Twitter Apps for Public Relations Professionals

Since it looks like Twitter is here to stay, public relations professionals need to learn how to effectively use Twitter and the myriad of tools that have been developed to help us navigate the microblogging network. To help, I pulled out the 10 apps that I thought would be most useful for PR pros from the article, “105 Twitter Apps for PR Professionals”:

1. CoTweet allows multiple people to connect to and tweet from a single corporate Twitter account. This is one of two tools I am highlighting in this post that I have used. I found CoTweet to be extremely easy to use and valuable because when needed, you can schedule tweets far in advance (I scheduled two weeks of tweets at once) and you can see what the other CoTweet-ers are doing on the account.
2. Twiler allows you to receive email updates of tweets that contain the keyword(s) that you set up. Instead of constantly checking Twitter Search or TweetDeck (see #7) you can have the tweets you want to see sent directly to your email to view at your convenience.
3. TwitTrans is a service provided by OneHourTranslation.com that translates your tweet to any language using human translators for a small fee. You can translate your tweet to Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. I’m assuming that the translation takes an hour, but that’s a lot faster than learning a second language!
4. ConnectTweet allows groups or organizations to combine the voices of its employees into a central Twitter account. With ConnectTweet, multiple people can contribute to the organization’s Twitter account by adding a hashtag to their company-related tweets coming from their personal account. ConnectTweet grabs the tweets containing the relevant hashtag and posts them to the organization’s Twitter page along with the individual’s Twitter handle.  This is a good way to avoid having a ghostwriter for your organization’s Twitter account (see my previous post: Ghostwriting for Social Media).
5. Twitpress automatically sends a tweet each time you update or add a new post to your blog. This helps you to promote your blog without having to remember to tweet about each new post you publish.
6. TwInbox, formerly known at OutTwit, integrates Twitter into Microsoft Outlook. This tool allows you to update your Twitter status, receive updates, archive, search and more all from Outlook. Simplifying Twitter and allowing you to have fewer items open on your computer?  Sign me up!
7. TweetDeck is a real-time browser that you can use on your desktop to connect your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more accounts that you monitor and use daily. The Integrated Media Services Group at Vanguard uses TweetDeck, and I have found it to be incredibly useful and organized. I can have multiple searches running for my clients at all times and can pull up TweetDeck to view these searches at my convenience.
8. TweetEffect allows you to see which tweet made people follow or unfollow you on Twitter. This could be a great tracking tool to see which messages and information are effective for your audience.
9. Twinfluence measures the combined influence of Twitterers and their followers to allow you to easily see which of your followers has the greatest influence on Twitter. Tracking success on Twitter is an ongoing question for PR professionals, and this may be a way to at least scratch the surface of this complicated question.
10. TweetBeep is similar to Twiler in that it sends you an email when your keyword(s) is mentioned on Twitter. The difference is that TweetBeep sends you an update every hour (which could be helpful or annoying depending on your personal preferences) and not only sends you information on people mentioning your keyword(s) but also who is tweeting your website or blog – even as a shorted URL!

What are your favorite Twitter apps?