The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

The best use of keywords is not SEO

Supercharging your site with keywords isn’t nearly as effective as building it around them from the ground up

Working on several SEO projects here at The Duffy Agency, I’ve come to realize keyword research has an even better use than optimizing a site for search engines – it should guide the entire focus of a site from day one.

Us SEO geeks usually start projects by doing some intense keyword research to make sure we’re optimizing an existing site for the search phrases with the greatest potential. This does help your content get found by a whole lot more people, but your chance to reach the masses may already be out of reach.

If you want to build a massively successful website in today’s overcrowded cyberspace, you need a cunning strategy. Keyword research is your secret weapon in crafting a strategy to give you a leg up on the competition. Without this research, you’re leaving your fate up to wishful thinking, hoping that your target is already searching for exactly what you’re creating and that you can steal traffic from competitors. But by taking a close look at what your target is searching for, you can tailor your content so that it gets placed where millions of targeted individuals are looking for it. But there's a catch: your site’s core content might not end up being what you had planned.

I can sense your skepticism. After all, if you want to sell bikinis, why should you go and make a website about swimming, workout tips and dieting instead of simply setting up an optimized webshop?

Because there aren’t many people searching for bikinis. Moreover, your webshop would be competing against every other company in the category, and the best SEO in the world won’t put you in front of the global giants. On top of that, you’ll only be fighting for the people typing “bikini” into search engines.

When you do the research, you see that most people interested in upgrading their beach-look are between 13 and 40, they work out, they dream about vacations in the Bahamas, and even though they want your product, most of them never search for it

. But they are searching for pictures of beaches, reading blogs about working out and trying out diets to lose a couple of pounds before bikini season. In other words, you discover swimwear is actually a small part of a bigger need your customers are trying to satisfy.

So instead of creating the website www.wesellswimwear.com you create www.getreadyforthebeach.com.

And instead of targeting the keywords "swimwear," "bikinis" and "bathing suits," which are being intensely fought over by a slew of competitors, you use "beach," "vacation," "work out" and "diet tips," since they get millions more hits and are less contested by the competition. 

There’s still competition to deal with, but you won’t be competing against other webshops struggling for their piece of a small audience. You’ll attract customers from a huge group of people who want your product, even if they aren’t looking for it directly. And you’ll still have pages on your site devoted to your webshop where you can fight for a place on the first “bikini” search results page.

The moral of this little hypothetical tale is that keyword research shows you what content your audience is out there looking for, and it’s likely not what you’re selling, whether it be a product, service or obscure amusement. You can’t do a whole lot with that information after your website is up, so doing the research in the beginning and engineering your site to give your target exactly what they want, where they’re looking for it, will lead to far greater results on search engines and higher traffic in general. Maybe a site that is all about you is exactly what you need, but you won’t know without the research. And if you don’t do it until after you’ve poured your time and money into making a site, your golden opportunity may have passed you by.

 

Please don’t follow me

How to work with (not around) Twitter’s 2,000 follow limit

Spammers have nested in Twitter’s dark underbelly since its earliest days. Fully aware of this, Twitter imposes a limit to the number of people you can follow all at once to hinder spam accounts and bots. Since that limit is 2,000 people, it’s not much of a hindrance to your average user. But for those of us trying to connect to as many relevant people as possible through Twitter, it can be a bother.

I’m going to offer some advice for cracking the 2,000 following limit, but first let’s consider why you need more than 2,000 people sending you 140 character messages to begin with.

This is about 2,000 people. Now imagine them all shouting at you. That's what following 2,000 people is like.

 

The line between spam and interesting content is thinner than you think

Honestly take a look at where you fall on the spam spectrum. We think of spam as bots, or companies pushing their offer into the world without restraint, but if you’re bulk following people you aren’t really interested in, or spending far more time shouting than listening, the Twitterverse doesn’t consider you much better than a bot. Almost all of us are guilty of this to some degree. If you’re swaying too far toward the spammer end of the spectrum, you should rethink how you use Twitter before you start strategizing how to get more followers. 

Who really needs to follow 2,000+ people? 

