: http://www.hellotxt.com/
Allows you to update Twitter, a host of other micro blogging sites, and social networking sites with one click.

LinkBunch: http://linkbun.ch/
LinkBunch puts together all the links and provides you one link that you can share on Twitter. As you might have understood, this can be used not just with Twitter, but also with emails, IMs, SMS, etc.

LiveTwitting: http://livetwitting.com/
Helps you cover a conference live on Twitter.

MicroRevie: http://microrevie.ws/
Post reviews on twitter accs and this service will turn them into microformats.

Mobypicture: http://www.mobypicture.com/
This tool allows you to post to your blog and micro-blogging sites like Twitter through your mobile phone.

OutTwit: http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit/
A tool for Outlook that will send the latest tweets from your friends as incoming email messages.

SnapTweet: http://snaptweet.com/
Allows you to post your Flickr pictures to Twitter.

Snitter: http://getsnitter.com/
An Adobe AIR based desktop client for Twitter compatible with Mac and Windows. The Linux version is in testing.

Twhirl: http://www.twhirl.org/
Twhirl is a popular desktop client based on Adobe AIR. It has a lot of impressive features including multiple Twitter accounts, connect to Friendfeed, post image to Twitpic, post to Pownce and Jaiku simultaneously, and search using Tweetscan.

Tweetr: http://tweet-r.com/
An AIR based Twitter client for MAC and PC. You can use this to send files up to 100MB.

Twibler: http://twibler.com/
Allows you to post your ebay listings to Twitter automatically.

Twiddeo: http://www.twiddeo.com/
Allows you to post videos to Twitter using this service that lets you upload the video to their site and then generates a link to your video.

Twitxr: http://www.twitxr.com/
Another way to post a picture on Twitter, Facebook, or Picassa.

TweetChannel: http://tweetchannel.com/
You can add TweetChannel as your friend in Twitter to help you channel your various posts.

TweetLater: http://www.tweetlater.com/
A useful service to schedule your Twitter posts for the future.

Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/
Share pictures on Twitter using Twitpic.

Twitsay: http://twitsay.com/
You can tweet an audio recording to Twitter using this new and popular service.

Twits Like Me: http://www.chrisfinke.com/twitslikeme/
You can use this service to find people on Twitter who share your interests.

TwitterCal: http://twittercal.com/
This service allows you to post events from your Google calendar to your Twitter accounts.

Twitter Feed: http://twitterfeed.com/
This tool allows you to send your blog atom or RSS feed to Twitter.

TwitterGram: http://www.twittergram.com/
Post an mp3 on Twitter using this service.

Twitteroo: http://rareedge.com/twitteroo/
This is another popular desktop client for Twitter.

TwitterIM: http://twitterim.com/
Using this tool, you can tweet from Windows Live Messenger and ICQ.

Twitterlights: http://www.twitterlights.com/
This tool allows you to highlight snippets of text from any webpage and send it to twitter. The url of the page also gets converted into a tinyurl and gets included in your tweet.

Twitter Reply: http://twitterreply.com/
With this tool, you can send your Twitter updates on a secret email address, or through Windows Live Messenger or ICQ.

Twittershare: http://www.phoreo.com/twittershare/
This desktop/web application also allows you to post pictures on Twitter. Works on Mac as well.

VisualTwitter: http://visualtwitter.com/
Allows you to post pictures on Twitter.

TopTweet: http://toptweet.com/
This site provides you updates from the top Twitter personalities.

TweetWire: http://www.tweetwire.com/
TweetWire grabs the freshest links posted on Twitter and displays them Yahoo News page style.

Twitter100: http://twitter100.com/
Just like in your personal start pages, this tool will allocate a box to each of the people you follow on a single page and display their latest tweets.

Twitterator: http://www.twitterator.org/
Twitterator enables you to follow a group of people at one go.

Twitter Digest: http://persistent.info/twitter-digest/
This tool allows you to subscribe to a message stream from a Twitter user of a group of users on the web or through an atom feed.

Alpha Twitter: http://www.alphatwitter.com/
This site provides you with the top links on Twitter.

Summize: http://summize.com/
A Twitter search engine, lately shaping into the leader of this space. You can run a RSS feed on your query too and filter tweets by language.

Flaptor Twitter Search: http://twittersearch.flaptor.com/search/index.do
A simple Twitter search engine. You can get an RSS feed out of your search query as well.

