9 services to help you get out more of Twitter

I am still trying to figure out Twitter myself, so it is not going to be a post how to achieve a social media success. It is just a list of services to help you use Twitter more efficiently, and maybe learn something about yourself and how you use Twitter in the process, too. Some of those services require you log-in with your Twitter account, and some are just user-based, so you an put in and check on somebody else patterns or influence, for example. Some offer more advanced features for which you need to pay. I was compiling this list since the day I started to use Twitter, and getting it to publish today, I discovered several services on my list were not active anymore.

1. TweetDeck – there are many Twitter clients, but this one became my favorite. It is a free software, which you can install on your desktop, iPhone, iPad and probably some more devices as well. And synchronize content between them, of course. What I partiularly love about it is that it allows you to have in one place your multiple Twitter accounts (for example I have personal and photo accounts separated), Facebook, Linked-In, Foursquare…. and probably whatever else you use.

2. Hashtags – it is a web page which lets you see if a particular hash tag, type of Twitter keyword starting with, well, hash #, have already been used and check the latest Tweets with it to see, in what context are they being use. Adding relevant hashtags to your tweets will help more people find your information. Also, you might want to monitor certain hashtags to get more information out of Twitter. For example, photographers might search “#photographers” or “#togs” (short for photographers, made popular by Jack Hollingsworth) and microstock shooters might monitor #microstock to keep tabs on what is going on in their field.

3. TweetBacks – is a web page to go to to personalize your Twitter page. It offers free, template solutions with limited customization as well as more sophisticated designs.

4. Twournal – is a very cool service, helping you to archive your ethereal Tweets, in the form of pdf (free) or even printed book (for a nominal price). It also includes images you tweeted using TwicPic or Yfrog.

5. Twtpoll – helps you to set up and manage polls on Twitter.

6. TweetChat – is a service for keeping online chats or meeting, which is hashtag based.

7. Tweepi – will show you inactive users in your Friends list, people who do not follow you back and do some more management tasks on your account Friend or Follow is a similar service, but just to monitor who of your friends do not follow you back. I occasionally visit it to see who of my non-followers in not a person of interest for me, and reduce my following list. With one of Twitter rules in mind- do not follow to many people, I try to keep my follow list of similar length to my followers list.

8. TweetStats – will analyze your tweeting habits and patterns, and show you how much you tweet by month, day of the week, and few other measures. Well, I was surprised to learn that I have tweeting patterns :).
UPDATE – this service doesn’t work from time to time. I will keep the link until I find something better, but be aware you might not get the response from server.

9. TweetEffect – will tell you if your tweet gained you a follower or you lost one. Luckily, mine are typically in neither category, but I also learned that I am not very influential yet, by checking on Twitalyzer and on TweetReach.

Do you think 9 items is a strange number for a list? Well, why not add your favorite Twitter services to the list?

UPDATE: I just found another useful tool for more advanced users. Using Timely, you can create Tweets which then will be posted at times that your audience is active on Twitter.