9 Surprising Things You Can Do With Twitter

Twitter is to social media what cheese is to a great sandwich – pretty much essential for great flavor, but often taken for granted.

While many use it as a newsfeed, a trend barometer or a way to keep in touch there are so many other things you can do on Twitter … some of them unexpected. I present…

9 Surprising Things You Can Do With Twitter

Surprise!

1. Book a hotel stay: Loews Hotels and Resorts now allows travelers to book rooms at 16 of its 19 properties via Twitter. Interested travelers tweet to @Loews_Hotels with the hashtag #BookLoews to express interest in a room. Then a Loews travel planner joins the Twitter conversation. The same Twitter account answers traveler’ questions and occasionally offers special deals. For more see Loews Hotels & Resorts Goes Social.

2. Gift a cup of coffee: Starbucks has a Tweet-a-Coffee program that can send a $5 Starbucks eCard to Twitter friends and followers. To do this users connect their Twitter account with Starbucks. They send a tweet that starts with "@TweetaCoffee to @recipientname because…." The @TweetaCoffee account then sends a tweet on the user’s behalf to the recipient, with a message. A few seconds later, a follow-up tweet from the official account will be sent with both parties mentioned in it, providing the recipient with a link to claim the coffee. For more, see Tweet-a-coffee sign-up page.

3. Buy, sell or fundraise: Chirpify is one app that allows users to buy and sell things or raise donations via Twitter. Both buyers and sellers need Chirpify and PayPal accounts. The system works by having buyers use certain keywords, the Twitter handle of the recipient, the amount being paid or sent and the reason for the transaction in a tweet to Chirpify. That platform then sends a confirmation tweet and a follow-up email. According to Buy And Sell On Twitter With Chirpify the service can be used for such diverse things paying bills to sending a friend a beer.

4. Get recipes: Gourmet recipes written in 140 characters or less? Twitter followers know it can be done because @Cookbook, by Maureen Evans (@Maureen) posts highly abbreviated recipes for dishes that range from omelets to souffle to tiramisu. Just be sure you understand all of the measurement abbreviations!

5. Water your plants: When your houseplants need watering a company called Botanicalls has a kit for a device that allows a plant (that’s right, the plant) to tweet its needs to you. With a Botanicalls Kit, an electronic sensor, ethernet connection and a bit of patience, you can set up an electronic sensor for your plants; it will automatically send out a Twitter message when a plant needs to be watered. Users even get a thank you note when they complete the task.

Tom Coates' house tweets to him and a 1,000+ followers

6. Have your home talk to you: Yes, appliances and household items that tweet at you are not new (see this 2009 Wired piece: Toaster, Toilet Lead Appliance Invasion of Twitter), but an entire house telling you via Twitter what is going on at home takes it to a new level. Such is the case with Tom Coates in San Francisco. According to a New York Times story (Home Tweet Home) the home has its own Twitter account called @houseofcoates where it shares tweets about unexpected movements inside the house and the owner’s coming and goings.

7. Manage your tasks: Remember the Milk for Twitter is a reminder app that functions across multiple digital platforms, from smartphones to tablets to Twitter. Send instructions to the app via a Twitter direct message/DM (after following the app's Twitter account, @rtm), and Remember the Milk will add the task to your account. You can also change your preferences and view specific to-do tasks using Direct Message commands.

8. Pray: Practice the centuries-old Jewish tradition of placing prayers in the Western Wall (a k a the Kotel) in Jerusalem via Twitter. Alon Nir of Tweet Your Prayers (@TheKotel) delivers 140-character prayers to the Western Wall - considered one of the most sacred religious sites in Judaism. Since 2009, Nir has been printing prayers that he received via Direct Message on Twitter and sticking them into the Western Wall on behalf of those who couldn't travel to Israel.

9. Share files: Yes, file-sharing is no terribly new on Twitter, but large numbers of users apparently still don’t know that it’s possible on Twitter. Twileshare allows users to upload files and share them with followers, all in one tweet. The files are hosted on Twileshare’s servers users are able to share a variety of file formats such as PNG, GIF, JPG, DOC and PDF files. Also on Twileshare you’re able to see the numbers of views your files get.

What other surprise uses do you know of for Twitter?

Related posts:
Twitter 101-1: Twitter – You Hardly Know Her
Twitter 101-2: Getting more from Twitter
Twitter 101-3: Getting even more from Twitter
11 Reasons I Won’t Follow You on Twitter

Have a social media wish list? This could help ...

What if there was a way to make a wish for a new feature in your favorite social network?

What if your wish is for a whole new social network to fill a gap in your life?

