Curating Tweets on Amplify and using Twitter to get off pesky Email lists.

What do you use Twitter for? It seems a great use is to get opted out of Email lists where the opt out procedure leaves a lot to be desired (or doesn’t work).

Also a great use of Amplify is curating tweets right from Twitter.com or Hootsuite. The Amplify clipping tool is absolutely an essential part of my toolkit. Have you ever used it?

hackmanj 8:37am via HootSuite

Hi @WinZipComputing I’ve been trying to opt out of your Emails but they keep coming. Suggestions? #uce #spam

WinZipComputing 8:52am via TweetDeck

@hackmanj Happens sometimes that you might be on more than one email list. Write in to help@winzip.com, direct it to Bill. I’ll see to it

hackmanj 9:22am via HootSuite

@WinZipComputing Email sent, please confirm you receive it. Thanks Bill.

WinZipComputing 9:23am via TweetDeck

@hackmanj Got it. Now I need to see how many different people need to be involved to get you off whatever lists you are on. I will reply.

hackmanj 9:40am via HootSuite

@WinZipComputing do you agree it ought not be so complicated? A simple one click should be all we have to do, no?

Episode summary of the first Ampalooza (Podcast)

This week I had the opportunity to chat with some very cool people about my favorite social networking site Amplify.com. I have done several podcasts and lots of posts about Amplify, but after kicking the idea around with my friend Shonali Burke,  the panel began to take shape. The panelists were:

Shonali Burke – my main co-conspirator in this effort, past podcast guest and all around awesome Marketing and PR genius. Also blogging at Waxingunlyrical.com and shonali.amplify.com or @shonali.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul – a new media veteran regularly sharing her traffic tips at freetraffictip.com and asktinu.amplify.com or @tinu.

Alex Schleber – my biggest influencer of #curation efforts, also savvy and prolific. Definite power user of #amplify. Also find him at businessmindhacks.com or Curation FTW his amplog or @alexschleber.

Eric Goldstein – the discussion would not be complete without the CEO of Amplify. Eric joined us for the last 20 minutes or so answering questions and sharing his insights. He’s participated in several interviews. You can find Eric on egoldstein.amplify.com or @egoldstein.

The community at large – there were tons of great Amplify users present in the chat, many of them are listed here. I regret that I could not have managed more people on the panel. This could have been a panel of 30-40 people that are great trusted sources on Amplify. Many (but not nearly all of them) are listed at “Why sources are more valuable than followers“.

What's on your Mind? An Amapalooza!

Highlights

What can you expect by listening to this podcast?:

  • Insights from several different users with unique approaches
  • That Shonali has a wonderful speaking voice and accent (Thanks @zn_moment and @flapic)
  • How discussion and meeting people creates a lot of value for the site users
  • Ideas about how Amplify could scale and remain “intimate”
  • The power of the @mentions on Amplify (Originally suggested to Eric by Shonali)
  • Lots of great suggestions for new features
  • A conversation between the panel and Eric

Listen to the Ampalooza:

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Quotables:

Amplify is what Google Buzz should have been.” – Tinu Abayomi-Paul

The structure of Amplify does create some of that intimacy, it’s not just happenstance and it’s not just that the community is still relatively small.” – Alex Schleber

“(On Amplify being a great time saver) - The clipping function which is to me is the core of it and is so beautiful about it and the way that it clips and presents the posts particularly when you post them to Facebook is remarkable.” – Shonali Burke

“(On being willing to change priorities) - The internet is incredibly fluid and one thing we try to do as a company is try to remain as fluid as possible.” – Eric Goldstein

Self quote (I know, strange quoting myself):

“(On the Amplify team) - When you deal with people that treat you right and give a crap, it makes it really easy to be an advocate.” – Joe Hackman

Listeners, how would you have responded to the questions? Are there any features that you would have suggested to the Amplify team?

