21 June 2014

What I'd change about Twitter (and some other social media channels!)

Using social media for work and play, there are a few things about certain channels that are starting to get on my nerves. If I ruled the internet, there are a few usability and feature changes I'd make to some of the main social media contenders to make my life that little bit easier... 

Twitter

  • Instead of having to go through a third party site like bit.ly, I'd LOVE it if Twitter had an option to automatically shorten URLs within the desktop site & mobile. It just makes sense!

  • It would also be useful to have the ability to 'quote tweet' from the Twitter mobile app - I can't think why this feature is only on desktop? Sometimes you want to explain why you're RT'ing something. (Since writing this post and updating my twitter app you can now do this - someone must have been listening ;) )

  • It would be great if the new ability to upload multiple photos was also available on the desktop version of Twitter - it seems to be only on mobile right now. The other day I found myself taking photos on my phone, emailing myself them to edit on Photoshop, then emailing myself them back to download them again and then upload them to Twitter with my phone - ahh!

  • In the twitter ads platform it would be really useful if you could have an 'enter now' call to action with a webcard - makes much more sense for running competitions! 


Instagram

  • It's kind of annoying that your 'Following' feed doesn't have a scroll or 'more' functionality so you can look through more of your friends' activity. (maybe I'm just nosey)

  • The BIG one. Please Instagram, can we have hyperlinks in image descriptions yet? Pretty please with a cherry on top! (it would also be nice if there was an automatic link shortener - see above)


Linkedin

  • When you accept someone as a new connection their little profile picture pops up for a second...then disappears! Of course you want to have a nosey at the employment history of this mysterious new connection. Instead of having to go and then (try and remember) their name and search for it, it would be great if you just had a simple 'view their profile' option after connecting with someone. 


Facebook

  • Whadda'ya know - I can't think of anything I'd change about Facebook right now as a user. As a page manager that's a different story and a whole other blog post. 


What about you, do you have any social media 'bug bears'? Comment below! (...and let the revolution commence!)

Thanks, Melissa.



13 June 2014

A look at the #WorldCup on Twitter so far!

It's here everybody. Last night the FIFA World Cup kicked off and for the next month we'll have football matches on the telly almost (thank goodness!) every day.

I'll put my hands up and admit that I'm really not that interested in football at all...like, not even a little bit. That being said, working at Glasgow 2014 has piqued my interest in how the biggest football event of the year uses social media, with a particular focus on Twitter, to engage and communicate with their fans.

Last night, the first match of the tournament #BRAvCRO, or Brazil vs Croatia to you and I generated over 12.2million tweets during the match. With 3,336 tweets per minute using the hashtag synonymous with the competition, #WorldCup. The tweets came from all over the world with more than 150 countries joining in the conversation. Check out this cool heat-map which visualises the conversation, and shows the huge influx in activity when a goal was scored. 


As we know, people love to share photos via social media - and that was no different last night. Twitter have pulled together an interactive gallery of some of the most shared photos posted during the match, with the top two coming from the Official @FIFAWorldCup account. The most mentioned player of the match was Brazil's top goal scorer @NeymarJ who consequently gained over 165,000 new followers on the day of the match. (10x the amount of followers he gains a day on average)



Taking a look at the official @FIFAWorldCup twitter account we can see that they have 1.47 million followers. Interestingly, the account has been branded as the 'FIFA World Cup' organisation, rather than the individual event IE twitter.com/Brazil2014. This means that in four year's time when the next world cup rolls around they can just 're-brand' the channel and will have a solid follower-base of 2 million +....give or take a few hundred thousand. 

Another thing I find really interesting, and quite surprising is that the channel doesn't seem to offer any customer service facility - from looking at its 'tweets and replies' feed there aren't any direct @mentions to fans which would indicate them answering questions. With so many people using social media to voice their opinions/make enquiries I wonder if they are missing a trick here. On the other hand they may have made a conscious decision to make the channel purely about pushing out the best/most relevant content - and leave the questions about parking spaces to some poor guy on the end of a phone. 


In terms of content so far they seem to be covering a nice range of different types of material. They are giving fans exclusive insights by showing behind-the-scenes content like the players' dressing room and a shot of the stadium before the Opening Ceremony started. They are also sharing the most up-to-date information like team line ups, and live tweeting throughout matches. Not forgetting to engage with the fans, they're also asking a lot of engaging questions - and RT'ing some of the best answers, which always helps in driving up the replies. The web page they seem to be driving the most traffic to is the match specific Live Blog which is pretty nifty showing a range of content like quotes, facts, stats, weather and photos of people wearing carrots on their head. El dente! I mean....GOOOAAALLLLL!





















I'll be looking out for interesting content throughout the rest of the tournament and will be saving my cheers for my sweepstake selection. Go Cameroon!

Thanks for reading, Melissa.

Feel free to share - 


7 June 2014

The CIA's #FirstTweet makes a splash on Twitter.













I woke up this morning and noticed that twitter was all aflutter with talk of the CIA's surprisingly witty first tweet. The secretive government organisation joined Twitter and Facebook yesterday, with a promise of making #unclassified information more widely available to the public. 
In less than 24 hours the tweet has gained 210 RT's and 120K favourites, driving over 383K followers of the new account. Not bad!

I can't say I know too much about the CIA (does anyone?) but I think they've made a smart move in launching the account with more of a 'human' tone of voice, much unlike the @FBI's account which just seems to robotically post out web links. Everyone loves the glamorous idea of secret missions and spies, so the tone they appear to be planning to use definitely further enhances the 'coolness' of the secretive government organisation. I'll certainly be giving the account a follow, and will be sorely disappointed if I don't see some form of extra terrestrial activity.  

Now I'm wondering if MI5 will follow suit in joining the social network, and if they'll use a similar tone of voice to our American cousins...or if the stiff upper lip will remain. 

A parting thought to the hypothetical land of film. 007's #FirstTweet? 

@Bond007: Shaken, not stirred. 




Thanks for reading, 
Melissa x
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