5 Essential Twitter Chrome Extensions for Marketers

If you're a marketer, Twitter is one of the key tools in your arsenal for engaging with your audience. Maintaining a pristine, vibrant feed, and dealing with all the administrative tasks can be a bit of a drag. Thankfully there are a few browser extensions you can use to make the whole thing slightly less laborious and focus on what matters: interacting with your network!

Here are five of the best ones that we use daily.


1) Silver Bird

The Big Bird of Twitter extensions, Silver Bird holds a raft of features for better Twitter management. For a start, you can see your feed, profile, DMs, and custom filtered lists all from a button on your toolbar.

The fun doesn't stop with this genuine quality of life addition though, with Silver Bird boasting a wealth of other features. Small buttons on each tweet allow you to easily reply, retweet or like the tweet from within the extension. You can also create tweets, including shortening URLs, in-extension, and the app automatically caches to avoid hitting Twitter's API rate limit. All of the lists and notification settings can be customised to best fit your Twitter usage, making Silver Bird an absolute no-brainer.


2) Chromnitweet

To further streamline the ease-of-use Silver Bird started to provide, in steps Chromnitweet. This extension turns your very own address bar into a Twitter post box. Simply type into the address bar (Ctrl + L for a quickfire shortcut) "tw" followed by your tweet. This extension also automatically shortens links so you don't have to worry about it. The only restriction is that it's text-only, but it certainly lets you tweet in a hurry if necessary.

3) Riffle

So you've got your tweading and twiting methods down. But how to decide what exactly to write? Well, one way is to know your audience. Enter Riffle. Riffle acts as an in-browser analytics engine. You can see all the stats and analytics you could need about your own page to fine tune your Twitter game:

Riffle

The analytic enlightenment doesn't stop there, though, as you can turn your attention to other users, whether your audience, the accounts you follow, or even your competitors. Stats include their influence, the platforms they use to publish and more. On top of that, Riffle integrates with 16 Twitter platforms including Hootsuite and TweetDeck, ensuring it will slot seamlessly into your posting procedure.


4) Buffer

Armed with all this knowledge and ready to tweet, what do you do if you come across something that you think would be absolutely perfect to post, or just a random flash of inspiration crosses your mind? Well, you could quickly post it with Chromnitweet or Silver Bird, but if you want to schedule it for later, you could use Buffer. Buffer allows you to queue your posts and space them out to a custom schedule. The extension will then give you analytics on the post, so you can track results and see what time of the day may be best to post.

You can post content you create yourself, or easily share web content you stumble across. Buffer makes it easy to do either.


5) Twitter Follower

Now you have all this perfectly scheduled and targeted posts, you just need some more followers. The best way to gain more followers is, of course, to follow some users yourself. The Twitter Follower extension makes this process much easier, automating bulk follows.

It can also perform bulk unfollows, if you should somehow find yourself following a bunch of people you don't want to.


Finally, here are some honourable mentions for the ones who nearly made it:

• Tweets Counter for Twitter - shows stats and retweets for current URL.
• Reddit Check - Check if the current URL has been submitted to Reddit.
• Photo Zoom for Twitter - Adds a large size Twitter image in your feed so you don't have to leave it.
• Whom to Follow - For the grammatical pedants among(st) you. Simply changes Who to Follow to Whom to Follow.

Now, get out there and extend both your browser and your Twitter following. Your audience isn't going to engage itself!

Sam Franklin

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Twitter Trials Tools to Turn Trolls Tongue-Tied

Twitter is a valuable online haven for discussing current affairs without fears of censorship. Unfortunately, free speech comes at a price, and that price is the troll toll. No, not that one, Always Sunny fans. The one that means that allowing people to say what they want from the anonymity of their mum's basement will inevitably lead to a spewing forth of vile abuse towards anyone with the temerity to state a slightly unpopular opinion, go against the meta, or just be a woman online.

Thankfully, Twitter continues to implement and enhance features to deal with the troll brigade, and some more were announced today. The features include an upgraded mute function, easier reporting of hate speech, and revamps to the company's internal support teams.

Twitter has introduced several anti-troll measures in the past, such as the flagging of abusive tweets, creating a safety council, and adding a quality filter, but the new additions will help further refine the way the platform deals with the insidious troll threat.

