Category Archives: Social Media Strategy

A useful list of Twitter tools

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A very useful list of Twitter Tools for those who are trying to track and make sense of the “Twitter-verse.”

Twenty Six Twitter Tools To Track Tweets | e-Strategy Internet Marketing Blog

I’ve been finding so many Twitter tools and passing them along that it’s hard to keep track of them all. The Twitter tools I want to keep track of are those that monitor, measure, and analyze Twitterers and their traffic. I figured I’d compile them here for your benefit.

The article is quite good, but misses a few new ones that I’ve discovered. TweetVisor seems designed as a browser-based control panel for hard-core twitter users. The UI could use some work. TweetDeck is not browser-based, but is an Adobe Air-based application that really lets you see a dashboard of Twitter users, followers, replies, and searches.

PeopleBrowsr like the Passover song, Dayanu, (updated to link to the lyrics) lets you have a browser console with not only Twitter users, followers, replies and searches, but includes columns from Facebook, LinkedIn, Identi.ca, FriendFeed and a host of others. PeopleBrowsr is in Alpha, so there are some rough edges, but it is quite useful if you want to get lost in your network’s status for hours at a time. And then, the closed-beta, but much talked about CoTweet lets multiple people manage a twitter account with a well-thought out interface. It is definitely designed for companies who are trying to listen to customers and make sure people get responses.  As it is closed, that’s all I can share, but watch out for these guys. (They did give me a beta account, and let me know a little more than I can say at this time.)

TweetLater is useful (for me) in helping me manage followers. Their “vet followers” feature lets me see everyone who’s added me recently and decide if I will add them back. If I don’t check in, TweetLater can automatically add them after a certain period of time. This is helping me a lot to follow back and keep up-to-date.

So, that’s a quick roundup of Twitter in my world. Let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

Presence is the new Dialtone

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At today’s SocComm (Social Communications) event, I moderated the panel on “Presence as the new Dialtone.” (Thanks to Aswath Rao, Doug Levin, and Alon Cohen). What does this mean? Well, in one sense, Dialtone is a signal that you have the ability to communicate. Pick up a landline phone and you hear that reassuring tone that lets you know you may now make an attempt to get in touch with another person or group. (Cell phones don’t have that tone – but they have ‘strength indicators’ that give you odds on a call going through). Dialtone was almost always available – a consistent reminder of your ability to connect.

Dialtone was a 20th Century marvel, but in the last part of that Century, our ability to communicate online started to exceed the mere dialtone experience. Instant messaging programs such as ICQ, AOL IM, MSN and Yahoo messenger gave us the ability to see if friends were at their computers, and if they were available or busy.  Dial tone turned to ‘busy’ when a phone call couldn’t go through – but we has no idea if the line was busy due to error, a short call, or an extended conversation. When we do connect, as Aswath Rao noted “We often start our calls with ‘Am I disturbing you?’ or ‘Is this a good time to speak?’”
Eventually, IM programs let us share our status messages – a short line about what our free/busy/away data meant. Things like “Rushing to Finish a Project” gave context to our status. We knew more about the person on the other end of the computer – and the likelihood of conversation and connection in a particular timeframe. Continue reading →

Steve Mann: Enterprise 2.0 and Process

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Steve Mann on his personal blog discusses some of his work at SAP. I think this piece is really important as a way to think about the “executive dashboard” of the future, with a way to help move conversations that happen online into processes inside organizations. These conversations can be used to enable organizational change and responses. Read more:

AbleBrains: Evolution, Enterprise 2.0 and Integrating Conversations with Processes

What we’ve done is integrate conversations into enterprise processes so that they are actionable on behalf of the enterprise. These take 2 forms. Conversation -> Process integration and Process -> Conversation.

A good example of Conversation -> Process integration was demonstrated yesterday briefly but to elaborate, by pulling Tweets into the SAP Business Suite and applying a sentiment engine to those tweets, a customer service rep can make those conversations actionable by identifying and emerging customer or brand issue. Someone may be complaining about your product or service. With Sentiment analysis not only can an organization proactively address a looming customer crisis but they can initate corporate processes such as raising a Customer Service Ticket to initiate a problem resolution process.

