TweetLater Review: A Twitter Productivity Tool

TweetLater (TweetLater.com) sounds like any other Twitter automated or scheduled tweeting web applications but do not let the name fool you.  It could be considered as one of the most valuable tool for any Twitter Power User.  We could even go as far as to say it is an essential Twitter timesaver.

This review is on TweetLater's free version, we will blog about the professional version in other posts not to divert from the main objective.

Making Twitter Marketing Easier

Social Network Marketing requires a much higher investment in time than other marketing initiatives.  The cost of the tools and ads are minimal compared to online advertising campaigns but building the relationships on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed could go up as to require a dedicated resource for monitoring and responding.

Whether your goal on Twitter is to sell products, create brand awareness, build relationships or simply be popular, there is a certain level of work and expectations to be set. Similarly to the abandoned blogs, omitting to post updates could raise questions about your liveliness, except that with real-time media, the allowed time is reduced to 24 hours.

I have seen many bloggers, webmasters and marketers use Twitter the wrong way by mass-following users or spamming promotional text to whoever follows them, this is not the type of marketing we condone. TweetLater could be used the wrong way but it could also free up your time if you write quality messages and follow only the right users if you decide to follow whoever follows you.

TweetLater Review (Free Version)

Auto Follow and More Functionalities

TweetLater is feature rich, unlike other Twitter applications which may perform a single task such as scheduling tweets, TweetLater allows you to do the following right out of the free version:

• Schedule Tweets
  Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer. The main advantage is to publish tweets when your international followers are online and you're asleep or when you are busy with your work or life.
  
  This feature works well as it allows you to post a tweet right now, using a time difference (e.g.: 2 hours later), at a set date and time or to spread your tweets out automatically during the day.  The pro version also adds the ability to schedule recurring and variable tweets!  When testing this we found that TweetLater will not be able to post your tweet when Twitter's API is unavailable, your tweet is seen in the history as not posted, we recommended them to add a feature to automatically retry posting x time every y minutes to circumvent this technical issue.

• Track Keywords and get notified through email alerts
  TweetLater can monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a digest of the tweets that contain those keywords every 4, 12 or 24 hours. You can also use this to track your @replies.
  
  This feature works well and could be useful to monitor the topics relevant to your website and to find people in your niche.  This currently works by email, but it would be nice if was also made available through RSS.
  
  
• Automated Direct Message (DM) on New Followers
  This is a feature causing some controversy in the Twittersphere.  As the name says it allows you to automatically send a DM to new people following you.  The feature is well implemented as it gives you the option to approve or ignore the new follower before sending the DM.  TweetLater heavily emphasize that the feature must be used to send non-promotional messages that focus on them and your future interaction with them, or simply a thank them for choosing to follow you.
  
  There are two schools of thoughts on this, the first is that Twitter should be authentic and that no automated messages should be sent on behalf of a Twitter User.  The second is that as a Power Twitter User, you can use automated tools to speed up your tasks and build relationships faster.  We will let you debate this on our comments below.
  
  
• Auto Follow/Unfollow New Followers
  Following followers could be considered as politeness or etiquette.  This system works the same way as the Automated DM as it allows you to appraise the members before auto-following them.  It also allows you to automatically unfollow people when they unfollow you even though this is not cool, never do it.
  


• Semi-Automated Follower Appraisal Before Automated Actions
  We consider this the current core differentiator of TweetLater.  It simply gives you the option to render the automated tasks semi-automatic:
• You gain new followers
• 2-3 times per day, TweetLater will batch index the new followers and give you the option to Approve, Ignore, Block or Mark as Spam
• Approving the new followers will give the green light to the automated actions you have set

Here comes an even more powerful feature: using data from the followers such as their join date, their number of followers and followees and their profile picture, you can set basic rules to pre-select the Approve, Ignore, Block or Mark as Spam Options.  It is a good set of filtering rules but could be expanded by allowing customized set of nested conditions or automatically determine types of Twitter Users (normal, marketing, spammer, celebrity, retweeter, etc.)

