A Retweet Changed How I Use Twitter
It took me a few weeks to finally write this blog post and I held off on blogging about it because I didn’t want it to contain angst or snark. I wanted it to have a few really great lessons and a-ha moments based on what I experienced. Some people may just sweep a story like this under the rug and pretend that it never happened (or never happens ever) but the truth of the matter is, people are going to do things and say things that you may not particularly enjoy and it is up to you to decide how you want to handle it. I hope this story allows you to see that mistakes will happen regardless of how social media proficient you are.
The Backstory
Let me back up a wee bit to one gorgeous, sunny afternoon a few weeks ago. I was walking down the road, enjoying the warmth and the nature and all of the goodness that was surrounding me, and decided to pull out my iPhone to check my Twitter feed. I read through the Tweets, laughing in response to some of the replies from friends when suddenly, I was punched in the gut. Hard.
A colleague of mine, from the same city I live in, retweeted one of my Tweets and added “puke” to the front of my Tweet. That was it, just a simple “puke” but the idea that my Tweet was vomit inducing was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. I replied to the person with a bit of humor and the response I received was even more gut punching than the first one. This person, that I had never met in person, told me that my over the top social media nonsense was what had induced this vomiting fit.
Read MoreArkli: Finally, a Social Media Manager I Can Get Behind
A few weeks ago, I was approached by Mike Potter of Arkli. He wanted to get me on the phone to show me the latest and greatest in social media campaign managers. I nearly blew him off. I get a TON of requests to review and look at web tools and most of them end up being a tool that will not provide value to my day-to-day life.
Mike and I scheduled a time to chat and he started showing me Arkli in action via webinar. It was probably the fifth or sixth minute in that I wanted to just tell him, “Stop talking. Where do I sign up?!” I begged Mike to let me be the one to share the tool with the world because seriously, you’re all going to thank me later… and I love mint chocolate anything and my shoe size is a 7.5! Just saying.
Arkli is a tool that lets you manage your social media campaigns. I know, I know. You’ve seen and heard it all when it comes to managing social media right? Wrong. SO wrong.
What Arkli Does
Arkli lets you import all of your social media accounts, your blogs, your e-mail marketing program (they have a short list right now but it does include MailChimp*! Win!), your YouTube account and your Google Analytics into the interface. Once all of your accounts are in the system and setup, you now have the ultimate power tool in your hands.
Arkli connects seamlessly to WordPress to allow you to craft a blog post. Then, with the click of a button, you can turn your blog post into a Tweet using whichever account you want. Then, with the click of another button, you can turn it into a Facebook update. Then, you can retweet yourself from a different account (yes, with the click of a button) and you can have it all tracked in their nifty built-in statistics tracker.
Not only that, the tool has ways to manipulate current websites for your full advantage. For example, let’s say that you want to have a blog post hit your blog next Wednesday but there is a YouTube video that you want to embed in the post too. Well, you can use Arkli to upload your video to YouTube BUT it won’t appear on YouTube until the time and date specified. It’s automagical.
In the past, bloggers would have to schedule their post in WordPress, setup some Tweets and Facebook status updates in Hootsuite, upload their video to YouTube but make sure it is set to private, set a reminder for the day the blog post is due to make YouTube video public, edit the WordPress post to have the proper YouTube embed code and hope you remember to do it before the post goes live.
Who Would Benefit from Arkli
This tool is going to benefit anyone that uses social media and blogging. Having the ability to preschedule your blogs in the same location that you generate your Tweets and Facebook status updates is a huge time saver.
Here is my short list of who will benefit from this:
- Bloggers (when you get asked to review a product/service, being able to setup the entire campaign and share it with your sponsor is a professional way to present yourself)
- Social media users (allows you to provide more value, more often with less time and money spent)
- Business owners (setup product / service promotions via Arkli)
- Affiliate managers (imagine setting up your entire event/product promotion in Arkli and then sharing that with your affiliates so that they can setup their own promotional pieces off of content you’ve already built?!)
- Joint venture partners (finally you’ll have one place to create content and share it with a succinct message)
A Peek Inside
I am pretty convinced that the description above is not going to be enough… you won’t be able to see the full awesomeness of the tool without seeing the inside. So, I’m going to show you how easy it will make your life in the following screenshots. These screens were taken as I was writing and scheduling this blog post and associated media.
Following screenshot shows the social media campaign interface once you’ve added a blog post to it.
The next screenshot shows the Twitter / Facebook additions.
As you can see, it is super simple to create social media updates from your existing content. In fact, I copy and paste from my blog post to create the updates so that I do not lose the integrity of my message. In the Tweet (above screenshot) section, you can see that I have a retweet option as well which means my other social media accounts can get in on the action too. Thus multiplying my reach.
As you build your campaign, your reach figures increase at the bottom of the screen.
This is a great way for you to see just how many people will be reached with your own outreach. This doesn’t take into consideration the number of people you have reading your blog but it does include all numbers from your social media accounts.
The Advanced Functions
Arkli also has some advanced functionality that I am really enjoying.
The first one that I love is the ability to share campaigns. What does that mean? Well, let’s say you are writing a blog post like this one. A review of a product / service or maybe even an interview or perhaps a podcast. Whenever your post is involving other people, you can share the campaign with them ahead of time and if they have an Arkli account (even at the free level!) they can, from your campaign, schedule their own retweets and tweets.
