Twitter Is Updating Its API Metadata To Help Developers Filter Tweets By Language And Importance

Twitter developer Arne Roomann-Kurrik has announced on theTwitter blog that the social media micro-messaging service is introducing new metadata to tweets in order to help developers “work with targeted subsets of Tweet collections”.

The improvements will help Twitter app developers filter and organise tweets by the language that they were written in an identify tweets that Twitter considers “high” value.

The language that the tweet has been written in is identified by Twitter’s machine language detection algorithms and marked by a new lang attribute in the metadata. “The values will be valid BCP 47 language identifiers,” says Roomann-Kurrik, “and may represent any of the languages listed on Twitter's advanced search page, or "und" if no language could be detected.”

This language update allows systems that compile and organise Twitter data, “such as analytics services or real-time search streams, to offer language-specific curation, aggregation and analysis of Tweet content.”

The filter_level attribute values Tweets from a stream as either "none", "low", or "medium", with a final classification, "high", to be introduced later. “The "medium" (and eventually "high") entries will roughly correlate to the "Top Tweets" results for searches on twitter.com”. This classification system will make it easier for apps to surface high-value tweets and other content from “noisy” feeds.

Both filter_level and lang will be available on Streaming API responses, with the latter also on REST.filter_level will be activated first, on Wednesday next week, with lang coming shortly after. However, the release times are subject to change, so Roomann-Kurrik advises that developers keep an eye on the calendar of API changes.

Here is an example of the new attributes present in metadata:


In the example above, the tweet is given a classification of "medium", meaning it is a quite high-value result in the search, and the language is English, as specified by “en”.

Public streaming endpoints will also support the filter_level and lang parameters, providing filtering of streamed data on Twitter’s side of the process. Users can connect to a public stream and specify the languages of the tweets that their search will return, as well as setting a filter_level parameter. 

At some point, Twitter will undoubtedly introduce the changes into the Discovery tab. However, there is the possibility that, instead of being organised chronologically, Twitter’s default home stream could be organised in order of value to the user. 

Would you like to see your Twitter stream organised by importance? 

The Social Media Simplicity Toolkit

New York Internet Week is upon us again. On Monday morning, there was a panel hosted at the Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Chelsea titled, “Social Media Simplicity Toolkit: How to Avoid Over Complicating your Brand Online”.

The panel consisted of Stephen Zangre, Manager of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook; Jared Feldman, CEO & Founder of Mashwork, a social media listening software solution; Myles Kleeger, General Manager of Strategic Brand Partnerships at Buddy Media; and Chris Phenner, Vice President of Business Development at digital advertising firm TBG Digital. Karen Robinovitz, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer at Digital Brand Architects acted as moderator.

The majority of the interactive discussion focused on brand presence on Facebook. Here are a few of the top takeaways from the discussion:

1. Less is More

All the panelists agreed: brands that keep things simple garner the most engagement. “More complicated is not the best course,” Zangre said. He noted than a simple, sharable consumer experience is often better than an advanced, complicated custom application. For contests, promotions and sweepstakes, the lower the barrier for entry is, the greater the engagement from consumers will be.

Kleeger also reinforced that brevity is aligned with success. In a recent study conducted by Buddy Media, Facebook Wall updates that were under 80 characters in length received 27% more engagement from consumers.

2. Don’t Sell, Engage

“Hard selling is a big mistake,” said Zangre. “Brands, it’s not all about you here [on Facebook].” Brands have to give their target consumers something useful and interactive to continually win over their attention on the platform and hopefully turn them into brand advocates. Brands should be cultivating relationships with their consumers, not barraging them by simply broadcasting only self-serving messages.

Feldman put it best with an interesting quote: “You don’t follow a comedian’s page because they are funny – you follow them because you want to laugh.”

3. Know Your Target Audience

The inevitable question of “how does my brand get more Likes” was asked. Phenner, a self-professed ‘Likes arms dealer’, discussed how knowing who your audience is and what their interests are is key. Research is paramount. “Know what the people you want to target are interested in, and then give it to them,” Kleeger added.

4. Be Able to Answer the Question, “Why are we on this Platform?”

It sounds like a simple question, but many brands jump into Facebook and other social media platforms (due to hype, because their competitors are there, because they saw an article about it) without being able to answer, “What does your brand want to accomplish by being on Facebook?”

