Here’s ten links to some pieces you may have missed on Seldom Seen Kid this month :-)
Tumblr: Why You Are Not On It Yet
Are Twitter Trending Topics The Next You Tube Video Viral?
How Does The Brain Create Meaning?
Blogger Engagement
Tumblr And Collaborative Content
Even Rock Stars Aren’t Rude
The Importance of Transparency
Mommy Bloggers’ PR Blackout
The power of a retweet
3 Twitter relationship building steps
I wrote yesterday about the power of retweets, and how they can help us to build a relationship on Twitter. Today I want to examine this more closely and throw at you a three step theory on how we can take this further and develop a relationship with someone over time.
This may seem naive, but I believe that we are seeing a shift in the way Twitter is used. Many ‘power users’ (y’know the guys that dominate the must-follow lists) it appears to me, are inundated with @’s and DM’s from users wanting to know more from them, and sometimes it all becomes a bit too much. This happens on successful blogs frequently where so many comments are left for the writer, that he or she cannot possibly take the time to respond to each one.
This has transferred to the Twittersphere and it is sometimes frustrating that a platform supposedly so open, can at the same time feel so closed because those big guys and girls won’t engage.
Now this is not supposed to be a ‘how to talk to celebs on Twitter’ guide. I hope that this will help us to rationally think about how to approach a stranger on Twitter that is someone we want to talk to. I say we because this applies as much to me as it does to you or your gran.
1) Use retweets
Retweeting is a simple way of making ourselves known to a fellow Twitter user. If we retweet someone’s tweet, it will appear in their mentions stream, or if they’re savvy and have a separate RT stream setup, they’ll see it even more clearly. This can bring us to the attention of person x.
There’s no need to go over board on this at all, and if we do it’ll seem like we’re obviously after attention. Just RT any content we genuinely think is useful to our network, and we should be fine. That’s why we want to engage with them after all isn’t it.
If they are a good Twitter user, they’ll thank people who retweet them. If they don’t, they may not be someone we want to engage with in the first place. If they thank us once or twice, we can begin to thin about engaging in a direct conversation with them.
2) Answer A Question
One of the many great things about Twitter is that people use it to crowdsource information; where are the best restaurants, who’s recently got the latest phone etc etc
This means that person x may from time to time be looking for some info around a certain topic and ask their Twittersphere. Why not, if we know the answer, let them know, and point them in the direction of some useful information by way of a link? Hopefully they’ll say thanks and we can start a conversation up as we share an interest (why else would we know the answer to their question?)
3) Ask Them A Question
If we’re at a point where we’ve been identified as adding value to person x’s Twitter stream we should know as they’ll have started following us. This gives us an opportunity to perhaps ask them a question about something they are knowledgeable about and to enter into conversation. If they are willing to answer or help you find out, we’re well on our way to getting to know person x (IRL/ITL rules applying natch).
At this point, hopefully we’ll be starting to think about following other members of their Twittersphere and trying to engage with them too. If we can follow this process with two or three of person x’s followers and start to appear in person x’s feed more frequently, that is essentially third party endorsement and another indication to our usefulness.
This is by no means a quick or perfect process, and of course it probably has many flaws which I hope you’ll all take pleasure in pointing out!
What I have tried to do is provide a simple way of making relationships easier to build and maintain for anyone who may be struggling.
I do expect flaming from the Twitterati, but from those guys I’d hope for some real insights :-)
Retweets possess a magical power.
There are many articles looking at retweeting, Kevin Rose explains how to retweet and what it is, Jeff Louis tackles the thorny issue of auto-retweeting and this post on Blog For Profit reckons you can even earn money by retweeting and being retweeted.
So a quick recap for anyone who’s like ‘huh, wtf is a retweet?’
A retweet is a function in Twitter which allows you to repeat someone else’s tweet in order to share it with your followers.
Why would you do this? You might think the tweet contains an interesting point, or a link to some compelling content.
But, there’s so much more to it than that.
Retweeting is one of the most important functions a new user to Twitter can learn to harness and one of the most indicative forms of just who to follow – if you find someone who is being retweeted all the time, likelihood is they’ll be throwing out some really interesting stuff to their followers.
Being retweeted is a bit of an ego stroke – I like seeing ‘RT @geetarchurchy blah blah blah…’ appear in my mentions feed in Tweetdeck.
Being retweeted is a sign that someone else thinks that the tweet you’ve just sent out, is worth sharing with their followers.
Retweeting is a way of letting someone you’re following, but isn’t following you, know that you’re following them.
Retweeting is a relationship ice breaker.
