There are plenty of Twitter clients available these days, but only a few have proved themselves truly worthy of the business audience. For an application to be successful it’s got to be easy to use and have all of the features the user wants. If you’ve recently convinced your company to start microblogging, chances are they aren’t as familiar with how things work and what the best applications are to use. However, if you can wrap up the best of them all (scheduling, search, follow/unfollow) and put it into an interface that people can understand, your chances for success are even greater.
Aaron Gotwalt (@gotwalt), Jesse Engle (@jesseengle) and Kyle Sollenberger (@iamkyle) think they’ve built the tool that could finally push businesses over the tipping point and into Twitter full-bore. From the looks of their new app, CoTweet, I’d say they’re well on their way.
It’s Like an Inbox…for Tweets
What business users will probably be most excited about is the look and feel of this app. Everything is very polished, just like any other piece of software they’re used to using. The main interface looks like an email inbox, which may also lead to wider adoption of Twitter as a business tool, as it allows you to process new tweets through the system. After you set up your company and personal accounts (called Channels in CoTweet), the tweets start flowing in.

CoTweet is like an email inbox for Twitter
Review, Assign, Respond, Archive
CoTweet is billed as a corporate Twitter tool because you can load a number of editors under a single company account. This allows your team to stay on top of inbound tweets without trampling over each other. As tweets drop into your inbox, individual employees can take whatever action is needed.
Does your company follow hundreds of users? Is is difficult to weed through everything just to find the messages you need to respond to? The OnDuty option (which can be switched on or off per user) will proactively monitor for new direct messages and @replies and send email alerts when they arrive. That also means you can continue working on other things in the background and just wait for email alerts to notify you when you need to take action.

Typing up a reply (see the signature included)
Another feature CoTweet uses to keep you on track is the Assignment option. If you’ve got an inbound tweet that really needs to be answered by someone from your sales department, assign the message to that person and they can be alerted via email of the pending assignment. For tracking purposes, the assignor can also get an email receipt when the assignee completes their task.
If you’ve ever watched Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero video and wish you could do the same with Twitter, CoTweet answers again. Mash the ‘X’ next to tweets in your inbox and they’ll be archived out of your queue.
Identify the Employees Behind Your Account with CoTags
As more companies begin to leverage corporate identities on Twitter, it can be difficult (and sometimes frustrating) for users to understand who specifically is behind an account. Dell has overcome this by leveraging company branded accounts like @RichardatDELL and @LionellatDell in conjunction with a page on its website dedicated to outlining who manages what. Other companies are updating the 160-character bio for their account as different employees are on duty. Still, some users aren’t satisfied (can we really please everyone?). CoTweet also aims to solve this problem of corporate identification by implementing its CoTags feature.
“CoTags are short signatures that allow you to identify yourself as part of a message while sharing an account with multiple people. CoTags take the form ^AG, where “AG” is your first and last initial.”
CoTweet has set up an additional website (and Twitter account: @cotags) to track and share good examples of accounts effectively using CoTags under their corporate brand. A few that stand out are @RobertVerdi and @msoffice_us. Perhaps this will satisfy those out there still proclaiming that brands should not have their own Twitter accounts, but rather employees with their own accounts tweeting on a company’s behalf. Now a user can follow a brand on Twitter AND see who is pushing out the messages.
CoTweet Provides the Tools for ANY Company to Get Involved
While previous corporate Twitter case studies were reserved for innovative companies like Whole Foods and Zappos, the team at CoTweet has built a tool that truly gives any company the ability to use the microblogging service effectively. Head over to their site and get signed up for the private beta for a chance to try it out.
Even after CoTweet rolls out a pro/paid plan (and I’m sure they will), companies will still be lining up with cash in hand to utilize this tool. You owe it to your company to give it a whirl.