With millions of tweets being posted on Twitter every hour, a free Twitter search tool is definitely very handy. Introducing Topsy,which, unlike the usual Twitter Search, is a tool that allows marketers to search for tweets from the date of inception of Twitter all the way back from 2007. Similar to 20/Twenty, the social listening tool from Radarr, Topsy also allows marketers to track their brand on Twitter, analyze how content is being shared (whether through links, photos, videos, or plain text), who are the active participants in the tweets, the key influencers and the sentiments over the brand over time. “How do you make sense of 400 billion pieces of content?” said Vipul Ved Prakash, Topsy’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “By ranking it. We do that ranking by looking at how much a particular piece of content is being cited by other people.”
About: A San Francisco Startup, Topsy is a Twitter search and analytic tool that helps marketers know their place in active social media.
Price: Free for the basic Topsy Search, Topsy Pro for $12000 per user.
Key Features
1. Review All Tweets
One of the basic features of a Twitter search tool, Topsy allows its users to review and analyze all the tweets followed by a domain name, hashtag, or Twitter profile name. This can also be done on Twitter search but that would give a glimpse of tweets limited to two or three numbers based on the recent tweets. Topsy, on the other hand, would display all the tweets pertaining to the particular search.
I limited my search to 30 days, i met all 773 tweets from Beta21
2. Who Are Your Influencers?
Knowing who really is interested in you and your business can come in very handy for a marketer. The Influencers feature of Topsy helps you with just that! Upon clicking the influencers tab, you get to see the top influencers of your company or search category. The people who make the most mentions about you or your search topic. Here, I found the five names that influenced Beta21 in the past 30 days.
The Influencers!
3. Reviewing Mentions
One of the most beneficial attributes of Topsy, you get access to exactly how many times a person or Twitter user had mentioned you in his/her tweets allowing you to know exactly who you are influencing and to what extent. Just search using your username and then the topic. Here below is an example of how many times I mentioned Beta21 in my tweets in the past 30 days!
Know your popularity!
4. Know Your Reach
For a Social Media Manager, it is important to know how many people talked about their reviews and articles. That is made fairly simple by simply adding the domain name of the article on the search index and you get access to the number of tweets your link was mentioned in and how many tweets were influential enough.
Know Your Reach!
5. Tracking and Analytics
With Topsy’s free social analytic tool, you can gather information about the trends the tweets take of one or more domains or Twitter profiles. This is a great advantage for knowing the trends and popularity of your profile in social media.
The graph shows the number of tweets pertaining to the domain name www.www.circussocial.com/beta21 in a particular period.
Given below is an example of how many times the link was mentioned on Twitter as compared to the profile Radarr blog.
The User Interface
Topsy has a fairly simple UI which is as easy as typing the keywords in a search index. “By adding a full historical index, now we can look even further back to the very first tweets 7 years ago, meaning our users have access to the best, most accurate view of the world’s social conversation,” Prakash said in a statement.
The New York Times has reported that Topsy, based in San Francisco, has indexed every Twitter message since the first tweet was posted in 2006 — about 425 billion pieces of content, including photos. Topsy\’s free service offers a limited archive, but the pro version unlocks them all for a cost.
What About Their Competitors?
What makes Topsy stand out is the fact that Twitter themselves use the Topsy Analytics for its Twitter Oscar’s index that tried to predict the winners from many of its Twitter chatters. Topsy thus, must definitely be doing something right! Competitors like DataSift and Gnip also offer access to the Twitter archive shared Prakash, although their ability to deliver real-time information is more limited. Others (likeRadian6) have a large amount of data which anyway are not easy to find. Furthermore, creating reports is too cumbersome there. But with Topsy, report generation takes seconds, not minutes.
Topsy has many benefits. From granting access to every single tweet from the start of Twitter to immediate access to results and multiple ways to analyze data, the Topsy search, and the analytic tool comes definitely as a boon!
Brands are on every social media platform imaginable to make their mark, fetching themselves some likes, getting pinned on boards or simply busy sharing an \’inside\’ view of their workplace. However, getting the end user engaged requires a lot of efforts by brands and that can be done via photo and video contests. Analyzed below are examples of two popular brands that have successfully created contests to win over their audience and increase engagement.
Skittles: BFF Campaign
Skittles took to social media in 2009 and since creating their Facebook page, they have garnered over 26 million page likes. One of their tactics was to make their page fun and interactive through innovative videos to photo contests, creating an image of themselves as a \’living entity\’ and \’not\’ just a candy brand.
Placing ‘Skittles’ as a first person gets them all the attention they need!
Skittles launched a campaign called BFF (Best Fan Forever), early this year. It had fans from all over post a picture of themselves with Skittles on Facebook and be eligible to be featured as a BFF for the week. Pictures poured in thousands and it is still ongoing.
