Twitter

Recently Twitter made some announcements that are meant to better shape the development focus of its future. One of those announcements was posted on their blog where they made it clear that Twitter is no longer just a micro-blogging service, but rather a communication platform. One result of this change was their internal development of applications, including a mobile client that is available for both iPhone and Android OS smart phones. Besides the fact that this is now the “official” Twitter client for Android, you’re probably wondering what could make it so different from the TwiDroid or Seesmic mobile clients. The truth is, there are quite a few differences!

Functionality & Usability

The home screen is absolutely incredible, and animated! The top level menu breaks the app into the six primary components of the Twitter service: Tweets, Mentions, Direct Messages, Lists, Retweets, and your Profile. Additionally, the home screen animation gives you a glimpse into the Trending Topics list that is easily accessible with an onscreen page flip motion, or for the specific topic a simple tap on it will bring you to a results page.

Sending a tweet is extremely easy, with the input box designed specifically to sit atop the onscreen keyboard without covering over any functionality. This is a small but often overlooked detail that Twitter has addressed, and it’s that type of extra effort spent on the details of the user interface that really sets this app apart as you’ll see from the next feature I’m about to talk about…

Share It All & Push It Good

Twitter has seemingly always played host in a semi-symbiotic relationship with Facebook. Over the years Facebook has adopted many of Twitter’s practices such as the News Feed that was derived from the Twitter Timeline, vanity URLs for their user profiles to mimic Twitter’s user profiles, and of course using the at sign (@) to initiate user tagging in Status Updates similar to Twitter’s user inspired Reply feature.

In the Android app, Twitter finally has the opportunity to “borrow” back with the cornerstone Facebook tenet of sharing. Depending on the other apps installed on your phone, the Twitter app will allow you to share a tweet via G-Mail, Facebook, SMS Messaging, Google Buzz, and ironically itself. Sharing a tweet via the application provides a message formatted like this:

David Konig (@davidkonig) has shared a Tweet with you:

“cnnbrk: Severe weather kills 4 in Ohio. http://on.cnn.com/cEC33d”
–http://www.twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/15561566108

In addition to this sharing capability, the Twitter app also provides built in push notifications. You can set the refresh interval and whether you want to be notified of all tweets, replies, and/or direct messages. Push notification is really a must have in todays communication applications, and surprisingly the Twitter app does not provide this feature on its iPhone version.

Not For The Power User

The one drawback of the Twitter app for Android is that it only allows you to use the application with one account. While this may not seem like a huge drawback to personal users, it does severely limit its use for the power user who is a member of a Social Media Team. Power users will probably still find Seesmic the best app for managing multiple Twitter accounts, but still have the option of using the Twitter app functionality for the account that would benefit most from it.

In Conclusion

The Twitter built application for Android is feature packed and blinged out beyond any other third party developed app. This is an example of building on a vision by merging the gamut of their features into a usable mobile extension of their core service. We can only hope that other services will follow suit for ALL the mobile platforms.

This is a guest post by Michelle Mangen.

HootSuite is one of the many great third-party applications you can use to schedule tweets for future dates and times. It also allows you to connect multiple Twitter accounts, including co-workers and agencies who want to give you access to their accounts.

Perfecting Scheduled Tweets

One of the first times I scheduled Tweets in HootSuite I utilized their “drafts” feature and had originally intended that in the following weeks I would only have to change the bit.ly link as well as the specific info for that particular week. Brilliant plan, right?

About 30 minutes into Week Two of scheduling tweets I found multiple flaws in my previously “brilliant plan.” The pre-saved drafts didn’t go as well as I had intended due to the fact that HootSuite saves drafts alphabetically – which isn’t the most efficient when you have updates you want to send to Twitter on a specific day and time.  Additionally if you have drafts for multiple accounts it is not easy to determine which tweets are for which account. It quickly became apparent to me that a Plan B had to be devised when I realized that I would have probably been just as fast by typing entirely new updates from scratch vs. using the drafts.

Plan B: Scheduled Tweets in 10 minutes

A better option than using the drafts feature is to type the tweets into a Word document. Now I can schedule a total of 14 tweets (7 for two different accounts) in 10 minutes by utilizing the following tactics to publicize two different podcasts:

• Change specific info for the upcoming week’s tweets (guest names, episodes, etc.)
• Create a new bit.ly link and then using the Find & Replace option I can update all instances of the previous week’s bit.ly link to the upcoming week’s bit.ly link in a mere matter of seconds.
• Copy and paste the tweets into HootSuite; Select the desired date and time; Select appropriate Twitter accounts; Save and Done!

