Over the weekend, we implemented Facebook Connect. That means that if you already have a Facebook account, you can now leave comments on socialTNT just by signing in! If you like what you read on sTNT, share it with your friends!

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But the rumors of my employment status are not.  Yes, I am no longer working at Text 100.  I’ve gone freelance–so if you’ve got any projects, please feel free to send them my way.

I’m pulling together a list of campaigns I’ve created–but feel free to email me directly with any questions

What does all this mean to you? Well, you should be seeing more content on socialTNT. I’ll have the chance to respond to pitches. We also recently purchased a convoluted HD digicam, so look for more video content!

Thanks, again, for all your support. You make all this possible! THANK YOU!

Best,

Chris

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Flashback, last Fall: We couldn’t get on Facebook without playing a round of Scrabulous and Superpoking all our friends.  By Spring, however, we’d become tired of all the drivel and wanted something a little more utilitarian.  Today, professional social network LinkedIn answers our prayers by launching its own set of apps–for grown ups!

Unlike Facebook or MySpace, LinkedIn is putting the apps through a rigorous approval process to make sure that the apps are (surprise) professional.  The initial offering of ten productivity apps should prove useful for serious business folks.  Today, socialTNT takes a look at Company Buzz, one of the new LinkedIn apps that could become a powerful tool for PR and Marketing Pros.

Using Company Buzz to Monitor Conversations on Twitter

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.  It’s truly the living web, a world where you can find what people are thinking about a product, company or topic in real time.  Company Buzz lets you search for key terms, shows you related terms that appear in Tweets with your search term, and graphs the volume of Tweets that mention your search term.  Take a look:

In the above screen cap, you can see the layout of the top half of the app.  In the top right-hand corner, you can see the list of search terms.  LinkedIn autopopulates your list with your company names.  You can remove these or add your own search terms.  In the screen cap, we’ve searched for McCain.  The query results are shown on the left hand side in traditional Twitter-feed style.

This screen shot shows the app below the fold.  Here’s where the app becomes a little more robust.  In the top right corner, you can find “Buzz Words.”  Buzz words are words that are found in tweets mentioning your keywords.  These can be incredibly useful for finding related words you may not have associated with your original search terms.

The box marked “Trends” graphs out the number of Tweets mentioning your keyword.  This is good for reporting, especially for a launch or event.

When building your search, you may want to add multiple terms for one search.  Just click on “Manage” in the “Topics” box.  Then click on “Edit” next to the query you want to change.

Then just click “Add an another search term,” type it in, and hit save.

We found LinkedIn’s Company Buzz to be a great monitoring tool.  One of the major drawbacks was lack of conversation threading.  That’s why we still recommend Twitter Search for conversation tracking. This is still a great tool for trending and monitoring.

Other apps on LinkedIn we found useful were SlideShare, Huddle, WordPress and box.net.  Check them out yourself, or you can learn more about LinkedIn’s new applications on TechCrunch or in Co-Founder Reid Hoffman’s video, below.

Like what you read? Add our RSS feed! [what’s that?]. Or start your morning with socialTNT in your InBox! Or read Chris 24-7 on Twitter!

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It’s our one year anniversary here at socialTNT. To celebrate, Marie and I recorded this seesmic video post! Yup, that’s right. We’ve got seesmic now, friends, so you can comment in LIVING video!

The new season of “3Q’s in 3Min” starts TOMORROW! Until then, enjoy our FUN birthday video. Eat some cake for us.

[The above image, Here's to the birthday boy! by Emma.c on Flickr, used under Creative Commons]

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Hey everyone:

Sorry for the radio silence. We’re both on vacation. Marie is preparing for a big move, and I’ll be doing a little fiction writing. We’ll be back next Thursday with “3Q’s in 3Min.” In the meantime, catch up on all of this season’s interviews on our blip.tv channel page.

Again, thank you all so much for continuing to read and watch socialTNT.

Have a great holiday!

Chris

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Dear friends of socialTNT:

Last night, my MacBook decided it wanted to be ornery. I tried repairing the OS, but that didn’t work. I ended up having to do a clean install of Leopard. After that didn’t work, my happy MacBook has to spend today at the Apple Genius Bar. Luckily I had an archive (Thanks Timemachine!), so they were able to restore my data. There is still some software that needs to be reinstalled, but the interview slated for today will be up tomorrow.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best,

Chris

Related posts:

1. PROGRAMMING NOTE: Still Sick

Whether building your personal brand or increasing conversation with your customers, there’s no denying that blogs have become a crucial part of any communications and marketing strategy. But with so many people blogging, sometimes it feels like the echo chamber is nothing but noise pollution. Today, socialTNT shares a few tips on how to establish your voice without adding to the pollution.

