I started working in Houston’s Theater District at Society for the Performing Arts before Facebook was well, Facebook and the introduction of the iPhone. Android was still just a dream of the Open Handset Alliance. Being the early adopter that I am, I began testing the waters of Facebook and Twitter, trying to figure out how all this crazy stuff worked. All the while, my mind kept spinning around the question, ‘How could these emerging methods of connection and communication be integrated into the Theater District experience?’
As with many organizations during this time, the answers have not been easy to come by. The main conflict is the ages of the respective audiences. The group actively using social media on the internet and their phones is considerably younger than the audiences taking in performances at Jones Hall and the Wortham. The great fear for some patrons is the degradation of the theater experience like we have seen in our movie theaters. Others find the behavior of these tech happy people abhorrent, and too unsophisticated for the filigreed temples of the arts. Honestly? They’re right. Going to a performance is an experience between you and the artists. It is an intimate relationship that sometimes requires the full attention of the patron.
Imagine yourself locked in a passionate embrace of your significant other. They are holding you in their arms tightly, stroking your hair, nibbling at your ear. When, all of a sudden, he or she pulls out their phone to send a tweet. That moment is, as they say, spent. Now, with that same scenario, imagine if a stranger interrupted this moment to post your picture on Facebook? We’ll call this phenomenon Theaterus Interruptus.
This is not behavior anyone here at Schipul would be likely to encourage, however, we also see the strong need for a conversation about the use of social media and mobile phones within the construct of a night at the theater. In the coming weeks, I want to open up a dialog with arts patrons and enthusiasts about the use of social media in our performance spaces. I will introduce you to different sites and apps that I feel have great potential, and hopefully develop a set of rules we all can follow to help expand our enjoyment of the theater-going experience.
Well, Twitter is all a-twitter this morning about their big announcement to finally make some money via ‘Promoted Tweets.†In a casual (if a bit vague) blog post, co-founder Biz Stone lays out the high level points of the program Q&A style with promises of more info today from COO Dick Costolo at the AdAge Digital Conference. So while we all wait in eager anticipation for more specific information about the program, here are the bullet points:
The program will be introduced in phases. As Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog points out, phase one will leverage Twitter’s most valuable asset’ the data of its more than 20 million users, ‘Twitter’s real value lies in the aggregated information of its estimated 22.3 million users, surfaced by search, so it makes sense that the company would turn to this strength to make money.â€
In phase one ‘Promoted Tweets†will show up only for searches on Twitter itself. No Promoted Tweets on Twitter apps yet.
If you perform a search on a particular term that is relevant to one of the companies paying for the Promoted Tweet service, like those Google Sponsored Links at the top of a Google search, a tweet from the paying company will be displayed at the top of the search page. The New York Times article ‘Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads†has a pretty fleshed out example of this using Starbucks,
Starbucks, for instance, often publishes Twitter posts about its promotions, like free pastries. But the messages quickly get lost in the thousands of posts from users who happen to mention meeting at Starbucks.
‘When people are searching on Starbucks, what we really want to show them is that something is happening at Starbucks right now, and Promoted Tweets will give us a chance to do that,†said Chris Bruzzo, vice president of brand, content and online at Starbucks.
In order for a Promoted Tweet to hold its ground at the top of the search page, it’s gotta resonate baby… people don’t click it, retweet it, engage with it… it’s outta there. And Twitter will be following the results in order to tweak the program… again like Google with its ever evolving, mysterious, and infamous algorithm.
Twitter says these are not ads’ ‘Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.â€
First takers, or ‘partners†include: Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America
Next up? According to the Times, ‘[Twitter] will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser.†This leaves me wondering if a post to Twitter about the overwhelming Houston pollen count induced allergies this season will elicit a Claritin tweet inserted into my stream. Twitter is the most vague about phase 2 stating, ‘Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value.â€
So there it is folks… I reserve final judgment until I actually see it IRL… (Update: I couldn’t post to the blog fast enough and Mashable reports Promoted Tweets are already showing up for limited searches) I think phase 1 will go by with lots of initial fan fare, may even trend for a bit, and then will fall into the obscurity of the already accepted and ignored ads that float in the periphery of the likes of sites such as Google, Facebook, The New York Times and even National Geographic. I am curious to see how much traction Promoted Tweets will actually gain. I myself don’t spend much time on a search.twitter.com‘ though over coffee in the break room this morning I learned of few co-workers who do use twitter search as their almost exclusive local search tool.
