Jul
20th

Oneupweb Reviews: 4 Ways To Schedule Tweets And Facebook Updates

Posted by Adam D on July 20, 2010 at 4:04 pm

Have you ever just wanted a simple way to send your Twitter and Facebook updates at a later time? Maybe you’re going away for the weekend, or you’re at work all day but you still want to send your friends and family updates. Here are a few of our favorite ways to schedule tweets and Facebook updates.

FutureTweets:

The great thing about FutureTweets is that you can schedule tweets simply and months in advanced. For example, you can schedule all your family and friends’ birthdays, then let FutureTweets remember them for you. I’m pretty sure my grandma does this somehow with snail mail cards. She never forgets a birthday (you can’t keep this secret forever grandma!).

Twuffer:

Twuffer is another free, simple, and easy to use way to schedule your tweets. The layout is clean and professional. It also includes a calendar and lists the tweets that have already gone out.

Su.pr:

StumbleUpon is really starting to grown on me. I’ve always enjoyed using this site personally but now they are adding some nice features that help to simplify your social media world. For example, you can schedule updates through StumbleUpon using their URL shortner, Su.pr, and share it across your Twitter and Facebook profiles.

LaterBro:

The thing I really like about LaterBro is its simplicity. You login with either your Twitter or Facebook account. Next, you’re taken to an intuitive scheduling interface. You will have no problem figuring things out from there. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

Let me give a warning to those interested in automating your updates. You don’t want to use these services too much, especially as a business. People are looking to connect with another person, not just automated news or updates. While these services can be useful and save time, they are not meant as a replacement for authentic tweets and Facebook updates.

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up (but use sparingly)

What’s your favorite Twitter/Facebook scheduler? Let me know in the comments below!

Read more Oneupweb reviews on other Twitter Tools.

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Jun
14th

Oneupweb Reviews: Social Media & the 2010 World Cup

Posted by Adam D on June 14, 2010 at 3:56 pm

The FIFA World Cup is one of the most watched events in the world. Though soccer (or football as it’s known outside the USA) is only recently catching on in the United States, it is one of the most popular sports around the rest of the globe. It’s no wonder that the 2010 World Cup, taking place right now in South Africa, has caught the social media bug. It’s not uncommon these days for promoters of large events to utilize social media. Both the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and MTV Movie Awards were integrated with social media marketing campaigns.

Here are a few ways to stay connected with what’s going on in the 2010 World Cup.

There are several World Cup News feeds. You can subscribe to the latest news, interviews, photos, and videos. You can even follow individual team news, photos, and videos.

Twitter has created a World Cup 2010 page to encapsulate every second of the world game action.

Click on a flag to select a country and view only tweets pertaining to that country’s hash tag. The feed you see in the screenshot above is tracking the hash tag #USA, which doesn’t always apply to the World Cup, but can be helpful if you’re looking to chat with people from your country. If you click on “View Match” on the far right of the page you can see tweets from both competing countries.

Though YouTube didn’t create a separate page specifically for the World Cup, ESPN’s YouTube Channel has done a decent job of covering the news from South Africa.

However, in my opinion the social media integration for the World Cup has been disappointing. I haven’t seen any creative innovations like the Olympic Tracker, or the MTV Movie Awards Tweet Tracker. All in all, the FIFA’s social media integration is pretty basic. RSS feeds and… that’s about it. Everything else was created by parties outside of the World Cup Committee. At the very least, I would like to see Facebook’s Like button under World Cup photos, videos and articles. You can click on the share button located on the World Cup’s home page but, again, basic integration would be nice.

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Down

For being one of the most popular events in the world, this really should have had more social media integration. I can think of a dozen different ways that the 2010 World Cup could be spread virally through the web. Perhaps they felt soccer was already popular enough, but I really have no idea why more wasn’t done.

At any rate, here’s a summary of what happened last week in the England vs USA match.

You can also view the video highlights from the match here: England vs USA. And don’t forget to watch USA vs Slovenia Friday the 18th.

