Too Many Apps!

What ever you need, someone has created an app to fulfill that need. If you’re like me you want to download apps for a variety of reasons, whether it actually fills a need for you, you have to have the newest thing, or if you’re like me you download it because it is new and try it out but then you never use it again. It gets to a point when you look at the apps on your phone and you have a lot of apps just taking up space. In this post I will discuss how to clean up your smart phone.

On lifehacker.com, a user wrote in describing this very issue. The site wrote back with some very useful steps-

1.     Wipeout all your apps. It will be easier to determine which apps you think are important as compared to which you can part with.

2.     Put your top 12 apps on the home page. They realize that your phone can probably fit more than 12 apps but, if you limit yourself to 12 apps then you will be able to navigate more easily.

3.     Make a secondary and final page. These apps on this page are ones you use but maybe not as often as others. You must limit your self to two pages.

4.     Create a holding bin. You can name it what ever you want, but if you have an app addiction but those “newest and coolest” apps in this bin. Next, on a weekly basis go in and clean that file of any apps you haven’t really used. 

The New York Times provides further guidelines in helping fight any app addiction.  First, use folders to group similar apps; this will help you navigate through all your apps. Second, respect the folder cap. Every folder can hold 12-16 apps determined whether you are using Apple or Android, the author of this article suggests a “one in one out” rule. This rule is simple, for every new app you put in a folder one has to go. Third, keep some apps separate. Examples would include those you use all the time, whether it be email or a bus schedule.

My thoughts? I am more likely to try the steps provided by lifehacker.com because its extreme but I think in the long term I would like the ease and efficiency it would provide. 

Viral Videos- from zero to 30 million views

Usually when I hear the word viral I have a negative connotation that gets tagged with it. Then all of a sudden people start talking about “viral videos” and how great it is. My first thought is, “But its viral? That’s bad.” I can say I am happy to be proven wrong.

Mashable gives a great definition of what makes a video a viral video. It is through the process of sharing a video electronically. Most common methods include sharing websites, social media, and email. So how do you diagnose a video as “viral”? How hast it spreads through out the web. The article describes that some viral videos get 30 million views in the first 30 days it was posted on YouTube  It definitely blows my mind how fast things travel. 

In an article on searchenginewatch.com, the author gives tips that can help your own video, whether for a business or personal use, become “viral”.

!) Arouse your viewer- positive and negative emotion linked to arousal will lead to one more likely to share a video.

2) Avoid sad emotion- when content evokes a sad response from viewers this is less arousal and will lead to a viewer being less likely to share the video.

3) Don’t worry be happy! The article does state the positive and negative extremes lead to video sharing but positive beats negative almost every time.  The study conducted by the site reinforces this tip; when deciding what emotion to go with, positive should be your default.

4)Negative can be positive. Yes in the last tip it says to default to positive every time but negative content can go viral too. Emotions include shock and anger among many others.

The author gives one final tidbit of information with regards to the results from the study mentioned. It says that content created by women went viral more often than content created by men. As a guy I want to disagree with this but, where women are men will follow. 

SEO- The Basics

Before I took a class on social media I had absolutely no idea what SEO stood for.  In this class I learned that it meant Search Engine Optimization. After learning what SEO stood for, I was enticed into doing more research so I could know more than what the letters in SEO stood for.

According to searchengineland.com, it is the process of getting traffic from the “organic” listings on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Where search engine optimization becomes crucial is in the business world.  The listings posted in search engines are ranked on relevance in accordance to what the user searched for. The game is to get your business in that first page of listings. Why? They will be more likely to click on your website and this potential customer can actually become a customer. They have a great clip posted on the website that gives more details on what SEO is. 

The site socialmediaexplorer.com takes on a unique approach when it comes to search engine optimization. The article I read states that if you obey two “pillars” of SEO, you will create more traffic going to your sites whether it may be business or personal. The ‘pillars’ they discuss are being active and adding value, they act in a cause and effect relationship. You need to regularly update your social media, that means everything from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, to Google+. The same goes for your website, mostly your business website but if you have a personal website that works as well.

What I most enjoyed about this article is that they emphasized showing your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ that you are ALIVE. This means sending a Tweet back to those who tweet you and replying to Facebook posts. This will open the doors allowing more people to go to your social media pages and join the conversation. The bigger the conversation the more value you add to the customer experience.

Managing Social Media... it takes time.

New social media platforms seem to be emerging from the shadows. Each one provides a unique and/or new functions to connect you with your family and friends, if you are like me you want to join each platform just to see if the new platform is as cool as other say it is. What you end up with is a headache.

So many platforms to check, too many passwords to remember; wouldn’t it be cool if a site existed that combined the news feeds of all these sites so all you have to do is sign onto one site and get caught up on everything more efficiently; they are called aggregators.

Mashable gives what it considers to be the top 5 aggregators. Whether you want an aggregator for personal use that is simple in design and user friendly, Tweetdeck is what you want; or if you are part of a firm that manages social media for multiple companies whom expect a high return on investment you want Spredfast.

If managing personal accounts isn’t hard enough, I can only imagine the amount of work it takes to manage social media for a business. According to Forbes, it takes a medium sized company it takes 32 hours a month to manage one social media platform; in my personal experience companies will often have at least two.

The article continues on by quoting the CEO of a firm that function to handle your company’s social media, “I advise all my clients on some basic principles.”

First, decide what you want to achieve. You can’t just join social media because someone says it’s crucial for conducting business. If your social media platform lacks purpose. Second, don’t spread yourself too thin. You won’t need more than three platforms, if you jump on every new platform that emerges you will lose focus. Third, keep some social media in house. It should be easy to find an employee who likes to spend the day on Facebook, use that to your advantage.

In summary, aggregators and other tools should be used in both your personal and professional life.