The incredible growth of Pinterest

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The Basics of Twitter #3 – Further twitter concepts

If you’ve been following this series on Twitter basics, then by now you’ve understood what twitter’s about, you’ve set up your account, and you’ve started tweeting. So today we’ll be looking at a few more twitter concepts:  retweets, hashtags, links, ‘ping’, ‘via’, spam and twitter clients. Ready? Let’s go!

Retweets (also known as an RT)

If the power of twitter lies in conversations, then think of a retweet as a conversation starter. In real life, when you’re talking with someone, you might say, “Hey, did you hear that…” – a retweet is exactly that. When you retweet someone else’s tweets, then you are sending this message to all your followers, saying, “Hey! Did you hear about this yet?” Retweets are powerful. If your tweets are retweeted by others, then the people you reach with that tweet are going to be followers of your followers… and so on, for as many times as your tweet is retweeted.

I use retweets in my @BloxhamMkting account in two ways. Firstly, each retweet is an indirect compliment to the person I’m following. It says, “Hey, thanks for the information; it’s worth sharing with my followers.” Secondly, it’s a way to tell my followers that this information is worth knowing about; it’s worth reading. Generally, I’ll retweet information that will help them with their digital marketing, however I’ll also retweet tech news, education news, and – from time to time – quotes I find inspiring, things I have found funny, and so on.

Another advantage of the RT is that I can use my own timeline as a content curation tool!

Hashtags (#)

Adding a hashtag to your tweet places it with everyone else’s tweets that carry that same hashtag. Hashtags are searchable, meaning that a search on a particular hashtag will retrieve all tweets, in reverse chronological order, containing that hashtag. This is particularly useful when it comes to breaking news, as you can keep up-to-date with whatever is happening with that particular story, by reading everybody’s tweets on the topic. Often topics may have multiple hashtags; choose which one/s are right for you in that particular situation.

Generally hashtags are added at the end of a tweet. Sometimes you may use a hashtag, or two, in the main text of your tweet, however filling your tweet with multiple hashtags isn’t rated too highly when it comes to twitter ‘best practice’. Don’t do it.

Links

To add a link to a tweet, copy the URL of what you want to link to, and paste it into your tweet. Some URL’s are long, so make things easier for yourself by ‘shrinking’ the link, using a shortener. Most twitter clients (see below) have inbuilt shorteners, and twitter.com also states that your link will appear shortened. “ Any length of URL will be altered to 19 characters.Your character count will reflect this.”  If you don’t shorten your links, the chances of your followers retweeting your tweet are smaller. I’ve sometimes gone to retweet someone’s tweet, only to find that the length of their original tweet makes retweeting it difficult. And if it’s too difficult, requiring too much editing, than I don’t bother.

‘Ping’

When you send a tweet to your followers, but want to make sure that one or more of your followers notices the tweet, you can ‘ping’ them. To do this, simply write ‘Ping’ then their twitter handle (s) at the end of your tweet. That way, the tweet will end up in their @mention stream – but it’s not directed only to them, but to all of your followers. Useful, hey!

‘via’

This is similar to ‘RT’, in that you’re acknowledging who your source of information was. Like a ping, the ‘via’ bit goes at the end of your tweet. Use either your source’s name or @handle.

Spam

Twitter spam happens. It’s annoying, but easy to deal with. If you suspect that a tweet in your @mention stream is spam, click on the person’s @handle, and you’ll see their synopsis. A quick check of their timeline will show you if they’ve sent identical tweets to multiple people. They probably have also 1) joined twitter fairly recently; 2) are following hundreds but have only a handful of followers themselves; and 3) have sent a very large number of tweets, considering the length of time they’ve been on twitter. Some may also boast photos that would be appropriate on a less-than-reputable dating site.

Once you’ve identified that the person is indeed a spammer (or maybe even a bot!) then you have two possible courses of action – blocking them, or reporting them. I choose the ‘Report Spammer’ option, as this blocks them as well. More information about twitter spam, phishing, what you can do if your account gets hijacked, etc etc etc is on this excellent blog post.

