Methodical Madness

5 Twitter Bookmarking Apps

If you’re like me, you find lots of great content online every day that ends up being fodder for Twitter. It can be hard to keep track of what you tweet much less the links you send out. Favoriting a link makes it easy to find later, but if you favorite a lot of links, it can be hard to find older links. If you want to tag your favorites, well forget that. Or how about searching other people’s favorites? Impossible at the moment. These frustrations sent me on a search for the best bookmarking Twitter tool. It turns out there are many more with a wider variety of features than I imagined.

I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in a Twitter bookmarking tool. As usual, all the tools have to be free and not require a download. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• send updates to Twitter and other sites
• easily configure it
• shorten URLs, preferably with the ability to choose the URL shortening tool
• use analytics
• save links
• tag or categorize links
• link to other social media sites
• search through the collection of bookmarks


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.


 

 
 

Twitthat is a basic bookmarking site. It allows you to install a button on your browser’s toolbar and post any link from any website. It’s as base as you can get. It does store your links, but doesn’t allow you to search or tag them for easier retrieval. There is also a public timeline which allows you to see what’s being updated using the site and most read. It also displays the most popular tweets from the site.

 

PROS: Easy to use toolbar app that allows you to bookmark Twitter links.

CONS: Doesn’t do anything else. It could be much more functional if they added one or two abilities.

RATING: 

 


Yourversion is a mix between Delicious and a bookmarking tool. This has it all. After creating an account, you add five interests and then select from a pre-determined list of words. From there, you have the ability to add or delete other interests. The site is divided into six sections: discover, bookmarks, thumbed, shared, friends and profile. Discover brings you content based on your interests and you can view all of them or just view news, blogs, webpages, Twitter, videos and products. After you bookmark something, you can view the links and share them on Twitter, Facebook or email. It also lets you thumb up or thumb down content which allows the algorithm to learn your taste and deliver more focused content to you. You can tag bookmarks, browse tags and import your bookmarks from Delicious. It does a lot  more, like giving you a public profile, the ability to import contacts from Gmail and Yahoo and provides a mobile interface. 

 

PROS: It covers all of our requirements and fills some we didn’t even know we had.

CONS: No analytics so you can’t see your influence.

RATING: 

Sharein is similar to Yourverision with two notable exceptions: it doesn’t bring new content to you and it has impressive analytics. Both sites have the same basic features and interaction and ability, but with Sharein, you can’t tag bookmarks as you save them, which adds another step. The real reason to choose this over Yourversion is the analytics. There is a very useful dashboard that shows retweets, user comments and reshares. By hovering over a link, you can see when it was shared, how many views it had, the reach of the tweet and number of times it was reshared. You can view activity in time intervals of 6 hours, 24 hours, month or a year. It’s the best way I’ve seen to measure your impact and influence.

 

PROS: Most of the features of Yourversion plus amazing analytics make this a great tool.

CONS: If they added the feature where they bring you information and the ability to tag bookmarks as you save them, it would be unstoppable.

RATING: 

 

   


Tweetmarks is a great idea. Why create a new website when you can modify an existing one. Get all the benefits of del.icio.us with a few extra additions. Tweetmarks will bookmark the links you use in your tweets to Delicious.com. There is no toolbar button or extra step. You can have the site add all links you tweet or just tweets with certain hashtags. 

 

PROS: Simple to use and works with a site on which you probably already have an account 

CONS: You’re limited to the features of Delicious which doesn’t allow you to post to Facebook or email and doesn’t have any analytics.

RATING:

 

Mister Wong is a bookmarking site that has released a Twitter app. All you have to do is attach your Twitter profile to your Mister Wong account and it brings in any tweet with a URL attached. The Mister Wong site allows you to make a comment on your bookmarks, tag them, decide to make the link private or public and share it on Twitter. 

 

PROS: Easy to share and save links. It lets you tag bookmarks, has a searchable database and gives you a public profile.

CONS: I tweeted several links and they never appeared in my profile. From what I can tell, the bookmarking feature through Twitter doesn’t work.

