Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying out a lot of new tools to help improve my experience with Twitter. Some were inspired by Michael Hyatt’s new book “Platform” and others I simply researched and tried out. Here they are, in no particular order.
Buffer
bufferapp.com – Buffer is an app that allows you to write a bunch of tweets and then have them slowly go out over the course of a few hours (or days). This is useful if you tend to read your news in batches and want to tweet 6 things out at once — you can send them all at once, but have them actually go out throughout the day. Just make sure you keep an eye on your Twitter account so that you can join in any conversations that those tweets may start.
getpocket.com – When you see something neat online that you want to read later, Pocket is a great place to store it. Using their Chrome or Firefox extension, you can quickly click “add to pocket” when you see something interesting and then read it later from your computer, tablet or phone (they all sync together). You can also send something directly from Pocket to Buffer to help spread out your tweets.
flipboard.com – Flipboard is a mobile-only app that presents a neat way of reading information. They have topics you can choose from (sports, news, etc) and you can also integrate your personal Facebook and Twitter accounts into it. I’ve found it to be a great way to catch up on news and Tweets, and anything interesting can be quickly sent to your Pocket or Buffer accounts if you’ll like to do more with that piece of content.
SocialOomph
socialoomph.com – SocialOomph is a very powerful tool to help with Twitter. It can help automate a lot of aspects of the service, including some that are less desirable (auto-following, auto-DM new followers, etc). However, I picked up a technique that Michael Hyatt mentioned and it seems to be working well so far. I spent a few hours and picked out 50 of my favorite blog posts that I’d written in the last few years, and set it to post one each day. Some of them have sparked fresh conversation, and it’s a neat way to re-use those old posts. Again, though, be sure to keep your eye on your Twitter account so you can join in any conversations that might be started from one of these tweets.
Other Tools
Those are some of my new tools, but I still spend some time each week with more common Twitter tools such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, etc, as they can serve their own purpose.
What are your favorite tools to help get more out of Twitter?
