3 More Social Media Wishes

I was satisfied with my post about my Top-3 social media wishes but since then, I've come up with a few more wishes. Just like my original wishes, these wishes are a little nitpicky but relevant enough to really enhance my experience with these particular social media outlets. Let's get right to it.

Pandora – List the Year! 

I'm not big on music. It doesn't dictate my life as much as it did when I was in high school. However, I do enjoy playing a radio in the background when I'm working on a project at home. Pandora does the trick for me. Hearing some of my favorite songs my own 90's Alternative channel really takes me back to days with fewer responsibilities (yet more angst). Pandora is great about providing details of songs such as the artists, the cover art from the album on which the song originally appeared and even the lyrics to the song. What isn’t provided is the release year of the song – and that sorta bugs me. XM Sirius displays the year of songs currently played by users and my DRV guide lists the release year of movies in the channel description. I always catch myself looking at the screen and searching for the year when Pandora plays a great song. I'm sure they have their reason for excluding the year but this would be a great addition, in my opinion.

(By the way, Pandora is a social media network because it requires a unique, personalized profile and custom channels can be shared with other users. Also, if you're in the Birmingham area and like 90's alternative music too, check out 94.9 The Alt FM. They play a lot of songs from the 90's and 00's with a tolerable amount of late 00's Emo music and today's "HEY" music.)

Google+ - Let the People Hoot! 

I enjoy using Hootsuite to schedule social media posts. It's very flexible and allows me to send messages from all of my social media messages – except Google+. Yes, you can send and schedule messages for your Google+ business page with Hootsuite, but not your personal profile. From what I've determined, this is a Google decision – they won't permit users the ability to manage their personal G+ posts with Hootsuite (or any other social media dashboard, from what I can tell). This is a real head-scratcher. It seems that Google would allow this type of connectivity if it ever wanted Google+ to shake its "ghost town" image. Sure, there are workarounds available through IFTTT but they're too convoluted. I'll just continue to keep my fingers crossed in hope of day when Google throws Hootsuite users a bone. Facebook does…just sayin'. Then again, it may not matter as Google seems to be repositioning Google+ as a business tool, according to this recent

video.


Tumblr & IFTTT – Can't We All Just Get Along? 

I use Tumblr primarily as a place to share content from others. IFTTT helps streamline a lot of "sharing steps" for many of my social media profiles. For a reason I cannot determine, YouTube and Tumblr do not want to connect via IFTTT for me. I've tried several recipes that are built to take the YouTube videos I like and instantly share them on my Tumblr. I've even tried building my own recipe to accomplish this but to no avail. It just…does…not…work. It's the only recipe I have trouble with and, even though it won't cause me to quit YouTube (never!) or Tumblr, my Tumblr experience sure would be a lot cooler if there was more harmony in this relationship.

Share your social media wishes with me in the comments below or with me on Twitter! Who knows? I may add even more wishes soon!

Twitter Cards: Mission Accomplished

If you've been keeping track of my personal mission to teach myself how to implement Twitter Cards into my Blogger site, you may recall that I was concerned about the low number of resources that I found to be helpful towards completing my task. After posting Part II of this series, I'm happy to say that a few new resources were discovered and proved to be just what I needed.

RECAP OF WHY

In additional to the educational benefits of teaching myself about Twitter Cards, I really wanted to gain the social media benefits that come with gaining this new skill. Everyone knows that photos included in social media posts help drive up responses to said posts. Think about it ... which posts do a better job of catching your attention as you zip through your social media feeds? The posts that feature photos, right? And that's what I wanted - particularly with my tweets.

WHAT I NOTICED

I share a lot of links to articles that I find to be helpful or interesting. I noticed that when sharing links from a major website, my tweets would feature a summary of the article along with a photo. Like this:

Why Do We Like #Brands As Much As We Like People? | http://t.co/lqh8OMg7X2 | http://t.co/tC1hoqSJ8s

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) June 19, 2015

Naturally, these types of posts produced better interaction stats than my posts that included links to my blog, which featured no such summary or photo.