How to delete posts from your amplog on Amplify.com (Video)

This video is a direct response to the top two search terms that brought people to my blog this past week. First of all thank you for coming. This video answers two questions that a number of people are asking:

  1. How do you delete posts from MyAmpLog
  2. hide my amplogs on amplify

Here is the video:

Any questions about Amplify (or anything else) feel free to ask in the comment section or on my Youtube Channel

Determining the business value of HootSuite Pro

After receiving an Email from Hootsuite informing me that it was time to “Go Pro or Stay Free” I had actually already made my decision. The price they are charging to me seemed fair and after having evaluated the alternatives I will save a lot more than $5.99/month of headaches by using Hootsuite. The deliberations started for me months back on Amplify with a very in depth discussion about Hootsuite’s earlier announcement that they were going to start charging for the premium features with their service.

Hootsuite - Go Pro or Stay Free?

Pro or Basic?

Hootsuite, why do I need thee so?

Hootsuite is my social media dashboard. I manage my Twitter and Facebook accounts on there. I also access many customer pages and accounts as well, it is super nice to be able to have one place to go for all of these things regardless of where I am located, so why do I love Hootsuite?:

  1. The platforms it supports (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm etc)
  2. The custom dashboards (must have, seriously!)
  3. Ability to access customers accounts and collaborate.
  4. Scheduling.
  5. RSS/Atom feed support. (This is a absolute must for some of my clients accounts)

The surprising thing is looking at that list, I don’t really mention a ton of the other “features” that Hootsuite includes now as a premium product:

Hootsuite Packages

Decisions, decisions.

I am actually greatly looking forward to playing with the Analytics and Insights integration. I also really appreciate the fact that I have a product I can grow into adding team members as needed for an additional fee.

The bottom line, Owl’s are a sound investment

Ultimately I put my pragmatic business person hat on when evaluating the decision to pay for HootSuite. I just don’t see a free alternative that would not require a lot more effort or perhaps multiple products to do what I want to do.

The Owls are happy!

The Owls are Happy...

Did you stick it out with Hootsuite or find a better solution?

The Value of Serendipity in New Media

Liz StraussI had a great serendipitous experience this month, it all started when I noticed a great blog post that had some un-answered comments. The author happened to be someone that I have now learned is exceptional about responding to comments but there had been a technical challenge making it difficult for her to do so. If you want to hear the rest of that part of the story you can view this post on amplify, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about meeting that person, none other than Liz Strauss, in SF for lunch. When I saw her tweet that she just landed in SF I reached out to see if we might meet for coffee or lunch while she was in town. Eventually we worked something out and I was headed to SF to meet a fantastic blogger and person.

When Liz came across the street she was finishing a phone call and she stretched out her arms to give me a hug. To me this was a great gesture for someone I was meeting for the first time. We grabbed a table inside and started to chat. One of the things that struck me right away is how Liz was asking me a lot of questions, gauging my knowledge with sincere interest. Before long she began to share with me a lot of great ideas about blogging, being found, Twitter, hired help and other things. I am going to highlight that information in this post because much of it has been extremely valuable to me.

  • Some tips about article titles.
  • A strategy to find some help.
  • A great strategy for engaging content creators on Twitter.

Some prudent advice on article titles

Liz gave me some great advice, in a very simple way, about how to title articles. She suggested that you read your article and determine what question it answers and build the subject around that. The thought process was brilliant, when people search for that question they are likely to find your article with content relevant to their question. I know people that love tricky titles may not like this approach, but you can always tweet out different content and see which one works better. I have taken this method very much to heart and I am utilizing it when appropriate here on my blog.

A strategy to find some help

I explained to Liz that I cut back on my manpower over the past two years and I am the only full time employee at my company. I also explained that I am enjoying it but there are times when I would like to delegate some work. Liz asked about universities in the area and explained an excellent way to establish a relationship with professors and their top students. The idea is that you reach out to the appropriate subject matter professor – Computer Science if you’re looking for IT, Marketing if you need marketing and so forth. You offer to get involved with classes, possible helping with providing your area of expertise as a resource. You also ask if they have students that might be interested in internships. Going through the professor the idea develops further, they have a vested interest in the success. They are likely to suggest their best students, wanting to make sure that things work out since they are involved.

