Social media cross-posting with Friends+me

// I've recently posted about +Fotostat (http://bit.ly/g-fotostat) , a new service for cross-posting within several social networks, with focus on images. I have been using it with great success for a site I manage. But if your main network is #Google+, you are out of luck, because #Google has only given write access through the G+ API to selected third-party services like #Hootsuite.

An alternative service is Friends+me, currently in beta. The concept is that your source is Google+ and you can cross-post anything you publish on G+ to #Facebook, #Twitter and #LinkedIn. Both personal profiles and pages are supported, you automate at the same time your G+ profile as well as any page you administer.

The good thing is that it comes with quite a few settings for customising when and what's posted. You can set manually to which networks a post will be copied using hashtags or have some networks as defaults. You also have choices on how the post will be made and how it will or not link back to the original post. Finally, links posted through Friends+me on Twitter have support for Twitter Cards, so followers can have a preview of the linked post/URL.

The devil is in the details though. What really won me over to use Friends+me instead of Hootsuite for a site I manage was that links to pages on the website are actually posted as link-type posts on Facebook. Meanwhile, Hootsuite's automated posting to Facebook creates status-type posts which are less click-friendly.

+Friends+Me is now in beta and free. Some (really cheap) plans will be available in the next months (they are announced on the website but you can't purchase them yet - an interesting approach). Check it out! http://bit.ly/friendsme

Blogger and the Holy Grail of unified comments

// So yesterday Google announced a further integration of Google+ comments and Blogger. If you enable the related setting, if your Blogger post is shared on G+, any comment on the G+ post with your post will also be shown in the page of the Blogger post in the comments section.

This is a Holy Grail for comments on Google+ for people like who use Google+ as a blogging platform, as you can have all (public) comments from re-shares on your original post both to read (if you have many re-shares usually you just don't follow discussion there) as well as respond to.

So this is a post written and first post on Blogger at mgiannopoulos.blogspot.com. I'm not sure where this will lead as not everything is peachy.

First of all, I've been looking for some good premium themes that would have the same look as my current setup at giannopoulos.net but have not found anything decent. Any suggestions here would be great.

The other issue I see is that, when you share a new post to G+ at the time of publishing (while you're on Blogger), you actually create a G+ post which contains a link to the blogger post. This mean that my current G+ followers, who were used to seeing my full posts (complete text and image) on their stream, will now see just a link (and perhaps some intro that I write while sharing). This is less compelling to click through.

On top of that, I would not be able to share a Blogger post on G+ communities without being marked a spammer :) Currently it is generally acceptable to share your own G+ post in a community since you're still keeping people on the platform and they can read the full post inline. See the screenshot above for a terrible "inception" effect :)

So as it is, I'm sceptical on whether this could work. My G+ audience is well, on G+. Sending them to Blogger in order to have all discussions in a single place could actually be counter-productive. Thoughts? :)


[Update] When someone replies directly on your Blogger post (not through a share), you get a notification on Google+ :)

Free eBook: Social State

// In celebration of Community Manager Appreciation Day, +Esteban Contreras's new book "Social State: Thoughts, stats and stories about the of social media in 2013" is available #free of charge just for today!

The book contains lots of great information and insights on #social  #media, making it a great read! Get it on the links below:
- Amazon Kindle http://bit.ly/socialstateamazon
- Apple iBooks http://bit.ly/socialstateibooks 
- B&N Nook http://bit.ly/socialstatenook
- Vook (ideal for international readers) http://bit.ly/socialstatevook

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day! #CMAD 

Zoom! Enhance!

// Google+ was already a great #social network for photographers but this new feature in the most recent #googleplusupdate  is simply awesome. You can now: 

- use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out
- click and drag to pan right, left, up or down

Try it out!
Note that this is 2000x1300 pixels screenshot of the interface. If you want to see the full image, head over to the announcement post by +Dave Cohen http://bit.ly/RFkNa5

(Let's see how many years it will take Facebook to copy this :))

Content worth sharing

What marketers can learn from cartoons

Here's an excellent (and huge!) article by +Tom Fishburne on creating content in the age of #social media

As a cartoonist and marketer, I learned that there is a lot to learn from the simple cartoon. Cartoons are “content worth sharing”. Today I want to talk about 5 lessons marketers can learn from cartoons, and I’m going to use cartoons to do it. These lessons are relevant no matter how you communicate with your audience. I’ll use case studies along the way too.

Tom explains why marketing content needs to be relevant ("worth sharing"), targeted, relevant to the audience, and much much more. Well worth the click (pun intended :)), read on at http://bit.ly/xOasC4

Google+: Reshared 4 times
Google+: View post on Google+

Social Media tracking with ThinkUp

There are various solutions (with varying paying options) if you want to monitor your #social network efforts but there is also an open-source solution. +ThinkUp, led by +Gina Trapani, is a web application that can provide you statistics on your #Facebook , #Twitter and #Google + accounts and pages. Included are likes, reshares and responses per posts, followers and page like per day, etc.

It is also a self-hosted solution, which means that you get to avoid giving access to your data to another corporation, or be subject to ads and marketing efforts. Plus it is a great way to give your clients an additional tool for their marketing efforts.

You can see an example of the output here http://bit.ly/wiWH4j , it is my Google+ profile (this is optional, you can keep your statistics private). See also Gina's twitter stats page http://bit.ly/xgVHzv If you want to test it out, I have also opened the registrations on my personal installation for the next few days http://bit.ly/yCaxcH

To install it yourself, you just need a web hosting account with PHP/mySQL (a quick Amazon EC2 solution is also supported although I didn't try it). Setup and installation is rather easy with quite clear instructions.

You can learn more about ThinkUp and download the code at the official site http://bit.ly/xMOw1e

Google+: View post on Google+