Now You Can Post to Multiple Twitter Accounts

There are several reasons why people have multiple Twitter accounts. Some people use one account to keep their friends up to date on events privately and automate their other account as an RSS feed.

I have two Twitter accounts that I maintain. @HeyStephanie is for personal use and  @Brickfish is geared towards highlighting new and exciting Brickfish campaigns.

Thanks to the Carsonified team, I no longer have to sign in to each account individually to make updates and neither do you! In four days, the Carsonified team built a web application called Matt to simplify ‘multiple account Twitter tweeting’ (say that five time fast!). And boy does it make managing multiple Twitter accounts easy.

Step 1: Simply login at Matt with your Twitter username and password and this will generate your first Twitter account.

Step 2: Next you’ll need to click on the “Click here to add a new account” link and enter the username and password of your second account.

Step 3: If you have more than two Twitter accounts and would like to add more, repeat Step 2.

Step 4: Once you’re done setting up your accounts, you’re good to go! Type in your 140 character tweet and check off the accounts that you want Matt to update for you and click on “go go go”  – it’s that easy!

Have fun Twittering and don’t forget to add me as a friend if you haven’t already.

(Photo Credit: TheMattinator.com)

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Design the New 20SB Header Contest

Attention all twenty something bloggers, now is your chance to leave a lasting impression on the Twenty Something Bloggers (20SB) community.

The Admins want you to create a one of a kind header to represent our social network. You can start from scratch, use Wordle as a background, or incorporate the 20SB badge in your design. Headers must be 955×200 pixels.

Each 20SB member can submit up to 5 entries but don’t forget, the contest ends August 3, 2008 and all entries must be submitted to the 20SB Header Contest Flickr Group.

While the prize for the winner is still to be determined, I think bragging rights is sufficient. For complete details of the contest, visit the 20SB blog and to spark your creativity, here’s my submission to the contest:

If you’re not already a member of 20SB, it’s not too late to sign-up.

20SB is a great community of active bloggers that are all approaching, in the middle, or just past their quarter life crisis. WIth over 1900 members and more than 100 groups, you’ll find a diverse community and plenty of reading material to get your creative juices flowing for your next blog post.

In fact, 20SB is full of activities with blogger meetups, blog swaps, and is currently in the process of rolling out category specific RSS feeds for everyone. Click here for more information about the RSS feeds.

What I like most about 20SB is the active forum, the friendly folks, and the fact that anyone can nominate a member to be a featured blogger on the homepage. Even more exciting is the fact that the group has recently been added to Alltop and thanks to Zakstar, a 20SB group has been added to LinkedIn.

With that said, what are you waiting for? Come join us.

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(Photo Credit: 20SB)

(Banner Credit: “Cityscape and skyline brushes” by c Luddy
Tag Cloud created with Wordle.net)

World of Wordle

Wordle lets you create “word clouds” from an RSS feed, a del.ici.ous username, or you can paste in a bunch of text to generate you word cloud.

Once you have the text all set, you can tweak your word cloud with different layouts, fonts, and color schemes. And because images created by the Wordle application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, you can use your Wordle on anything from book covers to T-shirts. I added my Wordle to my new Contact page.

Just remember to let people know how you created your Wordle. If you took an image from the Wordle gallery, don’t forget to mention where you got it from.

Thanks to Andrew, author of The Working Title, for highlighting Wordle in his blog. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found out about this awesome site. And kudos to Jonathan Feinberg for creating Wordle, I absolutely love it.

This Week’s Highlights

It’s that time again! It’s time to share the standout blog posts, websites, and social media tools that I discovered this week and would like to share with you.

Posts

• BatchBook is Great for Contact Management by Chris Brogan
• Flex Your Communication Style to Avoid Email Problems by Breanne Potter
• How to Promote Other People’s Content and Drive Traffic to your Own Blog by Problogger

Websites

• MyToons.com – the world’s greatest online animation community – now in HD!
• Comic-Con.org - okay, so I didn’t just discover this website this week. In fact, I’ve been going to Comic-Con for the last 5 years and plan on attending this year as well. I just wanted to add it to the list because I just bought my tickets this week which was a major highlight to me.

Social Media Tools

• BatchBook.com – the ultimate contact management web application. They have awesome customer service too!
• Tablefy.com – find the data you need, compare the results, and share it with colleagues and friends

Brickfish Gas Card Design

This has to be my favorite Brickfish campaign simply because it’s easy to enter and the prizes are fantastic! Who doesn’t want a $500 gas card?

Check out the prizes listed below but don’t forget to read the complete rules, regulations, and legal notice:

• Grand Prize: One winner, selected from the top 100 highest scoring entries by Brickfish, will win a $500 gas card.
• Most Viral: One winner, selected by Brickfish from the top 10 Most Viral entries, will win a $250 gas card. Learn about Most Viral.
• Weekly Voter/Reviewer Sweepstakes: Each week, one winner who participates in the campaign by voting or reviewing will win a $100 gas card.

The campaign just started yesterday and people are already submitting their designs. You can check out all of the entries here.

So to get you started, I made a quick tutorial on how to submit an entry using the Entry Editor.

(Photo Credit: Brickfish)

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BatchBook: Answer to my Blues

Organizing my emails in Outlook is simple. Every client has a separate folder and I use the Outlook wizard to create rules so important emails don’t get caught in a spam filter or get neglected. This helps to keep my inbox free from clutter and more manageable.

What isn’t simple, is trying to organize my contacts. In fact, I’ve been searching for a contact management software that would enable me to do these three things:

1. Utilize tags to organize contacts
2. Create targeted email lists
3. Track conversations easily

Friends and colleagues suggested that I create an excel database or create groups in my Gmail account. Unfortunately, both suggestions wouldn’t allow me to use tags to group contacts together. Plus,  tracking conversations in excel is tedious.