Ardent fans who were willing to go over that ‘extra mile’ to get a quirky comment from their favorite brand!
The Strategy
Online Engagement
Skittles BFF campaign created large levels of consumer engagement where customers not only posted pictures of themselves but made efforts to bring the brand in the larger picture. A free ad campaign by all means!
Cost Effectiveness
Of course, visuals are one of the primary modes of advertisements today and they sure do cost a lot but what Skittles did was extraordinary. It made people talk about it, for it! The campaign had the brand posed as the ‘hero’ in every entry for the BFF campaign.
This would have needed a LOT of planning for that fan!
Creating Awareness
The competitive environment created in the minds of the users would only add to the establishment of the brand further, by word of mouth. Fans made efforts to indulge themselves into getting creative pictures made just to be a part of Skittles photo contest.
Vine Your Disney Side
Disney parks (Disneyland) launched a video contest called “Vine Your Disney Side” where fans were invited to send in creative videos that showed how Disney was a part of them – heart and soul! And yes, it worked crazy well. Their daily winners received $1000 and the grand prize winners won a trip to Disneyland along with a prize money of $10,000.
The Strategy
Brand Awareness
The contest made people remember the brand for its USP which is enlivening the child in you. People of all ages created and shared videos on Vine that had creativity at its best.
Media Hype
The hashtag #disneyside received all the media hype it could get and is popular all around the globe making this one of Disneyland\’s most popular campaigns.
Cost-Effectiveness
One of the most obvious features of creating a video or a photo contest is that you get all the advertising done – by the masses and for the masses – therefore almost zeroing in costs.
Increase Engagement
The #disneyside contest created increased engagement among the followers of the brand. It allowed interactions to grow within the brand and its user in a much more personal level.
Creating Photo And Video Contests
If you\’re thinking for a way to increase your online engagement with audiences, Circus Social’s plug and play app will do the job for you. Creating photo and video contests allows users to create stories with their customers, thus increasing brand worth and reach. People love stories and get engaged by visuals and what better way than to make them the source of what they say and hear!
Plug and Play
The simple view dashboard provides a clean placement of all the apps offered by Radarr.
Simple view dashboard!
Customization
A simple click of a button and some standard information is all it takes to get through to your own personal photo or video contest. Select a theme and customize your contest based on information such as the name of the theme, the prizes, rules, and submission information. That and you are ready to go!
Online Engagement
Creating an impact in the minds of the consumer is what today’s digital marketing environment is all about. With the help of subtle apps such as plug and play apps for your Facebook pages, it is simpler for the marketer to tap the segment they are eyeing on. Making a statement and creating stories via photo and video contests form the ‘way’ today!
About: ReadingPack provides you with a streamlined access to discover, save and share articles of your interest, from anywhere within the web. ReadingPack provides you with a reading list based on your interest that can be shared with friends and followers. Imagine a Pinterest like tool – but made primarily for articles!
Cost of Application: Free!
Lets’s say you laid hands upon a really interesting article but don’t have the time to read it just then! More so, you would like to share it with a friend and also know what they have been reading. Do all that with ReadingPack – the online reading app – with a social twist!
Released in September 2013, Yuval Shoshan, founder of ReadingPack shares that most of our articles are saved according to titles or images. ReadingPack offers a different form of service.
Key Features
1. Discover
With ReadingPack, you can discover new articles of your interest based on what your friends with similar interests recommend!
Recommend and save articles easily from your browser
Read articles that have been recommended by your network
Get live notifications on your activity
Get notifications of articles based on your interests
2. Save For Later
The standard feature of any read-it later app – save articles on the go and have access to the same at leisure. Reading Pack also automatically prioritizes articles that you have saved based upon what has been highly recommended. Thus, you get to read the best, first!
3. Socialize
ReadingPack makes your reading list Public! The benefit? You get to share your reading interest with others and also have access to some of theirs which are within your field of interest. Follow friends and have them follow you back, all the while getting great articles to read!
4. Shared Reading List
A user of ReadingPack can create a ‘shared reading list’ that displays articles recommended by them that can be seen and followed by anyone. So, if you want to know what I\’m reading, just follow my shared reading list!
5. IFTTT Channel
Short for (If This Then That), IFTTT is a service that enables customers to connect channels with personally created or publicly shared profiles called recipes. You can join IFTTT and use one of these ‘recipes’ to empower your reading list. Simply put, ReadingPack connects you to 110 different channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Buffer and even Pocket!
It gives it all out – yet – it works with them all!
User Interface
A fairly simple display of pages recommended by you and also the pages recommended by others makes it a no-nonsense tool. Yuval believes that the ability to prioritize your saved articles by a number of recommendations from people that you follow is one of the specific features of ReadingPack.