By simply adjusting the method in which the drafts were saved (using a Word document instead of HootSuite’s option) the invested time was reduced from over 30 minutes to just under 10 minutes per week.

My philosophy for both myself and for the clients I serve is that a minute saved is a minute that can be “used” elsewhere so I am continually hyper-vigilant in “tweaking” my procedures and utilizing other programs to achieve the same end result in the least amount of time possible.

What are some of your favorite shortcuts to get more social media done in less time?

Connect with Michelle on Twitter (@MMangen) or at her website Your Virtual Assistant.

One of the driving forces behind my investment in a smart phone was none other than Twitter. I’ve always seen value in the service, but I never felt as though I was getting ALL of the potential value because I was stuck with a clunky Nextel i560. Now with my Droid, I’ve been able to finally experience the full power of Twitter.

All I can say is wow. Now I know what ALL of the buzz has been about.

But my experience isn’t just about the actual Twitter service. For that matter any experience on the internet is owed to both the service and the application used to gain access to it. I think my personal Twitter revolution is owed largely in part to the Seesmic Twitter app for Droid that I’ve recently started using.

Before Seesmic, I was using the popular Twidroid application. I even paid for the full version because I wanted to be able to manage multiple accounts ( my personal @DavidKonig and the @PIOSMTraining account to name two) and I wanted to be able to save searches.

Seesmic is really a great application with a variety of features and choices. You can edit your notification settings (all Tweets, Mentions, or Direct Messages), your refresh rates (5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc), and of course your notification tone.

The display is a typical Twitter timeline that you unfortunately can’t customize with colors, but it features hot key filters at the top for @ Replies, Private Messages, and your own profile. Seesmic will also allow you to save searches for quick one push searches of either hashtags or locations. I found this to be an incredibly valuable feature, especially when I was at a conference that used a hashtag.

But what I really enjoy about Seesmic is that it integrates seamlessly into the Share feature of the Droid. This allows you to share not just text but also photos through your choice of Twitter photo sites and making distribution of those scene photos very very easy.

Even though Twitter’s recent purchase of Tweetie signals the service itself is entering into the app market, I still think that for Droid users the Seesmic application is the most powerful choice with the best price… free.

You can download the Seesmic App through the Android Marketplace

Twitter has made it fairly easy to monitor using Twitter search features and hashtags.

1. Browse to Search.Twitter.com

2. Enter the word or phrase you want to search, such as your department name.

3. When the search is completed look in the upper right of the page for “Feed for This Query” That is the RSS feed for the search query.

4. Copy the RSS into your RSS reader.

5. Anytime the query appears in a tweet it will update the feed.

I would suggest monitoring for these terms:

• Department name
• Department name acronym
• Chief’s name
• Your name
• City name and key words like fire, police, ambulance, emergency

Use the results of your searches to refine the queries and select new queries.

Also use the Advanced Twitter search features to refine your search to your area. For example, searching NYFD might pull tweets from around the world. Narrowing the search to within 5 miles of zip code 10001 will limit the tweets to those coming from Manhattan and the surrounding Burroughs.

Today the 2010 Technology Entertainment Design (TED) Conference will begin in Long Beach, California. While I’m excited to see what this year’s conference will offer, I just wanted to rehash one of my favorite talks from last year.

This is Twitter co-founder Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users:

Five things to take away from this talk:

• Great ideas won’t always start out as the main goal
• The simplest idea can be changed and adapted by the user for their needs if you are flexible enough
• Tradional uses of mediums (and the media) for broadcasting is changing to be more of a conversation
• Real time delivery is a huge 2009 trend and continues to be a 2010 theme as well
• The first part of communication that will matter is being able to listen effectively

Are you listening effectively? If so, then how are you doing it? If you aren’t, then what is stopping you?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Yesterday morning my Twitter stream lit up with breaking news reports of an explosion at a Power Plant under construction in Connecticut. In this short screen cast I show how a Google Search and Advanced Twitter Search can be used to gather real-time incident intelligence from people at or near the incident.

When initiating my search I made a critical error. See if you can catch it.

This technique could be useful to:

• Hospitals preparing to receive casualties
• Administrators trying to determine how many off-duty personnel to call in
• Emergency management officials making decisions about opening a county or regional IC
• Selecting which shelters to open or close

How else could you use Google search, Google Alerts, and Advanced Twitter Search for social media intelligence gathering?

Napa City Fire Department posted a great twitter message on 12/22 that connected their department with the Social Media Responder 2009 contest. Check out this screencast, using Screenr, to find out why I think this is such a great Twitter message.