Twitter Clients (and services and applications)

HootSuite. TweetDeck. Buffer. Seesmic. Echofon. You may have heard of some of these, but not known that they were twitter clients. These five are the ones I have used / experimented with, at various points in time. There are many others out there, some great, some pretty dodgy. A good twitter client will allow you to set up your personal dashboard for multiple accounts across multiple tools (not just twitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, WordPress, FourSquare, etc etc). It will give you the capability to write updates on each, and schedule these in advance. It will have in-built analytics as well – and good support if you need it!

My Twitter Client of choice is HootSuite. In fact, the image on this post is a screenshot of my dashboard, showing the Facebook Pages timelines (Wall Posts, Page Feeds) of three of my clients. I used TweetDeck for some months, but  it got buggy on my mobile devices, and a few times, after updating, it lost all my account settings and I needed to re-input them all. Very annoying. I liked Buffer, however an upgraded account (which is what I would need, for the multiple client accounts I manage) is more expensive than the upgraded HootSuite account I have, and does less overall. Their analytics were more user-friendly (although less thorough) than HootSuite though. Seismic and Echofon were also pretty good, but weren’t in the same league as the others.

There is a lot more to twitter than what I have covered in this series on Twitter Basics. That being said however, I hope that these posts have helped you to understand enough that you can start out on twitter for yourself. Happy tweeting – and I’d love to hear from you!

The Basics of Twitter #2 – Setting up your account… and using it!

Okay, so now you understand theoretically how it’s going to work, so let’s dive right in. You need to create your account. Choose a handle, send a tweet or two, follow some people, etc etc. Here’s my tips:

Select your twitter handle.

Think about your handle carefully. Ensure that it reflects EXACTLY what you want it to say, then tweet according to the followers you see yourself having. My experiences in this area are below:

1. My first foray in twitter was under the handle “@GoodOldTalk” (for the goodoldtalk.com website that I’d just launched). And I used it for both “GoodOldTalk” tweets AND “personal” tweets. In hindsight, this was a bit of a mistake! I needed to get my audience clear in my head, and write ‘GoodOldTalk’ tweets ONLY.
2. Once I started my Masters degree, I was strongly encouraged to enter the twitterverse ‘properly’. So I set up my own personal account, with the name “CeridwynatUni” – and seeing as I was at Uni, this made sense to me at the time. Later however, I decided that I didn’t want to define myself by being a student. And having a difficult name to pronounce, I decided to make things easier for my tweeps and change my handle to a phonetic pronunciation. Thus my personal account is now @KRidwyn, and I use it to send non-work-related tweets. I do NOT recommend changing handles – in case you absolutely have to. It can create confusion in your followers, and that’s something you want to avoid.
3. I also run @BloxhamMkting, my business account. I use this account for work-related tweets only, and have quite a different following here than I have on my @KRidwyn account. I was also fortunate enough that this handle was available.
4. The other twitter accounts I manage are my clients’ ones. @Chancellor_Park, @CCCQLD, @St_James_LC and @StPaulsLPS –all of these twitter handles reflect the names of the organisations, meaning that they will not need to change at a future date.

Fill in your profile.

Add your photo. If you’re tweeting for your business, add your logo or your main branding photo. But do NOT leave it with just the twitter default image – the egg, the bird, or whatever they’ve given you. Not if you want people to follow you. Then fill in some more details, your bio, etc. If you like, set up your page as well – get it to look the way you want it to. There are twitter-provided backgrounds, or you can customize your own.

Send a tweet or two.

Try it. It takes some people a while to get the hang of condensing their thoughts into the 140-character limit. And don’t worry too much about typos. We all make them!

Follow some people.

