Tuesday Tip: Top Twitter clients for Business Users

Twitter has become an essential customer service tool in today's business world, and finding the right Twitter client can be a challenging process. Tweetdeck and Seismic are the most popular, but they don't have the necessary features to support your social media efforts, so we put together a list of some of our favorite business-centric Twitter clients below. We hope this will help you keep track of your tweets!

1. CoTweet: CoTweet is a web-based Twitter client made especially with business owners in mind. The difference between CoTweet, and popular desktop clients like Seismic and Tweetdeck, is that it gives business owners the ability to add multiple users to one account (up to six), assign tweets to users for follow-up, see who’s on duty at all times, and track any escalated issues through notes and user names. The interface is very clean and simple so even a person who’s never used Twitter could understand how it works. Other notable features include integration with social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), message archiving, URL shortening, threaded conversations, and click-tracking stats. CoTweet is a free service already being used by big companies like Coca-Cola, Ford, and Starbucks.




2. HootSuite: Another professional web-based Twitter client on our radar is called HootSuite. The incredible Twitter client is a mix between TweetDeck and CoTweet in many ways so it’s a great way to transition into a more customer service oriented Twitter client. Like TweetDeck, HootSuite has a tabbed and multiple-column view that allows you to organize your streams by keywords, groups, or profile feeds. It also allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, and even add multiple editors to select profiles if you wanted to. You can also schedule tweets, view threaded conversations, and generate embeddable columns for your website. Business owners will appreciate the ability to integrate their tweets with services such as Sales Force, Google Adsense, and social networks through Ping.FM. An iPhone application or desktop client are not available at this time, but this web-based service is free to use so give it a try if you’re looking for a more powerful Twitter management system. Companies using HootSuite include Dell, Fox, and National Geographic.



3. Twaitter: Less powerful than CoTweet and HootSuite, but if you’re more concerned about scheduling your daily tweets, then Twaitter is for you. This light app has a tabbed view of your @mentions, searches, groups and archives. The Tweet Calendar allows you to schedule out your tweets up to a month in advanced, and even lets you view a timeline of all your scheduled tweets. Multiple users can be assigned to one account, it includes a URL shortener, spell check tool, and language translation tool. Overall, the clean interface makes navigating through this Twitter client a pleasant experience.



The folks over at SEO Optimise have a comprehensive list of 30 Twitter tools for Business, so check those out and if you have any other suggestions, let us know in the comments below.