With Twitter becoming used more and more as another marketing channel for retailers, it’s important to make sure the time spent on this new channel is both effective and worthwhile.

1. 9 Great Tools for Retailers using Twitter
With Twitter becoming used more and more as another marketing channel for retailers, it’s
important to make sure the time spent on this new channel is both effective and worthwhile. There have
been a huge amount of Twitter tools introduced to help you:
 Manage your Twitter account
 Help build followers
 Help track your Twitter
 ...and more
We’ve looked at many of these tools and below is our list of the most useful:
1. Cotweet
Cotweet’s strapline is “How business does Twitter”
and it is what it says on the tin.
Cotweet is a tool that manages your tweets for up to 5 of your Twitter accounts and it’s great if multiple people
tweet on behalf of your company as each can post
tweets, schedule future tweets, leave
assignments for colleagues and more. A very
useful feature is the ability to schedule your
tweets for future posting to both deliver
important promotional messages at exactly the
right time and to ensure a steady stream of
tweets throughout the day/week/month. In
addition you can view click stats on your Cotweet
tweets, monitor trends, manage
updates, conversations within your team and
more.
Number one reason to use: For you and your team to
manage your tweets
2. Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed takes a feed that is already setup – whether it be an RSS feed or a blog –
and delivers it to your
Twitter account. This is
great if you have a news feed that you’re already
using – or even if you want to tweet posts from
someone else’s feed. In addition to linking to
Twitter, it also links to Facebook and many other
services ensuring you’re not duplicating your effort.
Number one reason to use: To build your tweets
with yours (and others’) feeds
01865 339 470 1 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

2. 3. Facebook
As a retailer, keeping all your social media activity up to date can be time consuming.
If you’re regularly updating
Facebook, set your account
to link to Twitter and all updates can be automatically
tweeted into your Twitter account – and vice versa if
you wish.
Number one reason to use: To automatically tweet
your Facebook updates
4. Blast Follow
This is a great tool to build up the number of people you’re following who have
an interest in the subjects you focus on (via a hashtag search). You can see how
many people are interested in what you offer and
automatically follow them so increasing your followers
(as the people you’ve blasted start to follow you back).
By using different keywords to search you are also able
to see which keywords bring back the most users
therefore enabling you to better focus your tweets to
the best keywords. On the negative side, and it’s quite a
big negative, the overuse of Blast Follow can get you
temporarily banned so use only in moderation and use
sensibly (if you sell shoes don’t BlastFollow people
interested in books).
Number one reason to use: Building your followers
5. Tweetcloud
Tweetcloud gives a picture
of the keywords that are
most prominent, and
therefore most associated, with your Twitter
account (or that of your competitor, influential
tweeters in your subject area etc). Using this
enables you a quick check to ensure you are using
the right keywords, and enough keywords, in your
Tweets to ensure maximum exposure.
Number one reason to use: To focus your keyword
strategy
01865 339 470 2 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

3. 6. WeFollow
WeFollow allows you to see the most influential and the most followed
tweeters in your subject area (via a hashtag search). In a similar way to
Google
giving weight to sites that have good,
relevant links into their site, WeFollow ranks
how influential a tweeter is based on how well
they tag themselves and how well those that
follow them tag themselves too. Once you’ve
established the most influential, looking at their
tweets can give you an idea of what has earned
them their status thereby assisting you in
planning your Twitter strategy to best effect.
You can also follow them in order to both get
into conversations with them and retweet their
posts.
Number one reason to use: Building your profile
7. TweetDeck
TweetDeck has similar features as Cotweet but is a desktop, ipad or iphone
application. It connects with
your contacts in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
and more. It is very good for managing,
grouping and keeping up-to-date with your
contacts. It also allows you to update Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn and more from one
application. The search function is also very
useful, filtering tweets from all of Twitter
allowing you to both keep abreast of what’s
going on in your subject area and finding new
people to follow. On the negative side, there
has been some feedback that the desktop
version can use a lot of memory.
Number one reason to use: Managing your Twitter contacts and conversations
8. Blog Tweeting
If you have a blog which is updated often, this can be time consuming enough without then having to tweet
about your posts as well. Most blogs now have options to link to your Twitter account to allow automated tweets
of your blog posts. This is an ideal way to both keep your Twitter up to date with all that’s going on at your
company, as well as marketing your blog.
Number one reason to use: To automatically tweet your blog posts
01865 339 470 3 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk

4. 9. HootSuite
HootSuite describes itself as a ‘Social Media Dashboard’ and is much more
than just a Twitter tool. The tool allows a team of people to collaboratively
schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress and other social networks via the web, your
desktop or on mobile platforms. While the tool works in much the same way as CoTweet in allowing you to
schedule updates, but does so much more by integrating more social networks as well as your Wordpress blog
in one easy to use tool. The majority of the tools are available in a free version, but there is also a ‘Premium’
package which costs $5.99 a month, and comes with a 30 day free trial.
Number one reason to use: Easily manage multiple accounts across multiple social media channels with ease
01865 339 470 4 www.IndiumWebManagement.co.uk