HootSuite. (http://hootsuite.com/)

HootSuite, the professional Twitter client, lets users manage their entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface. With HootSuite, users can manage multiple Twitter profiles with multiple editors on each, schedule tweets, track stats, RSS their content, and more. Vertical columns, drag-and-drop functionality and embeddable columns contribute to HootSuite’s intelligent, intuitive layout. Since launching in late 2008, HootSuite has become one of the world’s most popular Twitter clients.

HootSuite has integrated Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm status updates, allowing you to manage your social profiles from one location, and to schedule updates in advance. (In addition to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Ping.fm allows you to update GTalk, Tumblr and many other social networks.)

How K. A. Is It?

One Word. WOW.

Do yourself a favor and sign up for this as soon as you can! This is a great client for anyone who is like me and has a facebook page, a facebook fan page, and a twitter page. And there are different applications that you can use to update your twitter, which will then updated your facebook page. BUT, so far, unless I’m missing something, there are no “simple” applications that will also update your facebook fan pages at the same time. Well, until I found HootSuite.

This application not only allows you to update all of these different social networks simply, but you can also update other networks, and there’s an iphone app you can use, and they give you some great stats on your Twitter accounts, which is great for clients who want to see how their Twitter pages are doing.

Overall, this is a great application that you can use if you have a lot going on in your social networks. This is only my first day using it, but so far I’m in love with it and I can’t wait to continue to integrate all of my social networks with it.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Get the business leader’s guide to using Twitter to gain competitive advantage.

Since 2006, forward-thinking companies like Apple, JetBlue, Whole Foods, and GM have discovered the instant benefits of leveraging the social media phenomenon known as Twitter to reach consumers directly, build their brand, and increase sales.

Twitter is at the leading edge of the social media movement, allowing members to connect with one another in real time via short text messages–called “tweets”–that can be received either via the Twitter site or by e-mail, instant messenger, or cell phone.

Many companies have started building entire teams within their organization dedicated solely to responding to tweets from consumers about their brand. And this is just the beginning.

In Twitter Power, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers.

The book also presents case studies of companies on the forefront of the Twitter movement, to help you develop your own social networking strategies. Twitter Power is the result of extensive testing and participation in the social networking community and is a must-have for any business that wants to keep up with the social media movement. Twitter Power features a foreword by Tony Robbins.

How K. A. Is It?

I really enjoyed reading this book. At first, I was a little skeptical, as the first couple of chapters were all about how to setup a Twitter, how to create a background, and all of the “simple” steps. Although some of the things he wrote about were very helpful, since I’ve been setting up Twitter pages for about a year now, I felt like I am a little more advanced and was hoping the book would get there.

And it did.

The book really took off and talked about how to effectively use Twitter to gain more followers and probably my favorite parts of the book were the times he talked about others who were using Twitter effectively and what they were using it specifically for.

It also had a great chapter on some of the best Twitter tools. Which some I was using already and actually have written reviews about on this site, and others I have never heard about before.

Probably my favorite chapter was the second to last one. Joel did a great job of creating a 30-Day Plan for using Twitter and for using it effectively. I think his plan was very great and surprisingly I have been doing what he has been saying and almost on the days he had talked about. I’m not saying this to make myself sound like I know what I’m doing, but I’m saying it to say that I agree with Joel and will tell you first hand that this 30-Day Plan really does work and is very effective.

He ended the book with a chapter about some people who you should follow and I’ve been very excited to get to know these people more and see how to use Twitter effectively.

Overall, I think this book is excellent for anyone who is wanting to use Twitter to build their brand effectively. Whether you are a beginner to Twitter or have been on Twitter for years, this book is for you.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Get your copy here

Trendistic. (http://trendistic.com/)

Trendistic is a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches. It gathers tweets as they are posted, filters redundant ones and compiles the rest into one-hour intervals.

This way, it shows how the frequency of one, two, three and four-word phrases fluctuate over time. The result is a visualization of what is popular and what is not among Twitter users, and how certain events are reflected or even predicted by the microblogosphere.

You can enter a phrase (topic) in the Trendistic search box to see how its frequency varies over time, or several different topics separated by commas to see how they relate (each topic will show in the chart with a specific color): try comparing ‘dinner’ and ‘breakfast’ or ‘morning’ and ‘night’ for instance, to see how powerful it can be.

How K. A. Is It?

I first found out about this site from reading Joel Comm’s book, “Twitter Power.” (It’s our only K.A. Book right now). Like Joel, some of the things that I really like about it are the graphs that it shows. Being able to see what days the different trends peaked on, is great especially if you have had a part in it.

Some of the other things are:
– It’s accurate and very detailed.
– You can easily compare different terms with a click of a button.
– It shows you the most recent tweets who have used the term.

Why this is important? This allows you to see what trends are the most current and on Twitter have some great conversations to join. Which will ultimately get you some new followers hopefully, and if you’re like me who is not great with keeping up with current events, it gives you an idea of the latest news stories happening around the world.

