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.

Today’s Monday morning cool tool is a fluffy one but with Valentines day coming up fluffy is good.  Twit Amore searches Twitter and finds your perfect  love match.  The good news is that not only can you find out who you love but you can also find out who any Twitter user loves, it’s a stalkers delight!

All you have to do is type a Twitter username into the box, click ‘go’ and Twit Amore will find the person of your dream.

Apparently my perfect match is Lorna from @GarrendennyLane … but her true love is Mindful Productivity.  My love will have to remain unrequited!

Who does Twit Amore say you love?  Did it match you with your real loved one?  I’d be interested to hear if it matched you with your crush!

We are seeing more and more young people entering the world of Social Media.  Facebook & Twitter are becoming the tools that our youth are choosing to communicate and for many parents this is worrying.  Not only do many of them not understand the networks but they are concerned that their children could be leaving themselves open to dangers or acting inappropriately online.

It is important therefore for parents to familiarise themselves with social networks, to understand privacy settings and what levels of privacy are appropriate for young adults.  Understanding the tools gives parents the opportunity to open a conversation about social media and for them to create a supportive environment in which children will feel more comfortable reporting any issues.

Some parents approach to social media is to ban its use altogether and it’s worth noting that both Facebook and Twitter do not permit users under the age of 13.  However, banning a child over the age threshold from using these sites will just encourage them to use them outside the safety of the home.  Internet cafes and friends with computers will give them the opportunity to set up accounts without your permission and without your advice.

It’s not all bad news…

The Good News

A study by EU Kids online showed that Irish Children were the most responsible in Europe, only 7% of our teens add personal contact details to their profiles as opposed to 14% in the rest of Europe and only 11% have public profiles in comparison to 29% in the EU.

Using social media can be very beneficial for young people:

• Confidence – communicating online can give young people added confidence. Even a shy child will often come out of their shell and start talking online.  This will build their confidence and communication skills in real life relationships and make it easier for them to integrate into new groups.

• Social media is here to stay, it is already being woven into the fabric of our lives in much the same way as the phone and the email are already.  This makes it an important life skill that will become more and more relevant in their future lives.

• Children are able to connect with other like minded people. These could be people they share hobbies and interests with or support groups for children with issues.

• Education – Social media can be a space where children can learn from each other, they can share, view and understand a wide variety of content and opinions and learn to debate these.

• Staying in touch with friends and family geographically far away, this is becoming more valid in Ireland at the moment with many families seeking new homes overseas. Social networks allow children to keep their friendships alive.

How to stay safe online

I’ve created two downloadable guides to Facebook and Twitter privacy for teens.

Download the guide: Facebook privacy – Recommendations for teens and young adults by clicking here

Download the guide: Twitter privacy – Recommendations for teens and young adults by clicking here

Suggested Rules

After discussions with parents I’ve compiled a list of suggested rules for young people using social media.  It is in no way complete and I’d love to hear your thoughts so please do leave a comment.

• Don’t’ become friends with someone you don’t know in real life
• Don’t agree to meet up with strangers
• Don’t include personal contact info, hometown or other information that could have people track you offline
• Think three times before posting something. What you post has longevity and could be connected to you in the future.
• Respect the privacy of others
• Never send personal contact info via a social network
• Don’t use geolocation services that broadcast your current or past location
• Computers should be used in shared family spaces
• Never ever share your password

If you would like Amanda to come to your school or youth group and talk to parents or children about using Social Media safely contact us.

I found an interesting post on Inside Facebook today about using Hootsuite to post to Facebook.  Those of you who have been following my blog for a while will know I’m a big fan of Hootsuite (affiliate link).  I rarely use it  for Facebook but  from time to time I need to schedule posts if I’m not going to be around, It’s important to be consistant and Hootsuite scheduling allows me to do this even when I’m with clients or teaching a course.

The disadvantage of using Hootsuite for Facebook according to the article is that Facebook penalises your content as it comes from a third party app.  This means posts sent from it are less likely to appear in the ‘Top News’ feed of Facebook users and may get overlooked.

I do use Hootsuite scheduling far more frequently for Twitter, in fact I use it on a daily basis.  Unlike Facebook there is no penalty for using third party apps to post on Twitter.

Whenever I mention scheduling it usually sparks a debate.  There are advantages and disadvantages but used properly I believe it can help you create an effective social media strategy.