I tried to compensate by including a photo file with my tweets (that promoted my blog posts) that I scheduled through Hootsuite but that did not produce the desired result. I mean, it did...but it wasn't the same.

Double Dipping Days Over for Voice Acting Celebrities? http://t.co/OMzCl6g2ah http://t.co/v9HL1vukBk pic.twitter.com/RvXFVnApJ9

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) June 25, 2015

This method positioned the photo above the tweet, includes the photo file as another link within the tweet and features no summary. Again, not exactly what I wanted.

After searching for a solution, I leaned about Twitter Cards and the different kinds of Twitter Cards. I determined that I wanted to add Summary Cards to my Blogger site. As I've mentioned in my previous posts, Blogger's mechanics presented a bit of a challenge for my project - or so I thought.

WHAT DID I DO?

Twitter's developer site actually offers a link to a Blogger user's page that explains how to edit Blogger HTML for the purpose of adding Twitter Cards. Must be legit if Twitter links to it, right? Actually, um...no.

That was a dead end so I conducted a search of my own. I tried many of the suggestions that I came across but none worked as well as the solution I found at this very helpful blog. I simply copied the code found here and pasted it into my Blogger site just as the author instructed (as well as updated the Twitter handles within the code).

The author even provided a link to Twitter's validator, a helpful tool that gives a preview of your Twitter Cards. I gave one of my recent posts a test run through the validator and initially liked what I saw. It seemed the HTML code I plugged into place almost did the trick - nice, large photo...but no summary. Something wasn't quite right and the validator told me so - I was missing a meta description, or so it said. I was sure I was missing a line of code so back to searching I went.

Almost immediately, I came across this post that helped me realized that meta description error was due to a very simple reason: I had not utilized the "Search Description" feature found within the Post Settings that every Blogger user knows about. Duh!

So, I went back into one of my posts, entered some text in the "Search Description" section and....

Here's the latest on my project to teach myself how to implement Twitter Cards on my Blogger site. It's getting good! http://t.co/YvxPbhiaHg

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) July 13, 2015

SUCCESS! Just like the FastCompany tweet above, I know the summary card is working because the photo is below the tweet and features a summary. Plus, response to this particular tweet saw a significant rise in clicks.

All in all, this task didn't turn out to be as difficult as I thought. But, I'm glad I took the steps to learn about Twitter Cards on my own. I hope that this, the third post of my series, provided clear details on the steps I took to accomplish my mission. If not, feel free to leave a question in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

{Top Photo: Courtesy}

Corporate Blogs Done Right

Corporate blogs are great tools that companies can use to connect with customers. The stories shared through corporate blogs can even give consumers new ways to use your product, which is always a good thing. In this post, I want to brag on a few of my favorite corporate blogs and explain what they do well.

Hootsuite

We are all familiar with Hootsuite by now. Often viewed as the leader in social media management tools, the Hootsuite blog does a great job of continuously sharing examples of why we need their product. The bloggers at Hootsuite get an A+ for consistency (multiple posts each day) and for blogging about relevant examples of social media techniques. Hootsuite’s posts about their educational resources are very helpful too.

Infomedia

Infomedia is a Birmingham-based marketing firm that specializes in web communications. They cover all the bases – from web development to e-commerce to digital consulting. When supplying such a visible product, it’s important to have examples on hand, right? Infomedia does just that with their interesting company blog. Multiple Infomedia employees contribute to the blog where they share their opinions and expertise. Visit the Infomedia blog for help with spotting social media trends or to understand how a particular web marketing tool will benefit your company – plus much more.

Pillsbury

Food: it’s a basic necessity and a culture. Recipes are the tools of the trade and we always like to hear about new twists on old favorites. Pillbury features a weekly series of their favorite food obsessions. These obsessions include a list of ingredients, preparation details, nutritional info and more – all for a different dish, dessert or drink that you can try each day of the week. Best of all (and this is soooo smart), Pillsbury features posts by The Makers, six food bloggers that share ideas and stories to make your next meal really stand out.

I hope this post has helped you think of new blogging ideas. Do you have a favorite corporate blog? I’d love to check it out – leave me a link in the comments! As always, thanks for reading.