Engaging quality content creators on Twitter

The premise for this was simple, whenever you share an article see if you can’t find the author on Twitter and reference them in the Tweet. If they are monitoring their Twitter account at all they are likely to follow you and even RT you. This seems really obvious, but in an age where content curation has become so critical this technique is that much more valuable. Liz is an absolute pro blogger and power Twitter user. In fact look at what Klout says about her:

Liz Strauss Klout Influence Matrix

“You have the amazing ability to filter massive amounts of content to surface the nuggets that your audience truly care about.”

A little about Liz

While Liz was so generous with her time, I worked at learning more about what she does. I was pleased to hear that she does public speaking, puts on SOBCon and consults with clients helping them navigate social media. I have added the SOBCon event to my “must do” events for 2011 and I confess I am completely pumped up about it. You can find Liz via @lizstrauss on Twitter and via successful-blog.com.

Where to spend your limited time Online

You might have read last week about the PRapalooza on Blogtalkradio. During that episode I interviewed pros in the new media space Danny Brown, Gini Dietrich and Shonali Burke. In the course of the interview I had some prepared questions for the panel, the aim of those questions was to take advantage of the collective thought leadership of the group. One of those questions was:

If you could only spend one our per week on the Internet what would you do in that hour?

The responses of the panel were varied but speak volumes to where many of the pros spend their time. Here is a index of the time the panelists would spend based and where they would spend it as a % of the single hour allotment.

Panelist Listen Plt. Twitter LinkedIn Blogging Youtube Amplify Facebook Flickr Email Mktg
Danny Brown 50% 13% 13% 17% 8% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Shonali Burke 0% 17% 0% 50% 0% 25% 8% 0% 0%
Gini Dietrich 0% 33% 8% 50% 8% 0% 8% 0% 0%

As you can see the panelists had varied responses based largely on their strategy but there were some clear trends:

Panelists 1 Hour by Activity Type

This panel clearly believes that blogging and twitter are the two most important places overall to spend their time. I was also personally satisfied to see Amplify on Shonali’s list, no it was not a sponsored placement but I am to Amplify what iJustine is to Apple after all! It was also interesting to see how little time the panel would spend on Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube. Are there any surprises in this data for you?

The panel was then asked the same question but in the context of their clients:

If your clients could only spend one our per week on the Internet what would you suggest they do in that hour?

This is when things got a little interesting and much more focussed, here is the index per panelist for their client activity:

Panelist Listen Plt. Twitter LinkedIn Blogging Youtube Amplify Facebook Flickr Email Mktg
Danny Brown 0% 50% 0% 50% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Shonali Burke 0% 33% 0% 50% 8% 0% 0% 8% 0%
Gini Dietrich 0% 0% 0% 40% 0% 0% 0% 0% 60%

As initially noted this activity is far more focussed, it becomes more evident when you average the figures out:
Clients 1 Hour by Activity Type

Not only does this panel believe that their clients should be more focussed they believed blogging and Twitter were even more important for their customers to participate. We also learned that based on the market they represent the time spent would vary greatly – Gini Dietrich’s clients are middle market and she felt that Email marketing was very critical to success.

My Allocation

I had obviously more time to think about it than the panelists did, but I tried to do the exercise quickly and decided to add this right as I was finishing the post:

Listen Plt. Twitter LinkedIn Blogging Youtube Amplify Facebook Flickr Email Mktg
Joe Hackman 0% 17% 8% 33% 8% 17% 17% 0% 0%
Joes Clients 0% 25% 0% 33% 0% 25% 17% 0% 0%

I am probably more diluted than most people I do a lot of things but if it came down to only having an hour this is a pretty good estimation of what I would do with that hour. I’ve remained committed to Facebook because I think it is a excellent long term play. I am also very committed to maintaining a presence on Amplify.

