Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

Is spelling important any more?

SEO Scotland | Posted by Katie
Jul 27 2011

Growing up in the 70s / 80s and the constant words on my school reports were ‘bad spelling, poor concentration’…. luckily the introduction of spell checker solved one issue, the poor concentration I would like to think has improved with age!

So, what is my moan about today?  Well it’s about the lack of care people/businesses take to spelling these days.  I received a request today asking if we would be interested in linking to a blog – I am all for link building where appropriate but to be honest the subject of this blog probably wouldn’t have been appropriate for our website, however, the thing that put me off was that there were 6, yes I said 6, spelling mistakes within the first paragraph of the most recent blog post! (since writing this post I have contacted Skippy the blog writer and he has very graciously allowed me to link to his blog – I am sure the mistakes will be corrected by now though!)

I am aware that we all shorten words on Twitter, Facebook and other similar forms of quick communication – to see texts from my 60+ dad that don’t include any vowels is a joy in itself – but surely if you are creating web copy or blog posts then you have the freedom to revert back to normality and structure sentences properly and use correct spelling.  Or am I alone in this thinking?

Now before you trawl through our web copy or previous blog posts to find a glaring error, I am not for a minute saying we are perfect in any way, but I do use spell check and I do proof read things and I would suggest that the likelihood of finding 6 spelling mistakes within 2 sentences is minimal but I am, as ever, curious to hear people’s opinions on this because I would hate to think I have become old fashioned in my views!

Comments in the Queen’s English gladly received…… that’s i before e except after c, just in case you were wondering!

Popularity: 14% [?]

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People say ‘I don’t get Twitter’ – I don’t blame you!

Business News, Everything Else | Posted by Katie
Jul 11 2011

As far as we at ABS towers are concerned Twitter is a wonderful thing, yes it can be time consuming, frustrating, comical and down right ridiculous sometimes but, from a keeping up with what everyone’s doing point of view it is invaluable.  Oh and yes we have got business from it.  All good reasons in our eyes why being on Twitter is a must for our business.

However, the same can not be said about many people we meet.  Don’t get me wrong, many have embraced Twitter along with Facebook and actively get involved, but you know, after the last week’s worth of tweets from ‘some’ people we have been following, it really is no wonder people don’t get Twitter.

Scenario….. as most of you are aware we live in beautiful Scotland and for the past week or so have been living in a golfers paradise thanks to the golf up at Castle Stuart, which, let me be clear whilst it’s not a million miles away it most definitely is not on our immediate door step and as a neighbour showed us yesterday in order to be there for the golf he had to leave here at 6.30am on a Sunday morning!  However, if you had been watching our Twitter stream you would be excused from thinking we live and work next door to Castle Stuart and actually its not the golf that people have been here for it has been for the wonderful shopping, accommodation, lunches and dinners that they can have #castlestuart #golfopen #golfspecial !

Before I go off into rant mode, I personally don’t have an issue with hanging onto the marketing coat tales of a big event.  What I do have an issue with is blatant advertising made to look like it is a public service, somehow it just seems wrong to me.  In our eyes ramming sales messages down our twitter stream throat is a sure way to make us unfollow.  It also makes us more aware of why people don’t get Twitter.

So we’re asking please…. remember the old example : would you stand in a room full of people you don’t know and without any prompting start shouting out a sales message?  The answer hopefully is no!

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Is Facebook going to the dogs?

Business News, SEO Scotland | Posted by Katie
Jun 21 2011

There has been a lot in the news recently about whether Facebook is on the decline.  The main number being bandied about is that 100,000 users closed their accounts in May 2011 in the UK.  Well in my opinion, these numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Having read an article in This is London – and can I just say thanks to Robin Dalton for pointing me in the direction of this article – in my view there are a lot of people who would just love for Facebook to fail.  However, I dont think FB is going anywhere.  I agree it is going to have to change to keep up with some of the feedback they have been receiving recently, however, in the grand scheme of the FB world is 100,000 user profiles really going to make much difference?  As one person commented on the article, the actual number of users will never be a true figure will it?  Think of all the forgotten profiles, the duplicate profiles, the people ‘still’ using profiles instead of business pages.

Marc Hindley from Canary Dwarf (@canary_dwarf) tweeted recently that he can’t believe that Twitter doesn’t use a 6 month innactive user profile will be deleted policy – I think this is quite right, and in fact more businesses would have more realistic user profile figures if this policy was rolled out across the majority of social platforms.

Ultimately, we will all vote with our feet, or in the case of social media we will vote with our profile deletions… but to all of those people who scream and shout that FB is using their information, is putting in place face recognition software, is changing the way their profiles look, you must remember that you signed up to them and you probably didnt read all the small print – do any of us?

Popularity: 11% [?]

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Crianlarich Hotel – AA 3 star Scottish Hotel

Business News, Client News | Posted by Gavin
Apr 10 2010
3 star Scottish Hotel at Crianlarich

3 star Scottish Hotel at Crianlarich

One of our new clients, The Crianlarich Hotel have recently been awarded 3-stars by the AA.  Situated in Crialarich, ideally located near to Loch Lomond, The River Tay, Glencoe, Oban and the Western Isles, the hotel has also just  installed a new kitchen, totally transformed the reception and opened their new restaurant.  It is also rumored that the AA may return to inspect their food with a view to awarding them their first Rosette – our fingers are firmly crossed for them.

This great 36 room Scottish hotel, in a perfect situation is well worth a visit and we wish them all the best in gaining true recognition for all their hard work.

Join them online on: Twitter | Facebook
Read Guest Reviews on: Trip Advisor (97% of travellers recommend)

Popularity: 11% [?]

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How to get followers on Twitter – theory & practicality

Business News | Posted by Katie
Apr 05 2010

twitter birdThe heading of my post suggests that I am just about to give you a ‘how to’ guide – I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to say that I know how to get quality followers!  What I do know is that I have read some really good articles and blog posts and have also been subject to sales pitches from less than scrupulous companies telling me how, for the price of a small country they will get me a gazillion followers in 5 minutes.

So, whats the point of 1000′s of followers if they are following for the sake of it?  What we all want are followers who are interested in what we have to say, are keen to learn from our experiences or are just being nosy and want to keep a gossipy eye on what we are doing – I fall into that category I think!  Many of us have both a business and a personal Twitter account some of us link them both together but still the big question is how do I get more people to follow me?

So, this is the theory:

1.  Who is the most influential person/business you are following on Twitter who is in the same line of business as you and who you would consider a mentor in their field?

2.  Start following the people that are following your mentor.  Do this is blocks of 50 per day.

3.  After 3 days, anyone who has not followed back from your first 50, unfollow them.

4.  Repeat the process every day, unfollowing people if they havent followed you, and start following 50 more people. (A good tip here is to create private lists in order to keep track of when you initially followed them, so as not to repeat)

5.  Anyone who has followed you back, make sure you interact with them – not just an automated tweet saying thanks for the follow – actually go and look at their posts and find something that you can associate with.

OK, reality check – have any of us got the time to do this every day?  I know I haven’t!  So, in our business we have taken this theory and put it into practice but with a much longer time frame associated, but, I am pleased to say it is working and we are closer to doing more business with more people.  We are starting to build our followers up and I would like to think they are following us because they think we might have something interesting to say – of course they might stop following us next week because they are bored with us but then that is completely out of our control!

Are you a quality follower?  Well then you can follow Aviemore Business and we will speak soon.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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