3 Twitter Audio Apps to Talk Your Tweets

Twitter is a good social networking site. But sometimes, the 140 character text that it allows is just not enough to get your message across. So what do you do? Well, if you didn’t know, you can now add voice and other audio files to your tweets with the help of third party apps. Below are three Twitter audio apps that you can use for free.

Update: I have to admit that older comments on this blog went somewhat unnoticed. As I’ve been trying to find time to be more active with vGal and develop more relationships, I’ve been trying to clean-up so to say and start doing all those things I shoulda been doing all along… A reader from Chirbit commented quite a while back and I failed to notice his addition, so being better late than never – here’s Chirbit!

Chir.ps

If you are looking for a simple app to broadcast your voice to your Twitter followers then Chir.ps is the Twitter audio tool for you. Using this app is easy. You only need to sign up with OAuth and then simply enter your personal details to get your own Chir.ps page. The program interface is also very simple and straightforward. In fact, to a hit a button is all you need to do to start recording your voice. After recording, you can add text to it and then tweet it away.

To hear your voice, your followers would only have to click on s shortened URL that the app will add to your audio tweet. The audio may be low-quality but at least you can keep track of the the number of people who listened to your voice.

AudioBoo

Apart from an online service, this audio Twitter app also offers an iPhone and Android versions. This app uses a pop-up window which serves as the interface to record your voice. Through this window, you can also upload an audio file from your computer. You can record an audio for up to five minutes in length. When you are happy with your recording after reviewing it, you can then save it and then share it through Facebook or Twitter. When it comes to sound quality, Audio Boo is among the best out there for audio Tweets. However, they do not have a tracker for the number of people who listens to your recording.

Twaud.io

Like AudioBoo, Twaud.io lets users either record their voices or upload files from their computer. This audio Twitter app allows users to record a file for up to 30 minutes in length – the normal length of a regular podcast.

The simple interface of this app feature a one button operation. You can also add a 100 character text to be sent along with your voice recording. Your followers can download the file. They can even re-tweet them or comment on them. Sound quality is good and there is a counter that will tell you how many people have listened to your voice already

How a Pest Management Company integrates Social Media

Image via Wikipedia

JP McHale Pest Management is one of the top pest control companies in New York and Connecticut.  We are a family run pest management company that is located in Buchanan, New York.  Through our integrated pest management, we use the most effective and eco-friendly materials when treating pest issues.  Please visit our website or contact us if you have any question or would like to know more about our services.

Here at JP McHale Pest Management, we integrate social media marketing via blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  Our goal is to generate more traffic to our website and to reach out to other pest control companies and people in our community.  Every company has a website, but not every company utilizes the opportunities on the internet to drive traffic to their website.  Here at JP McHale’s, we use the following techniques to generate more traffic and exposure to our website:

Blog:

In addition to our pest control website that explains our services, we have a blog where people are informed of pests in the local and nationwide news.  We will occasionally post funny pictures or videos related to pests to give the readers a little laugh.  This blog helps people understand more about pests; how they act, what environments they are found in, and why they behave the way they do.  For example, if suddenly there was an outbreak of a certain pest, we can inform the readers of it right away, unlike a normal website. Through the blog we can interact with other pest control companies.  By posting our RSS feed, people can be notified of our updates.  We can exchange information with other pest companies to expand our knowledge on pests, and the interaction also give us link exchanges that boosts up our page rank with Google.

Twitter:

Twitter connects people worldwide in a matter of seconds, which produces a lot of opportunity for many people to be in contact with us.  JP McHale follows people in our service area and other pest control companies.  We organize our followers through TweetDeck.  TweetDeck not only allows us to organize our followers, but we can single out tweets with specific words, such as “carpenter ants” or “termites”.  By doing this, we can tweet at people who ask a question or are curious about a certain kind of pest, to which we can answer.  We will also post a link to our blog post when we publish a new story.

Facebook:

Facebook is the new craze from people in high school, to people in retirement homes.  Everyone’s on it.  JP McHale has a page that enables people to “Like” us.  When people “Like” us, we will come up in their newsfeed whenever we post something on our page.  Again, went we post a new blog entry, we can link back to our blog through the Facebook page.  Unlike Twitter, we can post photo albums to our Facebook page.  The albums we current have are pictures from the field, how to identify you weeds, and how to identify summer pests.  This enables users to learn about our company in a casual and friendly way.

There are many other social media sites that companies can use to increase traffic to your site. We feel these are the most beneficial sites to drive traffic to our website.

Adding Retweet Buttons to Your PDF Document

As you almost certainly know, Twitter is one of the hottest spots for sharing information. People often put twitter buttons on their blog post to make it easier for their readers to share. But here’s something that you may not know, as many people are not aware of it… Did you know that you can even add retweet buttons to their PDF files?

This enables anyone reading PDF files to share it in the massive world of twitter. Tweet buttons should be added to any PDF, whether it’s a white paper, report, an ebook or simply an article that you’re uploading to document sharing sites. These are usually files that people are going to want to share, so when creating them you should be sure to add the twitter button. Don’t worry it’s not hard at all!

When the reader clicks on the retweet button they have to do nothing except log in if they are not already logged. If they are already logged in then all the better! The button will send out a direct link to the original PDF file.

You can really benefit from using PDF files, because PDF files tend to be very, very, portable. People can download files on their desktops and email them to people as well as post them on forums. The retweet button allows for easy sharing. PDF’s typically float around so it is important to have an easy way to share a file with the world. For instance, if you’re writing about Sihanoukville, then it makes it much easier for travelers to share your document among others who will be visiting the region.