You could argue that no one does, because no one can actually sustain a conversation with that many people at once. Refining your list to a smaller network you interact with daily may be more beneficial than having 1 million people auto-follow you back who aren’t listening. Moreover, how many tweets do you have time to keep up with? If the answer is not nearly enough to stay up to speed on your Twitter stream, consider what the actual benefit of following more people is. That said, there are thousands of interesting people out there (here's how to find them) and if you’re following them for the right reasons, expanding your network can be a good idea. The whole point of Twitter is, after all, making new connections with interesting people. 

Ok, I get it, you still want to follow more people

2,000 isn’t the absolute limit, it’s actually based on a ratio – once you get close to 2,000 followers, you’re only allowed to follow 10% more people than are following you. If you aren’t close to having that many followers, unfollowing people is the obvious way to open up spots for new tweeple. People you should stop following are the ones who are either not contributing anything interesting or who have more or less abandoned their accounts. Here you can find tools to bulk unfollow people, but I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of people just because they didn’t follow you back - they may in fact be your most relevant follows. And you can get them to follow you back by listening to what they say and responding.

Focusing on generating great content and making sure it’s found will help you get more followers organically, and as such raise your follow limit. Using hashtags is a great way to help others with the same interests find you, as is promoting your account through your other social media assets like Facebook and LinkedIn, along with email sigs and business cards.

Do NOT auto-follow people back

This habit severely undermines the value of your Twitter stream and fills up your limit with fluff. There are tons of people bulk following others to try and boost their numbers with no intention of listening to anyone, including you. Following back can be difficult to resist as people can get snippy if you don’t. I’ve been publicly called out for not following someone back, and was forced to publicly state that I didn’t think they were very interesting. I was promptly unfollowed. I was perfectly ok with losing a follower, given that his main interest was fly fishing and, having never touched a rod, I had no insight to offer. So if you don’t share any of the same interests as me, please don’t follow me, neither of us will get anything out of it. Even if it makes our numbers look good.

The 2,000 follow limit is there for good reason. When you hit it, you should start refining your list, not finding ways to subvert the system. After all, 1 follower who really cares what you have to say is worth 2,000 who are just padding their numbers. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

The social media travel kit

Summertime is finally just about here, so it’s time to start planning your big annual getaway. For most of us, this means exploring new lands and leaving the daily grind in our dust. While it can be relaxing to pack up and leave town for a few weeks, it can also be stressful to feel like you’re going to fall out of the loop while you’re gone and like you can’t rely on the internets for all your problem solving needs. Thanks to social media, leaving your home doesn’t mean you can’t stay connected. Just like packing your suitcase with your clothes, toiletries, lotions, swimwear, sandals, etc, you’ll need a social media travel kit keep you connected and allow you get the most out of your vacation.

 

First, you’ll need a smartphone, iPad or mini-pc/netbook. You’re packing a lot of stuff to take with you, so why take a cumbersome laptop as well? Get a small, light-weight device that will allow you easy access to the internet and will allow you to upload photos. Mini-pc’s are a great way to get online when you’re on the go and quality models can be found for $200-300. 

If you’re like me, you have multiple websites you check every day to keep up with news, events, and in the case of vacation planning, recommended locations, restaurants and attractions. Instead of leaving all those bookmarks on your home computer, create a Del.icio.us account and you can check them from any device with internet access. 

Keep in touch with your friends and family and let them know what you’re up to through Facebook and Twitter. Since everyone you know is more than likely on Facebook and/or Twitter, it’s easy to arrange meet-ups if they’re in the area, and get recommendations from them on places to stay, eat and visit. This is an excellent way to get local advice on places to eat and sights to see that aren’t in the travel guides.

You often don’t know anyone in the places you’re visiting, so finding a great place to eat can be difficult. Fortunately Urbanspoon.com is a great user review restaurant site. You can find local places to eat through their website or their android or iPhone app, see how people rated the restaurant and how they critiqued it. 

TripIt allows you to plan out your entire vacation. You can add your flight, lodging and car rental information, plus add all the details of where you’ll be and how to get there, complete with maps and driving times. Even if you choose not to share the information through Facebook or Twitter, this is a great way to keep track of reservation numbers, costs and trip notes. 

Finally, Skype is the best free way to call people and even includes video calls. You can stay in touch with the people you left back home and make them jealous of the wonderful time you are having - without having to pay long distance or roaming fees.

