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Tweet Archivist Desktop Now Available In The Microsoft Store

Thrilled to announce that you can now trial and purchase Tweet Archivist Desktop in the Microsoft store. https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9PP9DFT7GJ2K

This is a very exciting development for the product. We also now have samples available of the raw JSON and Excel files that the tool exports:

http://files.tweetarchivist.com/desktop/samples/trivia.json

and

http://files.tweetarchivist.com/desktop/samples/trivia.txt

This tool is ideal for those needing to collect data for additional research and analysis.

socialmediadaily

Stumped by social media marketing? Follow this easy checklist to create a consistent social media internet marketing presence on multiple channels.

#socialmediamarketing

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Tweet Archivist Desktop Read Only Mode

We just pushed up version 1.0.0.34 of Tweet Archivist Desktop. This version has a new feature where you can open archives in read only mode, so that they aren’t auto refreshing all the time. You can enable this setting in settings by checking the box that says read only mode.

This was a customer request that we jumped on. Are there other features you’d like to see, either in this product or the web product? If so, let us know!

Tag Sleuth Gets Date Filtering

Tag Sleuth http://www.tagsleuth.com is our sister site that focuses on hashtag analytics across Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Vine.

They just implemented a much asked for feature: date filtering. Now you can filter the analytics of an archive by date.

This is real handy if you have a monthly subscription and want to get analytics by month, quarter or year.

#tagsleuth #Hashtag Analytics

carveblog

The Real Cost of Social Media

Social media is adapting at such a rapid pace, there are now hundreds of ways to communicate and socialise with friends, family, strangers and even co-workers on the internet. Due to this, it can be hard to keep up with all things social media.

According to GlobalWebIndex, in 2014 the average internet user spent an estimated 1.72 hours on social networking sites a day. People are spending more time online, which in effect, increases the growth of consumerism which businesses need to capitalise on.

11 Benefits of marketing through social media for your company.

Creating a social media account for your business is a great way to interact with loyal and potential new customers. Having an active social media account with a strong social media campaign can drastically help with market research and provide a fast and direct place for customer communications.

The greatest thing about social media is that those who are on it, are active consumers. For example, If a user from Twitter likes your product, they are very likely to tweet about it and share the news with their friends. This is positive for businesses as it is free promotion!

While some of the most popular social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are free to sign up, it is important to consider the later expenses that go into running a social media campaign.

Social media can be accessed from our phones and laptops 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so why not capitalise on such a powerful tool?

“How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” Seth Godin

Source: http://bit.ly/1jvHddz

Words: Jodie Ollivierre [Social Media Intern]

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The Science of Posting on Social Media

Check out this colourful infographic above explaining the successful ways of posting on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram and more…

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9 tips to Up Your Game on Twitter

Following on from our 9 tips to boost your Facebook’s Organic Reach we now have our 9 tips to Up Your Game on Twitter. Read our handy infographic to find out how you can reach more followers and improve engagement.

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Instagram Tips: Using Hashtags

Instagram Tips is a series that features Instagram-related pro-tips for both novice and expert users alike! Check out the Support Center, help.instagram.com, for more tips & help for Instagram, including basic information on how to use #hashtags.

Adding tags to your photos is a great way to find new followers and share your photos with more people. But hashtags can be tricky. To get the most out of them, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind. We’ll use this photo of a beautiful 1966 Volkswagen van as an example!

Be Specific

Choosing specific tags will help you connect with other like-minded people on Instagram. For this photo, instead of using the tag #van, we could use #vwvan. The photo will be added to that highly targeted tag page, where other Volkswagen lovers will be able to find the photo more easily (without sifting through photos of Toyota Siennas and Chevy Astros).

Be Relevant

Make it easy for other like-minded Instagrammers to find you by making sure your tags describe your photo. Using very general tags like #photo might get you a few likes, but with over 700,000 photos tagged #photo, it isn’t the best way to make your photos stand out and connect with the people most like you. Relevant tags will help you attract new followers who will take a genuine interest in your photos and continue liking and commenting on your photos over time. For the photo above, in addition to #vwbus, we could use the tag #volkswagen.

Be Observant

Pay attention to the other hashtags used on photos that use the same tag as yours. You may discover a popular hashtag you hadn’t thought of on your own. For example, on photos tagged #volkswagen, we can see that many of those photos also use the tag #vw. When you do a search for those tags, you’ll find out that Instagrammers use #vw to describe their Volkswagen photos more than twice as often as they use #volkswagen!

After tagging the photo with relevant and specific tags, you may also find that people sharing photos similar to yours are using even more specialized tags that you hadn’t thought of originally. For our photo, we found that photos tagged #vw and #vwvan also use #vwbus.

