More tools are becoming available every day to assist you to manage and grow your Twitter account. I’ve been checking out some of these tools, and thought I’d share what I’ve been discovering with you over a series of posts. This will help me to remember what I liked and didn’t like about different tools, and perhaps (hopefully!) be helpful to you too.

I didn’t find any of these first five tools particularly helpful for my Twitter management, but give them a go and share what you thought, and how they can be applied in a ministry context. Over time, I’m sure I’ll discover some crackers!

1. BrandChirp

BrandChirp has a 30-day free trial, and costs US$12 per month thereafter. You need to sign-up with your PayPal account, and if you want to cancel your account, you need to do this through PayPal.

• Brand Watch allows you to “follow Tweeters discussing your keyword, or reply instantly by clicking the related button.” This tool worked really well – mentions of keywords appeared almost instantly, and it’s very easy to follow the tweeters, or reply to their messages. However, it didn’t show me which people I was already following, and allowed me to follow people I was currently following. There’s also no way of sorting or filtering all of the mentions that start flooding in!

• Follow Stats shows you who you are following, how many followers they have and when their last tweet was. This function is less unique – other tools such as Refollow and Tweepi can give you these stats and allow you to unfollow.
• Target Follow allows you to follow the friends (followers) of another Twitter user, or follow users by search term (and even restrict by geographical location). Unfortunately, there’s no way of sorting this list, nor does the list reveal which of these people you’re already following. Tweepi’s Geeky Follow provides more tools for this type of following, and is free.

• Other features include the ability to ‘Automatically tweet the title and link of any RSS feed to your Twitter account’, and schedule your tweets (I’m currently doing this with TweetDeck, which is also free).

2. Friend or Follow?

This free tool will tell you:

• Who’s not following you back on Twitter,
• Who you are not following back, and
• Who your mutual friends are.

You can also export the results as a CSV file.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to bulk follow (or unfollow) people with Friend or Follow – again, you can do this with Refollow.

3. Twollow

Twollow offers a 7-day free trial, and accounts begin at US$14.99 per month. As with BrandChirp, you need to sign-up with your PayPal account, and if you want to cancel your account, you need to do this through PayPal.

The interface is basic, but I wasn’t able to test this out because when I tried to add my Twitter account I got an error message I haven’t seen before: “Invalid callback request. Oops. Sorry.”. This seemed to be a problem with the tool, and not with Twitter, so I gave up and cancelled my account.

4. Twitterator

“The purpose of this little script is to allow a Twitter user to “follow” a bunch of other Twitter users in one fell swoop—a Twitter friend list generator if you will.”

As you can see in the screenshot above, the interface is simply and gives you two options:

1. Enter a URL that points to a list of twitter usernames, or
2. Enter the list of usernames manually.

I’m not sure where to find a URL with a list of usernames, and I think that entering names manually could easily be done just by typing them into your browser. But perhaps I’m missing something?

5. TweetMetrics

TweetMetrics is a free tool that allows you to:

I had a lot of difficulties logging in to TweetMetrics with my Twitter account – it doesn’t use the same process as most Twitter tools, and repeatedly refused my password. Once I eventually got in I could see some interesting statistics that I haven’t come across in other Twitter tools (see below), but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with this information anyway. For example, what do I glean from knowing that my average tweet length is 104 characters?

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1. Searchtastic. Type in a Twitter username, press enter, and you’ll get a link to download an Excel spreadsheet of all the tweets for that user. This is my preferred tool – it’s free, easily, and reliable.
2. TweetScan Backup. This is also a very handy tool that allows you to select what you’d like to export – your tweets, your friends, direct messages, @replies, followers, favourite tweets – or a full archive. It will then export as a .CSV or HTML file.
3. TwitPrint. You’ll need to sign-in with your own account (i.e. you can’t get an export of another user), but TwitPrint does include some handy features, e.g. the ability to only print tweets that include particular keywords. It will also enable you to get a pretty print-out of your selected tweets. A similar tool is Print Your Tweets.

For more on this topic, check out ‘10 ways to archive your tweets‘ from Read Write Web.

On a related note, Twitter Export allows you to export a list of the friends or followers or a particular Twitter user, as a .CSV file.

Update:

1. twDocs is another nifty tool. One of the good features of this tool is the ability to choose the file type you’d like to export to – e.g. PDF, TXT, CSV and more.

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I could understand that bio if someone else wrote it for him, but who outsources the authoring of their Twitter bio?!

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I typed in ‘Jesus’ and this was the cloud that was generated (click to enlarge):

What stands out to you from this cloud? Any insights into what the world thinks about Jesus?

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If you’re thinking of doing something similar for your church or ministry, be sure to check out Facebook’s guidelines, and Twitter’s guidelines.

