HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

HootSuite was recently selected as a finalist for the prestigious Groundswell Awards, in recognition of the successful social media campaign run for the HootSuite 2.0 launch.  Hosted by the internationally recognized technology and market research company, Forrester Research Inc, the Groundswell awards recognize the most outstanding social technology applications with a unique focus on business performance. HootSuite was in owl-tastic company with our fellow finalists, including but not limited to the Bank of America, Adobe, and MasterCard.

For nine years, the Canadian New Media Awards have recognized and celebrated the accomplishments of the nation’s digital media movers and shakers. We’re happy to announce that CNMA has selected HootSuite as a finalist in this year’s awards. HootSuite is being recognized in the “Best Use of Social Media” category, which highlights “excellent use of social media for business, arts and community,” reflecting the runaway success HootSuite has had in the past year.

A big thank you to Forrester Research and the Canadian New Media Awards for recognizing HootSuite. We Sal-hoot you!

Twitter, hootsuite news, social media Canadian New Media Awards, Forrester Research Inc, Groundswell Awards, social media, twitter client

In the age of sharing, linking, retweeting, capped attention spans and character limits, people need things to be shorter, better, faster, stronger. The Ow.ly social bar is your answer.

What does this mean for you, the content creator? The social media marketing wizard? The link sharing, social bookmarking and retweeting addict? Actually, we’ve packed this toolbar with so many useful features that we’d like to think it means quite a lot.

For the active social media participant:

• Sharing functionality remains the focal point of the Ow.ly social bar. This feature will keep your eyes on prize content and allow you to share easily and frequently – we care how you share!
• Slimmer and non-obtrusive because we know just how valuable web browser real estate can be.
• Bookmarking of links that you have retweeted. (coming soon)

For the content creators, prolific publishers, savvy social media marketers and web developers, ow.ly 2.0 has a ton of features that you and your readers will find useful:

• Drastically increase the amount of clicks on every submitted link thanks to stickier and more versatile sharing functionality.
• Ow.ly links won’t harm SEO because they’re designed to allow Google and other search engine spiders access to the content without stealing any Google juice.
• Increased brand recognition via brand/logo recognition that links to your website/twitter account.
• Statistics are also accessible via API where you can also monitor the velocity and dissemination of shared content. (coming soon)
• Readers can vote on shared content and give you their valuable yay or nay assessment.
• One click opt-out. We recognize everyone is different. So, if you or your users happen not to like it? Not a problem. One click and anyone can opt-out of ever seeing an Ow.ly social bar again.

Interested in finding out how you can get an Ow.ly social bar of your own? Contact us to learn more.

UPDATE: There have been a lot of questions regarding how to get an ow.ly Social Bar. First off, thank you for all of your enthusiasm and positive feedback! Secondly, anyone can USE the social bar right now. Anyone looking to share content can simply use HootSuite, the Hootlet or ow.ly to shorten the URL. People who click on ow.ly links will be able to see the ow.ly social bar and benefit from the bar’s features. Those interested in partnering with the API in the future should visit http://ow.ly/socialbar and sign up for more information.

Twitter, features

Additions / updates for current release (beta v2.0):

• Detailed stats! In all their glory. View your total clicks for each twitter profile. View information about referrers, see where your links are getting clicked from (broken down by country), and view your most-clicked tweets.
• Improved integration with Twitter’s API, and better error handling. If your Twitter password changes, or if Twitter is down, you can see which scheduled tweets failed to send, and why. (You’ll also be able to re-send them, of course!)
• Updated Direct Message tab
• Improvements with @Replies
• New Tweet pop up
• Minor bug fixes and UI improvements

Special thanks goes out to everyone who sent in feedback and ideas, hope you enjoy the new features!

h00t!

hootsuite news

Thanks to all those who provided us with feedback! We’re very excited to share these new features with everyone.

We’ve added direct messaging. Now you can direct messages from your dashboard, that means:
- you can now DM someone from within the feeds on HootSuite
- there’s a DM tab in profile view
- you can view Inbox / Sent DMs

Do you re-tweet? (For those not in the know, that’s when you love what someone has tweeted, and want to repeat it.) We’ve added a re-tweet functionality. You can now RT with a single click.

It’s now possible to check who’s following you, and follow people right from your HootSuite feed.

We’ve also added a shiny new search tab. Custom searches can be viewed and saved for each of your twitter profiles. If you follow keywords, use hash tags, or ever search twitter, this feature is for you.

Other changes and improvements include:

- Notification of any failed tweets due to communication issues with Twitter
- All Twitter feeds are loaded via AJAX to improve HootSuite performance
- Some more general performance and layout improvements. For instance, the ‘Sent’ tab is now selected by default on dashboard profiles, so you can see what you tweeted last

Hoot!

