Spread Jam With Widgets and Timelines

October 11th, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tools - (0 Comments)

Showing you popular for your timeline, lists, and searches on Strawberryj.am has been a very solo experience. We know you all like to be social, and thus far, we haven’t made your timeline a very social experience.

This is all going to change with two new features we have launched today.

1. Share Your Timeline

Anyone can view your Twitter timeline, so why shouldn’t anyone be able to view your popular timeline? Now you can share popular with anyone via your Twitter account, and not just popular for your Twitter timeline either. We also let you share what’s popular for your lists, searches, and tags.

I know, we’ve really outdone ourselves. So how do you do share your awesome timeline? It’s simple. Just click the share icon next to the “Links From” drop-box as shown below.

Now if you were paying attention to the screenshot, you’ll notice one other icon that allows you to make…

2. Widgets

We are really proud of this feature release, and hope that you will find it immensely helpful in helping others find popular content. Aimed at bloggers, our widget lets you show off what’s popular to you wherever HTML code is allowed. You can see it live on our blog via the sidebar, and check it out on the Buffer* blog as well.

*We love Buffer so much, you can actually Buffer tweets directly from the widget. How cool is that!?!

We are really excited to announce these features, and hope that you find them as useful and fun as we do. Make sure to shout out at us via our Facebook or Twitter account if you love and plan to use these features. We love showing our users off!

Four Free Services to Track Your Blog and App Stats in Real-Time

October 4th, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tools - (0 Comments)

Your Twitter account is real-time, your Facebook News Feed is flowing by fast, and yet your blog stats are still stuck in the stone age. Get your stats into the modern age quickly with these awesome and powerful real-time analytics services. After all, you need to know what that big rush of tweets for your post means for traffic right now, not 12 hours from now.

1. Clicky Analytics

By far my most favorite real-time analytics service, and what we use to power the stats behind this blog, is Clicky Analytics. Their free offering not only allows you to track your visitors in real-time, but they also do a wonderful job of matching basic features and data insights of their larger competitors such as Google Analytics. Just because you’ve gone real-time doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice your old ways.

If you upgrade to their Pro account, you will also get the added bonus of being able to use their unique Spy program, which shows each individual user on your site on a real-time map.

Bonus: You can also track tweets, and integrate with Bit.ly through Clicky account.

2. Woopra

Very familiar to Clicky Analytics, and also offers a unique view of your visitors much like Clicky’s spy. Woopra also offers a powerful desktop application that allows you to track your stats, as well as official iOS and Android apps. Each and every one of these applications are drop dead gorgeous.

On top of stats, they also offer live-chat for your visitors to enable support on your site, and also allow you to track Facebook Likes (very neat!).

3. MixPanel

Need the full package for a side project? MixPanel is where you should be cooking. Offering real-time stats, funnel tracking, and user history, there is no way you could ask for more. On top of that, MixPanel will also track iPhone, Android, and Javascript based apps!

With such a robust feature set, complimented by a beautiful and fast user interface, MixPanel is a great choice with awesome Pro plans to meet your needs.

4. Google Analytics

Welcome back to relevancy Google! Recently, the Google Analytics team announced that they were going real-time. This was HUGE news, since many blog owners install Google Analytics upon first making their blog. While not as feature rich as the services listed above, there is no questioning that Google Analytics is an easy option to adopt for the newcomer to analytics that would like basic real-time functionality.

Access to the new Google Analytics will be available for all new accounts, and current users over the next few weeks. If you need access RIGHT NOW (and who doesn’t), simply go to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/ to gain access.

Of course, there are many other Analytics services that provide great value at an immediate monthly cost. Popular ones include Chartbeat, Gosquared, and Reinvigorate. We encourage you to check out those options if you have some spare change and know exactly what you want. Otherwise, I strongly encourage testing the waters to find what fits your needs.

What real-time analytics tools do you use? Let us know in the comments below.

Five Great Tools to Socialize Your Blog

October 3rd, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tips and Tricks | Tools - (2 Comments)

If you’re a blogger, you know how important it is to have a strong social media presence, and solid social media ground to stand on to distribute your articles. Thankfully, making your social media presence known, and making your articles easy to distribute, is often times an easy task. With these tools, you will no doubt command and conquer your blogs social media presence and authority.

1. Let Your Authority and Influence Be Known

Klout is increasingly becoming the new standard in determining your social influence. Show off your authority and influence on your blog with Klout’s widget maker. By making people aware that you are socially influential, they are bound to find that your blog is influential as well.

2. Share Timely

If your users are willing to share your article, they surely want as many of their followers as possible to RT, Favorite, and read your article. To do this though, the article has to be available when everyone is most likely scanning through their timelines. Make sharing at the best times easy by adding a Buffer button to your articles.

3. Make Sharing Prominent and Beautiful

Running WordPress? Let me show you one of the most beautiful, and easiest ways, to make sharing articles easy.

ShareBar is a social sharing bar that supports nearly every service and button format that allows sharing. It also stays out of the way of your content by hovering to the side of your content. They also make it easy to add buttons that may not be natively supported, such as the Buffer button.

4. Add Twitter @AnyWhere

If you are a social media blogger, I have no doubt you’ve name dropped a Twitter handle or two. Make it easy for your visitors to follow these people that are obviously important enough for you to mention. Twitter @AnyWhere makes it easy for you to turn your blog into an extension of the Twitter environment. Once implemented on your blog, any person you mention from Twitter can immediately be followed without leaving your blog.

Simply follow this tutorial on how to add @AnyWhere to your blog, and you are ready to roll.