The argument against scheduling

The idea of scheduling makes some people prickle and I think I understand why, social media is social, users value authenticity and interaction, the perception is that if you schedule you don’t care, you are not there to respond.  However I don’t believe we should all be chained to our computers or phones all day long to interact on Twitter.  Scheduling doesn’t preclude interaction, it just guarantees you are able to reach your audience when they are online even if you are not. Those who schedule must respond and interact live too but if you schedule you can do this when it suits you without loosing your audience.  In this respect scheduling tweets actually makes you more social not less so.

The advantages of scheduling

I find scheduling invaluable for many reasons.  As I mentioned in my opening paragraph I can’t always be at my computer, If I’m out of the office I’m still able to share with my followers, I’m able to be consistent.  If I kept my tweeting to when I had computer access I’d be in danger of flooding my followers streams with my tweets.  There is nothing worse than logging into Twitter and seeing it dominated by a string of tweets from a single user.  By spacing my tweets out I’m giving people time to digest them. As the tweeter this means followers are more likely to look at the links I tweet .  The biggest advantage of all is that scheduling is a massive time saver and it helps me avoid those procrastination moments. I spend time in the morning scheduling and then dip in throughout the day to converse and engage.

How to schedule

Before you start scheduling I’d recommend analysing your followers using a tool like Tweriod or CrowdBooster, this will give you a rough guide to when your followers are online and you can create your content calender around this. Use Hootsuite (affiliate link), Buffer or Crowdbooster to schedule your tweets and assign timeslots during the day to check in on your account and read tweets from others.

Do you love or hate the concept of scheduling? I’d love to hear your opinion so please leave a comment below.

Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at how you can boost your Twitter profile using an Image, by completing your bio, by injecting your personality and by sharing.  This week we look at how to customise your profile and how conversation can help you build relationships.

5. Customise your profile

By customising both your colour scheme and background on Twitter you are enhancing your brand,  when people visit your profile page it should fit in with the rest of your web presence.    You can change the colouring of your sidebar and your text matching these to your website, Facebook page or logo.  Changing your background to a photograph, your logo or simply your brand colouring like @BeatriceWhelan again drives home your branding.

Taking it one step forward you can add some information to your background like @thechurch_ie.  It’s important to note however that depending on your screen resolution you may be able to view more or less of the background so if the information on your background is important; a phone number or a discount code make sure you add it to your bio as well.

6. Conversation

What makes you choose to follow someone on Facebook?  For me I click through to their profile, have a look at their bio and have a quick scan of their tweets.  If a lot of their tweets start with @ I know they are conversational.  Conversation and engagement are the life blood of Twitter.  Yes you can be successful if you don’t converse but it’s easier to build a following and become a part of the community if you do.  Engaging on Twitter gives you the opportunity to prove your expertise and learn from others.  It can get you noticed by people you want to connect with.  Whereas someone may not reciprocate a follow engaging them in conversation can make more of an impact on them.

Ken McGuire does this well on all of his accounts but @AnyGivenFood is a great example of someone who converses and stays on topic.  He not only joins in conversations with others but instigates conversations himself

Another great example is Carol Tallon @BuyersBrokersLtd, again plenty of conversation but all with a professional edge.

Do you have a number 7 or 8?  I’d love to hear what you think the most important ways are to improve your Twitter presence.  Maybe you disagree with my top 6.  Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Last week in part 1 we looked at how you can boost your Twitter profile by writing a great bio and by including a picture.  The tips I am going to share this week may seem like child’s play to many experienced Twitter users but they are things that are often overlooked.

3. Personality

As business owners we are constantly seeking our USP, what makes us different to our competitors?  What makes us stand out from the crowd?  For me, the one thing you always have over your competitors, the thing that makes you truly unique is you and your people.  In social media this is a massive asset, injecting personality and tone of voice into your tweets makes them uniquely yours.

One of my favorite Twitter accounts, spanning way back to the old days when I was blogging for Feelgood Organic Hampers is @KieranMurphy of Murphy’s Ice Cream.  There is personality in his tweets, somehow always related to ice cream and always making me hungry.

Bigger companies can have personality too.  Last week I showed you how Honda identified the people behind their tweets.  The Roger Smith Hotel (@RShotel) in New York City has become a bit of a social media celebrity of late and although they are being very creative with their marketing it’s still easy to find the personality tweets.

