When the iOS 4 upgrade killed my iPhone’s cellular data connection, it triggered a day-long search for a fix. Several resets and restores later, I discovered that all I had to do was visit one web site. (You can read my story… or, if you’re in a hurry, read about the fix here.)
New media turning into old? It’s not as counterintuitive as you might think, as Angela Crocker, Kim Plumley and Peggy Richardson of The Book Broads explained.
Updated: Thanks to Mitch Cohen for this comment pointing to a one-click bookmarklet – even easier!
Blackbird Pie (kind of a gruesome name, if you’ve grown attached to the Twitter icon) is a new Twitter service that lets you post individual tweets to your blog or web site – keeping that good ol’ Twitter formatting intact, while picking up elements of your site’s design (such as the typeface) as well.
Now, because of certain style overrides we have on SocialSignal.com, the result isn’t quite as picturesque as we might like:
Finally! A tool for blogging tweets about the new tool for blogging tweets! http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/less than a minute ago via TweetDeck
Rob Cottingham
RobCottingham
There’s a certain amount of overlap and such. But it’s still pretty sweet, especially since our workflow used to be:
With Blackbird Pie, the workflow is:
So much easier. And now the text is selectable by others – not a minor issue from an SEO standpoint, either. And it preserves hyperlinks to the original tweet, the Twitter client and the originating Twitter profile.
I like that for a number of reasons, not the least of which is making it easy for people to see the larger context of a tweet: a conversation, for instance, or the user’s Twitter stream. And if you’re trying to blog about a longer Twitter conversation, citing several tweets, this could save you a whole lot of time.
There are plenty of caveats – among other things, it doesn’t work on Tumblr yet, and I keep having to fight the urge to call it “Blackberry Pie” – but it’s a handy tool to have.
For anyone who’s been told to cut the blog from their communications proposal…
…for anyone who knows their social media activities could pull more of their own weight on the bottom line…
…for anyone who wants to take their blog from the experimental stage to having real-world impact – and real-world value…
…we have something for you.
Today we’re launching Social Signal’s first ebook, called 10 Ways Your Blog Can Provide Real Value to You, Your Organization and Your Brand.
It’s based on one of our most popular blog series, and we think you’ll find it timely. Budgets for organizations – whether they’re corporations, non-profits or government agencies – are tighter than they’ve been in a long time, and every program has to justify itself. That’s especially true when we’re talking about something as new as social media.
One thing you won’t have to justify is the purchase price for this book: it’s free, in the Open SoSi spirit.
This ebook will help you make a business case for your blog (and for other social media channels). But more importantly, it will help make sure you get as much value from your blog as possible: by building capacity for your team, putting a human face on your organization, creating a crisis communications channel, and more.
It’s illustrated with Noise to Signal cartoons, naturally, and licensed under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license (which basically means you can’t sell it, and if you reproduce it or portions of it, please attribute it to Social Signal with a link to this page).
We would love your comments. Even better, we’d like to hear your ideas for getting value from blogs and other social media tools.
In times like these, organizations have to make every bit of effort and investment count. We hope this book will help make that happen… and we hope you’ll join in.
Here’s how you can use a new built-in Thesis feature to create a drop-down menu with the titles of the most recent posts in a given category.
Looking for advice on public speaking, speechwriting and leadership communications? Here are some of my most comprehensive posts, on topics that people ask me about most often.
