Social Business Bites - Curated by Des Walsh
Hi
3 crunchy bites this week
- At last! Twitter Beyond 140 Characters
- Find New Content with Google Alerts
- A Social Media Good News Story
______________________________________________
Browse previous issues of Social Business Bites at this link ______________________________________________
Mark Your Calendar: Twitter to Allow Longer Tweets Monday
Patrick Phillips
Don't you hate it when you find you can't fit your brilliant tweet and an image into Twitter's 140 character limit? Well, after lots of prior
alerts, it's finally happening this coming Monday - Twitter is lifting the restriction, but not totally. Patrick has a succinct explanation here of what will be possible come Monday.
If you’ve just been waiting with bated breath for the day you could sneak past the 140-character limit on Twitter, Monday will be your
day.
If you’ve dreamed of the day you could compose tweets longer than 140 characters, you’re about to get your wish…sort of.
FastCompany reported that Monday is the day on which tweets will technically be allowed to surpass the 140 character limit. But that doesn’t mean you write up a 200-character rant and expect to be able to tweet it out.
Nancy Young
One of the easiest tools to use for finding content for your blog or other social media postings, is right at you fingertips and free - Google Alerts.
Google indexes millions of
articles every day and it’s a safe bet that at least a few of them have information regarding your business. You need to be aware of the latest happenings within your field.
Sign up for Google Alerts which allows you to add and remove alert topics anytime based on your
interests.
Just add keywords relevant to your blogging goals and you’ll set updates on your email when this keyword is mentioned somewhere on the web. You might not come across these articles on your own.
The author lists and explains six ways you can use Google Alerts effectively
- Search for trending topics in your niche
- “Copy” what worked out for
others
- Find questions from people in your target audience
- Scan social media sites and online communities
- Find influential writers and topics
- Get into the habit of taking notes
(About item 6, in last week's SBB I included an item about Pocket - easier than writing notes!)One of the items in this issues of Social Business Bites came from my Google Alerts. Try it.
And now a social media good news story from an Australian rural community, to put a smile on your face for the weekend.
Social media has plenty of detractors at
times.
It can be seen as a haven for bullies and guttersnipes who can revel in its anonymity, particularly with fake Facebook and Twitter accounts. But like all technology the good tends to outweigh the bad.
...the response from the Beechworth community to the disappearance of Ben Dean, 6, was typical of how social media in the 2010s works to rally concern.
His
mother Nadia David posted on the Beechworth Community Facebook page on Wednesday night that her boy, who has Down syndrome, had gone missing on the family property.
By Thursday morning locals were volunteering their help, alongside the police and State Emergency Service, to assist in the search for
the youngster.
He was found that Thursday morning by a man from another town who picked up the alert on Facebook, got on his motorbike and rode the 30 minutes or so to where the boy had disappeared.
Mr Zuckerberg, take a
bow!
