I use twitter on a regular basis. I won’t pretend that I am a Twitter fanatic (yet), but I do use it almost daily. The tools I use are all free. All of these tools have a free version and several have a more powerful paid version. In some cases the extra features are well worth the money. Try the free products and upgrade after you decide you want more.

As you look through the list you might notice that many of these tools perform some sort of automation. First of all, I want to emphasize that complete automation of twitter is NOT a good idea. The human involvement is what makes it useful and enjoyable. However, a little automation will save you a significant amount of time. A little automation combined with regular manual intervention will make twitter enjoyable!

SocialOomph – Boost Your Productivity

SocialOomph is a powerful web application. The beauty of SocialOomph is that it is fully automated but with a delay. The automation tasks generally run 8 to 72 hours after the event that triggers it. This allows you to intervene and change things before making a mess. It also allows you to go on vacation and let your twitter account continue to grow and flourish without touching it every day. Schedule a few things and take a long weekend because SocialOomph:

• Supports multiple accounts
• Automatically follow back and set parameters to ignore (or not follow) certain account types
• Automatically schedule tweets and rotate through several
• Automatically send direct messages to new followers

SocialOomph is by far one of my favorite tools and the paid account is well worth it.

Twitter Tools for WordPress

Twitter Tools connects your blog with your twitter account.

• Configure a widget to show your tweets in the sidebar.
• Automatically tweet new blog posts.
• Create a daily or weekly twitter digest to post on your blog.
• And tweet directly from your blog sidebar or administrative panel.

Seesmic – Build your Community

Seesmic is a desktop tool that works great on the Mac.

• Supports multiple accounts
• Post tweets to multiple accounts at one time
• Search and save your searches for easy access.
• Watch multiple streams at one time
• and a whole lot more!

Tweepular

Tweepular is the ultimate follower management tool. See who is following you, see who you are following and perform actions on each of the lists. Build your popularity (tweepularity) by adding new followers.

Huitter – Bulk Follow Back and Unfollow

Huitter simply allows you unfollow anyone that is not following you back. It also allows you to follow anyone that is already following you that you are not already following.

Friend or Follow

Friend or Follow simply shows who you are following and who is following you.

Featured Users – Twitter Ad Network

Featured Users is a way to display your name in front of more users. If you really need to get your name out there and be in front of customers become a featured user. Your small twitter add is then displayed in several different locations.