It's been a long time since being active of Twitter meant making sure you didn't go over 140 characters and occasionally retweeting. 

These days Twitter is a sophisticated platform that is now the fifth largest advertising platform on the planet, while the recent opening of a Sydney office signals Twitter's interest in the Australian market.

Which is a long way of saying if you're a retailer or SME there's plenty of ways to leverage Twitter to help boost your bottom line. Here are three of our favourites.

TweetLevel

Free online service TweetLevel lets you see how people are talking about your brand. Simply enter your Twitter ID and TweetLevel will display information such as who influences you, and who you influence.

Your Twitter ID will also be grouped into one of five different categories (Idea Starters, Amplifiers, Curators, Commentators and Viewers) based on the ratio of tweets, followers and discussions they have.

Good for a statistical snapshot into your Twitter footprint.

Social Mention 

As the name implies, Social Mention is a simple and effective way to monitor how and where your brand is being mentioned online. Simply enter your search terms and Social Mention will give you real time results into your online footprint. It will also show you current trending topics if you're looking for a hashtags that might get you more leverage. 

As an added bonus Social Mention's reach extends beyond Twitter to over 100 websites. You can also filter the results based on categeories including blogs, images and video.  

Tweriod

Twitter might now allow you to schedule tweets, but Tweriod tells you the best time to do it. By analysing your tweets and those of your followers, Tweriod calculates the best time of day and week to tweet.

Once Tweriod completes its analysis it sends you a Direct Message via Twitter with its suggestions. Simply start tweeting and enjoy the enhanced engagement!

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