Fortunately, I came across Chris Brogan’s post on BatchBook.com and was floored with his review. The BatchBook features met all of my needs. I could organize contacts with tags, generate instant email lists, and track conversations instantly. My favorite features were the ability to add photos and create custom contact fields. Their plans were affordable too. In fact, I signed up for the Baby Blue account to test the waters. If I decide that I need to increase the amount of storage, users, contacts, or SuperTags – I can always upgrade later.

In the end, BatchBook was the solution to my problem. If you’re looking for a robust contact management application, I suggest you take a look at BatchBook. Below is a full breakout of features that they have to offer.

(Photo Credit: BatchBlue.com)

This Week’s Highlights

I have 32 subscriptions to blogs and 1000+ items in my Google Reader that’s waiting to be read. While I filter through these unread items and take steps to simplify and organize my RSS feeds, here are a couple of standout posts, websites, and tools that I found worthy to be highlighted this week.

Posts

• A Flickr Project for Everybody at ChrisBrogan.com
• The Main Difference Between Twitter and Plurk by Darren Rowse at Problogger.net
• Syndicate Your Personal Brand Through Social Media by Dan Schawbel at Personal Branding Blog

Websites

• KidZui – The Internet for Kids: An innovative way to stay in tune with your kids’ online activities
• TinyURL: Shorten that long URL for your tweets or plurks
• Searchme Visual Search Beta: See pictures of web pages that answer your search

Tools

• TweetLater.com: Schedule Future-Dated Tweets
• FlogBlog Facebook Application: Easily integrate your blog to your Facebook profile

Save Time Post at Ping.fm

Ping.fm is the most effective way to update your status on multiple social networks. A single post to Ping.fm can update 16 popular social services at the same time so you don’t have to sign into each account individually. You can post a status update, a blog, or micro-blog through one platform and posting a link won’t be a problem at all – Ping.fm will automatically convert it to a shorter link before posting to your services.

This week my status updates to Facebook, LinkedIn, Mashable, Myspace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, and Twitter and took less than a minute to complete. If I signed into each account individually, it would have taken me even longer.

Ping.fm saves me time and it can save you time as well.Go to Ping.fm and sign up with the beta code “pingofpings”.

After you sign up, check out a quick-and-easy tutorial that Trevor at BordelineTheory.com put together. Or you can check out Bwana.tv’s video tutorial below.

(Photo Credit: Ping.fm)

(Video Credit: Bwana.tv)

Firefighters Battle I-805 Brushfire

(Photo Credit: Misty Phillips)

We had just got out of a late meeting when I returned to my desk and saw this outside our office window. A brush fire had broke out on I-805 and the smoke started to fill the sky. We gathered around the window in shock but were relieved when we saw the firefighters arrive.

Since the fire was just off the freeway, employees that usually take the I-805 southbound, left the office because we knew that the brush fire would effect traffic. As I got onto the onramp, the rubbernecking had already began. Speeds were less than 10 mph and drivers were noticeably pulling out their camera phones to take a snap. Fortunately, traffic let up after Clairemont Mesa boulevard and I was able to get home at a decent hour.

Today’s event reminded me of last year’s firestorm. Our home was threatened by the Harris fire and the city issued a voluntary evacuation for our area (see photo below). Instead of driving to Qualcomm, we flew out of San Diego to Scottsdale, Arizona. Having been through previous fire seasons, we knew that the air quality would be poor and polluted in San Diego. (I honestly hope that history doesn’t repeat itself any time soon.)

It’s interesting to note that during last year’s firestorm our relatives and friends were scattered all over San Diego. We couldn’t use our cell phones to contact each other so we had to find another means of communication. Interestingly enough, every one of our family members and friends were connected on Myspace. To update our family and friends, we used my Myspace account to send bulletins to everyone ensuring our safety.

When we arrived in Arizona, we kept a close eye on the news and found a blog called Wildifires 2007 by SignOnSanDiego.com. They kept us up to date on the status of the fires and had links to evacuation centers. Several posts received comments and questions by subscribers and everyone pulled together to share information on where to find help and shelter.

Simply put, social media helped us communicate with our family, friends, and neighbors and proved to be an effective means of communication.

(Photo Credit: SignonSanDiego.com)

Capital One Wants to Get Personal

I stumbled across Kristen Nicole’s article on Mashable titled, “Use Flickr for Custom Capital One Cards” and thought it was a great campaign for several personal reasons.

First, Capital One makes it simple to create a personalized credit card. I already have a Capital One card but now I can select a photo that’s already hosted on my Flickr account or simply upload a jpeg from my PC and make it more fun. See upload guidelines here.

Second, by using a personal photo I’m creating an emotional attachment with my credit card. When I’m in the middle of a transaction, do I whip out my boring debit card or use my fancy customized Capital One card? Chances are, I’m going to whip out the Capital One card then chat with the clerk on how fun it was customizing my credit card and tell her where she can go online to create her own!

It would have also been interesting to see what would happen if the Capital One Image Card promotion ran a user-generated contest around the campaign. Let people create their custom Capital One card with their favorite photo then offer a prize (i.e. a $150 Capital One Gas Card) for the best design in a photo category (i.e. Family, Best Friends, Graduation, etc.).

People can engage longer with the promotion and check out what other people have designed and leave comments if they want to. And if they’re not interested in other people’s creations, they can still order their new card. That’s a great way of building brand awareness in my opinion, what do you think?

Create your own personalized Capital One credit card now.

(Avatar Credit: PosePrints.com)

(Photo Credit: CapitalOne)