At our recent seminar on Twitter for Business in Victoria, BC I mentioned that there are several resources you may find useful in your Twitter endeavours.

URL Shorteners:

URLs can take up a LOT of space in your tweet – sometimes more than 140 characters.

If you want to add a URL to your tweet and the platform you use doesn’t offer auto-URL-shortening, use the following site:

http://bit.ly/

Find local Twitter Users in Victoria (and add yourself to Directories):

Follow Janis La Couvee’s list of #yyj Twitterers: http://twitter.com/lacouvee/victoria-yyj-twitterers

Victoria Twibes http://www.twibes.com/group/yyj

Victoria Locals Directory (on Jodie’s website) Ask to be added by @jodie_nodes

TwellowHood http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/

Twellow (Listings by occupation) http://www.twellow.com/

Managing Twitter:

Twitter.com is not nearly as bad as it once was, so you might find you’re OK tweeting from there. I often do. Here are some other options:

CoTweet (great for companies) http://www.cotweet.com

Tweetdeck  http://tweetdeck.com/beta/ (has iPhone app)

Seesmic http://desktop.seesmic.com/

Hootsuite (great for timing your tweets): http://www.hootsuite.com (has iPhone app)

See the Top Twitter Users (Superstars of Twitter):

Twitterholic http://twitterholic.com/

Free Grading Tools for your website, Facebook and Twitter accounts:

http://www.grader.com/

Time Management

Hootsuite (write tweets in advance and time when they get posted)

3 Tips for Time Management on Social Media

Reputation Management

Tools for monitoring the online conversation about you and your company:

Google Alerts (sometimes buggy)

TweetBeep

Alright, that should help you to get started, but remember that I warned you – once you “get” Twitter (which takes about 1-2 weeks if you really stick with it) you may become a bit of an addict. It’s happened to the best of us. Have fun!