Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Understanding Social Networks: Frequency
Last month I discussed understanding social networks with a focus on delivery. I continue to see lots of people cross posting from Twitter to LinkedIn, something that I consider to be a bad move due to the nature of the different audiences on each social network. Today let's discuss something with even less hard and fast rules than delivery: Frequency. We've all had someone in our online social network who updates their status too much or with items we don't find interesting. I am sure I have been that person before (please let me know with a comment below, thanks). On LinkedIn most of your network is professional and oriented towards different goals and habits than on Twitter or Facebook. Here's an example from LinkedIn today:
To be kind to friends and connections I have blacked the cross posters' information. As you can see these folks are cross posting from Twitter. I already get these messages on Twitter from these people. I used the colored dots in the top right of the updates to identify the same user's updates. The frequency of these people's tweets is preventing me from viewing as many different LinkedIn updates as I would like. I see the same people constantly in my LinkedIn updates section.
The frequency of tweets (1-20/day) is very different than the usual frequency of LinkedIn updates (1-3/week). I know I am going to get into a bit of hot water here as everyone has different ideas about how often updates should be made on different social networks. There are NO hard and fast rules here, but when people ask me how frequently they should post I give them this list:
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| My Twitter Stats from tweetstats.com |
These are frequencies I recommend using for posts. What do you recommend or use?
We are all busy and seeing things we aren't interested in can turn people off, consider how easy it is to "unfollow" on Twitter or "hide" on Facebook. This is why it is so important to understand and respect each audience for their differences in the frequency and delivery they expect.
Embed Twitter and Facebook on your website or blog
The Short Answer:
These options can create dynamic content on your site whether embedding a relevant Twitter search window (as below) or placing Facebook widgets into your page to link to many different elements of Facebook it's easy to be a cut and paste coder and it can help you cross promote and show visitors what your 'community' looks like. Be sure to watch design and keep things clean and manageable for visitors. My site for example has far too many links and text unrelated to the main body and too many widgets, but I like information ;)
The Longer Answer:
I have created a document about how to embed Facebook badges or elements and embedded it at the end of this post or download or view it online here on Slideshare (one of my favourite web tools for storage and display). The easiest way to embed Facebook elements is through their Facebook Widget site it's great and easy to use. You can also check out my earlier post previewing Facebook Widgets it's from September 2009 when they were first released, so check the Facebook widget site for what's new.
If you want to put something like the "Follow Me On Twitter" badge, or the Retweet button or Share/AddThis bar at the top of the post you will need to know how to either cut and paste code or put an image on your page and link it. You can use a service like Twitter Buttons or click the above links for the respective tool.Twitter Widgets: It wasn't easy to find them but here is the link. I strongly recommend you check out Twitter's Widget offerings first before trying the ways listed below:
Twitter's widgets are awesome and totally customizable. I am showing the Profile widget in the right column on the blog and the Search Widget is displayed below with a few tweaks and a custom search:
Tweetizen: The directions are straight forward and allow multiple types of embeds. Tweetizen offers a number of options to customize what appears on your page and can include searches or tweets from specific people. It's a good tool but doesn't have the all-out customization of Twitter's Gadgets.
How to embed Facebook onto your webpage or blog:
more documents from Kemp Edmonds
Understanding Social Networks: Delivery
The three major social networks or as a Pakistani gentleman who repurposed my presentation calls them "The Three Amigos" Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter should be considered the essential social networks for most users. Niche Social Networks are a different beast altogether. I want to discuss the differences in 'Delivery' for the Three Amigos.
Linking together different social media profiles is all the rage these days and it does save time, but it may do damage to people's networks that they may not consider. Consider how you felt the last time you read something you didn't understand. This may be how your network on LinkedIn or Facebook feel seeing RT, @ or # in a message you post. They may not understand what it is.
Twitter is different from Facebook and LinkedIn in that it has symbols and key strings you wouldn't normally see when using the other networks. If you are someone who has only heard of Twitter but hasn't come to understand these words and symbols it can be challenging to understand and off putting. Remember what it was like the last time you read something that you didn't understand completely.
I recently linked my Youtube with Twitter and Facebook. The problem was when I favourited things or added videos to a playlist I do it a whole bunch at once flooding the stream. Once I saw it I changed the settings which had a lot of good options, like it would only update my networks when i uploaded a new video. Let's look at a few examples of messages across social networks.
