27 Twitter Applications Your Small Business Can Use Today

twitter small business appsTwitter is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds lately.   It seems like everyone is talking about Twitter.   The neat thing is that everyone seems to use Twitter in their own unique way.   Hundreds of Twitter applications can be found on numerous sites that offer cool tools to help you manage the way you use Twitter.   If you use Twitter for marketing your small business, I sorted thru tons of apps to bring you the most helpful.   Feel free to suggest other Twitter apps, for business owners, below in the comments.

Twitter Toolbar – Downloading this free toolbar gives you instant access to Twitter.   You can use the toolbar to access online Twitter tools, check your Twitter stats, post your updates and more.   Versions are available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Twitoria – This simple application lets you quickly find out which of your followers has not been actively tweeting.   Easily sort through your network of followers and purge the inactive users.

Monitter – Get a live streaming view at what Twitter users in your location are saying about you or your small business.   Simply insert keywords you would like to search for and the surrounding area you would liked monitored.

Bubble Tweet – This unique application lets you post a short video message that pops up on your Twitter profile in a bubble shaped player.   You can personally introduce yourself and/or your business to anyone who visits your profile.

Twitter Gallery – A collection of free backround themes for your Twitter account.   You can use the one click installation or manually install them yourself.   Lots of nice designs and colors to choose from.

Tweepler – Simplify the way you manage your Twitter followers.   Tweepler enables you to easily sort through new followers and accept them or ignore them on one simple screen.   They have made accepting followers easier by giving the Tweepler user the followers stats and last 3 tweets in one screen view.   This will save you time by eliminating the need to visit each individual follower’s profiles.

Twit This – Allow visitors to your blog or website to easily post Twitter messages about you or your business.   Post the TwitThis button to your website or blog pages with the instructions and coding provided on their site.

StockTwits – Follow and join into conversations with traders and investors.   An active community of investors are sharing their views on current market conditions and recent news happenings. You can quickly see what others are saying about investments in your portfolio.

HelloTxt – Update your status to several social networking sites in one simple step.   You can choose from over 35 social sites to post to including Twitter.

TwitterFox – This Firefox extension is one of my personal favorites.   You can post Twitter updates without visiting the Twitter site each time.   A small icon is added to the bottom of your Firefox status bar.   The icon opens to reveal your friend’s most current updates.   You can add your updates from that dialog box, even for multiple Twitter accounts.

Future Tweets – Do you have something to promote on Twitter tomorrow but are afraid of forgetting to do it?   With FutureTweets, you can schedule your tweet ahead of time for a specific date and time.   Even schedule reoccuring tweets to post daily, monthly, even yearly.

TwitPic – Share your favorite pictures on Twitter.   This would be a good way to introduce your new product to your network of followers.

twtQpon – Create exclusive coupons for your business services or products and share them with your Twitter followers.

Tweetburner – This site is designed to help you track your tweets.   With Tweetburner you can shorten URLs and track the clicks your tweets accumulate.

Tweetbeep – Just like Google Alerts, Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services.   Alerts are sent to you via email.

Twitter Counter – Proudly display the number of Twitter followers on your business blog or website.   Add the badge to your site and invite customers to follow you on Twitter.

Group Tweet – This app enables all employees within your company to post updates which can be privately viewed only by your group of approved members.

Twitter Safe – This free service protects your years of hard work building your community of followers.   This one click backup will restore your network of followers in the event that your list is compromised.

Twitxr – Post product pictures and updates from your mobile phone directly to Twitter.

Track This – This app enables tracking of any UPS, USPS, FedEx or DHL shipment.   Updates are sent to your Twitter account direct messages whenever your package changes location.

CoTweet – CoTweet lets your company manage one Twitter account while allowing several employees to contribute.   Each person maintains their own identity and their activity can be monitored.

Tweet Later – This one application contains several Twitter productivity tools.   You can track keywords, track replies, schedule tweets, send welcome direct messages, and much more.

Splitweet – Managing and updating multiple Twitter accounts is easily done from one screen.   Choose to send updates to one or all accounts in one step.   You can also follow your brand with notification when your company is mentioned on Twitter.

Twimailer – Sign up to receive more extensive email notifications when your account obtains new followers.   Instead of the generic Twitter email notification; the email contains the followers location, followers stats and their most recent tweets.   At the bottom of the email, you can choose to follow the individual without even visiting Twitter.

Digsby – Keep track of everything your followers are doing at all times.   The Digsby box display gives you a real time view into your Twitter account right from your browser.

HootSuite – Easily manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets and measure your progress.   You can even add multiple editors to your business profile.