This summer, leaving home for a vacation doesn’t mean you can’t stay informed or in touch with the people you care about or want to meet. Thanks to wifi networks and mobile devices, you can maximize your trip, stay in touch and best of all, get rid of those stupid maps.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

How an independent agency can reach 3.5 billion people

New network alliance creates a viable option to global advertising conglomerate – minus the baggage

One advertising agency by itself, even if it’s filled with some of the best and brightest in the industry, can’t give you global reach. That’s why so many companies turn to global network agencies (think Ogilvy, JWT, BBDO) despite the hefty price, inflexibility and bureaucracy that are often part of the package. But today many clients are discovering that when independent agencies around the globe work together in harmony, that independent creative shop around the corner turns into your brand’s gateway to brilliant global marketing, without all the baggage.  

This new independent solution provides more options to clients with global brands. Instead of having to choose between one global network agency or hand-picking individual agencies in every market, you can now go to an independent network to get centralized leadership with local expertise in one package. This strategy is becoming an increasingly popular one. 

Our goal has always been to be a lithe independent agency that can take on challenging international projects. That’s why we’re a member of the ad agency network TAAN. It allows us to partner with other top class independent agencies in markets around the world to take on multi-national campaigns. Since each agency is carefully selected and immersed in only its local market, with all of the unique nuances that entails, TAAN has been a godsend in making many of our projects successes for us and our clients. 

TAAN’s reach recently made a huge leap forward thanks to an alliance with the San Jose Network – the world’s premier Latin ad agency network serving global clients across North, Central and South America. The new alliance creates a network of independent ad agencies with combined coverage of 65 countries, 87 markets and 3.5 billion people. TAAN president Peter Gerristen said of the new partnership, “This alliance is truly a game-changer for today’s brands and will provide expertise, local knowledge and insight into economically important regions and cultures.”

Since it’s vital to meet face to face with our network partners to see what skills we can each add to projects, we bit the bullet and made the trip from perpetually overcast Sweden to the sunny shores of Miami. The meeting was the first gathering of the combined networks to establish relationships and get the ball rolling on some exciting new collaborations.

San Jose Network founder George L. San Jose with Sean Duffy (TAAN EU President, founder The Duffy Agency),  Rich Wahl (Managing Partner of The Duffy Agency Boston) and  Peter Gerristen (TAAN Global President) at the conference in Miami

The biggest impact the new alliance has for us is the added depth in Latin American markets. We can’t wait to dive into new projects that will take advantage of this expertise. 

With combined annual billings of $1.5 billion USD, this new independent constellation would easily rank in the world’s top 10 of Ad Agency Networks (combined billings were revised up from 1.1 billon since the alliance was announced in February, 2010).  “No matter how you look at it, that is a business entity to be reckoned with,” said Sean Duffy who, together with John Reisky, serves as president of  TAAN Europe. 

Despite their combined size, networks of independents retain a level of agility and adaptability that is valued by clients large and small, yet has proven difficult for the the WPP and Interpublic Groups of the world to copy. The failure of the global ad agency conglomerates to keep pace with the changes that have taken place in the market over the past decade is making networks like TAAN a more attractive option than traditional global agency network chains. We believe this trend will continue. 

Do you see the rise of independent networks shaping the future of the ad biz, or will the industry continue to be dominated by Sir Martin Sorrell and Michael Roth? 

Read more about the TAAN and San Jose Network alliance. 

SEO and Twitter: How to get your page ranked

Adding search engine optimization to a website is as essential as good design and content. SEO is the cornerstone of making sure a website is found by search engines, which helps increase site traffic and authority. Most people are catching on to SEO these days, but they still don’t associate it with Twitter. Which is a shame because they’re missing an easy opportunity to increase their exposure. 

Twitter is highly indexed by Google and taking a few simple steps will help your Twitter profile appear on the first page of results when someone searches for you. Too often we’ve done research for clients and found that a company’s Twitter page doesn’t appear in the first few pages of a Google search. If that applies to you (go and check, we’ll wait), by making a few changes to your profile, you can boost your ranking.

Profile name - Picking a username is one of the most important things you can do. A username should either reflect your industry, a name you’re well known by or your company. This is how people will find your profile and associating your account with a name that is already associated with your industry will increase its value. Avoid dashes and try to keep the name as short as possible. 