The answer can vary widely based on the brand’s greater business goals, but there needs to be a clear underlying purpose for that brand’s presence on a social media platform that can then be measured against. All the panelists agreed that brands need to have goals and a comprehensive content strategy that caters to those goals before their Facebook presence even launches.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business

This is written by a friend of ours, Tammy Fennell from Marketmesuite!

As more and more users flock to social media, small businesses must find a way to use these channels to reach their target markets. It can often seem daunting to cut through the social media clutter; however with these 5 strategies, you’ll be well on your way to social media marketing success.

1. Narrow Your target
For small businesses, it's important to connect with people in your geographic area, especially if you are a brick and mortar operation. Targeting your social media posts to a specific area or keyword set ensures that you are only interacting with viable leads.

There are hundreds of thousands of status updates getting published every minute, so cutting through the clutter has to be a top priority. Start small. Start out familiarizing yourself with tools like search.twitter.com, and you can eventually move on to using a more business-specific tool like CoTweet or Hootsuite.

2. Be Proactive
If you simply assume that “if you tweet, they will come,” you may be waiting for a long time. You need to find out who you should be interacting with and go after those people. Join Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, check out PeerIndex.net lists on your genre, and look at a person’s Twitter Grader score. There are so many tools out there whose sole mission is to make it easier to target your exact customer, so make use of them.

3. Some Automation Is Bad
When you’re having conversations with potential customers, you need to be real. Spam is one sure-fire way to turn people off. You want to start a conversation with qualified leads, and grow that conversation organically. You don’t need 500 people a day to respond to you. Instead, having 5 or 10 qualified leads will add much more to your bottom line.

Does this mean you can’t streamline the process? Of course not! Some automation is okay. For example, scheduling updates, pulling in from your RSS feed, these are all great time savers. It’s fine to even have a few templates ready to reply when you see people tweeting or posting on Facebook about something, but never automate the interaction because the results could be incredibly embarrassing.

Back in the day when these sorts of apps were allowed by Twitter, I tried an app for my antiques business that would automate replies without human interaction. I set it to look for a rare German figurine, and asked it to send them a specific tweet if they found it. Since I was not manually reviewing the matches, I had no idea that the same name of this German figurine was also a well-known Pokemon character. I had a lot of confused people @replying me. Templates are fine (there’s only so many ways you can answer a certain question) but make sure you’re reviewing who you are replying to!

4. Don’t Miss the Giant Gorilla
As a SME owner, you are expected to wear a lot of hats. When your social media hat comes off for a little while, you don’t want to leave your followers with nothing. Schedule some helpful posts for your followers, fans, and group members to read while you’re busy doing other things, but never leave them hanging for too long.

Social media is a great way to field a lot of customer requests, support, and even research. Set up searches for keywords related to your brand and put in the time to handle requests daily. Just make sure you set up enough ‘nets’ so you never miss the ‘giant gorilla’ in your business.

Because social media conversations happen in real time, you can usually put out a spark before it becomes a full fledged fire, often in 140 characters or less!

5. Give Others Credit
There are so many collaboration opportunities in social media. Retweeting is a great way to show your followers you have your finger on the pulse of your industry, but a big mistake is just posting a load of unattributed feeds as your own. You should always give credit to the original author of what you're tweeting. First, it shows your users you’re monitoring the field and curating some great content for them. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s a great way to get the attention of the person whose content you are pushing. You can start a lot of great strategic partnerships with a simple “RT.”

Key Marketing Takeaway:
Social media sites are exploding with users. As a savvy business, you can focus your efforts and concentrate on creating interactions that will help turn the social media noise into traffic which converts.

For a business without a lot of time or a very large marketing budget, social media is a great place for a targeted interaction to become a viable lead.

Half of UK businesses ban social media at work

A study has revealed that almost 50% of UK companies prohibit employees from using social media at work.

The research, carried out by Lewis Communications and HCL Technologies, found that from the 2,500 businesses surveyed, 48% ban their workers from posting updates on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.

So, whilst previous research has shown that social networking should be encouraged at work as it boosts moral and improves productivity, it seems that many companies still take a dim view of employees mixing business with pleasure.

