TweepML – check it out

TweepML

The team in the office came across this excellent tool (TweepML) the other day for listing all our Tweeters. It basically allows you to include all members of your team who use Twitter on a single landing page.

Users who visit this page can simply enter their Twitter username and password and the app will find out if you are following everyone on the list and lets you follow them automatically. I love this tool. It is a great time saver and ideal for companies who have a number of individuals on Twitter rather than just one corporate account.

What makes a viral video?

25 lttrs n th alphbt

I have expressed my love of viral videos over the past few months and will continue to post my favourites. That said Nick Emmel has written an interesting post on what makes a viral video.

Worth a read if you get five minutes.

How do the media use Twitter?

Source: www.pressgazette.co.uk

I met with Richard Abbott the deputy editor of Marketing last week for a lunch briefing with one of my clients. During the course of the conversation I brought up Twitter and in particular how the publication was using it.

To set the scene, the Marketing identity currently has over 5,500 followers and the individual journalists also manage their own individual profiles.

Richard explained that they have experimented to see how to get the best out of this medium and found that the greatest successes have come from simply asking questions. Rather than just putting links to headlines to drive traffic to the site, the magazine is using it as a journalistic tool.

According to Richard, for every question they post, the magazine currently gets over 100 responses. It get so much information from each question that the journalists have almost all the leads that they require to pull a story together. Not bad a bad return from just 140 characters.

Twitter is obviously a great source of traffic for sites, as Alan Burkitt-Gray said when I interviewed him, but it is also interesting to see a publication using it as a journalistic tool with such success.

Recession Blocker

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

I was mucking about on the web yesterday when I came accross Recession Blocker.

It is a site designed to combat the gloom and doom of the credit crunch by offering a lighthearted version of every news site. It basically blocks out any negative words on any website.

All you have to do is type in the site you want to look at and it will re-direct you to the site with all negative words blocked out. Check out its version of the Daily Mail above.

Breaking Tweets

Source: www.Breakingtweets.com

I stumbled upon a new (to me) site tonight which I thought I would share. Breaking Tweets compiles the latest world news and includes Twitter feedback on that story. Interesting concept and it makes for strangely addictive reading.

According to the site it has two main goals: 1. to help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events; 2. to increase dialogue about international news and make the world smaller through conversation and interaction, both on this site and on Twitter.

I like the philosophy behind the site which looks to record how people are reacting to particular news stories.

How can I improve my web research? Search Pad?

Source: Yahoo.co.uk

While catching up on my Sunday reading and listening to my latst Spotify play list I stumbled upon this story on PC World which caught my attention.

Yahoo has started trials with a new tool called Search Pad which will allows users to save links, type notes and copy and paste content from websites. It is also possible for users of Search Pad to share information through email or print it out.

According to Yahoo’s Larry Cornett “It intelligently understands when you’re in research mode and if you choose, collects information about the sites you visit. You can then create research documents with saved websites, edits and reorder your personal notes, and share them with friends. No more handwritten scrawls, Post its or scattered documents (has he seen my desk?). And you can access them from wherever you are.”

The feature isn’t being rolled out to everyone just yet but from reading the Yahoo blog it seems to be a popular direction. As one visitor commented: “looks like a leap in the way we think about and interact with our clipped bits and ever-growing data.”

This sounds like an interesting step for search addicts. Watch this space.

What is Spotify?

Source: Spotify.com

There has been a lot of buzz in recent weeks about Spotify which is the UK’s first piece of music software to offer free unrestricted streaming.

It is quite brilliant and great fun searching for tracks and building a play list of your chosen classics. The best thing about Spotify is how easy it is to install (it literally took me a few minutes) and ultimately use. There is a huge catalogue of artists and songs to choose from and reports suggest this will only grow over time.

PCs more entertaining than TV

Source: Midiabistro.com

While catching up on my Sunday reading I came across an interesting piece of research which explained that young people now view the computer as more of an entertainment device than their television.

The story on Media Post, explains how Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy survey found that three-quarters of “Millenials” between the ages of 14 and 25, find their PCs much more entertaining than watching TV.  The firm concluded that 73 percent regularly use social networking sites, chat rooms, and message boards and overall they’re spending at least one-third less time watching their TV than other generations.

Interesting and exciting news for digital marketers targeting the youth demographic.

10 ways to increase your Twitter followers

Source: Google Images

The world has gone Twitter mad over the past couple of days with high profile celebs getting in on the act.

Now I feel that everyone already on the platform should feel happy with this as they will be able to get access to information faster and build stronger communication links with just about anyone anywhere. The key to getting your thoughts and opinions out there to the masses is to increase your Twitter followers.

Checking my account earlier I was pointed in the direction of an excellent article written by the founder of Digg and investor in Twitter, Kevin Rose who has produced a list of ways to increase your following. The abridged pointers can be found below:

1. Encourage others to retweet – it pushes your @username to new people, resulting in click backs to your profile.
2. Fill out your bio
3. Put your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it to everywhere else you live online.
4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them.
5. Bring your twitter account into the physical world. If you give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, figure out a way to broadcast or display your twitter account.
6. Take pictures
7. Start a contest
8. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet
9. Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes
10. Track your results. 

All are excellent ideas and well worth implementing into your work on Twitter. For more indepth information on each of the ten points above visit the full article on TechCrunch

 

Britney Spears is hiring an online media manager

Source: Hollywood-celebrity-pictures.com

Techcrunch has published a job advert for Britney Spears who is hiring an online media manager. The job involves sorting Britney’s Twitter presence, but also MySpace, Facebook and YouTube adding new content and engaging with fans. It is interesting to see such a big name celebrity taking this stuff seriously and how having a direct channel of communication with fans is a positive thing (not to mention a good way to plug you next latest and greatest).

I think too few people and companies are scared of this type of engagement but at the end of the day this will happen somewhere even if you are not doing it. So why let someone use these platforms in a negative way against you when it is a service your PR agency should be doing for you. If an agency is savvy enough it should be able to offer you an audit of your current online coverage including key phrase research, SEO status, analytics, target blogs, target communities and target podcasts. It should then be able to provide an engagement and brand monitoring service to ensure that your online voice is as positive as your hard copy one. Is this something they can do?