Indianapolis Social Media Marketing | Indianapolis Internet Marketing

Time to Elf Yourself for the holidays

2009-11-11T11:57:15-05:00

Social Media Marketing helps fuel holiday spirit

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Bells are jingle belling. Carolers are caroling. And inboxes are filling with Elf Yourself videos from bored friends.

If you’ve never received one of these videos, you’re missing out. The Web site, created by OfficeMax , is a silly, fun way to spread holiday cheer. All you have to do is upload photos of your friends, family or pets, and Elf Yourself does the rest. You’ll have a short video of grooving elves to share with your address book in no time!

And this year, Elf Yourself caught the social media spirit. After your video is created, you can upload your video to your Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com> page, as well as embed the video in your Web site or blog.

And Elf Yourself has made uploading photos easier this year, adding an option to upload photos directly from your Facebook account. Doesn’t get any easier than that!

Here’s an example:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Elf YOURself, and Tweet them to me (now that you can!)

Alyson (follow me @alyandthecity <http://www.twitter.com/alyandthecity>)

Social Media Marketing

Tweetie 2: The Best iPhone Twitter App

2009-11-10T10:33:19-05:00

Tweetie 2 is the successor to the popular original Tweetie iPhone app by atebits. It is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, now! It is rewritten from the ground up with a fast and powerful new core, Tweetie 2 offers the most polished mobile Twitter experience around. Tweetie 2 is so far ahead of every other iPhone Twitter app, it's astounding. It’s got a cleaner look, a few extra features, and most importantly, it’s much faster.

*Writing a new tweet*

The greatest feature in Tweetie 2 is its offline powers. They're great. Not only does it cache tweets to read offline, but you have other Twitter capabilities, like adding favorites, which are synced up the next time you go back online. A basic drafts manager lets you store and edit tweets to send later.

*Twitter stream*

Key Features Listed:

Persistence
New message indicators
Scroll up to reload
More third-party service support
Live-filtering search
New tweet options
“Nearby” button
Draft manager
New tweet stream options
Notifications
Create iPhone contacts from Twitter profiles
Saved searches
Landscape
More threaded conversations
Video support

3 Flaws:

No real syncing with desktop app
No real push notifications
Costs: $2.99 (BUT WORTH IT)

If you've never paid for a Twitter app or even if you have, Tweetie 2 is well worth the three bucks that it costs. It's fast, it's got full offline powers. It's not perfect, but it's the closest yet. Buy the app today and tell us what you think! :)

Article by: Zach Reed // Firebelly Designer (Follow me @bluetidepro)

Social Media Marketing

Halloween Mania Music Mix

2009-10-30T17:30:59-04:00

Thanks to our friends from Passionati. We've got a great list from the premiere music sharing site. Its a halloween mix to help you get the most out of the scariest holiday on the calendar!!

Halloween Play List

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

People who tweet about their work outs - Get a life!

2009-10-30T00:27:56-04:00

Another seriously funny illustration in this series from Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal. Why do we feel so compelled to tweet our workouts? According to one of our readers, it because people seeks validation, support and self-expression. I know people do it because they want other people to converse with them. But seriously imagine this everyday. Once in a while - okay I'm in. But imagine this:

Monday: Ran 3 miles, Swam 40 laps, upper body work out - I'm tired!

Tuesday: Ran 1 mile, Swam 60 laps, Abs - damn that was good!

Wednesday: Love getting my squats in. That Trainer kicked my ass!

Do you really need more? Tweet about it but its nothing you'd say in real life - so why burden the rest of the world on twitter?

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

STOP Over-Tweeting about your kids, cats, dogs, etc.

2009-10-29T08:40:00-04:00

For real, you love them coz they're yours. Share those pics in person or on facebook - its right, its nice, its got more capabilities for comment chains, and more. Twitter just ain't the place. One is enough. Tamagotchi may be a bit harsh, but that is hilarious all the same!

We'd love you to call out tweets that fit this category! If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here. BTW Thank you Matthew Inman, you're a funny funny man!

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

Stop tweeting your DailyBooth photos NOW

2009-10-28T23:26:40-04:00

Remember Narcissus. He dashed all his suitors - male and female aside - to fall in love with his own reflection. While twitterholics or people who base their entire social media marketing communication strategy on Twitter (nice redundancy Duncan) will disagree, the great conversation on there is a shadow of itself. Perhaps, you can thank Oprah and Ashton Kutchner for that - I personally will not thank Ashton for anything and find him as substantial and interesting as a baked potato chip, but thats another story. If we've seen one photo of you on twitter, that is probably good. But really you've hardly changed since yesterday. And believe me, no one buys that you're thinner since yesterday. I'm definitely a leaner when it comes to photos (only to satisfy my own silly insecurities) but at least I don't burden all my associates with it. Keep those photos on Flickr, keep them on Facebook, keep them in your wallet, keep them in a box that you can bury for future generations to find - just keep them off my twitter feed. Out.

