May 14, 2012
 Run Twitter competitions for free with Binkd
We talk a lot about competitions on Facebook but Twitter can be a great tool for a competition. The promotional guidelines are looser and it’s easier to reach a mass audience. This weeks cool tool helps you manage your Twitter competition, it allows you to see entries, prompts entrants to share it via Twitter and can choose a winner for you. (I’m waiting for my Twitter competition to close to see how this works). It took me around 10 minutes to set up a basic competition but you may need a little longer to add your own privacy policy and terms and conditions.
To get started visit the Binkd website and sign up for a free account. Free accounts allow you to set up a free Twitter competition so after signing up scroll down the options until you find Twitter contest.
Next you will need to name your contest, set the dates and times for start and finish of it. You need to visit each tab on the interface to complete information.
- ‘Twitter’ connects the application to your Twitter account, and allows you to compose the tweet you want entrants to send.
- ‘Prizes’ allows you to describe your prize, categorise it and upload a photograph or image of it.
- ‘Terms’ allows you to add the T&C’s of your contest, e.g. no cash alternative, one entry per person and your Privacy Policy e.g. we won’t share your email address etc.
- ‘Design’ allows you to add a header image if you wish to brand your page more strongly.
Now you’re ready to launch your contest. I’ve created a test competition here that just runs for one day. You can see the page below.
Once someone enters they are prompted to Tweet an automated tweet to tell their followers about the competition.
I’ve played with lots of Twitter competition apps in the past and even tried to manage them manually, this one beats all of them hands down for simplicity. I’m dying to set up a real Twitter contest now so keep an eye on my Twitter account over the next few weeks for details.
If you set up a Twitter competition using this app I’d love to see it so do leave your links below in the comments.
May 7, 2012
One of the features I like the most on the new Twitter is the ability to preview images and videos right there on the feed. I’m more likely to expand an image than click it. With links and articles this problem can escalate. How do you know if it’s worth your while to click through and read? That’s where this weeks cool tool comes in handy. Embedly is a browser extension – an application that attaches to Chrome, Firefox etc. – that allows you to preview any piece of content on Twitter before you click.
To enable Embedly you will need to visit their site and download the extension. I downloaded it for Chrome for Windows and the install was quick and painless.
Now when you visit Twitter you can see the option to ‘expand’ each individual post, revealing a quick preview of any link attached to it.
If you use Instapaper there is an option to add the story to your account to read later. This is a great little tool and I can see it improving my Twitter experience, because I can see what I’m getting into before I click I anticipate that I will discover lots more great articles and blogs.
So now it’s up to you to give it a try. Let me know how you get on.
April 30, 2012
This weeks cool tool is a really handy app for promoting an event on Twitter. It’s easy to set up and you can have a homepage for your event, linked to your Twitter account in minutes.
There’s lots of great features including the ability to link the Twitter idents of event organisers and sponsors, adding your event #tag and encouraging those who RSVP to share the event via Twitter. I really like that it makes it easy for people to help share your event without too much effort.
To test it I set up a Twtvite for our up-coming KLCK Bloggers meetup in May. You can view the event page here.
Here’s how to set it up. On the Twtvite website click ‘Create an Event’
Next enter the information about your event. You’ll need to add your Twitter account, the event title and a short tweetable explanation. Underneath add a more detailed explanation. You can also choose a customised url (web address) for the page. I chose www.twtvite.com/klckmay2012
The next step is to add event organisers and sponsors via their Twitter accounts, these are displayed on the event page so it’s a great way for people to find out a bit more about the people behind the event. It’s also a great way to showcase sponsors.
Next add venue details and date and time. Try and add a full address for your venue as Twtvite will add a map to your page.
You also have the option to add free or paid tickets for the event.
Before you publish your page you have the option to add a banner image and a photo or a video to it. This isn’t essential and if you skip this step the big grey panels disappear when you activate it.
Once you’re happy with your design click ‘Activate’ at the top of the page and your event will go live. You’ll be prompted to tweet it straight away.
Here’s what the finished event page looks like
I really like this as a quick and easy solution for spreading the word about your event. If you set up an event using Twtvite I’d love to see it so do leave your links and comments below.
Hat tip to @Jangles for alerting me to this great app.