5. Use a Commenting Platform

The default commenting systems used on most blog platforms are absolutely wretched when it comes to being social media friendly. My favorite social media friendly commenting system to use? LiveFyre.

They have great support, integrate easily with most blogging platforms, and allow users to easily sign and share with their Facebook, Twitter, and Google profiles. You can also mention people directly within the comments, and manage your LiveFyre comments in a clean and easy to use interface.

Of course, there a million other ways to make your blog socially relevant. What tips, tools, and tricks do you use for your own blog? Let us know in the comments below!

How Do You Display Content Beautifully and Easily? Jux it.

September 22nd, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tools - (0 Comments)

Last nights guest on #ToolsChat was @juxdotcom. Jux is a new platform dedicated to showcasing beautiful content, whether it be images, articles, quotes or video.

What makes Jux unique in this space is its focus on giving the content the voice, rather than let the whole blog have the voice.

Each piece of content added to your Jux prominently commands a uniquely large space on your main Jux page. Once you click through to the content you want to see, Jux commands attention to the content by displaying it in full screen, with little to no distraction from other pieces of content.

What you click is literally all that you get.

A tweet with an image never looked so good.

This new take on displaying content is refreshing, and definitely cleans up the act of many blogs that are meant to showcase content. Jux truly knows how to display content in a way that is appealing for graphic heavy, and content loving junkies.

What’s most important is how easy it is to add content, and don’t worry, the experience is just as easy as it looks. Jux adds an array of options that are easy to use, and allow for surprisingly heavy customization to fit your needs. While the interface is a tad bit slow (I will chalk that up to growing pains), Jux is without a doubt a great and easy way to manage and display content.

While Jux has all the core features down, there are some features I would love to see be added in the near feature, the most prominent of which is stats. Basic stats such as the ones About.Me provides (as shown below) would be just fine, but something to let us know our time spent is leading to some sort of action would be nice. Also, discovering other Jux’s is a very confusing experience, and there is no easy way to “follow” a Jux.

Basic stats are cool too

All in all, Jux is a solid contender in the highly competitive content space, where you could consider the giant of content based blogging Tumblr a major competitor against Jux. Still, I am really liking what I am seeing so far, and plan on updating our own Jux account as time allows, so feel free to check us out.

Jux is doing some cool things, let’s support them in making content beautiful today by giving them a visit.

Sign up for Strawberryj.am today, and let us find you the most popular content in your Twitter timeline today!

Jux, Toolschat

Improve Your Hashtag Experience Near Instantaneously With These Tools

August 30th, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tools - (1 Comments)

Hashtags are a great to keep track of tweets, and contribute to a larger conversation. Last week, I missed out on one of my favorite hashtag events, #toolschat, and decided to find some tools that could help me keep up with, and look back on, these hashtag events. Below are tools listed that can help you do just that.

1. Strawberryj.am

If you missed out on a hashtag event, and don’t have the time to scan through possibly thousands of tweets, look no further than ourselves. We make it easy to add your favorite hashtags, and quickly keep up with what were the most popular and discussed items. Simply click on the hashtag button, and let our bee do the work for you.

P.S. Need an invite? Use the code “toolschat” to get in.

2. What The Trend

Ever been confused as to what that hashtag means? As have I. WhatTheTrend.com is available to help solve that problem by crowd sourcing definitions of popular hashtags.

3. Monitter

Sometimes a search is really all you need. Sure, Tweetdeck allows real-time search, but it also comes with distraction. Monitter is dedicated to doing just searches in a clean and easy to use format. You are also provided with basics, such as the ability to respond to a tweet you searched for, or RT’ing said tweet.

The key in Monitter is its simplicity, and it is my favorite way to track hashtag events in real-time.

4. TwapperKeeper

While it may not be for everybody, this is a great tool for conference managers, and historical buffs who feel that Twitter Search is lackluster at best. TwapperKeeper allows you to track and save any searches or hashtags for as long as you like. You can also search other archives, and even archive mentions.

Tip: For offline review of your archived tweets, add the RSS file provided to you from TwapperKeeper to your favorite reader.

What are your favorite tools to use to help manage all the hashtags out there? Let us know in the comments below!

Task Apps That Aren’t a Task To Keep Track Of

August 1st, 2011 | Posted by Holden Page in Tools - (0 Comments)

Keeping track of what you need to do can be a hassle. Especially when you are on the go, and use multiple devices throughout the day for work and play. Task managers are a great way to keep it all together, and here are a couple that will work across nearly every device you have.

1. Wunderlist

When it comes to free, you can’t ask for much better than this. Wunderlist is available as a native application on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android device.

As well as being available on nearly every device you could possibly own, Wunderlist will also sync your lists, tasks, and notes across all these devices. You can also add or be notified of tasks via email, and assign due dates to said tasks. Wunderlist does this all for free as well.

2. Tomorrow.do

We all would love to hold off our tasks till tomorrow, and in some ways, this product seems to encourage it with their cavalier attitude. Don’t that fool you though, Tomorrow.do is all about getting your ducks in a row, and they do it beautifully.

Available on your iPhone, iPad, and Android device, Tommorrow.do brings simple task management across all your devices, including the web. While not as feature rich as Wunderlist, keeping the focus on what needs to be done today, and what needs to be pushed off until tomorrow is a refreshing concept. Plus, little accents like the coffee stain on the right page never hurts the experience.

Keeping on task is a hard thing to do, I know that fact all too well. Hopefully these couple of apps can help you on the path to organization.

What do you use to keep your ducks in a row?