New ‘iPad’ hits stores today!

Apple releases, in recent years, tend to grab the attention of the tech world and get every one pretty excited. So unless you have lived under a rock you have most likely heard about today’s iPad launch.

Yep, at this very moment as you read this article, thousands of Apple enthusiasts across 10 different countries are eagerly standing in line waiting for the latest Apple sensation. Pre orders were so successful in fact, Apple were forced to push back the delivery date as they struggled with the high demand.

In the build up to this release date we have heard the names iPad 3 and iPad HD, however, it seems that Apple’s latest product will simply be called iPad. This shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise, although to some it has. The iPod has always been the iPod, the MacBook has always been the MacBook, and the iMac has always been the iMac. The products new name reflects the company’s simplistic philosophy.

The iPad features, a 5-mega-pixel camera with 1080p video recording, 1GB of ram and A5X CPU with quad-core graphics. Without doubt, the thing that seems to be getting every one exited is the new 3.1 million-pixel screen.

Apple has called this new screen the ‘retina’ screen. This is because there are so many pixels per inch that the human eye, at viewing distance, can’t pick them out individually.

When testing the iPad Walt Mossberg from allthingsd.com said “when I placed my iPad 2 next to the new model, with the same text on the screen. Letters and words that had seemed sharp on the older model five minutes earlier suddenly looked fuzzier”.

So what about Siri? After the excitement around the voice-activated personal assistant on the iPhone 4S, would it be correct to assume that the natural evolution of the iPad would include Siri? No, it wouldn’t. Siri doesn’t feature on the iPad, however, there is a dictation option when typing. It seems though that this voice-annotating device isn’t all that great.

Charles Arthur from The Guardian described it as the following, “Short sentences it’s good with – so “yeah that’s great I’ll see you later” came out perfectly three times in a row. But “I don’t think you’ve ever seen one of those ever before” came out as “I don’t did you see monomers and before”. Conclusion: don’t throw away the touch keypad. (Well, you can’t.)”.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, Siri on the iPhone is great to use as a hands free device when, excuse the pun, your hands are tied. But the iPad is different, you are given a 9.7 inch screen for a reason, it is something to hold, touch and explore.

It has been said time and time again that the new iPad is more of an evolution than a revolution, which seems to be a fair assessment. It is important to remember though that this new instalment will help the iPad keep its place at the top of the tablet leader board. As mentioned before, Apple have a knack for getting people excited over a new launch and it seems they have done it again, for very good reasons.

Do you fancy popping down to your nearest Apple store and joining the crowds? We’re excited, but we think we might wait a few weeks!

5 Must Have Free Apps For Your Apple Devices

Here at Whadda Media we love our Apple products, however with over 500,000 apps to choose from in the app store, it can sometimes be a challenge to find the best ones.

‘What apps are the best?’ is a common question, however is it not one that is easy to answer. However, here are 5 apps that we couldn’t do without!

1. Flipboard

Flipboard has to be our favourite and most used app. Founded in 2010 the social magazine application pulls together a collection of your social networks most relevant tweets & posts, and presents them in a magazine format on your mobile device.

This application is great for when you’re travelling to and from work, simply flick your way through articles posted by the people you follow on Twitter or Facebook. or select from articles in different sectors such as Technology, Lifestyle or News.

The application stops you scrolling through your timeline seeking relevant tweets and articles, instead, Flipboard brings all your relevant news stories into a stunning, engaging, digital magazine, for you to peruse at your leisure, allowing you to retweet, favourite or email through the app.

Check it out on…  www.flipboard.com

2. Frequency

Frequency is one of the best video applications around. Unfortunately this app is only available on the iPad, frustrating this may be, however, this app is so nicely integrated and so engaging, it may well force you out to Apple to buy an iPad.

The Frequency app acts as personalised video service, allowing you to sit back and ‘watch’ the Internet.  The application integrates several social networks and curates them into channels of your highlights, Facebook videos, Twitter videos, YouTube videos etc, as well as featuring videos in ‘Frequency top 25’ and ‘trending’ sections.

You can also filter and search for videos by topic. When selecting a category, the app will show you the biggest influencers in that particular field, allowing you in follow them on Twitter and browse the videos they have posted online.

