Magento Design and Development » twitter

A tale of Twitter Goodies

Mladen Lotar — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:42:29 +0000

Hello everyone! I decided that I’ll share some information on topic of Twitter implementation to a website. At the moment, Twitter offers three official “Goodies”, and we’ll go through them. Since it’s pretty straightforward, let’s begin.

Tweet Button

You’we all seen “Tweet this” button, right? Well, fellow developer Branko Ajzele wrote an article “Adding simple Tweet this for Magento products” some time ago, and implementation was pretty simple:

Tweet This!

And it still works just fine! But the thing is, it’s not styled, and especially not in “Twitter official” way. Now, Twitter has official Javascript API whose implementation is pretty straightforward too, like this:



Tweet

Twitter’s JavaScript library offers automatic shortening of URLs using Twitters own t.co URL shortening application. Combined with automatic styling through data-count attribute. Official button offers 3 different styles:

There are few properties (attributes) that you can use with Twitter API, and you can read more about them here. Ant that concludes first part of the article – Official Twitter Button.

Widgets

There are 5 official Twitter Widgets:

Follow any of these links and you’ll be able to generate code for your website in just a few clicks. Embedding them on to the site is same as with “Tweet This” button – copy and paste generated code on your web page and you’re ready. And now on to the last “Twitter Goodie”:

Buttons

On this link, you can get your own Twitter button in just one click! You will get something that looks like this:

And with this Goodie, you have option to choose from 18 different button styles, so that you can integrate it to almost any website layout. And now, on to the fun part:

Twitter Implementation into Magento

I’ll explain a basic example on how to implement Twitter button into Magento with fixed position. First of all, open up the “app/design/fromtend/default/your_theme/template/page/html/header.phtml” and scroll to the bottom of the file. Now insert this part of the code:




< ?php if(!ereg("https",$this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl())):?>

Tweet
< ?php endif;?>

Now you’ve added button itself, which will be displayed on all non SSL pages. All you still have to do is to add this part at the end of “skin/frontend/default_your_theme/css/styles.css” file:

#social-media-buttons{
position:fixed;
left: 50%;
margin: 50px 0 0 -570px;
}

And you will have Twitter button embedded on your site, fixedly positioned 570 pixels left from the middle of the site. Congratulations!

Conclusion

And to conclude, “old way” as Branko described earlier still works, but it’s only for “Tweet This Button”, and it isn’t styled. So there are advantages if you choose to implement Twitter to your site this (official) way (especially with widgets).

And I must mention that official API works exclusively over http protocol, and not with https. It’s important because if you put tweet button on SSL checkout page for example, customer might get scared if something isn’t working right, and at the and eventually give up on shopping.

I hope you learned something useful today. Bye!

Now that the value’s gone

Toni Anicic — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:08:35 +0000

I’ve been the active user of social networks before they called it social network, as did many people that dare to call themselves power-users of the internet.

In all these years, I wrote thousands of status updates (or however they called them) and read probably hundreds of thousands more, but if you ask me to tell you what I learned from this massive amount of data I consumed, I’ll have to say: nothing.

One big fat zero. That’s the value of hundreds of thousands of status updates day after they were posted and that’s the biggest problem today’s social networks have to face.

If we look at the more primitive social networks, ghosts of the past that are still lurking in the shadows of the internet – forums, you will see they are pretty much the same thing as social networks with one big difference – they provide value! This is the only reason why Facebook, Twitter and their clones didn’t destroy forums. Not to digress to much, you can read here about forums and social networks comparison.

Why don’t users bring valuable content on Facebook and Twitter?

It’s not because they have no way of doing it. They have a great way to post really any kind of content on Facebook. They can use notes to write extensive “blog posts”, add video, pictures, tag people, link to profiles and make content very valuable and interactive.

It’s because they:

Have limited audience. They are sharing their valuable content to group of their friends. When I write a super good article, I don’t want my friends to read it, I need my targeted audience to read it or that content brings no value to me.
Lack the motivation. Everything on Facebook is built to make you as lazy as possible. I bet non-power-users of Facebook have no idea how to write a note, and these that actually do know, use it for chain letter purposes. Facebook simply doesn’t encourage creating valuable content. Pity.