For my clients I also recommended a more focussed approach but since I do see Amplify as a sort of hybrid between blogging and Twitter. I encourage my clients to use Amplify as a means to produce content on their blogs quickly and easily and as a place to start making connections. You can connect much faster on Amplify than you can anywhere else on the Internet in my experience. Those relationships carry over to your blogs, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere.

Question: How would you allocate your hour?

Episode Summary of the PRapalooza on Blogtalkradio (Podcast)

I had the great opportunity to interview some veteran’s of PR and new media on my PRapalooza episode on Blogtalkradio. If you’re looking for a primer on new media and PR this is a great opportunity to learn more from the pros. Here are some highlights that were addressed:

  • The differences between PR and Marketing
  • The biggest changes in and the future of PR
  • Effective use of (limited) time in social media
  • PR / Blogger relations
  • How much all of the panelists love Twitter
  • Spin Sucks
  • Learn why these panelists blog

Listen to the episode while you read on:

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Quotables (don’t worry these are just a few of many):

I don’t know how Danny does it, he is a blogging machine.” – Shonali Burke

PR people don’t pay attention to bloggers unless they are the a-listers.” – Gini Dietrich

“You’re always as influential as your audience allows you to be.” – Danny Brown

Worthy mention:

Danny Brown suggested that Robert Scoble probably would not be a good candidate for promoting cow manure. He made his point and we all got a good laugh out of it. This was not the only comic relief by our friend Danny Brown.

Best Question and Answer:

Question from Ike in the blogtalkradio chat: (Hey Ike, if you’re reading this send me your Twitter handle so I can cite you properly)

“What is the biggest business world misconception about PR that you’d like vanquished?”:

The idea that PR Professionals are spindoctors, that they lie to stories placed for their our clients makes me absolutely insane” – Gini Dietrich

PRapalooza

Where to find my distinguished guests:

Gini Dietrich @ginidietrich or http://spinsucks.com
Danny Brown @dannybrown or http://dannybrown.me
Shonali Burke @shonali or http://waxingunlyrical.com

Recommendations:

I like to ask my guests who some of the “lesser known” people are that they follow that we should watch. Here are the lists by panelist:

Shonali Burke’s Recommendations:

Herwin Icasiano @iherwin
“Wedge” @wedge
Steve Crescenzo @crescenzo

Gini Dietrich’s Recommendations:

Jason Verhoosky @jasonverhoosky and http://streamingcreative.com
Scott Hepburn @scotthepburn and http://mediaemerging.com
Joe Thornley @thornley and http://propr.ca
Jon Buscall @jonbuscall and http://jontusmedia.com
Becky Johns @beckyjohns and http://becky-johns.com
Marijean Jaggers @marijean and http://marijeanjaggers.com
John Heaney @johnheaney and http://orange-envelopes.com/blog
Craig Jarrow @tmninja and http://timemanagementninja.com

Danny Brown’s Recommendations:

Tim Jahn @timjahn and http://beyondthepedway.com
Antonia Harler @antwizzel and http://socialglitz.com
Shannon Boudjema @shannonboudjema and http://shannonboudjema.com
Troy Claus @troyclaus and http://troyclaus.com

If you’re listed here and have a blog you’d like me to link to, please leave it in the comments below.

Listeners, what was the highlight of the program for you? Any key take aways?

Joe’s top 10 posts for October 2010 on Amplify.com

It was an interesting month over on my Amplog. The top viewed article was a clip of a blog post here about why Amplify is my Third Tribe. In that post I explain why I did not return to third tribe after taking a break from it, I found that I didn’t have the need based on my experience at Amplify. The clip on Amplify is entitled 4 Reasons why Amplify is my Third Tribe – join the discussion on #amplify #in and it received 2784 views in October.