Find people in your field of interest and follow them. I’d suggest ten to a dozen in each area. You’ll quickly decide who is worth following and who isn’t, who broadcasts and who’s inactive. Unfollow those who you don’t want to follow anymore, add those who you think are worth following. And do this (cull some, follow others) regularly! When you’ve been following for a while, you’ll get some idea of what sort of people they are. Cull those you wouldn’t really like associating with, and cultivate relationships with those you want to network with. How do you do this? Read on!

Start a conversation.

As I wrote above, when you’ve been following for a while, you’ll get some idea of what sort of people they are.  And if the opportunity presents itself, start a conversation with them, using an @mention (where you type their twitter handle) at the beginning of your tweet. This will, of necessity, make the tweet fewer characters. Type accordingly, and try to not use text-talk. If they reply, their @mention to you will appear in your ‘interactions’ stream. Check it regularly. And reply to them! If someone has spent the time writing to you, it’s good netiquette to reply. Still a little hesitant? Write a tweet to@KRidwyn or @BloxhamMkting – I’ll reply!

If you follow someone, and they’ve followed you back, then it is possible to send them a Direct Message, also called DM. These are private messages, which use a ‘d’ or ‘DM’ at the beginning of the tweet, together with their twitter handle. Again, of necessity, your tweet will be shorter.  Use these when the message you want to send is for their eyes only. Don’t use DM’s if it’s just a generalised message, where it doesn’t really matter if others read it. That just makes you look silly, and you will probably annoy the person you’re DM-ing. Alternatively, if the message contains private, or sensitive information, use a DM rather than an @mention. Otherwise you run the risk of offending the person you’re conversing with!

So by now you’ve understood the basic theory, and applied it in the creating of your own twitter account. The last post in this series covers a few more twitter concepts: retweets, hashtags, links, spam and twitter clients. Stay tuned!

CC image courtesy  Slava Baranskyi at http://www.flickr.com/photos/woofer_kyyiv/3581392721/

The Basics of Twitter #1 – What is it? Why use it?

So you’re thinking about jumping on the ‘Twitter bandwagon’. Great! Congratulations! Personally, I love twitter. I find it far better than facebook for networking with the people that I *want* to network with. But, assuming that you know very little about what twitter is, this series on ‘Twitter Basics’ will hopefully teach you how to use the service – so that you can enjoy using it as much as I do!

Firstly, what is twitter? At its most basic, twitter is a way of informing others. Your message is limited to 140 characters. When you post it, your message is called a ‘Tweet’. It is then sent to all of your followers (sometimes called ‘tweeps’) and forms part of their tweetstream. Tweeting is useful if you want to get your message out quickly – and if you have a large number of people following you, then your tweets will generally reach a wide audience.

‘Broadcasting’ your tweets is a good way to inform your audience of up-to-date information. But it is by no means all that twitter should be used for. In fact, if all you do is broadcast tweets, you will probably find that people will stop following you, as they don’t want to be talked at, they want to be spoken with. And that’s where the power of twitter lies.

Twitter is an online community. For that community to function, its members need to speak with each other. This is done in one of two ways: through mentions (which can be viewed by the general public) and Direct Messages (which are private, viewable only by the parties involved).

Mentions and Direct Messages are where the conversations are. This is where you want to be, conversing with those you follow, and those who follow you, as this will build your networks. Personally, very few of my friends IRL are on twitter. And so I find that my twitter networks are professional ones. I interact with people who inspire me, who I’d like to aspire to be like in some area of my life. I learn – a lot! – from their tweets, and am kept currently aware of developments in the fields which I am interested in. Twitter is my own personalised link to Professional Development – whenever, and wherever, I want it. And for that, it is absolutely invaluable!

CC Image courtesy Rosaura Ochoa at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosauraochoa/3419823308/

Image-based promotion

Over the past two weeks, St Paul’s has had a poster campaign running at Morayfield Shopping Centre. We used the same posters that we had up over the Christmas period last year – and I’d like to credit the record number of enrolments the school received, to these posters. Well… it may not have been to these exclusively, but nevertheless…!

