ComScore data indicates that Twitter attracted 20.1 million unique visitors in June. Conclusion: having a marketing plan for your small business including the surging social network is imperative. Since Twitter has become a social media giant comparable to Facebook, there has certainly been an excess of application development based on the Twitter API. It’’s important to decipher the real useful, practical, and successful tools from those that waste time, memory space, and energy. Here are a few must-have tools to get you on your way to attracting more qualified followers who define your target market. The best part is they are all free!

Twitter-Birds

YoTwits – Yotify has developed a great free service that allows you to choose select topics for automated feeds in your Twitter stream. By providing enough flexibility to define keyword filters, select specific sites to link to in your tweets along with time interval selection, this will boost your following signifcantly.

Nearby Tweets – Geo-targeted marketing is a growing segment that is continuously evolving. Look no further then what Google has done over the last few years with Google Maps and Latitude. This is a great search engine that allows users to pinpoint tweets within a chosen radius while taking into consideration specific keywords. There are not a lot of extra bells and whistles. Extremely user-friendly.

Twadder – A great desktop application by Eagle Creek Software that is ideal for SEO or Internet Marketers. The free version of Twadder allows you to follow up to 50 friends at a time that are following keywords relevant to your products and services. Users also have the option of following their friends followers and who they are following, ultimately allowing you to become a part of their inner circle.

TweetLater – A robust platform that automates many signifcant interactions on Twitter such as welcome messages to new followers and follow/unfollow. Spam protection is automated in the full version.

Twibs – Is more than just a business directory using Twitter. You can manage promotions, products, links, and locations. Another cool feature is that users may provice keyword tags relevant to searches for products and/or services their company provides.

With the rise in popularity of Twitter a whole industry of applications development based on the Twitter API has been born. There is quite a bit of weeding out to do to find the real legitmate contenders from the posers. If you have not begun blending Twitter into your media mix get off the couch, and create a plan that allows you to broaden your reach to potential clients who are trying to find you out in social network land. Trust me, it will eventually pay off.