Follow Napa City Fire on Twitter @Napa_City_Fire

One of the important aspects of a Social Media presence is your ability to measure its effectiveness in achieving your end goal.

Twitter is considered to be the current rock star of Social Media. Having such fame, it will inevitably end up as a potential spoke for your Social Media Hub. It therefore becomes important to be able to measure its effectiveness.

Defining Twitter Success

While most “experts” and “gurus” will say that the key to success in Twitter is having a large number of followers, I’m telling you that isn’t the case. The quality of your followers is much more important than the number of followers you actually have. Sending dynamic messages (with links to articles, photos, etc.) with good content will cause engaged followers to retweet your messages and engage you and your agency in conversation. There is more value in these types of Twitter activities than just sending non-dynamic propaganda.

This becomes evident when you begin looking at these three free analytic tools that will help you determine the effectiveness of your Agency on Twitter:

TweetStats

This is a very simple tool that measures the number of tweets your account sends out on a monthly basis, as well as the density of messages and their times sent over the course of a week. The tool also gives you insight into the top ten users you have retweeted and who have “@” messaged you. While the analytics aren’t deep, this is a great little tool to measure just how much your Agency uses Twitter, and to be able to quickly spot any gaping holes in your Twitter messaging approach.

Twitalyzer

This is a more advanced tool for analyzing your effectiveness on Twitter. Twitalyzer breaks your statistics down into 5 groups: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity, and Clout. Twitalyzer breaks down your activity on Twitter, coupled with the activity of your followers, and is able to develop a better picture of your account than just counting the number of followers you have. Twitalyzer excels as a tool used over time. I would recommend analyzing your Twitter account once a week on a set day, and once a month of analytics has been recorded you can look at the changes in a time based analysis.

Twitter Analyzer

This is by far the prettiest user interface of the bunch. Twitter Analyzer provides you with a slew of statistics including your Popularity and Reach. However the real hidden jewel of the service is showing you the number of your followers who were recently online using Twitter. This is a hugely important statistic to know and understand, because the truth is the number of your overall followers are less important than the number of your engaged followers when you send out a Tweet.

A common feature for the Hubs of Emergency Response Agency websites is badges and buttons that link to the agency spokes. Remember some of the spokes you can link to from your hub include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr

Twitter has a set of buttons available as a link from the Twitter Goodies page. Adding a Twitter button is as simple as copying the HTML code associated with button and pasting it into a widget, sidebar, post, or page.

View this screencast for a quick demonstration on how I added the Twitter button to this post.

PIO Social Media officers can and should schedule and automate the delivery of Twitter messages for several reasons:

1. New content from your hub and spokes may be of interest to your Twitter readers and will bring them to your Hub and Spokes – potentially for the first time.

2. Twitter readers can visit your Twitter feed at any time of day from any place in the world. If you are in the eastern time zone an 0800 post will not likely be seen by your West coast friends. Scheduling the same Tweet to post again at 1100, 1500, and 1900 eastern time will ensure that it is seen by more of your friends.

3. Use Twitter to announce upcoming events and programs by scheduling Tweets to post each day before the event. Consider making changes to each subsequent Tweet, like a ten reasons to attend list.

Remember, Twitter, like much of social media is like standing at the edge of Niagara Falls. Many social media users just have a few moments to glimpse at the raging of torrent of information that is passing by them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Scheduling and automating posting of tweets increases the number of opportunities for your message to be seen.

I use two Twitter tools for scheduling and automating Tweets:

1. Twitterfeed.com “feeds your blog to Twitter.” It takes the RSS feed from my blog eps411.com and feeds the blog post title and shortened url into my Twitter account @gfriese

2. Hootsuite.com also feeds any RSS feed into a Twitter account. Hootsuite also has several other excellent features for Social Media PIOs.
a. ability to post a single Tweet to multiple Twitter accounts (Tweetdeck also has this feature).
b. ability to schedule Tweets to post in the future. Schedule a Tweet for posting several times in a single day or to repeat every day leading up to a special event.
c. a URL shortening service that allows tracking of clicks on the shortened URLs from a Twitter post.

A common question I am asked is, “Do you think readers will be annoyed if you are scheduling Tweets and reposting the same Tweet?” Potentially they will be. The risk is greatest for readers that only follow a small number of other Twitter users. If a user is only following 10 people they are looking at a trickle of Tweets and not Niagara Falls. Instead of slowing down your torrent for these users recommend other people for them to follow with a Twitter list or #FollowFriday (see Follow Friday: What is it?)