Frequency is a great advert for the iPad – we would definitely recommend it!

Get it here…  www.frequency.com

3. Instagram

Everyone loves a good photograph and now with the iPhones powerful camera, more and more people are able to capture great shots on the move.

Instagram is an iPhone only application for sharing images, whether you’re a pro or an amateur, the app is a great forum for uploading images and hearing what people have to say about them.

Instagram inspiration attempts to recreate the instant and magical feeling that once surrounded Polaroid pictures. The application has an extremely large community around taking photographs, adding a cool little filter, and then posting them for all to see.

A simple but effective application and one that will quickly grow on you. Instead of tweeting or posting your image on Facebook, often you will find yourself wanting to add an original effect to the image, and share it with the Instragram community.

What we’ve found is that is grows your interest in photography and lures you into wanting to capture better photos to prove your ability and your eye for a great pic.

You can also access your Instagram profile & images on the web at Gramfeed! Check it out here… www.gramfeed.com

Get the app today at…  www.instagr.am

4. Foursquare

Foursquare is a great app that turns ‘eating out’ into a fun interactive game that allows you to compete against friends. Since launching in 2009 the leisure application has gathered a huge response with over 15 million users worldwide and over 2 million check-ins a day.

The application implements a similar check in concept that’s used on Facebook, however, Foursquare has incorporated the concept into a game, where users can compete for badges, accrue points, leave tips, unlock specials or earn the mayor title at venues all over the world.

The application is also great for companies, who can use the forum to analyse customer reviews as well as generate reward schemes and campaigns that surround the application.

This app is great fun and highly addictive, it’s awesome for competing against friends, building lists of place you love or want to visit, researching the best dishes to eat at a particular venue or for finding nice restaurants in your area!

Check out the application here…  www.foursquare.com

5. Evernote

Evernote is an awesome app that helps you organise and plan your busy lifestyle. It works across Mac, iPad, iPhone and more importantly you can sync your account so you can access it on any of these platforms at any one time.

The app allows you to create notes, capture images, record voice memos and write to do lists. Also, a number of the features work together; for example: you could take a picture and record a voice memo to go with it; you can also install the Evernote web clipper, this lets you clip images straight from a webpage and annotate before you save them to your account.

Evernote has so many different features it is hard to give one exact answer to why you should use it. We find it great to use to help us remember and separate ideas. Simply add a relevant tag and then when you need to find information, you can quickly search for it.

Although it isn’t exactly a ‘fun’ app, we are still huge fans. Since we’ve had it, we have been able to categorise all different ideas or notes on all different projects, as well as having separate tags for any personal interests.

Get Evernote here…  www.evernote.com

InKredible!

If you’re big on social media, you have most likely checked out your Klout score, or at best, heard of it. ‘Social influence’ took off in 2011 with the rise of Klout, as more and more people began to take notice of their score.

Launching late last year the ‘new kid’, Kred, hit the social world and is now beginning to challenge Klout as a serious competitor. Here’s the good news, we think not only is Kred more viable, it’s more accurate too!

So what sets Kred apart from Klout, giving it that edge, which forces you to check your Kred score over your Klout? Here are some of the reasons why we do…

Influence Level & Outreach Level

Firstly you get 2 scores. Kred works by looking at 1000 days worth of Data, including your tweets, conversations, topics and hashtags. Your first score is your ‘influence level’, this is measured out of 1000 on your ability to inspire others, and can be increased by other people re-tweeting, @mentioning or following your account. Secondly, Kred measures your ‘Outreach level’, which calculates your specific activity on Twitter, and is measured out of 10. You can earn more outreach points by @mentioning people, retweeting and following new accounts.

Break Down of Score

The accuracy of the Klout score has often been pulled into question, as it is quite difficult to verify why exactly your score is so low, or so high. For example, our digital marketing platform BeeLiked only has a Klout score of 33 and has been highly active on Twitter over the last 2 months. When comparing our twitter account @beeliked, to a staff member’s personal account, the employee’s score is over 16 points higher when he admits he less active, and tweets infrequently. In contrast, when @beeliked’s Kred is compared to the same staff members, you can see the scores are much closer, and more reasonable.

