8 apps to boost your Twitter strategy

Twitter is big business. Everyone from movie stars to the average Joe is sharing his thoughts and ideas on Twitter.

For average users, just going to Twitter.com and typing a tweet might be enough to get the job done, but this simply will not suffice for some users. People who use Twitter all the time need a way to tweet more efficiently and effectively. Here are nine apps to help.

1. Twentyfeet

Twentyfeet is like Google Analytics for Twitter. It keeps track of all the important statistics, and lets you know when something important is happening. The app displays easy-to-read graphs and insights so users can keep track of their follower numbers and how they are changing over time. You can keep track of your stats on Twitter, as well as Facebook and YouTube.

2. Buffer

Buffer is a really cool service for people who like to share a lot of links on Twitter. It allows users to submit links to their queue that it will post in spaced-out intervals. The last thing anyone wants to do is lose followers because of over-sharing. An app like Buffer prevents this problem.

3. Proxlet

FourSquare check-ins can be pretty annoying; they can clutter up a Twitter feed, making it hard to find the tweets that actually matter. That isn’t a problem with Proxlet, which blocks services like FourSquare. It also can block individual users, and does so right through Twitter.

4. Strawberryj.am

Strawberryj.am goes through your Twitter stream to pull out and display only the best tweets. It finds tweets based on the amount of times relevant users mention a link. It filters out all the junk from the timeline and shows only the links that people are actually talking about.

5. Tweepi

Tweepi is an incredibly easy way to clean out your followers. Instead of having to decide which accounts are worth following, the tool will tell you. It tells you which accounts are not following you back, are inactive, and are not tweeting much. This is a must-use app if you are looking to clean out your list of followers.

6. Twaylah

Twaylah is an interesting app that creates a Facebook-like fan page based on the content of your Twitter account. It shows tweets based on the topics you tweet most, and includes images from your timeline. This a great place to point prospective followers to give them a taste of the type of content they can expect from you.

7. Tweriod

Tweriod lets you know the most effective times of day to tweet. It looks at the timelines of all the people you follow and analyzes the best times to tweet so your tweet will have the most impact. This is incredibly valuable information for a business using Twitter for marketing. What business wouldn’t want its tweets in front of as many eyes as possible?

8. TwitHawk

TwitHawk is targeted marketing for Twitter. While it is kind of controversial, there is no arguing that it is effective. A user sets certain keywords and, when TwitHawk finds a user tweeting about those keywords, it automatically responds to the user with a predefined tweet. It costs five cents per tweet, and works automatically.

Lior Levine is a marketing consultant for Producteev , and consults for an online company that provides psd to html conversion. The original version of this article, which appeared on KyleLacy.com, offered nine apps. Since its publication, one of the apps mentioned has been acquired and closed to new registration.