RAITING:

 

 CONCLUSION: This was a tough one to pick. Tweetmarks is great because if you already have a Delicious account, you don’t have to open another bookmarking account. However, Delicious lacks any way to share your bookmarks beyond its service. Sharein is also great. The analytics are beyond anything else I’ve seen but it doesn’t bring new content to you. My pick for this week’s winner is Yourversion. It imports your existing Delicious account (making Delicious redundant), serves up content to you that might be of interest and has a mobile interface. It’s got some great tools that other sites should add to their list of features.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Download the Slideshare version of this blog post.

The Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads of 2010

The Super Bowl is the time of year when many companies show the world their creative "A-game" and set the tone of their marketing efforts for the rest of year. 2010 showed a surprisingly solid batch of commercials during this year's Super Bowl. We wanted to take a moment to show you the best, the average and the worst ads from the 2010 Super Bowl.

The Best

Home Away Griswalds

The classic 80’s movie National Lampoon's Vacation gets an updating thanks to Homeaway.com. I don’t know what they do, but I want to go to the site to see the rest of the movie.

Coca Cola - Hard Times / Simpsons

Coke and The Simpsons, it’s the best match since The Simpsons and Butterfinger. 

Volkswagen - PunchDub

Volkswagen plays with the slug bug game and gives a great punch line.

Dr Pepper Cherry - Dr Love / Little Kiss

Kiss and little people. What could be better? Nothing, that's what.

Bud Light - Asteroid

Bud Light’s theme for the Super Bowl this year appears to be avoiding disasters through Bud Light. The world’s worst astronomers discover Bud Light makes it all better.

Google - Parisian Love

This ad does a great job of showing how Google is used in life. Surprisingly effective.

McDonald's - Play You For it

McDonalds revisits familiar territory with a new version of the classic Michael Jordan/Larry Bird commercial from the 90’s.

Snickers - The Game

Abe Vigoda and Betty White in the same commercial! Score one for Snickers.

Godaddy - Movies / Danica Patrick

GoDaddy.com doesn’t shy away from the sexist commercials but for once, they don’t just focus on women with large breasts.

Vizio - Beyonce / HDTV 

I don’t know what it will do but I want it.

The Last Airbender

It’s hard to believe that M. Night Shyamalan has a movie that anyone wants to see, but this trailer makes it look very promising.

The Average

Bud Light - Plane Crash

LOST has returned and Bud Light cashes in on the phenomena. 

Boost Mobile - Shuffle

Now here is something I never thought I would see. Mobile Boost dusted off the Bears Super Bowl Shuffle (one of the most embarrassing sports events ever) and made it fun. 

Cars.com - Timothy Richman

Fans of Wes Anderson should enjoy this little slice of life ad.

Teleflora - Valentines day/ Don Rickles talking tulips

Don Rickles makes everything better. 

Denny's - Chicken Warning

Good day to be an American (unless you have cholesterol issues). Bad day to be a chicken.

Doritos - Underdog

Doritors returns with their fan created commercials. Speak boy, speak.

Focus on Family - Pam & Tim Tebow

Anti-abortion group Focus on Family does a surprisingly good ad that isn’t political. It even has a little humor in it.

Shutter Island

Great trailer that reminds us that Scorsese can do horror just as well as gangster films.

Honda Accord Crosstour - Squirrel

I have no idea what this has to do with Honda but it sure is pretty.

EA - Dante's Inferno - Go To hell

Don’t know how the gameplay is, but it looks amazing.

The Worst

Coca Cola  - Sleepwalker 

A sleepwalker risks his life to get a Coke. It felt neither creative nor inventive. Coke has done so many great ads over the year, this one just felt lazy and uninspired.

Michelob Ultra - Lance

Lance Armstrong hawking beer just feels wrong.

Bud Light - Bridge Out 

Bud Light gives us a swing and a miss. There appears to be a small town of highly functioning alcoholics that would risk their lives by forming a human bridge to get beer. Why?

Bridgestone - "Your Tires or Your Life" 

What starts as a nice homage to Mad Max style films ends in a bit of misogyny. Fail.

Dockers - Wear the pants

Free pants not withstanding, watching a bunch of pudgy men walk around in their underwear is not good for anyone.

ETrade - Baby Girlfriend

The Etrade babies have over-stayed their welcome. Time to put them down for a nap.

