I’ve lately jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and started trying to use it for marketing and publicity. At first I thought it was just so much “Today my 3 month old spit up her strained pears onto my best Vera Wang scarf” and not much else. Because I really couldn’t care less what I had for breakfast, much less what YOU had. :)

Since then, I’ve had an epiphany and see that quite a number of high profile folks are using Twitter to promote themselves, their services and their web sites. It’s perfect for a web design company to announce site launches, new free themes, design specials and promotions, and to update folks on what we’ve been doing.

With that in mind, I’ve listed below a few Twitter tools that I am checking out. If you think of others that should be on the list, feel free to drop a comment!

Tweetburner

This tool lets you track your own Tweeted links or those of others. You can login using your Twitter login information and check on the status and popularity of any links you’ve twurled.

Twit-It

This is a great way to Tweet about web sites you’re currently surfing.

Tweet My Page

Another browser bookmarklet for Twitter. I’m not altogether happy that my favorite browser, Opera is not on his list of supported browsers. Hopefully, that’s an oversight.

Twitt’d

Receive and send updates via IM. Again, sadly, my favorite IM, ICQ (which I actually use via QIP) is not supported. But there’s always GoogleTalk!

TwitterSafe

Backup your twitter followers.

TweeTake

This app seems to go a couple of steps further than TwitterSafe, as it backs up your Twitter friends, followers and followees.

Twapper

Keep up with Twitter on your mobile phone. But there’s also Mitreo for the Palm Treo.

The Mattinator

This allows you to post tweets to more than one Twitter account. What? You don’t have more than one Twitter account? Why not? There are a few good reasons for them, but more about that another time! Let’s just say that I, for one, have two Twitter accounts, personal and for our web design business.

MT Twitter for Movable Type 4

Brandon Fuller has the right idea. What with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc., if you aren’t careful, you’ll have posts scattered all over the internet. This plugin (for MT4 only) pulls your Twitter Tweets right onto your MT blog where they belong.

Twitter Tools for WordPress

This is a great plugin from Alex King, a popular WP plugin author. It lets you post tweets right from your WordPress blog’s sidebar.

And if you’ve read this far, it’s time for your just reward. I’ve created a blank Twitter Follow Me button free for the download. I’ve left the button blank so you can fire up Photoshop and put in your “Follow me on” text in any color or font your heart desires. (Check out ours on the sidebar over there on the left!) Enjoy!