Do you have any tips for tagging your photos? Reblog this and let us know in the comments!

The photo at the top of this post was taken by jameswagner.

socialmediadesk

Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 2: All about hashtags

This post is part of a series. Read Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 1

Hashtags, love them or hate them, are important because they allow users to categorize tweets. When a user publishes a tweet with a hashtag, the tag appears as a link and allows readers to see the larger conversation around a topic or keyword.

#butfirst, the origin of the [Twitter] Hashtag

Hashtags sprung up organically during the early days of Twitter. Users wanted to organize tweets, particularly for live events. In 2007, Chris Messina sent out this question to his followers and quickly, users began using hashtags, though Twitter didn’t officially support them until 2009. (Back then, you had to manually search for a hashtag as no automatic link occurred.)

As I alluded to above, hashtags are both loved and hated. Here are some examples that illustrate both:

#thegood

Breaking news. Hashtags organically rise out of many big breaking news events. Users watch these to get caught up on what’s happened. Some examples from this past year: #BlackLivesMatter, #JeSuisCharlie, #BringBackOurGirls, #BaltimoreUprising / #BaltimoreRiots.

Live events. Users will often use a common hashtag for an event, like a concert/festival, an election, or even holiday.

Official hashtags. Now that hashtags are so popular, brands, TV shows and event promoters often publicize a hashtag so that users can interact easily. (They also do this for marketing and self-promotion, of course.)

Callouts. You can ask your followers to contribute to a story by responding using a hashtag, like we did with #RaceOnTech.

#thebad

#hashtag #all #the #things. You’ll see this EVERYWHERE. As hashtags reached peak popularity, they spilled into pop culture, our language and pretty much everywhere. So, plenty of Twitter newbies are confused and hashtag #every #word #like #this. Also, snarky Twitter users do this for emphasis and to make fun of others. #guilty

The vague. Disclosure: This one is my personal pet peeve. I often see people (including many journalists) using vague hashtags such as #weather and #traffic. What’s wrong with that? Hashtags exist globally, not just locally. So, if a user clicks your #weather hashtag, they’re going to see a lot of irrelevant content. Additionally, if a user wanted to know what the weather or traffic was for your area, they’re not going to search for #weather or #traffic. They’d search more specific terms like “405” and “LA” to find out about problems on I-405 in Los Angeles.

Spam. Hashtags are not immune to spam bots and the like. If you come across one, do us all a favor and report it.

Should I use a hashtag? When?

As a user, I’m more interested in searching for keywords than for hashtags. Shadi Rahimi, of AJ+, touched on this in a post at Poynter’s Mediawire:

You might have thought that by tweeting #CallMeCaitlyn last week you were guaranteed engagement. Perhaps, as the hashtag was trending up. But a quick glance at Topsy near the end of the day showed “Caitlyn Jenner” as a keyword set on Twitter was trending higher than the hashtag (700,000+ tweets vs. 200,000+). [AJ+] sent out two tweets for that story: One with a hashtag at the very start of the trend, and one without at the end of the day.

What was the advantage of using the hashtag if “Caitlyn Jenner” trended higher? Shadi went on to write:

By using the one hashtag, we consciously entered an existing, catalogued online conversation with a long shelf life, where the agenda had already been set by users — knowing an actively engaged audience would be likely to retweet.

But for most stories this is now the exception for us rather than the rule.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure your tweets include the keywords people might search for if they’re trying to find out about a particular topic. If there’s a relevant, in-use hashtag, include it if space allows, or send out another tweet that includes the hashtag. Keep in mind the good and bad use cases mentioned above!

CAUTION! Hashtag ethics

As a journalist, you must exercise caution when using hashtags. While it’s usually best to use what’s already in use by the public, sometimes the hashtag might convey a bias. Shadi also wrote about this in the same Poynter piece, detailing how AJ+ used hashtags regarding the unrest in Baltimore. Be sure to give it a read.

If you’re unsure of whether or not a hashtag is ethically sound and okay to use, be sure to check in with your editors. At NPR, you can always email the social media team, as well as our Standards & Practices editor Mark Memmott.

How do I find relevant hashtags?

There are a lot of ways to find hashtags. Here are some to get you started:

Listen/read. What are other users already using? This is also important because sometimes, popular use of hashtags change over time.

If you’re covering an event, check the official websites to see if there’s an official hashtag.

Check what’s trending on Twitter. On Twitter.com, trends are listed in multiple places, including on the homepage. You can customize them to see local trends, too. In Twitter apps, you can find trending topics by clicking the search icon.

Check Topsy to compare keyword and hashtags use.

Should I create a hashtag if there isn’t one?

