September2010 Archive

2010/10: National Days

2010 Sep 27   category: Latest News   author:  

Several nations have national days in October. Plan something special on the following dates for friends from these countries.
Oct 1, Independence Day in Nigeria
Oct 1, Independence Day in Tuvalu
Oct 1, National Day in China
Oct 1, National Day in Cyprus
Oct 3, Unity Day in Germany
Oct 3, National Day in Iraq
Oct 4, National Day in Lesotho
Oct 9, Independence Day in Uganda
Oct 10, Fiji Day in Fiji
Oct 10, Double Ten Day in Taiwan
Oct 12, National Day in Equatorial Guinea
Oct 12, National Day in Spain
Oct 23, Republic Day in Hungary
Oct 24, Independence Day in Zambia
Oct 25, Republic Day in Kazakhstan
Oct 26, National Day in Austria
Oct 27, Independence Day in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Oct 27, Independence Day in Turkmenistan
Oct 28, National Day in Czechia
Oct 29, Republic Day in Turkey

Managing Social Network Accounts with HootSuite

2010 Sep 18   category: Technology   author:  

If you’re an active user of social media in your marketing campaigns – and most small businesses are these days – then you’ll certainly want to check out what HootSuite has to offer.

HootSuite enables you to track and manage an unlimited number of social network accounts from one console. Networks that can be handled include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and WordPress (currently only the .com service). Just being able to view all these accounts from one place is a huge advantage but HootSuite allows you to do much more.

Probably the next feature that will appeal to users is the ability to send updates to more than one account at the same time. Perhaps you have several twitter accounts and would like the same update to go out to more than one of them – easy to do with HootSuite. Simply create the message in HootSuite, select the accounts you’d like to update and send.

Of course you’ll be wanting a url shortening capability as you compose your updates. HootSuite uses ow.ly url shortening, which includes two cool features. First, you can easily append parameters, such as Google Analytics tags or affiliate referral IDs, to the end of your urls before they are shortened. Different parameter sets can even be saved as presets for future use making their attachment far speedier. Second, any url shortened in this way can be tracked and the clickthrough stats viewed from your HootSuite dashboard.

Another powerful HootSuite feature that you might find useful is the ability to schedule your updates. Everything can be set up just as described above but instead of pressing ‘send’ you select a future time and date (months in advance if you like) and press ‘schedule’. At the appointed time your update will be sent just as if you’d done so manually. If for example you have a predefined calendar of events for which you wish to send out reminders you can prepare and schedule these ahead of time and eliminate the need to worry about when the next one is due.

Finally, you’ll most likely want to check out the automated rss based updates. Select the rss feed from which you wish to extract updates, the network accounts you want them to feed and the frequency with which you want this to happen and, hey presto, HootSuite will automatically generate those updates from that point on.

We strongly recommend a visit to the HootSuite website where you will find they offer a free, ad supported, version with a 5 social network limit which should accommodate most individual or small business needs. Simply sign up and get started. We think you’ll quickly be hooked once you start to see what HootSuite can do.

2010/09: National Days

2010 Sep 15   category: Latest News   author:  

Many nations have national days in September. Plan something special on the following dates for friends from these countries.
Sep 1, Independence Day in Uzbekistan
Sep 1, National Day in Libya
Sep 1, Constitution Day in Slovakia
Sep 2, National Day in Vietnam
Sep 6, Independence Day in Swaziland
Sep 7, Independence Day in Brazil
Sep 8, National Day in Macedonia
Sep 8, National Day in North Korea
Sep 8, Our Lady of Meritxell Day in Andorra
Sep 9, Independence Day in Tajikistan
Sep 12, National Day in Cape Verde
Sep 15, National Day in Costa Rica
Sep 15, National Day in El Salvador
Sep 15, National Day in Guatemala
Sep 15, National Day in Honduras
Sep 15, National Day in Nicaragua
Sep 16, Grito de Dolores in Mexico
Sep 16, National Day in Papua New Guinea
Sep 18, National Day in Chile
Sep 19, National Day in Saint Kitts and Nevis
Sep 21, Independence Day in Malta
Sep 21, National Day in Belize
Sep 22, National Day in Mali
Sep 23, National Day in Saudi Arabia
Sep 24, National Day in Guinea-Bissau
Sep 30, National Day in Botswana