Social Media Marketing and Free Twitter Utilities: Free Tools to Enhance Your Twitter User Experience

More and more businesses and individuals are discovering the promotional power of social networking.  Social media websites allow users to build an online fanbase and communicate information easily to thousands of people with just a few clicks.

Among the social networking sites, Twitter has emerged as a true powerhouse for marketing.  The website itself has a simple interface, making it easy for even novice users to master.  However the true power of Twitter is in the array of third-party utilities available to enhance your Twitter experience.  Make the most of your social media promotions with these free Twitter utilities.

HootSuite is a social media dashboard. Users of the service can connect one or more Twitter accounts to their HootSuite account, allowing them to take advantage of many features not available on the Twitter website itself.

On your HootSuite dashboard, you can customize the feeds that appear. You can keep track of your own tweets, who mentions you, and more. You can also create customized feeds based on Twitter searches or hashtags. For instance, if you create a feed on your HootSuite dashboard for the hashtag #Twitter, you will see updates every time someone posts a tweet using that tag. This is great for anyone with a specific interest or working in a particular industry, keeping you up-to-date on nearly any topic.

Another very useful feature of HootSuite is the ability to schedule posts for the future. Count down to an event, post reminders, or just keep a steady flow of information to your Twitter account, all without having to be online at the time.

Paper.li is a service that creates an online "newspaper" based on links posted to Twitter. There are several different ways the newspapers can be compiled, with the ability to do a good deal of customizing.

The most common newspapers on Paper.li are based on Twitter hashtags. For example, a newspaper based on the hashtag #JohnnyDepp will automtically round up every link posted on Twitter with that tag each day, compiling them into an ezine-like format. Newspapers can also be created based on the stream of an individual, a Twitter list, or a more advanced Twitter search for specific terms. Users who choose to build their papers with the advanced options can also choose to compile the information weekly, daily, or twice a day in morning and evening editions.

While the service is in beta, each user is limited to creating a total of 10 newspapers. Once you've created your Twitter newspaper, it is easy too announce each edition to your Twitter followers with the "auto promote" feature, which will automatically send a tweet to your account every time the newspaper is updated.

Learn more about using Paper.li to promote your content, build backlinks, and get new, targeted Twitter followers.

For bloggers or anyone else whose online content is updated with an RSS feed, Twitterfeed is a priceless tool for automation.  Simply connect your RSS feeds to your Twitter account with this free service and links to any post you make will automatically appear on your Twitter account.

When setting up a feed to post to your Twitter account, check out the advanced options.  Here you can choose the frequency with which Twitterfeed checks for new posts (as short a time as every 30 minutes up to once every 24 hours) as well as how many new posts to tweet at a time (up to 5).  You can also automatically add text at the beginning or end of each tweet, such as the name of your website or a set of hashtags.