Twitterfeed: Feed your blog to your social networks

Twitterfeed is a basic distributing tool for bloggers. It is a nice application to distribute the content you create,without putting in much efforts! You don't need to post the same link in each and every social network you use to promote your blog. Simply feed your blog's RSS feed to the application and every time a new article is posted,it will automatically post it on your behalf.

It has three steps to create a service

Step 1: Fill up the feed name and the feed URL. Click on the advanced setting below to add suffix,prefix and to control the frequency at which the posts are made. You can also change the URL shortener and filter your feeds using keywords.

Step 2: Add the necessary social networks (Facebook,Linkedin and Twitter) where you want to share the content.

Step 3:  You are all done. Make sure that you have checked the 'feed active' button.

Twitterfeed will now post the content to your social networks and would also give you analytics of the clicks. Do check your click summary from time to time . The best part of Twitterfeed is that it perfectly fetches the RSS feed and posts at the perfect time specified. 

Buffer - A Smarter Way to Share on Social Media

Buffer is another scheduling application that finds itself on the favorite list of many twitter users. I have personally seen some of the awesome tweeps using this application to post their tweets. Just like Tricklr,buffer app lets you schedule tweets in a buffer: set and forget. It's integrated approach lets you share across Twitter,Facebook and Linkedin.

One can sign in with their twitter,Facebook or Linked in account or they can directly log in through their buffer account.

The main interface is again quite simple one. You can type the post in the post box. The lower part or the page contains the posts list. Just like Tricklr,you can re-order,edit,post immediately or delete the post. 

By default,the size of buffer is 10 tweets. You can increase the size by either inviting other friends to buffer or by going to a premium plan. The times to post can be changed in the settings options.

On the whole,buffer is a great application to post tweets at the right times,great application for the bloggers and marketeers to share their content across the social networks.

Link:

Buffer - A Smarter Way to Share on Social Media

Tricklr: Regular tweets,fewer distractions

Tricklr is a great application for those twitter users that want to remain present on their followers' timeline throughout the day. It is basically a scheduling app and lets you schedule tweets so that you don't spam your followers' timeline and even then remain productive on twitter.

The application is quite easy and simple to use. You just need to sign in with twitter and that's it! One doesn't needs to make a separate account for tricklr.

The working interface (above image) is the simplest interface that one can think of. Simply type the tweet in the box and add it to the queue. In the queue,you have the options to move,edit,publish immediately or delete the tweet. The major advantage of the application is that you needn't schedule each and every tweet. The tweets will be posted one after the other in the interval you decide!

By default the time interval between two tweets is 2 hours but you can change the time interval in the settings option. Apart from the time interval,you can also change the time period between which the tweets will be posted.

Overall,the app is just awesome. It is the right app for those who are in a hurry but want to remain effective on twitter. It's simple interface makes it the easiest to operate.

Link: http://tricklrapp.com/

Arizona plans to spread awareness of highway dust storms in a unique way

The state of Arizona has planned to combat it's old enemy in a new way. Summer dust storms,harboobs are quite troublesome for the drivers. These storms reduce the visibility level and also increases the risk of highway accidents leading to loss of property and life.

                                                   (image courtesy:  newdeal.feri.org )

However,Arizona has planned to combat this problem in an interesting way! The state is trying to promote awareness about this problem by conducting a haiku challenge. 

Haiku are micro-poems that contain 17 syllables arranged in the format of 5~7~5 syllables. These poems have originated from Japan but have considerably been popular in other countries too! These micro-poems are short but convey great poetic excellence and meaning. It has been popular among the twitter family too,with increased number of people tweeting these micro-poems under the hashtag #haiku.

Basically the challenge invites the twitter users to tweet haiku about the dust storm under the hashtag #harboobhaiku. This unique idea came out during a brainstorming session conducted on how the social media could be used efficiently to reach out to the drivers! Social media is connecting in a stronger way with the common public and these connections can be efficiently used to bring awareness to the daily life.

Source:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/15/us-arizona-haiku-idINBRE85E0EO20120615

Power of Social Media: A nine-year-old girl's blog goes viral!

There are probably millions of people who are into blogging,Martha Payne is one such girl. However what's unusual about her is that she's just nine-years-old and she has turned up to a unique and interesting way of raising charity! Her blog neverseconds has gone viral in the past few weeks and has got over 6 million hits!