So how do you add personality to your tweets?  As children in school we are constantly told to write in a particular way, to make sure our grammer is correct.  We are encouraged to have a professional writing style.  The key to tweeting with personality is to throw all of these rules out the window.  Tweet as you would speak and the personality will flow in naturally.

4. Sharing is caring

If you are familiar with @chrisbrogan you may be aware of his strategy that you should spend 12 times longer talking about others than yourself.  Sharing is a massive part of what Twitter is about,  Re Tweeting others and sharing blog posts from others that are of interest to your target market is easy and valuable.  Not only does this provide you with great content to share with your target market but it also opens a way to connect with other Twitter users in your industry, provoking conversation and forging new relationships.  12:1 may seem excessive to some but however much you choose to share it should be a huge part of your Twitter strategy.

As well as sharing other people’s content you should make it easy for others to share your Tweets.  As you know tweets can be up to 140 characters long but if you want to maximise your Re-Tweet potential, especially amongst the more established Tweeters who still use the old fashioned RT method try and confine your tweets to 120 characters.  This allows space for a full RT.

Asking for a RT is a way to increase the number of shares you get but be aware not to use this tactic too often.  Asking for a RT of every post will just make you look like you are begging!  Sian’s wrote a good post on ReTweeting recently.

One of my favorite Irish business accounts for sharing is @GarrendennyLane, Lorna the owner is a keen blogger herself but constantly tweets links to other great design blogs.

To find content to share set up some Twitter lists of your favorite tweeters, the ones who create and share the best content.  This way it’s easy to discover good stuff to share.  Find some good blogs covering key areas of your industry and keep an eye on them

If you have any tips and tricks you’d like to share on using Twitter do let me know, leave a comment below as I’m always looking for great Tweeps to include in these posts.

Twitter is an immensely powerful network.  Compared to Facebook the user base is tiny and even with 175 million registered accounts only a fraction of those are thought to be active.  The community might be small compared to other networks but it is easier to reach your target market using Twitter and Twitter users tend to be more passionate, willing to share and converse with others.  Anyone who has got an @reply from a celebrity will understand how easy it can be to reach people usually innaccessible to them.  So how can you make the most of your Twitter presence?  Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my top tips.

1. Profile picture

There is nothing that makes you look as untrustworthy as the defalt Twitter profile image, people will assume that you don’t tweet or that you aren’t serious about tweeting, a lot of the spam on Twitter comes from a faceless account and as a business this is the last thing you want people to associate you with.   But what should the avatar be?  For business do you use a photograph of yourself or your logo?  To answer this you need to ask yourself a few questions.  Are you always going to be the person tweeting for your business?  Is your brand based on your persona? How important is your brand identity?

If you are not going to compose every tweet yourself posting a photograph is misleading, even some celebrities have fallen fowl of this, transparancy and trust are important in social media and any doubt of your authenticity can do you more damage than good.  If you are your brand including a profile picture of yourself is important, people will recognise you and associate you with the information you share – building trust.  Make sure it is a good professional photograph and one that is identifiably you.  A great example of this is @KrishnaDe who uses the same profile image on all of her social media channels.  It is unmistakably her and you would have no problem identifying her if she walked into a room.

If your brand identity is important to you use your logo on Twitter.  I use my logo for Spiderworking.com as I want people to to recognise the brand, I use it consistently in one form or another on all of my social media.  I also want to seperate business from pleasure, @spiderworking is all about business, if I want to talk about anything non business related I use my personal account @hamperlady. At the moment I am the only person tweeting for @spiderworking I hope in the future other employees will join the conversation… don’t worry I’ll let you know if and when this happens.

A great example of how this can work is @CuriousWines, as featured last week.  They use their logo on their account but both @curiousmatt and @curiousmike use photographs on their personal twitter profiles.

2. Bio

Twitter gives you a 160 character bio to introduce yourself on Twitter, bare in mind that this is one of the things people are going to focus on when they choose whether to follow you or not.  Again you need to consider who is going to be tweeting on behalf of the company.  Is it just you?  Are there two of you or are there multiple tweeters?

If you alone are tweeting for your business or if you share with just one other person try and be as personal as you can in your profile.  Of course you should talk about what you do, your business but try and add a bit of personality too.  @Umnumnum_cork and @ladyumbrellaltd do this really well.

