Twitter is my favorite social network. I love how everyone can use it for different purposes; the functionality, branding opportunities and trending/search capabilities. I love it so much that I spend time every week reviewing my profile and statistics to see what efforts are working and what I need to tweak.
In order to do this, I’ve found an intense cocktail of different tools that I love to use — and they are all free! Keep in mind that this is a long list because I like to use different tools based on what is free and what I think gives me the best information.
HootSuite
Increasingly popular with an easy-to-use interface, I love HootSuite for tracking my tweets, other’s tweets to me, my DMs and scheduling posts to Twitter and my other networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, clients’ profiles, etc.). I have 10 or so networks in my HootSuite account and it works perfect for these purposes. Plus, it has an app (app isn’t perfect, but works pretty well for checking mentions, etc.)
If you have a social media team, you can purchase a subscription to let other team members schedule and view account details, however I like free stuff so I don’t personally use these features (I have for a client in the past and it works well!). You can also create analytic reports on HootSuite, but I use a different service for that. If you are interested in Twitter Ads, you also have easy access to an ads tab straight from your HootSuite dashboard.
Jugnoo
Jugnoo is a beta tool that I like to use for Twitter analytics. This is a free service that you can add team members to. You can post from Jugnoo (and schedule posts if you add an application to it). I love this for Twitter analytics because it gives you your most retweeted Tweets, when people follow you vs. you following them, rates of RTs and mentions, etc. It gives you easy-to-read graphs and explains everything really well. [UPDATE: Jugnoo is now ending beta and won’t offer this service anymore. Would love some new ideas for a new tool to share!]
SocialOomph
SocialOomph is wonderful for what I call Twitter Alerts. Like Google Alerts, you can receive your mentions (or mentions of keywords you care about) in an email digest. I receive these every 12 hours, and they help me make sure I respond to everyone in a timely manner, as well as watch my brand and keywords I care about. SocialOomph also allows you to automate DMs and follow-back, if you are interested in that sort of thing.
TwitterCounter
Fabulous for basic follower/following stats over customized time frame. You can also compare different Twitter users to yourself on a graph, and receive emails detailing your weekly change in followers and estimated future followers dependent on rate.
Tweepi
I LOVE Tweepi. I would not have the following I’ve gained without it. Tweepi allows you to easily follow Twitter Lists, the followers of people like you, and more. You can follow 20 at a time, as well as flush those who aren’t following you back. Tweepi tells you how active each user is, as well as a Klout score and the last time the user logged in. For a subscription, you can have added features that make it even easier and let you follow more at a time. But I use the free version and it works just fine. 🙂
And that’s what I use at the moment, although the list changes every few months. Am I missing out on a tool you love? Please let me know so I can check it out and add it for others!
Tori Randolph Terhune 