We'd love you to call out tweets that fit this category! If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here. BTW Thank you Matthew Inman, you're a funny funny man!

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

Oh yeah, and I'm dedicating this song by an American icon to you. Only she didn't write it about you ;)

Stop tweeting out of context

2009-10-27T16:56:25-04:00

Just like real life, people expect and appreciate conversation protocol. Listen, wait till the other person is done, spatial mores are different in different cultures - these are just a few of the expectations. Conversations are not just two way - they can have many participants. While speaking out of context can be funny in person - its usually not the rule. It can certainly be funny in the theater during a play or a film (in terms of actors not audience). But lets face it, as much as we'd all like to think we're actors - we're not. I'm sure there are lots of self-centered companies and people (read: ad agency execs who are usually skin deep and certain executives from psuedo digital marketing firms) that think everyone is constantly watching their twitter feed and so should immediately know what they're talking about. Before you get worked up, remember I'm saying its ok to speak out of context from time to time. I've just had it with the people that do it all the time.

We'd love you to call out tweets that fit this category! If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

Stop tweeting about your emotional break throughs

2009-10-26T11:45:04-04:00

I'm sorry to say but 140 characters doesn't do your self actualization justice, and frankly no one gives a shit (on twitter anyway). Go to facebook or find some friends. If that doesn't work, try commiserating with the world on fmylife. Of course a shrink can help too. But aren't you tired of people that talk about all kinds of emotional progress. I am.

So get over yourself, and give us all a break. Or we WILL unfollow you. I'm not just sayin' coz we know thats just plain passive aggression. I mean it. We're over the hype. And, thanks to the dynamic Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal for designing these.

We'd love you to call out tweets that fit this category! If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

Stop tweeting about the # of followers you have

2009-10-25T20:32:38-04:00

Matthew Inman who runs The Oatmeal site posted this recently. It's a top 10 list, but I think they're so good that we're going to feature them for you, our attention deficit reader, one at a time! No one cares about how many followers you have unless they're a mis-directed social media or PR firm that will give you more or less importance based on your primary and secondary reach. And I say, since when did it become cool to not think every one is important (regardless of reach).

If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

Five Reasons Why I Love Wordpress

2009-10-23T10:25:08-04:00

WordPress was originally made as a blog publishing application but has now evolved into a huge content management system (CMS). It was first released in May 2003 by its co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as the successor to b2/cafelog. It is powered by PHP and a SQL data backend. As of September 2009, Wordpress is used by 62.8 million websites in the US and 202 million websites worldwide.

Here are my top 5 reasons that I would recommend WordPress any day of the week:

WordPress can make websites that don’t look like blogs. This is a very big misconception. Many people always assume that if you are using WordPress as a CMS that it has to be a blog. This is very untrue. For example, check out the very popular site colourlovers. This site runs WordPress and is not just a blog.
Plugins. Plugins are extensions that add additional functions to the basic WordPress software. These are what turn the basic blog program into a full content management system. Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. There are almost 10,000 different king of plugins! Everything from basic social media plugins to advance portfolio galleries.
Themes make it easy to customize and update. Essentially, the WordPress theme system is a way to skin your website. You can find thousands upon thousands of premade themes online for free or sometimes a small fees. Here at Firebelly we make a lot of the custom themes from scratch. Themes allow your WordPress site to look ANY way you want.
Installing a WordPress blog/website is VERY easy. WordPress is now known for what they call the “famous 5-minute WordPress installation.” The title says it all. Wordpress is very simple to setup and start using ASAP. You can setup a free account with WordPress.com to host your site or you can always host it on your own server.
WordPress is really easy to use. If you have ever used Microsoft Word or something similar, you can easily use WordPress. When you update posts or pages it has a very “word-like” editor, which is called a WYSIWYG editor (What you see is what you get). This built in visual editor makes updating as simple as tying your shoe.
BONUS REASON: It’s FREE!

Do you love WordPress? Tell us why! :)

Article by: Zach Reed // Firebelly Designer (Follow me @bluetidepro)