New Twitter – Great! Why haven’t I got it yet?

So Twitter has redesigned it’s interface, with a new look that seems to be clean and very user friendly.  Content is now displayed in small white boxes and a sleek new toolbar with Home, @Connect and #Discover. It is also nice to see Twitter making @mentions quicker and easier to see and finally noticing the importance and popularity of trending; there is just one problem – we still haven’t got it!

The redesign has been released now for over a month, yet many Twitter users are still waiting in frustration. If you create a new Twitter account you view the new interface automatically, whereas us loyal ‘tweeters’ have to wait patiently. Twiffic Twitter

Twitter introduces its own photo sharing service

It’s been a while in the making but Twitter is now rolling out its own photo sharing service.

Twitter introduces its own photo sharing service

This could spell the beginning of the end for services like Twitpic and Yfrog, unless of course they introduce additional features. Twitter will now allow users to upload photos along with their 140-character long messages. The service can be accessed by clicking on the camera icon which appears when users click on the ‘What’s Happening’ box.

The service, which was initially unveiled in June, is powered by Photobucket, which will be responsible for hosting the images. Users can upload images as big as 3MB in size. Twitter has also noted that addional photo features like Galleries will be available soon. You will be able to continue using third-party upload services like Twitpic and yFrog, and those images will also show up in the upcoming galleries feature. Protected accounts will not display images uploaded through the Twitter photo service to the public. If you’d like instructions on how the new system works, you can visit Twitter’s help topic on the subject.

Our own service, BeeLiked.com currently allows images to be uploaded to Twitpic, but as soon as Twitter lets us, we’ll be looking to add this new functionality.

Let us know what you think. Maybe even tweet us a pic!

twitter.com/whaddamedia

We tweeted this pic via Twitter's new photo sharing service

Why companies should have a ‘Like’ button and a Google +1 button on their website

Facebook ‘Like’

The ‘Like’ button is a simple way for an individual to broadcast to their friends that they like something and thus share it with their Facebook friends.

Companies that place a ‘Like’ button on their website are making this act of sharing very easy. Previously, to recommend a website to friends, would have required users to copy a link, write an email and then select who to send it to. One simple click of the ‘Like’ button and this information is broadcasts automatically.

With 27 million people in the UK using Facebook on a daily basis and the average person having 130 Facebook Friends, the ‘Like’ button is probably the best free advertising that a company could ever hope for.

So don’t delay – put that ‘Like’ button on your website.

The best way to share what you like with your friends.

Google +1

Google processes 92% of all UK web searches, but it is playing catch up with Facebook in the social stakes.  ’Google Plus’ is the new social network that Google has been working so hard on building and it is quickly gaining momentum. Within a matter of days of its launch it already had 20 million active users and is growing at a phenomenal rate.

The +1 button is Google’s answer to the ‘Like’ button. The more people that click +1 on a website the higher up the rankings that website will go and the more people that join Google Plus, the more search results will be personalised according to the tastes of their own networks.

If you haven’t yet added a +1 button to your website, do so now.

Grow your followers by concentrating on just 150 people

For many businesses new to Social Media, the number of people that follow them is of the utmost importance. The thinking goes that the more people that follow the company on sites such as Twitter or Facebook, the more new customers the business will attract. Whilst this certainly has some truth, it is forcing companies to run before they can walk. New research shows that the secret to growing our social media following, could lie in concentrating on building relationships with just 150 people, only then can we leverage this audience to grow our total sphere of influence.

The Dunbar Number

Robin Dunbar, is The director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. Dunbar’s theory goes something like this:  throughout our history it has been consistently shown that we as humans have a capacity to form meaningful relationships with approximately 150 people at any one time, whether in a hunter-gatherer society or on Facebook.

The way in which our social world is constructed is part and parcel of our biological inheritance. Together with apes and monkeys, we’re members of the primate family – and within the primates there is a general relationship between the size of the brain and the size of the social group. We fit in a pattern. There are social circles beyond it and layers within – but there is a natural grouping of 150.

This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation – there’s some personal history, not just names and faces.

The Doomsday Book of 1086, for example, records that the average village size was 150.  It’s the same in the 18th century, where thanks to parish registers, county by county, the average size of a village is again 150. (Except in Kent, where it was inexplicably just 100).

Quality trumps Quantity: The idea that 150 followers is all you need probably sounds crazy to people, especially if you are just starting out. However, it is all down to your ability to interact with these 150 people and start a meaningful relationship that will make all the real difference.