Bud Light - Light House

I was waiting for that moment when the house crashed down around them because they drank out a retaining wall.

Monster.com - Fiddling Beaver 

I’m not really sure what they where thinking when they created this idea because a beaver that can play the fiddle certainly doesn't need help getting a job. It's pretty amazing all on its own.

Hyundai - Paint

Calling a Hyundai a beautiful work of art is really stretching the meaning of ”art”.

Dodge Charger - Man's Last Stand

I’m not sure if they are saying men are a bunch of slobs or women are shrews. Regardless, the Dodge Charger is here to straighten it all out.

CBS Late Show - Dave 

I don’t know how CBS did it, but having Dave, Oprah and Jay together watching the Super Bowl was comically awkward. For three people that are in front of millions on a daily basis, they couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable in front of the camera.

There you have it. The good, the average and the worst of the 2010 Super Bowl ads. What were your favorites and which did you think were the most ill conceived?

The best Super Bowl ads of the decade

This Sunday is the ad world’s Christmas. The Super Bowl stopped being about football for most of us a long time ago (especially for us working in advertising). But it’s not just about catching the funniest ads during the game, now it’s seeing which gets the most hits on YouTube. 

So we decided to dig up our favorite Super Bowl TV spots on YouTube and get a bit nostalgic. Here are our favorite ads from each of the last ten years. 

2000 – The Cat Herders 

EDS shows us what the wild west would have looked like if it had been settled by a crazy cat lady.

  


2001 – Running of the Squirrels 

EDS claims the first two spots with another bizarre animal themed ad. 
 

2002 – Crazy Legs

Apparently, Levis jeans turn your legs into silly putty. 
 

2003 – Office Linebacker

The violence of football invades the office in this hilarious spot from Reebok. So funny we’ve embedded the long version.

2004 – Alien in the Office

Bloodthirsty aliens prefer FedEx. As if that wasn’t obvious already.

2005 – Fantasy Creatures Invade the Living Room

A father lies to his child so he doesn’t have to share his Emerald Nuts. But she has friends in high places.
 

2006 – The Dragon

A beautifully animated spot from United Airlines about the magic of flight.
 

  

2007 –Learning English

A group of immigrants learn the finer points of regional dialects from a Bud Light spokesman.
 

2008 – Magnetic Attraction 

Not many things are more satisfying than watching Justin Timberlake take a beating…except maybe Adam Sandberg randomly appearing in drag.

2009 – The Evil Plot

Alec Bladwin tells us how Hulu is taking cerebral gelatinizing to the next level. We don’t stand a chance.

Let us know if we missed your favorite. Go to The Duffy Agency website for an early peek at this year’s Super Bowl ads. Stay tuned for Monday’s full review of the highs and lows of Sunday's showing.       

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry. 

Ten great marketers to follow on Twitter

Spammers, scammers and dullards, oh my! Search for marketers on Twitter without knowing where to start, and that’s largely what you’ll find. Trust us, we know. But there are actually some few genuinely interesting ones out there. We scoured our followers and searched beyond, delving deep into the Twittersphere to find some so-called marketing gurus who are actually worth listening to. Here are ten tweeple who tweet useful info and advice about social media marketing and are otherwise interesting folks to follow.

      

@ChrisBrogan
If you have any interest in social media marketing, you’ll be familiar with this name. He Tweets about his social media ideas and daily life quips.

@adfreak
This Twitter stream keeps you informed of both great and awful marketing efforts from around the world, adding a sharp commentary to go with it.

@andybeal
The CEO of Trackur.com and editor of MarketingPilgrim.com Tweets his views on the latest social media developments. One of the most consistently interesting.

@jowyang
He picks out some of the best social media related articles and comments on social media trends. You’ll also find him chatting with other marketers about their common challenges.

@steverubel
A columnist for AdAge and Forbes, Steve digs up interesting social media news and has an interesting take on things.

@TheGrok
A great source of info and statistics from a professional speaker and author on marketing.

@danavan
A good source of advice on social media marketing tactics and new ideas for getting more out of your efforts.

@WeAreVivid
This group from England tweet a lot about using Twitter and Facebook in marketing while writing in a highly entertaining voice. Also, they have an awesome neon zebra for their icon.

