When it comes to your personal social media activities or those of a client, it pays to work smart.  For years now, Dan Zarrella, a self described social media scientist, has been collecting data and sharing his insights on getting the most out of your efforts.  On Twitter specifically, he has focused a lot of energy on retweets as a measurement of influence for individual tweets.  Clearly there are other measurements to consider but analyzing retweets is a great place to start.

Dan Zarrella's free online tool - TweetWhen

It’s important to understand active Twitter times vary by topic, industry, location, audience demographics and more.  Therefore, relying on universal data suggesting the best times to tweet is not sound strategy.  On the other hand, analyzing the data from your own tweets is a much better indicator for making decisions about the timing of those tweets.

In preparation for a recent webinar, Dan launched a free tool called TweetWhen which quickly grabs data from your last 100 tweets and determines the most responsive times/days of the week for your Twitter activity.  It does this by calculating the most retweets per tweet and presenting the results in 2 graphs.  I should note, the tool does not require a connection to your Twitter account so you can view the results of other Twitter including your competitors.

A sample report for TweetWhen.com

What are you thoughts?  Is this a tool that can help you or your organization make better timing decisions?  For more information on Dan Zarrella’s timing webinar see the SlideShare presentation below.

Hallelujah!  Choice is a good thing.

HootSuite has always been an effective, reliable and user-friendly Twitter client, but there has been one glaring flaw.  For as long as I’ve been using HootSuite (7 months and counting), their ow.ly URL shortener has served up redirects within a frame accompanied by an annoying social bar at the top of the page.  Despite this maddening “feature” of HootSuite, I was too attached to the other benefits to make a switch to another Twitter client.

The truth is, I was probably a bit lazy about it.  I’ve been intending to switch to TweetDeck for a couple of months now.  However, I received an email from the HootSuite team this morning with welcome news.  Users now have a choice if they want their redirects to be served without the social bar.

A long-awaited choice from Hootsuite

Upon login today, HootSuite is allowing users to choose between their ow.ly and ht.ly URL shorteners.  I believe this is a big step for HootSuite because most users I know would prefer to have their redirects served without the social bar.  Now that this choice has been offered, I will surely stick with HootSuite until something clearly better comes along.

URL Shortener Choices

Fully loaded URL shortener – Ht.ly

Users wishing to keep the old social bar in their redirects can select the ht.ly URL option.  Although HootSuite would lead you to believe this to be the better option, I expect most users will get rid of the social bar when given the choice.

Ht.ly URL shortener includes social bar and frame

Lightweight URL shortener – Ow.ly

Users wishing their redirects to act like most other URL shorteners (such as bit.ly)  should select the ow.ly URL option which is interestingly the default choice.  This leads me to believe HootSuite had enough complaints and/or users leaving the service to actually push this option.

Ow.ly URL shortener redirects to the original URL with no social bar

Custom URL shortener – Ow.ly Pro

In the event you would like to have your own custom short URL, HootSuite will soon be offering a service called Ow.ly Pro.  This offers you the option to bring your own vanity URL to their service for “branding and style points”.  To be notified when Ow.ly Pro is available, simply visit HootSuite’s sign-up form.

I’m expecting this change to be well-received by those in social media circles – especially since the new option still tracks clicks.  HootSuite is almost always listed as one of the top Twitter clients and now they have just eliminated their biggest weakness.  I applaud their decision to offer a choice even though it will likely harm revenue in the short-term.

And why it probably doesn’t matter anyway…

I have become dependent on Twitter for many things these days.  The service itself is brilliant in it’s simplicity, effective and borderline addictive to a loyal group of users.  But I often wonder if Twitter is doing enough to be relevant in the long-term.

Let me be clear about something here.  I am not a Twitter basher.  However, I do think Twitter has benefited tremendously by innovative 3rd party applications and services that make it a much more useful tool than it otherwise would be.  The real power of Twitter lies in it’s incredible volume of users – not it’s functionality.

Tumblr and Twitter both allow users to follow others and post updates easily.  Although that is pretty much where the similarities end.  Beyond being a “status updater”, Tumblr is also an impressive micro blogging, feature-rich service allowing users to easily create a creative social presence online.

Tumblr Dashboard Screenshot

8 Reasons Why Tumblr Is Better Than Twitter:

1)  Tumblr has built-in functionality that doesn’t require multiple 3rd party applications.  Why is it that I find it necessary to use HootSuite, Twitpic, Twitvid, Twittgroups and Echofon regularly when I’m trying to get the most out of Twitter?

2)  Tumblr allows you to have your own custom domain.  Since Tumblr is a feature-rich micro blogging service, you may actually consider making it the framework for your website.

3)  Tumblr makes it easy to share anything you find or create.  You can post text, quotes, links, photos, audio, video, dialogues, slideshows, and more.

4)  Tumblr has built in search engine optimization. Using XML sitemaps and URL slugs, Tumblr is well liked by sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

5)  Tumblr uses Facebook and Twitter APIs.  If you’ve got something to say on Tumblr, you can post to your Facebook wall and Twitter page simultaneously.

Alert Presence on Tumblr

6)  You can send Tumblr posts in by phone.  Can’t get to a computer?  Have something to say out loud?  Tumblr offers you a toll free number where you can record and audio message that is immediately posted to your page.

7)  You can update your Tumblr page via email.  Whether email Tumblr a “status update”, song, quote, video or photo the service senses what you’re sharing and automatically posts it nicely to your page.

8)  You can choose to keep some Tumblr posts private. Some things just aren’t for everyone to read.  Tumblr allows you to make a post private and invite only friends, co-workers or family to view it.

Why It Probably Doesn’t Matter:

In a perfect world, the best services would ultimately win out.  However, we all know that it doesn’t always happen – especially on the Internet.  Tumblr was launched in 2007 which was a full year after Twitter’s debut.  Being first to the game (along with celebrity usage) allowed Twitter to gain a tremendous advantage in the number of users.  In social media, the number of users is the name of the game.  Unless Tumblr can find a way to get large numbers of new users, I’m afraid they will eventually fade into obscurity.  In facet, Tumblr may just be the equivalent to a critically acclaimed show that is “too good” for a broad public acceptance.