TwitterHawk – This marketing app helps you connect with consumers in your area and related to the keywords you choose.   TwitterHawk will send Twitter users your custom response when they tweet your keyword in locations that you specify.   Say you sell shoes and you want your response to reach anyone within a 20 mile radius of your business.   When someone 7 miles away tweets about shoes, your response will automatically be sent to that person.

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111 Comments 27 Twitter Applications Your Small Business Can Use Today

  1. gareth wong

    great list many thanks!

    challenge is though, seems like there is a bubble effect, so many new ‘apps’ for twitter, is it worthwhile or even feasible to try them all.. and after finding a great app, how likely they will be forgotten and superseded by a better one..?

    @GarethWong

    Reply
  2. Sidra

    So these are really great and I couldn’t find your “Twit This” button. You should definately take your own advice and put that application on your blog!

    Thanks for a great list! Sid
    @Minicom_IT

    Reply
  3. Chris

    This is a great list . . I never heard of the coupon one – interesting. Trying to figure out a way to use that now 🙂 Thanks!

    Reply
  4. Wendy Van Parys

    Great list – thanks! Scaling what works for large corporations to create cost effective solutions for small to medium-sized businesses was a lot simpler when all we needed to focus on was PR and advertising in local media outlets, direct mail, websites, e-mail marketing.

    Now we’re trying to scale the expanding universe of social media, SEO, and CRM. On extremely tight budgets.
    Small to medium sized businesses need all the help they can get!

    Please add me to the list of small business resources. http://www.wvpmc.com

    @wvpmc

    Reply
  5. Donald Cranford

    This is super-helpful. There are a lot of us in the franchising community trying to get our heads around the usefulness of Twitter in a small biz context. But these applications seem like they’ll make a life a lot easier…

    Reply
  6. Debby Bruck

    Super list. Love BubbleTweet Here’s a few I made if you want to see what it looks like.. http://bit.ly/uFX4V

    Also Tweetlater works great for posting tweets when you are asleep or away.

    I guess everyone knows about Tweetdeck by now.

    I’ll have to check out Twellow.com Thank you!

    Take care! Debby, CHOM

    Reply
  7. Eric T. Peterson

    If your audience is looking for an application to help measure the impact they are having in Twitter you may want to add Twitalyzer to your list (http://www.twitalyzer.com) Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, and Pete Cashmore (@mashable) have all been using the service, along with 30K other folks, and appear to like it.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  8. Martin Lindeskog

    Amanda,

    Great compilation! I need to use a tool to keep track of all the individuals I follow. Who will be my follower #1000 and get a free gift from my online store? Click on my name if you are interested to learn more about the freebie.

    Reply
  9. Amanda

    Gareth, You’re right, it’s impossible to use all of the Twitter apps that exist. It’s better to stick with just one or two that will streamline your Twitter experience.

    Reply
  10. spacefem

    Hi – I’m one of those normal people, not on twitter to talk about marketing and SEO and my business. I’m cool with some of you money-minded people following me and I will follow you back. But PLEASE on behalf of all normal people, stop auto-direct messaging us! It’s a misuse of the DM system, I don’t care if three twitter apps up there will do it.

    Reply
  11. Arthur Bland

    Cool down spacefem. 🙂

    Anyway, I feel the same way with your sentiments with that auto DM issues. It has long been the issue of many Twitter users out there. For now, all I can do is ignore it. 😉

    Reply
  12. Nic Evans

    No mention of Tweetdeck?
    Certainly among the tweets I follow it use is very widespread – and its a great desktop tool for all your twittering
    – URL shortening and lookup of your friends while typing.
    – you can pick up multiple searches and twitterscape (so see what the hot topics are)
    – as well as follows, replies and direct messages.

    I never go to the twitter website.

    And twitterific is the best for the free apps for the iphone & ipod IMHO

    http://twitter.com/nicevans20

    Reply
  13. John Hiemstra

    great list!! now testing which ones work better on wordpress vs. blogspot (my clients use both for different reasons) more than one here I haven’t heard of yet, look forward to exploring-thanks!

    Reply
  14. mark barwald

    Great list! Thanks. Do you think terms like “find and connect with consumers” is becoming obsolete since the real strength of twitter lies in connecting with real people? I think the view of our peers as consumers or our audience is on the way out.

    Reply
  15. Mr Omneo

    Great article with a host of stuff I haven’t heard about. however like someone already mentioned, by the time I work my way through the list I’ll probably have fund and discarded a few favourite applications as one slightly outdoes another :p

    If you are a networker or an internet based marketer using Twitter you should check out the tweeter forum http://bit.ly/12X5l

    Reply
  16. Frank Dobner

    Thank you. Very nice list.

    I am interested in finding an application that allows me to segregate my followers into groups of market niches or other categories so that I DM them directly on things of immediate interest to them.

