3 Free Tools to Manage Who You Follow on Twitter

If the list of accounts you follow on Twitter has gotten a little unruly over the years, we can help. We're highlighting three useful tools that will allow you to analyze and manage the accounts you follow to improve your overall experience.

From weeding out spam accounts to seeing inactive ones, these tools will help you reduce your Twitter follow list in a meaningful manner. 

1. Manage Flitter

As part of a much wider suite of paid-for Twitter tools, Manage Flitter's free package offers some useful functionality to view and manage the accounts you follow.

You can view the accounts that don't follow you back, which accounts don't tweet in English, accounts with high and low influence, talkative and quiet accounts, and accounts that haven't been active for 30 days.
There's also a nifty setting that reveals who you follow that has a dubious, "fake" and likely spam following itself.

As you navigate through each of the options above, Manage Flitter lets you click to unfollow any account that is picked up by the filters. 

 

2. UnTweeps

UnTweeps is a very simple service that will show you which accounts you follow haven't tweeted in a while. It's an excellent way to free up your follow list of a few inactive accounts, paving the way for you to follow more active users that will bring more to your stream.

Once you've authorized the app, you can select a time period to concentrate on; the default is to list accounts you are following that have not updated in 30 days. This seems like a reasonable amount of time to assume that someone has lost interest in posting to Twitter.

Once the list of "stale" accounts has been generated, you can then click through to view more info, and check the box next to each account to unfollow. 

3. Tweepi

You can use Tweepi's "cleanup" function to see all the accounts you're following in a grid-based list format. What's useful about this tool is that you can add or remove grid columns to see more information about the accounts you follow.

In addition to the basics such as bio, location and number of followers, you can view who has a verified account, how many times an account appears in Twitter lists and when they last tweeted.

Once you've added the columns you want, you can then sort each page of your follow list by this criteria. Finding out more about each account is only a matter of clicking the info button for more data, while unfollowing someone can be done with another quick click.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Andrew A

Why You Should Use Twitter As A Customer Service Tool

Twitter, as everyone knows, is a fantastic B2C communication tool, helping companies to connect, engage and interact with their followers and customers. One of the advantages of Twitter’s readily available communications network, is that customers can directly contact companies by including their Twitter handle in tweets.

Companies should always pay attention to the questions and queries mentioning them on Twitter. By monitoring and responding to these questions, a company will improve its reputation on the social media site. The companies that respond to their customers tweets are often well regarded, by customers and the general public alike. Analytics site socialbakers recently released figures showing the top 10 fastest responders to Twitter queries. Halo BCA, the fastest company, has an amazing response time of 3 minutes.

Of course, response speed isn’t everything but, as communication becomes more and more instantaneous, it becomes increasingly important for companies to respond to queries, questions and comments on social media sites as quickly as they can. Here’s how you can use Twitter as a customer service tool.

Respond To Mentions

Try to respond as quickly as you can to comments, questions and queries to do with your company. Monitor and search through the tweets which mention your company on Twitter. Try to respond to all of the questions, even though this may take time. Search Twitter for comments about your company that don’t include your Twitter handle, not everyone will mention you directly if they have a complaint to make, but they will probably appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Of course, you don’t have to respond to all the comments – the ones that are downright offensive, for example – but it’s best to monitor and analyse the sentiments expressed online about your company. Use a tool like Ezeesocial to manage, monitor and respond to all the questions and queries you get on Twitter.

If you run a larger company, it might be worth creating a dedicated customer service Twitter handle – 30% of Fortune 100 companies have a specific customer service Twitter site. A dedicated customer service account can draw attention away from negative comments about your company, as well as helping you manage complaints and queries.

Be Polite

Be personal and polite. Always answer customer queries and complaints with an apology and an offer to help. To make it even more personal, you could use the ^ symbol and include your initials. By doing this, customers will know they are talking to an actual person and not a faceless company. You could also address your customers by their names: check their bio or Twitter handle, their name will often be there.

There are examples on Twitter of employees judging the tone of tweeted queries and changing their response accordingly. For example, telecommunication agency O2 made headlines last year by responding to a customer complaint in London slang. O2 were not only able to help the customer with his problem, they also got a lot of publicity for their brand. Of course, I would generally advise against this approach as it is more likely that you will offend the customer than anything else, but it’s always worth assessing the tone of customer queries and complaints anyway, in order to judge how best to respond.