And in a week that sees the very act of tweeting brought into the legal limelight with the super-injunction cases, it’s worth considering why businesses are still afraid of social media.

Most companies are comfortable with staff taking ten minutes out for a cup of coffee, a cigarette or a chat in the canteen. So what’s wrong with staff posting the odd status update or firing out the occasional tweet?

There seems to be a notion that employers are worried about sensitive information leaking to the outside world, or employees writing detrimental things about the company. But people can leak information or bad-mouth their employer outside of work hours anyway, so I don’t think that’s the real issue here.

It’s the seamless integration between work and social media that is really concerning companies. It’s all too easy to get distracted when a steady stream of tweets and status updates are arriving in via a minimised browser. Moreover, it’s difficult for employers to know when this is happening, whereas walking off for a coffee is more noticeable and transparent.

And then there’s the issue of smartphones. Even if employers block certain websites at work, most people these days have mobile access to social networks.

So, a blanket ban does seem a little absurd. Surely a ‘during allocated breaks or lunch-time’ approach would suffice, with employees’ contracts clearly stipulating that anything bad written about the company on a social networking website (either during working hours or otherwise) will lead to disciplinary procedures.

People should be trusted to manage their tasks effectively. If employers feel the need to force people off social networking sites completely at work, it’s akin to them saying they don’t trust their staff. Not the best way boost morale in any workforce. What do you think??

Social Media Creates Better Consumer Experiences

With the use of new technology and social media tools, businesses are able to understand their customers’ needs and wants in ways never before possible. Fortunately for internet marketers, we have amazing technologies and tools at the tip of our fingers that allow us to listen and respond to customers on a whole new level. Gone are the days of mass impersonal messaging in advertising and marketing. These days, there are new ways to engage in conversation with your audience and get the feedback you need. With these results, we have the power to give consumers not only exactly what they want, but how and when they want it.

How can you find out what consumers want?

Social Media Sites

Social media is completely revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their customers. Stored information from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other networking sites can show us what brands they and their friends like. With this data, companies can now listen and respond to what it is people really want.

For example, Carnival Cruise Lines does a great job at listening to what people are saying. Their team monitors Twitter and Facebook for any mentions of their brand using the platform Tweetdeck. Social Media Manager from Carnival Cruise Lines Eric Schechter states, “We not only listen to the good, but also to the bad, correcting any customer service or providing service recovery if possible. We take into consideration what people write on our Facebook page and use these suggestions and comments to improve our cruise ships, guest experiences, etc. Social Media builds trust by being able to directly engage in conversation with the people who build and make our brand what it is.”

He continues to explain how the consumers “voice” actually builds the brand. “Now, with consumer generated content, customers turn into your brand ambassadors. By simply uploading pictures, videos, or commenting about your product or service, they are essentially building free PR for you! What’s better then free advertising?!”

Below is an example of Carnival Cruise Lines promoting conversation with customers through Facebook.






Another example of successfully understanding the needs of your consumers is a Facebook campaign by Target. Target launched a back-to-school Facebook page targeting college students living in dorms. The page included interactive games, photo and video posting opportunities as well as a discussion board. They offered a fun quiz application and colorful graphics which captured the interest of college students. In result, the page attracted a surge of new traffic and allowed Target to connect users to not only their brand but to receive insight on their products and customer service, both positive and negative. Marketers could then use this information to make changes to their current strategy and learn what exactly to continue doing and what to change out or improve on.




On the flip side, with the emergence of social media many consumers have also used this as an outlook to post negative comments and to vent or rant about products or services. Companies need to understand that this is not necessarily a bad thing. It gives the company an opportunity to fix the problem and a chance to learn what they can improve on in the future. If you are a business, check out this interesting article on how you can respond to negative social media reviews and turn it around to a positive.

One example of a company responding to negative feedback positively is Gap. After 20 years with the same logo, in 2010 the company decided to revamp it with a new one. This resulted in a frenzy amongst customers all over social media networking sites. Followers of the business posted negative comments about the new logo. So what was Gap left to do? Nothing but the obvious. They were able to take this feedback as constructive criticism and give people what they wanted – the original Gap logo back. In result, the negativity turned positive as it created buzz for the brand, increased sales that year, gave people a voice in the company and gave them back what they wanted.