Mobile is still really hot and the combination of @ramonbnuezjr @alexschleber @svartling @flapic @jffcrmr @kstaxman @gkrew and a number of others that comment on mobile posts really made for a very in depth discussion about Windows Phone 7 in “4 Reasons why Amplify is my Third Tribe – join the discussion on #amplify #in” with a total of 2203 views in October.

People continue to feel frustration with “The Social Network” Facebook, in their latest move they make it possible for people to be added to groups without their input, that led to not just a post about it but also a video. The Amplify clip is entitled Frustrated by the new Facebook groups? So am I, and something you can do. #discuss #facebook and it received 2189 views in October.

I had a nice chat with Louis Gray last week and the clip of it at Amplify generated a lot of interest. Louis is a very smart guy, in addition to the original clip in the list below you can also check out the actual article. If you’re not already following my podcast but you’d like to go to my blogtalkradio page and choose “follow” you will get updates about my programs that way. The original post at amplify received 2006 views in October and you can check it out and join the conversation at My chat with @louisgray on @my6sense, blogging, marketing, and even some #follownow suggestions.

Curation, tech, crowd sourcing and commentary all seem to represent value as well, the remainder of the posts evolved around that content.

Here is a matrix will all 10 most viewed posts for October on Amplify:

Views Post
2784 4 Reasons why Amplify is my Third Tribe – join the discussion on #amplify #in
2203 Windows Phone 7 likely to benefit from low expectations via @kstaxman cc: @jffcrmr @flapic @ramonbnuezjr #mobile
2189 Frustrated by the new Facebook groups? So am I, and something you can do. #discuss #facebook
2006 My chat with @louisgray on @my6sense, blogging, marketing, and even some #follownow suggestions.
1856 New Format: My top 5 clips of the week on @amplifytheweb #amplify #topamps
1718 Crowd Source: Need help with #mobile phone and device security suggestions for #PTA talk. #crowdsource
1635 You know intellectual property and trademark law is going to be the #cashcow of the future. cc: @alexschleber
1374 Nintendo – it’s time to reinvent yourselves, again.
1253 What do you get when you cross 61 Re-tweets and 15 author-unanswered comments? Not a conversation. #surprisedlook
1176 Google now a huge player in the autonomous vehicle space? #wow via @scobleizer

What do you think of this format, did you find anything useful from this post? Let me know if you did via comments below.

Louis Gray Interview on Blog Talk Radio (Podcast)

Louis GraySince I’ve loved and worked with or used technology for most of my adult life, I knew that I would enjoy chatting with Louis again (the last time was with @egoldstein and it was about Amplify – listen here). I was first introduced to Louis in 2009 when I started following him on Twitter and occasionally reading his blog. During the interview Louis really lays out what it takes to be successful at blogging, I think there is something for everyone there. We also discussed his involvement as VP of Marketing at My6sense. It was obvious that Louis is excited to be a part of the company. I’ve installed it on my Android tonight and the first impression is very good, the UI is incredibly clean and stunning on my Motorola Droid phone. I will share more on it once I get some time using it. I’d rather you listen to the podcast then get the blow by blow here. I will just say if you have any interest in technology, new media, etc, this will be a great show to listen to. Louis has a very high level of knowledge and one thing I noticed is in spite of not having prepared any Q&A for this (we spoke for 5-6 minutes before the interview – and much of that small talk/sound check) he responds quickly to every question. I didn’t realize it until I was reflecting back on the interview while writing this.

Blog Talk Radio

Also I asked Louis to share some resources that people will want to check out, here are some people and blogs you might want to watch or connect with:

Frustrated by the New Facebook Groups lack of opt-in? So am I. (Video)

Frustrated that anyone can add you to a Facebook Group without your permission? I am too and I’ve been following the issue and discussing it all over social media. I’ve come across some excellent resources and a way to mitigate the damage from being added to a group that might be less than flattering. Please also join the conversation, I would like to know your thoughts about this. You can leave a comment below, or on Youtube, Facebook, AmplifyTwitter or anywhere you see me.