President Barack Obama gave his first State of The Union Address to the nation on Wednesday night. During the live broadcast and for a long while after, the #SOTU (State of The Union) hashtag and several other related phrases were trending topics on Twitter. The President has his own Twitter feed @BarackObama that had live updates with direct quotes from his address to the nation and to Congress.
During the State of The Union Address, I kept an eye on Twitter through my phone. There were several quotes I wanted to Tweet, but I had trouble typing them and paying attention to what he was saying. I thought I had found a solution to the problem: the @BarackObama Twitter feed. However, to my dismay, I was unable to RT (retweet) his posts because of the 140 character limit. I’m not a fan of the new RT features on Twitter and I’m not alone. Very few people that I follow employ the new retweet feature. The new retweet feature is confusing to those seasoned Twitter users who are used to the original retweet, “RT @mikehalvorsen blah.” In addition to this, the new RT feature does not allow additional comments, such as “I love USA RT @BarackObama I never said change would be easy…”
At the end of his address, I checked out the Twitter feed on my desktop and to my shock, almost all of the Tweets made from his account during the address were near the 140 character limit. Out of 12 Tweets posted during the State of The Union Address, only two were RT-able using the old school retweet method.
For anyone using Twitter as a way to spread their brand or message, you must cover all bases. If you want your message to be spread around the Twittersphere, you must fully understand its limitations 140 characters at a time.
For those in charge of handling Barack Obama’s Twitter account and that of The White House, give us a call at 1-800-310-0317 for free Social Media consulting. Make sure you ask for me.
Read more Online Visibility, Social Media Marketing, Twitter
If you’re a local Twitter user and want to do some networking with your fellow Northeast Ohio tweeple, then come to the next NEO tweetup being held at Maize Valley Winery on October 29th.
Not only will you enjoy great networking with NEO tweeters, you’ll also have the opportunity to check out all that Maize Valley has to offer, including wine tasting, wagon rides, corn maze, etc.
Follow@NEOtweetups for more details & to RSVP.
Read more Social Media Marketing, Twitter
The Karcher Group is sponsoring a social lounge/tweetup at the upcoming Networking in the Middle event being held at the Akron Canton Aiport on September 23rd.
There will be free food & drinks, not to mention an awesome networking opportunity. You can RSVP with Cleveland Plus here: www.clevelandplus.com/nitmvii and let us know you’re coming on Facebook, too.
Follow @NEOtweetups for the latest NEO tweetup information!
Read more Social Media Marketing, Twitter
Come out to The Karcher Group office on Wednesday, July 1st to meet local tweeters from the Canton/Akron area. Come and spend some time with your tweeps and enjoy food & drinks – TKG is picking up the tab!
Follow @NEOtweetups on Twitter for the latest info.
Read more Social Media Marketing, Twitter
Biz Stone posted on the Twitter blog that Twitter is going to be rolling out Verified Account Beta, a feature that will help Twitter identify which accounts and real and authentic. There have been cases on Twitter where people have registered famous people or actors names to get a following.
Here is how to identify verified accounts from the Twitter Verified Account page:
The ‘Verified Account’ badge will appear in the top-right portion of a user’s profile page just above the name, location and bio—as shown in the screenshot above.
It will always have a badge followed by the words ‘Verified Account’
If the verified account badge appears anywhere else on a user’s profile page (e.g. in the avatar or the background) it is not a verified account
The verified account badge will also appear next to usernames in the Find People section
The verified account badge will have the same color as shown above even if users customize the background of their profile page or change the color in the sidebar
There are already for examples of Verified Accounts on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see how far Twitter takes this beta program in the upcoming weeks and if it will really help.
Read more Twitter
