It’s that time of year again and OfficeMax are at it again with the Elf Yourself campaign. This is the 4th year the campaign has been running, during the last three years the site has earned over 284 million visits. If you haven’t ever seen the site, the general point of it is that you get to add up to 5 faces (any pictures or your facebook profile pic) to elf figures, then choose from one of any of 5 sing and dance routines, then sit back and watch you and your friends dance around in elf costumes. Once you have finished you can embed the videos into your site, email, twitter, share to facebook, myspace or just download the clip to your computer. You can also buy officeMax products with your customised elf self on it such as mugs, calendars mouse mats etc etc. This year they launched the site in true 2009 fashion with a elf flash mob dance in Union Square, New York (click here to see that). To see me in elf singing action check out the video I made just for you below. Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Following on from the #ukhols Map, Vodafone UK has released another great little twitter tie in app, this time called Real-Time Top 40. Vodafone enlisted the help of Ben Marsh again (the man behind the #UKhols site) and they created a live top 40 chart of what people are listening to on Twitter, to promote the Vodafone Music Store.  Real-Time Top 40 is driven by people voting for music on Twitter, using the hashtag #RealTimeTop40 followed by the name of the artist and song they are listening to.

The site also includes some nice little digital media sharing and aggregations tools allowing you to share the site easily and see more of what Vodafone are up to online.

Check out http://www.realtimetop40.com/ to see it for yourself.

     Just found this great campaign to celebrate Virgin Atlantics 25 anniversary for people living in South Africa. The campaign launched on Virgin Atlantics anniversary (22nd of June) and is running for 25 days, ending on the16th July. All you have to do is answer 25 questions and if you answer them all correct you stand a chance to win the following:

• One pair of Economy Virgin Atlantic round-trip tickets to London Heathrow from either Johannesburg/Cape Town
• Two nights accommodation at a three star hotel in London including bed and breakfast.
• Two London Explorer passes

The campaign was developed by Cape Town digital agency Quirk, and utilises Twitter, Facebook and email marketing. All the answers for the questions are on the dedicated Twitter account, opt-in reminders can be sent to your email address each day, with the questions been answered and stored on a Facebook application. Great and easy use of social media tools. To enter the competition click here and follow Virgin Atlantic on Twitter here. The “Bearded” one (as pictured above with naked model in tow, why not) has always been a hero of mine and Virgin Atlantic is the only way I fly internationally. Needless to say, I’m entered & great work Quirk. (Below is my favourite Virgin Atlantic ad)

The Basics
Considering this is a service I have been using since 2007 I must start by saying I’m a little ashamed that I am only writing this now but I feel I must, as of recent a ton of friends and family have been hassling me for answers so here they are for future referrals.

Twitter was originally started by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in early 2006 as a sideline project for a internal short messing service and has grown into the world wide phenomenon we know today.

Twitter is a micro blogging platform that limits your messages to 140 characters or less. Start off by going to www.twitter.com and signing up. After this you will want to add some friends by clicking on the “Find people” tab at the top of your twitter home page, you can search contacts from your Gmail / Hotmail accounts etc or search for people by name. What you get out of Twitter will only be as useful and powerful as the network of people you build around it, so it may take a little while to build your network up but it can be extremely worth it in the end.

The way Twitter works is that you “Follow” people or companies you know or are interested in and then every time they write a message (a “Tweet”) you will get notified on your twitter home page. In turn people can follow you back.

There are two main ways of messaging people (“Tweeting”). The first is a public message (everyone can see it) all you do is type @ followed by the users name your directing your message at (e.g @daveduarte how’s Nomadic Marketing going?). The second is a “direct” message (only the recipient will see the message) to send a direct message the recipient needs to be “following” you and vice versa. To send a direct message you type “d” followed by the username your twittering (e.g. d @allankent lets play wii at the office later). You can also forward (“Retweet”) messages you have seen by typing “RT” before you copy the message.

 
Twitter Clients

That’s the basics, now as you can imagine if your following 100+ users you don’t really want to have to look at your Twitter home page in your browser all the time so best thing to do is download a free Twitter client, these work like a news ticker, updateing all the tweets you reciveve and putting them in one easy to read stream. The Two main ones are Twhirl and TweetDeck and both work with PC and MAC and simply allow you to receive tweets without interrupting your workflow too much. Both also intergrate 3rd party apps such as some of the ones listed below.  My recommendation would be Twhirl as its more compact and has similar capabilities (see pic above) but both work very well.

You can also Tweet from your phone (see the settings tab on your home page)

Other clients out there include: Digsby, Spaz, PocketTweets, Google Desktop and Twitterrific.

 
Useful Twitter apps 
Twitpic: This allows you to tweet a picture from your phone or computer etc and is built in to Twhirl and Tweetdeck.

Twitscoop / Twitter Search: Lets you see in real time what key words/topics people are tweeting about all over the world.

Twitterfone: lets you send messages to Twitter using voice.

Twinfluence: Lets you see how much influence your Twitter profile has.

Twitsaver: Gives you a free screensaver based on Twitpic (shows real-time pictures that are being uploaded to Twitter)

One last thing that Twitter can be great for is as a real time search tool i.e. rather than looking for information/jobs etc via Google you can find out directly from people in and around your twitter network.

At present there is no revenue model for Twitter and it has received some problems with downtime from traffic overloads but as its the hottest talk of the town expect changes to happen by the end of the year I would say (for better or worse).

You can follow me on Twitter here and if you have any questions just let me know.

While I’m on the topic of Twitter I thought I would share this other pretty cool Twitter client with you. TwitterFone was released last year in May in the USA and is now available to use in 18 different countries (unfortunately not South Africa yet). Basically it allows you to add Tweets by voice and even listen to your Twitter stream, reply to tweets and direct message people, all by using your phone. The voice to text software works great and its a fab tool to be able to use when your on the move or any other situation where you cant type. The way it works is you call a local number given to you by TwitterFone, speak your update and then hang up, its as simple as that, within 10 minutes your tweet will be online. If you want to listen to your Twitter feed all you need to do when you call up is press 1 on the keypad. Other numbers allow you to reply to Tweets and direct message people. Best part is there is no charge to use the service. All you need to do is receive an invite so head to their website and ask for one. If your not already following me on Twitter you can by clicking here.

Twhirl my personal twitter client of choice has just got even better. For me its always been the easiest one to use after reviewing a few others as its just so user friendly and doesn’t get in the way on my desktop, notifications are easily read and alerted without distracting me too much. A few months ago Twhirl got bought out by the fab Loic Le Meur who also founded Seesmic. Now they now have announced a great new upgrade to Twhirl. The basic additions are as follows:

• More URL shortening providers built in as well as tracking stats for your URL’s posted on Twhirl
• Ping.fm integration built in. Meaning with one click you can now update your status on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress amongst others all at the same time.
• The gathering under the “replies tab” of all tweets that include @yourusername, not just when it’s added at the start of a tweet (gathers all tweets mentioning your name)
• Saved Search, which basically saves all the twitter search results of anything you want to keep an eye on. E.G. your Brand, events, people etc. It also gives you a timeline of the results from when you were not online.
• Integration of one click video recording of new and reply Seesmic videos straight from Twhirl

To get this new version of Twhirl you have to go to Lioc Le Meur’s blog and sign up as its still a beta release for now. The sign up is painless and only takes a second.