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Posts Tagged ‘LinkedIn’

I Think, Therefore I Tweet #twitterjunkie

15 Jul

I am addicted to Twitter. There, I said it, admitting it is the first step, right? Over the last year, posting to Facebook has diminished, especially as I became more and more fascinated by Twitter. The biggest attraction is real-time news whether it’s what’s trending locally, articles about technology or startups, or conversations about my favorite topics. I love reading and consuming what’s going on, even if I do most of my reading late at night and into the wee hours of the morning.

I love sharing information and the conversations around various hashtags opens my mind to different ideas. During the work day, I limit information consumption so I can power through my to do list and have productive meetings. Yet the minute I get a free moment I’m compelled to check the feed to see what’s going on. Does anyone else feel this way? Hidden obsessive-compulsive tendencies?

It’s ok, if you don’t follow me. I tweet up to a hundred times a day which can be overwhelming to a casual user or anyone new to Twitter.

This is what I post:

  • Content from startup or social media events.
  • Content I’m reading, using Twitter to “bookmark” since it’s automagically backed up on Backupify.
  • Conversations on the following hashtags: #startup, #leanstartup, #smcphx, #socialmedia, #UFC, #phxlatenite
  • Random thoughts throughout the day.
  • Checkins on Gowalla/Foursquare/Facebook/Google+

Here are the mobile Twitter apps I use for iPhone:

    • Echofon – my favorite for browsing the feed and having twitter conversations.
    • Smartr – to read articles tweeted by people I follow without the noise of the conversations.

Hootsuite – to schedule articles and shorten links.

  • Tweetdeck – to post tweets longer than 140 chars, it’s laggy on my device so I use it very rarely.
  • Twitter – I use this the least and can’t figure out why I haven’t deleted it.

What are your favorite Twitter apps? Who else is addicted to Twitter?

20110715-055338.jpg
Image credit: Steve Rhodes

 
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Harder to Lose Klout When You Actually Engage

14 Jul

When you’re involved in social media, engagement is everything. Do you ever wonder what would happen if you suddenly stopped posting? This is the question I wanted to answer with the experiment on “How to Trash Your Klout Score“. Business owners believe social media needs near constant engagement, one of the questions I wanted to answer was what is the bare minimum you need to do so you can run your business or even go on vacation while still providing your customers a great online experience. I will post those guidelines after the experiment ends on July 17.

Seven days into the experiment, my Klout score is holding steady at 52 points. I had to tweet for an hour on July 8th for the Social Media Club Twitter Chat on the topic of Finding Balance for your Professional and Personal Life Online. If you look at each data point in the graph my score was going up incrementally for a couple days after this event. Since I stopped tweeting on my account it had a negative impact on Merlin U Ward’s (@MerlinUWard) brand, resulting in a 6% drop in reach for him. You can read the details and additional metrics on Merlin’s blog.

When I started the experiment on my Klout score, I never thought it would impact anyone else. Merlin bet my Klout score would drop 5 points, my goal was to drop 7 points. For people or businesses who only push out content or talk AT people, disconnecting may not have noticeable impact on anyone else’s reach. I believe Merlin’s reach dropped since we use Twitter as if it was instant messaging and texting to discuss my favorite topics, technology and business or fun things like #futzing and #wordswithfriends. I post a lot of articles on startups and entrepreneurship which ties into the conversations we are having publicly, you can think of it as tweet radio.

Klout score steady at 52 points after 7 days of inactivity.

The interesting side effect of this experiment is how the Klout score for my business account has gone UP. I’ve been tweeting out of the Hand Things Down Twitter account (@handthingsdown) and using it to have conversations I would normally have on my personal account. The other night, there was an informal Twitter chat about when the next #Twilight movie “Breaking Dawn” would be premiering. The Twilight series is near and dear to most moms which is the group I normally socialize with on this account. Since using @handthingsdown to have more conversations, the Klout score went up nearly 4 points in a week!

The lesson from the last few days; your Klout score will go up dramatically just by talking to people and BEING SOCIAL, it is after all social media. It’s not an exotic animal to be gawked at from the outside, it’s more like happy hour where you get to know people and discuss topics you are passionate about.

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How to Trash Your Klout Score

07 Jul

I’ve been following a social experiment with great interest over the last couple of weeks. Merlin U Ward challenged himself to become influential over #futzing in Klout in 10 days. He chose a word that wouldn’t be used in normal conversation for his “scientific” experiment. At first, I ignored using the #futzing hashtag on Twitter, hoping it would go away because I didn’t know what it meant. I also had no desire to accidentally have #futzing attached to my name. When I realized I can hide word in Klout I decided to join in on the fun, as a by product my own Klout score raised 4 points over 30 days, even going up 1 point in the last 5 days.

I thought this was interesting since social media junkies are all slightly obsessed with raising Klout. I’ve never been one to follow the pack so why not do the exact opposite for 10 days?

In an effort to see the results of influence within Twitter, I disconnected my Facebook account which resulted in an immediate 2 point drop in Klout. Then I disconnected Linkedin to receive a 4 point drop in Klout to 52 points.

10 Day Plan

  • Last tweets before going silent is to moderate the Social Media Club Phoenix Chat on how to separate your professional and personal life online on July 8 from 2:00 – 3:00 pm using the hashtag #smcphxchat
  • Respond to @mentions on DM to reduce the number of tweets from my account to nearly zero over the next 10 days. This will be hard since I’ve recently switched to using Twitter to replace instant messaging and text messaging. Most of my conversations are public, I have no secrets.
  • Don’t post any content I’m reading to Twitter, post directly to Linkedin.

Report back in 5 days with a screenshot showing the Klout score at that time.

If you want to follow this experiment, don’t forget to sign up to get it delivered to your mailbox or RSS reader. You can also follow on Twitter @CherylMarquez.


Klout score after disconnecting Facebook and before disconnecting Linkedin.
Cheryl Marquez's Klout is 56 on July 7

Klout score after disconnecting LinkedIn.

Cheryl Marquez's Klout score is 52 after disconnecting Facebook & Linkedin on July 7.

Note: This entire post was written on my iPod Touch in Evernote, then pasted into the WordPress app. This is why the screenshots of Klout are from an iOS device instead of the web.

 
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Startup Weekend Chandler Day 1

25 Jun
Image representing Startup Weekend as depicted...

Image via CrunchBase

Normal people look forward to the weekend to relax and hangout with their friends. Entrepreneurs, go to Startup Weekend and decide to get involved in another exciting project. Friday morning, I woke up, got ready, and packed my purse with everything I would need to work for the day. My gear included; netbook, power charger, phone, iPod, extended battery, headphones, mouse, notebook, pens, makeup, extra t-shirt with geek logo, webcam, mouse, and USB hub. Yes, I did pack all of that in my very stylish black patent leather purse that I had to use because they matched my shoes.

I stopped by Gangplank to drop off the stuff for the Women 2.0 Founder Friday happy hour. Hand Things Down was hosting this networking event for the ladies attending Startup Weekend. Then drove to the Chandler Public Library to attend Startup 101. Startup 101 was a chance to get a primer before the weekend for anyone new to the world of being an entrepreneur. They had panels talking about creating a team, product development, and execution.

I thought the best talk was about building teams and resolving conflict given by Derek Neighbors and Jade Meskill. Here are some of their key points.

  • Create a team with a common vision.
  • Look at the vision and use that to help guide decisions and conflict resolution.
  • Read “Core Protocols” to learn about conflict resolution.
  • Ask people at the beginning about their level of commitment.
  • You should NOT compromise, negotiate for the best of each idea.
  • Teams of developers and business people should sit together to discuss direction as the weekend progresses.

As the evening kicked off, the ladies of Startup Weekend got together for Founder Friday happy hour to get to know each other before we joined the guys. There was some good discussion and an exchange of Twitter handles so we could follow each other during and after the weekend.

When Startup Weekend kicked off, we heard about 28 pitches and then the mayhem of self-forming teams commenced. Two teams stood out for me. One of them was Chow Locally who is creating a locavore website to connect local farmers with consumers and delivering the farm fresh veggies and fruit to the Phoenix Public Market.  The second team I was interested in was called Surpriz.es and this is the team I joined for the weekend. Surprizes collects birthday freebies and presents them to you on your special day with Facebook and Twitter greetings. Now you can feel the birthday love all day as you go out and collect your freebies.

So that wraps it up for Day 1. Tomorrow I will be writing up birthday related blog posts for Surprizes and greeting people for their birthdays on Twitter. Sign up for your birthday Surpriz.es.

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World Domination One Like at a Time

22 Apr

I spent the day watching the live streams of the sold out Facebook F8 Developer Conference. It was streamed by Livestream and besides a few hiccups in the beginning it was great to consume all that information from the comfort of my own desk. The conference timing couldn’t have been better, I have been defining software requirements and drawing workflows for my business partner with specifics around integration with Facebook. Learning first hand about the changes Facebook was announcing allowed me to simplify some the requirements while I was watching the broadcast. Since our website is built on WordPress.org, I was able to quickly implement the new Like button by embedding the iframe into a text/HTML widget. The Like box links the title to the Facebook Fan Page, includes member photos, and if the user is not logged into Facebook, it will allow them to login from our website and automagically post to their Facebook stream. With just a few clicks Facebook integration was accomplished. Additionally, I was able to delete about seven different WordPress plugins we were using to create this integration. Next up, my business partner is working on getting single sign-on working without using the RPX plugin.

Key Messages

  • For developers some of the announcements made by Facebook simplifies the registration and login process because the single sign-on functionality asks for permission to access email and register the users Facebook account to a website. They are now using OAuth 2.0 protocol so this will play nicely with additional login options to different services such as Twitter.
  • Social plugins such as the Like button or box and the activity feeds help even novice bloggers get started with the Facebook platform using a single line of HTML. The code is generated by Facebook after the blogger makes some selections, which can be copied into blogs.
  • Insights is the Facebook analytics tool, the website says, “get detailed information about the demographics of your users and how users are sharing from your application.” While I believe the single sign-on is a must have, what is interesting is the analytics and the server-side personalization.

When launching a new website and brand, it’s important to understand who the customer really is and what they are doing on the website or the web application. Our assumption and research is tailoring the content of our website to a particular demographic, yet what if our target demographic is completely different from our actual users. We need to learn who they are and how they are using the application so we can optimize the experience for them.

The software requirements already build in a few tests to see which elements will drive viral growth and tracking to see where the users are dropping off. We will also request feedback and survey our users to see how their perception of what they are doing ties into actual usage. The goal is to launch a beta version in the coming weeks and update the software bi-weekly to refine how it works with a small group of people. More to follow on my side of the entrepreneurial journey in the coming weeks and how our Like box does in driving world domination.

 
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