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If you’re looking for help in just managing your Twitter follows and followers, there are a host of better services that won’t send a message that you’re a loser in the Twittersphere.

Five Tools To Help You Better Manage Your Twitter Follows & Followers

1. TwitCleaner — This is a free service and will quickly run through all the people you are following and identify whether they are social, antisocial, spammers, robots or simply taking up space in the Twittersphere.
2. Twitter Manager — this is an excellent iPhone/iPad app that provides not only follow and unfollow help, it analyzies the content of those you follow and lets you know if it’s interesting or otherwise
3. Tweepi — helps you manage followers, follows, allows you to unfollow, manage lists and gain other insight on your followers and uniquely allows you to force others to unfollow you by accessing Twitter’s block function.
4. TwitSweeper — this service automatically scans your Twitter followers and unfollows spammers; it will also notify you of suspected spammers and give you the option to continue to follow or not. A much more unobtrusive way to flush out spammy followers than TrueTwit.
5. ManageFlitter — this is more of a full-service Twitter management tool, but it has powerful follow and unfollow features that will have you taking control of your followers easily.

So don’t fall victim to false promises and into the trap that will turn you into a spammer, avoid TrueTwit at all cost. Check out these other tools. But remember, focus more energy on who you follow, rather than wasting valuable time and resources on who follows you.

Looking for more info on tools to help you better manage your Social Media efforts? Check out our previous post on the clearcloud digital marketing blog on “Taming The Social Media Monster” — Seven Twitter & Social Media Management Power Tools Worth A Closer Look.

Follow allankarl and clearcloudD on Twitter (we promise not to force you to validate through TrueTwit!.

Who Not To Follow On Twitter

Four Flags That A Twitter User Is A Spammer

1. The user has the standard Twitter “Egg” placeholder bio photo
2. The user’s bio is blank or simply has a single link
3. Tweet stream is blank or filled with non-sensical junk; nothing of interest
4. Follow to follower ratio is unbalanced. If the user has a disproportionate (or none) followers to how many the user follows, run! Personally, my rule of thumb is anyone with more than a 4 to 1 Follow to Follower ratio is a suspect bot, spammer or other bad Twitter decorum.

But you already know this. Even the lightest Twitter user can quickly determine if a user is a spammer. By taking a few seconds to look at a Twitter profile, you can tell whether someone is a legitamate follower or not. Resorting to a robotic and spammy service like the TrueTwit Validation to do your work sends another clear message: you don’t care and you’re a spammer. Sorry, it’s true. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. A quick “google” will unleash a rash of rants by people taking shots at TrueTwit.

The Ignorance of @TrueTwit Validation Service & Secrets To Responsible & Rewarding Social Media Engagement

Why You Should Focus On Who You Follow, Rather Than Who Follows You.

If you are an active or moderate Twitter user, you likely understand that for many the objective of your Twitter engagement is to share content, news and information and to interact with an interested and engaged follower base. In addition, you also are likely interested in engaging with like-minded people who are also sharing valuable content and engaging in conversations with people who you find interesting, can learn from or can help. The essence of Twitter — and all of social networking — is engagement and conversation. This is a two-way street.

The beauty of Twitter and how it’s different than Facebook or LinkedIn, is that it’s an open community, yet it’s also flexible. That is, you don’t need to accept or approve new followers. If you wish to close your Twitter activity to only approved followers, there is an option to protect your tweets.

Another benefit and differentiator of Twitter is users have freedom of choice. That is, you get to choose which Tweets appear in your streams or feeds by choosing which Twitter users to follow. You likely follow those users who intrigue you, share common interests, work in the same industry or are colleagues, friends or other connections. In the same manner, users who find you interesting or intriguing can choose to follow you.

What I find annoying and incredibly foolish and short-sighted (read: downright stupid) are users that choose to use a follower validation service such as TrueTwit. These services require new followers to read an email, click a link and land on a page where they must complete a CAPTCHA-like form. Upon successful completion of this form, users are “allowed” access to the Twitter stream of the TrueTwit user.

Why Twitter Users Will Ignore You and Write You Off If You Use TrueTwit

While the concept of TrueTwit might have some merit, the idea is flawed for many reasons. According to its website, TrueTwit will verify people from robots,

help avoid Twitter spam, and save time managing followers. In fact, TrueTwit by its very nature and its process is a Twitter Spammer, and by signing up for its service you are a spammer. Why? Because the TrueTwit validation notice comes to you as a Direct Message — and it’s direct messaging that TrueTwit is supposedly protecting users from.

The only way that Twitter users will get Twitter spam or be bothered by robots is if you choose to follow robots and spammers. Why would you follow robots and spammers? So why would anyone need to validate followers?

By forcing users who are truly intrigued, interested and who want to follow you through the laborious and silly step of validating them sends a clear message: “You worry me and I don’t trust you.”

So you see, the TrueTwit validation service targets and promotes poor Twitter behavior: the auto-following of anyone who follows you. The only way a Twitter user could be subject to spam is via Direct Messages (DM). The only way a user can send anyone a Direct Message is if they are following that user (spammer). So why would you be following a spammer, bot or anyone who doesn’t interest or intrigue you? And there lies the fault and stupidity of TrueTwit validation. And if notifications of new followers bothers you, it’s a simple setting you can turn off in your Twitter profile preferences. Keep in mind anyone can “mention” you in a Tweet; there is no requirement that you must follow someone to mention them. TrueTwit cannot protect users from “mention spam.”