Where is the big brother?

Another problem is obvious absence of a big brother figure. When you come to a professional forum and start writing stupid stuff or start a chain letter, there will be a big fat moderator or administrator who will smite you like a little worm. There is no one to smash the trolls, to delete the useless content, to filter the good and wrong, to encourage creation of value on Facebook and similar networks. Due to it’s audience being a bit older and possibly more tech savvy, Twitter brings a bit more value then Facebook but also desperately lacks the big brother figure. Twitter is also just a messenger, you can’t build valuable content on it, you can just point to it.

I believe the first social network that solves the problem of absence of valuable content or introduces the big brother figures might be the next big thing.

Are you sick of “Social Media Experts”?

Toni Anicic — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:06:19 +0000

If you spend at least a few days on Twitter you will probably come to a conclusion that Twitter’s user base is: 50% bots, 10% br1tn3y fuck3d accounts 39% Social Media Experts and 1% users / sales people / marketers.

OK, these numbers might be a bit exaggerated but it’s the image of Twitter a normal user sees nowadays.

I’m not trying to say there is no such thing as “Social Media Expert” or that SMM doesn’t work. I’m just trying to say there is way too many of them that present themselves as the expert in social media while their accounts, actions and interactions show you the opposite.

Just to list a few titles of blog posts these guys do to give you a clear picture of what I’m talking about… A “Social Media Expert” that probably never ran a single corporate account gives you the article about:

10 essential Twitter tools to run a successful corporate account

Oh come on! How many tools do you need to run a Twitter account? All you need is already on the Twitter.com. You can use some sort of client if you’re going to Tweet from your mobile but that’s as far as I’d go. Most of the Twitter tools you see out there will not save you any time or make your life any easier at all. I know, trust me, I tested almost every single one of them.

Another kind of blog post titles I love seeing and laughing at:

Get a consultant before your business fails at Twitter
20 reasons to hire a Social Media consultant

This is a harsh truth that no “Social Media Expert” will ever tell you:

All of these social media websites are made for users, not marketing superstars. You already posses all of the knowledge needed to run a stupid Twitter account. It’s a dead simple thing: You have a box where you put up to 140 characters and hit the “Update” button… And yet they (“Social Media Experts”) have the ability to make hundreds of articles every day about how complex this dead simple thing is.

A typical internet user is more then qualified to run your corporate Twitter account. It might take a few days before this person learns a few tricks and figure out how to gain an audience but reading hundreds of blog posts on that topic will only get this person even more confused. It will give out the impression that if they don’t follow some guidelines set by “Social Media Superstars” their business will fail at social networking.

As I said at the beginning of this article, it’s not that social media experts are useless, it’s just that most of them are not experienced in their field at all. They have great theories, but theories in this case don’t pay the bills.

The conclusion:

I’d advise you to hire a social media expert when: you need a dedicated person to run your social media accounts and work with the rest of your marketing team to fulfill your end goals.

I’d advise you not to hire a social media expert when: you think you need someone to teach you how to use Twitter.

If you like what you see, you should follow me on Twitter (and by me I mean our corporate account that I run). Thanks for the CC image left on Flickr by TheArtGuy, I made this cool image in this blog post from it.

LinkedIn and Twitter Integration

Toni Anicic — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:43:37 +0000

Finally, LinkedIn presented it’s newest feature, the complete integration with Twitter. When I say complete I mean status updates go both way. I personally didn’t expect something as good and as useful from LinkedIn any time soon.

The new LinkedIn application for Twitter allows you to connect your Twitter account and:

Update your LinkedIn status from Twitter whenever you Tweet
Or update your LinkedIn status whenever you Tweet using hashtag #in
Post Tweets using the LinkedIn status (by checking the check-box next to the Twitter logo).

If you go to the Twitter Settings (drop down menu on the Twitter logo at homepage) you will see you can actually add more Twitter accounts to your LinkedIn profile.

And wow, here comes the magic part: when you add more then one Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile, you’re converting LinkedIn into a powerful Twitter multy-account management client. What a perfect tool for business people handling several corporate accounts and their personal account.