And last week, I was inspired by @connectyou‘s post on the new Covers for the Facebook Page Timelines – to be rolled out on the 30 March, but which are able to be ‘published’ beforehand. So yesterday, I got busy. Evidenced by three cover photos. Check them out!

Caloundra Christian College:

St James Lutheran College:

And last but not least… St Paul’s Lutheran Primary School:

So – what do you think?

Top ideas from #iPadexplore – Part 2 of 2

#iPadExplore – more good stuff that I didn’t get to in my last post…

1. Apps, and App-cessories

Time Timer

Explain Everything

Puppet Pals

DropVox

Camera+

PhotoMess (pictured – using the images I took today at the conference)

WaterMyPhoto

Videolicious

iTimeLapsePro

Prezi Viewer

Disney App Mates

Game Changer – Game Board for iPad

Piano Apprentice

iBooks Author

iMovie

dotEPUB

QR Codes

Tattoo You

Creative Book Builder

Book Creator for iPad

Avid Studio

Reel Director

Popplet

2. Links

Todaysmeet.com

Prezi.com

Edmodo.com

simple.wikipedia.org

3. Lists (well, it should actually be in the singular…)

Presenters at the conference – definitely worth following on twitter. They’re at:

http://twitter.com/#!/KRidwyn/ipadexplore-presenters/members

(and deepest apologies to Liz Ratcliffe – Sorry, but I couldn’t find you!)

Using the tools to teach the ‘illiterate’…

As many of you are aware, I run the website GoodOldTalk.com – a space for people over 50 which is part  Computer Help Guides, part Forums, and part Social Network.  It’s been online now for just over two years, and in that time it’s grown a membership of well over 500. My main aim behind the site was to help Seniors understand more about their computers, in particular, the internet. And what has evolved is this – Seniors, some of whom have never used Web 2.0 skills before, now post regularly on their own blogs, and interact on a daily basis with other Seniors in the GOT Forums.  My oldest blogger is 94, and has posted about his 70^th wedding anniversary; and in the forums we have gardeners, crafters, lawnmower racers and Grey Nomads all sharing opinions and swapping stories and photos!

In a world where many are marginalised technologically, I think that we often don’t place enough importance on the need for people to be digitally literate. Soon after GOT was launched, U.S. President Barack Obama designated October 2009 ‘National Information Literacy Awareness Month’. (He was probably unaware of GOT at the time, though!)

The value of GOT lies in the fact that Seniors are supported in learning more about their computers, and through the computer, about other digital technologies. Since discovering the whole concept of screencasting, I have been inspired to convert each of the GOT Computer Help Guides into this format, as I believe that this particular tool holds immense potential for enhancing the effectiveness of their learning, due to its ability to record demonstrations on the computer screen, and enhance these with audible narration.

So now all I need is a tool to give me 48 hours in day…

Things are looking up…

The idea of the High School Library holds quite a bit of excitement for me. As an aspiring soon(ish)-to-be-qualified Librarian, the challenge of engaging teenagers with reading is something to which I may reasonably look forward to, one day.

Source: flickr.com via Randy on Pinterest

 

 

Just think of it – those young minds taught to enquire effectively, to understand clearly about their world, and to dream big regarding how to change this world – hopefully, for the better.

That’s been the aim behind these entries this last couple of weeks. How to use even just a few of the multitudinous number of Web 2.0 tools, to improve the High School Library – into a place where not only is it seen to be a place of relevance, but that it might actually become the place of choice for teenagers seeking information. This would be much more preferable than their turning to just a simple google / Wikipedia search!

Using RSS feeds, explaining and teaching about copyright and Creative Commons, leveraging the hundreds of thousands of wikis for collaborative learning, going mobile (as in, connecting with patrons ‘on the go’ – where they are) and even using gaming as a valid tool, were all ideas explained in this High School Library series.