Terraminds: http://terraminds.com/twitter/
Another search tool for Twitter.

Tweet Scan: http://tweetscan.com/
This is a search engine for Twitter indexing all the public messages on Twitter.

Twitterment: http://www.twitterment.com/
A search engine for Twitter powered by Google search.

TwitterWho: http://www.twitterwho.com/
Using this, you can search for multiple queries on Twitter at one go.

Twubble: http://www.crazybob.org/twubble/
This also helps find people who share your interests on Twitter. It brings our profiles who your current friends are already following.

TwitBuzz: http://twitbuzz.com/
TwitBuzz is a service that follows the links, messages, and users on Twitter and displays them nicely on its site Digg-style.

TweetBeep: http://tweetbeep.com/
Just like Google Alerts, this service will send you an alert whenever your set keyword is mentioned on Twitter or when somebody link to your site.

TwitGraph: http://www.twitgraph.com/
This service provides graphs of your Twitter usage - tweets by day, top 5 words, top 5 links, and top replies.

Twitterlinkr: http://www.twitterlinkr.com/
Shows you the popular links that people are posting in Twitter.

24oclocks: http://24clocks.com/
You can see your tweets displayed by the hour of the day.

GeoTwitterous: http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/geotwitterous/
Enter a Twitter ID and this tool will display from where the people that particular person is following are in a global map.

My Tweet Map: http://www.mytweetmap.com/
This tool will show you the latest tweets from your friends on a map.

Quotably: http://quotably.com/
With Quotably, you can check out any Twitter user’s conversations in a thread conversation style making it easier to follow, extremely useful.

Sitevolume: http://www.sitevolume.com/
Just like Alexa, this site will allow to see how many times a particular term has been used on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr. You can add in multiple terms and see bar graphs comparing the terms.

Twetterboard: http://tweeterboard.com/
An analytics service, that provides information about popular Twitter users and popular links.

Tweetburner: http://tweetburner.com/
Tweetburner gives you click stats for the links you posted in Twitter.

Twittermeter: http://www.twittermeter.com/
You can use Twittermeter to see how frequently a word has been used on Twitter. You can also compare two or more words

Twemes: http://twemes.com/
Twemes follows Twitter public messages with particular tags to build a meme around a topic.

TweetVolume: http://www.tweetvolume.com/
With this tool, you can check how many times a particular word appears on Twitter. You can compare up to five words and see the results in bar graphs.

TwitterLocal: http://www.twitterlocal.net/
This tool allows you to generate an RSS Feed of a filtered list of tweets from a certain area.

Tweetmeme: http://www.tweetmeme.com/
Displays popular topics on Twitter and those people talking about that topic.

Twist: http://twist.flaptor.com/
This provides trends of what people are saying on Twitter just like Google Trends does for internet search words.

Twittermap: http://twittermap.com/maps
This tool displays the most recent public updates in the last 12 hours.

Twitt(url)y: http://twitturly.com/
This service tracks the most linked to urls on Twitter and display them Digg-style.

Wiiizzz: http://www.wiiizzz.com/
This service lists the audio tracks that have been listed to and shared on Twitter.

Twitter for iPhone: http://twitterforiphone.com/
Another Twitter client for your iPhone.

iTwtr: http://itwtr.com/
This is an open source Twitter client for iphones.

Pocket Tweets: http://www.pockettweets.com/
A web based Twitter client for the iphone.

Twittai: http://www.twittai.com/
A Java-based Twitter client compatible with more than 200 kinds of mobile phones.

ceTwit: http://www.kosertech.com/blog/?page_id=5
Twitter client for Windows Mobile. Not as cool as the iPhone versions, but then again, what is?

Twapper : http://30boxes.com/blog/index.php/2007/04/02/introducing-twapper-20b-mashing-30boxes-and-twitter/
Send updates from your 30boxes calendar to your mobile phone using Twitter.

TwitterFone: http://www.twitterfone.com/
You can update Twitter from your mobile phone using this service.

Qik: http://qik.com/
Stream videos from your mobile phone to Twitter using Qik. Surprisingly, it works really well - try it out.

Crowd Status: http://crowdstatus.com/
View the status of your friends on Twitter in a start-up page style.

@answerme: http://atanswerme.com/
With this tool, you can track the questions you ask on Twitter.

Bkkeepr: http://bkkeepr.com/
With this service, you can track the books you are reading on Twitter.