For that extra personal touch to customer service, you could even follow up the more difficult customer problems a few days or a week later. Just tweet the customer after a week to make sure they aren’t still having problems. Try not to be too invasive, however, and don’t be offended if they don’t respond. Most customers who you help will be happy to compliment you on Twitter, which can really help your reputation.

Always Respond

You should always try to respond to questions, even if you can’t answer them. By acknowledging someone’s query, you ensure that they know that you are listening. If you don’t know the answer, direct them somewhere they might find it. Of course, it’s always better to try to give them the answer yourself.

If someone has a complaint that can’t really be expressed fully in tweet form, then ask them to direct message you their personal details, privately, so that you can continue the conversation on the phone or via email. A phone conversation is probably the best option: talking to a customer directly is often the fastest way to get a problem sorted. Of course, Twitter is great as the first line of communication, as it takes less time and effort to answer problems on the service.

Be Proactive

You don’t only have to respond to direct customer queries about your company, you can also look for tweeted questions to do with your industry that you can answer. You could even find funny or interesting questions to respond to, if you feel that you could shed some light on the subject.

Make sure your Twitter handle is in an obvious place on your website so that customers know how to get in contact with you. Put recently asked questions and answers in the FAQ section on your website: most people will look through this before turning to Twitter to help. It’s sometimes worth posting these FAQs on Twitter: useful information that might help your followers and customers.

Hopefully, your customers won’t have too many queries or complaints, but in the business world, they are inevitable. Thanks to Twitter, companies now have a platform on which they can communicate quickly and easily with their customers and vice versa. Twitter really is the first line of b2c communication in the modern world of social media.

How do you use Twitter as a customer service tool?

Integrating SEO and Social Media Marketing

Search engines are constantly trying to increase the search relevancy experience for users and are updating their algorithms more frequently. With search engines becoming stringent about link building policies and content usage, website owners now need to cautiously plan their SEO and digital marketing strategies.
The Twitter and Facebook revolution has forced search engines to give additional credit to social media activities. SEO and social media are made for each other pair. By integrating social media with SEO, companies can definitely achieve their digital marketing goals.

Here are some major factors you should consider while integrating SEO with social media marketing:

Picking the right keywords
Pick keywords people would normally search on social networks. Do not make a huge list of target keywords. More than 40% of the social network users engage through their smartphones and cell phones and don't like to type much while searching. Get insights from Google analytics about which keywords are mostly used by your visitors to search you.

Creating social presence
Create your company profile on all major social networking platforms. It is not important to cover all the social networks. Focus on those which are more relevant to your industry and can be easily managed. Customize your fan pages with clear call-to-action. Creating profiles on social networks is not just enough. You need to actively engage with your user community with content that adds value and helps you in reaching prospects.

Content marketing approach
Create optimized content which can be easily shared through social channels and can result increased visitors to your website. Content should be compelling and include target keywords within. Blogs, videos, articles, whitepapers, recorded events links are some of the most effective content for social marketing. Your updates and posts should be optimized with #hash tags on target keywords.

Website optimization for social media marketing
Link your website and corporate blogs to all major social profiles. Also give your visitors options to share your web pages and blog posts easily.

Setting targets for social engagement and conversions
Setting targets for new followers, replies/comments, favors/likes, enquiries, leads and sales can help you measure the ROI from social activities. Social media activities take lot of time, efforts and resources. Try integrating these targets with SEO and sales targets and ultimately with business goals.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7914481

A quick look at Ezeesocial (Infographic)

Social media is increasingly becoming a large of any businesses activity. There are a variety of platforms in which businesses can engage with other businesses and consumers in an instant. Ezeesocial lets you manage, monitor and engage on all your connected networks from one 'ezee' place.

Below is an infographic, detailing the main features of the social media tool. Be sure to try the 30 day free trial, and harness the power of Ezeesocial. 

Let us know your thoughts on this social media tool. 

Pinterest Introduces Tracking To Make Site ‘A Bit More Personal’

On Friday, Pinterest announced that it was tracking its users' browser activity in order to provide them with a more personal experience on the site. 

