by Roz | Mar 22, 2013 | Blog, How to, Online Resources
“Hearing that Google Reader is shutting down is like hearing that your favorite old bookstore is closing,” writes The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman. Google is spring cleaning, first on the list is Google Reader which will officially shutter on July 1, 2013. Do you use Google Reader? I do. I am seriously bummed with it’s death. However due to declining usage, Google is putting down the Reader so we’ll need to come to terms with this. Why Use a Reader? In a nutshell, a RSS reader is a tool, a tool for getting information from other people so you don’t have to keep going to their website to get updates. You subscribe and updates are sent to your Feed Reader automatically, allowing you to read it whenever you want all in one place. Google Reader is such a tool, an aggregator or in other words a feed reader, news reader, or RSS reader and if you like all your news in one spot from headlines to your favorite blogs then using an aggregator is a great tool. Many use it to aggregate news and analysis and have used it for years. The good news is that you have until July 1st before it’s officially GONE. Before jumping onto the next reader train, let’s take your feeds from Google Reader and export them into an XML file. By doing this you will then be able to import your feeds into your new RSS reader of choice. It’s easy peasy! How to Export Your RSS Feeds From Google Reader: 1. Login to Google Reader (if you’re not already signed in to...
by Kimberly | Jan 31, 2011 | Blog, Featured, How to, Online Resources, Social Media
This post is just a quick overview of some free tools out there to help measure some of your social media efforts. 1) Facebook Insights will provide some good in-depth information for a fan page. You can download these date into Excel or you can snapshot the graphs they offer. (keep in mind though that FB data aren’t always that accurate but can provide a good overview). You will need to do a bit of analysis with these data but they can help you determine what types of content your community likes and interacts with. You can access the insights for all of your Facebook pages here: http://www.facebook.com/insights/ 2) Twitter Counter will show the growth of followers for your Twitter account the past week, month, 3 months and 6 months. This site will also graph the number of tweets per day. 3) Tweetreach will show the reach of a twitter ID, a hashtag or a phrase. The free version only offers data for the most recent 50 tweets. This is important to remember so that you run a report right after a campaign or after a certain event. 4) Wildfire has a pretty cool social monitoring tool that allows you to track your Facebook page or Twitter against competitor accounts. You can find it here: http://monitor.wildfireapp.com/ 5) Socialmention.com is a great social media search engine that will track mentions of your company, brand or a specific phrase and also provides feedback on overall sentiment of those mentions. 6) I also recommend bit.ly as a URL shortner. It is good for tracking link clicks. These are just a few of...
