Be better and more efficient on Twitter 20-07-2012

you've mastered the art of telling a story in 140 characters or less. Now, take your tweeting to the next level

he Twitter logo is displayed at the entrance of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on March 11, 2011 in California. (Getty Images / July 18, 2012)

By Scott Kleinberg, Tribune Newspapers

July 19, 2012

Let's pretend this column is a college course. Welcome to Advanced Twitter Techniques 302. I'm Professor @scottkleinberg and my goal is to help you be better on Twitter by taking advantage of readily-accessible and easy-to-use tools.

A quick refresher. The important things you have learned so far about using Twitter stands, including:

• Do engage by responding to tweets.
• Do use the rule of thirds to ensure a variety of tweets that keep people coming back for more.
• Don't delete tweets.
• Don't use automated direct messages to welcome new followers.

What you are going to learn now is three ways to take your tweeting to the next level. I use them every day.

Buffer: Sign up with your Twitter or Facebook credentials at http://www.bufferapp.com and you'll be spreading your tweets out each day quickly and efficently. Add 10 tweets at a time and Buffer automatically spreads them out through the day. You can change the times or not and you can get more space in your Buffer by either getting your friends to try it or paying a monthly or yearly fee. You can add links directly to your buffer from your browser and keep everything updated on the iPhone app.

The company explains its philosophy eloquently on its website. "We genuinely want to help you create an authentic and honest appearance on social media because we believe that there are no "short-cuts" to succeeding on a platform where engagement is so crucial." In other words, you can schedule tweets and be a constant source of conversation, but you also have to engage with your followers. You get out of Twitter what you put into it.

Crowdbooster: Sign up at crowdbooster.com and in a matter of hours receive a personalized email showing how your tweets are doing, which are being retweeted the most along with your most influential followers. And the best part is Crowdbooster will suggest optimal times to tweet your content based on those interactions.

Once you know the optimal times according to Crowdbooster, go back to your Buffer and change the times to reflect the recommendations. Now you aren't only tweeting throughout the day, you're tweeting at the best times based on you and your followers.

SocialBro: It does almost everything, from helping you see your most influential followers to the people who have unfollowed you. Also see who isn't following you back, detect bots that follow/unfollow automatically. Plus, you can follow and unfollow right from the dashboard. It looks overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it you'll wonder how you ever tweeted without it -- check it out at socialbro.com.

And that's it for today, class. Your homework is to sign up for these three services and let me know how much better your Twitter experience is for it.

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