If you have multiple tweeters for your business using your bio to identify who is who can be a great way to instill confidence in your followers.  @Toyota have five people contributing to their account, they use their bio to list each one including their individual twitter accounts and the initials they will use to sign off their tweets.

Next week we’ll be back with part two but in the mean time if you have any words of wisdom to share let us know in the comment box below.  I’m still looking for tip number six so I’d appreciate any help you can give!

This week I asked people on Facebook and on Twitter for examples of small businesses using Twitter really well.  It is hard to define what using Twitter really well means and as I trawled through many accounts I found myself confused about what I meant by the term.  There are lots of Social Media agencies similar to myself with good accounts but I wanted to steer away from those.  I wanted to find real businesses that were doing something creative.

What I discovered was probably what I already knew.  Twitter isn’t neccesarily the place to be creative, the accounts I picked are all very much personality based.  People who seem passionate about what they are doing. People you would trust if you needed to buy their product or service.

Here is my top three choices from the suggestions I got and why I think they work:

@CuriousWines

What I like

They have a chatty tone, all the tweets are written in their own tone of voice, this adds legitimacy to their account, there can be no doubt you are dealing with real people.

They are chatty!  Aside from the chatty tone of voice they are chatty, you can tell instantly by the amount of @replies when you look at their profile.  This noted they are always on topic, there is hardly a tweet to be found that isn’t about wine although there is the odd bit of banter with customers.  The key to the two brothers keeping this account so on topic is that each has a personal account @curiousmike @curiousmatt giving us the opportunity to get to know them better if we wish.

Passionate – When you read through their timeline it becomes clear that they don’t just sell wine, they enjoy it.

Customer service – Curious wines deal with customer queries through their Twitter account making customers feeling valued.

@MoneyAdviserie

What I like

Great info – Bob Quinn, the man behind Money Advisor posts great info about finances targeted at those of us who may not understand the financial landscape.  Some links go to his blog but he shares content from across the Internet relating to finance.

Personal – Although the tone isn’t as chatty as that of curious wines we wouldn’t expect it to be.  Bob is a money advisor so his more serious tone fits perfectly.  It is still personal however, there is a personality to the tweets and even the odd non money related post.  This gives us the impression that Bob is trustworthy.

Conversation / expertise – Lots of @replies when you browse his stream, a lot of these seem to be conversations with other professionals and showcase his knowledge proving him to be an expert in his field.

@ChaptersBooks

What I liked

Completely on message – there is no tweet on their timeline that isn’t about books or writers.  This has to be a must follow account for any avid reader or book lover in Ireland.

Selling – There is no doubt that Chapters want to sell more books and sell them via Twitter, however it isn’t heavy handed, announcements of the latest arrivals and links to book reviews don’t overpower the Twitter account and serve as good information for anyone waiting for a release or looking for the next book to read.

Personality – Although we can’t tell if it’s just one or many person tweeting for Chapters there is some personality injected into tweets.  They all adopt the same tone of voice (chatty) although not as distinct as curious wines.  Some tweets are amusing commentary on book related topics.

Customer care – Chapters are able to respond to customer queries and make recommendations via their Twitter account

These three examples have two things in common, personality and conversation, however Twitter accounts don’t have to be interactive to work. The Irish Times, RTE News, and Social Media Ireland don’t interact but simply provide people with information and news. The advantage of interaction is that we are often told that people like to buy from people they know, so being conversational and connecting with your customer via Twitter can be hugely effective.

Do you agree or disagree?  What do you think makes a great tweeter?  Is there someone doing it better than any of these?  I’d love to hear your thoughts so do leave a comment below.

From reading this blog you may think that I am a Facebook fanatic.  And you may be right!  However I do believe Twitter is an amazing marketing tool.  As with all networking strategy is key so this week I I’m sharing my pick of Twitter marketing tools.

Tweriod

For those of you who follow the Spiderworking.com Facebook page you will know that Tweriod was featured this week as the ‘Monday Morning Cool Tool’.

Knowing when your followers are online will help you target them more accurately.  You can discover this with trial and error, sending out tweets at different times of the day and measuring which get the most click thrus but Tweriod makes it a lot easier.  Tweriod analyses the behaviour of your Twitter followers providing you with a report telling you when they are most active online.  With this data you can make sure you are tweeting when the most people are there to see them.