@richardsedley
A Course Director of Social Media Marketing, Richard does his best to uncover the truth of what the medium can accomplish and tweets about the projects he’s working on.

@brandranter
Hopefully you’ll forgive us this bit of shameless self-promotion. Brand Ranter is The Duffy Agency’s founder, Sean Duffy, and he has one of the most useful and interesting Twitter feeds for anyone who wants to learn more about social media marketing.

Those are ten of our favorites. If we’ve missed any of yours, leave a comment telling us who they are and why we should be following them.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

What’s in a name? If the name is iPad, a great big joke.

Steve Jobs helped menstrual humor go mainstream. That’s probably not what you’re looking for when you launch a new product.

 

Apple has been grooming the public over the past decade. With the release of the iPod Touch and the iPhone, we’ve been subtly conditioned by Apple to use the iPad. From initial reports, using the iPad is just like using the iPhone, only bigger. With 75 million iProducts sold, Apple has a built-in audience virtually guaranteeing success. 

But that doesn’t mean they’re invulnerable. In 2009, we saw Tropicana redesign their brand and suddenly disappear from the market as people couldn’t find their distinctive logo. Gatorade changed their logo to a big “G” and fans were not amused. Now Apple has launched the iPad. For those of us not baptized into the Cult of Apple, it’s easy to sit back and laugh at the product and the somewhat unfortunate connotations the name brings to mind.

When it was still rumored, the iPad had lots of names including iTablet and iSlate (both of which would have been a better choice). It’s curious that Apple would pick a name that could so easily be mocked and linked with feminine hygiene products. In a blog post on the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller goes into detail about how women have cringed at the name. On Twitter, the word “iTampon” is more popular than “iPad”, with the hashtag #iTampon hitting the top spot for trending topics. Here are some of the funniest tweets: 
 

@celeva93: Uncomfortable cramping and bloating? There's an app for that 

@godispretend Steve Jobs, I'ma let you finish, but Moses had the greatest tablet announcement of all time. #itampon

@melizeche "I'm not buying an iPad. Period." #iTampon

@kathycacace: Okay, just one more. The iPad: protecting your data from embarrassing incidents. #iTampon 

@Johnpapa: "64 gig iPad will forever be known as the heavy flow model." #iTampon 

@Lymed: Does the Period Tracker app come free? #iPad, #iTampon

@NellMood: It's so beautiful when an electronics company finally becomes a woman... #iPad #iTampon

@vlvtjones: So will iffy Wifi coverage be called iSpotting? #iPad #iTampon

@DaniGray: You can do things with #iTampon that you just can't do with #iPad - like biking, horseback riding and swimming.LOL

@Knightd427: Please follow all safety precautions when applying iPad. Remember, iPad does not protect against STDs such as SYFY. #itampon

And then there was the obligatory “Hitler responds” video:

Someone even found a MadTV sketch from 2006 that featured an iPad from Apple, though it has a slightly different use.

Apple had to have known they were going to alienate women and become the source of ridicule for others. The connection is to obvious. The question has been jokingly asked, “Are there any women on the marketing team for the iPad?” You have to wonder if they were there, why didn’t any of them object? The good news for Apple is they have such a strong brand that most of the criticism will have no long term effects on the sales of the product, but if a weaker brand had released this, it would probably have sunk the product before it went out the door.

Early reactions to the iPad have been mixed. Gizmondo is giving it a big thumbs down but TechCrunch has been very positive. It’s too early to tell if the iPad will be the big hit Apple hopes it will be or if it will be another toy used by a few to feel more elite. In the meantime, there is a heavy flow of jokes to be made at Apple’s expense while we wait to get the product in our hands.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

A complete list of Apple iPad features

Steve Jobs’ latest creation has the tech world in an uproar, but will it really revolutionize our lives?

 

The level of excitement surrounding the release of Apple’s newest product, the iPad, is normally reserved for the likes of Star Trekkers, comic book geeks and sci-fi convention goers. The Cult of Apple is strong among those that consider themselves to be hip and trendy. There are very good reasons for this fanboy behavior. Over the past decade, Steve Jobs has taken his company from the brink of collapse to one of the strongest and best known brands today, launching products that have helped shape our modern lives. Coming off a string of hits like iTunes, the iPod and iPhone, Apple’s iPad is sure to be a must have product.

