Ray Province

The HootSuite ap for iPhone is one of those rare applications that I actually paid money to own. In my case, I bought it so that I could more easily manage the Twitter accounts of my clients, for which we do social media micro blogs.  It also lets me handle my own account.

The surprise is how well the ap works.  It has been flawless for me.  It also allows me to better manage “mentions” from people who follow me. That’s a chore, because I have over 5000 people I tweet with all the time.  I don’t like losing people in the Twitter Ocean.

There is a featured Section, so you can get tweets for HootSuite, and you can get their featured users. As to your own account, you can keep up with live stream, Mentions, DM’s in your inbox and outbox, Sent Tweets, and Favorite Tweets. So, it really has all my favorite features that I use on the big version on my laptop.

If you are serious about Twitter, or you manage multiple accounts, you need to look at the HootSuite Program.  If you are also an iPhone junkie,  the HootSuite Ap for iPhone is worth the couple of bucks you’ll pay. Enjoy your Twitter experience more.

We’ll talk again soon,

Ray Province

Celtic Ozark Solutions

Ray Province

The Godaddy.com people have published their own iPhone application. I have to tell you that I really like it.  It has really opened up some new possibilities for managing my account on Godaddy.com.

I realize that some of you may not be as excited about Godaddy.com as I am. You hear good and bad stories, though, about every Domain Hosting Company. I have just always had a good experience there. Granted, my need for technical service is minimal. I can usually handle my own issues. However, I have needed them at times, and I have always been able to get a live voice from Tech Support that speaks English as well as I. (or almost so!)

The new ap has components that will let you check your email. You can also handle Domain Management, and order new products. You can renew also. In the future, I expect to see total DNS managment as an option.

If you’re a fan of the commercials, there is also a link to that.  A Contact Us section will also allow you to communicate with the Godaddy people. There is also a WHOIS search feature.

It’s not bad for a first edition of the iPhone application. Hang on. I’m sure there is more to come. Want to more more about Godaddy.com services, just click here.

We’ll talk again soon,

Ray Province, Celtic Ozark Solutons

Jailbreaking your iPhone involves putting software on your iPhone that will unlock its full functionality. Many types of programs are unrunable on the iPhone, because of security restrictions placed on it by Apple. Some people also call this process hacking the iPhone.

The reasons behind why people want to jailbreak the iPhone are many. Some of the bigger reasons, though, involve the limited custimizability of the iPhone.  There are also been complaints about text messaging privacy on the iPhone, and a lack of ability to run background applications.  Personally, I would also add the limited ability to “tether” an iPhone, thus making it act like a “WiFi router.”

You need to know, though, that hacking your iPhone will void your warranty.  You also need to know that you open your iPhone up to some bad programming also.  If those risks are acceptable, then you may be able to gain some real functionality by jailbreaking your iPhone.

One easy place to get help with a clean, safe  jailbreak of your iPhone is Blackra1n.com .  The system is easy to follow, and works well. Make sure you also make a backup of your iPhone before trying the process. You will then have a way to reset your iPhone to earlier settings set in your iTunes configuration.

You may also want to check out Cydia and RockApp for a place to start getting aps.  The two sites are safe, and provide some real quality applications.  A lot of them are free.

Jailbreaking your iPhone may open up a lot of functionality for your phone.  It may also be a source of some problems. Just don’t be mad at the Apple folks!

We’ll talk again soon,

Ray Province, M.A.

Ray Province

The BlogPress iPhone ap makes blogging on your website a breeze.  I am always looking for iphone aps that help me be more productive, when I can’t be in front of a desktop or laptop computer.  The BlogPress ap has made it possible for me to blog whereever I am.

I have the ap set up to handle all my blogs on Blogger.com  It can do much more, though.  It also handles my blogging on Wordpress and Joomla.  This includes my websites like this one, which are built on a Wordpress theme.  There are setting for MSN Live Spaces, Movable Type, TypePad, Live Journal, and Drupal.  You can also hook in Youtube,  Twitter, and some other sites.

For my wordpress sites, I had to activate the XML-RPC settings in the Settings>Writing section of my admin console.  There is also a setting there to active Atom style protocols.  This allows the iPhone ap to publish to a private website.

In Joomla, you will have to download and install the MetaWeblog plugin for Joomla. It grabbed it from the Joomla extensions site.  You also have to enable web services in the Global Setting section of your admin console in Joomla.

You may also want to grab the free iPhone ap for Dragon dictation. You can then dictate your blog, and paste it into the page you set up in the BlogPress ap.  Pictures can also be added this way. 

The BlogPress iPhone ap makes blogging on your website a breeze. I hope you will give it a try. Then, the world can become your blogging office!

Ray Province

Tweeting hot topics can be one way to really help draw traffic to your website.  Simple connections to current topics of interest will help many people take the extra step to go ahead and visit your website. Then, it’s up to you to WOW them.  Here are some simple rules about tweeting hot topics.

Make sure the topic is relevant to your website.  On this website about social media marketing, website development, etc., I would be much better off talking about the new iPad than I would the one year birthday of the children of the “octamom.”  Doing otherwise will not give you favorable results, and it really cheapens your website content. So, what do these results look like?  That’s simple: you want people to re-tweet your work, comment on your post, etc.

Some of the overall best subject matter for tweeting hot topics comes from new technical innovations, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, what’s happening with celebrities, and my personal favorite, politics!  If you can find good topic matter in these areas, you will draw extra hits.

Images and videos are also a great way to bring extra hits to your website from tweeting.  Most of us have now grown up with television, so we love our videos. That is why Youtube is the number two website in the world.  The biggest mistake people make in tweeting video is getting too commercial with it.  Try to give people information, share some knowledge, help people. Then, after you have shared first, you can be justified in pointing people to products and services.