In conclusion, internet marketers are using social media to help them better understand customers. Whether it’s listening to suggestions for new products or turning a negative review into a positive buzz, businesses are taking advantage of this new medium. A few years ago companies would have killed to have these channels of communication with their consumers.

Social media can be an extremely powerful channel if you have the right internet marketing company that knows how to use it correctly. If you’re looking to understand what your customers want on a whole new level, let an internet marketing professional help. Contact Mannix Marketing, Inc., your local Upstate NY internet marketing company to learn how you can use social media to create better experiences for your customers.

Top 10 Social Media Myths

It's 2011, you've got the social media covered for your company, right? Between Twitter, Facebook and Videos and...what’s that? You're confused and concerned that it's all so complicated and possibly not really useful to your business after all? Have no fear. We will break down the common myths and misconceptions about using social media for business.


Myth 1 – Social media is for kids, not business.

Social media is a broad term, but it covers most of the ways people share information over the internet. If you want people to talk about your company or product, you have to make it easy for them to do it online.

The various social media outlets, including YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogging, all make it possible for a business owner to answer tech questions, perform market research, promote sales or new products, support dealers and distributors and even become a daily part of their customer’s lives.

The result is incredible ROI – for very little cost beyond time/labor, you can communicate directly with consumers, without a filter, and increase both the bottom line and long-term brand awareness. Each aspect of social media has interesting features and all have their own benefits and pitfalls, which leads us to our second misconception.

Myth 2 – A business needs to be equally active in all forms of social media or it isn’t worth doing anything.

The great thing about the various social media outlets is that they can be coordinated into a single cohesive campaign – or you can treat each as a separate media channel. A new video can be shared on Facebook or a blog post promoted on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean that you must do everything at once. If you only have time for one forum, or you just want to tweet once a month about clearance items, then start there. It’s still an additional audience, and it’s still one more place for search engines to find your company or product. That’s the secret of social media marketing - they key isn't communicating immediately with the people who follow your channel (although that's very satisfying) it's caching all that content you create for people to read and absorb in the coming days, weeks and months as search engines index what you wrote and bring it up as a search result for people seeking answers and content.


Myth 3 – Participating in forums means posting constantly, many times each day. Who has time for that?

We could do a whole article devoted to the use of forums, but basically, sponsoring a few popular forums in your market gives you the ability to search and post answers to questions, as well as share blog posts or videos about your company. Posting frequency depends on your resources and interest, but the most important people who see your post are not the forum members; they are people stumbling into the forum thread via search engine.

Think about it; when you search for something new (say, you just got a new mobile phone and are curious about features) many of the results that come up will be forum posts where someone asked a similar question. You’ll scroll through the answers, and if there’s a satisfactory one, you’ll leave with the information you needed. Therefore, it is not the frequency of your company’s forum posts, but rather the completeness and quality, which will endear you to members and searchers alike.

Myth 4 – My company offers high-end products to an exclusive audience. Won’t all this tweeting, blogging and Facebooking take away from our mystique?

Here’s the thing about all use of social media, both for personal and business use: nobody is forcing you to post photos of messy workshops or proprietary schematics. You control the content and the message. Social media may be friendly, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used in a classy manner, just as a cocktail party is different from a frat party.

If you want to maintain a high-end feel, keep your posts formal. Make sure grammar and punctuation are accurate. Post high-resolution photographs from your catalogs, or link to well-respected publications featuring your products.
Being accessible doesn’t make you common, and more importantly, if you aren’t on the web, your fans will make unofficial profiles to represent you and then you’ll have no control of your company image.

Myth 5 – We have a blog on our website. Why would we start a Facebook page to compete with our own site?

No matter how exciting your company website is, it probably isn’t the homepage for hundreds of thousands of people across the world. When you have a Facebook fan page devoted to your company, there’s a good chance that your post will be in their newsfeed at least once a week or more and you can use it to push traffic to your blog.

Now you might be saying, “Once a week? But I post more than that, people must see my posts every day!” and that brings us to a very common mistake regarding Facebook.