App and Desktop Extensions
From browser extensions in Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari to Mobile apps in the Google Play store and an upcoming iOS, ReadingPack is available everywhere, ensuring you get to read, save and share articles at your own time.
Bookmarklets and Emails
Granting an easy access to ReadingPack are the bookmarklets and email features that are keyed in.
Simply drag these bookmarklets to your bookmarks bar or send an email to these addresses to recommend articles.
Alternatives
What makes ReadingPack different from its competitors like Pocket, Readability, Feedly, and others is the fact that you can socialize your reading interests. The tool allows you to prioritize your reading interests and shows a list of articles recommended by others you are following and also displays your saved articles in a sequence analyzed by what topics interest you first. Feedly allows you to follow articles while at ReadingPack you can share and recommend them to others!
Refreshingly different!
Yuval’s small but strong team of three people has created ReadingPack keeping in mind the need to share in today’s social era. Granted there are competitors, some who trend differently altogether, ReadingPack has managed to create a tool that picks all that is required for a good reading experience, just spicing it up with some fun by allowing you to talk about it with your friends!
Purpose: A project Management tool that allows users to create, delegate and communicatetasks within teams.
Pricing : Price ranges from $19 to $129. A 2 week trial is available as well.
A lot of hard work goes into the conceptualizing, programming, delegation, execution and follow-up of any project or campaign. Until now, there were never really any technological help that could assist a team. But yes, only until now!
Brightpod by Synage Software, helps you plan, collaborate, and delegate all your digital marketing and creative projects on the browser. Brightpod’s consumer-friendly dashboard helps you effectively create pods, or projects, using a custom workflow, sharing the same with your team, creating and managing tasks and also following up. Sahil Parikh, Founder & CEO, Synage, believes that the key to a company’s creativity, speed and success lies in following a system that documents all tasks, communications, and workflows that each of the team members can follow.
Key Features
Creating Pods with Real Time Task Lists:
Brightpod allows its users to create individual pods or projects and have access to a birds eye view of each of these. It is easy to manage the performance and growth of individual pods, grouped with effective teamwork. A fairly creative display of task lists is available that can be executed as the Kanban Board. Kanban helps you manufacture products based on demand thus reducing inventory. In the social scheme of things, Kanban will simply help its users know what and when to work on a specific task).
Manage PODS (PROJECTS) individually!
Team Work
Brightpod allows its users to share real time progress on each pods with the relevant team members. They can send and receive instant messages and also are aware of each others developments. ‘Brightpod Send’ allows your team and clients to add tasks, task lists, messages and files to your projects via email.
Involve your Team and work collaboratively!
Stay Updated
The \’Recurring Tasks’ feature allows you to place tasks on repeat, avoiding the risk of skipping any important and usual scheme of work. For example, placing the task “submit report every Monday” under the tab. A track list of blogs relevant to your industry can also be maintained effectively.
A glimpse of what the tasks lists look like and what can be done with it.
Workflows
Another impressive feature of Brightpod are the workflows that can be created to help similar projects perform without any glitches. Helps save time by planning faster therefore enhancing work-ability.
Editorial Calendar
Editorial calendar helps deploy and channel work that can be shared within the team. A simple drag and drop feature allows you and also your team members of individual pods, work collaboratively giving you the larger picture.
Share events and create more within the TEAM!
Task Reviewing
With the ability to manage the workflow through the \’activity stream\’ tab, the administrator of the pod gets to view the progress of individual team mates.
Archives
A task or message that has been deleted, is saved in the archives folder for 30 days. Thus, if your team mate deletes something that is important to you, but irrelevant for his/her use, you need not fret and simply gain access to the archives.
Time Tracking
You can budget time for each project, track time for each task, add custom time entries, choose between billable and non-billable, filter time by team members and even export all your time to a spreadsheet. Therefore, it assists in knowing exactly how much time is being spent over each project. Files upto 25 MB can be shared leaving enough space for anything to be done!
User Interface
Using Brightpod is as simple as using an email and does not need much getting used to. The pods displays the entire conversation and tasks on the same page, ensuring nothing that is important is missed.
Every user will have an individual page that notifies them about the tasks assigned. Only Administrators can view everyone else’s \’Me\’ page by clicking on the \’Team\’ tab and further clicking on any team member\’s name. Here, you can explore everything this person has done in Brightpod. Moreover, you can move tasks to prioritize and even send a notification which will tell the person that their tasks have been prioritized by you.
Project Management Alternatives
There are many general purpose project management tools such as Brightpod, Basecamp, Trello, Wrike and Clientvenue. Brightpod innovated its approach by not making a software for everyone, but specifically for the marketer and his teams. A small list of comparison of the same is below.