The internet has been a buzz with rumor of what exactly this product will be and tonight the rumors can end. Jason Calacanis leaked many features earlier today through his Twitter account. Jobs has finally revealed his latest brain child and the list of features is even more impressive than we expected. 

• .5 inches thin
• 1.5 pounds
• 9.7 inch IPS display
• powered by 1GHz Apple A4 chip
• Available in 16 GB, 32GB or 64GB 
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• full capacity multitouch
• WiFi 802.11n
• Accelerator + compass
• Speaker
• Microphone
• 30 pin connector
• 10 hour battery life, with a month of standby
• resizeable apps
• runs all iPhone apps
• apps bought for iPhone can be transferred to iPad without additional cost
• iPhone SKD support the iPad
• built in iTunes store, YouTube and YouTube HD
• smooth iPhone like scrolling
• built-in calendar
• click through photos and email like iPhone
• change view screen from horizontal to vertical by movie iPad
• menus pop down from the top
• onscreen popup keyboard
• iPhoto access with Google geolocations tied in
• iTunes access is similar to the laptop interface
• GPS
• built in painting app
• live video within apps
• iBooks, Amazon Kindle like book reader. They have deals in place with Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, MacMillan and Hatchett Book Group.
• changeable font in iBooks
• iWorks redesigned for iPad
• iWorks apps will be priced at $9.99 a piece
• projector connection
• syncs to iTunes like iPod and iPhone does via USB
• $14.99 for up to 250 MB of data
• $29.99 for unlimited data
• free use of ATT WiFi hotspots
• iPad 3G models come unlocked and uses new GSM micro SIMs
• international deals by June/July
• pricing starts at $499 up to $699
• shipping in 60 days
• keyboard docking station
• Kindle like case can be used as a stand
• no multitasking
• no phone
• no camera
• no built in DVD player

Only time will tell if the iPad will be the next iPhone or the next Newton. All signs point to it being the former, but there’s certainly room for failure. It’s not a cheap piece of hardware (and there’s a bit of a recession going on, last I heard), and exactly what it’ll do for your average Joe to change their day-to-day life isn’t crystal clear. The iPod let us carry thousands of songs in our pocket. The iPhone turned mobile phones into mobile computers. What mobile need is the new tablet really satisfying? The need to carry an entire mobile entertainment center with us wherever we go?

If you’re planning on buying an iPad, leave a comment and tell us why you think it’s worth putting down your hard earned cash for when you’ve already got a laptop, an MP3 player and a smart phone. As for us, we’re still debating whether or not to join the fans camping out overnight to get one the day it’s released. Maybe we’ll see you there. 

APPLE FACTS:

250 million iPods sold

284 Apple Stores

50 million visitors last quarter

140,000 apps

3 billion downloads

50.6 billion in revenue last year

World's largest mobile device company

Rumored Apple Tablet Features

 

The highly anticipated Apple Tablet/iSlate/iPad is being announced today.  Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis on his Twitter profile leaked some of the presumed features of the new device. He has been playing with one for the past two weeks. If what he says proves to be true, then Steve Jobs will once again have out done himself. But, the road to success hasn’t always been an easy one for Apple and their list of bombed devices almost out weights their successes. Jason lists the following features.

• connects to other tablets over wifi for gaming
• two cameras for video conferencing, one in the front and one in the back
• solar panel to help recharge the battery
• thumbpads on each side for mouse gestures
• fingerprint identification
• runs multiple apps at the same time
• OLED screen
• price will be $599, $699 and $799 depending on size and memory
• built in HDTV tuner and pvr
• wireless keyboard and mouse for TV

Fans have their hopes set so astronomically high there could well be a major letdown looming. But if it can do everything we're dreaming it can, maybe it will be that next leap forward.  We’ll have to wait and see what materializes later today. 

You can watch the big reveal at these sites.

Macrumorslive

Engadget

Gizmodo Live

Svenska Macworld

Slashgear

4 tools to add your RSS feed to your Twitter profile

With so many social media websites, the more you can automate your processes, the easier it is to stay on top of things. If you create a lot of content in a week, you can spend just as much time promoting your work as producing it, and who has time for that. 

