Twitter: Go Beyond Hashtags

One of Twitter’s greatest strengths is its ability to social media marketing consultant filter out communities. Most people are familiar with hashtags, which basically function like the subject line on an email, marking a tweet as about #solarenergy or #womenleaders, for example.What is more difficult is finding out which people are worth following and reaching them. Just because someone uses a hashtag doesn’t mean they are concerned about the topic on a regular basis. With a little digging, you can lock on to the right people to follow.If you are a solar energy nonprofit, you should be following solar energy news profiles, solar energy companies, and journalists who regularly write about solar energy. But you can’t stop there. Dig into the follower lists of those profiles and follow those who follow the big name profiles.

Twitter Tools Used by Social Media Experts

With so many Twitter tools out there, it’s hard to social media marketing ideas know which ones to trust with your Twitter account management. So why not take a look at what the social media and industry experts are using.Here are some Twitter applications and tools used by some of the top Twitterers.Bit.ly is just a URL shortening service right? Wrong! Used by @marismith, @techcrunch, and @problogger, a free Bit.ly account will give you access to a dashboard where you can shorten and share links to multiple Twitter accounts. You can also see the stats for any Bit.ly links you share through your dashboard and plug your Bit.ly API key into Tweetdeck, Twitterfeed, or Seesmic to get stats for links you share through those applications as well. As an added bonus, you can even create your own custom short domain to match your brand so you can have branding similar to Mashable’s on.mash.to and Amazon’s amzn.to custom URLs.Paper.li is a unique application that allows you to collect tweets and curate them manually or automatically in a newspaper-style format which can be automatically shared daily on your Twitter account. Used by @scottmonty, @guykawasaki, and @leeodden, this app is a great way to marketing and social media collect the top tweets from your followers, people on a specific Twitter list, or even anyone who mentions a particular #hashtag. It does drive a nice bit of traffic to sites mentioned by top users, so while some people may not like to be mentioned, others greatly appreciate it!HootSuite is one of my personal favorites as far as Twitter management is concerned, and is also quite popular amongst the social media elite including @chrisbrogan, @tweetsmarter, and @tamar. It is a freemium tool, meaning that you can use the free plan if you have fewer than five social profiles to manage. But the Pro version for unlimited social profiles including enhanced analytics isn’t too steep at only 5.99USD per month.

Twitterfeed, used by @sengineland, @amyporterfield, and @cindyking, allows you to social media marketing packages add RSS feeds (yours and others) to be shared automatically through your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts each time there is a new update to them. You can customize the tweets to show the title of the new post, the link (shortened by your preferred URL shortener), and even add a RT @username or via @username so you let the blogger know you’re always tweeting their posts. It’s a great way to curate content for your audience automatically, but just be careful that the blogs whose feeds you use always publish quality content.TweetDeck is a desktop Twitter management tool used by @jasonfalls, @problogger, and @marshallk. It has features similar features to HootSuite in terms of creating columns to organize your Twitter activity as well as the ability to send longer messages using their Deck.ly service which creates a shortened URL that directs followers to the rest of your tweet beyond 140 characters. I love the interface of this one, but since I use multiple computers, it makes more sense to use a browser-based application instead of one you have to install on a local machine.