In The Tipping Point, the author Malcom Gladwell further expands on Dunbar’s Number theory. He suggests that 150 people is all you need to make an idea spread and importantly our ability to influence people decreases once we try to engage with more than a core audience of 150. Now I can think of several examples with modern media where this theory appears to fall down, however I can see that when first reaching out to find a new audience, it is better to concentrate on a small core base, than try to appeal to everyone. There’s no way you are realistically going to engage effectively with thousands of followers, unless you absolutely have no life.

The role of 150 in business: At Gore Associates, there are always no more than 150 people at anyone plant. Everyone is known as an Associate not an employee and there are no bosses in the traditional sense, only sponsors and mentors. Founder Bill Gore termed this style as a “flat-lattice organization.” Gore found that beyond the number of 150 Associates per factory, there seems to be breakdowns in the ability of the group to act and agree upon anything with one voice.  One of the lessons that Gore discovered, was that if you if you want to create one large company, you have to master how to create several small companies first.

Creating Your own 150
Below are some ideas for how you can set about creating your 150:

• Track Mentions: Pay attention to mentions of your Twitter name and where appropriate start a conversation with that person by mentioning them back.
• Track Retweets: Make sure that you keep track of who retweets of your posts.  It’s obvious that they like what you are saying, otherwise they wouldn’t be sharing it.
• Create a List for your inner circle: Set up a list for yourself on Twitter (make it private) and call it ‘my inner circle’.  Then, anytime somebody mentions you or retweets one of your posts, add them to that list. Unless they’re a spammer in which case you should block them.
• Engage with the People on that List: Simply creating the list is not going to be enough. Once you have created your inner circle list, you need to start engaging with them.
  • Daily Conversations: Talk to at least some of the people on your inner circle list daily.
  • Retweet their Stuff: If you want others to take notice of you, then you have to start taking notice of them. So, make a point to promote the stuff of the people in your inner circle and don’t discredit the value of those with fewer followers, as they won’t be small forever.

Where to Start When You Are at Zero: If you are starting at zero, some of the above might seem more challenging, but it’s not. Go off the beaten track and find people that have something interesting to say and start engaging them in conversations.  They’ll be happy to hear from you. That will be the start of creating your 150.

Good luck and let me know how you go. Damian Dutton @whaddamedia

We Like. Facebook adds new ‘Send’ button

A year after introducing the world to the ‘Like’ button, Facebook has now introduced a ‘Send’ button. Why? Well because sometimes you want to quickly tell others of something you’ve seen and discuss it in private. Using the new ‘Send’ button you can do this with one click through Facebook Messages.

It doesn’t sound all that revolutionary really, but I bet it will quickly become popular. No more copying and pasting web links into emails. The ‘Send’ button today lauched with 1-800-Flowers.com, Gogobot, American Eagle Outfitters, Viagogo North America, and on our very own BeeLiked.com Facebook Page. So be sure to ‘Like’ us and ‘Send’ our page to your friends.

Now I’ve just got to figure how to add a ‘Send’ button to this blog.

Get your own ‘Send’ button now.

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/send/

Sweepstakes are all the rage

There was a time when sweepstakes and other similar competitions would fall out of your morning paper, but nowadays companies are falling over themselves to launch one on Facebook.

Facebook is already full of discounts and deals from companies trying to entice people to their Facebook pages, so its rare that a company comes up with an idea that is newsworthy. It seems though that starting today, Expedia is upping the ante: It has created a sweepstakes that offers more than $1 million in prizes, including five trips that cost more than $100,000.

Expedia launches ExpediaFriendTrips

Expedia FriendTrips is as much a game as a sweepstake.  The rules are fairly straightforward: Fans of Expedia can start a plane (becoming its pilot) and point the plane toward one of the 13 destinations offered as prizes. Pilots can then invite their friends to join them on the plane, each of which holds five passengers. Being a passenger or a pilot on the plane makes you eligible to win.

The prizes, called “trips of a lifetime,” include a $160,000 trip for the winner and five friends to go on a luxury tour of South America, with stops in Chile, Peru and Foz do Iguaçu, a natural paradise that spans the convergence of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay; a $100,000 trip to Las Vegas that covers the winner and five friends’ stay at a hotel suite, transportation by limousine, a shopping spree and $25,000 in cash (for gambling, of course); and a $100,000 European cruise for the winner and five others to fly (first class) to Venice, then stay in a 6,000-square-foot garden villa on Norwegian Cruise Line’s Jade.

To increase their chances of winning, fans of Expedia can merely start more planes and recruit more friends to join them on their journeys: 25 friends doubles your chances and 50 friends triples your chances. And to give everyone a sense of urgency, the competition ends in six weeks time.

If you would like to start your own Facebook Sweepstake, but want a bit of imagination put behind it, get in touch with Whadda Media. We’re good at thinking up and creating innovative marketing ideas.