This is an example of what a Facebook post looks like from April Smith. Notice the logo and the meta description pulled from the page automatically by Facebook. April has also posted this to the DNC Fan Page wall by using Facebook's mention function neither the graphic, the meta description nor the mention appear when cross posting as below:
I don't mean to call out my friend Jeremy Lim he is a busy professional in high demand so I understand him using cross posting to save time and get out his message but one just has to read the comments section of his post to understand the reaction of users who didn't know what a hashtag (#) was.
This post could have appeared on Facebook in this way:
The big difference about the social networks is the different audiences. We can't treat them all the same. On Twitter the hashtags become links to searches about the topic (EX). This is what Jeremy's post looked like on Twitter:
On Twitter the message looks perfect and fits in the Twitter ecosystem, but on Facebook it looks out of place and makes at least one person feel like they 'haven't learned the tricks'. Jeremy reveals that in fact he is cross posting to almost a dozen different social networking sites with the same message. I believe doing so is taking a risk.
Lastly, one of my favourite independent local marketing people, Rosa Meyers. Rosa cross posts from Twitter to LinkedIn. Rosa is starting out in marketing and LinkedIn is one the best places for her to find and connect with current and future clients some of whom may have never seen an RT or a # because they don't use Twitter. This is what her cross posted tweet looked like on LinkedIn:
Cross posting from Twitter to LinkedIn is a problem due to the differences in frequency for people using each platform as well. The biggest risk here is that the audience and potential audience on LinkedIn don't appreciate the 'cryptic' and very frequent updates as much as the audience on Twitter does. We only get one chance to make a first impression and when someone sees a status update on LinkedIn that they don't understand they may be less likely to connect with us.
In conclusion, as more and more people start using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn it's important that they feel like these ecosystems are easy to understand and I believe cross posting makes that more difficult. This post started out as one but will now be made into two: Delivery and Frequency, which I will cover in a later post.
For people who talk regularly these different messages are not a problem, they talk about it and someone learns something. It's when you don't speak to someone who only sees you on LinkedIn or Facebook, that the sight of these characters and symbols, which they don't understand, can put them off of communications and as the poster we may never know as they hide our updates on Facebook or LinkedIn. What are your thoughts on cross posting? What social networks do you use? Do you notice these differences in symbols and language? What are your feelings about it?
Athletes experience Social Media confusion at The 'Twitter' Olympics #TNMH
I recently read an article in Wired on athlete confusion around social media publishing policies. One skier told he 35,000 Twitter followers that "because of the Olympic rules (blackout period). I will not be able to post any updates from now until March 3rd. Sorry, it bums me out too!" The update was also posted to her Facebook, showing some savvy, nice one.
Apparently, the move was made based on a faulty understanding of the International Olympic Committee’s rules on blogging and social networking. There is no Olympic rule that sets up a blackout period for athletes according to Bob Condron, the Director of Media Services for the United States Olympic Committee. “Athletes are free to blog during the Games. Twitter is just a blog that’s written 140 characters at a time. You can’t act as a journalist if you aren’t,” says Condron. “You need to do things in a first person way.”
Speedskater Nick Pearson posted on Twitter, “Due to Olympic regulations I can no longer post pics on Twitter through the Olympics.” On the left is a photo he took from his room in the athlete's village. IOC guidelines state that athletes may post photos of themselves as long as they don’t show any of the actual sporting action during the Games. On the right is a picture of the Olympic speed skating oval he took Feb 4th accompianed by this twitter post, "After all has been cleared up, pictures are a go!!!! Just nothing from the competitions or the opening ceromies." Both of the photos are linked to the originals so if one disappears we can guess what may have happened.The IOC's concerns are about the very expensive exclusive advertising and broadcast sponsorship deals. Many of these athletes are sponsored by companies other than Olympic sponsors and photos of them in the Olympic venues or spirit may be considered 'offside'. For athletes with no major outside sponsor obligations these worries around twitter pictures and Facebook posts seem like a bit of joke for good reason, they are. No one can stop the wave of social media and this Olympics will confirm it.
Expect heavy social media activity among athletes in Vancouver. These are going to be the Twitter Olympics. On The Georgia Straight's website I found this list of about 50 Canadian athletes who tweet which stands in contrast to the situation with described in Wired. At least their article forced the US Olympic committee to clarify the situation for the athletes. The US Olympic Twitter page's recent tweets are a great example of dealing with the problem and some of the limitations of Twitter to serve customers.
An Interview with Richard Loat @Mozy19
What Oprah joining Twitter has done OR Weighing in on Twoprah, Oh Pope-rah!
