5 Top Twitter Apps for Business Users

If scheduling is your primary Twitter issue, and you need a tool that's geared towards sending out tweets at specific times, then Twaitter is the app for you. It has a "tweet calendar" where you can schedule messages to be broadcast to your followers when the time is right. It's tweet editor includes a "twait" button that, when clicked, prompts a scheduler. Like CoTweet, it allows you to manage multiple Twitter handles. Unlike CoTweet, it doesn't allow you to delegate to multiple users (and passwords), forcing you to share a user-name and password for the company account, which is a weakness. Overall, a smart, simple design. The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds is a bonus, but found in other apps as well.

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As TweetFunnel does roughly the same things as CoTweet, the decision to use it might come down to design preference. TweetFunnel allows you to invite users to have accounts and access the Twitter handle (or handles) you're collectively managing. You have a publish now or publish later option. This app gets some high marks on having a "mentions" tab, which CoTweet lacks, and you also have the ability to review and publish tweets. One of Twitter's upsides can also be its downside for business: You can publish quickly—sometimes too quickly. Having a feature that allows you to slow down the process and approve tweets in a hierarchical form can stop someone on your team from tweeting something that shouldn't be tweeted.

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We give Hootsuite props for not using the "tw" sound in its title. In addition to assigning multiple users (called "editors"), this app has a tab that delivers clickthrough reports on your tweets (when you use its ow.ly url shortening service). You can schedule tweets for later and have them appear in a "pending" tab. It has a very nifty search tab as well that saves keywords you type in for future use when querying Twitter for certain tweets. You can manage multiple accounts for your company as well, and they will be added to a dropdown menu, making it easy to switch between Twitter handles to monitor and update them.

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TwitIQ is not nearly as sophisticated as the other ones mentioned, but we include it for a few reasons. The interface is very simple, making it an easy way for people in your organization who are novice Twitter users to understand what people are talking about on Twitter as it concerns your brand or industry. It automatically generates a tag cloud of keywords that your followers are talking about, and a channels tab, comprised of saved searches you make on Twitter. So, as the boss, if you search some topics, your reports can see them later in the tab. While you can add multiple Twitter accounts to monitor, unfortunately you can't provision names and passwords to access the main console. You'll have to share a login and password.

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