    Does that exist?

    Reply
  17. Zack Perry

    Other than the entries already listed, I would like to suggest you to add TweetBrain into your list.

    It’s probably the first purposely built crowdsourcing service for the Twitter community. It went live on April 7, 2009, and has generated quite a stir. Even a Twitter Support likes it.
    http://twitter.com/cmagnuson/statuses/1507817434

    He enthusastically used it before he took his vacation:

    http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tweetbrain+@cmagnuson

    Some are already using it for business purposes, even with rewards:

    https://tweetbrain.com/questions/byreward

    One SEO expert even made a video about it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WlcwhMMus

    The following should give you some ideas how Twitter users think about TweetBrain:

    http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tweetbrain+awesome
    http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tweetbrain+cool

    Reply
  18. David

    Great list! I just wanted to mention IsFollow. A web based Twitter app that lets you find out who is following who, without having to login. It helped me figure out one of my biz Twitter pages wasn’t following the other.

    Reply
  19. Calendar Tweet

    Great list. Also small businesses can add tag and promote events via calendar tweet.

    Great lists, you should add a few to it. New twitter applications are coming out all the time.

    Reply
  20. Amanda

    You’re right Calendar Tweet, new apps are showing up every day. I’m currently putting together another list that should post next month. I hope you’ll be pleased to see that your app will make the new list. 🙂

    Reply
  21. Jenny

    You need to add Nutshellmail.com to this list. This service consolidates all of your email and social media accounts, including Twitter. It makes it so much easier to view your Twitter follower updates rather than having to log into your account all the time.

    Reply
  22. moralde

    So many apps I’m getting a headache choosing which ones to use.

    Thanks anyway for taking time to research these apps out. Makes us lazy ones even lazier. 🙂

    Reply
  23. Clifton

    Translate your tweet into your choice of over 40 languages and post automatically and immediately.

    You can also view previous translated tweets to help you learn new words and keep track of your conversations.

    Reply
  24. Justin K.

    Great post! There a so many cool tools and apps out there. While it isn’t exactly a tool for small businesses, I personally love Ref.ly. It’s a great tool for people who want to share Bible verses on Twitter.

    Reply
  25. Sean

    Wow. Great info. Thank you so much for the foot work. I am just starting my research on Twitter and applicable apps for my small business. I just wish someone would cram all these into one usable app.

    Thanks again!

    Sean

    Reply
  26. Marc

    Autopilot Tweet http://www.autopilottweet.com – Full Twitter automation software for Twitter marketing includes a Twitter Friend Adder / Follower Adder, auto follow, follow by keywords, follow your followers, auto unfollow, schedule your tweets and automate most of the mundance daily chores of managing your Twitter account. You can automate Twitter for an extremely affordable price.

    Reply
  27. KellyEdele

    Very good article thank you found it really useful in my research into Twitter apps. The only one I currently use is Twaitter to pre schedule tweets and manage multiple accounts as it is free and relatively simple to use.

    Twitter is definitely a useful factor for driving people to websites and blogs as well as keeping up to date with things.

    Reply
  28. paul

    Hi Amanda,

    I have developed a Twitter Application to help business promote themselves online via Twitter. Think of it as a 60 seconds online.

    The concept is really promoting your business in 140 char’s, but instead of the message being seen by all your followers and being sent from your account, it is sent to all the followers of @tweetmypitch and by @tweetmypitch.

    To use the free service you need to logon to http://www.tweetmypitch.com with your twitter account and then tweet your pitch.

    There are two restrictions, firstly you must follow @tweetmypitch (which is done automatically when you login) and you can only pitch/tweet once per day.

    I would be interested in your feedback Chris, please feel free to DM me via @tweetmypitch

    Reply
  29. gemma

    good list, but some items are getting old and are no longer in business. Might need a refresh as things change often in twitter land

    Reply
  30. Charles

    Great article. Lots of new apps to try. A great app that I found recently is called TapSocial. It streams a twitter feed like the newsticker on CNN. I like it because I can keep an eye on twitter while I do other things.

    Reply
  31. Jeff The Plumber

    Very nice list. I never knew there were so many nice freeby apps for twitter. I’ve been getting into twitter lately, seeing how valuable of a tool it can really be for any business, big or small. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    1. Ivan Widjaya

      Indeed, there are many Twitter apps on the market today – and the number continues to grow.

      Thanks for dropping by, Jeff!

      Reply
  32. Jennifer Alvarado

    Hi Amanda!
    Till date I had only use Facebook for enhancing my online marketing business..But As Twitter is also growing at very high speed so I am looking to use this social networking platform also..
    Thank you for sharing information about some Twitter Plugins..
    I want to ask could these applications affect the website server speed?

    Reply

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