4 Free (and utterly awesome) Twitter Tools for Online Marketing

As you know if you're a regular reader of this blog, Gnosis Arts has taken a very conservative and tentative position with respect to social media marketing in general and Twitter in particular. We don't subscribe to the social media hype, nor do we think social media marketing always produces good ROI for every business. However, there are a few Twitter clients that we've used and tested and endorse. We endorse them because their ability to produce improvements in our online marketing efforts is consistent and measurable.

1. Tweetchat (www.tweetchat.com)
Tweetchat enables you to filter Twitter conversations by hashtag. For example, if you want to converse with people only talking about dogs, you can view only those tweets pertaing to the subject. We endorse Tweetchat for social media marketing because each time we use it, we get 2 or 3 new, interested and engaged followers. While this is far slower in building up your "twitter groupie list" than many of the viral MLM apps out on the market, Tweetchat is far better because the quality of your followng is higher and it grows in the way search engines prefer - gradually, naturally and over time and based on content.

2. Tweetbrand/MarketMeTweet (www.marketmetweet.com)
TweetBrand is a client-side Twitter app that enables you to brand your Tweets with your own company, service, trademark or product name. The free version (TweetBrand) by itself is cool enough, but the paid version (MarketMeTweet) is ridiculously inexpensive and has a ton of really sweet functionality that helps you manage all your Twitter accounts in one place.

But perhaps the baddest feature of this app is what it can do for SEO. With TweetBrand, the links that show up underneath your tweets - where it reads "Tweeted by so and so at ..." - those links can be made into keyword specific anchor text links that point to your website. Although these links are nofollowed by Twitter, they still possess weight and ranking power, we think, due to the increasing importance of theme relevancy.

3. Twtsynd (http://s.gnosisarts.com/twtsynd)
Twtsynd stands for Twitter Syndication Network. With Twtsynd, members opt-in to have their Twitter feed used as a PR channel for the other members. When you join the Twtsynd Network, your tweets are syndicated on all other member status feeds. As the network grows, you gain exponential visibility for your tweets. Twtsynd is good for marketing because it enables you to easily expand the reach and influence of your tweets.

4. Foursquare (www.foursquare.com)
One of the newest Twitter apps to come on the social media scene, Foursquare allows you to "check in" on Twitter, whenever you visit a business, restaurant or other location-based venue. However, virtual companies can also get good local search marketing use of Foursquare. With 4sq, you can easily find and connect with people in your city. This could be used, for example, in local sales prospecting or lead generation.

There are many great Twitter tools and apps that can assist you with your marketing, but these four have so far been the most effective for us. If you have any other cool Twitter marketing apps you'd like to share, please leave then in the comments section.