Drupal iPhone SDK and stuff I like

The clever people at AppSumo, an iPhone development company, completely get the power of Facebook and how reaching friends can amplify your reach.

This ever so simple competition is beautifully crafted to ensure that entrants encourage their friends to enter, be that on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. By making social sharing a requirement to enter they ensure the competition goes viral. You do of course have to ensure you offer a fabulous prize too.

Already they have approaching 700 entrants via Facebook and a similar number on Twitter. It seems they are getting new entrants every 3 -4 minutes. Clever huh?

Would you like to have a competition like this? Why not contact Livelink New Media and we can do just that for you.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Klout scores are all very well, but what do they actually mean? The truth is very little is known about how the score is derived. My Klout score seems to being going down all the time but in the real world I consider my Twitter presence to be growing in vlaue.

Whilst algorithms can give some measure of your Twitter following, you should be aware of who they are and where.

The who

Focus on attracting a few key players in your field than 100’s of hangers on. Think quality, don’t tweet too often, and always consider as you gain influencers, what they think of your posts.

It is better to have a smaller number of followers attracted to an account who are actively engaged, interested in your tweets, read them, RT them, and engage with you. Narrowing your tweets down to a subject, maybe running several accounts for different personas or subjects will pay dividends. By keeping to a topic, you will keep followers engaged and loyal.

By talking on a narrow subject you are increasing your chances of being listed by people on Twitter. This can be big factor in achieving a bigger audience, possibly more value that followership.

The where

Why not try mapping your followers, find out more at http://tweepsmap.com/!pdjohnson

Google have released some interesting stats around Google+, their latest venture into social media. And this time they seem to have got it right. This week Google+ went into public beta so expect adoption to accelerate.

Whilst there was an initial surge of activity on the platform, things have expectedly cooled down. Indeed from what I can see most Drupalists are still hanging out back on Twitter. What Google+ desperately needs is highly active, engaged users.

“Twitter Web Analytics will be rolled out this week to a small pilot group of partners, and will be made available to all website owners within the next few weeks. We’re also committed to releasing a Twitter Web Analytics API for developers interested in incorporating Twitter data in their products.”

Read more on the Twitter Blog (Powered by Drupal).

As the volume of messages posted on social networks explodes people are becoming more selective about who they connect with. It is important that your message reaches its intended audience and that you stick to subjects they are engaged with. I have several personas and talk about Social Media, Drupal, Open Source, Manchester digital, ecommerce - the audiences don’t always cross over. This represents a challenge when using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. 

What’s wrong with Twitter?

I am a massive Twitter user, one aspect I always wrestle with is segmenting my messages so I don’t lose followers by hitting them with irrelevant messages. The best way I have to avoid this on Twitter is to have multiple accounts which act as personas. This is unsatisfactory since it requires time consuming sign ups and complex management issues.

Google+ Circles is the solution!

Google have taken the best of all social media and wrapped it up into Google+. Circles allows you to segment people you follow into interest groups. This provides two valuable features.

Filtering incoming messages by circle

By placing individuals in circles by interest or category you are able to view posts just within that circle. This is rather similar to Twitter lists. However there appears to be no limit to the number of circles you can generate which cannot be said of Twitter lists.

Share with specific circles

The ability to share a post just to certain circles is a killer feature. It provides the facility to achieve segmentation and relevance. You are more likely to grow and retain a larger following if you employ this tactic.

• Mark William, LinkedIn consultant
• Michael Taylor, Chairman
• Andy Poole, Weber Shandwick
• Vocus UK, Social Media Monitoring

What became apparent was that most businesses understood that they should engage on social media and that ther was a huge opportunity, yet few knew how to effectively engage with the medium. “I’ve registered, now what?” was a common theme expressed.

Nearly the whole audience were on LinkedIn yet few used Twitter or Facebook in their professional lives. Few businesses permitted their staff to use social media, indeed most indicated policies were in place to prevent this.

There was a certain level of apprehension, it seemed one reason for not adopting social media was the fear it could do more harm than good.

Manchester does social media

Locally there are plenty of success stories. Manchester airport has a fabulous Twitter presence which is used as a customer care channel, crisis management (during the volcanic ash cloud). MOSI use Twitter to market, converse with the public and build their brand to great effect. Manchester Libraries Facebook page features a catalogue search, videos of the Central Library transformation, highly engaging and popular.

Actionable tips for your business

On all networks ensure your profile is complete, reflects your brand appropriately and contains links to your web presence.

LinkedIn

Businesses should be more actively seeking to connect on LinkedIn with potential partners and prospects. They should be engaging with people on the LinkedIn groups and posting more regular updates to their profile.

Facebook

As the UK’s second most visited web site, every business should have an active presence on Facebook. Consider using the questions & answers tools, build a Facebook Page which can be used as an outbound marketing tool and relationship building exercise.

Twitter

Use Twitter as an outbound marketing tool and start to engage with your audience more

• Bring the conversation back to your website with a link
• Thank people for retweeting
• Answer questions
• Ask questions for which the answer is on your web site as a blog post
• Do use #FollowFriday to reach new followers
• Reach out to people, humanise your business by speaking directly and publicy

Advertising

Consider adding Facebook and LinkedIn advertising to the marketing mix. Since both Facebook and LinkedIn advertsing can be targetted using location and demographic information it offers opportunities which Google Adwords lacks.

Typically Facebook users are not in the buying cycle but you can approach people asking to be ‘liked’. This opens up a marketing channel so you can drive traffic towards your web site or Facebook page.

VW recently launched a brilliant campaign based around Star Wars, The Dark Side. They have used social media to spread the word on YouTube, but on 28th June 2011 Greenpeace launched a counter campaign with a daring stunt in London. It quickly spread around Twitter, Youtube and into traditional media.

The bright people at Greenpeace have launched a counter campaign using the same branding against VW’s emmisions stance. This is pure genius