Tweeting hot topics can be a great way to draw traffic to your website. It can also be a way to stimulate conversation on your Twitter page.  Good luck.

Blogging is a geat way to start to develop your social media network. It is also a great way to promote your business and services. Let’s take a moment and look at blogs.

By definition, a blog is a type of website used to share information, articles, videos, pictures, opinions on some topic. The sites are usually maintained by an individual or small group, though large corporations are starting to get in the game.
The word derives its meaning from weblog.

My favorite blogs to use are set up on WordPress, Blogger,Bloglines, and Tumblr. Each of these sites will allow you to set a blog, or multiple blogs, for free. You do not even need to write on different subjects. You may carry the same article, or post, on each of the blogs you set up.

My favorite thing to do with a blog is share information on a particular subject of interest. You are reading such a blog entry now. I am fascinated with blogging on social media, and its affects on our current society. So, I share this bit of expertise on these blog sites.

The best blog articles are 500 to 1000 words in length. They will contain keywords in the title, and a couple of times during the article. In this case, I am writing on social media integration. I have used these so called “keywords” in my title, and in the article.

A keyword is a word that someone might use to find something about my business in a informational search on a site like google or yahoo.
So, I use the keywords social,media, and integration as a way for people to find my work on the Internet. In fact, I even own a website named http://ping.fm/YEPC0 or http://ping.fm/36UWc

When I first opened my Twitter account, I had a great deal of trouble learning to “say what I want to say” in the 140 character limit. After serving for years as a minister, I have learned to write in a conversational style. This method does not work well in the new world of social media.

Then I went through a denial phase. I just started doing multiple “tweets’ to get my whole message out. That didn’t work either. No one was responding.

So, I went back to an idea first taught to me by my philosophy/religion professor in undergraduate school. He had us write one page summaries of all our reading. Talk about a task! This is now my “mantra” for Twitter.

So how long should tweets be? The answer is simple in concept: you should tweet with the fewest possible characters to get you message out! Just like a haiku: one concept.

Other considerations for the length of a Tweet include two important items: any “re-tweet or index code” and any URL you add. My re-tweet is @celticozarkian. That knocks out 15 characters. If I index my social media tweets, #socialmedia , that will take 12. Add a tinyurl, and you can easily be down to 100 characters left.

Here are some new tips on Tweeting for length of message:

• Make the message component 80 characters or less. 50 seems to be the new 140, so shoot for that!
• Make your URL as short as possible. There does not need to be clear meaning in the URL itself. Example: my social media site is http://socialmediaintegration.info . I don’t need all this in the URL, to get people interested in clicking the URL. That is the job of the message.
• Text message jargon is typically OK. Most people now understand an OMG, or IDK, or LOL. It saves you space. (My daughter says I still will not be cool!)
• Use caps to express emotion. Just don’t do all caps, unless you intend to be angry.

Talk to you again soon,

Ray Province

Ray Province is a retired minister, who now works as an IT programmer in the healthcare industry. He also owns Celtic Ozark Solutions, and IT Company specializing in website, development, SEO, and social media marketing. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

What is a good time to tweet? I have spent a lot of time looking at this issue lately, as I try to optimize this process for my own tweets. The answer is not always apparent.

I live in the Central Time zone in the United States. So, I have a several time zones behind me, and one if front, just to be able to tweet with people in the United States. This does not count my friends in Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.

My research is a bit unscientific at this point, but I have a good following for test cases. At last look, I tweet to around 4800 followers. What I have found is that I have the best luck between 11a to 5p CDST.

This is not to say that people don’t tweet later in the day, or earlier. I just seem to get the best responses during these hours. I do know that my tweets late in the day tend to be better recieved when they are on personal type issues, things going on in my life, etc.

This is not a surprise: business gets done during business hours. Tweeting for business purposes tends to follow this plan. Bear that in mind as you are looking at the best times to tweet for your business.

We’ll talk again soon,
Ray Province

Ray Province is an IT programmer in the healthcare industry, and owner of Celtic Ozark Solutions, and IT company that specialized in website design, social media integration, and SEO. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

The longer I study Twitter and Facebook, the more I realize it is all about tweeting with attitude.  The way you phrase things can make a big difference in whether or not your messages will be read.  Here are some thoughts on messages that have some attitude.

One of my favorite tactics is to be definitive in my message. Get it said with as few a words as possible. I used to have a boss that told me “5 words or less, Ray!” This hold true for getting to the point!

Another tactic is to use some humor in your messages.  Life is serious enough now, without someone getting too serious with the messages we read. That is why, I believe, people love funny jokes, cartoons, videos, etc.  If you can get a bit of humor in your message, it will almost always increase the hits.

 I throw this one in for my daughter.  Try the OMG shock value!  People love shocking and amazing stories as well. Give people a little OMG factor, and it may be more than they can handle.

Messages about current events and famous people can also help get your message out to the world.  One of my personal favs of the past was “Barach does this. You should too! “ This is not always an easy task for every type of business, but it did work to promote  a Twitter article.

So, that is what I mean by tweeting with attitude.  If you are going to tell me about what type of oatmeal you had for breakfast, then you had better tell me Barach eats it, or it was purple, or you spilled it all over your spouse’s new shoes!  There you have it!

I wanted to share a video from Scott Willoughby, regarding his research into what makes Twitter work for some people. Scott has taken a pure “research” methodology to this. I will be adding articles on this theme, with some of my thoughts on how I have built my 4000+ Twitter following. Enjoy!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – How to Get Re-Tweeted from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.