Social Media Week New York

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Social Media Week New York | Social Media Club

Most people think of the Bay Area as “the” hub of Social Media activity. But, during the week beginning Feb 9th, New York will be hosting the Social Communications Summit (update: register with discount code “SMC” to save $50), The Shorty Awards, NYC Twestival, Online Community Unconference (update: register with discount code “friendofhoward” to save $25), Social Media Breakfast, plus O’Reilly’s Tools for Change.

To help people navigate this overload, SMC NYC friend Toby Daniels and a board of other folks in the community created Social Media Week NY. The site features a calendar of the events above, plus additional events being put on, unconference fashion, all around town.

Note, I’ll be moderating a panel at SoComm, so please say hello if you’ll be there.

The One Thing in Social Media

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In the movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal’s character is told by Curly (Jack Palance):

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? [holds up one finger] This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.

(Update: YouTube won’t let it be embeded, but the clip is there.)

I was on a client call, and they were asking for that “one thing” they could do to start in Social Media. I knew it immediately. And, unlike Curly, I’m here to tell you the one thing for Social Media….
Continue reading →

Announcing an affiliation with CommCore Consulting Group

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I’m proud to announce that in addition to my ongoing work, I will also be helping clients of CommCore Consulting Group learn about Social Media strategy, tools and methods for communication.

CommCore Consulting Group Launches Social Media Practice

CommCore Consulting Group announces a set of basic and advanced offerings on the concepts, tools and best practices for engaging online and wireless virtual communities. CommCore is a leader in executive-level communications training, messaging and strategy for corporations, associations, government agencies, and non-profit and advocacy organizations. CommCore has added Howard Greenstein, a recognized leader in Social Media, as principal consultant/program developer for this effort.

Newspaper Guys doing new media at Social Media Jungle

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Media Panel
Daniel Honneman – Works with Chicago Tribune, and LA Times @dan360
Etan Horowitz – Orlando Sentinal   @etanowitz
Kevin Sablan – Web Taskforce leader for Orange County Register – @ksablan

Dan: Journalism isn’t in trouble – it is going to change and adapt – you don’t necessarily need organizations, but orgs help. Reporters pitch editors, editors pitch other editors, and if you don’t make the cut you don’t get on the page.

Quote from Tom Friedman – amazed at number of Journalists who hate people.
Journalists are something of Entrepreneurs – they need to be willing to connect with people, with each others, and share ideas.

Etan: the idea of branding or self-promotion is blasphemy to many journalists. But, they need to make sure blogs cover their articles, articles should show on DIGG, etc. If it’s not good content, why not promote it?
Dan: But if you look at stats for stories some don’t really get read.

Kevin – Now with online you can really understand what is driving readership daily – and who those people are.  As opposed to Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers – which have less accuracy.

Journalists wouldn’t normally quote other paper’s articles – but now web properties would link to other paper’s stories if the story is relevant.

Etan- Twitter posts can point to blog posts that lead to hundreds of comments.  Once his blog is so well read, he can really have the discussion of “What is News” vs. What are people interested in reading.
Kevin Sablan – Didn’t start a new Twitter account related to the fires – they used their own followers and own audience . They also did a lot of listening.
They did create a page that aggregated Tweets About the California fires, and it was a useful resource for them and for everyone

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Jeff Sass at Social Media Jungle

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Example – Disney employee heard Sass and his girlfriend debating riding Aerosmith the ride – 70 min wait for a 90 second ride and his girlfriend didn’t want to go.
The Employee gave him a fastpass for that hour, to let Jeff jump the line and his girlfriend didn’t have to wait very long at all.

Here’s a link to Jeff Sass’ “Learn, Baby Learn” presentation from the first Social Media Jungle event. Much of Jeff’s presentation is similar today – and I wanted to link this because his slides are really smart and well thought out.

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