Top 10's and Other Lists

10 Fun Twitter Apps You May Not Have Heard Of

As the new Twitter continues to role out across the network, it’s clear that the micro-blogging platform intends to be here for the long-term.

Its initial use as a short message system has evolved into a truly multi-faceted and game-changing platform. Business, cause marketing, non-profits, customer service, lead generation and more – Twitter really does have something for everyone.

A lot of blogs (mine included) often concentrate on the best ways to use Twitter for business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But wouldn’t it be cool to mix it up with a bit of fun too?

With that in mind, here are 10 fun apps for Twitter that you might not have heard of but are definitely worth checking out.

SecretTweet. Founded in April 2008, SecretTweet allows you to tweet your darkest secrets (or those of your friends) for Twitter to comment on. There’s? a mix of the funny and bizarre on the site, though there can also be sad ones as well.
Twitter Tussle. A cute little cartoon site, Twitter Tussle answers which topics are more popular on Twitter by having two cartoon Twitter birds duke it out on-screen.
ASKch. A great healthcare resource, ASKch (currently in beta) from Change:Healthcare allows you to send a question about healthcare costs and options in your neighbourhood, and receive an automated response and information link within 60 seconds.
Mombo. A fun and useful service, Mombo collates tweets about movies and formulates them into a review and overview of how good (or bad) that movie is according to Twitter.
BollyTweet. Like Bollywood movies? Got an iPhone? BollyTweet allows you to connect and chat with your favourite Bollywood stars. And in great Bollywood fashion, you can shake your iPhone to get the latest tweets.
Twitter for Busy People. Need to know at a glance what your Twitter friends are up to? Twitter for Busy People collates their images into sections (Last Hour, Last Day, More Than a Day Ago) and lets you hover over them for the latest update.
CheapTweet. Almost like a Digg for deals, CheapTweet collates all the best retail offers being tweeted, and allows folks to vote on the best ones so you can save the most.
Twitgift. The idea behind Twitgift is simply awesome. Want to send a gift to a Twitter friend? Choose a gift and send a tweet to them, and if they accept it gets mailed out to them. You don’t even need to know their address, Twitgift takes care of this.
Twistori. A very cool visualization project, Twistori gathers tweets about six main topics – Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish – and runs a colourful stream with tweets about that topic.
HootCourse. An interesting idea, HootCourse takes educational tweets and builds online classes around them. Virtual classrooms are created and students and teaches can meet to hold informal classes, complete with teaching materials and formats.

So there you have it. These are ten Twitter apps that might add a bit of fun to your tweeting and help mix things up a little when you want to get away from the serious stuff.

How about you – any Twitter apps you’ve found worth sharing? The comments are yours.

Image: Twitter Tussle

The 7 Day Blog Challenge

Here’s a little experiment I’d love for you to join me in. Let’s call it the 7 Day Blog Challenge.

Instead of sharing the usual suspects when it comes to bloggers and their latest posts, let’s widen our arc. Instead of staying within our normal boundaries, let’s push the ejector seat button and clear the space next to us for some new voices.

Let’s face it, as blog readers we can all be guilty of sticking to what and who we know, as opposed to finding new blood. So let’s encourage each other to diversify a bit, and really help other bloggers get the recognition they deserve.

Interested? Here’s how the 7 Day Blog Challenge will work.

Blog Readers

Sure, it’s great to read the latest from Seth Godin, Darren Rowse or copyblogger, but while they might have a great post that you want to share, do they really need that one extra push? Could their blog survive one less social share, and have it go to one of their commenters instead?

So.

Find a comment that interests you, and click through to their blog.
Take the time to read through the last 4-5 posts.
Comment on their post(s), and let them know you’ve found a new blog to enjoy.
Share the post with your network(s).
Subscribe to the new blog.
Rinse and repeat for another 6 new bloggers (so one a day).

Bloggers

We are who we are because of our readers. And many of these readers turn into commenters, some very regularly. And many of these commenters have blogs. So why not highlight them more?

Choose one of your commenters each day, and drop by their blog to read, comment and/or subscribe.
Share with your own readers – either highlight them in a post of yours, or via Twitter, your Facebook Page, or similar.
Add their blog to your blogroll (if you have one) or post a round-up at the end of the week of the great new bloggers you’ve found.
If you’re on Twitter, create a list (maybe Blogs I Read, for example), and tweet a link out to one of the blogger’s posts.
When replying to a comment of theirs, tell other commenters this is an example of the great mindset they’ll find over at that person’s blog.

Blogging takes time, commitment, and most of all love. If a blogger doesn’t love what they’re doing, that can soon come across and make the blog less enjoyable.

It can be hard for bloggers, especially newer ones, to keep going when they feel no-one is reading. Let’s take 7 days out of our normal blogging routine and share the love with more than just the usual suspects.

I’ll be sharing my 7 new blogs starting on Friday. Care to join me?

Image: tarop

52 Cool Facts About Social Media

As social media continues to gain acceptance as a bona-fide communications platform, I thought it might be fun to have a cool fact about it for every week of the year.

So, here are ten facts about the five most well-known social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogging – with two more bonus facts thrown in just for fun. (And to get to the figure of a fact a week for a year).

Enjoy!

Facebook

1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore?s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore?s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.

Statistics from Facebook press office.