This is a great tool but I wouldn’t recommend tweeting exclusively at optimum times, Tweriod isn’t able to distinguish between influential or brand advocate tweeters and regular followers and you don’t want to loose an already captive audience.  However if you discover that the majority of your followers are online at a time that you don’t usually tweet you can easily adjust your Twitter behavior to accommodate them.

Hootsuite

As regular blog readers may have noticed I’m a massive advocate of Hootsuite (affiliate link).  Hootsuite allows you to manage your Twitter account but it also has lots of great marketing features.

1. Once you have used Tweriod to discover when your followers are online you can schedule your Tweets using Hootsuite and target them at these optimum times.
2. Using the search function you can target potential customers and find new people to follow.  To find out more about this feature have a look at my video: How to find customers on Twitter using Hootsuite.
3. You can measure the effectiveness of your Tweets by counting click thrus from the inbuilt link shortener.
4. Finally you can use the ‘old fashioned’ RT method at the click of a button ensuring that those you are ReTweeting never miss a mention.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is probably the most popular link shortening service on the social web.  Link shorteners allow you to take a really long web link and make it small, the advantage being that you can add it to a tweet and still have plenty of your 140 characters left for comment.  If you are not a Hootsuite convert yet Bit.ly is a great alternative to the inbuilt Ow.ly.  It integrates easily with lots of other social media tools including TweetDeck.  Just like Hootsuite it allows you to see how many click thrus a specific shortened link gets. You can also customise links to make them more memorable, very handy when sharing a link verbally.

Klout

Who are your most influential followers?  Who is most likely to get content shared or get links clicked? Klout measures the reach and amplification of each Twitter user and gives them a score.  You can check out your own Klout score as well as that of any Twitter user.  It’s a great research tool and an interesting way to benchmark yourself against you competitors.

The real benefit of Klout is that you can determine who from your brand advocates has the widest reach on Twitter.  What can you do to reward them for sharing your content and how can you encourage them to share more?  Don’t leave people with low Klout scores behind though, these could be the influencers of the future.

Some of these suggestions may seem a little cold but it is important to have a strategy and know how to measure your efforts.  I believe as long as you are transparent, human and yourself there is no harm using a few tools to assist you to market efficiently on Twitter.  Do you agree? Do you have a Twitter tool that you can’t live without?  I’d love to hear what you think so please do leave a comment below.

For our weekly pick of social media tools ‘Like’ us on Facebook.

Recently TweetDeck added a new feature, Deck.ly allows users to post Tweets longer than 140 Characters. Although not the first product to offer this service, it’s connection to the popular TweetDeck means it’s been getting a lot of publicity.

Why 140 characters?

When Twitter was originally devised messages were sent via text. The standard length of a text message is 160 characters. At first there was no strict limit on the length of a Tweet but it would be split into parts if it went over 160. Eventually it was decided that a Tweet’s optimum length would be 140 characters. This allowed for the Tweet plus a user name and colon to fit into a single SMS.

Should we Tweet longer?

I like the discipline that comes with 140 characters, it makes it what it is. Because people are restrictive they get their point accross quickly, it eliminates the possibility of our streams getting swamped by chatterboxes – something I may well be guilty of -and is easily digestible. We all have time to scan a tweet, it’s the equivilant of watching a 30 second video when we may avoid watching something over a minute. The reaction to the question on Facebook was surprising. Although Krishna De agreed with me I was surprised by the many who thought a few extra characters would allow them to communicate better. If a message was limited to 160 characters would it make a big difference in the way we communicate? Die hard Tweeters were adamant that 140 was enough but should we be so rigid? Maybe it is time for a change but how could we determine the optimum length without the SMS restriction that defined it in the first place?

How to Tweet over 140 Characters

Love the idea or loath it the tools are available. If you’re a TweetDeck user upgrade to the newest version to take advantage Deck.ly that allows you to automatically post longer tweets. It simply adds a link to your Tweet that brings users to the full text. If you’re not a TweetDecker  Twitlonger does the same thing. All you need to do is log in with Twitter, type your oversized Tweet into the box and post. Just like Deck.ly it adds a link to your post pointing at the full text. The disadvantage of both of these is that they link off site. You would need to make your Tweet very compelling to encourage people to click the link to see the rest of your text. This makes your first 120 characters even more important, make sure you really sell your Tweet so that people will want to see what happens in the end. Is it time for Twitter to rethink the length of a Tweet? What is the optimum Tweet length? Let me know what you think, post your comments below.