It’s been no secret that I’ve been engaging with Twitter more recently and building my following. Today I want to review the tools available for growing your following.
The following apps / services are what I’ll cover in this post
- ThreadStart
- Later
- Social Dog
- Hype Fury
- Tweet Hunter
ThreadStart
First up is ThreadStart which I used for a short period of time recently. I quite liked the UI but found that the free version was a little too limited in how far ahead I could schedule my tweets (just 48 hours) – so I’ll need to be able to log on every two days to schedule ahead again.
I’d have preferred being able to schedule my tweets further ahead (maybe a full month) and the tweets be put into time-slots that have proved to be the most engaging. Instead there’s quite a process for scheduling a tweet if not on pro where I need to select a date and time manually from a large form.
At the minimum it’d be nice if it was write tweet -> auto schedule to a slot (even if just 9am, noon, 3pm, 5pm, 9pm, mignight) for example.
I 100% understand the need to upsell (and $9 won’t break the bank) – it just feels a little too limited relative to other tools out there. What I do like however is the simplicity
- It’s focussed on Twitter.
- The Thread composing tool is really nice.
Like (most) the other tools below though, it doesn’t let me @ mention accounts from the scheduling tool.
Later
I can’t remember where I discovered Later from, it’s a buffer alternative and it’s actually quite nice to use. I can connect multiple accounts and start using it easily.
It feels like it was built for instagram though, and then additional social profiles aded on in a bid to expand the market. As such – I’m not seeing a great deal of value for primarily growing a twitter account. For example:-
- It doesn’t bring up Twitter accounts when I “@” in the composer.
- The scheduling is a drag and drop.
- The app feels a little bit overwhelming when first used.
Social Dog
Social Dog is what I stumbled across with a Google search – it looks quite nice. Like the tools above it’s limited for the free version and initially it’s a little overwhelming as a first use UI (for me anyway, with my sole purpose to grow / manage my Twitter count).
Hype Fury
This is another tool which is quite nice. I particularly like how using @ lets me tag an account so I can schedule tweets where I mention people 🎉🎉🎉 .
Again, there’s quite a lot of features under the hood here, here’s some that stand out:-
- Evergreen Tweets – mark some older tweets to be re-tweeted periodically.
- Queue – decent slots and nice little plugs to share on other platforms “this is a slot for instagram”.
Tweet Hunter
The final tool I’m trying out is Tweet Hunter. I’m pretty sure I’ve either seen this, or used it before (edit – ah I follow @tibo_maker). I couldn’t find a way to get past the plans page (yikes, no free account) – but there’s a 7 day free trial which is enough for me to sign up and kick the tyres.
Bonus – it’s using Stripe Checkout, which is quite slick now.
After sign up, it chugs away and an “AI” analyses your twitter history. Then after some keyword filling in, it sends me straight to a page with a welcome video 🤤🤤. This is looking good.
But, then when I’m finally dumped into the UI of the app – it is familiar territory to the ones above. It’s also a little confusing Tweet Inspirations For You essentially finds tweets from other accounts and expects you to re-tweet them as your own (no thanks).
What looked like it might be so promising, isn’t amazing. I do quite like the AI written tweets though, but there’s only a handful of them to choose from. The CRM section is quite nice too but, it doesn’t do anything out of the box. It’d be nice if it had a list of all my twitter contacts, split between most engaged with, and inactive accounts.
That way, I could even go about unfollowing accounts which aren’t very active.
What are my takeaways?
Now, bear with me here. All the tools above are quite nice – but a little overwhelming for someone who just wants to grow and manage their twitter account. What would be ideal for me?
- See Analytics on my Twitter followers. I’m not too fussed on Tweet impressions / engagement – but might be nice.
- Show me suggestions of who to follow based on my keywords (target audience).
- Schedule tweets (with suggestions for the best times to tweet).
- Threads, I can take or leave.
- AI suggested tweets – so I could queue up a bunch of tweets which have been written for me.
- Allow @ of people I follow (or don’t follow).
- See a list of people (ordered by interactions) – with the ability to DM.
- Possibly have a “campaign” mode – where I could choose to auto-DM a segment from my twitter contacts.
- Connect my site (and tweet / re-tweet my blog posts).
The main thing would be a super simple user interface where I can batch tweets (bonus points for mentions and pre-written tweets).
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