Your website - Don’t bother adding “www” in front of your url. Twitter will add “http://” so the shorter you can keep your url the better. Twitter will only show the first 20 characters and the first 7 are pre-filled in. Just use the domainname.com. Avoid using url shorteners like Bit.ly or Tiny Url. 

Bio keywords - With only 160 characters allowed in your bio, don’t waste characters with words that don’t add to your value and have no search relevance. Your bio is a short introduction to who you are and will be displayed in the search results. It should tell people who you are, what you do and what you’ll tweet about.

Avatar - Most people don’t think about this, but Twitter doesn’t rename your profile photo like some sites do. By giving your profile photo a correct name, it will appear in search engine image results. This is important when it comes to making sure people are using the correct version of your logo or picture.

Use your account - Now that you’ve set up your account to maximize search engine results, use your account. The more active you are on Twitter, the higher Google and Bing will rank your profile in search results. This will lead to more people finding your profile, getting more followers and increasing your brand authority. 

After making these changes, let us know how it changed the search results for your Twitter profile.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

5 lessons Hollywood taught me about social media

Summer blockbuster season has kicked off with Iron Man 2 hauling in bucket loads of cash. Social media has been a big part of movie promotion this year, allowing film studios to get eager movie goers more engaged with their stories and characters than ever. Every campaign site I visited had a Facebook and Twitter account attached, so they aren't anything that will set a campaign apart any more. While most weren't anything to write home about, a few of the campaigns for this year’s big films have been downright brilliant, generating widespread buzz across the internet. As there are some great concepts in these campaigns, I decided to pick a few of them apart to see what the rest of us trying to market through social media could learn. Here are 5 examples of social media campaigns done right and what lessons there are to take away.

1. Toy Story 3 taught me to think laterally 
Beyond promoting Toy Story 3 directly, Pixar “leaked” bizarre retro TV spots for non-existent toys on YouTube. It was a brilliant move because it showed Pixar understood what gives a video viral appeal, making them feel like obscure, hilarious discoveries that you want to share with everyone you know. With millions of views on YouTube, articles written about the campaign on blogs and websites both big and small, and buzz stormed up on social media networks, Pixar showed us that you don’t have to say a word about yourself to get the internet talking about you.  

2. Iron Man 2 taught me to let fans become the hero 

This site easily took the longest to load (and it doesn’t appear to work in Chrome at all), but it was worth it when it did. Using an augmented reality app and your webcam, you can finally see yourself as Iron Man or War Machine. The app tracks where your head is (don’t ask me how) and places the Iron Man helmet over it, moving around as you move. You can also get an inside view of the helmet with all the futuristic interfaces Tony Stark uses in the movies. It’s a big kick for fans of the movie to see themselves as the hero, and there’s nothing that draws more attention than appealing to people’s vanity. If you can find a way to let your target become the star, it’ll earn you a lot of goodwill. 

 I. Am. Iron Man.

3. Shrek Forever After taught me if I let fans build their own content, they will happily share it 

The campaign site for Dreamworks’ 4th Shrek movie is stuffed with the usual content, but its build-an-ogre feature makes it a standout. It invites you to join the ogre resistance by creating your very own ugly green soldier. There’s actually quite a lot of options for customizing your ogre. The franchise lost my interest after the second film, but I still found it great fun to see what combinations of silly faces and fierce weapons I could come up with. It’s even made me a bit curious about what this resistance is and how it plays into the film. But the really brilliant part is that Dreamworks realized people were far more interested in sharing their own creations than someone else’s, so they gave them a way to make something highly customizable of their own that promoted their film at the same time. 

This is my Ogre. I call him Steve.

 

4. Jonah Hex taught me to plant teasers where the target will find them 

In support of the upcoming theatrical release of Jonah Hex, DC Comics and the WB have created a web series of animated motion-comics covering three new story arcs. I had never heard of Jonah Hex, but the motion-comics look kick ass and have gotten me intrigued enough to look into the film and ask my friends about it. The motion comics are available through Amazon, iTunes, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network – most of the places their target go to satisfy their entertainment cravings. By creating exclusive content to hook potential new fans, they’re generating a higher level of anticipation for the film by immersing people in the Jonah Hex universe. If you put the effort into creating great offshoot content, people will happily download and talk about it – even if they have to pay for it.