Uncategorized

Additions / fixes for current release (beta v1.8):

• Added a “Feed” tab, which displays all of your incoming tweets
• Added “@Replies” tab to view all of your @replies
• Added the ability to reply to incoming tweets
• When creating a new tweet: Send “Now” is selected by default, and Send “Later” is pre-populated with the current date/time+15mins
• Additional time zones. We now have: Europe, Americas (North and South), Africa, Asia, Australia, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Antarctica
• Fixed an issue where following @HootSuite auto-enabled device updates
• Fixed an issue where some scheduled tweets were not sent out
• Fixed minor issues with character counter
• Updated the date picker
• Improved integration with ow.ly
• Creating a new tweet: “Add Link” now says “Shrink It”
• Identified which fields are required for signup process
• Minor bug fixes and performance improvements

Enjoy!

More great features on the way, including custom feeds, DM’s and more detailed stats!

Thanks to everyone for your feedback.

h00t!

hootsuite news

“It’s a wonderful broadening experience to be on a social network” – Guy Kawasaki
Here’s a short clip of Guy Kawasaki explaining why he uses Twitter, more so than other social network sites. Twitter has created thousands of relationships for Guy, cut the cost of communication, and has made face-to-face meet ups anywhere in the world possible.
Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine.

http://fora.tv/2008/11/17/Guy_Kawasaki_on_the_Power_of_Twitter

Twitter Guy Kawasaki, Twitter

A post published last month on Pistachio Consulting’s TouchBase blog examines how a public relations team can successfully and non-offensively tweet on a client’s behalf.

Mike Keliher, (@mjkeliher) works in public relations for Provident Partners. Last month, he wrote a guest post for TouchBase explaining how to staff business accounts with multiple people. Mike understood that his web-aware client would use Twitter, that was a given, but the challenge was how to create a single profile maintained by group of users and still retain that cost-of-entry transparency expected of responsible Tweeters.

Mike feels that being honest with your identity on Twitter (as in life) is pivotal. He makes sure the client’s Twitter profile has integrity in the eyes of the Twitter community by establishing up front that it is a team writing the tweets. This is accomplished a few ways.

1) By making it clear on their client’s Twitter profile line bio
2) By changing their display name to add ‘Team’
3) By initialing tweets (we do this with our twitter profiles here at Invoke)
4) by creating a link in the URL section, that explains in more detail who they are and what they do.

Back in September, famous Tweeter / social media whiz Chris Brogan published 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business. Brogan’s list is broken down into 5 categories: First Steps, Ideas About WHAT to Tweet, Some Sanity For You, The Negatives People Will Throw At You and Some Positives to Throw Back.

The list is long and contains an array of ideas, from simple, no-brainers (#2 – add a picture), to some goodies like:

#17 When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
#24 Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
#48 Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.

Numbers 31 – 40 are less ideas for businesses than Twitter criticisms detractors are likely to toss out, but they’re still notable as preparation tools because these types of comments do come up.

Whether you’re new to Twittering for business or just curious about better ways to use the micro-sharing tool, Chris answers a lot of questions. Beyond just business practices, his list is a handy guide to the world of Twitter; it’s definitely worth a peep… or a tweet or two.

Twitter for business

Medialets uses a clever Twitter promotion strategy.

Everyone enjoys winning something, and contests are fun way to get involved. They’re also a powerful tool for gaining new clients and generating a buzz around a product. Contests create an engagement between consumer and business, and empower the audience to help determine an outcome. They’re interactive and democratic–in short, they’re what social media is all about.

Medialets is a creative ad network for native mobile applications. Like us, they believe in innovation and transformative thinking. Last week they held a contest using Twitter. It provides an excellent example of how Twitter can be used to cross-promote two things: a concert and a company.

The contest offered 2 free tickets to the Girl Talk concert in New York. Medialets produced posters with three easy step instructions for how to enter:

· Follow @medialets
· Send a tweet beginning with #medialets explaining why you should win tickets
· Direct message us at @medialets with a) what company you work for b) email address and phone number c) what kind of phone you have

While we don’t know the results of the contest, this, to us, represented a great example of how Twitter can be used in new and different ways. Possible outcomes? Depending on where they put this poster or online graphic, Medialets likely attracted plenty of followers. Presumably some of these followers would have added to the conversation online by passing along useful information about the company, musician and/or the contest. The concert itself may have been better attended as a result. And by requiring entrants to use a #medialets hashtag, Medialets increased their search ratings.

Twitter for business

Last week Jonathan Kash from Pistachio Consulting wrote an article about Molson’s use of Social Media, including Twitter. Ferg Devins, VP Government and Public Affairs of Molson Canada, answers questions about how Molson connects with their community. The article provides some great information about corporate Twitter usage and how fully engaged Molson is in social media.

Tonia Hammer of Molson’s PR Team provided great examples of their Twitter use:

Events: We use Twitter to live-tweet and monitor events. For our Brew 2.0 events in Toronto and Vancouver, we followed the tweets to get feedback and also to share thanks, photos and video.

Promotions: We’ve done tweets with offers – discount code for ShopMolson.com, taxiguy discounts for the holidays

Soliciting Feedback: We ask questions about new websites, promotions, or what people would like to hear from Molson.

http://pistachioconsulting.com/molson-social-media-case-study/. Jonathan Kash. Molson: Brewing Up Success with Social Media. November 13, 2008.

Twitter for business