Myth 6 – If you post every day on Facebook, you’ll be annoying and people won’t like your company.

We’ve heard from many companies that are afraid of over-posting and becoming like “Farmville” or “Mafia Wars” (By the way, you can block those apps while still maintaining a relationship with the person who plays them, just hover the cursor on the right side of the post, hit the “x” when it appears and click “hide …Farm Wars…”. You’re welcome.)

At this point, most regular Facebook users have more friends and interests than will fit on their screen in a single visit, and Facebook sets the newsfeed to a default called “Top News” which is actually a sort of “favorites,” meaning it’s the people or companies most clicked by that user. If you aren’t in the Top news, the Facebook user won’t see your post that day unless he or she switches over to “Most Recent” and even then, your posts will move down the viewer’s wall during the day as new posts are made by their other contacts.

This is good, because it means you can post every day without alienating your fans, (although we don’t recommend more than once a day unless you are offering live updates from an event or contest). The quick turn over of posts also means you can repeat posts, or post similar information. It will be new to much of your audience!

While daily posts aren’t annoying, daily Facebook messages are. Since Facebook messages go straight to people’s email, sending sales notices or product updates as a message is basically spamming. That’s a quick way to get your page or profile blocked.

Myth 7 - We have to post about our products every day.

So now you’ve been won over to the idea of updating blogs, forums and Facebook pages often, but with what? Daily repetition of the product line is bound to get boring, both for the reader and the company making the posts. So what do you post about?

Use your social media outlets to post detail shots, behind the scenes tours, history, employee bios, helpful tech, entertaining events, relevant trivia, and vintage videos, or to ask questions for your market research. Find out what products your fans would like to see, or encourage them to ask tech questions or post their own stories and photos.

People love to feel like they have inside information, so if you post a quick bio of your lead technician or video of an R&D session, it gives your fans a real feeling of connecting with your company. As mentioned earlier, only post what you are comfortable sharing.

Maybe that’s just macro shots of fasteners or details of the fine stitching on a product. If it is something that isn’t available anywhere else, your audience will view it as worthwhile content.

It’s important to post product links occasionally, but if you make machine tooling, your posts needn’t be solely sales links to chamfer bits. You can post links to videos about new machinable plastics, or articles detailing the proper maintenance of lathes. As long as the links you post don’t mention your competitors, your readers will associate the helpful or interesting information with your company.

Myth 8 - Flickr is just for people sharing wedding photos.

Going back to the main reason for using social media (increased web presence), Flickr is one of the easiest ways to use social media. Simply upload the same images you use for web catalogs and label them with product info, keywords and weblinks and you have one more place which will show up for customers when they make searches. As an added bonus, bloggers searching for images to illustrate their own stories may grab yours from Flickr. Make sure they have watermarks!

Myth 9 – We don’t make enough videos to have a YouTube Channel.

YouTube allows you to make playlists and add videos posted by other users to your channel. If you notice your company or product in customer’s videos, add them to your channel and you’ll have one more place where customers can see you and reach your company on the web.

Along with adding customer videos to your playlists, make sure you tag your own videos as you upload them. Tags are the words at the bottom of photos, blog posts and videos and they are a useful way to help search functions find your posts and videos. On YouTube, tags are especially important as they greatly affect the frequency and position of your video in search results.

The best results come from including a detailed description of the video, and including tags that you see on videos with a similar theme. Don't be afraid of tags like "awesome.” A lot of people spend their free time searching general terms like "awesome video.”

Myth 10 – Once it is set up, we can just leave our profiles and fan pages alone except for when we post links.

Nothing is sadder than a Facebook fan page full of spam or a Twitter mailbox with 600 unanswered direct messages. A social media site is very much like a real party. A good host interacts with all the guests, cleans up messes and sends rowdy guests outside.

The reason social media has the word “social” in it is because it is based off interaction. It is important to make sure that whoever is monitoring your company’s online activities will be able to answer tech questions, reply to friend requests, link to dealers and diffuse tense situations or customer squabbles.

Don’t start up a giant social media campaign and attend it half-heartedly. It’s better to participate in only one outlet and do it well, than to set up profiles everywhere and leave them neglected like digital ghost towns.