5. Despicable Me taught me if you’re just gonna do a campaign site, do it exceptionally well 
The best way to get people to share your content through social media is simply by giving them great content. Universal poured a whole lot of effort (and god knows how much money) into their campaign site for Despicable Me to give visitors much more than the usual, forgettable movie site. I usually hate it when a website has music playing in the background, but Despicable Me’s theme song is too much fun to find annoying. And that’s the crux of this whole site: things that are usually throwaways are done well enough to be endearing. Each section is presented nicely and has several options for sharing the content. The games are particularly slick. They’re based on classics but with amusing tweaks, e.g. when you play tic-tac-toe various landmarks pop up along with amusing soundbites. You even have an extra incentive to keep playing as winning games unlocks prizes, like desktop wallpapers. There isn’t a revolutionary idea in the site, but it certainly has me excited to see this film just by how much fun it is.

Those are just a few of the campaigns for this summer's big movies. Did we miss any of your favorites?  

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

5 Twitter apps for the iPad

With the impending international release of the iPad (May 28th) and over a million already sold in the US, the adoption of the platform is in full swing. And that of course means the new apps are flying fast – over 4,800 are available already. If you ask us, a smooth Twitter app plays a big part in the iPad’s usefulness. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for the majority of these apps. Of the Twitter apps we found, only one was free, but none was more than $5. These are the early days of iPad development and some of the apps clearly aren’t 100% there yet. With a few more revisions, all of these apps should be outstanding. As it stands now, they’re all pretty good solutions, but some have more problems than others.

TweetDeck for iPad (Price: free) - The transition to the iPad has been an easy one for the master of the desktop Twitter apps. All the features we love in the desktop app are available here including easy to navigate columns, multiple account support, photo sharing, and all the others we’ve come to rely on. It’s the best of the free Twitter apps.

 

Twitterific for iPad (Price: free; $4.99 for Pro account) - Twitterific Pro is the best iPad Twitter application we tried. The switch between portrait and landscape view is fluid, and even the free version has all the basics you need like being able to reply, re-tweet, DM and more. The $5 upgrade to Pro lets you add multiple Twitter accounts and remove the ads. It may not be free like Tweetdeck, but the small cost is worth it for the better functionality. 

 

Twitepad (Price: $1.99) - For $3 less than Twitterific and Twittelator, Twitepad gives you most of the same functionality: multiple Twitter accounts, multiple columns, bit.ly stats and instapaper support. But you get what you pay for as it’s a little buggy, which is the only thing that keeps us from strongly recommending it. They have fixed a few of the bugs but it needs another round or two before it’s as good a tool as its competitors.

TwitRocker (Price: $4.99) - TwitRocker is another great app that features all the bells and whistles you need. With bit.ly URL shortening, multiple account support, OAuth security, search functions, list imports and all the basics such as retweeting, direct messages, and following/unfollowing people, TwitRocker truly does rock Twitter for the iPad. It’s a solid choice, but if you’re going to pay $5 for your app we’d still recommend Twitterific. 

 Twittelator for iPad (Price: $4.99) - Coming in at the more expensive level, Twittelator is easy to navigate and has great customization options. But $5 is expensive for an app, so it better work. With slow load times, problems switching from landscape to portrait mode and missing some of the iPhone features, Twittelator isn’t quite worth the price tag. Give this one a pass until it goes through a couple of revisions to work out the kinks. Once it does, it has the potential to be a great app.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

State of the Union in Social Media

The 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner was released a couple of weeks ago. Stelzner interviewed 1,356 marketing professionals in order to understand how marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. It confirms what many of us working in social media already knew, but also contained several surprises. 

A staggering 91% of the marketers surveyed say they are using social media for marketing purposes. That’s much higher than I think most people would have predicted. Sure, social media is hot right now, but many companies are reluctant to get started even if they feel they should. The common perception is that more B2C companies are using social media than B2B companies. It turns out that 79.5% of B2B companies use social media, with only 68.7% of their B2C counterparts on the bandwagon.

The majority of marketers are using social media 6 hours or more a week. This shows a growing number of businesses are investing their time in social media – and with great results. Over 73% of marketers using social media for over a year reported that it helped them close business, which is an increase of 12% over 2009. 