April 23, 2012
I used to upload all my videocasts both to Facebook and Youbube but changed strategy towards the end of last year. The reason? I have found the inbuilt Facebook video app frustrating. It can take ages to upload videos and then they seem to disappear only to re-appear a day or two later. It was this that pushed my decision to upload to YouTube only and link to it from my Facebook page. The videos can still be watched directly on Facebook and I’ve cut the time it takes to load by half.
The disadvantage is that those who visited my Facebook page and wanted to watch videos from the archive could only access those I’d posted directly to Facebook. The video tab displayed the old ones but the new ones, linked from YouTube were not easy to find. YouTube for Pages from Involver solves this problem by allowing you to add a YouTube tab to your Facebook page. Here’s how it works.
Follow this link and choose which of the Facebook pages you manage that you want to add your YouTube tab to. You will need to give the application some permissions to access your Facebook account & you will need to provide some basic information to Involver if this is the first time you have installed one of their apps.
Next add your YouTube username and choose some options for your page. Do you want to include videos you favourite as well as those you upload? Do you want to allow comments? Do you want to display related videos? Most importantly do you want to allow the app to autopost your uploads to your Facebook Timeline? I don’t recommend this option as posting manually allows you to add your own blurb and encourage more interaction.
Once you have saved your changes here a YouTube tab will be added to your page. The good news is that this app is fully optimised for Timeline and occupies the full tab width. Here’s what mine looks like.
A massive hat tip to this excellent post from www.wchingya.com for helping me discover this handy app.
If you add a YouTube tab to your page I’d love to see it so do leave your links below. Also let me know if you have any problems installing it.
April 16, 2012
One of the reasons I don’t use Pinterest much is because I’m not working in a hugely visual industry. After a while people will tire of looking at infographics and book covers and although it’s a great bookmarking tool I worry about the copyright of the images I pin. Pinterest is pretty and I don’t want to spoil this with lots of dodgy social media stock photos.
Pinstamatic is a cool tool that allows you to turn all sorts of data into visual Pinterest posts. You can screen grab a website, turn a quote into an image, make notes, share a Spotify song, link to a location.. and more. (see examples below).
On some levels this really works, it’s allowing us to create visual content from our data, making them pinable. However some of the tools make quite ugly visuals. For example the ‘notes’ feature isn’t very pretty, not only will this wreck the beauty of Pinterest but if it’s not visually interesting you won’t get re-pins or comments. People notice quirky and interesting images, the notes just look plain.
I do like the way quotes look, you can change their style and appearance, I also like the way it pins a Twitter account. It’s going to be a valuable tool and is in it’s infancy, I’m sure the posts will become more aesthetically pleasing in the future and it is going to be very useful for those of us not working in a hugely visual space but who love Pinterest.
Would you use a tool like Pinstamatic or are you a Pinterest purist? I’d love to discuss it in the comments below.
April 10, 2012
Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of people contact me with problems about the Places app on Facebook. When you input your exact address Facebook is supposed to add you to the map. The problem is it’s not very accurate. One person with a premises in Limerick ended up in Belgium on the Facebook map! One solution to this problem is to add a Google Map Tab to your Facebook page. This allows you to locate your business and add some information underneath. You could use this for directions to your venue or to display opening times. Although it’s not adjusted to Timeline width yet I think this offers a pretty good solution to the problem.
To install the app click here.
You will need to give the app basic permissions for your Facebook profile page. Once you have done this you can add it to your page.
Once added click on your new tab, then click edit at the top of the page to add your address and change the info displayed underneath.
I added Google Map Tab to my test page, this is what it looks like.
Have you had problem with Facebook places showing you in a different location to where you are? How have you resolved this? I’d love to hear any solutions you’ve found as I know it’s an issue that will persist.
April 2, 2012
I was asked last week ‘how do I get people to read my blog’. Amongst my many suggestions was to add your blog address to your email signature. This weeks cool tool WiseStamp takes that one step forward and will link to your latest blog post in your signature.
This is a web based app and adds to webmail, I’ve added it to my Gmail signature but I’m not sure if I’m able to add it to my general mail signature on my mail client… I need to experiment some.
Here’s how to get started. Go to the website and download the browser plug in
Wise stamp will talk you through the process of adding it depending on your browser (Firefox, Chrome etc.)
Once downloaded you are prompted to use the on-site wizard to generate your email signature.
It asks you for some basic information to open an account or if you choose to link it to Facebook it scrapes data from your Facebook account. This is a handy option as it grabs your Facebook avatar however you might not be happy with the permissions it looks for so do check before you allow it to connect.
Next it offers you some basic templates to choose from… I chose one without my ugly mug on it!