How to measure the ROI of social media

Social is definitely in fashion.

All of a sudden everything from search through to e-commerce is proceeded by the word ’social’. Of course, the leisure industry knows better than most the power of social, after all personal recommendation is still the most powerful form of advertising, with word of mouth contributing to a large part of any venue‟s customers. Our collective desire to know what our friends are doing has fuelled the meteoric rise of countless social networks from MySpace and Bebo, to Facebook and Twitter, not forgetting Youtube and Flickr. It is no wonder that every business has scrambled to benefit from this new form of digital recommendation and climb on board the social bandwagon.

Now in 2011, as everyone takes long hard looks at their budgets, the need has never been greater for leisure groups to validate and measure the benefits delivered by their increasing investment in social media and digital marketing. However, before going headlong into number crunching, it is important to realise that whilst the size of a company’s online social reach is a reflection of the level of social media participation, it is not symbolic of brand stature, resonance, loyalty, or advocacy, nor is it an indicator for business performance.

Social media marketing delivers a wide range of benefits to organisations that are beneficial in the short term and long term in both quantitative and qualitative ways. To properly value the impact of its social media marketing investments, leisure groups must align their objectives, metrics, targets, and strategies across four perspectives:

• Financial – has revenue or profit increased or costs decreased?
• Digital – has the company enhanced its owned and earned digital assets?
• Brand – have consumer attitudes about the brand improved?
• Risk management – is the organization better prepared to note and respond to attacks or problems that affect reputation?

Marketers must learn to evaluate a diverse set of short and long-term benefits and not concentrate solely on the financial aspect.  This approach furnishes several benefits, such as aligning measurement to all corporate objectives and not just sales, providing a means for gaining consensus from diverse stakeholders and avoiding short-term gains at the expense of long-term brand health.

Whadda Media launches

So much has been happening here, that we thought it was about time we updated our blog.

Since the launch of Whaddado.com we’ve been researching how best we can help the leisure industry promote themselves and their events.

Your audience is tech savvy, are you?

We commissioned research to discover how people currently find things to do and to what extent they are influenced by their friends. Of particular interest to us was on people’s use of technology to stay informed and plan their social lives.

It is not surprising that 87% of the people we questioned used Facebook on a daily basis and that 48% of people actively used Facebook to organize an evening out. We were however, a little taken aback to discover how many people already have a smart phone (55%) and the percentage of people that regularly use Google as their primary means for discovering ideas for things to do (30%).

Now in 2011, as everyone takes long hard looks at their budgets, the need has never been greater for leisure groups to validate and measure the effects of their marketing efforts. Shouldn’t leisure companies now be looking to Facebook and Google for ways to promote their businesses, rather than the more traditional media? And surely it is time to make sure that every printed ad does a better job of promoting a company’s website, Facebook Page and Twitter account, than the usual tiny mention placed discreetly at the bottom of the ad?

So we’ve decided to make it our mission to help every leisure group get more fans and followers and learn simple tricks for engaging with their increasingly tech savvy audience.

Today we’re delighted to announce the launch of Whadda Media and our accompanying website whaddamedia.com, a social marketing company with a difference. We’re all about transforming leisure company’s social marketing efforts through cost effective online tools. Our service is affordable to all, from single venues to the largest chains. We promise to save you time, increase awareness of your business online, give you some handy marketing tools, teach you a thing or two and most of all, we’ll keep you ahead of the game, giving you ultimate control over all your social media.

Please keep an eye on this blog as we will continue to post our thoughts and advice on how the leisure industry can really take advantage of social media. More to follow soon…

preBeta Launch – 2nd Sept 2010

Finally the time has come to open the pre-Beta to the world.  We have had lots of testing with our test user group and now feel we are ready to give you all an opportunity to feedback.

As part of the Launch 48 showcase, whaddado will be one of the 18 exhibitors to some top investors and the web startup community.  It will be held at the London PayPal office and promises to be a great day to launch the Whaddado pre-beta.

Make sure you get your ticket to come along, free beer and pizza.

http://showcase.launch48.com/exhibitors/

And of course some check out the new site, login via facebook, add some whaddados, create lists and share with your friends.  The more followers you get the more points.  And points means great things to whaddadoers.

The Whaddado Team

Let me in

Hold onto your hats folks, we’re nearly there; yes Whaddado is finally about to take to the world stage for our dress rehearsal. We’ve labored long and hard these past months to bring our vision to life and now we’d like to start by inviting a few ‘nice’ people to give us some feedback, point out any errors they come across before we’re ready to release Whaddado on an unsuspecting public.  Expect to see our lovely holding page replaced by what we term a preBeta release.  Return soon to participate and join in sharing great ideas with the Whaddado community.