7 Useful Twitter Widgets

Twitter has grown far beyond its microblogging roots to become a fabulous tool for social messaging, but how can you get the most out of it? Many people use Twitter clients to update their status and read tweets, but there are also a host of useful Twitter widgets that allow you to check your tweets from your blog or even let people retweet your blog entries.

Twitter Search Widget

Useful Twitter Widget

Adobe Air-based Released TweetDeck Android App (Beta)

TweetDeck, the Adobe Air-based multi-platform, multi-network Twitter client, has released an early beta for the Android platform today. Available by request (via a web form), the beta brings TweetDeck’s new single-feed-style interface to your Android phone with an all-new interface.

TweetDeck Android’s main timeline collapses your updates from friends on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Google Buzz into a single feed, with secondary timelines for directed (Twitter “@” answers) and direct messages (private message from Twitter). The main feed works fantastic, updates frequently with silent alerts using the status bar and LED. Flipping between secondary feeds is as simple as a swipe to the left or right. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to add more timelines at the moment, but I’d like to at least see a future update include a feed for direct messages from Facebook.

Updating your Foursquare status can be a small clumsy since it requires navigating to a dedicated “location” screen within TweetDeck, but thankfully your “favorite” locations are included, so you’ll have relatively quick access to the places you visit (and update from) the most.

The interface is clean, bright, and simple to navigate. There’s a conspicuous lack of options, which I might otherwise chalk up to the app being in beta, but the TweetDeck development team seems to have a similar “less is more” philosophy when it comes to the flexibility of the desktop client as well. If you consider yourself a Twitter “power user”, you may want to hold off jumping to TweetDeck Android, at least until there are more options for the service.

For the moment, TweetDeck has replaced the official Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare apps on my handset’s primary home screen. Time will tell if it keeps that coveted spot, but I’m hoping with a few small updates TweetDeck can be the multi-network social client the Android platform has been waiting for!

Marketers Tap into Twitter

Continuing its commitment to enable marketers to fully realize the collective power of relevant messaging via email, social and mobile channels, Lyris, Inc. on May 4, 2009 announced social media enhancements in Lyris HQ to include the monitoring, sharing and measurement of messages posted on Twitter. Support for Twitter is the latest
addition to Lyris HQ’s social media functionality, which allows marketers to incorporate social media sharing, tracking and measurement into campaigns across 10 of the most well loved social networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon and more.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send, read and share 140-character messages, referred to as “Tweets.” Tweets are showed on the user’s profile page and are visible to other users who have subscribed to receive messages, known as “followers.” Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites, with more than seven million unique monthly visitors and an annual growth rate of more than 1,000 percent, according to a recent Nielsen report.

“Twitter offers us another touchpoint to reach and engage key audiences,” said Karen McNaughton, director of marketing, In-Touch Survey Systems. “We are communicating on Twitter as a way to increase brand awareness and engagement and look forward to leveraging Lyris’ continued innovation to help us achieve our business goals.”

Lyris HQ is the only solution available today that allows time and cost conscious marketers to make, manage and measure successful social media campaigns from one integrated marketing platform. Lyris HQ provides customers with total control of interactive marketing campaigns, including email marketing, social and mobile marketing, pay-per-click management (PPC), Web content management, search engine marketing (SEM) and Web analytics.

Growing Community and ROI with Twitter
According to the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide, Sergio Balegno, senior analyst with MarketingSherpa notes that “Social media is changing the way companies communicate in the pursuit of commerce.” More than 75 percent of marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa agree that social media is changing the way their companies communicate with target audiences.
For marketers, Twitter has become an influential community to share information and interact with customers and key stakeholders via timely updates, offers, customer support and interactive dialogue. Lyris HQ allows marketers to leverage Twitter as part of their integrated marketing repertoire, expanding their ability to reach and engage with customers, prospects and followers in real-time. With the new Twitter functionality, customers can:

· Monitor: A new window in the Lyris HQ dashboard displays a running Twitter feed based on an individual marketer’s key search terms, allowing Lyris HQ users to actively track and respond to discussions on Twitter in real-time.
· Share: Lyris HQ social media enhancements allow customers to easily incorporate social media widgets (or icons) into their email marketing campaigns and newsletters. Once a recipient receives an email and clicks the new Twitter widget, it will take them to their Twitter page and automatically generate both a shortened URL link and associated subject line text that can be used or edited, automating and scaling the sharing of key messages, content and offers.

· Measure: The new functionality allows marketers to measure traffic from Twitter back to their Web site, as well as report what customers and prospects are doing once on the site. This level of insight enables marketers to better assess the business impact and effectiveness of messages posted on Twitter – whether originating from their own company or spread virally throughout the Twitter community.