Tracksuit CEO

by Daniel Hope

Hugo Chavez believes the time has come for him to embrace Social Media and try to fit his notorious verbosity into 140 characters or less; Rory Carroll at the Guardian is skeptical.  The Venezuelan president recently began tweeting as @Chavezcandanga with his first tweet reading:

“Hi, how’s it going? Here I am, just like I said I would be, at midnight.  I’m going to Brazil.  I’m so happy to work on behalf of Venezuela.  We will overcome!!”

Granted it probably lost some of it’s revolutionary zeal in the translation.  So far Chavez has 50,000+ followers but is only following 5.  Come on, Hugo show some follow-back love!

Some time back I donated a Twitter account to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a show of international goodwill.  I hoped that the transparency and progressiveness of the social network would rub off on the man.  But, alas he ignored my offer and when everyone was making their Twitter icons green to support the Iranian uprising he was forced to sit quietly on the social networking sidelines.

So it’s good to see at least one of these Axis of Evil types are finally coming around to the power of Social Media.

In the comments: Who else believes social media has transformative power?

Subscribe to Tracksuit CEO

By Daniel Hope

photo credit Adland

I thought Make My Logo Bigger cream only worked on logos.  But look what happened when I used it on the Panel Picker Thumbs Up icon the great folks at SXSW sent me.

Before —————– After

If you would like to get the word out about your panel proposal and that small thumbs up icon just isn’t doing it for you have two options:

You can order your own tube of Make My Logo Bigger cream

or

Go visit the SXSW website where they now offer the icon in small and LARGE!

Speaking of shamelessly promoting panel ideas, go and check out the proposal me and Scotty Iseri put together: The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time.

* I may have used too much cream on this one

By Daniel Hope

What if employers encouraged workers to set up Facebook accounts?
or
What if employees used their LOLcat browsing time to promote their company’s product?

That is precisely what Scotty Iseri and I are proposing in our panel: The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time.

This is a very exciting topic and it’s one that employees and employers need to be talking about.  Employers are increasingly encroaching on their worker’s personal time.  Scotty put it well when he said that if employers expect workers to answer their Blackberry at home then they should expect their employees to answer personal email at work (at the very least).

So what happens when employers and employees sit down at a table to discuss this topic?  What are the gives-and-takes?  Will employees and management ever see eye-to-eye?

That’s what we will find out at SXSW 2010.  So please go now and place your vote for our panel, it’s going to be a blast!

Vote here:  The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time

By Daniel Hope

This morning I go to log in to my Twitbin sidebar to have a quick look at my @replies.  In case you don’t know what I’m referring to, @replies are responses from other Twitter users who have included your username (in my case @tracksuitceo) in their tweet.  This is done either in response to one of your tweets or they are simply mentioning your name in their post.

But instead of seeing my @replies I see the error message above.

In the interim while Twitter is offline I decided to do some macro-blogging (as opposed to micro-blogging).  I want to consider what would happen if Twitter never came back online?

For my Facebook status I posted: Twitter is still offline. How am I supposed to get any work done?

I was only half kidding.  Twitter has actually become a vital tool that I use regularly for personal and professional purposes.  Vero Pepperrell, the UK Social Media blogger, replied in frustration, apprarently there is information she needs that is only available in other people’s Twitter feeds.

This really is no laughing matter and the possibility of permanently losing all of your tweets is not so far fetched.  Just ask my friend Jon Carroll who occasionally wears a t-shirt, sent to him Twitter when they lost his original Twitter account.  I repeat: they lost his entire account!  It was on a server that was fried and that was that.  A “Wearing my Twitter T-Shirt” shirt is great and all but hardly makes up for what was lost and the effort (not to mention wit) that was put into crafting those tweets.

The Value of Trust
How important is trust when it comes to online presence?  I am looking forward to the release of the book Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.  This question is what the book addresses and judging by Chris’s success at gaining my trust, as well as the trust of thousands of others, I know this will be an informative and compelling read.  I expect this book will become staple reading for anyone looking to increase influence or enhance reputation online. 

The Importance of Listening

In my previous post I talk about the importance of listening when it comes to Social Media.  Social Media is as much about receiving information as it is about pushing it out.  The good news is that Social Media offers so many ways to listen.

At last night’s SEO Meetup I heard Ben Wills of Ontolo talk about identifying the websites that should be linking to you.  Ben talked about the importance of strategically tracking what is being said online about you and your industry.

Ben suggests reading Andy Beal’s Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide.  Here is a tip from that guide:

Create custom RSS feeds based on keyword searches: Feedster.com, Technorati.com, IceRocket.com, Google.com/blogsearch, Blogpulse.com, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN News and PubSub.

When the Fail Whale Surfaces

Artwork by Etherbrian

Twitter is a tool that trust (or one that I want to trust) and it is also one that use for listening to the community; listening to what is being said about me and about others.  But what happens when my listening tool is rendered useless?

I know that Twitter actually fell victim to a Denial of Service attack this morning, but still each time the Fail Whale appears the trust we have in Twitter is strained.

I love Twitter and will use it religiously … until something better comes along.

In the comments:  What if Twitter never came back?

On Twitter: #permafailwhale

  
               Follow me on Twitter