- a newbie (@oprah) can crown a popular TV star, Ashton Kutcher, (@aplusk) the 'Twitter King"
- Ad Age still knows how to lay the smackdown even on the 'Twitter King'
- @THE_REAL_SHAQ can digitally slam dunk Newb @oprah
- if Oprah joins something as cool as Twitter is it still cool? 'Cool' is still around?
- the Oprah effect is real, check out the statistics, it isn't a book endorsement but it's good.
- Reuters will report on Twitter when Ashton 'battles' CNN making Oprah 'atwitter'
- the most WTF week on the internet would have to include a story like Susan Boyle
- when things 'go mainstream' bloggers and traditionalists love to say 'Twitter sucks'
- when people say 'Twitter sucks' other people say they suck
- Business Insider will blog about Oprah if she doesn't tweet for 4 days saying 'she's bored with it'
Oprah truly is the leader of American culture, Prove me wrong in the comments below...
A Twitter crash course for Newbies and a little for the more advanced user
If you have ever seen this before...
...you may be more likely to enjoy this post and you have been using Twitter, maybe too much (this is the image received when Twitter is overloaded). It is happening more and more frequently these days, in fact as I write Twitter is down. If I could tweet about it I would ;)
Twitter is both overwhelming and underwhelming. The simplicity of the interface and the first screen that appears when you login for the first time can be disheartening. Twitter doesn't give all users integrated search capability. There is no search tutorial to explain how you should go here and let your hands do the searching. Start by searching for @yourtwittername and you will find all the public messages Tweeters have sent you!
@______: This is called an at reply. It a message with another user's name in it. Why even have it? The @ reply is a public conversation between the individuals involved. The other option is a DM or Direct Message which is like a twitter email, private and between two users.
#_______: This is called a hashtag. It represents a thread and can searched for using Twitterfall, Twitter Search or Tweetgrid. Each of these methods caters to different uses for # or hashtags. Try them all and you will see.
Recently I've been reading a large number of blog posts from Tweeple (=Twitter+People) who found the Tworld (=Twitter+World) to be over the top in terms of Twitter tweeting (tweeting about Twitter). This is the nature and effect of a new communications medium it builds on itself and appears obviously self-obsessed. Enjoy!
Twitter's self-obsession can be seen by the number of tweets about Twitter and the sheer number of blog posts talking about Twitter. Some blog posts even bag on it knowing full well people will Stumble on their post because it's about Twitter. Just google it and be astonished. Everyone is connecting and communicating. People are monitoring the tweet stream and clicking stories of interest and reading what's going on.
ADVANCED TWITTER TIP: Twitter search only goes back 50-55 days, so Twitter research about your brand(s), product(s), company, clients or competitors should be done frequently. -http://ow.ly/198K
I recommend using TweetGrid is let's you track up to nine words at once on Twitter in real time.
The only thing that everyone on Twitter has in common is that we use Twitter and therefore any post, blog or article about Twitter will be able to connect in some way to all. What makes my experience different is that yeah I dabbled in blogging in the past; but I was driven to blog through my love and use of Twitter and I have therefore decided to turn this blog into a full-time account of Twitter trends and topics. Please follow me on Twitter.
Although almost all of the traffic to this blog comes from Twitter, let me know if you found this blog from a different source, thanks.
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BREWING NEXT TWITTER POST: The Following - Twitter's Black Hat OR TweetDeck VS. Twirl OR Bit.ly VS. Hootsuite
Comment below with your choice and thanks for reading
The importance of social media to business looms large @ Massive Tech Show 2009 Pt. 1
On April 1st 2009 Vancouverites awoke to snow, slush or rain as temperatures dipped below freezing. At UBC Robson Square in the heart of downtown Vancouver directly below bustling Robson Street between the Art Gallery and The Law courts a world contrasting the weather was humming.
A hidden secret lay waiting underground covered with tarpaulins and a construction site. On that cold rainy Wednesday in April, Robson Square played host to a five year tradition; The Massive Technology Show. Massive, as it’s known, has been
connecting business and technology since 2005. Lindsay Smith, Massive founder, was inspired after working as CEO and co-founder of Techvibes.com, a web portal that markets high-tech companies to the masses. Her career in technology started in 2000 when she co-founded GeekRave Productions.
Inspired through her work with Techvibes Lindsay saw an opportunity and felt strongly that because technology is good for business; business needs to be more closely connected to technology. This year at The Massive Tech Show business and technology learned a lot about one another and will learn more as the Toronto show happens in May.
The connection between technology and business is becoming increasingly important for all businesses of all sizes, particularly small ones.