RSS feeds give you a great solution for reducing this workload. Every blog these days has an RSS feed built into it. With it, you can update your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace account with your latest updates instantly. But not all RSS feed tools were created equal. 

I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in an RSS feeder tool. As usual, all the tools have to be free and not require a download. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• send updates to Twitter and other sites
• easily configure it
• add hashtags
• determine the number of updates
• change how often it updates our accounts
• have some form of useable analytics
• selectable URL shortening software


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

 

TwitterFeed is probably the best known of the RSS feeder tools. Signing up is simple and they allow you to use OpenID to register with the site. This means if you already have a Gmail account (and who doesn’t these days), you don’t have to create a new account to use TwitterFeed. You can add as many RSS feeds as you want and they can feed any number of Twitter, Laconica, Ping.fm, Hellotxt and Facebook accounts. You don’t have to worry about flooding your audience with information as it allows you to choose how often it updates and how many of your posts it pulls. You can also change what content gets posted – title only, title & description or description only. There are 21 different shortening link settings and you can add either a post prefix or suffix to make use of hashtags.

PROS: Very easy and highly functional RSS tool. Lots of features and the ability to add multiple accounts and limitless feeds make TwitterFeed an extremely effective single feature site.

CONS: The built-in analytics on the site don’t provide much insight. It’s best used in conjunction with another site like Bit.ly.

RATING: Thumbs Up

RSS2 Twitter is very similar to TwitterFeed, except it’s more limited. You add an RSS feed, decide what to include (title, description, or both), which Twitter account to update, filter keywords and add a prefix. It also automatically shortens URLs and provides analytics on the number of clicks you get from your links. The site uses OAuth to login, which makes it easy to login without a needlessly elaborate form. 

PROS: Easy to use and customizable. The analytics look good with an easy to understand chart.

CONS: Needs more features. Hopefully RSS2 Twitter will add more customizable features to their service. Doesn’t allow you to add additional social media sites. Doesn’t allow 3rd party URL shortening.

RATINGS: Thumbs down

Hootsuite is basically a browser based version of TweetDeck. The site allows you to monitor and update your Twitter feed, create columns to monitor based on hashtags or keywords, has built-in statistics and you can update multiple social networks. Hootsuite is a great online tool and one that makes monitoring your Twitter profile from any computer very easy without having to use a downloadable client, like TweetDeck and Seesmic do. 

PROS: Easy to use, lots of features and the ability to add multiple RSS feeds and social media accounts makes it a great way to update your Twitter profile via RSS feed.

CONS: Hootsuite will only allow you to use their Ow.ly url shortening. This can come into conflict if you’re using Bit.ly or other URL shortening tools. There is also no ability to add hashtags to your post. 

RATINGS: Thumbs Up

Twt.sy is another solid entry into the RSS feeder category. The site allows you to add multiple feeds and Twitter profiles. It doesn’t allow you to add additional social media sites. When you add an RSS feed, you can adjust the tweet update times, what to include in the tweet and any prefixes and keywords to filter by. The main asset of this site is a dashboard that shows the number of clicks, the most popular clicks from that past hour, the most recent links and the links that have the most clicks. You can also see where clicks are originating from thanks to their mashup with Google Maps. It’s a unique feature to Twt.sy. 

PROS: Good use of analytics that no other site has. You can add multiple twitter accounts and RSS feeds.

CONS: Doesn’t allow for updating to additional social media sites. Doesn’t allow third party URL shortening. Needs to add more customizable features. 

RATING: Thumbs down

CONCLUSION:

All the sites in this category are useful tools. It comes down to personal taste and needs. I like to have as many features as possible and that’s why for an RSS feeder, I have to choose TwitterFeed. True, Hootsuite has more overall features but just looking at the RSS features, it falls a little short. If you’re not already using a Twitter interface client, I would recommend using Hootsuite because it will cover all your basic needs and then some. If you’re already using TweetDeck or Seesmic, the extra features aren’t necessary and TwitterFeed’s excellent abilities will more than meet your needs.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Download the Slideshare version of this blog post.

