12 Twitter Tools to Take Control of Your Online Reputation

Online reputation management is all about developing your personal brand, publishing quality content, and taking control of your search results. Twitter is an obvious choice if you’re looking to get control of your search results — it ranks well on its own and can be a powerful resource for increasing the engagement of your original content.

But there is a big difference between using Twitter like an average user and using Twitter like a pro to impact search results. First, you'll need to optimize your Twitter profile. Then use these 12 twitter tools to give you the jumpstart you need to take control of your online reputation:

1. RightRelevance

RightRelevance is one of my favorite resources for aggregating quality content all in one place. RR mines the web to consistently find and rank the most influential people and articles for any given topic. Once you’ve signed in via your Twitter account, simply add all your favorite topics to your feed (that column on the left) and then check them whenever you’re low on content.

Once you've clicked on a particular topic, you can view the ‘Influencers’ tab (across the top) to see that topic’s most influential users and find loads of people to follow in the industry. You can do it all easily right from the RightRelevance interface.

2. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a data miner’s best friend. It shows you the most shared pieces of content for a given topic and a given timeframe. It teaches you which social networks and platforms you’ll want to target based on your industry and interests. And it is also a critical brainstorming tool because it shows you what your competitors and peers are doing. Use it to discover content, improve your content, and come up with brand new content altogether.

3. RiteTag

If you’re tweeting about ‘entrepreneurship,’ how do you know whether to use #entrepreneur #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship or some other variant? 

RiteTag, that’s how. Simply enter a keyword and RiteTag will determine how many unique tweets per hour, retweets, potential hashtag views, etc. You can even view a historical timeline of that hashtag’s popularity over the last month. 

From my RiteTag search above, I can see that #entrepreneurs and #entrepreneurship are good but #entrepreneur is better by a long shot. Case closed. The RiteTag extension makes this even easier by integrating directly with Twitter, Buffer and Hootsuite but it only lasts for a 30-day free trial unless you’re willing to dish out a monthly fee.

4. Buffer and 5. Swayy

I go back and forth between Buffer and Swayy a lot. Buffer has quickly become one of my all-time favorite Twitter tools because of its amazingly easy queuing system. You set up as many posting times as you want throughout the week and your tweets will automatically fall into line when you add them to the queue. With Buffer’s new Content Suggestions (which will probably get better and better), you can throw ready-made tweets right into your queue with one click. Just season with hashtags to taste.

But as good as Buffer’s content is, it isn’t curated based on your interests, which is why I’m drawn to Swayy. Swayy’s content suggestion engine gets better and better the more you use it because it learns what types of content you like to share over time. Swayy also suggests users to mention and hashtags to use. (The hashtags sometimes leave something to be desired, however, so I would still stick to RiteTag.) 

Buffer lets you easily throw images into your queued tweets to increase engagement but you have to pay to schedule more than 10 tweets at one time. Swayy doesn’t make it easy to use images but it does let you schedule an infinite amount of tweets. Sigh…the debate rages on.

6. Pablo

Even if you don’t use Buffer, you should still use its younger brother Pablo. Pablo lets you create engaging social media images in under a minute. Upload a picture of your choice, pick a quick background option, enter a title, and you’ve got a custom image ready to go.

7. Canva

If you have a little more time to make an engaging social media image, then Canva is the way to go. Canva - which deserves a whole article to itself - lets you easily create stunning designs, images, infographics, and more. Their awesome templates and cookie-cutter social media sizes makes this process as easy as it can be.

8. Hootsuite

Hootsuite has become one of the standard tools for social media managers because it was early on the scene (2008) and its dashboard integrates with a whole range of social networks from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn and Google+. Heck, it even supports MySpace if you’re into that.

I actually prefer Swayy and Buffer as pure scheduling tools but one thing I will say about Hootsuite is that it makes scheduling retweets a cinch. Simply install the Hootlet extension on your browser and you’re ready to start spacing out your retweets.  All you have to do is click the little owl instead of the retweet button to throw retweets into your queue.

9. Tweriod

Tweriod helps you make the most of your tweets by analyzing your Twitter followers and letting you know the best times to tweet. It will tell you when you get the most exposure, when most of your followers are online, and when you received the most @replies. Use this simple tool before setting up your customized schedule to get the most out of your tweets.

10. WhoUnfollowedMe

One of the easiest ways to NOT get followers and quality engagement is to just follow people willy nilly and let your following/followers ratio get all out of whack. Think about it — if you follow 2000 people (the maximum Twitter will allow unless your ratio is healthy) but only have 100 people following you back, that’s a pretty sure sign that you’re a spammy user. Most users will steer clear.

That’s where WhoUnfollowedMe comes in. It helps you catch the people who once followed you but have since unfollowed you. You can quickly see who those users are and then seamlessly unfollow them back to keep your ratio clean and healthy. You can also use the tool as a great way to view the people who have followed you recently and decide who you’d like to follow back. 

11. Twitter Analytics

Twitter analytics is a really easy and useful. Simply go to analytics.twitter.com to start tracking your account with Twitter analytics. Then you can check back at any time and see a 28 day summary of your Tweets, Impressions, Profile Visits, Mentions, and Follower Growth. You can compare this month’s numbers to last month’s and can see some great highlights like your Top Media Tweet, your Top Follower, and how many impressions your Top Tweet received.

12. Followerwonk

Moz’s Followerwonk tool does a lot of things, but my favorite is the analysis feature. Simply put, it helps you figure out when your followers are online and engaged. This is critical because it gives you a great sense of how you can be more efficient with the time you spend on Twitter. Tweet when your followers are active and lay off when they’re not.