Keeping in mind the above, the answer will be rarely. But, there are always exceptions to the rule. As a regular Twitter user, you might want to categorize some your tweets so that you can go back later and reference them. You could do this to collect all the photos of your dog.

I particularly love how Sree Sreenivasan, chief digital officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, uses hashtags. Sree gives a lot of talks about social media and tells the audience to tweet what they learn using #sreetips. Additionally, Sree tweets a lot of the cool new tools he finds using #coolnewtools. (This is a great hashtag to checkout!)

NPR does something similar with #NPRreads, where correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept us reading. Each Friday, we highlight some of the best on the Two-Way.

How many hashtags should I use?

Zero, one or two will usually get the job done. Any more than that and you’re pushing the patience of your audience.

Hashtags elsewhere

Hashtags are not exclusive to Twitter anymore, however they are more popular on some social networks than others:

Facebook has them, but they’ve failed to really catch on there.

Tumblr uses them as tags for blogs and can help others discover your content. We use them on the Social Media Desk tumblr to categorize our posts. Here’s our Twitter tag, for example.

On Instagram, they’re extremely popular. Users can use up to 30 tags on a single photo/video. Here’s a helpful guide to Instagram hashtags.

Other relevant links

We’re using hashtags less than ever. Here’s why. from Shadi Rahimi, AJ+

Hashtag journalism: The pros and cons to covering Twitter’s trending topics by Ann Friedman

Thanks for reading. I’ve still got a lot more of your questions to answer, so look forward to another post about Twitter later this week.

- Lori Read Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 1

socialmediadesk

Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 1

Turning our focus back to bootcamp, I wanted to answer some of the basic Twitter questions I often get. (Some of these were sent in to me via email last week. Thank you!) Keep in mind that the answers below have been written for individual journalists and may not necessarily apply directly to what we call branded accounts (official accounts, such as @NPR, @MorningEdition, @NPRGlobalHealth).

Because these are getting somewhat long, I’ll be sharing only a few at a time. Let’s get started:

What should I tweet?

You might not need help with this one, but many people do. I like to recommend that people start tweeting using the “rule of thirds”:

Tweet your stuff: Promote your content one-third of the time. Link to your stories. Post your photos.

Tweet other stuff: Promote other people’s content one-third of the time. This could be your colleagues stories or other things you’re reading/enjoying. This could also be supplemental material that supports your particular beat. Tweeting other people’s stuff helps establish your credibility around a particular topic or beat, as well as creates relationships and *warm fuzzies* in the Twitterverse.

Be human: One-third of the time, you should engage people and/or show your own personality. Answer people’s questions. Talk to your followers. Share a glimpse into your life. Do not post photos of every cupcake you eat.

How often should I tweet?

Often. There’s a wide range of what’s acceptable here and the “right” answer will vary from person to person. I actually hate giving a definitive answer here, too, because it’s subjective. Here’s what I think is appropriate for most journalists: Three to 10 times a day. I would also say it’s okay to go a few days without tweeting (like weekends, vacations, etc.). I would caution against over-tweeting, too. I know some reporters who tweet 30+ times a day. Some are able to get away with it without losing followers because they have a strong fan base who really wants to hear from them that often. For most of us, however, it’s likely that tweeting that much might have a negative effect. Essentially, in order to be getting value out of Twitter, you need to be contributing to it on a regular basis, but don’t go overboard.

When should I tweet?

Anytime and all the time. Not the answer you wanted, right? I know! There’s no “right” answer here, either. But, if you’re really needing some guidance, I would recommend spacing out your tweets throughout the day and throughout the week, not excluding weekends. I try to think about when people are most likely to be using their mobile devices, and tweet then. (In short: mornings when people wake up and are commuting; lunchtime, when we grab our phones and down our sandwiches; evenings, for the afternoon commute and after work, when we all crash on the couch to watch TV.)

Can I schedule tweets?

Yes, but only if you PROMISE to be human, too. You’ll need a tool to do this. We recommend Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Buffer. They’re all free and get the job done.

Perform a self audit

Even if you think your Twitter game is on-par, I highly recommend doing a self-audit from time to time. Consider the following and make changes as necessary:

Is your Twitter bio up-to-date?

Does my Twitter avatar need updating?

How often am I tweeting?

Am I promoting my content too much (instead of mixing it up by promoting others and interacting)?

Are people retweeting me? If not, why?

Are people tweeting to me?

Do I have a Twitter background? (If not, you should!)

Are people following me back?

Am I following the right people? Who is missing? Who can I unfollow?

Who do you think is doing a great job on Twitter? What are they doing that you aren’t?

What were your most successful tweets this month? Last month? (Check it out at analytics.twitter.com.) Is there a theme?

Next week, I’ll answer these questions about Twitter and more: