Archive | Social Networking
Top 10 Twitter Tools According to @ZaddleMarketing
Tonight I gave a presentation at the #lincstweetmeet event on the top 10 twitter tools, covering both old twitter applications and new applications. In all honesty there were probably another 20 I could have added to the list (however I only had 18 minutes!)
Other worthwhile mentions include SocialOomph, Tweetdeck, SocialMention & Sprout Social
Do you agree?
Are there other applications you use or could recommend – feel free to share you tips below.
How To Search On Twitter
With the popularity of social search continuing to increase, we thought it would be a good time to help people “find” what they want on Twitter.
Most people have seen the search facility on Twitter – however this can be narrowed down further with a few simple commands (listed below the image)
- Standard Search: Places To Visit = tweets containing “places” “to” “visit” in any order – this is the default setting for Twitter.
- “Places To Visit” = tweets containing the exact phrase “places to visit”.
- Manchester OR Leeds = tweets containing either “manchester” or “leeds” (or both).
- Football -spanish = tweets containing “football” but not “spanish”.
- #Leeds = tweets containing the hashtag “Leeds”.
- from:AndyClaytonEC = tweets sent FROM the person “AndyClaytonEC”.
- to:lesanto = tweets sent TO the person “lesanto”.
- @jennysjams = tweets referencing the person “jennysjams”.
- “places to visit” near:”Leeds” = tweets containing the exact phrase “places to visit” and sent near “Leeds”.
- near:Lincoln within:20mi = tweets sent within 20 miles of “Lincoln”.
- social search since:2010-02-01 = tweets containing “social search” and sent SINCE date “1st February 2010″ (always have the year-month-day format when searching).
- social search until:2010-01-31 = tweets containing “social search” and sent UP TO the date “2010-01-31″. (although I am not sure how far back you can go with this, as I thought Twitter no longer kept your tweets for longer than a month or two).
- football -spanish
= tweets containing “football”, but not “spanish”, and with a positive attitude. - traffic
= tweets containing “traffic” and with a negative attitude. - traffic ? = tweets containing “traffic” and asking a question.
- tricks filter:links = tweets containing “tricks” and linking to URLs.
- news source:twitterfeed = tweets containing “news” and entered via TwitterFeed
Using Twitter search more accurately as a business can help you to find people either talking about or looking for your product or service. Equally, as a venue, you can see people who are tweeting close by to where you are – this might give you the opportunity to invite them to come and look at your venue, or to drop in for a coffee.
Google Circles Or Google Me?
I have been watching the recent rumours then denials by Google about its own social networking platform. Some have dubbed it the facebook killer (despite not knowing what it was – probably the same people who dubbed wolfram alpha as the Google killer! Lazy Journalism?) – however I came across this inconspicuous search result yesterday:
www.google.com/s2/search/social
On clicking this link (and signing in with my Google account) I was then presented with a list of people I knew via my Google Account, and more intriguingly, a list of all the social network sites that they were part of, as well as a list of posts they had published to these sites. The sites included:
- Their own websites
- YouTube
- Picasa Web Albums
- Blogger
- De.li.cious
- Google Reader
- Flickr
- Quora
- TinyUrl
I can click on the name of the people in my “profile” and then go through to their “buzz” tag and see all the tweets (and other stuff) they had posted – which in itself isn’t the bit that got me thinking.
What did get me thinking was how Google could use all this information it is very obviously collecting to create a social media platform to rule them all!!
Instead of trying to compete with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all the rest – why not create a ”super” platform that actually feeds in all the social media information, from all your subscribed social media channels all into one place?
This would actually be a better experience for most people as they would be able to keep even more up to date with their social networks (without having to look at multiple feeds in management tools such as hootsuite).
How good would it be to have a Google platform that brought information through (similar to how twitter works) but filled with the posts from ALL the social media platforms in one place – so you would get a steady stream of updates but it would be 5 in a row from twitter, 2 from facebook, another 3 from twitter, one from flickr etc.
If you could then respond directly from one platform BACK to these it would make the management of multiple social media platforms much much easier for everyone.
Google could also then corner the “social search” market (which possibly has them concerned at the moment) – allowing you to search for (or ask for) help across multiple social media platforms at once, without the need to navigate away from Google.
So could the answer be that Google don’t end up offering a “social media” platform – but actual become THE social media platform by integrating everyone else?
Google Confirm Tweet Status Can Effect Natural Ranking Position
Way back at the end of 2009, we heard through the grapevine that there were to be some major changes to the Google Algorithm, and how it would decide which websites would be listed on the first page.
We had heard there would be 6 major changes:
- Site Speed
- Bounce Rate
- Time Spent On Site
- Duplicate Content
- Poor Links
- Social Media
We saw massive changes to some of the ranking positions websites with the May Day update, and there have been other updates that have had the online (SEO) community chatting about since then.
An interview with Dan Sullivan from Google confirmed that the status of your tweets can also feed back to the ranking of your website. What this means is that when you tweet, you are hoping for this to get retweeted by people who have found it interesting. And then some of their followers do the same. This gives your tweet great exposure, however it also gives your tweet some “credibility”.
What Google appear to be looking at is not only how many times your tweet gets retweeted, but also by whom. If you get a tweet retweeted by someone with 1000′s of followers (and add to that the number of followers THEIR followers have) then Google is likely to see your tweet as a valuable piece of information (and give your website some credit back as a result).
Which means two things for businesses and website owners.
1. Get on Twitter – engage, socialise, tell us about your stuff and tell us interesting things about your industry. Be the expert (or at least display a good level of knowledge) about the area you are supposed to be respresenting.
2. Ensure your blog and tweets (that you want retweeting) are about the subject matter on your website. My guess would be that tweets that people find funny (and retweet) will have no bearing on your website (unless you are a comedian).
Promoted Who To Follow Now Live In Twitter
At the end of September, Twitter announced they would be offering a new service (for a fee), allowing people to promote themselves into the “Who To Follow” suggestion list of Twitter users. The same algorithm used for the existing “who to follow” interface is used – therefore if you are talking alot about “Internet Marketing” then don’t be surprised to see people in your “Who to Follow” list who are internet marketers.
Anyway – I have just seen the first one appear in my list – see the screen shot below (and thought I may as well raise the awareness about it!). This could be a great idea to gain followers genuinely interested in your services or products.
