9 Great Tools for Retailers using Twitter

With Twitter becoming used more and more as another marketing channel for retailers, it’s important to make sure the time spent on this new channel is both effective and worthwhile. There have been a huge amount of Twitter tools introduced to help you:

Manage your Twitter account

Help build followers

Help track your Twitter

...and more

We’ve looked at many of these tools and below is our list of the most useful: 1. Cotweet

Cotweet’s strapline is “How business does Twitter” and it is what it says on the tin.

Cotweet is a tool that manages your tweets for up to 5 of your Twitter accounts and it’s great if multiple people tweet on behalf of your company as each can post tweets, schedule future tweets, leave assignments for colleagues and more. A very useful feature is the ability to schedule your tweets for future posting to both deliver important promotional messages at exactly the right time and to ensure a steady stream of tweets throughout the day/week/month. In addition you can view click stats on your Cotweet tweets, monitor trends, manage updates, conversations within your team and more. Number one reason to use: For you and your team to manage your tweets 2. Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed takes a feed that is already setup – whether it be an RSS feed or a blog – and delivers it to your Twitter account. This is

great if you have a news feed that you’re already using – or even if you want to tweet posts from someone else’s feed. In addition to linking to Twitter, it also links to Facebook and many other services ensuring you’re not duplicating your effort. Number one reason to use: To build your tweets with yours (and others’) feeds

01865 339 470 1 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

3. Facebook

As a retailer, keeping all your social media activity up to date can be time consuming. If you’re regularly updating

Facebook, set your account to link to Twitter and all updates can be automatically tweeted into your Twitter account – and vice versa if you wish. Number one reason to use: To automatically tweet your Facebook updates 4. Blast Follow

This is a great tool to build up the number of people you’re following who have an interest in the subjects you focus on (via a hashtag search). You can see how

many people are interested in what you offer and automatically follow them so increasing your followers (as the people you’ve blasted start to follow you back). By using different keywords to search you are also able to see which keywords bring back the most users therefore enabling you to better focus your tweets to the best keywords. On the negative side, and it’s quite a big negative, the overuse of Blast Follow can get you temporarily banned so use only in moderation and use sensibly (if you sell shoes don’t BlastFollow people interested in books). Number one reason to use: Building your followers 5. Tweetcloud

Tweetcloud gives a picture of the keywords that are most prominent, and

therefore most associated, with your Twitter account (or that of your competitor, influential tweeters in your subject area etc). Using this enables you a quick check to ensure you are using the right keywords, and enough keywords, in your Tweets to ensure maximum exposure. Number one reason to use: To focus your keyword strategy

01865 339 470 2 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

6. WeFollow

WeFollow allows you to see the most influential and the most followed

tweeters in your subject area (via a hashtag search). In a similar way to Google giving weight to sites that have good, relevant links into their site, WeFollow ranks how influential a tweeter is based on how well they tag themselves and how well those that follow them tag themselves too. Once you’ve established the most influential, looking at their tweets can give you an idea of what has earned them their status thereby assisting you in planning your Twitter strategy to best effect. You can also follow them in order to both get into conversations with them and retweet their posts. Number one reason to use: Building your profile

7. TweetDeck

TweetDeck has similar features as Cotweet but is a desktop, ipad or iphone application. It connects with

your contacts in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. It is very good for managing, grouping and keeping up-to-date with your contacts. It also allows you to update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more from one application. The search function is also very useful, filtering tweets from all of Twitter allowing you to both keep abreast of what’s going on in your subject area and finding new people to follow. On the negative side, there has been some feedback that the desktop version can use a lot of memory. Number one reason to use: Managing your Twitter contacts and conversations

8. Blog Tweeting

If you have a blog which is updated often, this can be time consuming enough without then having to tweet about your posts as well. Most blogs now have options to link to your Twitter account to allow automated tweets of your blog posts. This is an ideal way to both keep your Twitter up to date with all that’s going on at your company, as well as marketing your blog.

Number one reason to use: To automatically tweet your blog posts

01865 339 470 3 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

9. HootSuite

HootSuite describes itself as a ‘Social Media Dashboard’ and is much more than just a Twitter tool. The tool allows a team of people to collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress and other social networks via the web, your desktop or on mobile platforms. While the tool works in much the same way as CoTweet in allowing you to schedule updates, but does so much more by integrating more social networks as well as your Wordpress blog in one easy to use tool. The majority of the tools are available in a free version, but there is also a ‘Premium’ package which costs $5.99 a month, and comes with a 30 day free trial. Number one reason to use: Easily manage multiple accounts across multiple social media channels with ease

01865 339 470 4 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk