Faithful Apple

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I am an AVID Apple lover. As we all know, you either love or you hate Apple, there isn’t much of an in-between. OK, maybe those who are too afraid to leave their virus infected PCs. I got my first Apple computer my senior year of college and I have been in love ever since. Let’s start at the beginning.

Apple Love

My dell PC had melted its own video card. After their tech support told me I should put my laptop in my freezer while i saved any files off the hard drive to keep it from catching on fire, I decided I had enough. My mother’s reaction was “well, aren’t you a little rebel” when I chose to get an Apple. Really? Is that what a government computer programmer in her 50’s thinks? She’s afraid of the change. So, of course, I ‘rebelled’.  I have had the iPhone since it first came out and I have never regretted it. I even took it on a business trip to France in 2008 and without it, I wouldn’t have been able to continue communication with my now fiance that led to him meeting me in Paris for the most romantic weekend of my life. Thank you iPhone.

There is also nothing left to be desired at the Genius bar. To have a person and a place to take my computer or phone when I’m having problems is a god-send.  When I got my iPhone4 and got home to set it up on my MacBook Pro I was told that since I didn’t have Leopard OS, I couldn’t use my phone with my computer. I was still running Tiger. To upgrade would cost $100’s. Great. So I took my computer to my local Apple store and asked if I could just buy the upgrade for $35. The Genius told me that technically I need to buy Leopard (which they don’t sell anymore) and THEN upgrade to Snow Leopard for $35. BUT, the upgrade alone might work, but he couldn’t tell me that. I asked if he minded if I sat in the store and ran the upgrade if he would come and check on me every so often. Amazingly, he did the whole upgrade for me — and when it came time to upload the new software, he brought me one of the Genius Bar fancy orange hard drives. You know what I’m talking about, the good stuff. He winked and told me this would be faster than the upgrade CD I had just purchased. What he did was give me the Leopard OS and then upgrade me to Snow Leopard. He saved me a couple $100!!

Thank you Apple. Thank you Genius Bar and un-named Genius.

The Social Media Juggler

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I haven’t been keeping up with this blog for the past few weeks and my reason is going to sound odd — I’ve been SWAMPED with social media! So wait, that means I’ve been doing so much social media that I couldn’t keep up with it all? I guess that’s it. My company has five separate Twitter accounts. Yes, five. We have a general company news and activities one that my boss, the VP of communications runs. The VP of government affairs has his own account and he gives updates as to what he is doing on Capitol Hill for our industry. Two of our membership programs have their own accounts to build the brand, get out messaging about specials and generate membership. Finally, our trade show has its own account to generate excitement and attendees for the show. Each has a distinct purpose and they show our members who are generally over the age of 50 that our company is moving with the times, we are invested in learning what we can about how the industry is growing and what new ways our members can expand their outreach to increase their business.

Back to the point, my neglect of this blog came from a meeting I went to a few weeks ago where I volunteered to run one of the membership programs Twitter accounts. It was easy, fun and a new aspect of my job that I was excited to grow in. Tweeting for a company is very different from tweeting for yourself and I was eager to try my hand at it. Suddenly, a week later, my boss was taking a few weeks off so I’ve also taken over the general company account while she’s been out. Then, the girl who was handling the trade show account wasn’t really attending to it because she was too busy, and some how I ended up taking that over as well. At the moment, I am running three of our company’s five Twitter accounts. Needless to say, I’ve been a little distracted.

It has been quite interesting juggling all of these different ‘voices’ but that all have the same essential message – to join our company.  I started using HootSuite because it lets me schedule Tweets which is by far the most valuable tool for a corporate Twitter account.

Try these tips for your business Twitter account:

1. Schedule Tweets. I have found that you usually have multiple messages that you want your followers to get, but it’s best to space them out. You never know when people are reading their Twitter feed, or if they are following a lot of people, your Tweets can quickly get lost in the shuffle.
2. ALWAYS provide a link. Even if it’s just back to your homepage, you want your followers to have some reference, a way to find out more info. If your Tweet gets re-Tweeted(RT)ed, then the info needs to be available.
3. Create Hash tags. If you make a hash tag from your company’s name, show names, program names, etc. this will not only reinforce your brand so that others know the acronyms, but allow others to follow news about your topics if they are later followers. It’s an easy way to stay in control of what Twitter searches bring up about you and your company.
4. Play well with others. You have a few followers and you are following a few people. So RT what they say if its relevant (hopefully that’s why you’re following them, they are relevant to your company). This way they will RT for you (hopefully) and get your message out and you both learn and build a relationship. The relationship is key.

Here are a few things I have learned:

1. Follow with intent to interact. Don’t follow someone unless you care about what they say. First of all, there is a ratio you have to maintain. in order to follow more than 2,000 people you must have X amount of followers. Plus, it just become clutter to follow people you aren’t going to read from or talk to. The point of social media is to interact and be social. Following someone because you’re hoping they will follow you back JUST to increase your number of followers, doesn’t work and defeats the purpose.
2. Don’t double dutch. That’s right. I made up a new term. It means don’t schedule the same tweet for multiple accounts at the same time. If you’re Tweeting for one company or client from multiple accounts, chances are both accounts have similar followers. If they see that two accounts Tweeted the exact same message at the exact same time, it takes away from the interaction and both accounts lose their individual voice. Each account has a separate purpose, and while they have the same larger goal at the end of the day, the point is that they should have slightly different target audiences.

A small pet peeve of mine is I’ve noticed some people who RT the same messages often. They have a brilliant blog, but seem to just use their Twitter account to promote the blog posts. That’s great and a good use, BUT it’s not good or helpful to RT about old blog posts that you’ve already Tweeted about using the same messaging. This makes me not want to interact with you because I feel like you’re not reading what other people are Tweeting, you’re just mechanically RTing all of your old Tweets.

The most important thing is to remember voice and target audience. The rest is gravy.

Update: TweetDeck iPhone App

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I LOVE the TweetDeck iPhone app. I have been using it relentlessly this week and it is great.  I was apprehensive at first, but it is so streamline that it is hard not to like it.

What I love:

Sync. I love that the columns that I create on my computer automatically sync with my phone so I never miss a thing.

Simple. It’s easy to use and not overwhelming like I feared.

Links. The app allows you to view links from other tweets within the app so you don’t have to wait to go to the browser.