Take it as a given that we now want as much information as quickly as possible. The ways in which we do this are changing as people constantly find new ways to allow us to scan content in bit-size chunks before deciding if it’s worth clicking through. What effect is this having on our attention span though and just how much content can we consume?
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One of my favorite sites for finding news on the web at the moment is Tweetmeme. I use it very much in the same way as I used to use Digg as it does a better job of aggregating content in real time and I can see any interesting stories breaking all over the world. It does have flaws around the Re tweeting of stories but it is becoming a more important site on the social media landscape with impressive traffic growth and it can in my opinion go on to be a major challenger to social news sites like Digg and become a portal for breaking news stories. The site works perfectly simply because people learned how to share links on Twitter and they were easy to aggregate but could the same sort of system apply to other platforms? Facebook in particular?
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Tripadvisor’s recent release of the top 10 dirtiest hotels in the world is a timely reminder of the power of social media to influence your reputation online. The advent of real-time search has added another level to this, as customers now need to be keenly aware of what their customers are saying about them 24/7 and be prepared to intervene before a crisis erupts before your eyes.
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There is a new arrival at the Simply Zesty offices. We just need a name for her!
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With so many social media profiles that you use on a daily basis for your brand or business it is very important that you have one consistent message and look across all of them and that your brand strategy is in line with everything that you do. I wanted to use our own profiles here as an example of how important it is to have something that looks and feels the same on all channels even if the message is slightly different on each network…
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I have been talking to different people in the last couple of days about the tools the use to access Twitter and have been blown away by the amount of different services, apps and tools that are in use. We are big Tweetdeck users here in the office and for all our clients but it seems to be a case of different strokes for different folks. With that in mind I wanted to carry out a little poll to find out what a social media savvy bunch like the readers of this blog would use. There are benefits to each service and what I actually find is that I end up using a couple like Twitter.com to access things quickly, the mobile when I am relaxing in the evening or on the go an Tweetdeck for more formal client work….
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Social media as customer service is rapidly developing and we’re seeing many companies adopt this, communicating regularly with their cuustomers and implementing real change for consumers. But for the all the benefits of social media as a customer service channel there are also lots of difficulties that are steadily presenting themselves and it’s evident that many companies are learning as they go along, or having to make changes to internal structures to be in a position to take advantage of social network technologies.
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In a world that is obsessed with numbers on social media platforms I wanted to talk to you about pretty much the only number that really matters…The RSS reader. Twitter followers, Facebook fans and email lists can all be gamed and are fairly easy to rack up but getting a new RSS reader takes a lot of time and effort and is something that can only really be done by writing good content over and over again. We have a look at why the RSS reader is so important…
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With the Apple tablet set to launch tomorrow Stephen O’leary takes a look at the world’s media to see if they have any idea what the device is going to be called. As you can see from the graphs opinions are mixed but both the iPad and the iSlate seem to be very popular front runners. There is also a betting market with the always quick thinking attention seekers at Paddy Power running a book on all the favorites as well as some quite outlandish ones as well! The good news is that as you read this and the suspense builds there really isn’t too much longer to wait with the launch scheduled for 36 hours from now…
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Though there are now many tools that will analyse your presence online, the analytics of social networks themselves is a hugely valuable area that remains largely untapped. Facebook’s recent introduction of impressions per post could be a game changer and we need to more sites offering insights such as this, that add value to your social media campaigns.
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I wanted to start a simple little challenge for readers of this blog to set up a Tumblr blog as I set one up a couple of weeks ago and it has to be one of the simplest and most rewarding ways of blogging. I wanted to look at some of the reasons why you would want to start a Tumblr blog either as your first blog or as a second little blog on the side. The key with a Tumblr blog as you will see is that they really don’t take very long to get going or to create content for and they are very rewarding…
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Facebook connect arrived as a service in 2008 and it has steadily grown in to a crucial part of many site’s offering especially over the last year.The idea behind using Facebook connect is that you can leverage the huge community elements that Facebook bring as well as allowing users to log in using one of the most trusted services on the web with a simple one click solution. 1000s of sites have been adding Facebook connect over the past couple of years but we wanted to look at some of the sites and services that were using it innovatively and engaging users in a creative way by using people’s social graph. One thing we did notice when researching this article is that Facebook Connect is a big favorite with brands and agencies trying to build quick buzz around a microsite or service as they could leverage the viral natue of Facebook. SOme great creative examples in here…
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