Social media can be time consuming.
We want to participate and engage, but finding enough time in the day to manage all those accounts can turn into a full time job in itself.
Luckily, there are a few handy apps which make managing your social media life a lot easier. I’m just going to tell you about the 3 I use for Twitter.
Buffer
As the name suggests, this nifty app keeps a collection of your tweets and then drip feeds them out at set times.
This is great because if you’re like me and do a lot of your web reading at the same time of day, it saves you from tweeting 10+ articles in the space of an hour, sometimes when there’s hardly anyone else online to read them. With Buffer, it stores the tweets for you and then sends them automatically over time, spacing them out throughout the day.
It even creates a schedule for you based on your time zone, or you can choose your own, adding or removing times at will.
Another cool advantage of Buffer is that it allows you to connect with people who are online at times you’re not – in different time zones, while you’re sleeping for example.
There’s a browser add-on that lets you buffer pages in the same way you’d bookmark them, and it integrates with Twitter so when you tweet something normally, it gives the option to Tweet now or add it to Buffer.
The free version has some limitations, such as only allowing a fixed number of tweets in your buffer (I think it’s 10 max).
Get your free Buffer account here.
Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is useful if you manage more than one Twitter account. For example, let’s say you have several business Twitter accounts and a personal account, and you don’t want to switch back and forth between them all the time.
Tweetdeck allows you to lay them all out on the one screen, and assign columns to whatever you want, like the interactions for a particular account or tweets by people you’re following.
You can tweet direct from Tweetdeck on any account, as well as following new people from multiple accounts at once.
Completely free. Sign up here.
InboxQ
Last but not least is InboxQ, which I’ve only just discovered. This nifty little app allows you to choose keywords that interest you, then it will scan Twitter for questions containing those keywords.
It’s designed to give you a way to interact with other users by being helpful and answering their questions.
It’s also a great way to research what people want to know, if you’re trying to think of useful blog posts for example.
Sign up for your free InboxQ account here.
What tools do you use to help manage social media? Share your experiences in the comment section below.
Dude, inboxQ is so awesome; I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it. Great post!
Hi Jon, thanks for the feedback. Glad you found it useful 🙂 … Love your blog over at Insite Design Lab by the way – tons of great info and beautiful UX.
Thanks man! I’m just finishing a post about your ‘Send Voicemail’ feature on the sidebar. I found it really interesting. Your site is great too, I’ll be sure to stop by often.
Thanks for this useful post, especially your recommendation of InboxQ and Buffer. I am already using TweetDeck.
I do have another recommendation on my own: Use Tweriod with Tweetdeck. Tweriod tells you exactly the time that your followers are online and most active, and thus most likely to read and follow through with clicks on your tweets and even Facebook. For example, I schedule Tweets and FB posts using TweetDeck after TWERIOD tells me that my followers are mostly online between 2am-5am in my local time.
Since these tools are free, try it for yourselves. Don’t just take my word for it. Trust me, your social engagement factor will increase significantly. 😉
Great tip Saba, will definitely check out Tweriod. Thanks!
I’ve just started experimenting with twitter to increase traffic to my website. I like InBoxQ the best from this collection because it allows me to be helpful to potential users. Hopefully, once they see that my answers are useful, they’ll check my website out for related information. Thanks much, Damien.
Glad you found it useful, Leo. Good luck driving traffic to your website.
Hello Damien,Loved your Blog,excellent post about twitter tools. But are there any tools that can automatically tweet when we create a new post?
Hmm good question Ravi – that would be handy.
I don’t know of any tools that do that but maybe someone else will suggest one here…
I love inboxQ. Thanks for this post man.
No worries, Harry!
I’m still toying with the idea of twitter. I feel like I couldn’t do much with it for my business nor do I feel I have the time for it. I read in other places that if you don’t have the time for it then it’s best to just not bother as a blank page would just reflect poorly on your business way more than not having a page at all.