10 Essential Twitter Features Tools to Use – Blogging Tips to Maximize Twitter Benefits

Twitter still remains the hottest micro-blogging tool. Numerous features are added to enable bloggers benefit even more from the Twitter platform.

Though most bloggers & businesses are now on Twitter, very few use the essential helpful features that Twitter provides.

Here is a list of some of our popular posts on using Twitter for small business & bloggers.

• Innovative use of Twitter in Transportation Business
• Flutter as an alternative micro-blogging tool
• Interview with Twitter creator Biz Stone
• Using Twitter as a Small Business Marketing Tool
• 10 Ways to get Popular on Twitter
• Easy Twitter Tools for New Bloggers

Here are 10 Essnetial Twitter Features & Tools that could help you maximize its benefits to your blogging business.

• Twitter Search – use various keywords & operators with Twitter Search to find posts and tweets related to any specific subject.
• Using Free TweetDeck as Twitter & FaceBook Desktop Widget – use Twitter, view Favorites, friends, Replies & Direct messages from your desktop. You can separate Tweets into columns to large number of follow messages.
• TwitPic – post pictures on Twitter with TwitPic. You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone or from the website.
• TweetShrink Shortener – this is a free service that replaces common phrases with symbols from Twitter feeds. Since each tweet must be within 140 characters, using tweetShrink allows you to use more words in your tweets.
• Finding common topics with Hashtags # – hashtags are words prefixed with the hash symbol (#). They are used to link tweets that share a common topic. Though anyone posting tweets could start a hashtag, it is usually more effective when a lot of people tweet on the same topic.
• Follow Users with WeFollow – unlike the built in Twitter follow tool, WeFollow is a people powered directory of interesting people worth following on Twitter.
• Use Tweetlater to Schedule Tweets – this is a free service that lets you schedule your Tweets. Much like you schedule WordPress posts, TweetLater does the same for Twitter tweets. It works with multiple Twitter accounts too.
• Find Popular Twitter Topics with TwitScoop – though Twitter also provides a Trend list of the popular topics on Twitter, TwitScoop is another free service that helps you to find out the latest hot & popular Twitter posts. The list is updated in real time & moving your mouse over any word will list the latest 5 tweets using that word.
• Find Twitter Statistics on TwitterCounter – TwitterCounter is a free service that will give you your Twitter account statistics. It can also help you compare more than 1 Twitter account to compare the individual account statistics.
• Disguise Twitter at Work with SpreadTweet – created by Elliott Kember, SpreadTweet is Twitter that looks like an excel workbook spreadsheet. Versions of this Twitter disguising tool are available for Office OSX, Office 2003 & Office 2007 versions of Microsoft Office.

If you know of any other Twitter tool that you have effectively used with Twitter, please share it with our readers.