• Other features
  For completion's sake, TweetLater also provides a set of other features that are a bit less of a differentiator since there are many alternative tools that could perform the same tasks or that they are of little use:
• Multiple Twitter Account Management
• Direct Message Box Purging
• Bit.ly URL Shortening Integration
• Saved Message Templates

Great Support, Reliability and Criticism Responses

Some current users might think that TweetLater is not working due to the unintuitive workflow or error messages.  Nevertheless, TweetLater's support is exceptional, most likely due to their capabilities to have personnel dedicated for support with the revenues they receive from the professional version.  The application is strong but not perfect, there seem to be minor features that are not working as intended (such as seeing all the automated DMs sent) but there is nothing that breaks its core functionalities.

TweetLater received a lot of criticism for helping the creation of Twitter Bots or automated Direct Messages (and even causing some account suspensions).  However, they are very strong and positive in answering to the criticism, first by allowing anyone to opt-out of the automated messages sent by their systems. Second, by educating TweetLater users on how to properly use Direct Messages (non-promotional, send only what you would like to receive)

Poor Ease of Use and User Interface

Integrating multiple functionalities in a single tool will always be a challenge and TweetLater still have much room for improvement in that area.  Each functionality is well documented in the FAQ or in the Blog but is not easy to find.  Most of the features are disorganized and segregated as if other tools were grafted to an original scheduling tool.  No doubt that their poor ease of use could have affected their web promotion and marketing negatively.

Overall Conclusion on TweetLater

If you are looking for a tool to increase your productivity and make Twitter less of a time sink by automating mechanical tasks, TweetLater is a tool that does the job.  Its set of core features even in their free version will outweigh its unintuitive and ugly user interface design which you will get used to (I cannot think of any other words, sorry).  On the other hand, if you are looking to simply manage multiple accounts or schedule tweets in the future without the powerful semi-automatic Following Appraisal feature, see the TweetLater Alternatives below.

TweetLater Pro and Other Features

This TweetLater review would be incomplete if we do not mention the possibilities (without testing and reviewing them) of the pro version and two additional features:

TweetLater Professional

• Single view and management console of all Timeline and DM to multiple Twitter Accounts with configurable filters
• Filter out messages marked as spam (irony? since the tool can be used to create spam)
• Perform the same action on multiple accounts
• Forward messages (tweets, DMs) without having to copy/paste
• Multi-user management for Accounts
• Schedule Recurring Tweets and DMs with variable text
• Have a Twitter account feed from an RSS Feed (Twitter Bot)
• Integration with Ping.fm to schedule messages on all Ping.fm platforms (Facebook, MySpace, etc.)

Auctioned Ad Space (Profile Banners)

TweetLater being a tool that claims to have over 97k users have a huge ad banner above the fold of every page which is being auctioned off every 24 hours.  The winning bid (from 60 to USD$100) will have their ad displayed 91k times and sent as part of the 30k emails.  We have not tested the effectiveness of this advertising method with the fact that TweetLater is a tool for semi-automatic tweeting, therefore, there will be less people paying attention.  It would be interesting to see some demographic and performance data such as click-through and conversion rates.

Affiliate Program

There is an well-documented affiliate program which TweetLater use to convert more people to their paid  professional version.  We want to write as disclaimer that this is a neutral review of TweetLater although we are using affiliate links to the site.  Actually, we did not notice the affiliate link due to its poor link placement when we first decided to review TweetLater...

TweetLater Alternative Examples

Alternatives for TweetLater exists if you are looking for specific functionalities, here are two examples we will complete as we review other tools (know more? let us know in the comments!):

• Schedule Tweets
• FutureTweets: lets you schedule your Twitter messages. Send it at a specific time in the future or send a reoccurring Tweet daily, weekly, monthly or yearly (for free!)
• Multiple Account Management
• HootSuite: lets you manage multiple Twitter profiles, add multiple editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.

There is always one threat that lurks for each Twitter application, if Twitter were to finish fixing their infrastructure, they could very well start adding functionalities to its main site and render these 3rd party apps useful.  However, as outline by the Twitter internal strategy document, they are more likely to work the other way by working with the API developers and even have a possibility of acquiring them.  

Also in the topic of alternatives, you can also read a exploratory TweetLater review by Blog Herald or a step-by-step TweetLater walkthrough by Vincent Rich. But remember that your best bet is to try TweetLater for yourself!

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