A new ‘Edit Home Feed’ button has appeared on the home page, across all devices. There are two tabs on the ‘Edit Home Feed’ page: ‘Follow Boards’, where users can view boards based on what they have pinned themselves; and ‘Unfollow Boards’, where users can stop following boards they don’t have any interest in any more.

Pinterest will also suggest boards based on the sites users have visited recently, as long as they have a ‘Pin It’ button. Software Engineer Ke Chen gives an example in the updates announcement of when this feature might be useful:

So if you’re planning a party and have gone to lots of party sites recently, we’ll try to suggest boards to make your event a hit. You can learn more about personalized pins and boards in our Help Center or updated privacy policy.

Pinterest now supports Do Not Track, so users who don’t want their activity tracked by the site can adjust their account settings at any time.

What do you think of Pinterest’s update?

Ten Great Free Apps For Social Media Managers

Earlier this month, Facebook released its 2013 Q2 earnings report. In the last three months, Facebook earned $1.8 billion, an increase of 53% from last quarter. This boost in revenue is largely thanks to an increase in mobile advertising, which has raised 41% of Facebook’s ad revenue in Q2.

Mobile is becoming an increasingly important platform for social media managers. Every social media network has a number of apps to make managing social media profiles easier. Facebook, for example, has several, including Pages manager and Messenger.

Apart from all the apps owned by the big social media firms, there are dozens of apps that can help a social media manager to organise their day and create content for their pages. Here are ten great apps you might not have heard of and how they can help you manage your social media pages.

1. Drop Box

Drop Box is a secure cloud platform where you can save images, documents, spread sheets and videos, and then access them from any device.
If you take a photo on your phone that you want to edit on your computer, save it to Drop Box so that you can access it later.

The alternatives: Google Docs

2. Pho.to Lab

Pho.to Lab is a great app for social media managers looking for an image editing tool with capabilities beyond those of Instagram. With more than 500 different effects, Pho.to Lab lets you create photo montages, virtual postcards, personalised contact icons and animated photos. If you want to create an eye-catching, unique image to post on your company’s social media pages, Pho.to lab is the one for you.

The alternatives: Aviary, BeFunky

3. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is the brilliant video calling service from search giants Google. Unlike Skype, video conferencing on the service comes at no extra cost. Because Hangouts is a Google product, there are also a number of great add-ons to help improve your communication, such as YouTube video sharing. Using Hangouts you can call clients, hold meetings and conduct interviews. You can even store and post the videos on your other social media sites.

The alternatives: ooVoo Video, Skype

4. SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a fantastic site where you can upload all your podcasts and audio files, follow other users and share content – essentially, it’s a social media site for audio. You can even embed SoundCloud files on other websites. With the SoundCloud app, you can manage your audio files easily, just as you would on your desktop device.

The alternatives: there aren’t any, really

5. Feedly

Feedly is a great news aggregator app, with many calling it the natural successor to the recently demised Google Reader. Feedly is available across all platforms, so you can stay abreast of updates relevant to you and your company no matter where you are. If Feedly doesn’t suit your needs, the alternatives below also provide great services.

The alternatives: Pulse, Flipboard, Google Currents

6. Blogger

Maintaining an active blog is simple with the Blogger app. It isn’t very easy to write articles on the go, but if you need to edit a mistake or respond to a comment, the app can be extremely useful.

Of course, the alternative WordPress also has an app, so if you do most of your blogging on WordPress then download it instead.

The alternative: WordPress

7. Yelp

Yelp is the best online business directory out there, with information about hundreds of businesses accessible from any device. Create your own Yelp profile so that people can find your business.

If you need to contact a potential client or find their offices while on the go, I advise that you download Yelp onto your mobile device.

The alternative: Google Places

8. Evernote

Easy to use and absolutely free, Evernote is the best note taking app out there. Like Drop Box, Evernote saves all you work onto a cloud platform so you can access it from any device. If you don’t have a pen and paper handy, then Evernote is the perfect application to note down important information. Evernote can also help you stay abreast of all your tasks and appointments with to-do lists and notifications.

The alternatives: EasilyDo, Weave

9. Dragon Dictation

If you don’t have time to type, then Dragon Dictation is the app for you.