CommuterFeed: http://www.commuterfeed.com/
You can share your traffic report on Commuterfeed using Twitter.

Foamee: http://foamee.com/
This is a fun site that allows you to track people who owes you beer or coffee using your Twitter account.

FoodFeed: http://foodfeed.us/
FoodFeed is a micro blogging site that you can use to post about your food habits through Twitter.

InnerTwitter: http://innertwitter.com/
Meditate by receiving chimes at regular intervals from InnerTwitter.

Notches: http://twitter.notch.es/
Allows you to write reviews of certain items on Twitter.

Hahlo: http://hahlo.com/
If you are not satisfied with your Twitter interface, you can check out Hahlo to manage your
Twitter account. It gives you a separate profile page and the rest of the Twitter features in a new look.

LoudTwitter: http://www.loudtwitter.com/
This tool posts your Twitter posts on your blog. Hey, isn’t Twitter supposed to be some kind of a blog, too? Now I’m confused.

My Tweeple: http://www.mytweeple.com/
Manage your friends and followers in Twitter on a single web page.

Politweets: http://politweets.com/
You can check out your presidential candidate’s popularity on Twitter here.

Post Like a Pirate: http://postlikeapirate.com/twitter.php
This tool allow you to convert your post into pirate-speak before posting it to Twitter. I, however, don’t need it, because I already speak like a pirate. Yarr!

Quitter: http://qwitter.tobaccofreeflorida.com/
Quitter will help you how to use Twitter to quit smoking.

Roll.The.Dice: http://jazzychad.net/rollthedice/
You can use this service to do all the silly things on Twitter like roll a dice, flip a coin, deal cards, or generate a random number.

StrawPoll: http://strawpollnow.com/
Allows you to send out polls on Twitter that you and others can participate in.

TrackThis: http://trackthis.pb30.com/
This is a useful service to get updates of your shipment using Twitter. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes.

Twee60: http://www.twee60.com/
You can tweet your Xbox live status with Twee60 automatically.

Twit2twit: http://tweet2tweet.com/
Similar to Facebook’s Wall to Wall, this service enables you to view any two Twitter users conversation via replies.

Twitimonials: http://www.twitimonials.com/
This service allows you to praise your friends in a special way on Twitter.

TwitResponse: http://twitresponse.com/
Set up your Twitter posts for the future.

Twitterfeed: http://www.twitterfeed.com/
Posts your blog posts automatically to Twitter.

TwitterMeThis: http://www.twittermethis.com/
When you follow TwitterMeThis, it will send you a question randomly. If you are the first to answer that question, then you get $5.

TwitterSpy: http://twitspy.com/
TwitterSpy provides you a Google map on its site. when you hover your mouse above certain locations on that map, you get to see the latest public posts from that area. Strangely addicting.

Tweet140: http://www.tweet140.com/
This service tracks your Twitter messages and rates them according to how many characters you messages are. The closer to 140 characters they are, the higher you score.

Tweetclouds: http://tweetcloud.com/
Create a word cloud from a public Twitter stream using this service.

Tweetgift: http://tweetgift.com/
Remember Facebook where you can poke, throw a sheep, or hug a friend? Tweetgift enables you to do the same on Twitter.

Twaction: http://twaction.com/
Another service that lets you do Facebook-style pokes and slaps at friends.

Twistori: http://twistori.com/
Based on Summize, this service collects Twitter messages with words such as love, hate, think, believe, wish, and feel and displays them on its site with automatic updates.

Tweet Clouds: http://www.tweetclouds.com/
Make a tag cloud from your Twitter posts.

Tweetpeek: http://www.tweetpeek.com/
You can create a group Twitter feed with Tweetpeek.

TweetWheel: http://www.tweetwheel.com/
You can find out which of your Twitter friends know each other with this service.

Twitku: http://twitku.com/
Mashup of Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce public timelines, and you can also post from its interface.

Twittpoll: http://twittpoll.com/
You can participate on polls using Twitter through Twitpoll.

Tweetshots: http://tweetshots.com/
This service allows you to take your Twitter posts to Tumblr, embed in websites, or send over email.

TwitterAnswers: http://www.mosio.com/twitter/
TwitterAnswers combines Twitter and Mosio, so that you can send questions over Twitter and have them answered by other people.

Twitter Census: http://twittercensus.com/
You can create surveys on Twitter using this service.

