Category Archives: Social Media

Pandora Radio Desktop Application

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Dear Pandora,

Maybe I’m alone in feeling this way, but I still prefer having Pandora open on the web instead of via desktop application. The application brings an extra double-click in addition to the browser unless you set it to start with Windows… which people HATE. I think the browser is the first thing most people click on when they start up their computers, anyway, which brings me to my suggestion…

An effective alternative to having an external application, I feel, would be a browser toolbar. So it’s “always on top”, opens with the browser, and doesn’t require its own tab (which I don’t mind the tab anyway). Then song ratings are only one click away (versus 2 with a tab or app: once to bring Pandora into focus, and once to rate a song).

OR…

Make the application operate like a stock ticker. Make it 20px high and 400px across. Have the “always on top” option turned on by default. Let it dock against the top or bottom of the screen. Now you’ve got a non-obtrusive, always on top, click-minimizing application that can operate without the browser, which is pretty much your main marketing point for the current one as it sounds to me.

The sacrifice of my suggestions is the album art. That’s easily solved by an icon on the ticker/toolbar that displays the album art onRollover (or mouseOver, depending on your programming language of choice :) )

That’s all from me for now, thanks for listening!

Intro to Social Media Strategy

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Many organizations simply ignore the proper ways of interacting before they introduce their brand to social media. They are quick to jump in because it’s trendy and popular, but just having accounts on various popular sites does not guarantee a positive return. In fact, Twitter can harm as easily as it can help if you’re not properly prepared.

The most common mistake of new Twitterers is letting their account become stale after only a few days. Ideally, you’ll want to “tweet” at least two-three times a day so that each time someone looks at your page, there is something new for them to see. Often I see pages from institutions that only update once a week or perhaps haven’t updated in over a month. Rarely do I give them the benefit of a doubt that “well maybe they’re just busy lately. I’ll check back next week.” This is common behavior for social users: if it isn’t appealing the first time, they don’t come back a second.

Another frequent mistake from organizations is that they use Twitter only to post events and announcements. While this is acceptable if you have a large following (which means that people are already interested in what you are doing and can therefore get away with it), it is not an effective strategy for gaining followers initially (going back to the significance of the first impression).

I have recommended to my team here in web services to tweet at least twice a day. Additionally, we all have separate personal accounts that we use frequently to keep focused on the true purpose of Twitter: interaction. On Terry College’s official Twitter (@TerryCollege), we try to keep the verbiage casual and social. We only announce a few events each week, and we offer several direct, personalized messages to individual followers (students and alumni, mostly) that keep the friendly interactions rolling.

We have not even advertised our own Twitter/Facebook/YouTube accounts on the website yet because we’re still tweaking and synchronizing our brand’s personality on each. We have been now since late last year.

Twitter > Blogger

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For those of you who loyally follow my blog (there are not many), I would like to apologize for having not posted in almost a month. The reason? I haven’t felt compelled to. Probably because I’ve gotten a lot of good stuff off my chest already in previous posts, but also because I am an avid Tweeter.

Twitterer [twi-ter-er]: a person who utilizes the Twitter social network.

The best description I ever heard of Twitter is that “it’s a blog where your entries are limited to 140 characters.” So every day my twitter feed is full of thought-provoking ideas, statements, observations, and rants. So please please please, if you like my blog, you should really get on Twitter and follow my updates there.

Twitter lingo (for the newbies)

@Replies – These are used when you are directing your update to a specific person. For example, if you wanted to respond to something I had written, you would begin your update with “@danielfowler Blah blah blah! You’re a dirty dirty boy and I hate your guts.”

#Hashtag – These are used for referencing an event or organization. They are helpful for search engines and Twitter-searches for updates related to certain topics. Usually, organizations or event coordinators will designate what specific hashtag should be used when posting on Twitter other social networks. For example, if you attended the South By Southwest conference in Austin last week, you would tweet something like “So many coffee drinkers in this panel discussion! #sxsw” because “#sxsw” was the universal hashtag used for that event. Just tack it onto the end of your updates. :-)

If you have any questions or need help setting up your account, just let me know!