What if there was a way to take the best features of several social networks to make your own custom network?

You’d likely need a social media fairy godmother to make this happen and while that may seem like a fantasy there is a way to spread the word on your social media wishes … The Social Media Wish Factory.

The Wish Factory is a panel that I and two others are proposing for the SXSW Interactive event in Austin next year.

The idea behind The Social Media Wish Factory is that it would be a place where the panelists would kick off a discussion about new ideas for social media, but very quickly they’d get the audience involved too. If anyone is looking for new ideas for apps or new ways to leverage existing social networks this would be a panel to attend.

The panel might try to answer such questions as ….

Why can’t I sort my Linkedin connections into two, three or four levels of trust based on how well I know them? For example, there is a big difference between someone I once met at a conference and someone I worked with for 20 years.

Why isn’t there a simple way to bring all my social networks together to pay tribute to someone? For example, what can I do if a person I admire passes away and I want to send a message of condolence on all my networks or someone I know does something outstanding and I want to acknowledge that across all my social networks?

What one improvement of a major social platform would make it 100, or 1,000, percent better? For example, why can’t I set alerts on some updates and not others on my favorite social networks?

This is a just a small sampling of what will, I hope, be hundreds of questions and suggestions that spring from this session  at SXSW.

The two people I invited to be panelists are smart, renaissance thinkers about social media and have great ideas about what is still needed in social. They are:

Aaron Strout is  a 20+-year marketing veteran who specializes in the convergence of mobile, social and digital marketing. Aaron is Managing Director at W2O Group where he helps customers with social and mobile strategies. In addition, Aaron is on the advisory board of the Social Media Club and is co-author (with Mike Schneider) of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies.

Deirdre Breakenridge is the CEO at Pure Performance Communications and a veteran in PR and marketing. She has counseled senior level executives at companies such as Hershey’s, JVC, Kraft and Marketwired and is the author of five books (her most recent being Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional). Deirdre blogs about PR 2.0 strategies and is the co-founder of #PRStudChat, a dynamic Twitter discussion scheduled monthly for PR students, educators and PR pros.

So, there you have it: A panel discussing everything that still needs to be done with and by social media. Would you help such a panel by voting for it? I hope so.

To help make your social media dreams come true please take two minutes to vote here for the The Social Media Wish Factory.

You can also use the comments area here to leave suggestions for the discussion…. Thank you!

A New Year: A New Online You

Look at all your online presences

The New Year is a great time to assess how you appear to the online world.

Are there unflattering comments about you on a blog post? Are you tagged in inappropriate images on Facebook? Are there things attached to your name online that give the wrong impression?

You exist online in so many places you’ve likely lost track of how the world sees you. So use the excitement of New Years to do an inventory of your online presences and your overall online image. Then get busy with your online makeover.

This is the first of a three-part series on how you can assess and improve your online self.

Today: Where you are now online and the basic clean up

Step 1: Search for yourself online: Things to remember …
   • Use quote marks around your name and the most-common variations of your name
   • In Google, make sure that the Personal/Global results button (upper right on the Google search window) is toggled to Global so you’re seeing the results that the rest of the world sees
   • Go through at least the first five pages of results – the first 10 to 12 would be better
   • Also look at other services such as 123People
   • Check all results that are unfamiliar/surprising and make a note of the results you’d like to change or delete

Step 2: Clean up the obvious:
For pages and accounts you control:
   • Make sure all of the "About" and "Bio" sections of all online accounts are accurate and devoid of typos
   • Edit and improve your Google profile, which is a public bio that comes up as one of the top search results for your name
   • Delete posts from your blog that don’t show you in the best light

For pages and accounts you don’t control:
   • (From Google) Contact the owner of the web page or the webmaster and work with them to get the problematic content updated or removed
   • (From Google) Work with the appropriate legal authorities to get the content removed from the web

Step 3: Overwhelming the negative: One do-it-yourself approach to getting rid of negative web content is to bury it with positive content. For example, by starting a blog and posting to it regularly.Other ideas:
   • Comment on other, highly rated, blogs
   • Ensure that content you control (your blog, for example) is correctly tagged and the text is search engine optimized
   • Seek endorsements and recommendations on Linkedin (and only display the most positive)
   • Help others on social networks in your area of professional expertise
   • Accept opportunities to be quoted in the media (and therefore on their websites)

These are just a few of the things you can do to improve your online reputation.

Next up: How to work with Google and the biggest social networks to clean up negative or other inappropriate content; to be followed by a guide to professional services that help clean up your online image.

What other steps would you recommend to clean up an online image?