Back in November we covered the Firefox add-on/desktop application Yoono. As a Christmas present, the folks over at Yoono HQ gave us an updated version of the application a couple weeks ago, and is it ever sweet.
Upon downloading the newest version, I immediately noticed a change in aesthetics and in operations: Yoono now sports a slick silver look and runs much smoother than previous versions, minimizing browser slowdown when streaming multiple updates at once. But these changes were in the rearview mirror once I realized the following.
The new version of Yoono now supports multiple Twitter/Facebook accounts.
For those of us who maintain multiple accounts (On a given day I have anywhere between 3 and 5 Twitter accounts to keep an eye on), this is an unbelievable time saver. Instead of logging in to each individual account, finding something cool, relevant material and retweeting it, then doing the whole process again and again, now Yoono lets me see all of my Twitter accounts’ updates in real time, streaming in my sidebar while I’m free to do other things. It’s a level of efficiency that simply wasn’t possible before.
The screenshot above is what my Yoono sidebar looked like this morning. You’ll notice three different Twitter accounts and a lone Facebook account at the top of the image. I’m still giddy over the freedom it gives me.
Hopefully I already made this clear, but I’ll say it anyway. If you maintain multiple social media accounts on the same platform, Yoono is officially a must-have. The few minutes it takes you to install and set up will save you hours of time down the road.
See the “share” button at the bottom of this post? It’s thanks to AddThis, the “#1 Bookmarking & Sharing Service.” You might already be aware of the button and may in fact use it on your blog posts, but you may not know that it can be placed into the HTML code of your email as well.
Whether you’re sending an email to one or thousands of people, utilizing an AddThis share button makes it easy for the recipients of your email to pass your information along. It’s just up to you to have captivating content!
Here’s a screen capture of what you’ll see. Click to enlarge.
To add the button to your email, you’ll want to click on the ‘more options’ link at the bottom, then specify you’d like to use the button in an email newsletter. From that point you just choose the design of the button and the link of the article you’re sharing, and you’re good to go!
Setting up an account is free and anayltics are provided by AddThis, so you’ll easily see if taking advantage of their share buttons is worth your time. If your content is interesting, chances are it’ll be well worth the couple extra minutes.
Despite proven success, only 10% of U.S. hospitals and health systems are involved in social media (California HealthCare Foundation). Even worse, few of the 10% really take advantage of the “social” side of this medium, instead preferring to simply push out messages about services, classes, and general news. In fact, per the study, only 6% of all tweets (in the sample) were social interactions; therefore, 94% of all hospital and healthcare tweets were simply information.
This needs to change.
For social media to work, hospitals must be social. Rather than just tweeting news, or uploading press releases to Facebook and LinkedIn (which, by the way, is still important), why not post discussion points, such as “how can we improve our Emergency Department?”, or “we’re redesigning our waiting rooms and would like your opinion regarding the furniture, carpets and wallpaper.”
This article has great information to help, so click the link below for a more thorough read:
Tactics for Achieving ‘Socialness’
A somewhat new website allows builders, real estate agents and anyone interested in housing access to information about the “walkability” of the area by making calculations based on the distance from any given house to nearby amenities. One important note: Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking. So this site is really not for those who are looking for nice areas in which to walk.
Per the site, home buyers rank proximity to daily conveniences as one of the two most important factors in choosing a neighborhood—more important than schools and property taxes. Anyone can add Walk Score to their website or to their listings with the Walk Score API or the Walk Score Real Estate Tile.
Walk Score API
Beds: 3 Baths: 2 Walk Score: 84
The Walk Score API returns the Walk Score for any latitude and longitude. Use the API to add Walk Score to your property listings and allow people to search homes by Walk Score.
Learn more about the Walk Score API
Walk Score Real Estate Tile
An amenity map for any address.
The Walk Score Tile displays the Walk Score of a property and a map of nearby amenities. It’s simple to add the tile to your property listings, website, or blog.
Learn more about the Walk Score Tile
It is simply amazing how much information there is on the web — not just for people to use for themselves, but also for people to use in business situations.
Social Media provides some really great benefits to marketers. So do Web 2.0 strategies and PPC buys. But these tools represent just a small part of a good online marketing program. The key is to bring these all together in a nice, synergistic package that’s easy to create, easy to manage and easy to analyze
Welcome to “Sparking”, the web marketing program we created almost two years ago that provides an incredible ROI by building relationships with customers through online networks, blogs, eblasts and more.
To find out more, click here and learn about Sparking and how you can benefit by romancing your customers online.