Twitter Comic Book: http://www.socialcomicbook.com/
Enter your Twitter name, and this tool will create a comic strip for you based on your latest tweets, using Flickr pictures.

Twitter Karma: http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
This tool fetches your Twitter friends and followers and displays them for you, letting you paginate through them in a nicer way than you would on Twitter.

TwitterNotes: http://twitternotes.com/
You can create notes on TwitterNotes using Twitter and tagging your notes.

TwitterPoster: http://twitterposter.com/
This site generates a mosaic of user icons of those with a large number of followers on Twitter.

TwitterSnooze: http://twittersnooze.com/
If you have friends on Twitter who are updating every 10 seconds and are irritating the hell out of you, you can simply now snooze them away using this tool.

TwitterSpectrum: http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterSpectrum/TwitterSpectrum.html
Based on Summize, this tool shows you the associated words of two pair of words or names.

Twittertale: http://twittertale.com/
Twittertale records all the swearing you do on Twitter and lists them down on its site. It also lists the top swearers and the top 5 naughty words.

Xpenser: http://xpenser.com/
Record your expenses using Twitter. You can also use other mediums like email, SMS, IM, voice, etc.

Who Should I Follow: http://www.whoshouldifollow.com/
Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.

Twitter Blacklist: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25548
This Greasemonkey script displays a big red banner on Twitter profiles that are blacklisted at twitterblacklist.com.

Twitter Live Updater: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/21946
This one updates your Twitter pages without refreshing the webpage on your browser.

Twitzer: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6810
This add-on allows you to write more than 140 letters in your Twitter posts. The extra letters will be saved offsite and link to it will be placed on Twitter.

TwittyTunes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4994
You can post the songs that you are listening to currently on Twitter using this plug-in. There is a chance that people will start un-following you though.

Twitterbook: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6966
Tweet your favorite sites when you bookmark them on your browser using this add-on.

Twitterline: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7137
Displays your friends’ public timelines on your browser toolbar.

Twitkit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6845
This tool is a Twitter client for your Firefox sidebar.

Twitturl: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7220
This add-on allows you to tweet the current url you are on, on your browser.

Twitterratio: http://twitterratio.com/Default.aspx
This tool allows you to compare the ratio of the number of people you follow to those who follow you. The higher the ratio, the more Twitter heat you have.

Twitscoop: http://www.twitscoop.com/
This tool pulls out the words most used in Twitter every minute and displays on its site.

Twitter Movie Reviews: http://flixpulse.com/
You can review movies on Twitter using this service. It contributes to a handy list of graded movies, great when you need to quickly find something good at the video store.

Twidentify: http://www.twidentify.com/
This is a search engine that sorts results by people who get re-tweeted the most.

Twitemperature: http://twitemperature.com/
Find out how hot you are. How does it work it all out? “We poll your last several hundred tweets and score what you’re saying against what everyone else is saying in current hot conversations on Twitter and elsewhere.”

Destroy Twitter: http://destroytoday.com/?p=Project&id=DestroyTwitter
Adobe AIR Twitter client.

Twtcard: http://twtcard.com/
E-cards for Twitter.

Mr Tweet: http://mrtweet.net/
Get recommendations on who you should follow, (based on your extended Twitter network) from Mr. Tweet.

Twits Near Me: http://twitsnear.me/
Displays (and automatically refreshes) recent Tweets from people near you.

Twtpoll: http://twtpoll.com/
Create multiple choice polls for Twitter and Facebook.

Twithority: http://twithority.com/
This is a search engine that ranks results by ‘authority’. Results are displayed by rank and time.

twit.pix.ly: http://twit.pix.ly/
Rate the avatars of the Twitterers you follow.

Twoogie: http://twoogie.com/
This tool is a web interface for updating Twitter.

My Twitter Notebook: http://www.mytwitternotebook.com/
Follow @tweetnote, and then wait for them to follow you back; you can then send notes via direct message and recall them by tag.

Tweetchat: http://tweetchat.com/
With this tool you are able to create rooms in Twitter to ‘chat’ about a particular topic.

Happy Tweets: http://happytweets.com/
Allows you to find out how happy your Tweets are.

Twitterless: http://twitterless.com/
This tool enables you to be informed when people stop following you, available in graph form as well.

*Twtupon: http://twtupon.com/
Similar to StumbleUpon: Find users with similar interests, ranked by popolarity

If we missed any- Let us know… We’ll add ‘em to the list!

*New Addition

Share this Story: