By Xavier Izaguirre,

To any self respecting “Twitterer”, Twitter.com is clearly insufficient. In order to harness the full potential of Twitter and remain productive using it, you need to get hold of a Twitter suite. There are quite a few out there and unsettlingly they keep adding and adding features to improve functionality and serve different industries that nowadays have Twitter and social networks included in their staff job descriptions. This is why choosing one involves quite a lot of guesswork and switching from one to another can sometimes seem like a drag. Hence, before moving your tweets and social platforms to a suite, cast an eye over this article.

We’ve decided to have a quick overview of the four chief clients that use Twitter and social media, so you can then pick one or change to one that suits you better. After the brief lowdown I have included an exhaustive comparison of features.

Cotweet

Cotweet has recently been quoted as the ultimate business solution and for a reason. Cotweet is the ideal solution for big companies with multiple accounts to take care of and, more importantly, with different people in charge of managing different sides of the tweet’s output and input. This is because Cotweet has been developed to make the tweets that need to be acted upon (email notifications, tweet asignments) unmissable.

On the downside, Cotweet is not as useful from a knowledge centre perspective, since it is not laid out in columns.
As a conclusion I’d say that Cotweet is the way forward for CRM, customer service purposes and for companies that receive many @messages expecting an answer (e.g. a sales outlet or a service provider).

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a very complete solution that allows multiple accounts and has a column-based interface, which makes for a great way to organise streams of information on people’s tweets (e.g. lists) and search queries (trends, brand monitoring or trend analysis). It is ideal for PR or reputation managers that need to keep an eye on various issues at the same time and to update their knowledge in various areas. Besides all this, the greatest selling point of Hootsuite is the range of click through analytics that gives a real time insight on best working tweets and the number and origin of click throughs.

On the downside, the absence of notifications of any kind makes Hootsuite very demanding for people that need or want to be constantly updated of mentions or DMs.

As a conclusion I would recommend Hootsuite to everyone with an interest in the information possibilities of Twitter, either for learning or monitoring purposes, and to all those who need to constantly monitor the success of their tweets, such as all those who are using Twitter for brand building and lead generation purposes.

Seesmic

The focus on Seesmic seems to be ubiquity and cross functionality. With more mobile applications than anyone and the recent acquisition of Ping.fm, Seesmic gained a lot of points in becoming the best connected client, linking up with 50+ social networks including WordPress, Delicious and Notepad.

On the downside, Seesmic lacks much functionality on the analytics and business side.
I would recommend Seismic for people with a very active online social life who need to update multiple platforms from the same place effectively.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is another Twitter solution that resembles Hootsuite in its ability to display a lot of information at a glance. Also, it has some excellent unique features like the on-screen flash when you get a mention (like Outlook’s new email flash) and the ability to track new followers, both of which are of great use to businesses.

On the downside, Tweetdeck is not totally accessible on the web and needs to be downloaded. Also, it lacks some key features like tweet scheduling and analytics.

However, Tweetdeck is the market leader so far with 20% of Twitterers using the application’s slick and irresistible interface. Tweetdeck has been recently installed in all staff computers in SKY newsroom thanks to its column interface and flashing service that makes it easy and fast to stay abreast of news as it happens.

Comparision Chart of the Four Main Twitter Clients

This report is accurate at the time of writing.

Also, I confess to being a heavy user of Hootsuite.

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library in November 2009 working as part of the Research Team. Prior to joining Social Media Library, Xavier completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London. An active user of Social Media platforms, Xavier is very passionate about new trends in communication and Social Media Marketing contributing towards a number of online campaigns within the Educational Sector.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre