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How To Use Buffer in an All About Me Kind of Way

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

 

These days, when you are online you probably spend big chunk of time on social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, et al; and you are chatting, engaging, sharing and tagging.  You don’t do this for yourself; you do this with others to help others, right? Are you with me??

Enter Buffer, a wonderful app that lets you schedule tweets and optimize the best time to send to the most followers possible for greatest potential reach.  There has been enough debates about whether it’s appropriate to schedule tweets, my thinking is “ it’s ok to schedule useful information you want to share to people you know will benefit from but never schedule a conversation”; I am sure my friends, Aaron Lee and Danny Brown will agree with me here, I’ve seen and enjoyed their automated tweets, plus they are honest to say so up front in their bios.

So much good information out that your blogging simply can’t keep up with, why not simply share where it’s originated and give credits to the author? I use Buffer when (1) I don’t want to annoy or overwhelmed my followers; (2) I don’t take part in buzz creating campaign.  After all, you are on social media to help others, aren’t you?
Now that’s “all for you” goodies, what about ME then? I link Buffer to both my Twitter account and Facebook business page; I also schedule tweets diligently (See charts below).  One thing to note is, Buffer gives different posting schedule for my Twitter and Facebook page, and you can change it anytime if you feel there are other schedule should be added.

 

This is how I use Buffer in an “all about me” kind of way :)
   Reading Maniac – I used to have the articles saved, links bookmarked, page forward to emailed, Google Reader archived for all information I want to read but for whatever reasons was unable to do so at that moment, and it ends up in different places I find it hard to keep up, now it’s all in my Buffer list and I can always go back and read it.

 

   RT Monster on steroid – I prefer to see RTs with comments so I know whether it’s worth clicking, and yes, Buffer do let you schedule tweets and it also has the option of “post now”, you can add comments to the RTing message before fire away.

 

   Aalytics smarty —  BufferApp presents a list of your tweets with number of clicks and people who retweeted, you will see which post gets the most clicks and what content people are interested, it’s kind of neat way to find out the “call to action” trigger.

(You can learn more from this TechCrunch post, http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/20/sharing-scheduler-app-buffer-raises-400000-gets-kicked-out-of-us/)

I have been using it for couple months now and absolutely enjoy it, I find it easy, handy and very useful!!

Now with the app hitting iPhone App store (check it out here http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-complete-guide-to-the-brand-new-buffer-iphone-app), I am sure all you iLovers will like it and please share your thoughts with me here.

Filed Under: Social & Listen & Tools Tagged With: , ,

How To Get High On Klout

October 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you were at ShesConnected Conference (#SCCTO, which you should if you want to work with brands) last week but too busy to read the program guide; OR if you weren’t at the conference at all, OR if you are not getting Marketing magazine (the program guide is an insert), any reason you have not seen/read the article I wrote about Klout, here it is.

how to use klout effectively

You want to be influencer, you look up and follow those influencers, so what is you do everyday online that can help increase your own Klout score, eventually be among the rank?

First, for those who is not familiar with Klout or hasn’t joined yet, Klout is a social influencemeter where your interactions on social media space are taken into account to end up with an influence score.  Klout gathers data from all your linked accounts and does this on a daily basis.

A very important feature here is, you score on the topics you are most influential about; so perhaps you tweet or share content about certain issue over and over again, Klout takes this and perceives that you are either an expert or an avid follower of that subject.   As of now, you can connect all your activities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger and Flicker to Klout, it’s a great way to integrate these social media channels into one place and also great opportunity to build up your own brand.

I’d like to specifically point out Foursquare here, the reason being in a recent Foursqare research report have found–more than 2/3 active Foursquare users post tips and these tips have a ready audience with each tip being done, or average, at least once; 80% of active users have “done” tips.  What this means is that, you can never underestimate the importance of tips for a venue, you may actually alter the consumer buying behaviour !!

I also like Twylah, a content marketing tool that extract maximum value from your tweets and let you own your brand, get discovered beyond Twitter with built-in SEO as well as give your audience what they want.  With Twylah, you can promote your topical tweets all at the same time, this is my Twylah page http://www.twylah.com/infosara and it really tells my twitter brand.

We all know Klout is not the only tool to measure influences nor it is flawless, however it’s the one being used most widely for now.  So, how to get high on Klout?  Retweet and share great content, try to respond to people who have questions for you, and most importantly, always thank people who have helped you in any shape of forms.