A hidden secret lay waiting underground covered with tarpaulins and a construction site. On that cold rainy Wednesday in April, Robson Square played host to a five year tradition; The Massive Technology Show. Massive, as it’s known, has been
connecting business and technology since 2005. Lindsay Smith, Massive founder, was inspired after working as CEO and co-founder of Techvibes.com, a web portal that markets high-tech companies to the masses. Her career in technology started in 2000 when she co-founded GeekRave Productions.Inspired through her work with Techvibes Lindsay saw an opportunity and felt strongly that because technology is good for business; business needs to be more closely connected to technology. This year at The Massive Tech Show business and technology learned a lot about one another and will learn more as the Toronto show happens in May.
The connection between technology and business is becoming increasingly important for all businesses of all sizes, particularly small ones.
Twitter's Amazing Growth
PROOF: I, 24 News Stations, Obama and Congress have all jump on the Twitter bandwagon.
REFERENCE - THE DAILY SHOW: Jon Stewart's smart, hilarious report on Twitter's massive media exposure featuring Canadian Samantha Bee ------->US Link - Canadian Link
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... SEO is to website as Stumble & Sticky is to social media ...
Stumble: the chance for someone to see what you put out there.
Sticky: the chance that the same user will stay around or input info.
FUTURE POST - kempedmonds.com.
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Stumble: the chance for someone to see what you put out there.
Sticky: the chance that the same user will stay around or input info.
FUTURE POST - kempedmonds.com.
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Twitter is the hottest thing on the web/in the world since Google became the 'Almighty'. Here is a chart of growth of various social media sites for February 2009:
-Nielsen Online"The latest numbers from Nielsen Online indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Not only is that huge growth in one year, but in one month as well, as in January, Twitter.com clocked in with 4.5 million unique visitors in the US, meaning the service grew by more than 50 percent month-over-month."-ADAM OSTROW, mashable.com, http://ow.ly/10wi.
This graphic from comScore charts Twitter's current growth levels...
Twitter traffic data from comScore (via TechCrunch)
Twitter is only at the beginning of its steady growth phase...
Twitter is only at the beginning of its steady growth phase...
8 ways to use Twitter
This post will give you tips and ideas about ways that Twitter can benefit you, your business or your personal brand.
1. Store, access and share links, videos, articles or pictures
This may seem strange when great sites like Delicious, Friendfeed or Digg are out there for bookmarking but Twitter is evolving into an all-in-one. Using Power Twitter, a Firefox add-on, you can search through a Twitter Profile for keywords. If you don't use Firefox you can also use Twitter Search to search for a twitter name and a keyword(s).
If you are using Power Twitter the add-on will automatically open embedded video and pictures on your Twitter page without having to click a link.
I have been tagging my tweets with keywords (marketing, twitter, facebook, technology, business, Canada, etc.) for three reasons. First, people searching Twitter for those topics may stumble upon my tweets. Second, when I want to find an article I tweeted about 2 months ago I can simply view my own profile and using Power Twitter or Twitter Search I can search only my profile updates to find all of the links I have tweeted about those search criteria. Lastly, Google will be crawling those keywords and can return strong organic search results (FUTURE POST: Twitter as a Google keyword tool).
I am in no way affiliated with Power Twitter I hope they read this and I have more to say about their app in the future, it's great, although it hogs a fair amount of memory.
PROFESSIONALISM SIDE NOTE: Tweets, links, replies and everything else in your profile paints a picture about who you are and what you are up to generally. Imagine customers, business partners, friends and employers going through your Twitter profile and seeing what you have been reading, saying, doing or promoting.
2. Connect & talk with your customers past, present & future
This is the most important and complex element of Twitter to business. These days everyone is using Twitter to sell themselves, their business or 1500 Followers for $200. There is so much noise out there. How can you cut it?
Whatever your selling, to truly make Twitter work for you: Use traditional sales for traditional selling and Twitter for a more advanced form of Customer Relationship Management.
This is your business' opportunity to get free, easy, cheap customer feedback and market research. Twitter users are not a true measure of the population, check this out for marketing statistcs on twitterers to get a better idea of the Twitter demographic. Ask customers what they think of your offerings through Twitter. Generally, the people who respond are likely the customers who are most interested in the new products or services your company produces.
Also by replying to people's questions with advice and a link to your business you will encourage the entire Tworld to visit your business and consider your value proposition because you have offered them something up front; the advice. This will be one of the new economy's buying criteria: consumers want something upfront to engage in a transaction with a new company.
