Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is now owned by Twitter, Tweetdeck is the Twitter app for power users: its multi-column view and powerful filters enable you to keep on top of what matters to you, scheduled tweets enable you to pre-plan posts and you can use as many Twitter accounts as you can create. Tweetdeck is free.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social allows businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across multiple channels and turn social connections into loyal customers.
The web application integrates with Twitter and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, reporting, analytics and more – all in a package that’s intuitive and easy to use. One of the most notable features is the ability to compare with competitors. Comparison will show the number of daily mentions, percentage of engagements, and also the ability to see who’s talking to them.
Overall, it is a great, intuitive and affordable product. This would be recommended for users who have a firm understanding of Twitter and what metrics they are looking for.
Refollow
Refollow makes it easy to discover, manage, and protect your Twitter social circle. Manage your friends and followers, establish new relationships, unfollow or block users, sort by importance or lock relationships. This is a great research tool and you can try out the basic features for free.
TweetDeck
Tweetdeck is a product of Twitter created to offer users flexibility within the application. You can arrange various feeds, and if you have multiple accounts, you can schedule and manage those Tweets via Tweetdeck. This is a desktop app that is all about showing you the info you need in a convenient structure, and it even works for smartphones.
“One of the reasons why I love Tweetdeck is because I can set up keywords that I want to receive tweets on. I can have topics, I can have industries and hashtags. I can even keep tabs on my competitors. It would absolutely blow your mind what kind of complete disclosure people are willing to offer in these venues.” Paul Castain, The Sales Playbook
Overall, TweetDeck has the most user-friendly update process with one account. However, more than two accounts will make a mess of your TweetDeck dashboard. Especially if you are monitoring hashtags, lists and searches, as well as general account activity. Tweetdeck is recommended for users who are just getting started and want to manage one account.
Seesmic
Want to manage multiple accounts across different devices? Seesmic has you covered! This great Twitter tool integrates with 3rd parties like Salesforce Chatter and LinkedIn and Stocktwits. Overall, it’s a great tool with color scheme options, rounded edges, better spacing around columns and less clutter across the top of the dashboard to make Seesmic more pleasant to use. The biggest flaw is that it lacks features like tabs and analytics, which would make it a more robust option. Overall, Seesmic is packed with options and features to control multiple accounts and social media services.
Twitteriffic
Once the preferred app of Mac users, Twitterrific has seen brighter days on your desktop (meanwhile the iPhone app is certainly an impressive option). As it stands, Twitterrific is hardly an improvement on the Twitter.com web experience. One of the biggest issues involves not being able to view videos, photos or links that are posted on your timeline.
Twitterific has fallen behind their competitors in terms of ease of use and features, however remains a solid platform for beginners. Hootsuite is a handy Twitter tool that works well for business applications. Further, it works on iPads, iPhones and smartphones. Companies like Fox, Time and NBA use Hootsuite and have thus given it a stamp of approval.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers convenience, as you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even WordPress and Foursquare profiles! But it gets better, as you can even manage multiple profiles as well and use Hootsuite for keyword monitoring too. Currently, Hootsuite remains as one of the most popular social media applications holding an ever growing following of 4 million users. Overall, the tool can be used at any experience level. Hootsuite is great for beginners because of its intuitive platform and multiple features.
InsideView
Over the last decade, InsideView has established themselves as the leader in sales intelligence and social selling. In Spring 2012, InsideView updated their social media feature allowing sales professionals to view corporate Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and Blogs. Empowered with list building features, a 360° degree industry analysis and a consolidation of social media platforms, this tool gives sales professionals the ability to effectively apply social selling in their sales cycle. Users can now monitor and interact with their prospects, through social media, all under one roof.
InsideView is great for all levels of experience. It is intuitive for beginners or can be also used in advanced social selling for experienced sales reps.