There are many great tools available to help make managing your social media easier and more effective, and if you don’t have the time or personnel to run a full social media campaign, there are several good marketing and PR firms with social media experts who are happy to discuss and maintain your company’s social media presence.

Hopefully this has inspired you to log on and get to know your customers and fans. Social media is like a free ad in a magazine, or a booth in a worldwide trade show. It takes a little effort, coordination and manpower to get things rolling and keep it staffed and active, but it’s good for your company.

How to Monetize Social Media

Companies are not only getting the word out about their brands using social media such as Facebook and Twitter but are also making money.


Many business executives have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Myspace, and Linkedin useful in making money. Building genuine online relationships that are also good for the bottom line is not so easy. There is a lot of trial and error. But while monetizing social media is difficult it is not impossible. There are companies that are getting the word out about their brands using social media and are turning a profit.

Take The New York Jets. The NFL team launched their Ultimate Fan social game in September 2010, which was the first revenue generating Facebook app to be backed by a pro sports team. The application lets football fans do online what they would normally do at home and in stadiums—root for their favorite teams and players, predict game scores, and hold a virtual tailgate party with other fans from across the globe. Ultimate Fan has since lured four major sponsors integrating their brands: MetLife, Motorola, SNY and HotelPlanner.com. This year, 10 percent of Jets sponsorships include a social media component; the team is planning to bump it up to 50 percent by next year, according to a spokesperson.

The Jets also communicate regularly on Twitter. They even advertised a Twitter-based contest to win tickets to their 2011 AFC playoff championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Jets are able to engage with their fans and make them feel like they are part of the team. They are leveraging social medial to capitalize on their fans' passion for the team and their willingness to share that fervor.

Like many companies, your social media efforts have started small and grew organically. To capitalize on those efforts to generate sales and revenues you need to have a team of people dedicated to your social media presence. You also will need a deep understanding of your audience, a creative vision, and a way to measure results in order to execute a successful strategy, says industry experts.

Here are some ways your social media can be monetized.

How to Monetize Social Media: Build Brand Awareness

The first step is to use traditional media or word-of-mouth advertising to drive awareness and traffic to your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin or Myspace pages, says Jamie Turner, author of How to Make Money with Social Media. Unless you already have a recognizable brand like Nike or Apple, your brand needs to develop social media magnetism before you can look to make any money. You also need to create circular momentum across many platforms when designing your social media campaign, says Turner. By providing multiple channels for users to talk with you, you let customers choose the channel that they are most comfortable with, he adds; and by doing that you increase the likelihood that they'll connect with your brand in any number of ways.


How to Monetize Social Media: Engage Your Audience

Social media is about having a dialogue. When you have a dialogue with a customer or prospect, the communication is much more fulfilling and much more profitable, says Turner. The PETCO brand has developed a strong presence in social media. The pet store chain has a YouTube channel, its Facebook page generates a lot of discussions among pet owners, and there's lots of activity on its PETCO Scoop blog, which has received hundreds of 'likes' and comments. PETCO's customers are true pet lovers and treat their pets as part of the family. The company tries to keep conversation going by aiming Facebook and Twitter posts so that there's an explicit question to answer, or at least a specific piece of information to which people can react. Industry experts stress that you have to know your community and know how to take part within that community and through that create great content or conversation that will raise awareness and increase sales.

How to Monetize Social Media: Offer Special Promotions

Dell Computers exemplifies a company that is selling products using social media. Its Twitter page, @DellOutlet, offers discounts exclusively to followers. Dell might tweet 15 percent off any Dell Outlet laptop or desktop with a special coupon code entered at checkout so they'll know which tweet you are seeing. @DellOutlet also points you to a specific web page. There is some interaction in terms of chats with tweeters. @DellOutlet has garnered more than 1.6 million followers and generated more than $2 million in incremental revenues for Dell. Traditionally, Dell would have spent a lot of money running print ads. Today, they can write a 140-character promotion to reach customers.

PETCO is yet another example. The company provided a promo code to their customers for $40 in free shipping. The person who shared their code with the most people won a $500 PETCO gift card. About 40 percent of the sales that resulted from this promotional push came from new consumers. The desire to save a few bucks drove loyal PETCO customers to connect with the larger pet owner community and spread the word about the store via social media.