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Mar
24th

Oneupweb Reviews: Activists Use Social Campaign to Influence Change

Posted by Adam D on March 24, 2010 at 2:21 pm

Have you ever wondered how much of an impact a social media campaign can have? Since social media’s inception, we have seen its influence grow. For example, many political pundits attribute the successful political campaign of President Obama to his social media strategy. Though some say it can be difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media, there’s no denying bottom line results. Which brings us to a recent social media-based campaign instigated by the environmental activism group Greenpeace.

It started with a report: Caught Red-Handed: How Nestlé’s Use of Palm Oil is Having a Devastating Impact on Rainforest, The Climate and Orang-utans. This report makes the case that Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rain forests.

To spread the word about this report Greenpeace encouraged Facebook fans to change their profile picture to the image below:

Several Greenpeace activists also began leaving comments on Nestlé’s Facebook Fan Page, cleverly asking them to give the rain forest a break. Nestlé responded to the flood of comments by threatening to delete posts if users adopted an altered version of the company’s logo.

This only added fuel to the fire. Users felt Nestlé was missing the point.

Greenpeace also released a video that immediately went viral, but Nestlé requested that YouTube censor the video. A “censored version” was soon released.

So did the campaign ultimately have an impact? Greenpeace demanded that Nestlé stop using Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil, and in a statement released March 19, 2010, Nestlé said, “After the publication of Greenpeace’s ‘Illegal Forest Clearance’ report in 2009, we started our own investigations, reviewing the allegations that the report made. As a result of these investigations, we took the decision to replace Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil with another supplier for further shipments.” Nestlé also stated that the company would be moving to “Certified Sustainable Palm Oil” by 2015.

Whether you side with Greenpeace or Nestlé, there’s no doubt that this campaign has had an impact and influenced change. Not to mention, this serves as a notice to brands. You don’t want just anyone managing your social media. A tactful tailored response from Nestlé could have put water on the fire instead of gas. You need someone who “gets it” and is allowed the freedom to respond in a real, sincere, down-to-earth way.

So to review the effectiveness of Greenpeace’s campaign, there’s no doubt that it has had an impact. For the effective use of social media we give this Greenpeace campaign an…

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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Mar
15th

Oneupweb Reviews: Twitter Geolocation

Posted by Adam D on March 15, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Geolocation-based services have been dubbed as the web’s next big thing. There has been a proverbial war going on between location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare. Facebook is even adding integration with these services to its platform. So it comes as no surprise that Twitter has expanded its geolocation feature to stay competitive.

You may have noticed on your Twitter home page that there is a new feature – Add a location to your tweets. If you want to add this feature – Turn it on. Don’t worry, you can choose individually whether or not your tweets will include a location (we’ll cover that later).

From there, you will be prompted to turn on the feature once again.

After following the above instructions, the location feature is now enabled. Now your tweets will include your location like the image below.

While the Twitter geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, this is the first we’ve seen on the site itself. Also, the location is no longer by your coordinates (longitude and latitude) alone, but includes your town or neighborhood.

One of the features I appreciate is the ability to choose how specific you want to be when it comes to your location. Tweets can display the ‘place’, exact coordinates, or both. The default display is ‘place’ (like a neighborhood or a town). So instead of saying exactly where you are at, by default, Twitter will add your location as a city or neighborhood, keeping your location fairly general.

Although (so far) Twitter’s location feature lacks checking-in as an incentive like Foursquare, in general, it is a welcomed add-on. I also appreciate Twitter giving users so much control over the feature. If you don’t like it you don’t even have to use it. But they don’t stop there. Once you opt-in, you can also control how specific you want your location to be. And if that wasn’t enough, before you send out each tweet you can decide whether or not you want that particular tweet to include your location.

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

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Mar
10th

Oneupweb Reviews: Hollrr!

Posted by Adam D on March 10, 2010 at 3:06 pm

Just the other day Lisa Wehr and I were tweeting about the latest technology products. “We are such consumers.” I said. Lisa replied, “You bet. I must have new and flashy.” If you’re anything like most of us at Oneupweb you love new gadgets, and just recently I discovered a site that allows you to keep up on great new products and services that your friends are discovering. Meet Hollrr!

