twitter

Twitterfeed logo

Producing content regularly on Twitter and Facebook is essential to driving growth and engagement. And there are plenty of tools to help automate the process of announcing new posts or sharing interesting links. One of my favorites is Twitterfeed, a free service that easily lets you publish any RSS feed content automatically to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and several other services.

Setup is easy, just enter your RSS feed in the first step and then choose the service you would like to pipe the feed content into. There are controls in the advanced section to set polling frequency, add a prefix, hashtag, or control the number of entries send each time. If you post to Facebook, Twitterfeed can be used to update personal profiles or Facebook Pages making this an easy way to pipe blog posts into that social network. Another interesting use case is posting your Google Reader shared items via the RSS feed found on your Reader public profile page.

Once setup, you don’t have to worry about posting feed updates manually anymore. If you have a creative use case for Twitterfeed, post them up in the comments.

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What Wineries Need To Know About Google+

by Tim Elliott on July 12, 2011

It has been exactly two weeks since Google announced their new social networking service Google+. And some early adopting wineries are already kicking the tires even if the service is still in a limited release requiring an invitation (more on that later). So I thought I would give a short summary of what Google+ offers wineries and some impressions after using the service for a few days.

Google+ logoFirst, Google+ reminds me a lot of Twitter circa early 2007 although it shares more with Facebook and Friendfeed than the popular micro-blogging platform. It has the same vibe as Twitter five years ago and many of the same early adopters in the wine industry are there right now attempting to figure out where it fits in our industry. Google+ is sort of a mashup of Facebook and Twitter but does not require the friend permissions system of Facebook making it more open and indexable into Google’s search engine. But to their credit, Google has also provided ways to post content to limited groups of people, a la Facebook.

The main difference from Facebook is Google+ enables you to build communities of interest called Circles using an innovative, game-like interface. Google gets you started with obvious Circles such as Family, Friends, and Acquaintances but you can create as many as you like. Even better, you can put people into multiple circles so you can both follow and message based upon interest or relationship. Once your Circles are complete you can choose to post to them or to everyone you are connected to. So for instance I can post wine-related content to wine industry contacts and bloggers and vacation photos to just my family and friends. This feature is much easier to use than Facebook friend groups which I abandoned quite a while back.

There are other innovative features to Google+ but the most interesting to me is Hangouts. These are ad-hock video conferences between up to 10 participants. Last Friday evening Rick Bakas hosted such a Hangout sharing weekend wine picks. Since most laptops these days come with video cameras, Hangouts are much easier to do and is currently totally free. I see great potential for wineries using Hangouts to connect with customers, hold small virtual tastings, and extend their customer service.

But like Twitter in early 2007, I don’t see an immediate need for wineries to adopt Google+ just yet. Later this year company profiles will be launched providing a winery with Facebook Page-like functionality. Until then I recommend only early adopters jumping in and creating a personal profile to join the conversation and check it out. If any readers don’t yet have a Google+ invite, just send me an email to acanmedia (at) gmail (dot) com and I will hook you up (Google profile or Gmail is required right now).

Google+ shows a lot of promise for being an alternative to Facebook AND Twitter. Once Google integrates more of their services to this social network it may surpass Facebook as the most engaging social platform for wineries. But it’s very, very early days right now. You can connect with me on Google+ here.

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10 Tips for Wineries on Twitter

February 10, 2010

Rick Bakas posted 7 Twitter tips for wineries on his Posterous blog yesterday. They include nearly everything a winery needs to build a thriving Twitter presence: 1. Twitter gives you 140 characters. Try to keep your tweets to 110. Leave room to people to ReTweet your post. 2. Talk with people, not at them. 3. Use the 1 in 9 rule – one out of 9 posts can be promotional, the other eight are conversational with actual people. 4. Use Tweetdeck – one of the [...]

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Grow Twitter Followers In 4 Easy Steps

June 7, 2009

When starting up a client Twitter presence, I start with a seed list of active wine bloggers and enthusiasts. The process is pretty simple, basically logging into the new account and then visiting my Twitter friends page on my company Twitter account and mindlessly click on the follow button. Brute force but it works. These days there are hundreds of wine enthusiasts on Twitter and this process takes a lot more time than I’d like so I’ve been looking at ways to automate this process. [...]

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Increasing Engagement On Facebook

May 5, 2009

Like the proverbial shoemaker, I tend to get around to setting up some social services for my company later than I really should. I tend to road-test new services on my wine blog or personal accounts before recommending them to clients. And often it’s weeks or months later before I add them here. [singlepic id=1 w=320 h=240 float=center]Case in point is the Facebook page I just published for Acan Media mostly to demonstrate some cool new tools from a company called Involver. Since Facebook is [...]

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Social Media Is About Conversation

May 1, 2009

There is a good post on Mashable today about social media that struck a cord with me. All too often when “social media” is mentioned in the wine industry, most think all they have to do is start a blog, claim their Twitter account and setup a Facebook page. While all of these things are part of a social media plan, they are just tactics to produce one thing: conversation. Back 5 years ago, Stormhoek leveraged the conversation they nurtured in the tech blogosphere to [...]

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