News spread fast on Social platforms but much faster on Twitter. The death of world class singer, Whitney Houston spread like wild fire on this popular social platform – and before the media announced it to the world. The first tweet was made by a person with only 14 followers, but spread so fast that another person in Nevada tweeted that his source had not only said Whitney Houston is dead, but that he also gave the location of where Houston was found.  This information was yet another detail of her death that took even longer to be announced by the mainstream media

This is the first tweet at 4:30 pm about Houston’s death and the location.

This tweet is by The Associated Press at 4:57pm without the location.

This sad news broke on social media 27 minutes before being picked up by die mainstream media.  Topsy Labs reported that about 2.5 billion Tweets and re-tweets regarding Houston’s death occurred in the first hour, amounting to about 1000 tweets per second.

This is the power of Twitter.

If you do not have a Twitter account, this is the perfect time to create one. To recognise the power and speed of a tweet and how it can become the ‘Word from your corporation’s mouth’ – and reach thousands within minutes.

Whitney might not have known, but her legacy lives on, and Twitter and all the Twitter fans worldwide ‘Will (really) always love her’…

Social media is all about, well, being social.  The platform was developed to interact (again and more frequently) with the people around us as we live in a more-and-more isolated environment.

As this media evolved and took the shape of groups, chats, instant messaging, professional contacts and job portals, some of the pioneers in ‘social for corporates’ have, it would seem, missed the point.

We are bombarded by a myriad of marketing messages daily.  Emails take the average user approximately 2,7seconds to analyse and assess whether or not it will be opened, read, or instantly deleted.  Ad breaks on television are almost longer than the program itself and almost every website you enter has flashing advertising banners screaming for you to hear their message.

What we want, more than anything, is to be human.  We want to have people (and companies) to interact with us in such a way that it is kept fun, inspirational and even emotional.  We want to be respected for our likes and interests – not some marketing faux.

Direct marketing used to know us by name – social media allows companies to ‘know’ us for us.

Getting a company or brand liked by nations on a social space, is certainly then not a marketing message.  It is an interaction.  A care.  Based on the knowledge gained by constant interaction with the ‘we’ following your company or brand.

Social media is a platform, thus, not for marketing products or services per se, but to be and remain social with the people who care about your brand as much as you do… People who believe in your ethos, trust you, and know that your brand development would mean the development of self.

At the end of 2011 there were roughly 200 million registered Twitter users in the world, which puts Twitter at about a third of all Facebook users. Twitter has been boosted with the advent of Smartphones and Tablets keeping people online for longer and wherever they go. “This is wonderful” you might say, “but how can I keep up with the mountains of tweets I get?” Lady Gaga has over 18 Million followers and she is following over 140,000 on Twitter, if all of those tweeted just once a day she would receive 140,000 tweets a day! Here are the top ten tools to manage your “twitterverse”.

1. TweetStats

This is a wonderful tool to measure your Twitter behaviour, it provides useful stats on how much you are tweeting, when you are tweeting and when is the best time to tweet. The best feature that I have found is the measurement of how many of your tweets were “retweeted”.

2. Hootsuite

This is a great looking Twitter management tool which is free as long as you have less than five social profiles to manage. It has an easy-to-use feel with all the stats you might need. It also is available on various platforms and devices.

3. SocialOomph

SocialOomph is another popular management software tool for Twitter that was developed by a South African, Dewald Pretorius who lives in Canada. This tool allows you to schedule tweets for the future at any date, time and frequency. Another nice feature is the ability to “spin” your tweets to prevent repetition.

4. Nurph

This tool allows you to invite friends into a private chat room via a tweet. This allows for longer conversations and connections and works great as a support service. I really liked the feature which archives your conversations for future reference.

5. MarketMeSuite

This is one of many social media dashboards that are available online, but this has many useful features. Here you can connect multiple social networks, including pulling in RSS feeds. A top feature is the ability to Geo-tag users.

6. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a Twitter management tool that is similar to Hootsuite in which it allows you to organise your tweets in handy columns. They also have their own Bit.ly service (Deck.ly) to allow shortened URLs in the standard 140 characters. This is not a browser-based application though so you can only manage this from the device that it is loaded on.

7. Twitterfeed

This tool allows you to add RSS feeds to all your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. It also has real time stats on the feeds and it’s a great way to create content for your followers automatically.

8. Triberr

This is an invite only community tool that gives you access to “tribes” of like-minded bloggers. A neat feature allows you to do automatic tweeting of other members posts.

9. StrawberryJ.am

This app automatically finds the top mentioned tweets and puts them in order for you of the most retweeted tweets. They also can email you a summary daily so you don’t have to sign into another website each day.

10. Twylah

This app can turn all your tweets into self-branded landed pages according to the topic of the tweet. This creates a beautiful media stream which is proven to decrease bounce rates by up to 4x.

During the last month, I have been keeping a keen eye on Google’s new approach to search. In my previous article, The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO, I mentioned that the decision to include Google+ social content in search results might not be welcomed by everyone. This especially stems from the fact that it seems as if Google places priority to Google+ information in its search results. One can argue that Google is entitled to include Google+ content, since they own the search engine. Also, Google mentioned that they would index data from Facebook and Twitter if they made their platforms open. One thing that is certainly sure however, is that Google has received significant backlash because of the decision.

Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

Facebook launched a new app, the Timeline Movie Maker yesterday.  Built by the Marketing Agency, Definition6, this new application is fun, user-friendly and easy to use (and add to your profile).

All you need do is sign in to your Facebook account, type ‘Timeline Movie Maker’ into the Search bar at the top, “Like” the page and go to the app.

When the light blue block appears on your screen with a small green block at the bottom saying “Make your movie”, it will start doing just that – make your very own movie!

After this process, you will be able to watch your Timeline Movie and make changes to it by adding or deleting photos at the bottom of the screen in your gallery. On top of the gallery you can even add music to complete a real ‘Timeline Music Video’ of your chosen range of photos.

http://www.timelinemoviemaker.com/

This is fun and so easy!  If you haven’t switched to Facebook Timeline…now is the time to do it!