The limitations of growing a social media campaign

A look at the technical restrictions we discovered during our last social media campaign

We ended 2009 with an eight week social media campaign for a client. The client wanted a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel to drive traffic to and raise awareness of their campaign site. They wanted to cover their target market on both a personal and professional level, as well as attract people interested in their cause. Starting at zero, we wanted to create as aggressive a social media campaign as possible over the eight weeks. What we discovered is that there are ceilings and lots of unwritten rules that must be followed.

Due to the tight deadlines we had and the brevity of the campaign, we mounted as aggressive a campaign as we could to push out the client's message. We don’t recommend using social media assets as aggressively as we did for this campaign. Social media growth should be paced and nurtured, not a quick grab for as many followers as you can attract. These sites should be used to develop a community and build brand loyalty. By being as aggressive as we were, our actions could have just as easily been deemed spam and our entire campaign could have collapsed as quickly as it started. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The following information is for general knowledge of what we learned from the campaign and not recommended as a best practice scenario. 

Before we even began, we did our research and targeted individuals that self-identified with our client’s cause. By doing extensive market research, we were able to propel the campaign forward and get the client’s message out to the people that would be most receptive to it. This step was the most important thing we did. Before any social media campaign begins, having a plan of attack and good research will make your efforts go much further.

Looking to reach as many people as quickly as possible, we used Twitter as our main tool. Twitter allowed us to grow the other assets and drive traffic to the site more than anything else we did in the beginning. Through it, we promoted the pages of the site we wanted people to pay attention to, alert people to the other social media campaigns and find new followers. The Twitter 2000 follower ceiling is well documented. You can’t follow 2000 more people than are following you. What is less known is how it applies to the first 2000 followers. Twitter doesn’t want individuals to create accounts and just go crazy following people. It created a problem in growing followers as we hit that ceiling. Here are the limits we found:

• You can’t follow more than 500 people in a day
• You can’t have 2000 more followings than followers
• Twitter will block you from following people if you are too aggressive 
• Once you reach the 2000 following limit, you can delete followers and add new people until your follower total catches up

We used Facebook as gathering place for people to allow them to self-identify with the campaign. With 350 million users, it’s the place to go to find people interested in any brand or cause. We created a Facebook fan page and a profile page based on the brand. The fan page was used to push our message and keep fans updated on what was happening with the campaign. The profile page was created to find people and directly interact with them in a way you can’t with a fan page. From the profile, we were able to find people and then invite them to join the page and the website. Through the profile page, we were also able to join other groups and leave comments on their walls. Facebook’s limits are more cryptic than Twitter’s and appear to be arbitrary. Here are a few of the limits we discovered:

• Sending out more than 50 friend requests will get your friending privileges revoked for a period
• You can’t post the same message on more than five wall’s 
• Slightly vary your message from wall to wall. It will take the Facebook algorithm time to discover your activity
• If you’re going to be aggressive in your Facebook activity, limit it to one day a week, then use the site on a slower level through the rest of the week to keep from getting flagged.

The campaign site focused heavily on a video component, which naturally brought YouTube into play. The site encouraged people to leave a video that would then be uploaded onto the YouTube channel. The more videos we uploaded, the more traffic the channel got. This is the one area that really took care of itself. There aren’t many limits with YouTube, but we did find a couple:

• You can only subscribe to 10 channels a day
• If you don’t upload your own videos, the analytics won’t work.

For the first half of the campaign, the social media effort was the only advertising that was used. We saw great initial site traffic, but once people saw our message, it was difficult to attract them back and site traffic trailed off. In week 6, we added Google AdWords and Facebook ads and saw our traffic more than double the projected total site traffic.

In the end, the social media campaign was successful. Our final numbers were:

Twitter: 2042 followers
Facebook: 324 fans
YouTube: 719 views

Given the limitations of the campaign (no initial advertising, almost zero awareness of the issue and creating all assets from the ground up), after eight weeks, we had 3.7 million targeted impressions and over 15 thousand people interacted with the brand. 

Five lessons learned:

1. The more planning you do up front, the easier it will be to connect to the right people.
2. Don’t try to outsmart the sites. It’s not worth the potential backlash you attract.
3. The more you don’t talk about yourself, the better people respond.
4. If you feel like you’re spamming people, you probably are.
5. It’s ok to be aggressive, just know the limits.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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