Yisel Guajardo is an entrepreneur who writes about internet marketing, social media, and blogging. She authors the blog Advanced Income. You can also follow her on Twitter.
There are lots of tools or “twools” that can save you time on Twitter.
Here is a list of 5 automated tools that are meant specifically to save you time when it comes to managing friends and/or tweets. Some have unique features while others overlap. I’ve left off any desktop or mobile applications that let you tweet away from Twitter like Tweetdeck or Twhirl since the following tools complement them or can be used standalone.
This is the ultimate set it and forget tool. Once it’s setup it follows those that follow you and also unfollows those that unfollow you. It also lets you send an automated direct message to new followers. Another feature is that you can get a daily email message that shows you who followed or unfollowed you and the last Tweet you sent out when it happened.
This service lets you time delay or future post your tweets (post at a specific time and day you set). What’s cool is that it has built in tracking capabilities so you can measure the effectiveness of the links on your tweeets.
Although their site says “allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers”, it’s really just a simple no frills way of seeing how many clicks your tweets get. So even though you don’t advertise on twitter, and I recommend you don’t do any blatant advertising anyway, it provides some valuable feedback to you about which tweets are more effective or generate the most response.
TwitterMail is for people who find it more convenient to tweet via email. When you sign up you get a TwitterMail email address and whenever you want to tweet you send an email to that address and it will be automatically posted to Twitter. Plus, it has some added features like sending photos to Twitter and future tweeting.
If you have several blogs or Twitter accounts, PostLater lets you, well, uh…post later. 
You can schedule posts on multiple blogging platforms as well as microblogging platforms like Twitter. Plus they also support scheduling entries for FriendFeed and scheduling recurring entries.
Tweetlater has features of both SocialToo and PostLater. You can schedule future tweets, send automated direct messages to followers and also auto-follow new followers.
Another tool worth mentioning that’s gaining popularity is Tweepler. It’s actually become my favorite because rather than automatically following new followers you can easily see in groups or buckets who you want to follow and who you don’t. It lets you keep control by letting YOU decide in a very fast and efficient way.
There you have it, the top automated time saving Twitter tools based on traffic ranking per Alexa.
Which are your favorite time-saving Twitter tools? Any that didn’t make the list?
Image source: sxc.hu
Thanks! I learned some new tools from you!
Here is one that I learned about today which allows me to track Trends in near real time: http://www.Twitterfall.com.
I like TweetDeck for my computer and Tweetie for my iPhone.
Cool. I also like twitblogs. I can Tweet and Blog in one platform. I don’t have to create a new username. Just sign in with my twitter useand pass.
Another tool Similar to Tweepler I use is Tweepular.com does a bit more and is gaining alot of recognition