Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
In yesterday’s Podcast of the month post, I mentioned that Marketing Over Coffee was picked because of the Facebook application introduced during the show.
The application in question (if you haven’t already guessed) is Connection Cloud, and what it does is show you a cloud network of your friends and who’s linked to who. Here’s mine (click for larger image):
What’s amazing is that you actually can see little groups of people formed in here. If you click to see a bigger image, you can see 5 distinct groups of people:
- The SJI group in the bottom left
- My TA group somewhere in the centre (ie people who I have TA-ed for in the last few years)
- The MTV group to the right
- Family on the top right
- The mass of SMU and SMU Broadcast & Entertainment people are right smack in the middle
How does this help?
If you listened to Marketing Over Coffee, this really helps identify who the connectors are in various circles of people you know. And this can be really useful in getting your message, question, brand out to whoever is is you want. Given that I don’t own a business right now, I don’t have business uses for this application, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it can be an extremely powerful tool if used correctly.
The only thing I don’t like is the mass in the centre. I think there should be some way to decipher the huge scribbly-ball there instead of just leaving it as a cloud. Perhaps in future versions?
Have you seen your cloud? How does it look? Can you identify important sub-groups within your network? Let me know.
Tags: connection cloud, connectors, facebook application, marketing over coffee, network, Podcasts, sub-groups
Posted in Marketing, social media | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Part 2 of Twitter coverage focusing on making Twitter useful and growing your network. If you missed it, part 1 was an introduction to Twitter & its uses.
How Is It Useful?
For Twitter to be useful, it’s got to be more than a website you visit from time to time to update your status. It actually has to be a part of your daily life. One of the websites I read actually had the person saying he sets specific times of the day to remind himself to Twitter.
Once Twitter is a permanent feature in your day, you need to generate enough friends or acquaintances to fully realise the network externalities of Twitter, and eventually translate this network into real benefits.
How Do You Grow Your Network
1) Join or create a conversation. This is relatively simple, reply to what people are asking/saying to “appear” on their radar. If you’re replying to someone directly, use @theirusername so that they know it. Most importantly: Do not just broadcast one-way. That makes it very hard for someone to enter a conversation with you.
2) Post interesting/thought-provoking Tweets. The thing about Twitter, is many people on it just generate “noise”, such as my example yesterday. It’s fine from time to time, but reading about a friend who just updates about going to the toilet, choosing underwear, printing notes etcetc will get tiring. So how do you not create “noise”? Chris Brogan has great advice: “Instead of answering “What’re you doing?”, try answering “What as your attention?”"
In part 3 of Twitter 201: best apps for Twitter and what not to do on Twitter. Check back or subscribe to my RSS if you don’t want to miss it. Once again, feel free to follow me on Twitter: uniquefrequency
Tags: broadcast, chris brogan, conversation, externalities, grow network, howto, interesting tweets, network, thought provoking tweets, twitter 101, twitter 102, twitter 103, twitter 201, twitter how to, twitter howto, twitter usages, twitter uses, twitter101, twitter102, twitter103, twitter201
Posted in social media, twitter | 5 Comments »
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Roughly trawling through 10 webpages and roughly 470 comments later, I’m ready to “graduate” to Twitter201 and give you a good if not definitive guide to Twitter and it’s uses. This will be part 1 of 3, so check back or subscribe to my RSS feed to know when parts 2 and 3 are out.
What Is Twitter?
Twitter is a mashup between instant messaging (IM), email, facebook and even sms. It’s mobile, can be targeted specifically at friends or widely at anyone you choose, is instantaneous, and social.
When you visit Twitter, you’ll be prompted: “What are you doing?” and that’s exactly what Twitter does: let your friends/acquaintances know what you’re doing at any given time. For example, mine currently says “yet another great cup of Hazelnut latte at Borders Bistro”, that lets people know what I’m doing and where I’m at. Let me just say that that’s a bad example of how to use Twitter, and a good example of “noise”. More on that in part 2.
If I haven’t made it clear by now, Twitter’s usage is to help you stay connected with whoever you choose.
More Twitter Usages
Besides connecting people, Twitter also allows you to ask questions to find out more about what the people in your network think or what they’re doing. A really good example is found on ProBlogger where Darren got 30 responses to a question in 10 minutes. (You should really click on the link and check out the screenshots to get an idea of what I’m saying).
Also Twitter can be used very easily as a traffic generating device. Everytime I have a new blogpost, I announce it on Twitter for anyone who’s interested.
Twitter can also be used as a to-do-list. Remember The Milk is a cool site where you can send messages to your Twitter to remember stuff like, well, buying milk. If your phone is internet or wi-fi enabled, this can be even more useful because you can just update your Twitter status to remind yourself to do something later.
Finally, Twitter can be used for friendsourcing. Surfing around Twitter the past few days, I’ve seen quite a few tweets going like “need a ______ on behalf of a friend”, which can be really useful if there’s something specific you need, and a particular audience you want to tap onto.
Before I end, let me say that this list is nowhere near exhaustive and of course there are business uses that I’ve neglected to mention. Given that I don’t own a business, I don’t think I have the necessary expertise to talk about that. Also, this guide is targeted at the average blogger trying to figure out how to use Twitter for the first time, I’ve decided to leave out all the business bits.
Part 2 should be up tomorrow, covering what you need to do to make Twitter useful, as well as how to grow your Twitter network. Meanwhile you may want to check out my previous posts Twitter 101, Twitter 102 and Twitter 103, as well as let me know what’s on your mind with regards to Twitter in the comments below!
PS: If you like what I’m doing, please add me to your Technorati favourites (
) and/or follow me on Twitter, user: uniquefrequency
Tags: connectivity, email, facebook, friendsourcing, howto, im, network, problogger, remember the milk, sms, to do list, todo, traffic, traffic generator, twitter 101, twitter 102, twitter 103, twitter 201, twitter how to, twitter howto, twitter usages, twitter uses, twitter101, twitter102, twitter103, twitter201
Posted in social media, twitter | 7 Comments »
