Archives for 2009

Updating Facebook from Twitter – selectively!

Just a quick post for those of you who want to select which of your Twitter updates then update your Facebook status. Updating from Twitter with everything is simple to do, but most of us, especially if we use Twitter and Facebook for different things, should be more selective!

A young man in Oxford, Andy Young, has created the Selective Twitter application in Facebook. It’s very straightforward to set up and will result in your Facebook perhaps looking less frantic, making more sense to your friends there, and probably not losing some!

It’s all very straightforward, hence the lack of step by step notes here – thanks to Andy – you can follow him here http://twitter.com/andyy

Have fun!

Email newsletters

Most of us receive many email newsletters every week – but how many do we bother reading?

It seems to me that some are getting a bit beyond their original intentions – far to much “look at me” and not enough of what you want to read – less of the content that is worth us spending our valuable time reading.

Let’s face it, we are deluged with “information” and too much of the useful, readworthy information that we want is tucked away between advertising and utter nonsense. If you want to reach your reader, don’t make us hunt down the value in your newsletter – just give it to us!

Taking note of what your readers really want can even end up saving you time. An excellent example is Mark Lee; he’s recently reviewed the format of his newsletter for and about accountants – now it looks like a personal email from him – no distractions at the top – straight into the news with no faffing about (and fewer italics!). Some weeks ago he asked his readers for feedback and has acted on it – good marketing strategy in action.

Others, sadly, are going from mediocre to worse…

One network’s newsletter just landed, headed by a goodly chunk of imagery that was of no value, that I could see, which turned me off before I’d got to anything to read-worthy!
Another today had white text on a green background which was too hard to read,
and yet another always includes header images made up of photographs of the writer – far too “me-me” for my liking.
The worst is a weekly missive so poorly formatted that it embarrasses what purports to be a professional business – and not only is there no option to unsubscribe, but they don’t seem to read emails gently suggesting a more agreeable approach!

You’re wasting your time, at the very least, if you don’t respect your readers. I know that sending out email newsletters is something most of us can do with relative ease, but if you need some expert guidance, then find it and take heed of the advice offered. I’ll review my favourites for this soon – if you have any recommendations, please share them.

It’s a bit like creating a website with WordPress – just because we can all do it, does not mean that we can all do it well – there is still room for expertise to be sought – we need to know when that is going to be more beneficial to our businesses than all the DIY that we try to do these days – but that’s for another blog…

Be Sure of Your ReTweets

Some musings after recent having a retweet affect some people’s view of me, in a negative way.

Now we all know that retweeting adds a sheen of being in the know, a helpful person, knowing who to follow, but we do sometimes need to consider just what that tweet we’re saying is worth our followers, our network, taking notice of.

No matter how much you want to spread the word on behalf of your chum, colleague, boss – what will people think of what you are endorsing. Does it matter to you if some people will consider the link that you are suggesting they visit is dreadful and perhaps not up to your usual professional standard?

Twice now I have retweeted a link from someone that I considered a good sort – not even a close friend in either case, but I wanted to give them a bit of “moral support” in their latest endeavour – almost on a whim and just feeling friendly.

The first time I was asked if I had in fact used that person’s services myself – I had not, but I would – I was caught a bit on the hop though, I must admit (see the blog post ReTweeting on Twitter)

And the second time I was simply helping to spread the word in support of a friend’s launch. And it was to a web page that I cringed at, personally – not at all my style nor something I would encourage anyone to create. However this person knows their way in business and is pretty successful in their own right – so their methods may not be what I would endorse or buy into, but I am well aware that my way is considerably more conservative than many, especially in the world of Internet marketing (I’ll convince you all in the long run – I will, I will!). So I put aside my own snobbery and respect that the person I was retweeting knows what they’re doing – and stand by my retweet as I know that the offer being made was a genuine one, however it was being marketed.

Just something to think on though – two people that I hold in high regard pointed out that the link I had retweeted was dreadful (in so many words)… And that did bother me – two trusted business friends let me know that my retweet was not up to scratch – how many others did not share their opinion with me.

What do you think of this of retweeting something that you’re not quite happy about, and do you retweet without actually being sure of what you’re suggesting your followers give some of their attention to?

As we all get really stuck into Twitter, we need to consider these things – it’s bedding down now and can indeed be very useful. I hate to use the term but we are well into Twitter 2.0 now (much as I dislike such labelling of what is a natural and obvious evolution of any system, but you’ll know what I mean!).

Don’t plagiarise a good Internet marketer!

What a wealth of blog post topics today – just from keeping an eye on Twitter!

S0 – what’s riled me now? And why would anyone plagiarise a good Internet marketer?

To most of you this is not only obvious, but something you’d not consider doing anyway, but for the one or two who take the biscuit, a word of advice…

Don’t!

Whether you’re sneaky about it or downright obvious – copying a real expert’s content is stupidity. Do you really think the person you’ve considered to be good enough to provide you with your content is not going to also be good enough to keep an eye on where she’s placed her content? I am talking about a specific instance from today, and the original author is highly regarded as one of the best UK Internet marketers – how foolish to copy her content, and in a particularly stupid way (if you’re going to be dishonest, at least do it intelligently – ah – OK, that’s akin to a double-negative, I suppose.).

Well I’m going to step off my soapbox now, but keep in mind that someone who is genuinely good at this particular craft is not someone you want to annoy. Reputation management works both ways!

Remember the Oogachaka Dancing Baby?

Do you remember the viral phenomenon that was the CGI dancing baby? Last Saturday Jonathon Ross played Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling, complete with the “oogashakas”, which I have to admit I liked at the time, and remembered THAT dancing baby.

It was huge; we’d never seen anything like it on the Internet and the cgi file “went viral” as fast as our 33.6k modems (if we were lucky!) would allow (it’s true – read the New Scientist’s article on the promised boost to speed at the time!)

One aspect of my job at the time was to monitor the emails being sent around the world within Coopers & Lybrand, as it was then, and admonishing anyone sending anything unnecessary – boy, would it clog up the modems, especially to more remote countries who might enjoy a daily 10-minute connection at extortionate cost. Mondays mornings would be spent on deleting emails with what were then considered huge files (some of which not for a lady’s eyes – I did rather enjoy telling off those senders).

Anyway – watching this small animation was exciting to us then, back in the old days. I wonder what we’ll be able to do in another 13 years…