The Many Merits of Twitter
While Twitter is a great tool for keeping up with friends, interacting with businesses, or letting the world know exactly what you’re up to in 140 characters or less, there is so much more to the social network than meets the eye. Over the years, Twitter has been used to gather important data and help disseminate information when other traditional forms of media were not available.
With cold and flu season just around the corner, Twitter becomes an invaluable resource for governments and healthcare groups to track the spread of gems. The Center for Disease Control is able to monitor the spread of contagious illnesses using the information that people Tweet. In 2009, scientists were able to track the spread of Swine Flu to see how that compared with vaccination information. By comparing the Twitter data with the CDC’s vaccination data, patterns began to emerge. Scientists were able to see if those who tweeted about getting the swine flu vaccination were getting sick.
And Twitter is not just limited to the realm of infectious diseases. During the recent blackout in San Diego, Twitter was one of the few forms of communication that were still available after the lights went out. San Diego Gas & Electric used the social media platform to keep residents up to date with what was going on. Information was still able to be passed around virtually when traditional forms of media like local news were left (literally) in the dark!
When natural disasters occur, people take to the Twitterverse in droves to tweet about it. During an earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey’s seismometer can take several minutes to sound the alarm. Twitter on the other hand can publish almost one hundred thousand tweets a minute, spreading the word at an amazing rate. People on one side of the country often know about an earthquake on the other side before an official report has even been generated.
Facebook Announces the Subscribe Button
Facebook has rolled out a new feature that allows personal users to filter which updates they receive from their current friends as well as view public posts from interesting people. This opens up the experience to celebrities, journalist, and political figures without friending them ahead of time. Following the trend of Google +’s circles, you can now customize what you post to either private friends or the public.
This new subscribe button allows you to:
- Choose what you see from people in your news feed
- Subscribe to people, even if you’re not friends
- Let people subscribe to you, even if you’re not friends
This new feature also allows you to customize what you see in your news feed.
- All updates: Everything your friend posts
- Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
- Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move
In order to activate this feature on your profile, you must opt-in here and click “Allow Subscribers” After you have opted-in you can customize who is allowed to leave comments and see who is subscribed to you.
The positive power of social media in crises
Over the past few weeks we have witnessed tremendous tragedy in natural disasters and political revolt but with this has been an amazing outpouring of aid and incredible sense of community. For someone in the online and social media business it has been interesting to watch the role that social media has played throughout these events.
Texting the world
As history has shown, natural disasters, political unrest and other crises will continue but it seems we are at a new cross-roads in terms of how we learn about, react to and cope with these events. I thought it would be worth highlighting a few of the many ways that social media has made an impact over the past few weeks. Where there is a need, people find a way to use these tools to their advantage. I think some of that same thinking can be applied to using social media in your business.
During the initial aftermath of the Japan crisis, social media platforms played an important role in helping people get help, find each other, let others know who still needed help. When traditional means of communication failed, social media provided the needed communication link.
An open group on Facebook called Japan Quake Survival Strategies was started to let people know how to make donations, where to get purifier straws for drinking water, and what potassium iodine is used for – protection against radiation.
The Red Cross launched a campaign on Causes to raise money for relief efforts. By logging in to Facebook, you can donate anywhere from $10 to $500 to help Tsunami victims and their families.
Twitter published a blog post detailing ways you can help with the relief efforts. Not only have they updated Japan’s mobile website with the latest information on the disaster, but they have also published a list of hashtags to tweet and/or follow related to the crisis. Not surprisingly, Japan Crisis was the number one Tweet topic.
Turning to the middle East, Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms have had a significant impact on these events. Here are just a few.
Speed: Messages and information were shared and communicated much faster.
Global Connections: People were able to easily connect to others around the world.
Global Audience: A Tweet by one person was able reach the entire world and go viral in a matter of minutes.
Reduced secrecy and isolation: Isolation of opinion has become almost impossible.
While there has been much tragedy and devastation, I also think we have witnessed both the goodness and inventiveness of the human spirit as people from around the world have come together to provide help and find new and innovative ways to do so.
Tips for getting the most from the latest Facebook updates
This week Facebook announced a few more changes. Let’s take a look at what they are and how you can utilize these changes to your advantage.
The first change relates to the Page posts filter. When Facebook rolled out the update to Pages, it took away the option to have posts displayed chronologically when the user clicked on the option to view posts by everyone. That change apparently didn’t sit well with Page admins and they have now given the option to display posts either in chronological order or by popularity. I am in favor of any change that gives more control to the page admin rather than relying on what Facebook thinks is the most appropriate place/order/method to display information related to my business or that of my clients.
A second change announced by Facebook this week is an update to the comments plugin for third-party websites. With this update the comments plugin will have the same capabilities currently available on page walls within Facebook. This includes showing the most popular posts first rather than in chronological order (that again) and improved moderation.
This change may be most relevant to news type websites that receive a high number of comments and less important for product or service focused websites. The idea behind this enhancement is that when someone leaves a comment on your site, it can be published to friends on Facebook with a link to the original site where the comment originated. The plugin also provides tools to help mitigate spam and other types of malicious content.
I think this feature should be used judiciously. Based on your goals, you need to think through whether or not your Facebook friends will benefit from or care about your comment on a story. In some cases this may be very appropriate but I would caution that you don’t want to be pegged as someone who is high on quantity but low on quality.
Let us know what you think about these latest changes at OrganikSEO.com
Are you sticking your toe in the social media water?
I attended the San Diego Chapter of AMA lunch meeting yesterday. The topic was social media. I wanted to see what new I might learn and hear what opportunities and challenges others are seeing.
Dipping a toe into social media
Based on my experience and comments during the presentation, my sense is that there is a lot of opportunity. More and more companies are initiating social media or thinking seriously about it. A need among businesses is education. Many know what to do and what to expect when it comes to traditional media but are a bit in the dark when it comes to social.
The speaker stressed the importance of making a commitment to social. Many businesses want to just “stick their toe in the water”. The danger of that approach is that if you do get customers to follow you or visit your page/blog etc. and there hasn’t been any activity, you will end up worse off. You will be giving potential customers a poor image of your business; worse than no image. I wholeheartedly agree with this and can’t stress it enough. If you can’t make the commitment, wait until you can. Under this scenario, not only do you send an unintended message to potential customers but you might get the erroneous impression that social doesn’t work. It’s sort of like saying that if you ran one small black and white ad that was surrounded by clutter and you didn’t get any response, that advertising doesn’t work.
As far as trends go, no surprise that mobile was the top issue for 2011.
If you are thinking about trying out social media for your business, give us a shout. OrganikSEO.com
