Twitter Trends by geographic location

For fans of twitter that like to look at Twitter's trending topics (favorite tweeter topics), a new mash-up from http://trendsmap.com drills down and shows you the trending topics based on geographic location. Kind of cool if you just want to see what Utah tweeters are doing.

Another way to follow social media trends

I came across the Smartbrief service the other day. They have a social media beat which is nice to follow (follow via rss, twitter, or e-mail). We thought you might find it helpful: http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/.

What Peer Schools Are Doing

Check out http://ow.ly/klrb. This is a nice blog post on what other schools are doing with social media.

3000 Fans in 30 Days

We follow the allfacebook.com blog religiously around here. Allfacebook recently began a "How to get 3,000 fans in 30 days" program. The program is only three days in, but so far we've been pleased with the approach. We thought we would pass the link along.

Getting more Facebook fans with a simple text message

We all want more Facebook fans, but what is the best way to go about recruiting fans? Not many people know about the following Facebook feature: people can become fans to your page by simply texting "fan YourPageNameHere" to FBOOK (32665). Add a sign to your lobby, or run a free ad on your UBN screens with this information. Fans no longer need to be in front of a computer to become a fan.

Facebook Stream CTR and ETR

Facebook has been tooling around with its “insights” feature during the past week (FB Web analytics). The changes appear to have affected page adminstrators’ ability to zoom in on analytic timelines. While poking around insights today, I found a reference to a future statistic entitled Stream CTR / ETR. This addition seems to be a move to align insights with traditional metrics found in online advertising. Below is the excerpt from FB’s Web site.

Stream CTR / ETR: This graph is a measure of the Click Through Rate and Engagement Rate for your content appearing in the Facbeook News Feed. If a user clicks on one of your posts, that will be counted as Stream CTR. If a user likes or comments on one of your posts, that will be counted in the Stream ETR. Please note that the Stream data is based on a sample and therefore is an estimate of your stream CTR and ETR. (coming soon)

Facebook Favorite Pages Error

You may have noticed that the "see all favorite pages" link on the U's Facebook page (facebook.utah.edu) delivers the following error: "Warning: This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users." This issue has been going on for several days and is not limited to just the U's Facebook page. The error appears to affect all Facebook pages and is the result of a malfunctioning server. For more information, visit the following thread.

Youtube Channels 2 Beta

YouTube recently launched Channels 2.0 which allows YouTube channel managers more flexibility and new design options when customizing their homepages. Check out this blog post from June 22 that explains the upgrade.

University Marketing & Communications has recently upgraded it's channel to the new 2.0 template and is in the process of re-customizing its page (youtube.utah.edu) to work with the template. If you manage your own channel, we currently have branded YouTube templates on our Web site. While these can still be used, we will be be updating them to 2.0 as well.

Get a banner on the U's homepage.

Many academic units want to know how to get a banner on the U's homepage. UMC, in conjunction with the U's Office of Information Technology, is launching a new technology that will allow homepage banners to be targeted by geographic region (zip codes, states, countries, etc.). This will allow UMC greater flexibility in selecting banners and yield higher click-through rates. If you have something that you would like featured on the U's homepage that meets existing criteria and is relevant to a specific geographic region, please let us know. You can see a demo of how the new homepage will function here.