Twitter is a very under-utilized tool for making a real social media impact. Too many people view it as a very limited way to connect with people. Rather than thinking limited, why don’t we swap out that word for efficient. Ponder how much information is passed back and forth across the web on a minute-by-minute basis. How much of that information is either fluff or complete garbage?

What is Social Media Impact?

Social media platforms like Twitter are an excellent place to really grab a large segment of people. Various directories provide users by interest that will allow you to compile a list of followers and following relevant to your business. Building that list then providing solid information will generate even more followers for you as your messages get shared. Reach enough people and you may very well find your information going viral. There is no better place to pursue that kind of goal than on a social media platform.

Tools for Twitter Users

Twitter Counter – Want to know how a Twitter account is faring statistically? This third party website lets a person search the statistics of over 10 million Twitter users. Use it to easily check Followers, Following, and tweeting trends over a graphed period of time.

TweetGrader – Efficiently compare your Twitter account to many other users. TweetGrader makes it simple to look at other geographically relevant Twitter users to compare how your statistics stack up to theirs. Tracking Follower history is a nice touch as it lets you see what other interests your followers may be pursuing.

TweetLevel – Need a way to determine the effective influence of a specific Twitter account? TweetLevel is designed with the Public Relations and marketing professionals in mind. For those individuals, concepts such as influence are far more important than a staggering number of users. That staggering number can be created by nurturing informational appeal and influence. Though they do not profess to have solved the question of measuring influence, TweetLevel provides valuable insight based on their formula.

Klout – Utilizing a social-oriented graph, Klout helps track the influence of the information you provide on Twitter. Values such as True Reach, Network Score, and Amplification Score help the user gauge the effectiveness of their approach. Though popular, Klout is not without its faults. One can find spam accounts with fairly high Klout ratings due to the massive amount of information they put out with relatively few Followings. Balance is always important to prove legitimacy to human users.

Tweetreach – Tweetreach provides an easy to use format for analyzing tweet impression and the number of users reached. A building block of this metric is search terms which are all important to any internet presence. This application can be easily used to help nail down terms that are trending right now.

Other Useful Tools

The quality of your Followed and Following list comes down to usefulness. How useful is the information you are providing, or reading, to the people you would spread it to? One would obviously want to build lists of people that are most interested in the subject matter. A very easy way to do that is to utilize a variety of the Twitter directories available across the internet. They function much like a phonebook in that they categorize users by interests, industry, and a number of other criteria. Far better to tweet to 50 people interested in your subject matter than 200 who are not. They are also the people who will be most likely to repost your tweets.

Social media is an incredibly important part of internet presence today. It is where friends, family members, and businesses come together to interact on a more frequent basis. Opportunities abound for the individual looking for the way to maximize their social media impact. The best way to do that is with a concise, informed approach. There are many utilities out there that can help, these are but a handful.