Twitter

11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
13. There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.
14. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
15. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.
16. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.
17. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
18. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
19. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.
20. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.

21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.
22. There are more than 70 million users worldwide.
23. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.
24. LinkedIn is available in six native languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
25. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.
26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
27. A new member joins LinkedIn every second.
28. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.
29. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
30. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.

Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.

YouTube

31. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.
32. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day.
33. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
37. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.
40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.

Statistics from YouTube press centre.

Blogging

41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.
42. There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati.
43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.
44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.
45. Two thirds of bloggers are male.
46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.
47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.
48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.
49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.
50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009.

Bonus Facts

51. 90% of Internet users know at least one social network.
52. The average social user has 195 friends.

Statistics from Online Media Gazette.

So there you have it – a fact for every week of the year, just in case you need it for your next presentation or tweet-up, and want to let folks know why social media isn’t so dorky after all. And as an added bonus, here are some ways you can use these stats for your business’s strategy.

Cheers!

The Five Unwritten Rules of Guest Posting on Blogs

If you’re a blogger, you may have been asked to write a guest post by another blogger.?Or, you might have offered a guest post yourself to a blogger you admire.

Either way, writing a guest post opens you up to a whole new audience and can increase your own readership into the bargain.

Blog readers that may never have heard of you otherwise now have their eyes on you.

Add to that the credence that comes with someone else thinking enough of you to have you on their blog, and a guest post is a pretty big thing.

So it’s only fair that you follow the five unwritten rules when it comes to guest posting on other blogs.

Make It Great

This should pretty much go without saying, but the amount of guest posts I’ve read where you can see the author has basically just mailed it in is both surprising and disappointing.

If someone has taken the time to give you real estate on their blog and put you in front of their audience, the very least you can do is make sure that the post you provide is top notch. Before you send the post, ask yourself the following questions:

Would I be happy posting this on my own blog?
Is this the best this post can possibly be on this topic?
Am I being relevant to the audience of the blog I’m posting on?

Unless you can answer yes to at least two of these questions (the relevance factor may not come into play if the blog owner wants to mix things up a bit), then your guest post isn’t ready.

Research

What’s your guest post going to be about? Did you make the suggestion of the post, or did the blog owner ask you to guest? Either way, one thing you need to make sure of is that you do your research.

This could be of the blog’s archives, to get a feel for the topics that normally appear there. More than likely it’s going to be about the topic you’re writing about. Names, places, facts, statistics, references – all these and more need to be checked before you submit your post.

Let’s face it, you wouldn’t write a load of bull on your own blog, would you? So why even think about doing it to another blogger? Quote your sources and link to external references and sites and make sure the blogger you’re writing for doesn’t end up looking an ass as he or she tries to cover your mistakes in the comments.

This might seem a harsh view, but think of it as if it was your blog. Get the facts right; get the blog right.

Format

While content is often quoted as king when it comes to blog posts, the look and feel of a post can go a long way toward its readability. You can have the greatest blog post in the world, but if it looks like crap then readers will be put off from the start.

When you guest post for someone, provide the format you want it to appear in. Think of how you’d want it to appear on your blog, and then make sure you provide that information with the post itself:

Header(s) and sub-header(s).
Bullets or numbers.
Hyperlinks to external sources or sites.
Images with accreditation to the source.
Author bio.

If you’re unsure on the formatting side, take a look at the blog you’re going to guest on and go with the formatting that blogger uses. Or, simply ask them.

Don’t Be Self-Serving

Okay, so we know that guest posting on another blog offers you new eyeballs and therefore potentially new readers of your own blog. After all, if the readers of the blog you’re guesting on like what you have to say, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ll check out more of your own stuff too.

So why ruin that by pimping yourself shamelessly throughout your guest post?

If you’re using resources and links to external articles to back up your guest post, don’t make all the links to older posts on your own blog. You (probably) don’t do that on your own posts – instead, you highlight other great content and thoughts elsewhere (or at least should be). So why should that be any different on your guest post??Having great content is one thing, but linking to no-one but yourself is just a lesson in narcissism. And you can be sure the readers of the blog you’re appearing at will notice that too.

By all means, link to a post of yours you think might be relevant – but let the readers find out for themselves how great your other stuff is too. Because if you write a great guest post and it’s not self-serving, you can be sure folks will check your stuff out as soon as they’ve finished reading your guest post.

Remember to Visit

When you write a guest post, where do you stop? Is it the moment you finish typing and hit the Send tab on your email, or is it a quick visit to see how popular your post was?

Or are you a blogger who genuinely cares, so you’ll follow up your guest post much like you’d follow up a post on your own blog? After all, it’s still your name on the post, so why should you act any differently just because it’s not on your own blog?

Respond to comments made by the readers of the blog you’re guesting on.
Promote via social networks, much the same as you’d promote your own stuff.
Connect with commenters online and continue to build the relationship started on your guest post.
Write a post on your own blog, expanding the discussion started in your guest post and link to it, offering more traffic to the blogger who’s giving you real estate space.

While you don’t have to follow these unwritten rules when guest posting on another blog, they help you stand out as someone who actually gives a damn.

After all, if you can’t be bothered to offer anything but your best when taking over another blogger’s baby, should you even bother at all?

How about you – what would you add as an unwritten rule when guest blogging?