The mute function was first released by Twitter last month, allowing users to mute accounts that they don't want to hear from. This update will take that even further, allowing users to mute certain keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations from appearing in their notifications. This means that inflammatory or simply undesired content, especially those targeted specifically at the user, will be able to be filtered out without even making anyone aware of their existence. However, filtered phrases can still be seen on a user's timeline, so it's not yet a watertight feature.

The next part of the announcement concerns the way in which users can report trolls. Twitter's hateful conduct policy forbids 'specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.' The new reporting feature will allow anyone to notify Twitter of offensive speech whenever they see it, meaning the burden is not all on the victim to report abuse.

It's no good all these reports coming through if no one is there to deal with them. That's why Twitter has also promised a refresh of all the support teams that deal with the issue of hate speech. This is coupled with improvements to the internal tools and systems they use to address them. It is of course difficult to fully automate reporting, as that opens up the system to abuse, allowing the very trolls it's designed to target to use mass reporting as a brigading tool.

So just how big is the problem? Well, Mashable wrote an article questioning whether we've reached peak troll, and abuse on the platform has certainly been building to a fever pitch, especially during the recent US election. If users don't feel secure on the Twitter it could lead to dropping user numbers, with monthly user growth already a problem for the platform. There are even rumours that the hate speech issue was part of what led to Disney's withdrawal from a takeover, with Twitter struggling on that front.

It's a difficult dilemma for Twitter to deal with, as there is a fine line to walk between free speech and censorship. Customising user muting preferences seems like a good way to deal with that, allowing potential problems to be nipped in the bud. And that is important, as free speech also relates to people's right to have their voice heard without an oppressive barrage of abuse drowning it out. Twitter recognises the scale of the issue, and the task of dealing with it, stating: 'We don’t expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that.' Indeed, trolls can be resourceful creatures, even starting to speak in code to get their grim message out.

Still, it's admirable that they're trying, both for their own sake as a platform and for the sake of their users. Hopefully the trolls will be gradually driven back under their bridge, and we'll no longer have to pay the price for their shenanigans. Or the troll toll.

Author & Source

How to Get Verified on Twitter (If I can do it, you can too!)

Have you ever felt like a celebrity on social media?

I’ve had a moment or two when someone I really like or admire reshares a post of mine, or when people from across the world happen to come across my content and like or follow.

Social media has that unique ability to take non-celebs like me and thrust us into the spotlightevery now and then.

Well now Twitter’s gone one step further. You can apply to be Twitter verified and receive a blue checkmark badge next to your name. To become verified on Twitter, you simply update your profile with current information, verify a phone number and email address, then fill out a form requesting consideration as a verified user.

It does provide a bit of an ego boost and celebrity moment to see the blue badge, but here’s the real kicker: There are significant business/brand advantages to being Twitter verified.

I’d love to show you how you can get your business or brand verified on Twitter and the great things that might mean!

(Nieman Lab wrote one of the best recaps of what the new Twitter verification process has meant, if you’re keen to check it out. The image above is from the great folks there.)

How to Get Verified on Twitter, Step-by-Step

1. Fill out your profile completely with profile picture, cover photo, name, website, and bio
2. Add a verified phone number and confirm your email address
3. Add your birthday
4. Set your tweets as “public”
5. Visit the verification form on Twitter

(Note: If you’re applying for verification of a personal profile as opposed to a business profile, you’ll also need a copy of a photo ID like a passport or driver’s license.)

In Twitter’s announcement about verified accounts, they listed a few particular elements that might be a factor in which accounts they choose to verify and which they don’t. The biggest factor in getting verified on Twitter is that the profile is of public interest. 

To explain a bit further, Twitter mentions that “public interest” might include public figures and organizations in the fields of:

• Music
• TV
• Film
• Fashion
• Government
• Politics
• Religion
• Journalism
• Media
• Sports
• Business
• and other key interest areas

So long as you meet the minimum guidelines with your profile (things like having a profile photo and a verified phone number, etc.), the verification process seems to be a bit subjective in ultimately deciding what is of “public interest.”

If you go through the process once and don’t get verified, no worries. You can try again in 30 days.

In terms of the minimum guidelines, here’s a bit more about how to complete each one successfully.

Verify your phone number on Twitter.

You can add a phone number to your account here; to verify the number, enter the verification code that Twitter sends to your email. This is what it looks like if your phone number is verified:

Confirm your email address.

