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What are the four stages of Twitter enlightenment? How important is Twitter for business? How can you get more retweets and efficiently manage unfollowers? How exactly did Dell generate so much revenue by Twittering? What are the “secrets” of top corporate Twitterers?

Learn the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best blog posts and articles from last year on Twitter techniques, tools and tactics.

Sanity check: The four stages of a typical Twitter user by TechRepublic

Jason Hiner brilliantly summarizes the path to enlightenment of the typical Twitter newbie, from “confusion and indignation” through the use of tools and mobile messaging. Great advice for newbies, and experienced Tweeters will likely get a smile of recognition out of this post as well.

A Twitter Marketing Sanity Check by iMedia Connection

Yes, another Twitter “sanity check.” In this article, Daniel Flamberg explains why he is “stumped and frustrated” by Twitter (maybe he needs to read Jason’s post above?) but in the end concedes that “Twitter is ripe for experimentation,” and advises marketers to “be true to your brand personality and ethos and play with this (not so) new tool.” In another iMedia Connection piece on Twitter, Twitter brand smackdown: The winners and losers, Rodney Rumford highlights lessons from the Twitter successes of Ford, Zappos and Dell. And in a third piece from the same publication, Twitter now a business ‘must-have,‘ Madhuri Shekar quotes a MarketingProfs survey showing that “84 percent of respondents (most of whom represent small businesses) claim that their company’s Twitter usage will increase and 46 percent say it will increase by a ’significant’ margin” in the coming year, and quotes the conclusion of Ann Handley, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, “Much like Facebook, Twitter is now moving into the business mainstream.”

What’s a Retweet? by Social Media Today

The title may not sound promising to experienced Twitterers, but in this excellent post, Jill Kurtz notes that less than 1/5 of 1% of all tweets get 100 retweets—the level considered a “home run” for a Twitter post—then provides helpful tips for getting into that retweet stratosphere, such as including “pls RT” with tweets, keeping tweets short enough for others to retweet without editing, and asking for RT’s only for relevant content.

5 Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Unfollowers by WebProNews

Jeremy Muncy reviews five helpful Twitter tools, from the ubiquitous (Twellow) to the less well-known, such as Twitterless, an online application that not only notifies you when someone stops following, but also supplies “a graphed out ‘follower history’ over a period of time to help you understand where your (sic) gaining or losing followers.”

Dell Says It Has Earned $3 Million From Twitter by The New York Times

Okay, the figure quoted in the headline is now outdated (the most recent Twitter revenue claimed by Dell on Twitter is $6.5 million), but Claire Cain Miller does an excellent job of outlining how Dell has generated, and continues to generate, significant sales through Twitter. She also notes that “Twitter made exactly $0 from those Dell sales, something that will very likely change.”

Pro Twitterers Share Their Secrets by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Mark Walsh reports on the secrets of highly successful corporate Twitterers from Comcast, Dunkin’ Donuts and Six Flags. Among the tips: be human, authentic, even a bit immature. Favorite snip: “Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast…drew hearty laughter when he described the cable giant as being known for its customer service. ‘I can’t wait until people stop laughing at that joke,’ added Eliason.”

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2009 (S0 Far): AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Twitter Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 2
Best of 2009 (So Far): AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 2
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2009 (So Far): Cool Web Tools, Part 2
Best of 2009 (So Far): Search Engine Marketing
Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 3
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 3
Best of 2009 (So Far): Blogging for Business, Part 2

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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Best of 2009 (So Far): Twitter Tips and Tactics, Part 2

If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that traditional e-mail is outdated. Whether it be from the Enterprise or Web 2.0 side of things, companies are attempting to redefine either the whole shebang (Google Wave) or just certain aspects of it (FMYI).

On board with the latter is Metalogix (news, site), whose fourth complete version of their e-mail archiving tool attempts to redefine, well, e-mail archiving. The recent release features inexpensive enterprise-level perks like federated search, e-discovery and lifecycle management.

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Metalogix Offers the Enterprise Email Archiving for Cheap

This week the GRC focuses on compliance and inserts a little web publishing for good measure.

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GRC Roll-Up: Anxiety Enters the New Age of Compliance

We know EntropySoft (news, site) best for their content connectors, but there’s more to this company than connectors alone. They have released the newest version of their Content ETL (Extraction, Transform, Load) product, helping you move content between repositories whether they are on premise or in the cloud.

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EntropySoft Updates Content ETL for Transfers and Cloud Synchronization

For My Innovation (FMYI) stepped into the ring to duke it out with fellow social solutions for the enterprise (think Socialtext) six versions ago, but this is the first time they’ve popped up on our radar.

In addition to some delightful, tree-hugging values, the FMYI package includes several features that are common in enterprise-level tools: a calendar, news feed, workspaces, the ability to post and share text, links, files, events and tasks, etc. Like its predecessors, version 6 of the app claims to go beyond work needs, but this time the company aims to make it fun.