(image courtesy: blog.hellomagazine.com )


She actively blogs and photographs about her school lunch. She has a unique way of describing the food by giving a detailed information about it ranging from food rating to mouthfuls to the price to the number pieces of hair found. 

Her blog has served as a nice forum of debate and discussion,attracting a large number of comments to her posts and eventually drawing up quite a fantastic amount of money for her charity mission. She has raised  stg £80,000 for the charity Mary's Meals Kitchen in Malawi. 

The controversy

The Argyll and Bute Council stopped her from taking photographs of the meals following a newspaper report criticizing the meal arrangement. This was followed by her writing the following post

This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today. 

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.

Goodbye,
VEG

The post eventually received over 2800 comments,drawing criticism from people and fans all over! 


A large amount of support was seen on twitter too with #neverseconds trending for over 5 hours. Finally the ban was lifted by the council leader Cllr Rody Mcuish. 


Finally she is back to blogging and rating meals in the unique style. This incident clearly exhibits the power and unity of social media and also on it's direct influence over the traditional media. 


Sources:

• http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/27810-9-year-old-blogger-sparks-a/
• http://www.business2community.com/blogging/the-power-of-blogging-how-a-9-year-old-girl-became-a-social-media-star-0198932
• http://neverseconds.blogspot.in/2012/06/goodbye.html
• http://neverseconds.blogspot.in/

Can't follow more than 2001 tweeps?

I have seen many people who can't follow more than 2001 followers. When they try to do so twitter shows an error message. Let me tell you the reason for this.

For the first 2000 follows,twitter doesn't restrict your follow activity. However,when you cross the limit of 2000,twitter brings about a rule,a very simple equation that must be followed.

The equation

Let x=No. of people you follow

y=No. of your followers

equation is => x>=y+10% y

Going by this equation,one must have 1819 followers when they follow the 2001nd tweep. Hence if you are not able to follow 2001+ follow,it is because you have less than 1819 followers. 

Remedy

If you would like to follow new people,you have to unfollow people. I recommend three applications out of which one can be chosen

• Just Unfollow
• Tweepi
• Manage Flitter

All The Best

t.co v/s third party URL shortening services

Twitter's new URL shortening service has made sharing the links an easy affair. You don't need to go to a third party shortening application to shorten your links. This naturally saves time.However I found a shortcoming of this service.

When you shorten a link using t.co,you can't track the clicks.

Tracking the clicks is a healthy habit for every twitter user. It lets you know your true reach (even more than re-tweets). Also, for bloggers it is a necessity to know how many real-time clicks they get for the links the post (this info. is provided by the blogging services like blogger etc.).

The best part of third party shortening services is that they give you a complete history of clicks. Hence,it is quite a useful affair to shorten links using these services. A few of the shortening services are:

• Bit.ly
• goo.gl
• ow.ly
• su.pr
• tinyurl.com (You can add it to browser's tool bar and also use custom alias)

Its good to be consistent with one of these service as you'll readily get a reference and compare which of your links/at which time your link got highest clicks.

All The Best.

5 twitter applications to make it simple

Twitter is one of my favorite social media tool. A place where professionalism meets social networking. The best part of twitter is: it is an open garden. Make your own stuff,do it in your own way,and no one would object. Here are five applications what makes twitter experience a simple but lovely one:

1.Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck finds itself on most of the twitter users'  fav. list. It's efficient layout ensures that you can easily perform all the twitter actions: follow/unfollow,reading tweets,re-tweeting(edited and new one) . Tweetdeck makes it all simple.

2.Tweepi

Tweepi is a great tool to manage twitter account. It comes with geeky follow: which lets you quickly add followers or friends of a particular twitter user. It also gives you option to add your followers back and unfollow the non-followers.

3.Manage Flitter

Manageflitter shows all the people who are not following you back. Select them at once and unfollow. Its simple and easy.

4.Social Oomph 

Social oomph increases your productivity on twitter. It lets you schedule tweets,auto-follow-back twitter users and much more. It comes in a free as well as in a paid version. The latter is useful for those who want to promote their brand etc. on twitter.

5.Dlvr.it  

This is a super cool application for bloggers. Many bloggers write their blog posts at once and then schedule the posts. Once you feed the rss feed of the blog to this application,it directly posts the blog post to your twitter account, minimizing your efforts.