If you don’t know somebody, but you’d like to enter their Twittersphere, it’s a great way of showing them that you are listening to, and genuinely enjoying the content they are sharing on Twitter.
What’s better than to retweet someone, and then for them to acknowledge that retweet publicly in a follow up tweet later in the day?
It alerts their followers to you and may even persuade some of them to start following you, growing your network and hopefully making some worthwhile connections in the process, whilst also being made aware of other great content.
Now, I don’t usually consider myself to be the sort of chap who is ruled by brands and professes ultimate brand loyalty to any one manufacturer of whatever in particular.
It did strike me a few days ago however when I was thinking about buying a new pair of trainers, that I’d only been considering buying a pair from Gola, the British sports wear guys, famed for making tennis shoes. I have two pairs for Gola trainers already, and this made me think that perhaps I’ve found the first brand I feel comfortable wearing as a ‘label’.
So I decided to have a look and see what Gola’s web presence is like. First they have an official website, as everybody does nowadays. It’s presented in a nice easy format with the option to manually search and click through the site to find your favourite shoe which makes use of big bright images, this I like a lot – if you’ve got a product that you’re confident of, shout about it.
Secondly they’ve got a Twitter account (@GolaClassics) which is updated daily since it was created on July 8th, which seems to be coming out of the team in the Carnaby Street store.
So far the stream is, as is to be expected, a bit broadcasty, but once they’ve got the hang of it, they’ll be rocking. The tone is very chatty, but so far there’s little real content, which will of course change over time.
What struck me when I was walking round the store, was the amount of people who were already wearing Gola trainers, obviously looking for a repeat buy.
I am by no means a trainer expert, but I do very much know what I like – that kind of retro look really does appeal, and the contrast of colours in each trainer makes them a bit different, but not overly garish, and easily accessible. And of course, and most importantly, they feel comfortable.
I’m a fan of the Harrier range, and currently have three pairs, brown with blue trim, brown with orange trim and now the yellow and blue. The shape fits with the jeans I tend to wear and doesn’t make my feet look too small or too big.
I think there is a really big opportunity for the likes of Gola to embrace social media – follow Zappo’s lead, and to make the online retail experience fresh and exciting. I hate shopping, but if it’s a bit quirky and a bit more interesting that just wandering round a bunch of shops, I’m more likely to engage.
It is not often I will confess being taken in by a brand, but I’m afraid it appears I too have cracked.
4Chan took on AT&T today, and won. One is a vibrant online community, famed with starting memes, the other is a telecommunications giant. Yesterday, AT&T blocked access to 4Chan for no seemingly apparant reason, an action that caused a mild stirring of frustration online.
Comments flooded the Techcrunch article, ranging from:
“4chan is perhaps the biggest mob-mentality site there is. This is not a site you want to mess with. AT&T will be getting DDoS’d up the wazoo, amongst other things, no doubt.”
And:
“AT&T for even thinking about upsetting 4chan. You don’t DO that.”
To:
“You’re one of those fools that thinks the internet is an appliance. The wild west wasn’t the wild west and neither is the internet. This issue is one of censorship. You can lead, follow or step aside.”
This evening, AT&T have revealed that the site was blocked because of a “denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org.”
Now this may resolve the issue, and one wonders what the reason for the denial-of-service attack was in the first place.
However this raises an important issue over ISPs, or other third parties, restricting access to content that they think their users should not have the right to consume.
We already have of course the great firewall of China blocking everything, including Twitter, but the US is much more liberal than their Eastern counterparts.
It is a worrying thought for many, that their Internet usage will be determined according to what someone, somewhere, believes they should and shouldn’t be allowed to view.
The Internet is the torch for freedom of speech. Be you a left wing or right wing nutcase, a troll or a passive consumer of ‘stuff’, it is your right to view to view what you like, and to say what you like, without restriction.
You have the right to choose what information you want to take in, let’s keep it that way.
The BBC recently unveiled Shownar, a site dedicated to tracking online conversation about Auntie’s shows. Shownar collects up all the online content discussing BBC shows and then aggregates it to tell you and I, what’s causing most waves in the world of social media.
Dan Taylor explained on the BBC’s Internet Blog:
For as long as the BBC has been making programmes, audiences have been talking about them and we have done our best to showcase some of those conversations on-air, via programmes like Feedback and Points of View. However, it is only with the advent of the internet that those conversations have become accessible to a much wider audience. Here on bbc.co.uk we have a range of blogs, messageboards and other commenting tools, which enable users to talk about our output. However, much of the conversation about BBC programming inevitably happens away from bbc.co.uk on people’s personal blogs or microblogging services such as Twitter.
