For Twitter to be an effective marketing tool, you need to have a significant number of quality followers. To use it efficiently, you need to be able to manage your account(s).
A whole industry has been developed to help people use Twitter. But, among all the tools out there, which ones are the best to use? We decided it would be interesting to do an informal survey of some leading HR social influencers, some of whom have more than 100,000 followers. The question to them was simple: What do you use?
What we found: Some used a variety of tools outside of the native Twitter application. Others used few or none.
Here are some of the tools that were mentioned more than once in our survey of HR influencers:
• TweetDeck: This management application, which is operated by Twitter, is intended to bring “more flexibility and insight to power users.” Users can arrange feeds, use filters, schedule tweets, monitor and manage unlimited accounts and receive notification alerts for new tweets.
• HootSuite: This is the leading alternative to TweetDeck for managing Twitter accounts. It allows users to manage multiple social profiles, schedule message and tweets, track brand mentions and analyze social media traffic.
Note: While we don't recommend one over the other - both TweetDeck and Hootsite are awesome products - we strongly suggest you use one of them! If you use no other Twitter client, use one of these.
• SocialEars HR: [Full Disclosure - We (HRmarketer.com) have a close business partnership with SocialEars Corporation and exclusively market the SocialEars HR software - but hey, influencers use it!]. This social analysis software focuses exclusively on the human resource marketplace and, among other things, allows users, through keyword searches, to find the trending social conversations taking place within the human resources space that are relevant to them, as well as the influencers who are driving the conversations. Users can also instantly follow any of these HR movers and shakers. Additionally, users can discover “hot” content – the content HR influencers are sharing – to tweet about or comment on, as well as the most popular HR hashtags, both of which can expand their reach. Searching the hot hashtags within Twitter can also help users find people to follow.
• Twuffer: This software allows users to schedule pre-written, post-dated tweets.
• Timely: This app tells users the most effective times to schedule tweets. However, it is no longer accepting new users, and will be closed down to existing users after Nov. 16. The site suggests Buffer and Hootsuite as alternatives.
• ManageFlitter: This service allows users to sort, filter and manage who they follow on their Twitter accounts. It is useful for bulk unfollowing.
• JustUnfollow: This tool allows users to find and unfollow Twitter users who unfollowed them or don’t follow them. But it has a ton of other very cool features.
• Twellow: This is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help users find people who matter to them. Go ahead, search for HR or human resources and see for yourself.
• Twitterfeed: This tool feeds the user’s blog into Twitter, as well as into other social networking sites.
Some use software that goes out and gets you followers, but we don’t recommend traveling this route. Most of the followers are likely to be of either no value to you or be people you don’t want to be associated with.
Ultimately, it’s up to users to find the tools that work best for them. Then it becomes about tweeting material — both your own and the work of others — that people will find valuable. For while each of the influencers we surveyed had a different method for managing Twitter, their Twitter accounts had one commonality: excellent content.
Have more we should add to the list? Let us know, comment on this post or Tweet them to us (@HRmarketer).
Labels: content marketing, social marketing, SocialEars HR, Top 10 Lists, Twitter