The true distinction with Kred, and what really differentiates them from Klout, is in the detail and valuation of your score. Kred gives a complete break down of every single tweet, @mention and follow, letting you know exactly what each was worth. This assessment allows you to see what you are doing right on Twitter, and which aspects you need to improve on.

 
Kred Communities

Kred also incorporates ‘Community Kred’, which lists up to 200 communities based on the topics you are influential on…

You can select a topic, ‘marketing’ for example, and Kred gives you a list of the top ‘Influencers’ & ‘Outreachers’, in that particular field for you to follow and interact with on Twitter. Kred also gives you a score for how influential and active you are in this particular sector, therefore, this application is great for enhancing your twitter account in the fields you wish to succeed and progress in.

Offline Kred

Finally Kred lets you upload your life achievements, including, degrees, honors and certificates etc. You can simply send Kred a PDF as evidence of the real-world accomplishment, and they will add it to your profile. Offline achievements are a really nice touch to Kred, giving a personal feel to your profile.

Check out your score at www.kred.com now!

The Follow Frenzy Experiment

How to increase followers is a much talked about topic surrounding Twitter, and most companies would agree they would like to see there following increase to a figure that’s nicer on the eyes! – So here at Whadda Media we thought we would run a cheeky Twitter experiment of our own…

The Experiment

‘Follow 1000 sector relevant people’

Why?

To discover whether following 1000 people, would generate a sufficient amount of accounts following back!

Factors of the Study

Anyone can follow a 1000 people and get some sort of response, however, there a certain aspects to this strategy that will affect the response and outcome. Listen carefully…

Follows must be sector relevant

We don’t need to stress the obvious, by following sector relevant people there is a much higher chance they will return the favour.

We are a digital marketing platform that helps companies manage their social media; therefore any account that we follow, would include interests like ‘digital marketing’, or ‘social media’ within their bio and tweets.

Twitter Account must already have some followers, relevant tweets & a bio

If you’re starting from scratch with something like 0-50 followers, and you’ve only tweeted a few times, it’s notable that your ‘follow back’ percentage, will not increase as much an established twitter page. Therefore, make sure your account has some relevant tweets, and 50 followers minimum, this way people will view your company as ‘professional’ and follow you back.

Make sure you don’t underestimate your Bio! You must strategically write your copy, as it sums you up as a company and as an account – it’s often what people judge you on, before deciding to follow you back.

Our profile before we started:

 
Accounts must continue to tweet throughout the experiment

Throughout the ‘follow frenzy’ you must continue to tweet. If people are looking at your profile and they see you don’t tweet at least once a day, the chances that they will follow you back slims dramatically. We recommend that the  average professional account should tweet at least 5 times a day minimum.

Method

• Follow 1000 sector relevant accounts in the fastest possible time.

• Measure the results after 24 hours, remembering to tweet throughout.

• Measure the total amount of followers after 48 hours and un-follow those who didn’t follow back

The News

So, did it work, and was it worthwhile  you’re wondering?

To give you a rough idea of the experiment time, it took us around 1 hour 30 minutes, between two members of staff to follow 1000 accounts.

Here were the results:

We received 143 unique followers in 24 hours and totalled 159 followers in 48 hours.

Start: 250 Followers End: 409 Followers

Start: 315 Following End: 1239 Following

Start: Tweets 208 End: 227 Tweets

 

Interestingly out of the 159 new followers gained, 95 (59%) were not accounts that we initially followed for the test, therefore indicating only 65 (41%) of new followers, were profiles that we initially followed! Nuts!

 

 
Our Account after the experiment

 
Our Website Hits

Not only did our follow count rise, but because our Twitter bio includes the link to our website, we generated over 1000 hits to our site in over the 48 hours.

 

 
Did you notice something?

We didn’t quite manage to follow 1000 people. We followed 923 and then Twitter told us we had reached a following limit!

 
Woops…so apparently this strategy is technically against the rules of Twitter. According to the social networking site ‘aggressive following’ is a breech of the rules. You are only allowed a 2000 people follow limit, and you can’t follow more accounts until more are following you. It seems that Twitter also counts if you followed and un-followed an account!

Summary

We would definitely recommend undertaking this experiment to get a quick boost in your followers. The underlying moral to story, however, isn’t that if you follow people, they will follow back.