This demonstrates that the Beeb are very much in the know when it comes to the online world. Indeed, Hitwise reported recently that the BBC iPlayer had overtaken Myspace and had become the 20th most visited website in the UK – that’s some feat.
And what’s more, the BBC are currently putting together ‘an open and collaborative documentary on the way the web is changing our lives’ called Digital Revolution. Aleks Krotoski (yes she, from the wonderful from Bits and the Guardian) presents and looks at how the net is changing the way we live – hence the strapline.
Auntie might be getting on a bit, but she’s certainly keeping up with the times, and she seems to be trying to innovate a litle bit too.
Online TV service Hulu is set to start showing programmes in the UK as the Telegraph has revealed that the US company has been in talks with broadcasters such as ITV.
Currently the service can only be watched from the US, so a step towards the UK market would provide an interesting proposition for the online viewing public in Britain.
BBC iPlayer recently overtook Myspace and became the 20th most visited website in the UK, a sure sign that video on demand is indeed, in great demand.
Hulu presents the BBC with a small competitive issue. Does the BBC standalone and hope that it’s programming will be strong enough to beat an ITV plus Sky, plus whoever cohort? Or, do the BBC jump on the bandwagon?
It makes sense to me that the BBC will standalone. They are a public service broadcaster and as such, are tasked with making their content available to everyone as easily as possible.
Hulu will be offering an advert based service one must presume, to be able to afford the shows on offer from the likes of ITV, and would also perhaps toy with the idea of running a subscription based service. These are two potential barriers to entry in an online world where content is seen as in the public domain and therefore free.
However, Hulu would be successful in the UK for two reasons.
a) People want to consume TV content on their PCs
b) People don’t mind adverts before programmes
Where Hulu will face challenges is that the quality of the shows being put out by ITV at the moment is pretty low and they will find themselves possibly focussing on the wealth of US TV programmes as a USP, as many of these will be unavailable to anyone without freeview or Sky etc.
What does this mean for the production of UK based shows? Only time will tell.
I’ve recently been exploring the world of street art and blogs which cover this dark yet wonderful obsession. street art is one of those things that you will miss as you idly stroll by, but keep your eyes peeled and all of a sudden you notice little things that before you’d have neglected to register.
Here’s some Street Art blogs to get your aerosol can requirements sprayed:
1) Dr.d
2) Streetsy
3) Wooster Collective
4) Graffiti Research Lab
5) Art of the State
6) Street Stickers
7) C6 Dotmasters
8) Cut Up Collective
9) Syd
Social Network aggregator Digsby has hit one million users and they have now started an affiliate program that pays fans $1 for every new user they sign up.
The BBC has reported that a braodband supplier in Hull is instigating a three strikes rule for anyone caught file-sharing. Internet users in Hull can’t change suppliers as Kingston Communications, the company owning broadband supplier Kangaroo, are the only providers in the town.
Twitter have launched a Business 101 service, providing businesses who are new to Twitter and don’t know how to use it, with a starting point. This is the first step in a new business model for the micro-blogging service, and certainly an interesting one at that.
Razorfish have created a SIM (Social Influence Marketing) score for brands engaging online, reports Social Times. This is an interesting development and I’ll be keen to see this tracked over the course of the next 12-18 months and to discover how much the score fluctuates.
It’s amazing how two people can see the same picture in totally different ways.
This image by Howard Hodgkin called ‘The Sky’s The Limit’ makes me think of a hot summer’s day, strolling through a field with the only thing visible, a distant line on the horizon.
You might see this as like looking through a skylight, or an obscured view looking out to sea.
What can you achieve by looking at something from a different angle, gaining a different perspective?
Kimia M. Ansari has recently written about an HSBC ad campaign which encourages a different point of view when looking at two scenarios.
The ads are an on-going series of poster-size images superimposed by a single word. The words are simple and describe two opposite extremes. Combined, the images and message are straight-forward yet open ended.
This encourages the viewer to see two scenarios from alternate points of view and consider both in equal measure.
Looking at a problem from a different perspective can often result in frustration and anxiety that the issue won’t be resolved. However, sometimnes an entirely seperate point of view and perspective can lead to cracking the code that is finding itself elusive to you.
What can you do to make this process easier?
A simple technique is to remove yourself from your usual thinking place, be that at home on the sofa, or your desk at work. You could walk through a park or even an art gallery, and find inspiration comes to you there, where your comfort zone has been completely removed.
It can be very difficult to do this in ordinary working life, but, even a lunch time in the park, as opposed to being shackled to your desk, can provide room for your imagination to breathe and consider a new approach to a quandry you find yourself in.
What do you do to help yourself find a new perspective upon an imperfect picture?
