Top 10 Twitter tools for business

Twitter can make a great business tool - if you know how to use it.

IT PRO published a business guide for Twitter beginner some months ago outlining the basics, while Twitter itself has published a guide on how companies can best make use of the microblogging site.

However, using Twitter over its own website isn’t actually the best way for business users. Many of the third-party Twitter applications transform the way it can be used, and some of these are especially useful if you are working for a business. Here are ten of the best.

Hootsuite

Previously called BrightKit, this application allows Twitter to be used by a team of people, by allowing different profiles to be connected to one master account.

This way, you can select a number of accounts to tweet from without logging in to each, while the boss can choose who has permission to use the master account.

It has offers analytic functions, which can allow the Twitter account manager to measure the businesses’ influence by counting the number of clicks per day on each of your Twitter accounts. This also tracks the locations of users, as well as the referring websites.

Cotweet is a similar tool to Hootsuite and offers much of the same functionality.

TweetDeck

This is a very popular Adobe AIR powered desktop app that is useful for both serious business users and those people who just want to save time and organise their tweets properly.

With TweetDeck, you can connect through multiple Twitter accounts as well as Facebook at the same time.

This is very useful if you have multiple identities. (For example, it may be the case you have one Twitter account for personal reasons and one for business.)

It is also extremely customisable, and allows you to create new columns, groups, and saved searches that are useful as you both add and are added by new followers. There is also a version of TweetDeck available for the iPhone.

Twellow

Twellow, or the Twitter Yellow Pages, is a directory of public Twitter accounts to search for anybody who might be useful to you.

The categories available that users can search include business and financial services, international business, information technology and telecommunications.

It already looks like it has a wide base of Twitter users. Registration is free, so anybody can get their name on the list.

Working on the same principle as Twellow, Whoshouldifollow.com sends you a list of Twitter users who you might want to follow depending on the followers you already have.

TwInbox

Twitter meets your inbox – TwInbox. Business users are very likely to use Microsoft Outlook, and this tool allows them to use a fully integrated Twitter client with it.

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