To start sharing a document through twitter, the first thing you’re going to need is a Twitter graphic. If you aren’t skilled in creating simple graphics, you can hire someone to do it or find one of the many free Twitter icons that are available.

There should be a bird on the graphic to tell people that it’s a Twitter graphic and the color that twitter is typically known for is blue. Then you need to set up a link to the PDF file. It is a good idea to link to a page about the PDF file and not to link to the PDF file directly. Linking to the PDF file directly limits the possibility of describing what the PDF is actually about. Also, consider using an @ tag to yourself to help grow your Twitter following.

When you get the link you want to shorten it on a site like bit.ly, so it looks more attractive to Twitter users. Now that all of that is done go ahead and write the tweet that people will see when someone presses the retweet button.

Copy and paste this code:

http://twitter.com/home/?status=

For everywhere there is a space in your message, add a plus sign (+)

If your Twitter name is SihanoukvilleNow, then your message may look something like this:

http://twitter.com/home/?status=RT:@SihanoukvilleNow+Tourism+Up+as+Expected+and+New+Railway+Underway!+http://yourshorteningURL.service

Then just link your graphic to that special URL you just created. Test it out!

Link all three of the elements together and a PDF file can now help you gain followers and spread information. If you don’t have a program to create PDF files, you can use https://createpdf.adobe.com/ Alternatively, you can download OpenOffice (free). The OpenOffice writer has the ability to export as a PDF file.

See a shared document with a retweet button in action: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/62066304/Add-Retweet-Buttons-To-PDF

Related articles

• How to Link PDF Documents to Buttons in Flash (brighthub.com)
• Saving your documents as PDF files [Shelley Fishel] (ecademy.com)

Twitter Gmail Gadget Brings Twitter Right into Your Gmail

The Twitter Gmail gadget isn’t really new. A recent client was interested in finding out if there was any way to keep up with his social media accounts while he’s doing his daily routines. Since he uses Gmail a lot, this is something that is working out great for him. I thought I’d go over this for you in case you haven’t been using it or maybe never heard of it. It is very convenient if you use spend a lot of time in your Gmail account. Your Twitter updates are fed right into the side panel of your Gmail account. You’ll have to enable labs in your settings and get it set up, which only takes maybe 5 minutes. Don’t know how to do that? No worries. This step-by-step guide will have you up and running with your Twitter Gmail gadget before you can say hashtag!

Step One:

If you don’t already have labs enabled, you’ll need to go do that in your settings. Not sure if you have labs? If you do, there would be a green chemical lab bottle in the menu shown here. On this email account, I didn’t have labs enabled so you don’t see the icon here. Click on that “Settings” link.

Step Two:

Once you get to that page, click on “Labs” on the top menu. When you get there, you’ll need to enable “Add any gadget by URL”. Your top menu will then have a “Gadgets” link.

Step Three:

Now that you have it enabled, you need to have the URL for the Twitter Gmail gadget. You can use either of these:

• http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml
• or https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml

If you want to grab it right from the site then go to http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gmail Just so you know, you can also add Twitter to Facebook, Orkut, or MySpace. For those go to their main URL at http://twittergadget.appspot.com/ It will look like this…

Step Four:

Now go back to your Gmail and click on the “Gadgets” link that appeared on the top menu earlier. Paste in the URL for the gadget.

That’s pretty much it! Once you do that, you should see the Twitter box show up on the side bar in your Gmail. You’ll have to connect it to your Twitter account, which is easy. Just click on the link in the Twitter Gmail gadget box and it will take you to a screen where you’ll have to “allow” the connection. Then it will take you back to Gmal. Just reload and you’re ready to roll with your new Twitter Gmail gadget – Have fun!

Sharpen Your Business with New Twitter Lists

Twitter was once a powerful giant in the social media marketing world. Wait a minuted. It still is! Who would have foreseen that it could become even more powerful? That it has surely done. One of the coolest features you’ll find on your Twitter profile now is the list feature. When I first seen it, I was like ok… what am I supposed to do with this thing? But it is actually very neat and there so many ways your business can use Twitter lists. If you haven’t been using Twitter marketing for your business, then you have not been using social media marketing to its fullest potential. Every business should be taking advantage of the many things that you can do with Twitter! The new Twitter lists are a nice little power house built right in to Twitter. Here’s a quick little run down of what Twitter lists let you do…

They let you:

• Create targeted lists of Twitter users
• Make your  list public for anyone to see or keep it hidden by making it private
• Recommend people on your lists to others
• Follow other users without actually following them

Create targeted lists

You can create a list that has just your buddies from the gym. That probably wouldn’t be too helpful for your business, though, would it? Well, you can create lists based on age or gender or location. Now we’re getting warmer. But let’s say you run a business that sells eco-friendly home accessories and decorations. Search out Twitter users who have tweeted how they love green products, have recently bought an eco-friendly bath rug, or are avid home decoration shoppers. Create a list of these users. Do you think that may be of any use to your business?  Of course it would!

Private and Public Lists

Being able to make Twitter lists private is awesome for businesses. Why? You can easily add all of your competitors into a competitors list. Remember, that you don’t have to follow each user in order for them to be on your list. Make this list private. Now you have your own little peeping hole into your competitors behavior. What are they doing on Twitter that you aren’t? How are they interacting with their followers? Are they running contests? Are they using Twitter as a means for customer support? By creating a competitors list of competitors who are doing extremely well with their business, you can spot things that you maybe wouldn’t have ever known about otherwise. And guess what? They’ll never know you’re watching.