Phase 2 however, has me itching already to get my feathers all ruffled up. I am trying to maintain my calm composure, with a ‘wait and see†attitude… but I gotta letcha know I feel pretty dang partial to my twitter stream being my own. I don’t really have much love for the bullying bull-horn approach of most advertising campaigns and I feel like in the world of social media – where personal brands are more important than big brand loyalty and famous personalities have more followers than global news organizations – there is not going to be a great big love fest should Twitter choose to place paid tweets from mega-brands into the streams of its users.
For more on Twitter Promoted Tweets take your eye-balls on over to:
Unless you are a huge, die-hard fan of our favorite search engine, you probably had no idea Google was creating a new software product. And that it would take over our inboxes and (inadvertently) share our lives with everyone. Welcome to Google Buzz.
WTF is this Buzz thing?
Google Buzz is a new product from Google that lets you share things. If you use Google Reader, then you will likely recognize the interface. The two both include a list of posts with information like who it’s from, when it was shared, and a list of comments below each item. It is strikingly familiar in design to FriendFeed, your Facebook Newsfeed, and in some ways, Twitter. All include shared updates from friends with the option for additional feeds and pictures/video.
Buzz is almost identical to Friendfeed in the way it allows you to merge outside services like Blog Feeds, Twitter updates, and Google Reader shared items into one constant stream of sharing. To add these settings in Buzz, you must first have configured a Google Profile (you have that setup, right?). Then, after your feeds are added there, Google Buzz will allow you to add them to Buzz by selecting them from the Connected Sites link in Buzz. While allowing you to share things and see your friends’ shared things, you can also add comments on anything. You can follow along with the conversation and even have new comments show up in your Gmail inbox.
Google Buzz Main Entry Box. Look familiar?
The big difference in the Google service is that you already start out following everyone in your Google Contacts, which often includes people you may have emailed once or twice in the past few years. For most of us, this is a huge concern because we are now sharing things with people we never intended to share with.
If you have a phone like the iPhone or an Android phone, then Google Buzz will also share your location. This has been done by other services, but it is a major privacy concern for this opt-out service.
The Opt-Out and Privacy Concerns
Opt-out services, where you are automatically signed up, are usually not great for you (with the exception of 401ks). You get hooked into something that you never chose to use. Instead of giving Buzz it’s own URL and special place on the web, Google just stuck it in your Gmail inbox. Everyone was signed up without a great explanation of Buzz. You have to manually go in a either remove people from your contacts or block them.
Lets use an analogy. Imagine if, when you first signed up for Facebook and entered in your high school and class year, you automatically became friends with everyone else from your class. Except Facebook didn’t tell you or give you an option to opt-out of this. Facebook wants to get you started building friends so it adds some for you. They think they are helping. And now, you have to un-friend hundreds of people that you don’t care to share your life with anymore.
Google thinks they are doing us a favor, but I don’t feel helped very much. The privacy settings on Google Buzz are granular, meaning everything can be set to private, but you have to hunt and search to find out where. Harriet at Fungitivus ran into this problem. All of her Google Reader shared items were instantly exposed to anyone in her “recent contacts”, which contained many old email addresses from random past emails. Google Reader is public by default, but no one may have been viewing it if you were using it on a private email account. Buzz now exposes this to all of your recent contacts.
The privacy settings are all available to be turned off or configured specifically, but the notion of being set to public by default is not cool. Facebook has run into troublelike this before and has had to scramble to fix things. I have faith that Google is already working on a better all-out admin interface for settings, but nothing like that has been released yet.
