Twitter lets you connect to your potential customers, but it’s up to you to engage them and generate interest in your brand. How do you get them talking? Hold a contest! People love winning things, even if the prize is just a retweet.

Binkd Promotion is a Twitter contest app that can help you get your brand’s message to go viral by creating unique contests to get people voting on, retweeting, mentioning and sharing your content.
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Twitter is a real-time social network, so it is a naturally good fit as an emergency communication tool. But just how are we actually using it to share information in times of trouble?

A study from North Carolina State University explores how people used Twitter during the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan, finding that Twitter doesn’t really change what we communicate but it certainly increases the speed at which we do it.
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Did you know that social media users who receive excellent service from their favourite brands go on to spend, on average, 21 percent more than non-social customers?

Conversely, 83 percent of socially savvy consumers have walked away from a purchase in the past year after having a negative support experience with brand, compared to just 49 percent of everybody else *.

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When you set up a new website it can be tempting to bolt on every single social sharing button in existence – after all, you want to maximise traffic and exposure, and what better way to do this than by letting your visitors share your content any and everywhere?

This sounds like a good idea, but it’s actually a mistake. Not only do dozens of share buttons risk making you look a little desperate, but by giving your visitors too many options you can actually trigger choice paralysis – with so many possibilities available to them the decision becomes overly-complicated and, frustrated, they often end up choosing none. By giving them less choice, you’re actually far more likely to get the outcome you desire.

Moreover, the different social networks are popular with different types of demographics, and not all of them will have a general interest in your business. So how do you know which share button is right for you?

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Have you ever seen racist tweets and thought to yourself, “Man, I wish someone would call them out for that!” Your prayers have been answered.

There’s a Twitter handle, @alittleracist, run by some anonymous man in the UK (according to the corresponding website). The account “calls out racism, xenophobia, and stereotyping on Twitter. Because, well, someone has to do it.” Amen to that!
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We’re excited to announce the launch of our new conference, Social Curation Summit! Join us in New York City on July 31 for the first ever full-day conference exploring the business of social content curation and visual communities. We’re offering a special early bird rate of only $199 when you register by Thursday, June 7.
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For some reason, high school and even college students around the world seem to think that they can post threatening messages on Twitter without consequence.

There are adults guilty of doing this as well no doubt, but just as dog attack stories always focus on pitbulls, teens seem to bear the brunt of these bad behavior reports. We would all do well to learn from these students’ mistakes.
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Cloud services are, first and foremost, an easy way to access your stuff from any device. But, for media professionals and die-hard Twitter users, there’s an added bonus: increased productivity.

“I no longer have to ask myself, ‘Which computer did I create that on?’ or ‘Where is that file?’ I can travel light when needed and access my information from any device,” said Internet marketing coach and author Laura Waage in mediabistro.com’s latest feature.

If you’re part of a team, collaboration on the cloud is becoming both routine and necessary. Shafqat Islam, CEO of NewsCred, enjoys the collaborative nature of Google’s cloud-based apps, with allow “two or three of us can work on the same document or spreadsheet at the same time, from different countries. Our typing and changes are reflected on each other’s screens in real time.”

To find out which cloud service is best for you, read 4 Reasons Journalists Should Use The Cloud.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

Twitter has suspended an account that has been vocal in its opposition to the Olympics.
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Over 32,000 tweets-per-minute were sent on Twitter this weekend, as Chelsea triumphed dramatically over Bayern Munich during the Champions League Final.
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