Category: Twitter

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Social Engagement? It’s The Timing Stupid!

I have recently read a very interesting report on the timing of engagement for social media. Specifically, what time of the day and what days of the week appear to be important for connecting with Twitter and Facebook users. You can read the full article and see the graphs on this web page.

After reading the article, I made some pretty sweeping changes to the times we post our updates for clients on both Twitter and Facebook. Not only that, but we are going to monitor and then report back – did changing our update times really improve the level of engagement both in actions on Facebook and follower growth on Twitter. It should be an interesting new white paper! We are following sixteen client sites for our report, so although this is a small group, the insights will be very interesting.

Based on the report this is what we personally are doing:

For Twitter, we are posting at 6 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 6 p.m.,  and 9 p.m.

For Facebook, we are posting at noon and 7 p.m.

We are planning on doing further testing for Facebook on increasing the number of status updates as it now appears with the change in the Facebook news feed that Business Page updates may be lost in the noise with just one or two updates a day.

Pretty interesting stuff! I’ll make sure to post a link to my report and share my findings as we get more data.

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How to Bulk Upload Tweets into HootSuite

If you have the HootSuite Pro version then you may have already tried this option. If you are using HootSuite Free then this may be the reason to upgrade, and if you are not using HootSuite at all, this may be the reason you take a look.

HootSuite is an online Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, and Facebook Page update and status scheduling tool. I have used it for team management and self management of small accounts. Just this last week I checked out the Pro account version Bulk Upload of status update features.

First although HootSuite offers a sample .csv file to review and to use for your own updates, I found that Excel kept changing the date format and did not offer the date format they wanted for load, and so I moved to Notepad to do my list creation.

This is the format to use:

09/02/2011 09:00,”Check out our blog writing prices and blog clients on this page.”,”http://ow.ly/3S5ru”

Note that the date format is day first, then month, then year followed by time on a 24 hour clock. The update must be wrapped in quotes, and then the URL wrapped in quotes. Each of these three fields is separated by a comma. You may be able to leave your URL as pointing to your own domain, but to be safe, I shrunk my URL ahead of time.

Of important note is that HootSuite will not allow duplicate updates. So you can not load more than one version. Additionally the Bulk Upload feature allows for 50 unique updates to be loaded maximum at a time. I found that the load creation was time consuming, but was able to be used on multiple accounts and as I saved the document, will allow me to use and re-use this load anytime I go on vacation for coverage.

When you go to upload your text file, you will put your select your social network from the icon list, then put your cursor in the message field. The box opens and allows you (for Pro accounts only) the option to bulk upload. Browse to your upload file then click Okay. You will then see all your updates appear in the pending stream column.

I think this is a great new feature for HootSuite. Social Oomph offers this same feature for Professional accounts as well but without duplication restriction. Please note that if you click the links in this post and purchase either Professional level accounts from these suppliers that they will pay me a commission which will allow me to buy lunch at McDonald’s. Thanks for your support and try out these two applications they may end up being big time savers for you too.

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New Twitter Background Design How-To

Twitter has moved to a very slim line background profile. If you haven’t visited your Twitter profile in a while and you had done a custom background, you may find that what you had before is cut off and nearly invisible with the new Twitter background space available.

Here are is a detailed explanation of what space you now have for Twitter.

We used to take a 1,920 pixel wide by 1,000 pixel tall canvas and show the company phone and website address in a block starting 25 pixels from the left to 200 pixels from the left. This space has now shrunk to 5 pixels from the left to a maximum of 110 pixels from the left.

The top drop down has also changed. Before we started our content block 70 pixels down from the top. Now we start the content block at 0 pixels or 57 pixels depending on what type of graphic you will be using. You may have to tweak a few things on your background based on the visual elements you are using, but this gives you a starting point.

The big issue is that background space has shrunk from 200 pixels to 120. This means that your previous Twitter background will look bad with the new interface design. In fact your company information that previously used to show may be cut off. There just isn’t much real estate for personalization at this point, but you can still use what is there to tie in with your website brand colors and Facebook Business page profile.

If you use HootSuite or TweetDeck to update your Twitter account, now’s the time to look at what your profile at www.Twitter.com looks like so you can make sure to make any necessary changes to keep looking good!

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New Facebook and Twitter Services

Facebook is so popular that our clients are asking us for more service options. Just this past week we have added some new levels of engagement to our Facebook and Twitter program. For all the details on Facebook visit our pricing page. For all the details on Twitter visit our pricing page.

We’ve also created a new special program for clients that want Twitter AND Facebook done together. Here are the details.

Facebook & Twitter Program – $530  per 4 Week Month ($26.50 per day)

In our Facebook  & Twitter Program we provide:

  • For Twitter: Four tweets a day Monday through Friday. Tweets will consist of comments, links to articles, tweets pointing to items on your website you sell as products or services, and interesting informational content that builds value for readers.
  • For Facebook: We provide Facebook profile or Facebook Fan Page updates,    interaction, posting of links and videos as well as interaction with your  Fans on a regular basis. We perform the following actions on your Facebook  Business page.
    • Seek to interact with fans every Tuesday and Thursday spending about .2 hours of time each day to comment on your fan’s comments and look for other areas to enrich the interactivity on your Fan Page.
    • Update your Facebook Fan Page status twice a day five days a week.
    • Add a special link or video from YouTube or your website once a week.

Our strategy at this level is to grow your Facebook activity while providing  additional Twitter benefits for clients who feel that they really want to be  involved in both platforms.