Dragon Dictation is the best of the new generation of speech recognition apps, allowing you to record your speech quickly and accurately.

The alternative: Listnote Speech

10. Vine

Alright, Vine might be a little bit obvious but it’s a great app nonetheless. Personally, I use it instead of Instagram Video, but it really is a matter of preference. With Vine, you can create fun and interesting videos to post onto Twitter, catching the attention of your Twitter audience. The best Vine videos often go viral, so it’s worth experimenting with.

The alternative: Instagram

What apps do you use to manage your social media pages?   

Twitter Improves Profile Editing

Twitter has made profile editing easier, allowing users to drag photos from their desktop and drop them directly in the header image or profile image slot.

Twitter engineer Patrick Ewing announced the update with a tweet, in which he embedded the explanatory video above. The video suggests that Twitter are pushing for all users to have a profile picture instead of the anonymous egg.

Users can edit all their profile information from the ‘Me’ tab by clicking the ‘Edit Profile’ button. Having selected a profile or header image, users can reposition them with the mouse within their respective frames.

Twitter’s changes improve site functionality, making creating and editing accounts easier and more intuitive. Also, with all the editing options available onsite, users will spend more time on Twitter as they won’t have to navigate away to select photos from rivals Facebook, Google and Instagram – sites ideal for searching out, uploading and storing photos.

There have also been reports that Twitter is testing a new conversation view, with a line through threads of mentions and replies.

What do you think of the new Twitter profile editing options?    

Introducing Twitter’s New Marketing Tool: The Lead Generation Card

Yesterday, Twitter released details of its new expanded tweet model, the lead generation card: a powerful new tool for companies looking to generate cost-effective leads on-site.


Lead generation cards contain a company’s chosen offer and a customisable call to action button which, when clicked, will send the user’s email address and @username directly to the company. All the user’s information is filled in already, so they just have to click to send it to the company. The whole process is secure, so users need not worry about their information falling into the wrong hands.

Twitter’s new lead generation cards will make it easier for users to show their interest in a company, speeding up the whole process of responding to offers by keeping it all on-site, while also helping companies build up a larger database of enthusiastic customers. Lead generation is of the highest importance to marketers, says Revenue Product Manager Mitali Pattnaik in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog:

Marketers regularly talk to us about their goals, and for many it boils down to one major theme: generating leads, and ultimately driving purchases. 

Companies can use lead generation cards to display offers, to advertise jobs or to promote new products – as long as they are giving users an incentive to send their email addresses and Twitter information, marketers are only limited by their imagination.

Before releasing lead generation cards, Twitter successfully tested the feature with a small number of companies, including Full Sail (@fullsail), New Relic (@newrelic) and Priceline (@priceline), and discovered that the feature helped brands forge “deeper connections with customers”.

At the moment, lead generation cards are only available to Twitter’s managed clients, but they do plan to roll out the feature globally to smaller businesses soon.

What do you think of Twitter’s new lead generation cards?     

Facebook Admins Can Now Create Unpublished Posts On Their Page

Facebook administrators now have the option to create unpublished posts in the compose box on their page, instead of having to create them using Facebook’s Power Editor or the ads API.

Unpublished posts are hidden from the news feeds of a page’s fans. Instead, administrators can target specific groups of fans with unpublished posts by promoting them using adverts.

To create an unpublished post on their page, administrators first have to click on the tiny clock symbol to the bottom left of the status box. An option to “+ Add year” will then appear – an option administrators should take. After an admin has selected a year, a tick box will appear beneath, ticking this box will allow them to “Hide [the post] from [their fans’] news feed”.

With unpublished posts, administrators can experiment with different targeting options without inundating their fans’ news feeds with unwanted content. In fact, by targeting certain users with posts, based on their interests, brand loyalty, age, gender and location, page administrators can ensure more engagement with the content they create.

For example, a cinema chain could create an unpublished post to advertise a new horror film to fans of horror, then create a different one to promote an action film in the news feeds of action film fans, or a car company could advertise a people carrier to a family man, then advertise a roadster to a bachelor.

When news feed unpublished posts were introduced to the Power Editor and the ads API earlier this year, Facebook PMD AdParlor, who had been experimenting with unpublished posts, released some revelatory results. In one of AdParlor’s campaigns, the average click-through rate of unpublished post ads was 57% higher than that of organic post ads, while the cost per sign up was $0.65 less.

