Friday favorites: Tweriod

There are many many Twitter apps and tools available out there, some far better than others (some verging on the utter pointless). So, it's rare that I recommend one as generally they have quite a lot of holes in them or don't really provide any data that is really very useful without further data mining to understand it.

However, in a return to Friday favorites, I'm spotlighting Tweriod. I like the simplicity of it. It analyzes up to 5,000 (for free, or up to 15,000 for a few dollars) of your followers to tell you typically when they tweet and therefore provide you with an idea of the timeframes as to when it is best to reach your followers.

There are some useless results, for example telling me that most of my followers are online between 9am and 10pm (no s**t Sherlock), but when you then look at the graphs in a little more detail, they do give greater insights that just might be useful. For me, it's clear that the busiest period for my followers is from noon (probably because that's when many of my US-based followers typically start coming online, which heightens the effect).

It's all too easy when you're someone who only follows a handful of people to forget that other people may follow a lot more than you and therefore will miss your tweets all too easily if they aren't timed well (i.e. when they're actually on Twitter), so this kind of insight is probably, in my opinion, one of the more useful out there. It does, however, also mean that just about everyone else also targeting your followers could also time their tweets to coincide with these peak times, thus increasing competition for your tweet actually being seen, but that's a risk that seems worth taking at this moment in time.

What makes me 'unfollow' people (and how can we apply such lessons to our approaches online)?

I recently had a little purge on Twitter and unfollowed a number of people. It's a healthy process and makes you feel somehow cleansed (a bit like having a good old clear out of your wardrobe). As I did so, I reflected on the reasons why I unfollowed people and thought I'd summarise those reasons here.

I unfollowed:

• People who only tweet about themselves (when their lives aren't particularly interesting);


• People who tweet inane crap (sorry, this is very general, but I'm looking for value-add from Twitter, otherwise I'm wasting my time on there, so if all your tweets are about how it is snowing in London, but I live in Newcastle, then that goes into the 'inane crap' bin for me);


• People who bulk-tweet and then disappear for a while (I cannot stand this - it's like invading a stage at a conference, shouting something, and then making a speedy exit without waiting around for the reaction);


• People who were interesting to me when I first started using Twitter, but have been 'overtaken' in the interesting/usefulness stakes by other people (this doesn't mean you're using Twitter 'wrong', it just means I have finessed and revised what I am using Twitter for and what I can get out of it - this has shifted as more and more people have joined the conversation in recent years);


• People who don't post any relevant information for me (absolutely critical for me - it is all about value-add);


• PR people who spend all their time tweeting about their clients (ugh, that's all I have to say about that one);


• People who just tweet press releases (ugh again, enough said);


• People who retweet positive things that others have said about them (okay, this won't necessarily make me unfollow you, but if you're great, then I'll know you're great and I won't need to see this little piece of self-indulgence - there are many other things to do with positive tweets about you that retweeting them to everyone else).

This isn't remotely scientific, but I often advise people to think about how they use social media themselves (and their own mental filtering processes) when they think about how they use social media to engage other people. Or, if you're not a heavy social media user, think about the mental filtering processes that you apply when deciding which emails to open first in your bulging inbox. We all apply these filtering processes to just about everything we do (it's decision making and prioritisation), but I often find that when we're trying to get messages out to other people, we forget that they too have their own mental filtering criteria (whether they're aware of it or not).

So, with this in mind, how can you ensure that people (forget about me, I'm not important) don't unfollow you or your organisation on Twitter or other such sites? Here are a few thoughts:

• Apply my mantra: useful, interesting, relevant. Make sure that what you are sharing is at least one of these things to them (this might not be the same thing as what is useful, interesting and relevant to you);


• Add value: provide content that adds value to their lives. This might be providing them with something that could save them time, offer them a new perspective on something, add another string to their professional bow, etc. If they are followers who really matter to you, then look out for opportunities to help them with something through signposting or forming useful connections for them;


• Be personable but not self-centered or self-obsessed. It's possible to inject your personality without talking about yourself all the time;


• Be humble. Be confident in your own worth and awesomeness. We don't need to see that someone said something great about you. Just be great, and we'll think the same thing anyway (show us, don't tell us);


• Don't tweet too much (you'll overpower us and make us weary);


• Don't tweet too little (we'll forget about you).

Underpinning all of this is a basic and simple guiding principle: know who you want your audience to be (keep it narrow and clearly defined) and know what makes them tick. If you understand these two things, then you'll know exactly how you can add value to their lives, what content they will engage with. If you know all of this, then there should never be any reason for them wanting to unfollow you.