Getting rid of the Buzz
Google Reader Sharing Settings
You can set all of your Connected sites to be private by setting them as such when adding them. To update your Google Reader settings, you have to open the sidebar, click the + on the People you follow list, and click sharing settings. Chances are your shared items are set to Public (the default). You can view a list of people following you and Block them by default if you wish. But, you must do this individually. Business Insider has a nice walk-through to make some things private.
You can also set anything you do to private, and select a group of people to share with. These groups come from Google Contacts, which many people may not use unless they sync them with a mobile device. They are editable within Gmail. By not connecting any sites, blocking all of your “followers”, and unfollowing everyone, you can effectively get off of Google Buzz. But it will still exist right next to your inbox in Gmail, at least for the time being. UPDATE: Mark from the comments tell us that you can simply turn off Buzz in the Gmail footer. Thanks for the tip!
Implications of Buzz
With Buzz, I see Google trying to be the central hub for online human interaction. It’s the place you email, chat, use documents, share pictures and links, and now bring in some of your outside services. Google is very late to the party, as many of these kinds of services have been done by other companies. The idea of having everything in one place is wonderful, but even that has been done before to limited success.
Google is a bit different, though. They already have many of us hooked into their services. If you were on Twitter two years ago, or joined facebook three years ago, then I’d bet money you are using Gmail. If you know how to subscribe to RSS feeds, then you are likely using Google Reader. Google already has us using their services, and they are betting with Buzz that we will choose to use Google for even more.
However, not everything can be done with Buzz, which is the beginning of the problem. I recently moved to Tumblr for sharing things online, and I can’t find a way to bring that feed into Buzz. You also can’t bring in Facebook updates, but that is due to Facebook’s sharing policies and not Buzz. People that are already using other sites like Friendfeed will not come over willingly, since Buzz only replicates that service and doesn’t add much visible value. The hidden change is in using the data power of Google to decide what is Signal and what is Noise, and how that distinction is different for everyone. That will take some time to come through, which is why I’m not yet buying into Buzz.
Final Thoughts on Buzz
One of the reasons that Facebook is successful is that it connects you with Real People, not just with online personas. Almost all other services allow people to create personas and hide behind them. Facebook strips most of that away, so that who you are on Facebook is closely related to who you are offline. By tying users to their email address, Google has the opportunity to do the same with Buzz. I can “follow” celebrities and such in Buzz, but seeing the enormous string of comments will be overwhelming and unhelpful. Instead, I will follow people that I know in the real world.
This online persona/offline Real Person is a big distinction. You may be a fan of a teeny-bopper pop singer, but you probably don’t want to send them pictures of you grandkids. The privacy settings in Buzz can be used to share different things with different people, which is a great feature once you setup your groups. And after some time of seeing what your Buzz friends share, you can parse your list into a readable stream of interesting information.
I am generally a big fan of Google, but Buzz may take some time to get used to.
Ever clicked on the top link in Google only to find a page that takes For-ev-er to load? Well, that page may not be a top site for long. Google is changing up how they are ranking websites and one of their new pieces of criteria is speed.
Example of Webmaster Tools Page Speed Graph
Page Speed
Google has recently released an entire sub-site to improve on website speed. The site includes a tools page which highlights among others Page Speed which is Firefox plugin for developers. The also showcase a new report in Webmaster Tools to show how quickly your site loads. Many of these tools give you stats about your site speed as well as suggestions on how to improve it. These suggestions include:
Google Page Speed in Chrome showing data load times
*This website embeds our Twitter feed, which requires an extra DNS lookup and can increase the load time. You will have to decide the importance of similar widgets for your site. We like our Twitter feed and Flickr pics, so we’ll take the small performance hit to keep those. But, we don’t include other widgets from most of our other social media profiles so we can speed up our blog. Finding the right balance for your site may take some testing and tough decisions, but speed is definitely something to keep in mind.
Social Search and Authority
Speed is very important to Google themselves. As the real-time web continues to change minute by minute, Google is beginning to bring some of that data into its results. You may have noticed that Google now displays twitter results at the top of some searches.
The first part of the ranking system is the time of the tweet. Google generally displays the most recent tweets first so searchers will have up-to-the minute results to their queries. This speed combined with link authority shapes how searchers can get the latest Glee news (or other important things of course).
