Businesses are always looking for ways to save time on their social media activity while boosting their profile. Happily, there is an abundance of tools out there to help you do this very thing! We’ve put together a list of the required ingredients to create an exemplary recipe for success.

So, what's in our Twitter toolkit?

1. Scheduling tools

Content planning is very important. A regular stream of interesting content makes your feed look natural and consistent, as opposed to a more random approach, squeezing in a flurry rush of posts from the train or when you suddenly have five minutes after the lunchtime rush..

Using a tool to schedule posts can help with this. Yes, you still have to put them into the system, but it helps you stagger it so there are more gaps in between.

These are really good tools to use if you know you’re going to be unable to access social media or if you’re out of the office for a while.

It means you can schedule posts ahead of time so that you can relax, knowing that there’s a post already going up. We call this ‘building block’ content.

It’s not the reactive stuff, focusing on customer engagement. It’s the rich mix of content about your business or sector that people will generally find interesting.

Some of the scheduling tools we like include:

If we want something simple, that is solely designed for scheduling social media content, we tend to go for Buffer.

This is good for us because it means there aren’t any unnecessary features that we’re putting to waste. The ability to re-buffer past successful content is great, so you know the engagement rate will be good.

2. Social media dashboards

A social media dashboard helps you manage your accounts.

You’ll be able to run lots of different platforms through it - not just Twitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and more.

So, you won’t be using the Twitter app to publish, you’ll be using something else. Depending on what you use you’ll be able to post tweets, read replies, monitor competitors, schedule content and run reports.

The biggest advantage here is saving time:

Everything is in one place so you don’t get side-tracked
Often, they include scheduling tools
The ability to track competitors and keywords
Track your activity, so you can analyse it to see what works

Some of the most common ones you’ll come across are:

Our favourite is Hootsuite, for its ease of adding extra columns, and the way you can add so many different platforms into the dashboard. Great if you’re not just stopping at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, you want Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and others as well.

3. Image and video content editors

The visuals in your tweets are really important. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be a whizz with Photoshop. There are some handy tools out there that do a lot of the legwork for you.

We like Canva and Pablo (which is integrated with Buffer). Lots of social media-ready graphics to get you started, plus you can save them as templates to save you even more time and create regular consistent images.

Canva offers a variety of content types. From pre-sized social media image and header templates to marketing materials, documents, presentations, invitations and ads, you’ll find almost everything you need.

Pablo makes it easier to quickly create graphics on the fly. It provides you with a tool to create beautiful images that you can share on social media.

4. Tools to help you build followers

Building followers is a big part of your Twitter account.

It can determine how much traffic you gain
More traffic means more sales
Drives a conversation about your brand
People trust accounts with more followers! With more followers your profile will look more appealing

When building followers, it’s important that you connect with the right people, that you feel you can build a bond with and form a potential business deal.

We like Manageflittr, Commun.it and Followerwonk. These are all good for tracking your followers and the profile analytics in depth so you know how you’re progressing.

Manageflittr gives Twitter users insight into their Twitter account. It provides you with a set of handy tools to help you work faster and smarter.

Commun.it helps companies use their social media as a powerful performance marketing solution. It lets you to analyse your posts and see what’s working and what isn’t.

5. Twitter measurement

Once you’ve created and published your tweets you need to have a tool to check how well they’re doing because there’s no point putting all this effort in if you're not measuring and using those results to improve your next campaign.

One way to do this is by using a tool called Dashthis, which is used to pull in the data from lots of different platforms. Dashthis gives you an all-in-one dashboard and allows you to create reports which can tell you information like total tweet views, ad impressions and ad cost.

We’ve also used Raven, then there’s Falcon and Cyfe, and in-built measurement in the above tools like Hootsuite or Sprout.

However, if you’re a small business just getting to grips with Twitter, you might want to try Twitter’s own analytics.

It features a Tweet activity dashboard where you’ll find metrics for every single one of your Tweets. You’ll know exactly how many times Twitter users have seen, retweeted, liked and replied to each Tweet.

There’s also an audience insights dashboard containing valuable information about the people who follow you on Twitter. You can track your follower growth over time and learn more about your followers’ interests and demographics.

Master your Twitter account

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A recipe for success: the top 5 Twitter tools to promote your business