Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for bloggers. In less than 140 characters per tweet, Twitter helps you get and stay connected to your readers, and allows you to join conversations and keep up with the latest trends and topics. Check out our list of the best Twitter programs to help you make the most of your profile.

Content

TweetDeck by Twitter is a great tool for managing your content. It allows you to schedule tweets (including images), so you can plan your content beforehand and make sure it hits Twitter when your audience is most active. This free program gives you the tools to organize and build custom timelines, keep track of lists, custom searches, activity and more—all in one easy-to-use interface.

Another exciting feature of TweetDeck is the ability to manage multiple accounts on one interface. If you’re running both your blog and personal account, this is a great way to toggle back and forth without having to log in and out of multiple accounts. You can set up your streams to be displayed side by side so you never miss a tweet!

You can also use this dashboard to view content pulled from those you engage with most frequently, or monitor and follow new accounts on one (or all) with a couple of clicks.  Trying to avoid spoilers until you can catch up on the latest episode of Downton Abbey? TweetDeck lets you mute accounts or hashtags by excluding a user’s handle or specific word. Once the threat of spoilers has passed, you can easily unmute those users or keywords as well.

Conversation

TweetChat is a free to use, simple interface that makes it a snap to host, moderate or join a tweet chat. If you’ve been part of a tweet chat before, you may have found it frustrating to track the conversation or stay engaged between your usual Twitter stream and the chat. TweetChat lets you zero in on the conversation at hand, interact with participants, and automatically loads a predetermined hashtag into every tweet so you can stay focused and on point.

TweetChat also features Active Rooms, which allow you to see the most talked about topics on Twitter and connect with users who are conversing on these topics. This is a great way to get involved with an audience you may not have reached before by seeking topics that are both popular and could relate to your blog. Opting to occasionally join these Active Rooms could help you recruit new readers to your blog – just be sure you’re staying relevant to the conversation at hand!

If you’re looking for a more integrated site that gives you more options and features, take a look at HootSuite and Sprout Social. These platforms offer a variety of features including scheduling posts and tracking analytics for a monthly fee.

Analytics

Twitter updated their analytics in 2014, and have been working hard to make it a more comprehensive overview of your account. Twitter Analytics offers you free snapshot of how your Twitter posts are performing and who’s engaging—information that could be extremely helpful in determining what your audience is interested in and how to keep them engaged and coming back for more.

The program is automatically set up for a month-at-a-glance view of your most vital stats, but you can customize the time period, which gives you the opportunity to get a more flexible look at the performance of your account across specific dates.

And for those who really love delving into analytics and spreadsheets, you can opt to export the data as a CSV file, which means you can save your data over the course of a year (or longer) to get a better understanding of your overall Twitter impact. Plus, this allows you to easily share with clients and partners to show how your content has performed for campaigns, sponsored posts and more. 

Some of the most powerful breakdowns Twitter Analytics provides are as follows:

Engagement Rate: Engagement factors in every way a follower can interact with your account to make it show up in their timeline. It incorporates one-on-one conversations as well as promotion to their circles of influence.

Link Clicks: If you post a tweet with a link in it, link clicks can tell you how many people actually opened that link. If the click-through rate is low, you know you need to either adjust your content strategy, or take a look at when you’re posting to improve performance. 

Retweets: A retweet happens when another user decides to repost a tweet sent by you. If a user retweets your tweet, their followers (and your followers) see your content.

Favorites: Favorites allow users to archive content by “starring” it so that they can re-engage later.

Replies: When a user responds directly to a tweet you sent out, or uses your Twitter handle at the beginning of a tweet.

Impressions: Impressions refers to the total number of users who received your tweets in their newsfeed. Although not everyone who receives a tweet reads it, it gives you a basis for how many people may be viewing your tweets.

When taken in together, this information gives you a look at what posts are highly effective so you can learn what’s working (and what isn’t) so that you’re tailoring your content to match the interests of your audience. 

Tweet Reach is an especially useful tool when creating online promotions. If you’re working with an organization (or just doing a promo yourself) it helps you see your overall reach and how your content is having an impact on users. You can view your impressions and see a breakdown of how many tweets are sent by users with a certain number of followers. Customize this for your Twitter handle or hashtag to see how your blog is performing.

This program is also a great tool for Tweet Ups and Tweet Chats because it offers many of features similar to TweetChat. Use their interface to view a tweet timeline and track hashtags, brands and individuals.

Use the top contributors function to learn who is interacting with your blog the most and consider giving them a shout-out or perhaps rewarding them with a giveaway for their loyalty. Customers are loyal to brands that are loyal to them, so this can help keep your most loyal audience coming back to your blog.

The website shows you data from the last 50 tweets for free. If you want a more robust report, you can choose to pay a fee.

We’ve shared our favorite Twitter programs to help you grow your audience; now let us know what you love! In the comments below, share how you set up content, conversation and analytics to make the most of Twitter!