Google Search with Twitter Results displayed above the regular results
As you can see, this search result shows twitter responses. While the exact science behind choosing tweets is not know, we do know that Google follows a similar model to their search results. Incoming links to a website can raise its ranking, and similarly more followers and incoming links to a Twitter profile can give that Twitterer more authority. There are similar theories out there, but we know that Google is ranking authority somehow.
The Facebook Factor
Google also has agreements with Facebook to bring your status updates and Facebook info to the Search Results as well. Before you freak out, yes, you can keep these things from the search engines using the Privacy features in Facebook. They have a dedicated page for Search Privacy Settings. I have mine set to Everyone, but I understand that may not work for you. Other options include Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, and Friends Only. From the Search Privacy Settings you can preview your public profile, which will give you an idea of what information Google will see about you (see below).
Facebook Seach Privacy Setting Options
Google can also use this public Facebook profile to show authority. If you do not have your own website, doing a vanity search may show your Facebook profile as the top result for your name. I have my personal website (JMO), but my Twitter feed and Facebook profile both rank above it because of the authority those sites carry. I urge you to search for your name to see where your social profiles rank.
Tips for you
What steps can you take to insure people find you fast?
As the users of various social media sites grows, so too does the number of people who will try to take advantage of those users. This morning has been filled with all kinds of SPAM so we wanted to take a second to pass on some quick tips and tricks for identifying those pesky spammers and help you avoid falling prey for those who’d just love love love your password.
Let’s start with Facebook.
If you get an email that looks like THIS (minus the pink arrows of course) it is a spammy scam and you should not click on any links in the email… I have received three of these emails this week.
Let’s talk about how you identify these email hoaxes:
Who is the email from? If it’s not coming from the actual site that is requesting action from you then it is probably spam. But beware. Email addresses are super easy to spoof. Our example email looks like it’s from Facebook but when we check out the rest of our criteria for IDing spam, it’s clearly not.
Who is the email to? If it’s not “to” the email address that is tied to the account that is requesting action then ignore it. The example email was sent to a group address at Schipul but my Facebook account is tied to my gmail address so I know this is fake.
Who is the email addressed to? Social Media sites are created to be your buddy, so when they reach out to you via email they will almost ALWAYS use your real name (Dear Maggie McDonald) or your username (Dear MagsMac), if they don’t use a familiar name when they, then they do not know your account.SPAM!
Are they asking you to click a link in the email? If an email has failed all of the prior tests then most assuredly DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS in the email. Go directly to the site and check their to see if they need any info from you. If they really need something, you can bet they’ll tell you right when you log in and not just in some random email.
Even if the email looks like it’s from the site, beware! See point #1. Emails are easy to spoof. The example email includes the correct address for Facebook headquarters but that doesn’t mean it’s really from Facebook.
For a GREAT example of a company that takes internet security very seriously, check out ebays guidelines for IDing a legitimate ebay email.
So in summary, be careful what you click. If in doubt don’t click anything and head on over to the site requesting action for more information!!
Ah, the Blog Contest. Who doesn’t love a good blog contest. You may be think from the title and first words (and perhaps the by line) that this will be a bit of biting criticism calling out the blog industry for selling it self short. Or perhaps you think it is ridiculous self promotion for our current blog contest. Well, this is neither. It is the perspective of those two people who can agree on one thing: Blog Contests work!
One of the values at Schipul is Win/Win. This means that in an interaction or agreement or business-dealing, both sides walk away feeling like they have gained something. When we do work for our clients, we earn their business, and in turn they are provided with a service they need. The Blog Contest is, on most scales, a true example of Win/Win.
The Blog owner can be seeking PR, attention, an urge for traffic, or perhaps they just have extra stuff. To accomplish their goal, they can utilize traditional advertising, but this does not always help them reach their audience in a fun and interesting way. Even online advertising can be a poor fit for the audience or the budget. The flexibility of the Blog Contest allows you to give away pretty much anything, from a Wii Fit to netbooks to cat T’s.