You can add your email address here; to confirm the email, click the link that Twitter sends to your email address. This is what it looks like if your email address is confirmed:

Add a bio, profile photo, cover photo, birthday, and website.

To add or edit this information, visit your profile on Twitter (in my case, twitter.com/kevanlee). If you’re logged in, you should see an “Edit Profile” button to the right of your Twitter stats.

Clicking the edit button will make the various aspects of your profile editable. You can click to change your cover photo and your profile photo. You can edit the text areas directly from this screen.

In editing this information, Twitter recommends that your profile name is the real name of the person or the organization, that the profile photo and cover photo accurately represent what you’re about, and that the bio mentions an area of expertise or company mission.

Here’s a pro tip for adding a birthday: When you’re entering the birthday information on the web, click the lock icon to choose who can see your birthday on your profile.

Set your tweets to “public.”

Visit this page in your Twitter security and privacy settings, and make sure the checkbox for “Tweet privacy” is unchecked.

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As you’re going through the verification process, Twitter will ask that you be logged in to the account you wish to verify. There will also be a paragraph section toward the end where you get to tell Twitter why you should be verified (this was the most time-intensive part of the process for me). You can share links to support your claim, too, so this might be something you want to think about or plan ahead.

Here’s what the form asks for specifically:

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10 Ways to Maximize Your Chances at Getting Verified on Twitter

I was very fortunate to get the favor of the Twitter verified team on my first attempt. I’m still not sure I fully deserve it! However, I was glad to see that a bunch of the pre-work I did to ensure my profile was looking its best seems to have paid off.

There is no way to know for sure what factors go into the decision to verify a user or not. These are some of the things that I tried for myself and feel might be useful if you’re thinking of giving it a go.

1. Make sure your Twitter profile has been active, consistently, for the past two weeks.

There’s this cryptic bit of advice from Twitter: “Before you apply, take a look at your account to make sure it’s ready.”

What does “ready” mean exactly?

It’s hard to tell, but one possibility might be that a “ready” profile means an active profile.

When I first heard that Twitter was allowing users to request the verified badge, I wanted to do it right away. The only snag: I realized I was in a bit of a Twitter lull and hadn’t posted for a couple weeks. So did a bit of work:

1. I hopped into Buffer and filled up the Buffer queue for my Twitter account for the next 30 days.
2. I also made sure that I was actively engaged with my @-mentions and direct messages in the days immediately before and after I submitted the verified form.

I’m not sure to what degree it actually helped. These things tend to matter when we check out Twitter profiles for potential Buffer hires, so my sense is that the Twitter verified team would notice the same!

2. Link to other verified Twitter accounts in your bio.

This one seems to give a bit of social proof to one’s chances of being verified. Within your Twitter bio, you can @-mention any other profile on Twitter. Bonus: It’s a good practice for writing a great Twitter bio that helps you gain more followers.

If you’re an individual, you can add your current employer, past employers, or connections you have with other members of the Twitter community (“husband to @mywife” or “building a product with @partner”).

If you’re a company, you can mention parent companies or VCs that have funded you.

I was lucky to be able to @-mention Buffer in my bio.

3. For organizations, add numbers and specifics to your Twitter bio.

Put your best foot forward by being a bit self-promotional about what you achieved. Here are a few ideas:

• +3 million customers and counting
• We’re a $10M startup …
• Member of the INC 5000
• celebrating 25 years in business

4. For individuals, use the biggest job title you can in your bio.

Similar to the above tip for organizations, this one requires that you sell yourself a little. Before I reached out to Twitter, I had my profile listed as “Content @buffer.” I changed it to “Director of marketing @buffer.” Here are a few other semantic changes that might spark some ideas for you:

• Content marketer = Published at @TNW and @Lifehacker
• I run a blog = Founder of @ProBlogger

And here are some tips that Neil Patel shared on the Buffer blog:

• If you started a company, welcome to the ranks of  the “entrepreneur.”
• If you helped a company, you are a “problem solver.”
• If you run sometimes, maybe you can be a “fitness guru.”
• If you give to charity, perhaps you’re a “philanthropist.”

5. For people profiles, add a cover photo that shows you doing something important.

For a long time, I had used an inspiring quote as my cover photo. It looked pretty nice, I thought (thanks to Canva). But it wasn’t quite as powerful or descriptive of a person of “public interest.”

