Social Media 14

Reorganizing my lifestream

November 28, 2009 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Lately I’ve had a hard time keeping up with what services cross-post to each other. If I send a status update to Twitter, does it auto-post to Facebook? If I send a picture to Posterous, does it go to Flickr? What about FriendFeed? I had I set up so many different tools that I was losing track of things. I spent some time today rearranging things and here’s what I’ve got:

:: Status Updates via Ping.fm

I’ve used Ping.fm for a while, and I love it. I can send updates using their website or the Pingle app on iPhone, and those status updates go out to dozens of different services that I’ve configured. I’ll still be using it for a lot of my status updates, but I’ve tweaked it a little bit.

I’ve set it to update my status on virtually every service it supports (and it’s a lot of them) except for Posterous. I’ll explain why in the next item.

:: Media Updates via Posterous

I’ll be pushing all photo and video uploads through my Posterous account. I used to use PixelPipe on my iPhone, but Posterous offers a bit better control. I can easily send items to Posterous via email or by using their iPhone app, and they’ll automatically push them to various locations. Specifically:

Photos: To Facebook and Flickr
Videos: To Facebook and YouTube
Also, Twitter and LinkedIn will get notified of all new photos/videos

If I had set Ping.fm to send status updates to Posterous, it would then push them to Twitter and Facebook — which Ping.fm already does. That would duplicate my updates on a few services, which is why it’s important to not have Ping.fm push to Posterous.

:: RSS Updates via TwitterFeed

I’ve been using TwitterFeed for a while to auto-tweet new blog entries from my various blogs to their respective Twitter accounts. It works well, and I’ll continue doing that for now.

:: Google Reader –> Twitter via FriendFeed

When I’m in Google Reader, I can “share” an item and it automatically tweets it out. It does this via FriendFeed; I have FriendFeed pull in all of my shared items, and then I have it tweet out those shared items to my Twitter account. It’s very handy when I’m away from my computer on a cell (like at Disney). A single click allows me to share an interesting story with all of my followers.

You could do a similar thing via TwitterFeed, and either method would work just fine.

So there you have it — my new system (for now). I’m always looking to streamline things, so what do you do differently, and why?

Use Pages in Facebook, not Groups

August 13, 2009 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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There’s been some debate recently on whether churches and other organizations should use “groups” or “pages” for their church/ministries on Facebook. The thought is typically that groups are good for short-term activities, while pages are better for long-term usage. I think that holds true, and I think churches need to be using Pages as much as possible.

Here’s why:

You get all of the functionality of groups except privacy. If you are a small group wanting a private place to connect, a group is the way to go. Otherwise, pages can do pretty much everything else that groups can do. That makes it a tie (at worst) right away.
Facebook seems to care more about pages. They’re always releasing new updates and features for pages, but there’s been nothing new for groups in quite a while.
Wall posts on a page show up in the activity stream on the home page of all of your fans. With groups, people need to visit to see what’s new. With pages, you can push the info right to them.
You can add apps to a page. This is great for importing RSS feeds and things like that.
You can get custom URLs for your pages. This might be the best argument for pages. Once you have over 100 fans, you can get a slick custom address for your page, like facebook.com/yourchurch.
Your logo shows up in the search drop-down box instead of the generic blue heads for groups.
Pages has an API for external services to use. It’s still a bit bumpy, but you can update your page from cool services like Ping.fm. You can’t do that with groups.

Many churches already have active groups, and there’s no need to abandon those just yet. If that’s the case for you, I’d recommend:

Create your new Page
Build it out as much as you can. Add a logo, some wall posts, info, links, etc.
Invite as many of your friends as would be appropriate for that page.
Once you have it going, go into your Group and send a message to all members informing them of the new Page.
At any point, once you have over 100 fans go to the Facebook username page and get a nice URL for the Page.

Once you have most people shifted to the Page, put a notice at the top of the group and point them over there.

That’s my take on this. Disagree? Have other ideas about these? Leave a comment and let us know!

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How a simple tweet made an HVAC company $700

April 5, 2009 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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I told you a few days ago how I thought Cool Ray Atlanta was doing some interesting things with Twitter. Turns out they were quite brilliant.

Last Monday I tweeted that I was “Heading home to meet the plumber to fix a leak. Fun Monday morning…“. It was a local guy I’ve used before. Not long after that, @coolrayatlanta tweeted back “@mickmel Always a bummer to take time out of your day for plumbing problems – yuck“. I thought it was very nice, especially that they weren’t trying to push anything, but I thought that was the end of it.

The plumber came on Monday (2.5 hours late) and fixed the leak, but couldn’t get the water heater restarted. We figured we’d let the base of it dry out a bit more and it’d be ok the next day.

Tuesday he had to come back out — the same leak was back. He fixed it again (after being about 3 hours late this time), but still no dice on the water heater. I called GE to get some help, but they tossed me under the bus. Because the 3-month-old water heater had sat in 1/2” of water, it was now “flooded” and out of warranty. No exceptions. I asked for a suggestions for a local plumber and they gave me one.

I called their suggested plumber, but only got the answering machine (just after 8am). They’d call back “as soon as possible”, but gave no indication of when they’d be open. I hung up.

Now, I need another plumber. Who should I call? Cool Ray was in my head so I gave them a call. They promised to have someone out before noon (which they did) and they did a great job. They worked HARD to get our old water heater going again, but it simply wouldn’t go. They offered a very good deal on a replacement, so we did that. The leak that had been fixed twice by the old plumber was back as well, so they took care of that too.

All told, it was about $700. I hated to spend that to replace a water heater barely 3 months old, but it was still a great experience. Here’s why. They…

Answered the phone when I called
Sent someone out the same morning
Showed up on time
Fixed the problem
Gave a fair price
Were very knowledgeable and polite

All of those are traits that any company should have, but you’ve got to get in the door before you can show them off. A search for “Atlanta Plumber” on Google Maps gives me 3,099 results. Had they not been on Twitter, I almost certainly wouldn’t have called (mathematically speaking).

One simple tweet — just sympathtic, not hard-selling — $700. Brilliant.