A few weeks ago, I explained why I think Twitter can be a very useful tool for journalists. Some of you emailed me to say that you've started to use Twitter and want to learn more about other ways of using it. So in my next few articles, I'm going to focus on some innovative tools that both use and exploit Twitter, and I'll show you how to use them for daily reporting and editing. I think that you'll find, as I have, that Twitter is a very powerful Web tool indeed!

This week: Use Twitter for publishing.

TweetStats - Track your Twitter traffic to see who your users are, how often you're being read and how far your reach extends. Just like site metrics, but for Twitter!

Tweetpeek - Create a group Twitter feed. This is a good way to aggregate the content from your site into one feed. You can also create a group feed for reporters, editors or even your readers.

TwitterGram - Tired of just sending out 140 characters? Use TwitterGram to send mp3s tweets. This could be a fantastic way to share breaking news audio reports. You might also consider using it to send out quick advertisements every X# tweets.

Here's a great example of how Twitter has been used to publish breaking news stories from the BBC. You can also find a long list of traditional media organizations from around the world who are using Twitter to post breaking news here.

Next week: Twitter applications for reporting!