I think we all have our methods of tweeting—some use Buffer to queue tweets, others poke around their account and retweet, others tweet whenever they feel like it, and others use Twitter dashboards to schedule tweets. Being that Twitter is one of the “old” social networks, many people find that they are stuck in their ways. Why break what isn’t broken, right?
This was my mentality until I discovered a tool called SocialBro. This tool has completely changed the way I go about tweeting and using Twitter. SocialBro is a free service that you can download in just a few minutes, and it offers insights into Twitter that I had never even considered. Although all of the analysis the tool offers isn’t particularly necessary for the individual, it can be extremely valuable to those who use Twitter for promotion and other business reasons. Consider some of the benefits the service offers:
- You can segment your followers into several different categories: People who follow you and you don’t follow back; people who you follow you don’t follow you back; famous friends and followers; inactive friends and followers. This lets businesses look at their Twitter community and make sure their connections are valuable.
- It will give you real-time analytics. This will help you see if you are losing followers and at what rate; thus helping you determine if your current practices are working.
- You can monitor a hashtag to help you determine what you should be tweeting.
- It will give you insights into the geographical location, primarily language, and typical tweet topics of most of your followers.
- All information is shown graphically.
Even if you do not use Twitter for business reasons, this insight is extremely interesting and can keep you busy for hours. My favorite thing that SocialBro does—tells you when the most opportune time is for you to tweet.
How SocialBro Helps You Learn the Best Time to Tweet
This is an extremely important feature of the tool because it helps enrich your Twitter experience. The way it works is this:
Step #1:SocialBro analyzes your top 100 most influential followers.
This is the first thing the service does in order to determine the best time for you to be tweeting. The service looks to see when these followers are tweeting or doing some sort of action on Twitter, and then averages all of these times, days of the week, and even days of the month to determine when you should be tweeting most often. In other words, this lets you know when the most people will be seeing your tweets. To do this, simply click on “best time to tweet” and they will do the configuring for you. Below is a screenshot of the button:
Step #2:Generate graphs for the “best time to tweet” information.
SocialBro is all about the charts and graphs, and this feature is no different. Showing this information pictorially helps to give users a better idea about when they should be tweeting and is certainly best for the visual learner. The service will generate a line graph for the best hour, day of the week, your replies and retweets, and your reach (when you are reaching the most people based not only on when they are on Twitter, but when they are active with you). In addition to all of these separate graphs, SocialBro will generate one general graph like the one below:
Step #3: Configure your best times with Buffer.
SocialBro has teamed up with Buffer to make sure that your tweets are going out at the best possible time. Because Buffer works as a schedule for tweets, you can simply click the “Configure Buffer Schedule” button and then the two will work together to schedule your tweets at the best time. All you have to do is go about your day and add tweets into your Buffer. If you’re unfamiliar with Buffer, visit Bufferapp to learn more.
I have found that this has made a difference when it comes to my social sharing. My articles are getting more retweets and more publicity than ever before because my own tweets are getting seen more frequently. I think that this is going to be a tool that will really take off in the near future, and I highly recommend starting now!
Have you ever used SocialBro? What has been your experience?
Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to small business loans. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including 401k limits to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.
