You can always use Twitter Search to search through what people are discussing on Twitter. But that shouldn’t be the only tool you use. In fact, these 4 tools are much more powerful and can give you more ideas:

Topsy: it’s quickly replacing Google for me. It makes it so easy to find new stories and hot topics people are talking about. You can always use the trends to figure out what’s hot. Pretty straight forward to use.

Tweetmeme: another powerful tool that can help you figure out what stories are currently hot on Twitter. You can think of it as Digg for tweets.

DailyRT: a nice alternative to Tweetmeme and Topsy, if you are looking for the very top retweets on Twitter. Stories that get a lot of retweets on Twitter are very interesting to follow. Not all of them are going to give you ideas but some of them will.

Twendtz: one of my favorite Twitter tools that I use on a daily basis. It makes tracking stories and trends much easier. You can always use the pro version to measure brand impact on Twitter.

What’s your favorite Twitter tool for tracking topics?

When someone talks about adding retweet functionality to blogs, many bloggers jump to the conclusion and assume the best service out there for such a function is the one offered by Tweetmeme. Don’t get me wrong. Tweetmeme is a wonderful service that makes it easier for people to not only find your posts but also help spread the words around them. But it’s not the only game in town. Topsy is another top Twitter aggregator that can help your content go viral fast. It’s easy to implement as well.

Topsy provides you with numerous ways to add its service to your blog. You can easily grab a piece of code from Topsy.com and post it to your blog to let your visitors retweet your posts and find out which one of your posts are popular.If you happen to run your blog on WordPress, you can just download the plugin offered by Topsy.

I have talked about how I use Topsy to develop new blogging ideas and find people to follow on Twitter. The interface is very easy to get a hang on, and there is plenty of data aggregation going on in the back. Many assume that Tweetmeme is the only game in town, but Topsy has quickly closed the distance. In fact, Topsy buttons are much more website friendly than Tweetmeme’s. If you happen to be a developer, you can probably do more neat things with Otter. As it things stand today, Topsy provides you with enough tools to encourage your visitors to promote your posts.

Twitter may be a fun social network to fulfill your talkative side, but there is more to Twitter than just talking pointlessly all day. Twitter is one of the most significant sources of data on the web. There are discussions going on Twitter right now about almost anything under the sun. If you are willing to spend time to listen to what’s going on Twitter, you are going to get your hands all the ammunition you need to start writing more powerful content for your blog.

Topsy is a new search engine that is built around Twitter data that helps you find all kinds of information on Twitter fast. It’s so easy to find out who’s been talking about what on Twitter, and how you can develop content that people are craving for.

Take “Swine Flu” for example. By using Topsy, you are going see who’s been talking about it the most in the past few weeks or month. You’ll also find out who the top users are as far as this topic is concerned.

Another thing to like about Topsy is that it shows you the most influential users who are talking about your topic on Twitter. You can also find all kinds of related sources of data to look at to find even more information about your keyword. And let’s not forget how useful the related tags can be.

Overall, if you are looking to find killer ideas for your future blog posts, there is no easier way than mining Twitter data.  If you use the right tools, the sky’s the limit.