How Do YOU Tweet | Twitter Fools

How do YOU Tweet?

By TwitterFools Editorial Staff, October 20th, 2009 in Tips, Tools | Comments

Since we launched Twitterfools.com we’ve reviewed countless twitter apps and tools all with the goal of helping our readers leverage Twitter to greater success. Along the way we’ve learned a thing or two and even changed the way we tweet to share information. We have also tried, tested and changed the twitter tools we use to find and follow others and those we use to promote our blog. Today, we are going to share how we tweet by listing the tools and apps that we use and all we ask is that you to let us know what works for you. One of the greatest features of social media is sharing the conversation. So, we are going to kick it off but in the end what we really want to know is how do you tweet.

How the TwitterFools Tweet

As we considered what to include in this post we decided there are several aspects of tweeting we should cover. These are:

Tools we use to find and follow great people
Desktop and Mobile apps that help us organized incoming tweets and send outgoing tweets and retweets
Url shortening services we employ
Twitter Tools we use on our WordPress based blog

Find and Follow Great People:

We’ve written about Twellow and WeFollow in the past and we still use these sites, but recently we’ve been enamored of TweepML.org. There has been a lot of hype about the upcoming List feature on Twitter, of how you and others can become ‘curators’ of fine people to follow. Well, TweepML.org has been doing that for a quite a while now. In fact, their site boasts that more than 29 thousand users have followed over 2 million tweeple using their interface. We like TweepML so much we used the service to compose our own list of our Top 10 Funny Tweeps. Check them out and, if you are looking for an occasional laugh, with one click of your mouse you can easily follow our list of twitter comedians. Of course, we are looking forward to the rollout of Lists for all Twitter users in the near future.

Desktop and Mobile Twitter Apps:

We have tried so many desktop and mobile twitter apps it would make anyone but a Twitterfool’s head spin. Currently our desktop twitter app of choice is Hoot Suite. We spend a lot of time online with our browser open and Hoot Suite is clean, simple, and easy to organize. On the mobile side with the iPhone we enjoyed a brief dalliance with Twittelator before settling in with Icon Factory’s Twitterific which has been our mobile standby for months now. However, we must say we’ve been testing Tweetie and feel there could a switch coming on soon. But for now…its Twitterific.

Url Shortening Services

If you’ve followed us for any time you know we’ve tried many of them from bit.ly, to ow.ly, even su.pr and retwt.me. Since we are all busy people convenience as well as features plays a role in deciding which tool to use. All of them integrate an analytics functions which is important to us and probably you too. While it might be better to use just one for manageability, we will probably continue to use a variety of url shorteners. Part of that theory revolves around the notion of having all your eggs in one basket isn’t always a good strategy. The other fact of the matter is convenience. It all depends where we are when we post a shortened url which service we will use. What do you think?

Twitter Tools We Use to Promote Our Blog

TwitterFools runs on the WordPress platform and because of that we have lots of options for integrating twitter on our website. Here are the twitter related plugins we are using:

Tweet – automatically links @ symbols and # hashtags to Twitter.com

TweetMeme Button – Allows readers to retweet our posts, it keeps a retweet count, and most recently supports TweetMeme’s new analytics offering.

TwitterFools Trending Topics – Of course we use our own plugins, this one allows you to add a sidebar widget to your site that displays Twitter’s trending topics. As of v1.0.2, we added the ability to display trending topic descriptions from WhatTheTrend.com.

TwitterFools User Timeline – we also wrote a plugin that displays a slice of our twitter timeline. We haven’t released this one to the community yet as there are other tools that provide this functionality. However, if you want us to share the code – let us know and we just might.

Disqus Commenting System – On the surface you might not think of the commenting system as a twitter tool, but Disqus offers a great range of features that help start and keep a conversation going. If you decide to comment you can sign it with a Disqus, Twitter, Facebook, or your OpenId credentials – and you can also Tweet your comments. It even integrates video commenting from your web cam. Calling Disqus a plugin almost diminishes it. Disqus is a fully featured commenting system that tracks conversations on our blog and catalogs reactions to our posts from twitter and across the web. We love it.

Well there you go. For now, this is how we are tweeting and promoting our blog. Please, let us know your twitter recipe for success by telling us how you tweet. You can share and tweet your comments below – and we look forward to receiving our first video comment real soon – hint, hint!

Until next time, be well and tweet like you mean it!