From the reader perspective, generally very little is asked of you. Leave a funny comment, become a fan on facebook, mention something on twitter, etc. Much of the time your odds of winning are quite good compared to a business card fishbowl or a clearing house sweepstakes. And generally there is a high amount of transparency in seeing who wins. Unless a contest gets out of hand (see Wii Fit above), then the contest is contained to the community of people who read the blog, with maybe a few outsiders who are just around for the contest.
Even after a winner is announced, many great things have happened. Either a new reader has won something, which may keep them coming back as a reader, or an old reader has won something, which rewards them for being a part of the conversation. Attention is gained at a cost (like all advertising), but in this case the readers profit, not an Ad agency. Aside from some twitter contests which can be quite annoying (i.e. planet-orbiting-berry), the old-fashioned blog contest is a Win/Win event.
In all seriousness, these contests are really good for everyone and are turning into a great advancement in online economics. The scale of costs and attention help to create a happy event for all involved. A small giveaway creates a small burst of traffic, and giving away something large can create bigger waves on the internets. As a blog creator, you control the size and expense. As a blog contestant, you can control what contests you enter, and what is worth your time/attention/info. Everyone remains in control, traffic goes up, and someone is a winner.
In the words of Michael Scott, this is Win/Win/Win. One Win for the blogger, one Win for the contestants, and a Win for me for explaining it here and encouraging you to create a blog contest. There’s another Win too if you follow me on twitter, because all of my followers are winners.
When I was a teenager (early 2000’s), text messaging didn’t exist. Blackberries were around and could send emails, but they were expensive, and no one my age had one. Actually, most of my friends didn’t have cell phones until they were driving, and some not until college. And even then, minutes were expensive, so my group didn’t really use our phones very often. We used instant messenger.
I can remember nights of having 9 different conversation windows open on my computer screen (until the miracle of tabs) and learning to type fast solely so I could chat faster. While IM was great at allowing multiple conversations, it did have it’s limitations. You couldn’t really use it without sitting in front of a computer (connected to the internet), and IM required that the other person was in front of a computer, also connected. This tiny requirement usually kept IM sessions to a few hours in the evening, and not always every night.
Texts are very similar to IM’s. Short messages are sent back and forth between two people (occasionally sent in mass). Texting, however, has essentially removed the limitation of being in front of a computer and connected to the internet. And it has changed everything for teens. Now, teens can “IM” each other at any time, day or night. You just need to have a cell phone, which many are getting at younger and younger ages (I know a 12 year-old who sports an iPhone). Those of us older than 19 may text quite a bit, but not nearly as much as the teens. I send/receive around 1,200 texts a month. In the world of the teens, though, that is bush league. The teens I know (friends of my younger brother) send between 5k and 10k texts a month. Rumor is one girl sends almost 20k per month. Texting that much is almost inconceivable in my mind, but carrying on conversations with friends is not.
I’m sure if my IM messages were tallied up in a similar fashion, I would have sent similar numbers. But again, my IM’s were limited to time in front of the computer. Because these massive amount of texts are being sent at any and all times, they are creating some dangerous situations. Car and Driver recently did a study and found texting while driving to be (much) more dangerous than drinking and driving.
As a result of the growing trend of accidents caused by texting, many states (Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) are enacting legislation to make texting and emailing from mobile devices for teens (and in some cases everyone) illegal while driving. As society is adapting to new technologies, it is great to see that the lawmakers are doing their part to keep up. These types of laws are picking up steam across the country and will likely be the norm in a few more years.
Adults may not be texting up a storm as they drive, but sending emails and twittering are likely just as dangerous. These communication tools have brought communication everywhere, even places where we should be focused on other things. Let’s keep having the conversations, but make sure it is done safely.
Well folks, it’s that time of year again. The time when technology experts, social media gurus and a whole slew of other web personalities congregate to the same online place. I’m talking of course about the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker. There are a few changes this year that make voting a bit more Interactive.