Tracy's Friday Favorites - Screenr

I have quite a lot of need for being able to show people how to do things online in quite bursts of information sharing. This can be in presentations when I know that a live demo might be too risky, or for sharing on my blog and other websites. That's why Screenr has become, in the last couple of years, an invaluable tool to me. It's a very very simple web-based tool that allows you to select an area of the screen on your computer, record what you're doing on it for up to 5 minutes, and record a voiceover to explain what you're doing. Very very simple online tutorials and great if you're ever trying to help someone understand how to do something online (training staff for using social media, for example). You can then automatically publish the videos to Twitter, YouTube or download the video file. It's one of those sites that it beautifully simple and so damn useful. Their video explains more:



Because I use Prezi for most of my presentations, that ability to upload a screen cast direct to YouTube and then just simply paste the YouTube video url into prezi for showing the video in presentations is really very quick and seamless.

The audience online engagement journey (AMDIS conference presentation)

Last week I spoke at the Association of Marketing and Development in Independent Schools (AMDIS) admissions conference. I spoke about the online audience engagement journey and how social media plays a role at different stages in the schools marketing, recruitment and admissions process. Here's the prezi from that conference:

What's next for social media? College Marketing Network Conference

Here is the plenary session prezi I am giving at the College Marketing Network conference in Coventry on Tuesday 29 November.

Finally - an education prospectus that does AR properly!

Almost 2 years ago (yes, 2 years ago... sigh!) I blogged about how Augmented Reality (AR) could enhance the college or university prospectus. However, to my endless frustration, the most 'vision' that I've seen in universities and colleges (particularly in the UK) has been the use of QR codes to direct people to web content.

Now, finally, Kendall College have launched a prospectus and AR prospectus app that I think takes real advantage of the trend in AR experiences to merge multimedia with their print prospectus. Check out the video:



Read their info on it here. I'm ordering a copy now to play with it. I hope they've done a big print run to manage all the non-student requests they're about to get!

Tracy's Friday Favorites: Prezi

It was definitely coming, wasn't it? Prezi (www.prezi.com) had to be one of my Friday favorites sooner or later. Those who know me know that this is by far one of my favorite 'tech' tools and one that I think has really helped to make me stand out as a speaker at conferences. Okay, it's not the tool but what you do with it that counts, but Prezi has transformed the way in which I am able to deliver presentations, making them far more entertaining, interactive and visually appealing that dull PowerPoint slides with bullet point after bullet point. It's also enabled me to develop wiki-style workshops, which I love doing as they really engage the participants and get them involved in co-creating their own workshops and programmes, fully sharing the collective knowledge within a room rather than just having a lone voice speaking out at them.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Prezi is a presentation tool, but rather than have individual slides, you work with one large canvas that you can zoom in and out of to highlight key areas of your presentation, talk or workshop. If you like mind-mapping, then you'll probably love Prezi. It's perfect for me as my mind doesn't tend to work in a very linear, structured way anyway. So it means that when I'm planning a conference talk, I can just dump all of my initial thoughts into the one big canvas, then create groupings and move them around to make sense of them, give them shape, and eventually take shape into, hopefully, a beautiful presentation.

The key is not to move too quickly through the presentation, otherwise your audience will complain of feelings akin to sea-sickness! So, as with all technology, don't get carried away with whizzy technology for the sake of whizzy technology.

Here are a few features that it has, beyond just producing beautiful presentations, that I particularly love (and use a lot):

• The ability to embed presentations into other websites, blogs, etc. If you scroll through my blog you'll see a number of posts that have presentations I have given embedded in them.


• Seamless embedding of YouTube videos into your presentations just by pasting in the url for the video (so no fussing with uploading large video files).


• The offline editor (okay, you have to have a paid-for account to get this, but it's worth it if, like me, you do a lot of editing and speech/presentation planning on the go. Many of my presentations are put together as basic structures on train journeys, for example, when I wouldn't be able to use the online editor).


• iPad app. You can't yet edit presentations through the iPad app, but you can show them. And they look amazing. These are great for when you're seeing a prospective client or client on a one-to-one or small group basis and just want to show them something quickly, or for chatting with people on exhibition stands, at recruitment fairs, etc.

IE University have made good use of this for a student recruitment presentation (and I also briefly advised the University of Warwick on one that they created for the same purpose for themselves a year or so back). This is also something that I can help universities put together, or put together for you (with input of graphic designers where required, depending on the brief) so give me a yell if you want to know more. To develop them yourself, it takes a little time to get used to using the site, but after you are used to it, you'll find yourself wanting to come up with all kinds of creative and beautiful presentations. To understand the basic functionality and get my head around it probably took about a day, though of course it takes longer to really get to grips with it and come up with compelling presentations. I've been using it for over 2 years now and for me there is no going back.