The key to  success on twitter, is ‘follow few and often’ and make them ‘sector relevant’, this should steadily increase your followers and ensure you’re not kicked off Twitter!

Hope this helped!

Digital Marketing Predications for 2012

So 2012 is finally here, it’s been year of much speculation, with London set to host the Olympic games, the Queens Golden Jubilee, and the Euro championships all to look forward to. Then of course there is the predicted ‘end of the world’ this year on December 21st according to the Mayan calendar, which has already seen films and ad campaigns produced in its honour- but what will 2012 mean for digital marketing?

Digital is rapidly replacing old media models, leading the new media age into 2012, and quickly becoming essential for all companies. As we all know we’ve entered into the New Year in recession, however, it seems that the digital world will benefit from this, as companies must utilize social media marketing to increase customers in 2012. Here are 5 digital predictions from us here at BeeLiked for 2012:

1. Rise of Mobile

Mobile marketing seems ready to really take off this year, more and more brands are seeking mobile advancements to their companies, to ensure to capitalise on the rise of smart phones and tablet devices. This year more brands will utilize mobile, to ensure they are effectively engaging and building brand relationships with consumers.

The app industry is coming of age, but currently we are still seeing more brands using them in a general manner, rather than creating strategic, engaging apps that appeal to consumers. It seems this year that is going to change; we’ll see brands developing apps for both customers, and employees. Which means increased experiences for customers, and well-equipped staff with the ability to work on the go!

2. Gamification

Gamification is a method of creating a ‘real life’ game within social apps in your browser, or your smart phone, which allows consumers to take part and compete for certain rewards, badges or points. This new trend seemed to spark some interest in 2011, with the rise of Foursquare, that now receives over 2 million check-ins a week, and will continue to be implemented by a number of brands this year.

A number of companies will also start to execute this feature into their campaigns, as another method to grab and hook the consumer – you will engage and ‘play’ with a brand, all the time building your loyalty and relationship them.

Primarily this method has purely been used in the consumer environment, but this year, expect to see it in other areas from human resources, healthcare, government, and potentially business management – this year at work your targets and rewards could be based on how well your doing on the business digital leaderboard!

 
3. Engagement & Relevance Marketing

2012 will be all about relevant marketing; companies will no longer have the luxury to waste time and effort on ‘nice to have’ mass communications, instead, they will be replaced with digital concepts, that are tailored to the right audience, at the right time. Therefore it’s seems this year companies need to focus their digital marketing efforts on engagement over the amount of followers.

Most companies now are using Facebook and Twitter to give themselves a presence online focusing on how many ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ they have. It’s clear that in 2012 the focus on social media will be quantity over quality with companies focussing on who is following them instead of how many.

Many businesses are in the trial and error stage of implementing social strategy; nonetheless, they will face a challenge this year, as they are driven to evolve their social media strategy to engage consumers to ensure ROI. With a recession still looming people need to justify time and money put towards digital.

This year it is essential for companies to produce innovative ideas, interactive content and great campaigns, to capture and engross followers and fans online – transforming their social audience – into profit.

4. Social Media Optimisation

Social media optimisations or SMO, is the process by which companies make their content easily sharable across the social web – leading to essential visits to their website. This can include features such as apps and widgets, which we have seen much of over the past year or so!

SMO will play an increasing part in companies search engine optimisation (SEO), with businesses using social activities, and social media marketing, to boost visits to their website. The key for companies this year is to understand the audience of each social site, and what to implement on each particular site, making sure their content is more ‘clickable’.

5. Social Influence

There has been a huge rise in the interest of ‘social influence’ online, with sites like ‘Klout’ and the new kid of the block ‘Kred’. Some people are slightly dubious to the accuracy of these scores, however; people seem to be paying a great deal of time, and effort, to improve their score.

Klout well established their platform in 2011 as they attempted to convert digital influence into business value, which will continue to develop this year. More and more businesses will begin to pay attention to Klout, and Kred this year as they attempt to increase their social influence rating, and influential topics.

This year we predict the influence trend will become less about scores, but about the technique companies use to receive and score digital influence, as well as measuring the outcome of it.

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/