Fortunately, I had the chance to speak at Unbounce’s CTA Conference a few months before, so I added a picture from when I was speaking on stage. John Bonini of Litmus does it really well here, too:

6. In your “why I should be verified” paragraph, write your pitch with empathy for the Twitter community.

One of the quotes I love from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is this one:

You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.

It’s spot-on advice for filling out the Twitter verification form and writing the paragraph about why you should be verified. Show an interest in how your being verified can help the Twitter community. Does it help your audience find you easier? Are you often confused with others and are keen to help improve that experience? Are you a business who wants to provide great, fast, trusted support to your Twitter audience?

I took a Dale Carnegie approach with my paragraph for Twitter verification, mentioning how I’d love to be able to connect easier with the people who follow the Buffer blog and the other places where our content is syndicated. I’m not sure how much this approach weighted things for the Twitter team, but it felt like a good step!

7. Be exact with the location in your bio

I’ve seen a lot of clever, original ways that people have used their location field in the Twitter bio. At Buffer, since we’re a fully remote team, we list our location as “Worldwide.”

Other people have chosen a humorous path. My all-time favorite is “Location: Spaceship earth.”  

It’s very possible that the location field doesn’t matter much. I didn’t want to take any chances.

My location was listed as “Idaho,” which I always thought was specific enough since not too many people know specific cities within my sparsely populated state. However, just to play it safe, I went ahead and added the city: Boise, Idaho.

8. Choose a variety of links to submit

Submitting the Twitter verification form reminded me a bit of applying for a job. I wanted to give people the best, broadest sense of how I could be a fit. As a writer, this often means submitting links from a variety of sources where you’ve been published. For Twitter, I went one step further and added conference speaking engagements (both ones from the past and from the future).

Generally-speaking, share as many positive mentions of you or your business, from as many big sources as possible. This could be:

• Bylines from major websites or publications
• Author pages at major websites or publications
• Press you received from major publications
• Awards
• Speaking engagements
• Company profiles

9. You must submit at least two links. Be sure you submit the maximum five links.

Though Twitter lets you submit only two links, you definitely want to maximize this by filling in links for all five spots. Be creative (see the list above).

10. View the list of recently verified users for inspiration

This is one that I wished I had found earlier. The Twitter account @verified follows all the verified accounts on the network. If you click over to their “following” tab, you can see a list of everyone who has recently been verified. The full list is over 215,000 people and companies.

You can scroll this list for ideas and inspiration for what might be worth trying to get verified.

One thing you’re likely to notice: There’s a lot of variety! It seems there might not be any one right way to get verified. My best advice would be to find people or organizations that might be similar to you and take some learnings from the way they pitch themselves.

Another thing you might notice: You don’t have to have thousands of followers to get verified.There are many, many verified profiles with 2,000 or less followers. Don’t let follower count stop you from applying for verification!

Why It’s Important to be Twitter Verified

There are likely to be a lot of obvious benefits to having a verified status on Twitter.

1. You might get more followers
2. You’re bound to gain trust and respect from the community
3. You have one more data point on your being an influencer/authority

There are some immediate platform benefits, too. You can opt out of group DMs, and (this one’s quite cool) you can filter your notifications to include only notifications from other verified users.

It’s this last point that might be the most important.

By being verified, you will always have a closer connection to other verified users. Your likes, replies, and retweets of other verified users can never be hidden.

And to look ahead into the future, this may be an area that Twitter moves toward for everyone. The “Verified” filter is only available to other verified users now, but it’s possible that this could be rolled out to all Twitter users in some form, perhaps even as a filter in the main Twitter stream.

Being verified ensures that your content and your interactions always remain visible for the maximum number of Twitter users possible.

As the Nieman Lab pointed out:

“If a significant share of Twitter users were verified, it would be easier for Twitter to make something like “Show notifications and replies only from verified users and people I follow” the Twitter default view.”

It’s a bit early to tell for sure where Twitter may head, though it never helps to get ahead of the curve if you can. Just in case. 

Over to you

Does Twitter verification sound like something you might give a try?

If you’ve already tried it out, what was your experience? Any tips to share? Any questions to ask?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments and keep the conversation going there!

Image sources: WOC in Tech, Pablo

Author: Kevan Lee

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