Brightpod seems to be the all-encompassing tool that maintains its quality and functionality towards its target audience. The only improvement that can be suggested would be for it to launch a mobile app. The viewing, listing, user interface, and even the communication benefits within the tool make it a winner.
“Imagination at work” constitutes General Electric’s promise in the fields of science – be it healthcare, finance, industrial engineering, energy or social media.GE has not held back in creating its space in the media mammoths like Facebook, Twitter and everything else. Now comes, Instagram – GE’s presence on Instagram? Over 170,500 followers – yes, it’s not much compared to some celebrities but for an organisation like GE, that’s a huge feat to achieve. How can a company that deals with manufacturing windmills and healthcare and industrial gadgets make people on the social media wait anxiously for a campaign created called Instawalk – #GEInstaWalk and #GEInspiredMe.
General Electric’s Content Strategy
The 120 year company deals in designing and building aeroplanes, power turbines locomotives and molecular imaging equipment. Every single day, those products are used by people all over the world. GE uses social media to share its story and engage its global audience. Instagram has become the hub of its visual storytelling allowing GE to connect with its followers in a new way.
1. High Quality Images
Since 2013, GE has prioritized on generating great content for its Instagram profile. It keeps up with the trend of high quality images, planning photo shoots at its most innovative facilities in the world.
A GE90 #engine at #GE #Aviation in Peebles, OH. Shot by @adamsenatori.
2. Real Time Feeds
Giving its viewers the a never-seen-before experience and access to its facilities that only a few people have, GE’s Instagram posts create images that make GE’s loyal followers crave for more. These photo shoots took place in locations like the GE Aviation Engine Testing Center and GE Transportation’s Manufacturing Facility. The loyal followers got in real-time feeds of the most popular airshow where GE boasts of its talent, displaying some of its most cutting edge technology at Dubai and Paris. GE takes their fans all over the world and immerses their followers in the beauty of innovation.
3. Crowdsourcing
General Electric\’s most popular campaign, the first one launched in November 2011, called Instagrapher,is highly sought after ever since.General Electric asked Instagrammers to take photos inspired by three areas of GE innovation and tag them with ‘#GEinspiredme’. More than 5,000 photos are submitted in every contest under the hashtag. The winner of the contest becomes the next official GE Instagram photographer and gets the opportunity to visit the GE facilities around the globe.
4. Adding A Personal Touch
GE\’s Instagrapher contest winners are invited by large to visit the brands magnanimous properties in London and this time at Cape Cod Air Force Facility in Massachusetts.
Making it all – REAL BIG!!!
5. Communicate With The End User
Linda Boff, the company’s executive director of global digital marketing, believes that social started because we wanted to be having conversations with people – consumers, employees, investors – and anybody else that shares our passions. If that’s what you’re looking to do, then you’ve got to be where people are now spending 22 percent of their time. GE uses Instagram to keep the customer engaged and up to date!
“We love the idea that Instagram lets us share this intersection of science and technology, but doing it from a very visual, artistic point of view,” said Linda Boff. “When you’re as complicated as GE, how you tell the story and how you bring the company to life is incredibly important.”
4 Tips For A Successful Content Strategy
1. Keep It Personal
The entire scheme behind adapting to Instagram for content marketing would be to share behind the scenes images of your company. This will create a bonding between you and your customer, giving them a glimpse of what employees have the access to.
GE quotes on Instagram from within premises – “Happy 3D Printing Day! We have racks of #3Dprinters from @3DSystems and @Makerbot ready to take your gift orders”
2. Professional Photography Is Not A Must
Investing into professional photography can cost a big hole in you pocket and if it falls out of your budget, it’s fine to do without it. A good picture at the right angle can always be edited with various softwares, including Instagram\’s edit features to give your images a beguiling feel.
3. Take Risks
Brands often use the excuse of not participating on social media in highly regulated industries like GE stating it could be too big a legal risk to be publishing on the social media. The fear of losing control of what is ‘apt’ to messaging holds them back. A solution to this was executed by GE which creates teams that consists of a strategist, producer, designer and a lawyer, who help it conceptualize and promote its social feeds on Instagram and other hubs.
4. Create A Story
An example of this would be the Instagrapher campaign by GE. Here users update pictures of products made by the brand on a hashtag promoted by GE. This way, great stories are made increasing the interest and involvement of the end user.
General Electric A contest created by a simple hashtag increasing engagement and reach.
When brands like General Electrics hold on the Instagram and make it count, other larger companies must not shy away. Instagram is explored to show the consumers, what’s happening behind the curtains of the company. “Photos can be so emotional,” says Amy Cole, Head of Business Operations, Instagram. “It’s a great way for users to really connect with a brand in a way that ‘s different from text posts.”
