The best and worst times (and days) to update Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and more

From Social Marketing Writing:

Why your Twitter bio is important

From Mashable:

 "Your Twitter bio should position you as an expert in your field who serves a specific audience," states Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0. 

"The objective is to position your personal brand so you're using the right keywords and clearly showing what your focus is so people read it and know exactly what you do and whom you serve." 

As well as widening your appeal for potential followers, Schawbel suggests this tactic may help your future job prospects. 

"I did a study with American Express and we found that 65% of managers are looking to hire and promote subject matter experts. The problem is that most people position themselves as generalists or 'Jacks-of-all-trades,' and that won't work in this economy," he says.

Rethinking Twitter: How to make it attractive

Why Vine is like Twitter is like Facebook is like Instagram

Ron Faris of Virgin Mobile on NPR's All Things Considered:

"Vine is no different than Twitter, is no different from Facebook, is no different from Instagram. They're all water coolers. The more you're able to contribute to that community, the more that community will learn to consider your products and services especially if they've never heard of you before."

How to use a hashtag to create a perpetual conversation

Rohit Bhargava tells this story at the Influential Marketing Blog:

Several years ago a group of marketers working in the healthcare industry were planning to attend the rapidly growing South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, but felt frustrated at the lack of panels and conversation devoted to the topic of healthcare. Wanting a good alternative, they banded together to create their own show they called South By Social Health (SXSH). 

For weeks they used the #sxsh tag (and a secondary tag of #hcsm – “health care social media”) to bring the conversation together. For years after the event, both tags continued to be used to bring digital healthcare conversations together. What’s the lesson for brands? 

Sometimes a hashtag can offer the ultimate means to foster a conversation on a topic broader than your brand, and let you do it in a way that can last far beyond any one campaign.

The problem with retweets: How do you correct an error that goes viral?

From Mat Honan at Wired.com: 

Here’s the problem with the way the current system works. Let’s say you tweet something that turns out to be incorrect to your 100 followers. Let’s say 5 of those retweet it to their 100 followers. At this point, some 595 potential people have seen it. (Or at least spambots, but bear with me.) You realize your error, and issue a correction on your Twitter feed. Your 100 original followers may see the update, but it leaves 495 who do not unless those same five people again retweet you. 

In short, while the automatic retweet button on Twitter lets people spread information far and wide beyond your followers, there’s no way to makes sure those same people see your attempts to correct it.

Hashtags: 5 best practices for strategic success

From Paul Dunay at Marketing Darwinism:

In order to be successful with your hashtag strategy, leaders in the space recommend several best practices to follow:

• Limit the number of hashtags you use and keep it simple. Too many hashtags make it difficult to track and are confusing to consumers.
• Make them mean something. Figure out what you are going to focus on and then consistently leverage those across numerous campaigns.
• Avoid open-ended questions. By not limiting the response to a specific type, not only are you losing relevancy, but you are opening a can of worms for a hashtag hijacking.
• Be realistic. Make sure you have permission from your consumers to claim that hashtag. Blackberry’s #BeBold campaign, complete with super heroes, was a #Fail that opened it up to ridicule that quickly expanded into a chance to mock their slip into irrelevance.
• Get organized. Use dashboards structured by hashtag or more easily monitor and manage your campaigns.

How to use a photo to get more clicks for your tweet

Jennifer Wong at Search Engine Watch says: 

A recent photo in a tweet vs. no photo in a tweet experiment revealed that a linked photo results in 120 percent increase in engagement and 350 percent increase in clicks for a tweet. 

Additional findings from the experiment include:

• Retweets, replies and favorites aren't affected by tweet with a photo link vs. a tweet without a photo link.
• Visits to a site from a tweet with a photo link vs. a tweet without a photo link are the same even though a tweet with a photo spends twice as many advertising dollars.
• Within the same tweet, a photo link gets as many clicks as a URL link.

Depending on the goal of your Twitter campaign, adding a photo to your tweet might add additional value in terms of engagement but it also might just add costs with no additional benefit if you’re trying to optimize for website visits

KitCam: It's a lot of camera for just $1.99

Here's a new camera app I'm playing with. It's called KitCam, and it offers some interesting advantages over Hipstamatic, Instragram, Magic Hour and other such apps. The app comes with a wide range of lens and film choices. It handles video and time-lapse and tilt shift and even multi-exposure. It connects you to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Dropbox, Instagram and more. And almost all of it comes with the basic $1.99 package.

Here's a video introduction:



Give it a try and let me know what you think.

There is more than one way to be a journalist these days

That's a central theme in this brief video from PBS Off Book:

Stop talking about 'social media' and start talking about 'real-time media'

David Meerman Scott says:

When I speak with executives around the world about social media and business, many think of their kids' (or grandkids') Facebook or the Twitter silliness they hear about on television. ... When I ask the same executives about "real-time communications with customers" they lean forward and want to know more. These are the same people who dismiss Twitter. When I talk about "real-time media" they understand that it is important for their business.

Makes sense to me.

The better choice for driving video? Facebook or Twitter?

Chris Johnson at Brightcove has a strong opinion. He says the winner is Facebook, largely due to its built-in video player and its ability to embed the video into a newsfeed when shared. See what you think. Does his argument hold water? Is there a choice better than Facebook ... perhaps YouTube, Google+ or Vimeo?

• Beet.TV: Facebook Beats Twitter in Driving Video Views, Brightcove's Chris Johnston

4 big trends to watch in social media -- from Richard Edelman

 Janet Tyler at Airfoil Public Relations blogs about a recent Harvard Leadership Program:

I confess, however, that the highlight of the event for me was the opportunity to hear from public relations icon Richard Edelman. In many ways, he is what Niall Horan from the boy band One Direction is to my teenage daughter—a rock star of our industry so-to-speak. In his remarks, Edelman pointed out four “big trends” he is observing in social media:

1. Keep an eye on three impending social giants: BuzzFeed, Pinterest and Tumblr. We need to watch them as closely as we do Facebook and Twitter.
2. Search and social now are more integrated than ever. If you’re doing well in one, you’re likely doing well in the other.
3. Amplification trumps circulation. Appearing in an influential online publication is one thing, but becoming the subject of online communities who begin discussing you represents a whole new level of success. When we can measure this amplification of initial content, we’ll be doing well.
4. Visuals matter more than ever. Think infographics, video, slides and any other way to tell our story beyond words.

Twitter, Reddit and the newsroom of the future

From Matthew Ingram at  Tech News and Analysis:

By now, many people are becoming used to Twitter as a source of breaking news, whether it’s a report about the death of Osama bin Laden or details about the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt.

But it’s still fascinating to come across new examples of how the real-time information network can be used to report on a breaking news story, whether by professional journalists or those committing what Andy Carvin of NPR has called “random acts of journalism.”

In one recent case, a member of Reddit pulled together a news report about a shooting in Toronto, including the tweets of those who attended and later became victims of the incident — another sign of how social media is changing both the way we consume and the way we produce journalism.

4 extensions that let you turn Twitter into your social media powerhouse | #MoPR

From Leo Widrich:

Although Twitter.com is a super-clean interface, I wasn’t spending much time there. I had become dependent on other great Twitter apps instead. But now, I have returned to it. Here are four ways you can do this as well.