Filed Under: Info & Intel & Insights, Social & Listen & Tools, Thoughts & Reflections Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trackur — Hassle Free Social Media Monitoring Tool

August 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Not too long ago I wrote about the 5W of social media listening (Are You Listening In The Right Place), left out the 1H – How. In addition to Google Alert and other free tools, I am always looking for user intuitive, cost effective ones that can help my resources constrained clients. There are quite a few I’ve been using, Trackur is one of them and I like it a lot. The reasons being it’s super easy to use, you can view new items in Trackur dashboard or have them sent to you in email or RSS feed; you can also download data in to csv format then do some fancy analysis; however, the most important is their awesome support, in my opinion this is BIG; we all know in social media things move in a lightning speed that’s impossible for us to catch, but Trackur always gets back to me with solution within hours, often it’s within one hour even before I become client!

I had the opportunity to ask Andy Beal, CEO and Founder of Trackur, few “quick to the point” questions; below is his response — take note, he got back to me with 3 hours even though I told him it’s not urgent because he was going on vacation! Crazy nice guy :)

 

Tell us briefly about Trackur and your role

Andy: I founded Trackur in 2007 and in 2008 we launched the world’s easiest and most affordable tool for monitoring your reputation online. To date, 35,000+ users rely on us to keep track of conversations across news sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

 

Why Trackur? What makes your product different, stand out from the rest?

Andy: Trackur is so easy to use, we guarantee you are up and running in less than 60 seconds. If you can use Gmail, then you can use Trackur to monitor conversations about your name, company, products, competition…absolutely anything!

 

Can you give any advice for SMBs wanting to DIYing the process?

Andy: This may come as a shock, but I believe most people are going to be just fine using Google Alerts. In fact, I want you to use Google Alerts before switching to a tool such as Trackur. That way, you can get to know your reputation needs and will better understand what you need in a paid monitoring tool. I shared some advice on this subject here: http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/09/6-steps-social-media-monitoring/

 

Tell us the wonderful thing about Trackur Three Dot OMG

Andy: It’s HUGE! We added Trackur Insights, which is basically analytics for your social media monitoring. With our Plus plan and up, you can quickly see what conversations are the most important, where they are happening, and discover new trends and topic.

 

So go ahead and try Trackur, they even offer 10-day money back guarantee, that’s the confidence in the valuable products.

Greatly appreciate Andy and the Trackur team support, you guys rock!

Filed Under: professional, Social & Listen & Tools, Thoughts & Reflections Tagged With: , , , ,

Are You Listening In The Right Place ?

June 26, 2011 By 5 Comments

Do-you-Practice-Active-Listening-In-The-Right-Place?

No matter what industry / which stage of the business you are in, the classic 5W+1H (Who/What/Where/When/Why/How) questions apply to every step of the way.  Before we continue, I am going to assume you already know the “Why“, if not, please go back to your business plan and find out why you started the business in the first place.

O.K., so here we go;

Who – you want to know who are/were your customers and who will most likely be your advocates for the products/services you are offering.  Have they always like it, or been referred by their family/friends to try it, or they are the gold mine — meaning they are haters-turned-lovers?

What — you want to know what people are mostly talking about; is it you as business owners, the products/services you offer, or they are talking with/about your competitors? What is the context, i.e. sentiment analysis?

Where — you know you have to start somewhere, you know you have to listen to your customers and clients and you know you have to do something if they say good/not so good thing about your business.  The question is, where (which channel)?  You should tailor your message to different channels depends on your market; only 13% of people online are on Twitter, most people won’t like/join Facebook Fan pages if asked to access their and their friends’ personal information, can be overwhelming sometimes, Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration, has a great post here which gives the reasons why Ten is the magic number.

When — this is not about the time of day, it is about when the event occurs that triggers people to talk.  Were they inquiring before making the decision? Did they have great experience and simply want to spread the words or they had unbearable encounter that maybe a better solution can be offered?  Can you avert the crisis and turn into opportunity?

And all the above goes back to the question of WHY, so does the cycle starts all over again.  WHY they want to talk about you and to continue the conversation?   WHY they buy your products/services and keep buying more?  WHY they prefer to talk on specific channels?  WHY they decide to talk at that moment?

So you ask, how do I start this listening?  What tools can I use?  Tool is just tool; you need a human mind to interpret the data and information you have collected.  But if you insist to know, given the cost of accessing legacy platforms providers (Radian6, Sysomos just to name a few) creates barrier for small business owners,  , I’d say DIY by using Google Alert and/or Social Mention;  the brilliant Jay Baer has great resource here , or a recent article from MarketingProfs “5 Free & Easy-to-Use Listening Tools for Monitoring Social Media” can also help you.

Here are some sobering numbers about the real use of social media, from @jasonfalls. EVERYONE should read this http://izmy.us/uF1 . The DIY tools are good enough until your brand gets about 300 mentions per month, and then you’ll want some more analytics.

So, are you listening? In the right place ??

Filed Under: Info & Intel & Insights, professional, Social & Listen & Tools, Thoughts & Reflections Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,