6 More Sites to Upgrade Your Twitter Experience
Do you want to go from being a simple tweeter to a Twitter power-user? Here are some more tools to help you get there.
Analyze Your Feed
First up, if you’ve already got a healthy Twitter account and want to look into your usage stats, Tweetrush is a pretty good way to do it.
You can search for your username and immediately get a rundown of the last week’s usage data, broken down by day and hour. Also, you can compare your account to the entire user-base. You can even break it down by Twitter client if you want. There aren’t an enormous number of options, but for regular usage tracking, it’s quick and easy to use.
For a little more data-heavy (and somewhat more artistic) approach, try out Xefer’s Twitter Charts application. Entering your username renders an attractive dot graph that breaks your entire tweeting history down by day of the week and hour. It also differentiates between regular tweets and @replies.
While there are no options beyond the basic graph, it can tell you a lot about your usage habits. For instance, Tuesday afternoons are pretty desolate for me. I’m going to have to look into that!
Twitter Grader is a bit on the “commercial” side because it’s a marketing tool by HubSpot, but it provides a little ranking metric that is useful in several different ways. First of all, entering your account name generates a score. That score is based on an algorithm that looks at following/followers and total number of updates. If you like, you can take your score (out of 100) and put it on your blog with their widget.
The more useful part of the web app is their “suggested follow” list. This takes other people who have a similar score to yours and lines them up for your browsing pleasure. I’m not sure if the compatability software looks at interests (it may use a sort of tag cloud) or ifit is solely based on your score and rank. Either way, the list will probably have a few people on there of interest to you, so it’s a quick way to find new people to follow.
Add Some Zing to Your Tweets
PollDaddy is actually a poll-creation service in and of itself, but the Twitter functionality is pretty good. You do need to enter both your username and password for this one. This will take you to a poll creation screen that is extremely simple and intuitive. Once you’ve made your poll and selected from one of their many options, the site will create a shortened link and automatically update your Twitter account with a relevant message. It’s a quick way to change up your feed and interact with your followers at the same time. People can even comment about your poll.
PollDaddy also gives you a neat little widget, so here’s an example for you!
Find Out What’s Hot
Knowing what’s going on in the Twitter universe is pretty important if you want to take your account to the next level. Tag tracking sites are becoming more popular for this reason. Twitscoop is nice because it lists a tag cloud on the front page so you can see what is trending upwards in real-time.
From there you can search keywords and get instant graphs of the last 6 hours, 1 day, and 3 days. While it isn’t good for long-term historical data, it works as a good snapshot. The front page also gives you a live feed of users posting with your keyword. Again, it’s simple and easy to use!
Attract More Followers
TwittieMe has a pretty terrible name in my opinion, but if you’re looking to grow your followers, it’s not a bad place to start. They allow you to post your profile for others to see. This includes an image, a title, and even a short biography. It’s not much more complicated than that. Submissions are moderated, but mine was accepted rapidly, so hopefully yours will be too.
In the last week or so since I submitted my profile, I have received quite a few new followers under my belt. I’m sure not all of them are related to TwittieMe, but I’d bet that it’s a good portion.
New web apps, services, and clients are always coming out for Twitter, so the best thing you can probably do is keep reading articles like these. While only one or two of these sites will probably help you out directly, one or two may be all you need to succeed on Twitter.
Good luck and be sure to post your favorite Twitter support sites in the comments! And finally make sure to follow MakeUseOf on Twiter as well.
(By) Jimmy Rogers is a Biology major at George Mason University and an avid freelance tech blogger. Check out his blog, Mason Tech Beat. Also follow him on Twitter or just send him an email if you want to get in touch!
PollDaddy seems to be best and most useful. I was totally unknown to this feature!
Thanks!
how can i put twitter on my blog any suggestions?
thanks!
Thanks for highlighting these services. I’ve used PollDaddy a lot on one of my blogs so it’s interesting to know it can be used for Twitter as well.
Mark
@kuros
check out my blog (masontechbeat.blogspot.com) for an example of tweetstamp, i think it’s pretty attractive
To get your tweets posted into your blog sidebar: wptwitter (a Wordpress plugin from their list)
To get your blog headlines posted to Twitter: TweetMyBlog.com or TwitterFeed.com
I have not been able to access those 2 sites…
If you don’t mind me adding a more time-delimited one — which my employer, New Media Strategies, built along with Tropicana — see An Orange America.
Although I am obviously biased in its favor I think it’s a pretty unique visualization of which words people are using when tweeting about Obama and McCain. We launched on Tuesday and got a pretty good response, even though it went up on election day.
If it seems a little difficult to follow, understandable — there is a fuller explanation on the site. But also, with the success of this one, I bet we’ll be doing more of them, and the style should catch on.