The second thing I am loving is the statistics that I can see and review per campaign. If I am doing a blog post and I want to see the reach, clicks, etc. Arkli will compile that for me. Not only will I be able to see the statistics within the program, I’ll also get an e-mail at the end of the campaign which summarizes how well it did.
What’s Missing
Now, it wouldn’t be a fair review if I didn’t point out a few things that are on my wish list for Arkli. However, Mike has been super receptive to hearing these ideas and has promised to add in the suggestions that will add true value for multiple users.
- A calendar of scheduled items — there is the main campaign calendar which shows you the overview of what is going to post when but when you are inside, editing a campaign, there isn’t a way to see this easily. For now though, opening your campaign calendar in a separate tab works for me.
- A way to upload photos within the blog editor — right now I am uploading photos via my own blog in a separate tab and then just using the add full image URL function for images. They did have the functionality to upload an image present but it’s disappeared again so I can’t wait for that to come back.
- An indexed list of past, present and future campaigns — I’d love a simple list, off the calendar grid, that showed the list of past, present and future campaigns so I could easily click through to edit them. In fact, it’d be awesome if the list showed the campaigns, had an edit button next to it and beside that a stats button for easy access to the stats.
To Close
Arkli is a tool that I am going to be recommending to ALL of our clients immediately. In fact, I don’t want to work on anyone’s social media campaigns unless they are using this tool. It is seriously that awesome.
If you have any questions about Arkli, its functionality or how I use it, please leave them as a comment. I’d be more than happy to answer them!
Oh, now is the time that you run, not walk, over to Arkli’s website and sign up (at least get your free account going so you can play with it!) If you like it, love it or are indifferent, comment that too! Would love to be able to pass more feedback on to Mike and the team at Arkli.
Follow Mike Potter (guy behind Arkli) here.
* I have used an affiliate link here. If you prefer not to click through my affiliate link, simply Google the tool referenced. Your karma score may go down a wee bit but in the grand scheme of things, we can still be friends. Promise.
Read MorePodcast: To Follow or Not to Follow (Ep. 13)
We’re pleased to announce that we will be hosting a weekly podcast via iTunes! Each week, we’ll be bringing you a five-minute or less podcast focused on a variety of topics: social media, Internet marketing, entrepreneurship, general business tips and more.
Episode 13: To Follow or Not to Follow
One of the things I get asked often is, “Out of the people who follow you on Twitter, how do you determine who to follow back?” Prior to a few weeks ago, that answer was, “Everybody.” I had this notion that I would follow everyone who would follow me and then use lists to suss out who I really wanted to listen to versus those that I wanted to tune into sometimes.
Unfortunately, that method turned out to be the incorrect path for me.
This episode explains why my path was incorrect and how you should approach adding people to follow.
Subscribe Via iTunes
Click on the icon to the left and you will be taken to iTunes where you can subscribe and download this episode along with all other episodes. Once added to iTunes, you can add the podcast to an MP3 player or simply listen to it from your iTunes account.
Listen from Our Website
You can also listen to the podcast right from this post! To listen, simply click play on the player below. You will not be able to stop and come back to the recording so keep that in mind before starting the podcast. If you have any comments that stem from the podcast, please leave them as a comment here!
Podcast: Growing Your Social Media Following (Ep. 10)
We’re pleased to announce that we will be hosting a weekly podcast via iTunes! Each week, we’ll be bringing you a five-minute or less podcast focused on a variety of topics: social media, Internet marketing, entrepreneurship, general business tips and more.
Episode 10: Growing Your Social Media Following
I received a question on my Formspring.me account which asked, “What do you recommend people do to grow their Facebook and Twitter following?”
Growing your Twitter and Facebook following can feel like a daunting task. You start with a profile and an empty list of friends / fans and followers and you might feel as though you’re Twittering and Facebooking to dead air at first. Growing your following is not something that you can purchase or learn about in an e-book so let me save you a few dollars and talk about some natural ways to go about doing this.
This episode focuses on answering that question.
Subscribe Via iTunes
Click on the icon to the left and you will be taken to iTunes where you can subscribe and download this episode along with all other episodes. Once added to iTunes, you can add the podcast to an MP3 player or simply listen to it from your iTunes account.
Listen from Our Website
You can also listen to the podcast right from this post! To listen, simply click play on the player below. You will not be able to stop and come back to the recording so keep that in mind before starting the podcast. If you have any comments that stem from the podcast, please leave them as a comment here!
Twitter for Business Part 5: Twitter Tools
A lot of our clients ask us about Twitter, getting started on Twitter and how to best use it. Well, we’re answering all of your questions in a no cost video series! (In case you missed video #1, you can watch it here, video #2 is here, video #3 is here and video #4 is here!)
The fifth video is below which covers:
- Threadsy.com
- Tweet Deck
- TwitPic.com
- Hootsuite
- Mobile apps for Tweeting
- The Twit Cleaner
- and more!
(If you have any trouble with the embedded video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.)
Read MoreThought-Provoking Interviews, Straight to Your Inbox
Erin has interviewed countless experts on countless topics all relating to business ownership. Now, you can subscribe to receive, at no cost, all of these audio interviews! Subscribe below to receive one audio interview, per week, and you'll also receive our newsletter!
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