The only downfall so far is that for some of the lower used trends, it really doesn’t do that great of a job with giving statistics. For instance, my good friend Jeremy Cowart, had an amazing event this past weekend called help-portrait. (http://www.help-portrait.com/) and it was covered on CNN, and Fox News and I know it was a pretty good trending topic, but when I checked on Trendistic, it said the trend was too low.

Either way, this is still a very cool site that has helped a lot. Thanks Joel Comm. (http://www.joelcomm.com/)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tweet For A Track. (http://tweetforatrack.com/)

Step 1: Upload a song & post a tweet with a link to download the free mp3.
Step 2: Your fan “Joe” sees your tweet and clicks the link.
Step 3: To get the free mp3, Joe reposts your tweet and is emailed a download link.
Step 4: Joe’s friends see his tweet, click the link, post their own tweets, and spread the promotion…

How K. A. Is It?

Being that I’m currently in a band that is “up and coming” called UnionVox, this service is amazing!

We’ve been looking for a place to get our music out there to all of our friends and have been wanting to give it away for free, but at the same time be able to build our Twitter following.

Signing up is simple and after you upload your song, you have a chance to pick a unique URL that you would like them to be able to use. Also, you can update the message that is attached with the tweet as well.

Example: RT @UnionVox Get the new song “Fly” by UnionVox for free in exchange for just one tweet: #UnionVoxFreeSongs http://trkurl.com/Mj2SZp #TFAT

The only downfall so far is that you can only have one song per account…hopefully that will change soon.

Rating: 4 out of 5

TidyTweet. (http://twitter.grader.com/)

Twitter Grader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your twitter profile. It looks at a variety of factors including the number of followers, power of those followers and the level to which you are engaging the community. It takes just a few seconds to generate your free report.

How K. A. Is It?

I’m a big fan of this site. It helps a lot with understanding how good your Twitter is. It checks things like, analyzes the people you are following and the people who are following you, based on how “powerful” they are. Meaning that it goes and grades those people’s Twitter pages and gives them their own score.

(Click Here to find out exactly how their scoring works.)

I’m going to be using this site to grade how well my clients Twitter pages are doing, and hopefully will be able stop following some of the people who aren’t worth following.

Some other cool sites they have for you to check out are:

http://websitegrader.com/
http://facebook.grader.com/
http://pressrelease.grader.com/

Rating: 4 out of 5

TidyTweet. (http://tidytweet.com/)

What is TidyTweet, anyway?

Think of TidyTweet as your very own Twitter feed housekeeper. Based on your preferences, it keeps conversations clean, orderly, and free of unwanted comment clutter. TidyTweet works behind the scenes to prevent unwanted surprises from showing up on your website. After creating an account and setting up a feed, you can blacklist or whitelist specific handles, approve Tweets manually or automatically, and create a customized word filter to avoid annoying – or embarrassing – situations. TidyTweet lets you keep the conversation going – without worrying about what’s being said.

How K. A. Is It?

Coming from a person who works with a lot of “faith-based” clients, this product is amazing!

I’ve seen a lot of “spam” and such on Twitter lately. It’s almost everyday that I see another person who is following me that is following close to 900 people, with only 30 people who follow them. Then when you look at their tweet, you see a random link in there that send people to a “spam” site.

The great advantage of TidyTweet, is that with it, you can make sure that none of this activity is going onto your Twitter site, and that your clients aren’t getting upset by some of the people they are following or the things being posted to it.

TidyTweet has 5 great features:

1. Automatic or Manual Approval of Tweets.
2. Custom Bad Word Filtering.
3. Whitelist or Blacklist Twitter Users.
4. Auto-rejection of spam based on a number of settings.
5. Integration with Wordpress and VisibleTweets.com

I think most of these are self-explanatory, so I really don’t see the need to go into detail, but all of them will help out alot. (Especially the Wordpress Integration)

Anyways, if you are someone who is handling some Twitter accounts for other people, this is definitely a program that you will want to use.

Rating: 4 out of 5

ClickHeat. (http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html)

ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones. ClickHeat is an OpenSource software, released under GPL licence, and free of charge.

Requirements:
- on the browser’s client: Javascript (tested on Firefox 2.0, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Konqueror…)
- on the server: either Linux or Windows (since ClickHeat 1.3 release), Apache or Lighttpd (other may work fine), PHP, the graphic library GD2 (PNG support needed). Please post on the bug tracker or contact us (link on the right) if you have problem running ClickHeat.

Features:
- Low logging activity: a very few function calls to log a click, no server load rise should be noticed.
- A keyword is used to define the page upon Javascript code load, allowing you to group same pages.
- Screen sizes and browsers are logged, making possible the tracking of liquid CSS layouts (100% used width).

How K. A. Is It?

****First off, please do not go to http://www.clickheat.com thinking that you are going to get this product.**** I know it’s a great name for this product, but if you are like I am and just try to type it directly in, you’ll get a site with one of those “Click Enter if you’re over 18″ sites…

Besides that, I really think this site is really great. At first I was a little confused on everything the site could do, but then I noticed on the homepage on the right, it had a link to a demo. All you have to do is click on the link, and then use the word demo for both the username and password.

In the demo, it really shows off all the potential of the product. There are four that I would like to hit on.