In my opinion, it’s just so important to capture the minds of the children – especially in a day and age where information is ubiquitous, and not all information is accurate or free from bias. If our children can be taught that google and Wikipedia do not hold all the answers, and that discernment of information is a valuable if not crucial skill to have, then our future as a whole society, looks better.

Would you agree?

My ‘crystal ball’ view of the School Library

I was trying to decide on a title for this post, but kept coming back to the idea of ‘Through the Looking Glass’; which, of course, had connotations of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis’ Carroll’s drug use, and all things ‘curiouser and curiouser’. Why? I hear you ask. Well – it’s that whole ‘what implications does X have for Y’ topic. The discuss ion surrounding the possibilities that lie in our future; specifically, the future of Libraries. Following on from yesterday’s “How to improve your Library’s reputation”, I started thinking about what else a School Library should probably be doing. And that’s when my thoughts turned to Creative Commons.

What’s this? I hear you ask. This is them – in their own words:

And again, in mine…

http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf

The copyright story on Prezi

So – my prediction? The School Library – in fact, all Libraries, and their respective Librarians – will be needed to show people how to use Creative Commons, and how to attribute properly. We all know that students plagiarise wily-nily from the internet – images, text, etc. Often teachers, too, when planning worksheets, happily copy and paste pictures off the internet without attributing. I am not suggesting though, that teachers are malicious in their intent! Just uninformed. As are the large majority of people in professions other than teaching, who do the exact same thing. Hence my prediction that Librarians will be needed to inform their users regarding how to attribute properly, so as to not infringe on the copyright of the creators of that content.

Of course, Libraries can also use the CC licensed content for their own use, in websites, promotional documents, and the like – just as they can create content, upload it to Flickr etc, and license this content within whichever category they feel is appropriate. However, I feel the main implication Creative Commons has for Libraries is to add one more thing to the role Librarians have to fill; that of teaching their users how to approach this whole issue of copyright. So there you go… my crystal ball view of CC and Libraries. What does your crystal ball show you?

CC Image courtesy PR at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolorestifo/24926633/

Planning for successful blog writing – Step one of two

I’ve often read how important it is to plan ahead. In a blog, I guess that means ‘work out what you want to say, ahead of time’. Which is good enough in theory, but when it comes to putting it into practice, sometimes that’s when things go awry. So I’ve decided to not just work out what I want to say, but when. And by this, I mean scheduling.

Schedule, using the right tools for you

Scheduling – the planning of a certain event to happen at a certain time – is helped enormously by the huge variety of online tools that others have made, that we can use. We are no longer restricted to a pen and diary-with-pages (remember them? I actually still use one – do you?!), or even a computerized version of diary / calendar. Since the explosion of Web 2.0 we now have tools that schedule or day for us (or around us, as the case may be!) and all it takes is a little bit of planning. I discovered, last weekend, the website www.ifttt.com and I think that this might quickly become a big part of my ‘organizational’ life, as it were. I also am enjoying playing with, understanding, and using HootSuite to schedule tweets from the variety of twitter accounts I oversee. So now it’s just blogging that I need to schedule.

As you can probably tell (you’re reading it!) I use WordPress to blog. A huge thanks to @katiedatwork for introducing us, in the INN333 course, Sem 2 2010. And although I haven’t played much with the ‘scheduling’ section of WordPress, I  will be. That way, I’ll be forced to keep ahead with my writing, which is always a good thing. Write ahead of time, edit, make it what you want, then determine when it is you want that post to be published. Easy! And one less thing to worry about. Again, less worrying – always a good thing!

So, that’s what I’ll be doing. Scheduling. What I haven’t done in the past, which is why last Friday’s post only happened Saturday morning. How about you? Do you schedule? If so, what tools do you use? If not, why not? (And what’s your favourite colour!)

CC Image Courtesy Earls37a  at http://www.flickr.com/photos/indraw/4857101224/