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It’s well-written and easy to read, and explores the impact of Facebook on its users, and how we (as Christians) can use it for our good, the good of others, and for God’s glory. I’ll review it in more detail soon.

As I read the book, I reflected on the emotions that Facebook (and other social media) generate in us. Here’s some examples.

1. I posted a link on Facebook and I checked back later to discover that “3 friends like this”. This made me feel happy. People liked something that I shared.
2. I posted another link on Facebook about a Christian preacher arrested in London. 2 people liked that, and I felt confused. Did they like that I posted it, or that the preacher was being persecuted?
3. I saw someone I knew on Facebook and sent them a friend request. I received notification that they accepted my friend request. This made me feel happy. They want to be my friend! It was a strange feeling, because friendships in the ‘real’ world don’t work like that – you don’t reach a point when someone officially confirms they are your friend – it’s an organic process from stranger, to acquaintance, to friend.

With this realisation, one of the obvious dangers of Facebook becomes clear – our temptation to act to please people, to be well thought of and to make ourselves feel good. While not always bad, this is a temptation most of us need to spend far more time fighting than succumbing to.

Can you think of any other examples of the unusual emotions that social media prompts?

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Her tweets during the Logies have resulted in her being sacked by The Age (where she was a columnist). news.com.au sums up the worst of her tweets:

“Deveny drew the most criticism for writing that she hoped 11-year-old TV star Bindi Irwin “gets laid” and that former TV host Rove McManus’ wife Tasma “didn’t die too” – referring to the loss of his first wife Belinda Emmett to cancer in 2006.”

According to The Age, Deveny justifies her comments:

“It was just passing notes in class, but suddenly these notes are being projected into the sky and taken out of context,” she said.

It’s hard for 140 character tweets to be taken out of context. She also seems blissfully unaware of the power of the medium – did she think that no one was listening? If she thought no one was listening, why was she speaking?

Is she sorry?

“I meant every single word,” she said.

It’s a shame she can’t see the hurt she caused.

You can do a lot of damage in 140 characters. The tongue truly is a fire – and Christians can be just as guilty of using harmful words, and need to be just as careful with how we use our tongue – literally, and virtually.

Let’s not be ignorant of the power and influence of social media – what you say can be read, re-tweeted and will remain online forever.

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More churches and ministries are developing a presence on Facebook and there’s lots of good reasons to do this. I’ve written a number of articles on the possibilities of Facebook – check them out here.

When you create a page on Facebook you will get a URL that is impossible to remember without a memory like a steel trap. However, it’s easy to create your own URL so that:

• Instead of having a URL like this: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=4097712284&ref=ts,
• You can have a URL like this: http://www.facebook.com/churchbythebridge

Here’s how:

1. When you’re logged into Facebook, go to http://www.facebook.com/username/.
2. On the landing page you will be able to set a username for your personal profile on Facebook. Beneath this is a link to ‘Set a username for your pages’. Click on this link.
3. You will now see a drop-down menu listing the pages you are an administrator for (you can set a username for a group or event yet). Click on the page you would like to set a username for.
4. You can now set a username. Think carefully about the username that you choose – you can only change it once (previously you couldn’t change it at all!).

Want help? Learn more about usernames.

I’ve used this process to create usernames for my church’s page (http://www.facebook.com/churchbythebridge) and the Communicate Jesus page (http://www.facebook.com/communicatejesus).

It makes it easy to then promote your Facebook page offline – my church has just created two posters for our noticeboard to promote our presence on Twitter and Facebook to passers-by.

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It struck me how quickly the social media landscape changes. For example, I’d made a note of the possibilities of Facebook Connect. At the Facebook Developer’s Conference, it was announced that Facebook Connect will be no more.

Keeping up with the latest developments in social media isn’t easy. But with Facebook providing a challenge to Google for the most consumed website, and 300,000 new Twitter users coming on board every day, the opportunities are only increasing.

What’s the answer? How do you avoid stepping into a nightmare? How do you make the most of social media?

Keep reading Communicate Jesus

You can check out all posts on Social Media, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Enjoy the weekend!

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This week, Marketing Magazine (UK) has an interesting post on how British Airways has been using social media to respond to industrial action.

Read ‘British Airways’ preemptive strike‘.

According to the article:

“A series of videos featuring chief executive Willie Walsh providing updates on the impact of the strike and apologising for the inconvenience caused to customers has received more than 100,000 hits on YouTube and BA.com. According to research carried out for Marketing, the videos improved perceptions of the British Airways brand among 19% of the people who had seen them (Marketing, 24 March).”

“‘Brands don’t have a choice but to do social media ‘ says Ian Armstrong, manager, European communications for Honda. ‘In a crisis, the medium can influence behaviour and brands can’t opt out as consumers will continue to use it. The brands just have to maintain a strong position and be true to their values; the tone should reflect that.’”

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