Now when I post status update via LinkedIn, I can choose on which account (or accounts) I wish my Tweet to appear using the good old drop-down on the Twitter logo.

Long live LinkedIn! Don’t forget to follow Inchoo via Twitter!

Twitter lists you should follow

Toni Anicic — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:14:11 +0000

It’s been all over the web… Twitter rolled out the most useful feature it ever head – Twitter lists. I bet all of you started building your own lists as soon as you got the access to this feature and those of you who follow a lot of people found it extremely painful to organize all of the people you follow into lists.

I started creating two lists with our Inchoo twitter account: Magento twitter List and Inbound Marketing Twitter list. I’m accepting recommendations on which accounts should I add to the lists, please comment if you know I’m missing someone who really deserves to be there.

Here are the Magento related Twitter lists you can follow:

Here are Inbound Marketing (SEO, SEM, SMM) Twitter lists you can follow:

Adding simple Tweet this for Magento products

Branko Ajzele — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:04:13 +0000

There are few different ways one can achieve this kind of functionality. Normally in Magento you would do it like a real, “independent”, module (extension) thus loosing at least two ours to make a few lines of code work.

The simplest way to add this kind of feature to your product view page is to open the view.phtml file under the app/design/frontend/default/custom/template/catalog/product/ folder.

And add the following code where you sish to show your “Tweet this” link:

Tweet This!

Thats it. Remember, this is truly the simplest solution, aka Quick & Dirty. For more fancy stuff… we do custom deevelopment

Cheers.

Get Yahoo MeMe Invitations Here!

Toni Anicic — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:57:03 +0000

We’re testing out Yahoo!’s new Twitter clone service known as yahoo MeMe. The service looks pretty nice from what I can see.

For us, marketers, this is not an Twitter alternative, this is another communication channel to look after. I really like the ability to easily split the content into four main media categories: text, photos, video, and music.

I still don’t get it what’s the main difference between video and music. I mean, videos can be music as well, can’t they? Perhaps they should have used word “audio” instead of “music” as it really specifies the media, not the content of the media.

How to get a Yahoo MeMe invitation?

Anyway… Check out our new Yahoo MeMe account and drop us a line in the comments here if you want a yahoo meme invitation. Make sure you leave us a correct e-mail address when you leave a comment since the invitations will be sent to that e-mail.

Flowchart – Are your potential customers on Twitter?

Toni Anicic — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:38:50 +0000

I’ve done some research, and considering the number of people currently using Twitter and diversity of industries and demographics they belong to, I came up with this extremely useful flowchart that you can use to determine if your targeted audience is using Twitter or not.

It appears that if you sell products to extraterrestrials, the probability of finding your potential customers on Twitter decreases dramatically. I hope this helps you my respected colleagues.

Follow me on Twitter!

Twitter linking hashtags to searches was a great move

Toni Anicic — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:48:13 +0000

I was trying not to comment on Twitter‘s decision to link hashtags with search until I can see how that one effected the service. Last night I saw something that shown the real value of this move.

The ability to simply click on a hashtag and see everyone engaged in the discussion made it easier for the community to interact. It opened space for bigger and more relevant discussions that are easier to follow.

How it use to be:

Discussions use to be generally limited inside a mutually followed community. It was extremely rear that persons not following themselves would engage into a discussion. An influential twitterer could set a ball rolling but there was no real interaction between thousands of his followers if they weren’t following between themselves.

What changed:

Yesterday, for example, a small community of people on twitter started talking about Croatian media. We talked about the need for a decent online news channel, a trusted source unaffected by the government or mass capital. The discussion picked up under the hashtag #HrMedia.

Suddenly, people that I’ve never heard of started engaging us in conversation. They brought thoughts and ideas of value. This was no longer a 140 character conversation. People started talking to each other as if we were in some sort of bulletin board, a special one, niche targeted for one really small but important topic. I ended up following lots of people I never knew about before and gained even more followers as a result of this discussion. Another result of this discussion is that a real life meeting is arranged to discuss the idea of actually creating such a news site.

It appears that Twitter did a great move and became much more useful now that it links hashtags to search and enables big, more valuable discussions.