Now for the really cool stuff… WiseStamp allows you to add a number of applications to your signature. I’d advise to use these sparingly. It might be tempting to add everything but one strong call to action is enough.
Remember we’re adding this so that we get more traffic to our blog. For that reason I added the RSS widget, grabbed my feed address and pasted it in.
Once happy, click OK and there you have it… here’s what it looks like on my Gmail account
I really like this idea and am going to be investigating the premium service. There was one glitch however. My main computer is a Mac and although the plugin seemed to work with Chrome for Mac it outright refused to add the signature to Gmail, I followed all the trouble shooting tips but simply couldn’t get it to work. When I switched to Firefox I found it worked perfectly.
Do you think it’s a good idea to add something like this to your email signature or do you get put off by all the noise at the bottom of your emails?
March 26, 2012
As you read this I am on my way to SMWF (social media world forum) in London. As you might be aware the highlight of the conference for me is Chris Brogan. I’ve got his latest book ‘Google+ for Business’ on my Kindle and I’m looking forward to his presentation on the subject. That’s why this week I thought we’d take a look at a pretty cool tool for use with Google+.
Google+Timing can tell you the best time to post updates to Google+. As far as I can work out it only does this for personal profiles at the moment but it’s still pretty cool.
Just sign up with your Google+ account and it will pull some data and give you some pretty cool graphs outlining the best time of day to post to reach your followers. It also ranks days and times in order of importance. So although Wednesday between 8pm and 9pm is my optimum time there are countless other options.
On Wednesday I’ll be putting together a short summery of what I learnt from Chris Brogan about Google+ so do drop by.
March 12, 2012
This weeks cool tool could prove to be a bit controversial. Post Planner is an application for Facebook that helps you think of things to post. One of the biggest time sucks when managing Facebook pages can be deciding what to post today. I use several methods to combat this, I have a schedule and a list of content, I bookmark interesting links, I write down ideas that pop into my head during the day and I’m always looking for something new and creative. However, like everyone else I get brain freeze from time to time and this is when I could see Post Planner coming in handy.
Once you authorise the app to Facebook (and it looks for a lot of permissions) a click on the light bulb icon will throw up a number of suggestions for posts. Unfortunately the free version teases you with question suggestions but if you try and activate them you are asked to sign up for the free trial. However when you click through to sign up for the trial it looks for credit card details to activate it. This really put me off, maybe I’m an old fuddy duddy but I’m still not ready to trust my credit card to a company I stumbled on through a Google search that has pretty comprehensive access to my Facebook profile. Sacrificing the Facebook data and my credit card info at the same time was a step further than I was willing to go. If you sign up for the free trial there’s lots more cool stuff you can have access to, including ‘fill the blank’ updates ‘ask for likes’ updates and posting to your Facebook page rather than just your profile, they have a huge database of ideas for you to tap into, all of them aimed at getting more interaction. Tempting as it is I’m still not ready to hand them my credit card info.
For free and without the trial there is one useful feature and that’s the ability to schedule updates. Yes there are tools such as Hootusite that allow me to do this as well but the beauty of doing it through Post Planner is that you don’t need to leave Facebook. As a free user I can only schedule updates to my personal profile page but I can see that pairing the posting ideas with a scheduling function could yield great results, particularly if you want to target users in a different timezone.
I’d love to try the full functioning app or to hear from anyone who has done the trial. What do you think? Would a Facebook app with access to your profile information scare you off giving credit card information or am I being overly cautious?
March 5, 2012
I don’t like football (soccer), I know this is a contraversial opinion but there it is. It can also be frustrating having to avoid Twitter when I’ve missed an episode of the Apprentice, if I look I’m bound to find out who’s been fired before I get a chance to catch up.
That’s where this weeks cool tool Slipstream comes in. Simply download it and it will add to your browser (chrome, FireFox etc). Once downloaded sign into Twitter and it appears on your sidebar.
Now when you hover your mouse over a Tweet you see a new ‘hide’ option. Click on this and you get the choice of hiding all tweets from a user or all tweets containing a specific #tag or both.
 
Once you have hidden a #tag it appears in your sidebar and it’s easy to unhide it again. The only downside I can see is that if you use multiple computers and multiple browsers like myself you will need to install it on each one.
With the European Football Championships coming up I’m delighted I’ve found this in time! What #tags will you be hiding? Tell me in the comments below.
|
01 442 9410