If I find someone and choose to follow them and they then force me through this silly TrueTwit validation scheme, I ignore them. And there are many in the Twittersphere that will do the same. So if you desire to have followers that are interested and intrigued, the worse thing you can do is put them through TrueTwit validation. Here’s a suggestion, next time someone sends you a TrueTwit scheme, mention them in a tweet and include a link to this post.

So, instead of putting senseless energy into who follows you, the more productive use of that energy should be put into who you choose to follow.

Seven Twitter & Social Media Management Power Tools Worth A Closer Look —

There is bad news people for individuals and for small and medium-sized business when it comes to social marketing: it’s impossible to keep up with the pace of innovation and change in social media. Sorry, it’s true. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to find any truly sustainable social media expert. What was hot and working yesterday, may be cool and mediocre today.

What can you do about it? First, rid yourself of fear and open up to trying something new and expect that sometimes you will fail or simply not achieve what you hoped.

The good news is that there are a number of tools that can help you manage your social media engagements and efforts. You should dip your toes and test the water when it comes to these tools. But be warned that the tools will change and so will you and your business. That’s why you must define clearly why and how you will use these tools before you dive into deep water.

Here are seven Twitter and social media management tools that are on our radar and worth checking out. They are in no particular order and each has its purpose, pros and cons and place in the social media mix. In some cases you might consider using a mix of more than one tool.

Buffer

If part of your social media strategy is to share interesting content, and it should be, you want to be sure to share it at the optimum time, and not always when you found it. Buffer allows you to set a schedule to post tweets at optimal times well spaced our throughout the day. Place tweets in your Buffer and they’ll go out according to your defined schedule. Browser extensions for Firefox, Safari and Chrome make it real easy to add content to your Buffer.

SproutSocial

Great for small business, SproutSocial pulls all activity from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn into one stream. You get a single and simple inbox, can schedule tweets and leverage a powerful monitoring and alert system for hashtags, keywords and users. Offers discovery tool and makes recommendations on who to follow, unfollow and dead accounts. Great user interface with clean dashboard.

HootSuite

HootSuite is like command central for all of your social media accounts including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. With scheduling capabilities, custom list creation, powerful search tools and easy to use analytics, HootSuite was one of the first SocialMedia dashboard products and they continue to innovative and improve. Currently, this is the only social media tool that supports Google+ — but even that will change.

Commun.it

So you’ve done a good job getting hundreds or thousands of followers and you are following increasingly more each day. Now what? Commun.it is a community and relationship management service for social media. It performs powerful analytics on who you follow and automatically categorizes and places them in lists according to influencers, activity and much more. Further filtering allows you to search and follow those interacting with your company or brand and interact with them directly.

Argyle Social

This is one of the more expensive tools in our list, but Argyle Social is designed for larger enterprises specifically looking to measure social marketing ROI. Like others Argyle Social offers powerful scheduling and a Buffer-like optimal timing capability, task assignment, real time analytics and, like HootSuite, a custom URL shortener for more robust tracking and the ability to setup and track specific campaigns.

TweetDeck

There’s a reason that Twitter bought this social media dashboard and management tool. Available in iPhone, Android and desktop versions, TweetDeck allows you to post simultaneously to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks. Ability to pull lists, searches, hashtags and social media accounts in a clean column view. Also offers a scheduling option and a great overview of your social media activity.

ManageFlitter

This is part of a new breed of Twitter tools that are bringing analytics, follow and unfollower data and incredible search capability. This will help you find and follow the most influential and relevant people and built up your Twitter followers using a smart follow strategy. Plus you will see people who you’ve followed that don’t follow you back, are inactive, have no profile and many more attributes.

Fail To Plan. Plan To Fail —

There’s no question that social media efforts must be included in virtually any marketing or branding effort. Without consistent activity on key social networks, your company will be conspicuous by your absence. That’s not a good thing.

How Are You Handling Social Media?
Key to success and postive ROI on social media marketing efforts is developing a simple strategy which should include defining objectives, prioirtization and creating a simple to follow social media flow chart that can be easily adopted and implemented.

Your strategy should include defining content, sources, targets and a means to measure success and ROI.
However, because time and resource constraints may interfere with consistent social media activity, it’s imperative that you fill  a toolchest of accessible and timely messages—idea and content galleries that can be drawn on during peak periods.

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1. Use a business-oriented Social Media App such as HootSuite or TweetDeck to manage your social networks
2. Don’t get overwhelmed by tasks and keeping up, use tools like scheduled posts, content and idea galleries and a follow social media flow chart.
3. Don’t forget social media is a conversations, don’t overwhelm your friends, followers and fans with simply promotional messages. Engage them with relevant content.
4. Generate your own content, but don’t forget to retweet, follow and link to others.

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If you are unable to handle the workload internally, supplement your activity by engaging a partner who can align with you and provide necessary transparency while still leveraging the power of social media and improving your visibility and interaction.

If you would like to discuss social media strategy, plans and the options available that will let you engage and take advantage of this critical marketing tool. Contact clearcloud by sending us a note or calling +1.949.891.2661