Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 16, 2010
We’ve already put together a list of tips and resources for Twitter beginners, and Part 2 is focused on those who are familiar with Twitter and don’t want to waste time trawling through hundreds of applications which all do the same thing. All resources mentioned were free at time of posting.
Time-saving Twitter tools
- Twitter Tools for Wordpress – This handy plugin automatically creates tweets from your blog posts, so your Twitter followers can grab a link to your new entry straight away. Optional bit.ly URL shortening is included, and you can also post your Tweets as blog entries. If you don’t have a blog yet, you can take advantage of our one click WordPress install and web hosting to get set up in less than a minute.
- Twitoria – This website allows you to unfollow people who haven’t tweeted in the past week, fortnight, month, two months, six months or year. A great easy-use tool which will keep your follower base fresh.
- Hashtags – Just enter a search term to get a list of tweets, trends and people tweeting about that topic recently using a hashtag. Hashtags also displays a popularity graph. This is a useful tool to find out how popular a word or term is so you can get in on a conversation or monitor a trend.
- Friendorfollow – displays your relationships with your followers, i.e. people who follow you but you don’t follow and vice versa, and reciprocal following. You can also look up the stats for other tweeters simply by entering their username and export data.
- OneForty is a directory of Twitter applications along with ratings and comments. Currently approaching 3,000 tools, it’s a good solution for checking up on apps you’ve heard about and finding the right software for you e.g. the right mobile phone application.
Twhirl is a good choice for those requiring a simple, unobtrusive client whilst HootSuite offers a lot of features ideal for business users. It’s also important to keep an eye on the development plans for each application so you’re aware of what features are intended for the near future. Just because you’ve found a suitable client doesn’t mean you have to stick with it – it’s an area which is increasingly growing and increasingly competitive – but consider the impact on any stats or analytics you may be tracking to avoid confusion or loss of information.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Web Hosting on Jul 16, 2010
We’re pleased to announce that we’re now offering one-click installs of WordPress’s forum software, bbPress. Message boards are a great way to promote visitor interaction and can be a useful tool to discover what your visitors are interested in, who they are, and what else they want to see from your site.
bbPress is open source and focused on speed and security, meaning you don’t have to worry about slow loading pages or the risk of being hacked. The streamlined software is also lightweight and efficient for better use of space and bandwidth. bbPress is easy to install thanks to our one-click install solution, and the user-friendly control panel also means less work for admins and moderators once you’re up and running.
bbPress enjoys many similar customisation elements to WordPress so you can develop and install themes and plugins (e.g. for ratings, video and private forums) to customise your forums. Furthermore, bbPress can be integrated with WordPress so it has access to your blog’s functionality and users signing up to your message boards can also be users on your blog. This is especially useful for multi-author blogs, blogs with regular commenters and those looking to build up integrated site communities from an existing WordPress blog.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Domain Names on Jul 16, 2010
With only five days to go until general release of the .co domain name, here are five top reasons to pre-register your .co domain name before it’s too late!
1. 70% of the world’s top 500 brands have signed up for their .co name already, and WorldTrademarkReview.com has discovered that some big brands intend to provide new services and products just from their .co website, cementing its popularity.
2. It’s a good way to get a generic domain name that describes your brand or field rather than just having to stick to your company name, e.g. webdesign.co or slimming.co.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 07, 2010
Twitter in itself can be very overwhelming, and that’s without worrying what tools and resources you need to manage your account properly. So we’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of our favourites.
Twitter for Beginners
We’ve divided our list into two parts; this one for fledgling tweeters and one for fully-fledged users (keep an eagle eye out for more advanced tools in Part 2, coming soon), but it’s worth checking them both to make sure there’s nothing you miss.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 07, 2010
With more and more social media sites popping up everywhere, the craze to have the next Facebook or Twitter continues to be relentless. Wikipedia lists ‘some notable, well-known’ active social media sites – ‘some’ being 190 – and even has a separate page for defunct websites, showing that this competitive trend shows no mercy.
So with almost two hundred ‘notable’ options out there, how do you know which to use for your site and how? Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious choices, but it’s essential to take time to create a strategy and see what works best for your particular needs.
Take time to find the sites relevant to you
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Investigate what’s out there, and make two lists of potentials – one for pages that require very little maintenance (e.g. a StumbleUpon link), and one for sites that require frequent updates and monitoring (e.g. Facebook).
