Twitter changes! 5 Suggestions for adding picture posts to brighten Twitter up!

Ok, this is not about eyes. This post is about livening your Tweets up with images. You may have noticed that Twitter is displaying images and videos in Tweets to make the stream more like Tumblr and Facebook, with images streaming down where people attached them.

This change is aimed at making Twitter more visual. Tweets with images get retweeted and commented a lot more. This also helps Twitter compete with social media sites where there are a lot of images and video links.

There are a lot of new opportunities presented by this change. I am experimenting with adding pics to one in three of my Tweets. These, I hope, are relevant and interesting. The jury is out as to how they will be perceived by my followers, over 250,000 now on my different Twitter accounts, but I also believe this is an opportunity for compelling visual story telling about your offering. 

Thinking visually means we have to find good content that you own the rights to - I paid for the above image earlier this month at Videoblocks - and thinking about how to select images that relate to our posts. Some subjects will be easy to find images for. Others will not.

Here are some suggestions for adding images:

1. Take more pictures of what's around you, your office, your desk, your colleagues, your output, your city.

2. Make changes to images using Ifranview or Paint.net at getpaint.net. They are both free, but the paint.net program allows you to add layers easily.

3. Make friends or buy services from photographers and animators and artists. Value their work. This will be good thing for everyone who is visually minded.

4. Consider creating your own videos using the Vine app on your phone, wideo.com for free animations or Animoto.com for edited videos. All these services are free.

5. Create visual story boards about your products or services. Take multiple pictures of the process you go through to create what you do. Then post the images.

This is a revolutionary change to Twitter. It will force us to make our Tweets more interesting. That's all good, in my opinion. If you have any other suggestions for adding visual content please comment below. Or simply let me know what you think about this change to your Twitter stream.

Thanks for following too. Please click the link above to get my occasional posts on social media developments.   

Newsjacking Post #2 - Using Google Alerts

I posted a previously on the basic concept of newjacking, inserting you or your company into a story breaking on the internet.

I got my highest number of hits in a day on my blog, over 500, the day I posted the second comment on a major story that was relevant to what I do; writing popular fiction and assisting people with social media.

I was reviewing this process in the last few days, as I spend time every morning checking major newspaper/media sites looking for stories I can comment or post about. And then I had an idea, why don't I set up a Google Alert for the major subject areas that I would be competent to insert comments on or post about in my own blog?

So I did that. I now have ten Google Alerts set up and I don't have to spend a lot of time searching through news sites. And I'm finding stories all over the world I can comment on. And best of all it's free! Thank you, Google.

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

 

7 Alternative Rules of Innovation

1. Think coalitions, new working teams. Choose home workers, part time workers, others based on talent, drive and results.

2. Become resilient through local funding first, investment in people, support networks.

3. Your greatest innovators may not even work for you, they may be your customers, your suppliers or your support network.

4. If you are a dinosaur, learn to dance. Don't wait. Don't be afraid of looking stupid. Otherwise you'll end up on the sidelines while the rest are at a party.

5. Offer clear value. Make it obvious.

6. Invest in your education. Do courses. Do them online, offline or inline. But do them.

7. Listen to your talent. Top down decision making is stone age thinking. Experiment with ideas.