First, the voting is for more than just the Interactive (web) Conference. Voters can now select panels for the Film and Music Conferences. The many different panels are displayed in a table interface similar to Google Reader list view, with keyboard shortcuts for quick browsing. J and K will move you down and up, and a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down vote can be cast with a 1 or 0 (very binary, we know). Voting closes September 4th, so be sure to get your picks in by then.
Speaking of picks, it may at first seem overwhelming when you discover there are 2215 panels to choose from. There is a search option to filter, but if you still need some inspiration you can always count on your social networks. A quick search on Twitter for SXSW Panel will give you an almost endless list of bit.ly links. You can also check out Facebook to see which panels you friends are voting for, or to let them know which ones you have picked. As the conference continues to grow, keep an in out for more discussion and promotion for these panels in the next few weeks.
The formula for choosing the final panels that will appear at the SXSW Conference next Spring is a mix of the voters (you and me), the staff, and an advisory board. While it isn’t a pure democracy, the voters do have a say, which is a welcome change from other large conferences. This type of outreach to the attendees and larger tech community is one of the reasons that SXSW has been so successful.
You now know where to vote, how to vote, why to vote, and places you can find out for whom to vote. If you need more recommended picks, we have a page dedicated to the Schipul SXSW 2010 Panel Picks. It is filled panels staffed by some of the Schipulites and some of the community members that we think are awesome. Along with voting, you can support your favorite panels by talking about them around the internet.
Let’s make SXSW 2010 the best it can be by using the web to promote the top panels that we want! See you in the comments…
If you are confused by today’s title then you are no doubt just as confused by some of the tweets you may be reading. Two weeks ago a British furniture store was ousted by the Twitter community for abusing the hashtag feature in twitter. They were caught using including terms from the top trends in their tweets when they had nothing to do with the subject. The furniture store has since apologized (and blamed an intern), but the damage has already been done. They may not repeat this act, but unfortunately many folks on twitter will.
New forms of Twitter spam pop up daily, and while it is fairly easy to filter out Viagra-hocking followers and ladies of the night, filtering out Twitter’s search feature is more difficult. Now that search is readily available in the sidebar on twitter.com, many users seem to think it fit to include one or many of the trending topics in with their tweets about chilling with their homies. These users are likely suffering from a bit of ignorance with regard to twitter etiquette because they see everyone else doing it. If you happen to be one of these people, you are now in the know thattacking on twitter trends to you tweets is not OK, so quit doing it. Even worse are twitter users who’s tweets consist of listing the current trending topics. Oh how much I would pay for a Ban button to block these buffoons from blasting more bad tweets.
The bigger problems with twitter trend spam are the formulaic spammers. For instance, the $2,612 scam is one of the most annoying. The tweets start with a trending topic and even the word ‘trend?’. Then, they are followed by a ridiculous fake new stories like bombs going off in NYC or Egypt, new virus outbreaks killing 3000, or anyone actually buying twitter (none of which are even remotely true). Then the tweet is followed by text along the lines of “earned $2,612 thanks to this to this” with a tiny.cc link to more web spam. This is disgusting and pretty evil at its core and will hopefully be shutdown soon by the twittergods.
As a twitter user and someone who works in the search business, I tend to use twitter search quite a bit. Many of the spammy aspects of twitter can be frustrating, and they force you do make some changes to get the results you are looking for. Here are a few changes I have made.
Narrowing the search – on Mondays, #musicmonday is almost always on the top trends. I like to use it to find bands similar to ones I already like, so I search “#musicmonday wilco” to discover related bands.
Getting creative – instead of being lazy and clicking the link to the trending topic in the sidebar, I can search for something more specific, like “Roddick 3rd set” instead of “Wimbledon“.
Look for Re-tweets – Another trick I use is to add RT or via to my searches. This lets me crowdsource the task of finding the things that real people want to point out. When I find a good nugget of info, I like to re-tweet it as well to spread the news.
