Inman

Tweet better, faster, stronger with Swift Social

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Swift Social is a Twitter management and marketing solution for businesses.

Platform(s): Browser-based
Ideal for: Agents already comfortable with social media marketing

Top selling points

  • Custom banner “ad” on tweeted Web pages
  • Suggested follows and unfollows
  • Highly detailed configuration of automated tweets

Things to consider

There are plans for Swift Social to integrate management of other social networks. I’d be very impressed if it can apply the same level of control across them all.

Full review

Swift Social is the most detailed software I’ve come across in this space. It’s currently only for Twitter, so it can afford to offer such a rich feature set.

The solution adds tremendous value by automating much of its users’ activity.

An account requires a fair amount of upfront configuration prior to formal launch. (Then again, every marketing effort should.)

The surface level stuff is all here, such as writing and scheduling tweets.

Real horsepower is displayed when its automation features are revved up. It’s fueled by populating an account with favorite website feeds.

Although Twitter is often recognized as the broadcast channel of choice for the vapid ramblings of yet another member of the seemingly parthenogenetic Kardashian ilk, most of what matters stems from the sharing of quality content. You know, original thought.

Swift Social has created an intricate progression of settings for each feed that, when complete, will automatically send the most recent article, blog post or content from that feed with any number of hashtags, prefixes or suffixes you assign it.

It also filters specific words and lets you specify “find and replace” terms to further target your tweet and make it more prone to search results. You can replace instances of “Detroit homes” with “#detroithomes,” or something similar.

You can also create a Swift Social “frame.” This is a branded banner that will float over Web pages that are tweeted by your account.

Users can add a 75-character headline — which includes 15 characters for a call-to-action button and the link for the button.

This very slick tool is an effective way to push traffic to a listing or landing page.

Real horsepower is displayed when its automation features are revved up.

Swift Social also finds shareable content for its users using a network of keywords and hashtags through its integration with Hashtagify.

Related terms and their popularity on Twitter are dynamically generated based on those interests to accept or delete. That’s how Swift Social populates an account with the Twitter feeds from influential and other related profiles.

Users are encouraged to continually update and monitor what terms are generated.

Who you follow and who follows you is a critical component to building a rep on Twitter.

The software gives users a list of daily recommended unfollows based on their activity, propensity to follow you back, how they relate to your specialty and a number of other “secret sauce” metrics.

The suggestions can be ignored. However, the magical Twitter benchmark of credibility is reached when the number of people following a user is greater than the number they follow.

Like I said, detailed stuff.

Because Swift Social addresses one social network, the interface is beautifully designed. I fear visual clutter would accompany the addition of more networks, which is in the works. Hopefully I’ll be wrong.

A few nitpicks: You can’t add comments to retweets or preview automated posts.

I was told the former would be brought up in a future feature discussion, and the latter is because the system doesn’t know “yet” what content the tweet will send — it’s waiting on the most up-to-date news based on the schedule.

I started a Swift Social account under another business for this column. I plan on sticking around awhile, intrigued by its potential. The automation is sharp and it’s genuinely fun to use.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.