Which app is right for you?
Posted: Thursday 12 May, 2011
Erica Whiteman
Twitter has been all over the news in the past week with the breaking news of Osama bin Laden’s death and celebrity super-injunctions. According to Experian Hitwise, Monday 9th May was the busiest day ever for Twitter traffic in the UK. I regularly use Twitter to receive instant news updates, up to the minute information on such things as train delays and where the latest pop up shop will be in London, as well as sharing information with my followers.
In addition to using Twitter for my own use, I use it for Punch and various clients. I find using third party Twitter apps helpful in managing these separate accounts. Currently, I use the Twitter function within RockMelt as my social browser, but on the go I use TweetDeck. I’ve seen news pieces on other Twitter apps being used as marketing tools and my curiosity was piqued… how do all of the Twitter apps differ and which one is best for me?
Here are the top five Twitter applications I came across during my research:
Hoot Suite is a web-based application that helps manage multiple Twitter accounts. It was developed with marketing in mind so it has special functionality that helps keep agencies from posting tweets from the wrong account.
With its multiple columns, Tweet Deck enables users to see, at a glance, @replies, direct messages as well as the Twitter stream. Users are also able to connect and manage multiple Twitter accounts as well as link Facebook accounts.
Co-Tweet – for those who have a team of staff updating various Twitter accounts, CoTweet enables agencies to assign more than one person to update each account as well as being able to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Like in Hoot Suite and Tweet Deck, posts can be scheduled from a prepared content calendar.
Twitterfeed is an RSS utility that links Tweets from blogs and Facebook or vice versa. Users can track their feeds to get real time stats, which help with campaign analysis. This is an ideal application for those updating on many different social platforms.
And for the purists, there’s just plain Twitter. For managing a single account, Twitter’s simplicity allows users to read the conversation, reply to the conversation and re-tweet the conversation with ease. Each Twitter app has their own URL shortener, which allows users to maximise the use of 140 characters.
Which is your favourite Twitter application?