There is one more action I have learned that has really taught me to use twitter as the service as it was intended: to connect with people. For instance, yesterday the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum (#pdf09) was a very popular subject on twitter, and was trending quite high for most of the day. By clicking on the link to the trend in the sidebar, I was brought to a sea of tweets with great content right next to dirty, dirty spammers. Relying on search alone would have been very difficult in my quest for useful information on a popular subject, so I decided to follow some new people. I added Clay Shirky (@cshirky) and Alex Steed (@alexsteed) to my followers and then I was able to track PDF09 from the comfort of my own home (twitter.com/home that is). And after the Forum, I am free to un-follow them if their other tweets are not something I am interested in.
The bottom line is that searching twitter for very popular subjects is a bit broken. The good news, though, is it forces you to be creative and follow new people to gain the valuable information you are seeking. Thanks to this you may discover a new favorite twitter-friend. So, the next time you are searching twitter for trending tweets, look for the good stuff, Re-tweet it, and never tack on trends to a tweet that isn’t about them.
Finally, I must add that using hashtags properly is a great asset to twitter, so please DO use them whenever you are joining the conversation. And for those of you that like to tag ridiculousthings, that’s perfectly fine too.
We talk a lot about monitoring your brand online. Twitter is one way to do that that allows both a one to many (in updates) and one to one conversation (in responses and direct messages). For Comcast, Twitter has become one of their most positively received Customer Service tools. That’s right a positive + Customer Service tool + for a cable provider. How did they do that?
“Customers, just like most Customer Service agents, are craving real time, unedited information. If something is wrong they really want to know what it is, what is being done and when it will be back. We are working to create that environment at Comcast.”
Twitter announced big changes this week that may just change the way you monitor your brand online. Here are the facts on Twitter Search updates:
On Twitter, each character is valuable real estate. You have to squeeze in all the elements of your incredibly intriguing story in 140 characters. URL shortening services make this easier. In fact, if you so much as attempt to include a URL more than about 25 characters, Twitter will do the honors for you and shorten it. Using tinyURLbit.ly.
Bit.ly lets you fit more in your tweet! Pic from Flickr user choytony.
Bit.ly allows logins so you have a history of all the URLs you have shortened
STATISTICS! – This is the deal breaker for me against TinyURL. Bit.ly shows real time stats like number of click throughs
So what? Keep an eye on the little URL that could. It has a lot more power behind it now than ever before.
News #2: This is the game changer – Twitter Search to become more like web search
Twitter has announced plans to add link content in its search results. In an interview with CNET, Twitter’s VP of Operations Santosh Jayaram said Twitter search will soon begin to crawl the links included in tweets, as well as the tweets themselves.
On top of this, Twitter will be implementing a reputation ranking system. Sound familiar? This means Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet when displaying results.
What does that even mean? Twitter will be wise to keep the calculation mystery. But we can guess that “reputation” has to do with number of followers, retweets, etc. And we can be sure that it will make Twitter search more valuable.
5 things you can do right now:
If you want to have any say over what’s going on around your brand on Twitter, set up a twitter account. At the very least save your brand name, add an image, location, and description. Now.
Monitor yourself – set up an RSS feed of the search.twitter.com results for your brand, your products, and any common misspellings of all of the above. Put the results somewhere were you can see them – Outlook has built in RSS feed readers.
Use Twitalyzer (analytics for Twitter – hat tip to the Schipul SEM team for finding this gem!) to get an idea of how successfully you’re engaging your community. Check your Twitter user name and your brand. Run your competitors’ brands through as well.
This is speculation, but my guess is that it will be easier for Twitter to monitor and crawl bit.ly URLs as they are currently partnering. If you’re not married to your URL shortening mechanism, give bit.ly a try.
Take a look at your Twitter content. Is it interesting to your community? If you’re not sure, ask for feedback. A simple “What are we doing that you like? What would you like to see more of?” to your community at large or a small group of loyal fans goes a long way. Remember to follow the 3 to 1 rule. Post 3 things about your community before you post 1 thing about you.
Keep watching for trend Tuesday updates on trends we’re seeing!
Full Disclosure: You guessed it. Schipul does Social Media consulting. It’s what we love so it’s what we write about. If online PR through tools like Twitter and Facebook is something you are interested in, check out more on Schipul Social Media consulting. We focus on training and disclosure – we do love our clients but we don’t impersonate them!
