"Developing WordPress themes, templates and WordPress plugins"

Just a thought based on the last post some people may have seen a tinyurl but not actually know what a tinyurl is.  Here is the wikipedia description:

TinyURL is a web service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 so that he would be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.

The TinyURL homepage includes a form that’s used to submit a long URL for shortening. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL such as http://tinyurl.com/2unsh in the following page. If the URL has already been requested, TinyURL will return the existing alias rather than create a duplicate entry. The short URL forwards users to the long URL.

TinyURL also offers an API that allows applications to automatically create short URLs.^[1]

Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they are easier to write down, remember or pass around, are less error-prone to write, and also fit where space is limited such as IRC channel topics, email signatures, microblogs, certain printed newspapers (such as the .net Magazine or even Nature), and email clients that impose line breaks on messages at a certain length. People posting on Twitter make extensive use of shortened URLs to keep their tweets within the service-imposed 140 character limit.

Starting in 2008, TinyURL allows users to create custom, more meaningful aliases. This means that a user can create descriptive URLs rather than a randomly generated address. For example, http://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl.

Popularity: 1% [?]

As web developers – with a little bit of web design – as mentioned before in this blog – we are seeing more and more use of social media/networks as a way to assist in internet marketing.  Currently all the 5 website we are developing for clients require some form of social network intergration and we are continually looking for ways (and easy ones) that allow this and allow site owners to easilly access these networks.

Most people will have seen links like “Tweet this article now” where the link takes the visitor to Twitter, allows them to log in and post a tweet with a shortened URL – a bit like this URL http://tinyurl.com/mehaf4 or http://tinyurl.com/nnzqy2. If you have a basic knowledge of HTML and  PHP then there is a simple function that allows you to create this:

<?php
function create_tiny_url($url)
{
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,‘http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=’.$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
?>

This PHP function uses CURL to access tinyurl and convert the variable $url to a tinyurl such as the ons above.

To call (use) this function on a page requires this code:

<?php

$new_url = create_tiny_url($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

echo ‘<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Reading Your Site Name ‘.$row ['a row from your query'].‘ ‘.$new_url.‘” title=”Put a title in here”> Tweet this item</a>’;

?>

Hope this helps people.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Want to take a quick glance at the social media mentions for your brand?   Have a look at Social Mention it provids a quick snapshot of conversations surrounding your brand – enter your keyword one time and switch between blogs, twitter, bookmarks, comments, events, images, and more. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

You can also create Social Media Alerts and receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest on a celebrity.

Without a more detailed analysis of how they create their metrics (Strength, sentiment, passion & reach)

Strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media. A very simple calculation is used: phrase mentions within the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions.

Sentiment is the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.

Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly.   For example, if you have a small group of very passionate advocates who talk about your products or brand all the time you will have a higher Passion score.   Conversely if every mention is written by a different author you will have a lower score.   Most frequently used keywords and number of times mentioned. Number of mentions by sentiment.

Reach is a measure of the range of influence. It is the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions.)

It is difficult to really assess how valuable a tool this is, but it does give an interesting “snapshot”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Whether it is Twitter, Facebook, mySpace or any of the other sites – I keep saying it but social media is becoming more and more important to business.

But this phenomenon has its problems – the safety of your Brand.

As a business you will have worked hard to develop your name or “brand” into one that people will respect and recognise.  You will have controlled and developed this is a planned and systematic way.

Today most business transactions are preceded by some sort of a search on one of the major search engines for your company name. If those results don’t show your company in a positive light, then you are likely to be losing business.

What happens if someone on a forum is posting about  your company in a negative way, or someone posts photographs of you on their social media walls from your ‘less professional’ days?

This is all about Brand Reputation Management – BRM

There are three fundamental concepts to master when dealing with search Brand Reputation Management:

Monitor

What to monitor?

• Brands
• Products
• Company
• Key Executives
• Your competitors

Types of content to monitor include: News Search, Social Media/Tags, Standard Search Results, Blogs and Forums.

Where to Monitor

• Google Alerts – google.com/alerts
• Yahoo Alerts – alerts.yahoo.com
• RSS feed subscriptions to search results Technorati, Feedster, Yahoo & Google News, BlogPulse
• Social Media via tags: tagbulb.com, tagfetch.com, keotag.com

Optimize

Too often people only think about optimization of their web site, whereas they should be thinking about all their digital communications e.g.  PR, marketing, SEO, HR, investor relations and related electronic content that is publicly available on the web as well as social media: text, images, audio, video.

Optimization of these will create more branded content in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs).  This form of optimization may not put the brand in control, but it is better than trying to put out the fire after a negative situation.

Engage

Once a negative mention has been identified, here are a few basic steps in dealing with it:

• Research the situation – is there merit?
• If not, provide the facts and ask for corrections
• If yes, then offer to discuss
• Be ready to respond with your own blog
• Be honest, be transparent and listen.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I regulary go on about social media and the advantages that linking to it and using it can have for web sites, now I have found a great application that actually brings social media interaction directly to your web site.

Historically many sites use forums – we are currently coding a site that wants to include a forum, – but they do tend to be re-active rather than pro-active, plus they are always open to abuse with members posting inappropriate content etc. and then have to be policed by moderators.  The advantage of some social media – Twitter/Facebook etc is that most posts are limited to the “140″ word syndrome.  Because these media are in real time and highly interactive they are designed to promote real-time conversation.  Post a question and get an answer,  post an opinion and get an answer.  If you can’t do that in the “140″ words of the 140 word syndrome  then …………. you waffle (yes I do) but that is reserved for places like here, not answering questions via social media.  The “140″ words of the 140 word syndrome actually teach us how to phrase questions to get answers or promote an artice etc.  in the shortest possible way.  Get the attention, draw then in and get a response.

So here is something to think about Tweetboard – a new, fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.

Tweetboard is also a powerful viral tool that engages your website visitors. Each time someone posts (or replies) via your board, a link back to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral stream of Twitter traffic to your website.

Amazing and it’s free! use the link and register.  Tweetboard is in Alpha format at the moment but I can see it being an amazing application for your website.  We are already intergarting it into the sites we are currently working on as we can see a real benefit for our Clients to have a real time forum rather than the “old fashioned” reactive ones.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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