One can also use Twitter to connect with customers to offer them more value. A method that will pay off in the long-run as Twitter is now only beginning to penetrate the mainstream. This value-added Twitter service is something done well by the Retro Bakery's Twitter/Blog "simply delightful", JapaDog Hot Dog Stand Vancouver (@japadog) and Vancouver-based Provident Security (@ProvidentMike).
3. Break news, send emergency messages or communicate when other methods are not working.
This method is one of the most popular uses of Twitter. News now travels faster than even newspapers who jumped onto the net early had thought it would. This way of using Twitter is sadly most well documented by three recent plain crashes near Denver, New York and Amsterdam.
In each case an ordinary citizen was the first person to report the crash and it was first widely reported on twitter. In each of the latter cases the 'reporters' also took photos. In the case of the New York Hudson River crash landing miracle (great work by the pilots) the photo was the kind that would usually would fetch $100,000 from the Associated Press or Reuters.
Emergency Alerts are perfectly suited to Twitter read ----> A great story about Government intentions to use Twitter for emergency messaging.
The recent outage of Gmail almost caused Twitter to crash as millions of users turned to tweet to see what was wrong with their beloved Gmail. Read about it here. This outage has raised questions about Google's near monopoly and whether or not it is truly good for internet users to rely so much on one source when that source could go down. The debate is sure to rage for years.
4. Spread News
On Twitter you get news the instant that it's posted, usually the night before anyone receives their PAID newspaper subscriptions, it is being spread through the Tworld (Twitter World) for FREE. This is a great way to use Twitter to add value for your followers because of course they deserve more value, we all do.
Posting links should not be over used and can be helped by using these qualifying questions:
- Did you read the whole article?
- Did you think it was worth keeping or ready again in the future?
- Would my friends appreciate reading it?
- Are my followers like my friends?
5. Send information/links to your facebook network.
On Facebook people often spend time browsing Status Updates. As I post links on Twitter, which is linked directly to my Facebook, I see a large numbers of clicks coming from FaceBook(links are tracked using HootSuite). Its my Facebook network clicking my Tweet links because they find them interesting. I will discuss a little later about tracking your tweets in the #8.
Linking your Facebook status to Twitter can be a bit much for some people in your Facebook network to take. TweetDeck's new Facebook integration is amazing for this with a simple check box next to either the message box with a check for Facebook and one for Twitter.
There are some great services that can help you out. This is especially true if you tweet very frequently or use excessive tweet language. Tweet language can be difficult for Facebook users to understand.
6. Monitor what the Tworld is saying about Anything
Use Tweetgrid to monitor what people are saying about up to 9 different topics/keywords in real time. Just visit the Tweetgrid link and click "3X3". Now enter the keywords you want to track into the boxes and let it rip. This can slowdown other internet activities and should be used while doing other Twitter activities and not general browsing.
Tweetgrid is an awesome tool for tracking tweets. You can also use tools like Tweetdeck to seperate tweets into categories.
7. Monitor your community and connect with locals
By following local news organizations, politicians, community leaders and others like yourself you will be able to connect yo your local community in a whole new way. This an awesome way to connect to people in your community you may never had connected with without Twitter. Just use Twitter Search or Tweetgrid to look for your city/town name, the name of your area or community center. You will shocked with how many people in your area are using Twitter.
8. To track link metrics and more
Using Hootsuite, TwitPwr or others you can track how many people click your specially shortened links. You can also find out where those clicks came from in terms of site(Facebook, twitter & other feed sites), country and date.
Hootsuite is not the only service which will track your tweets and try this link for 26 ways to track your tweets. TwitPwr and Hootsuite add a title bar on the top of your clicked links , a small price to pay for the services you receive in return. One of those services is the chance to put a Google Adsense ad benefiting you in the title bar with Hootsuite's own ads. Check out Magpie basically Twitter's own affiliate marketing.
It's a good trade-off. It's also something that could turn off savvy and experienced Twitterers; some of whom are already wealthy and some of whom just feel it is in bad taste to monetize twitter in anyway.
To the other 99% of the population out there this is an opportunity for you to offer valuable information to your followers on twitter and facebook while also opening the door to a financial opportunity for you.
NOTE: You may lose some followers applying these changes to your tweets but if you continue to offer value through your tweeted links then you will ultimately gain more tweeters than you lose.
Be sure to Read this great post from Kris Colvin: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers.
Lastly, no matter what you do on Twitter offer people 90% valuable information and 10% self-promotion - The 90-10 rule.
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