 

Additionally, businesses using social media saw the following results:

• An increase in their search engine rankings
• Greater exposure for their business
• Created new partnerships
• Generated qualified leads
• Reduced overall marketing expenses
• Increased website traffic

 

Naturally Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most used social media tools. Look to blogs and YouTube to make big strides in the coming year as many of the marketers surveyed planned to increase their usage. But the tools they really want to know more about are social bookmarking sites (i.e.; Delicious) and smartphone marketing. 

Social media is quickly becoming a marketing staple, which means your customers will be less and less forgiving if you don’t have a presence there, and potential customers may miss you altogether. If you aren’t developing a social media marketing plan this year, it will be harder to catch up. 

In our business, Facebook, Twitter and blogging have been instrumental in helping us make contacts and increase our footprint beyond what a small agency could normally create. But we’re always looking for innovative new ways to connect with people. What social media tools have you found particularly effective?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

The top 5 Twitter apps for Android

The smartphone app battle has heated up with legitimate rivals to the iPhone hitting their stride. Apple’s App Store continues to overshadow the competition with downloads in the multiple billions, but Google’s Android Market has emerged with a strong collection of its own mobile apps, along with the advantage of having multiple mobile phone brands running the OS. With around 300 million downloads under its belt, Android Market is building up steam. 

Seeing that Android has a prominent place in the future of mobile devices, we picked up an HTC Desire to discover firsthand what it’s capable of. First order of business: finding the best Android app to run our Twitter accounts. What we found was there is no app that truly stands out as the best overall, but there are apps that excel at meeting specific needs. Below you’ll find 5 of the best apps out there and which type of Twitter user they best serve.

 

The Official Twitter App – For the user looking for basic functionality 
The official Twitter app is surprisingly bare bones, seeming to not even try to compete with the feature-rich apps from third party developers. But for basic functionality, it serves its purpose extremely well. Its interface is one the best looking of the apps we tried and everything works smoothly. Still, its lack of features is a big turn off for all but casual users. Twitter’s official app was only recently released, so keep your eye on it as they are sure to launch updates with expanded features. Since the HTC Android phones come preloaded with Peep, which has the same basic functionality, there is no reason to add this app.

Seesmic – For the user looking to balance features and speed 
 More often than not with mobile apps, having loads of features means sacrificing at least some speed. Seesmic manages to offer a host of functionality without getting bogged down. Some of these features include geotagging, lists, search and multiple retweet styles. Seesmic also gives you a widget for your desktop. There are a lot of features in there for free that usually only come with the premium version of apps. If we had to pick an over all best Twitter app for Android, it would be Seesmic. 

Twidroid – For the user looking for the maximum amount of features 
Twidroid boasts a wide array of functions, including the fan-favorite slidescreen integration. It also allows linking up with other services like TwitPic, Posterous and bit.ly, among others. But for the full experience, including multiple accounts and customizable themes, you need to upgrade to Twidroid Pro. Even the free version is far ahead of most other apps in the range of features, so if you’re looking for the app with the most flexibility, this is it.

Hootsuite – For the professional user with multiple accounts and tweeters 
Hootsuite is the best bet for professionals using Twitter for marketing. You can schedule tweets from your Android phone and manage multiple accounts, which includes the ability to give multiple people access to those accounts, adding and withdrawing access as you see fit. The Android version works best in tandem with the desktop version, so if you’ve been using Hootsuite to manage your accounts, this is the best way to go mobile with your Twitter use. And thanks to Hootsuite’s acquisition of Swift - the speediest Twitter for Android app around - the app doesn’t lag despite being feature heavy.

Touiteur – For the user looking for the prettiest interface 
Touiteur (which we eventually realized is supposed to sound like Twitter, but more French) has by far the slickest and most polished interface of any app we looked at. With animated menus and transitions in a compact, streamlined design, Touiteur is a dream to use. But the glitz comes with a couple catches. The features are quite limited in the free version – you’ll have to pay get link shortening, widgets and multiple account support. And if it’s speed you’re after, this isn’t the app for you, it’s noticeably slower than most of the others. But we’re almost inclined to say it’s worth it.

Developers are starting to put serious effort into creating apps for Android, as these great options showcase. Do you have a favorite Twitter app that we missed? Let us know.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.