1. Overall – This site shows you where people are clicking on your website. This allows you to see things that maybe should be links that aren’t and maybe links that you have on there that people aren’t even seeing or thinking about pressing on. At least for me, the demo had a bunch of random clicks, but one was on the screenshot, which doesn’t link and the most used one was actually the demo link.

2. Browsers – It has a cool feature that you can look at different browsers and see if people were clicking on different areas in different browsers. This also helps to see how your website looks in other browsers, which is always something good to know.

3. Screen Size – Today I walked into a friends office and on his desk, he had his 15 in. MacBook, 21 in. screen, and 27 in. screen. With this option, you are able to see what your website looks like on different screen sizes and at the same time lets you see where people with different size screens are clicking.

4. Calendar – Let’s say you have a special running on your site for a week. With the calendar option, you can see if people actually clicked on your special banner you had running for that week, or if people were missing it. You can also use this option to see what days people are visiting your site, and what days people aren’t visiting your site as much.

Overall, I really like this product. The only downside I see so far, is that installation looks like it could be a problem for people like me who aren’t really that “tech savvy.” But other than that, it looks really great!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Listorious. (http://listorious.com/)

Twitter’s new Lists feature allows anyone to curate the real time web. Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.

This site was created using new Twitter List API. Thanks to the Twitter team for their support.

Listorious was created by Sawhorse Media in New York City. If you have comments or questions, please email hello at sawhorsemedia.com or contact us on Twitter at @sawhorse.

Follow @listorious for site news and updates about interesting lists.

How K. A. is it?

First off, I was really surprised this site was up and running as quick as it was. I feel like just a couple days ago, I heard about these new “Twitter” lists and then I heard about this site that was created to keep them all together and in one centralized area that people can search through the lists and also include their own lists, which they have created.

I’m also quite surprised that they have everything working as well as it does as well. Just from what I know about websites and website development, there’s about a 75% chance that a new website that I’m guessing was built rather quickly, would work as well as it does. I haven’t found anything yet that is messing it up and that is not working properly on there.

Overall, I think this is a great site, and I’m interested in seeing more sites like it pop up in the upcoming months. Although, Listorious is definitely a front-runner.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dropjack. (http://www.dropjack.com)

DropJack.com is a social content website powered by users like you.

How K. A. is it?

To be honest I can’t really tell that much of a difference between this and StumbleUpon, but makes me think that there’s got to be more new creative things out there, then to just copy something else that someone has already been doing. (Point in case..have you heard about Christian Chirp? http://christianchirp.com/

The only difference I really see about this site, are that you can create groups of people with like interests. “Groups allow users to share articles with other members who share a common interest in a topic. Join a group to submit topical articles that other members would be interested in. Some groups may require membership approval before you become part of the group.” – dropjack.com

Overall, I probably won’t use this site much, as I’m just starting to get into StumbleUpon, but maybe once this things gets going a little, I may give it a try.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Kazle. (http://www.kazle.com)

Kazle is a Multi-Networking Aggregation Platform.

In simple terms, yes we’re a Social Network but we do, however integrate nicely with many other networks to create a nifty, super simple “Social Networking Hub”.
Social Hub?

A Social Networking Hub is a place on the interwebz that you can come to update and view everything from all your Social Networks in one.

For example, if you want to update both your Facebook and Twitter status at the same time then also view Feeds from both of these networks, Kazle is very useful for you.
Don’t have many Networks to update?

That’s okay, there’s still plenty of reasons to use Kazle. We’re a fully functional Social Network all on our own. The best part is, we’re going about things slightly differently to everyone else and entirely powered by user content, opinions and ideas.

That’s right. We’re the good guys, the ones that listen to our users. We’re going to take all ideas on board and we also aim to offer support at a personal level. hey, why not put Twitter and Kazle’s own Mailbox system to good use, eh?

Another thing you might like is the usability factor we offer here at Kazle. Lots of other Networks like Facebook and Myspace have quickly become overweight with content and features. We hope to keep Kazle as lightweight and easy to use as possible so that it’s never going to become tiresome to use.
Wondering why you haven’t heard of us before now?

Kazle is but a baby in the world of Social Networking. As a new site, we obviously do have a rather long way to go but, like any journey, we’re hoping it’s going to be as fun filled as possible.

Description of the term “Kazle” from UrbanDictionary.com: Kazle: social multi-tasking. to update, view, edit and aggregate all your social networks, blogs and gaming platforms from one place. Example: “I need to quickly notify all of my contacts and friends of what just happened, let me just kazle that.”

How K. A. is it?

Kazle is a brand new site, similar to ones that I’ve seen recently that allow you to update pretty much any of your Facebook/Twitter/Flickr updates all with one click of the button. Now in theory, this sounds amazing and sounds like it would be easy to use and save you tons of time, but in reality, as you can see below, when I first clicked on Twitter it just sat there for a good five minutes before it did anything.

Overall, I don’t think this is a bad product, and I probably could have used it a little more to see it’s full potential. But at the end of the day, my main thought was that I feel that as Americans we have lost the idea of patience and have this weird desire to need things done quickly and right now, when sometimes the “better” thing is to take your time and just do things one at a time.

Rating: 3 out of 5