If you’re familiar with Twitter, or Foursquare, Hollrr will come pretty easy to you. The only difference is that instead of updating people on anything and everything, with Hollrr you update people on products or services that you bought or used. Hollrr believes there is enough of a market for this type of service.

On Hollrr’s About Us page they say they love underdog companies.

“We love the products they make. We love the passion of their employees. We love that their founders put everything on the line to follow their dream and bring you something you think is awesome.”

We’ve looked at the social networking and search engine trends before in some of our White Papers, and people are relying more and more on reviews from people they trust. Hollrr may have caught onto something here. We like the idea behind Hollrr, now let’s see how they’ve implemented this idea.

After you’ve signed up and logged in, click on the All Products button in the upper right. This is where it got interesting for me. From there you can explore trending tags. This alone is a wealth of information!

You can choose from the many trending tags in just about any area of interest. I chose the #electronics top ten to get started. From there I was given a list of top ten trending electronic products. Of course, you have the typical popular products, like the iPhone and Macbook, but I wanted to see some underdog products that I hadn’t heard of yet. Skull Candy Ear Buds, hmmm, that looks interesting.

After clicking the link I was able to see what others had to say about the product.

From there I cruised on over to Skullcandy.com, and like everyone said this product looked pretty cool.

There are many more features included in Hollrr. You can search for popular products within the last 30 days, or the most popular overall. You can earn points, win badges, and even become the owner of a product.

If you couldn’t tell already, I’m pretty excited about Hollrr. Only time will tell (in the midst of all the real-time, location based, micro blogging services) if Hollrr stays afloat. But as for Oneupweb, we give Hollrr an

Official Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up!

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Mar
3rd

Oneupweb Reviews: Skittles Experience the Rainbow Marketing Strategy

Posted by Adam D on March 3, 2010 at 2:51 pm

Skittles is one brand that we like to keep an eye on. The rainbow candy’s creators seem to have a good grasp on social media and cutting edge marketing techniques. It helps that the nature of their product allows them to create some unusual marketing campaigns. Today, let’s dive into the marketing angle Skittles has taken now.

You never know what to expect when you type in the URL www.skittles.com. A few months ago you would have been directed to the Wikipedia page for Skittles. But today we had a chance to “Experience the Rainbow,” and what an experience it was.

Not only was I encouraged to “Taste the Rainbow” as you might expect, but also to (and I quote), “Lace the Train Slow.”

The play on words didn’t stop there. There’s “Trace the Vain Bro,” “Encase the Faint Glow,” and “Chase the Vain Crow” to name a few.

It appears that Skittles has created these entertaining bits of content for users to share via social media. Skittles understands that having your customers help sell your product is the new business model. That’s because the use of search engines is waning in comparison to social search. Just last night I had a Facebook friend ask if anyone had ever ordered prescription glasses online. I told her yes, gave her the site URL, and now she plans on purchasing glasses there. People trust product recommendations from people within their social circle far more than from anywhere else.

To review the Skittles website alone would be shortsighted. And the pieces of content kind of freak me out. For example, this badly Photoshoped astronaut clown brings up some mixed emotions. (Primarily, my childhood fear of clowns and love for space exploration.)

By the time I was done scrolling through the Skittles site I wasn’t sure what to think. And as I scrolled, I realized you can’t reach the end of the site… just like a rainbow.

Instead of reviewing the website itself, let’s give our assessment of the overall Skittles marketing strategy:

Official Oneupweb Review: Oneup-Thumbs-Up

By observing online trends and planning accordingly, Skittles is a brand that understands where digital marketing is going.

Speaking of trends, earlier today we released a new white paper entitled Search Gone Wild, An Eye Tracking Study on Google’s Real-Time Results.

One trend we’ve seen is that traditional search engines are being used less and less, and social networks more and more. Just a few weeks ago Facebook flew by Yahoo in total number of unique visitors reported. Google even created its own social networking tool recently, Google Buzz, to get in on the action. Like Wayne Gretzky pointed out, you have to skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s at. And search is, and has been, going social.

Observing these trends, we here at Oneupweb say, “Follow the Trends Bro.” It’s time to experience the rainbow.

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