Although the new unpublished posts tick box is a bit hard to find, it makes unpublished posts more accessible and simpler to create.

Have you used unpublished posts to promote your business’ Facebook page? Do they work?       

Pinterest Now Lets Users Send Pins On-Site

Pinners can now send individual pins to their friends on-site as long as they both follow each other – before, pins had to be sent via email. Pins can be sent on both desktop and mobile devices, to both desktop and mobile devices.

To send a pin to a friend, follower or family member, users just have to click the “Send” button on the bottom right of a pin box. A screen will then pop up with a search bar and a short list of suggested recipients based on the people the user has most recently sent pins to.

Users can include a special message with any pin they send to their friends in order to – as software engineer Sunny Rochiramani puts it in the announcement post – “give it a more personal touch”. Pins can still be sent to Facebook friends or via email if the intended recipient is not on Pinterest, or either party doesn’t follow the other.

Pin recipients are notified if they are sent a pin. If they repin, like or comment on any pin they receive, the sender receives a notifcation also. The update is small, but it shows not only that Pinterest’s engineers are aware of their customers’ frustrations with the service, but also that they are willing to address these frustrations, however small, to make Pinterest more user-friendly.

Pinterest will be rolling the feature out over the next few weeks.

Have you sent any pins to your friends? Has it become easier?       

Facebook Updates Its Page Manager App For iOS Devices

Facebook has rebuilt its Page Manager App to make it “faster and easier to use”, according to the download page in the iTunes app store. Facebook has also added photo filtering and stickers to the app. Only the iOS app has been updated thus far, there is no word yet on when Android users will be able to download the new version.

Facebook has made some changes behind the scenes to improve navigation on the app: scrolling through the news feed is faster and more intuitive; photos can be opened and closed quickly with a single downward swipe.

Previously, users could not edit photos using the app, instead they had to apply filters and make changes to photos in Instagram, or another image editing app, before uploading them to their page in the Page Manager app. Now, iPhone and iPad users can edit the photos as soon as they are taken or uploaded to the app, with a similar array of filters to those available in Instagram.

Page administrators can also add stickers and emojis to messages sent using the app. Facebook started using stickers last month, adding them to Facebook Messenger on iOS devices earlier this week– they were already available to Android users.

Have you used stickers yet? What do you think of them?

Facebook Updates Mobile Business Pages

Facebook has redesigned its business pages for mobile devices, putting more focus on information that might be handy to users on the move, such as reviews, a map, and share, like and call buttons, at the expense of content posted on the page by administrators.

According to the announcement article on the Facebook Studio news page, the company has redesigned the page layout because over half of the millions of people accessing business pages every day are doing so via a mobile device: it makes sense, then, that those accessing pages on their phones and tablets are going to be provided with a “layout tailored to the way people look for information on their mobile devices.”

Mobile business pages for administrators, brands and individual locations have all been redesigned. Beneath the cover photo on the brand and store pages are interaction buttons: Like, Message and Share on brand business pages; Like, Check-In and Call on individual location pages. On the brand page there is a map and address information showing individual locations within the user’s area. Navigating through to one of these locations will display a page which also has a map and address information, but this time contains a star rating, as well as ‘like’ and ‘talking about’ figures.

The admin version of the business page gives administrators the option to either write a post or share a photo, with previously written posts and shared photos displayed in a scroll-down list beneath. Administrators cannot pin posts on mobile devices however, which could be a problem considering the fact that other mobile users won’t see posts unless they scroll down. If administrators really need a post to be seen, they’ll have to pin it on the page using a desktop device. Admins can switch between an admin and a public view at any time.

There are no longer specific video and event sections on the mobile app business pages, but a side-scrolling photos section remains. Administrators can still pin video and event posts using a desktop device, however.

The new layout definitely makes it easier for mobile users who are out and about to find stores and brands, contact them and interact with the page, but perhaps also makes post interaction less likely. It is unclear, however, how much post interaction occurred on mobile pages before. Posts will still appear on timelines, which is probably where most of the interaction with them occurs.

What do you think of the redesigned Facebook business pages for mobile?