• Every day in our professional lives, we encounter experiences that can be used to help others learn. Write anecdotes of challenges or successes, or share tips and tricks. They’ll help increase your industry’s knowledge, and your readers will appreciate it.
• Do you have case studies, white papers or reviews you can share? Do it!
• Holiday coming up? Incorporate your blog’s focus into a post with a seasonal angle.
• Instead of posting every time you want to share a link, try using Twitter, tumblr, or del.icio.us to create a link log.
• One of the most revolutionary things about blogging is that it allows readers to participate in the news dialog. Before writing about the news or another blog post, check to make sure you are adding insight or evolving the conversation. It also doesn’t hurt if you are adding your own personal style to the news (for example, instead of covering the Final Four, what about covering how brackets have moved into the social media space, or the way brands are using these brackets to market to consumers).

Blogging is a great tool to share your unique point of view with the world. With so many people writing, you can’t always have original content. You can, however, always have your own style. Be genuine and you’ll always be able to add to the discussion.

What are some tips you can offer other bloggers on how to fight the noise in the echo chamber? Or is it even a problem? Let us know in the comments!

:: :: :: :: ::

Don’t miss a post: Add socialTNT to your RSS reader [what’s that?]. Better yet: socialTNT delivered to your InBox!

[The above photo, “Megaphone” by Indigo Goat on flickr, is used under Creative Commons]

Related posts:

1. “Stop Talking to Yourself: Tips to Better Corporate Blogging”
2. “MacBook Error: Six Tips To Apple On Social Media Marketing”
3. “20+ Ways to Fold Your Laundry Online: Social Media Tips for Packaged Goods Companies”

Hey Guys:

As many of you know, I’ve been struggling with the flu for almost two weeks now. Thank you all for your warm Tweets and emails.

Initially I thought it was tonsillitis, but it has progressed into something more. When not at work, I’m sleeping. It’s been rough trying to maintain my client workload and publish the blog. Unfortunately, I’ve also had to cancel interviews with some great folks.

Please bear with me as I regain my health. I hope to return next week to the timely commentary and insightful profiles all of you have come to expect from socialTNT.

We’ve got some exciting things in the works this quarter, including a bit of a face lift and more audio and video programming. We also are working on some distribution deals across a variety of media so that you can get socialTNT however you want it.

If you haven’t already, please add our RSS feed to your reader.  Better yet, subscribe to socialTNT by email!

Best,

Chris

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1. “PROGRAMMING NOTE: 3Q’s in 3Min Delayed”

Thanksgiving: Four days of feasting, family and football. More than likely you’ll be eating leftover turkey all this week. Just like your grandma, I’ve pre-packaged all the juicy social media news from the holiday weekend and put it into bite size bits. In case you missed it:

Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang Outlines the four qualities of a “community manager”

• A Community Advocate
• Brand Evangelist
• Saavy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
• Gathers Future Input for Product and Services

It’s great that this position is becoming more formalized. It’s already creating some discussion.

Dan Ackerman Greenberg gives advice on how to create a viral video and then tries to save a sinking ship in a follow-up post

Heavily weighted on the commercial angle, this piece seems to promote Dan’s viral marketing firm. Nothing in it is very surprising; it’s just shocking to see it written out and in use.

He gives some good advice on how to optimize the thumbnail and titles plus other basic viral strategy (send to all your friends, post in MySpace comments, etc.). Ultimately, the whole post turns south when he mentions these practices:

“Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.

“Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.”

“A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section – especially if the comments are related to a brand/startup.

“Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”

Facebook ruins everyone‘s holiday shopping; Creates privacy issues

A lot of people are talking about this one. I have a lot to say about this. Working on a post. Until then, I’ve joined the MoveOn group on Facebook.

Any comments on any of these stories? They each deserve a full post. I’ve been sick since mid-weekend and haven’t had a chance to write what I’d like, or even catch-up on reading. A full post tomorrow. On Thursday, John Markoff of the New York Times will join us for part one of two special conversations in the “3Q’s in 3 Min” series.

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For some reason, WordPress has taken down my post from yesterday, “It’s a Conversation, Stupid! Part 3 The Approach.” I don’t have a copy of it and it was a LOOOONG post on the 6 elements of launching a social media campaign. Their support hours don’t start until 9AM PT. The link to the post remains active, but it takes you to a draft version that is incomplete.

UPDATE: After being in a semi-state of shock all morning, I received an email from Todd Defren with a cached version of yesterday’s post. The post should now be up in its entirety. Todd, you F-ing ROCK!!!

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