For the last seven weeks Thrive Business Accounting has featured 7 different Twitter desktop apps and programs that are sure to help you maximize your time on Twitter and to be as efficient as possible. When I ran my survey, prior to this series, my friend @LauraKennedy said, “Scheduling is easy. It’s the engagement that takes time.”

Every person, whether a business owner or individual, only has 24 hours in every day. If we spend five minutes on Twitter that is five minutes we can’t spend with our kids or planting flowers. As a “time hacker”  always on the lookout for tools and programs that can help me achieve the desired outcome with the least amount of time and effort required, I present to you this list of Twitter Tools and Desktop Apps that can help you manage your “alloted” social media time in a better manner.

Below you will find a listing of the 7 featured Twitter programs and tools to help set your bird on auto-pilot as well as the featured guest blogger who shared their insight and wisdom with you.  Read further down to get a breakdown of which tools will allow you to do various things you may be interested in for your social media marketing use.

  1. Pluggio (formerly TweetMiner) was written by @TommyTRC
  2. TwInbox (for Outlook) written by me (@mmangen)
  3. MyVBO written by @PrimoAssistance
  4. Seesmic desktop written by @AnaLuciaNovak
  5. Hootsuite written by me
  6. MarketMeSuite written by @AnnEvanston
  7. Tweetdeck written by @LissaDuty

If you aren’t already following the individuals above I personally vouch for each of them. Stop by, say hello, and know you are being introduced to a person who shares both great content and engages.

If you don’t have time to read all seven posts, you will find a quick categorization of features that may be beneficial to you with regards to the specific end goal you have in mind; one that fits both your budget as well as your alloted daily time on Twitter.  (Note: all of the posts just “scratched the surface” of all of the features available to users. We advise that you do not solely rely on the posts above in making your final determination.)

Free Twitter Desktop Apps:

  • TwInbox
  • MyVBO
  • Seesmic
  • Hootsuite (has limited free plan available; paid upgrades available as well)
  • Tweetdeck

Twitter Desktop Apps with Column Layout Options:

  • Seesmic
  • Hootsuite
  • MarketMeSuite
  • Tweetdeck

Schedule Tweets on Twitter:

  • Pluggio
  • MyVBO
  • Seesmic
  • Hootsuite
  • MarketMeSuite
  • Tweetdeck

Rolling Schedule Option for Scheduled Tweets:

  • Pluggio
  • MyVBO

Keyword Searches:

  • All

Ability to Import Twitter Lists:

  • Pluggio
  • Seesmic
  • Hootsuite
  • MarketMeSuite
  • Tweetdeck

Manage Social Networking Beyond Twitter (e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook):

  • Pluggio
  • Seesmic
  • Hootsuite
  • MarketMeSuite
  • Tweetdeck
  • MyVBO (Ping.fm integration only)

Branded Tweets:

  • MarketMeSuite

Which of these are in your “social media toolbox”?

PS: We’re not done yet! Starting next week we will have a review of TweetAdder. In the subsequent weeks there will be posts sharing some of the many free, and paid, Twitter tools we use for follower management and more.