twitter – big in New Zealand

A new survey shows the percentage of Kiwis using Twitter apparently outstrips the percentage of Americans doing so.

The survey of 1000 New Zealanders aged between 15 and 65 also shows 58 percent use Facebook, 18 percent use Bebo, 7 percent use MySpace and 3 percent use LinkedIn. And 88 percent said blogs, streaming video, podcasting and social platforms were here to stay.

Find out more here.

yes, we’ve been a bit slack!

No posts here for the past couple of weeks. Not good enough, I know! My energy has pretty much all been absorbed by work, but we have been putting some interesting posts up on our other blog – the Facttactic Journal if you want to read a bit about PR (Public Relations).

Normal service will resume here shortly … we hope … fingers crossed!

twitter – don’t believe the hype but do secure your name

Should your business embrace Twitter and start tweeting? Not always!

Yes, it can have big upsides, but to be effective, you’ll need to set clear guidelines for how and why you’re using it. If you’re a small business and don’t have the time or resources for it, give it a miss, no big deal. Find out why here.

But having said that even if you do not intend to use Twitter, you should definitely register Twitter accounts for your brands to stop other people taking your names and using them for their own purposes. This is becoming a major problem on the Twitter service because anyone can register any name on Twitter.  Registering names on Twitter is free and easy to do — so get in quick and grab your important brand names before some one else does.

hello, hello – internet phoning for small business

Two new, free phone services announced recently hold heaps of promise (and cost-savings) for small businesses.

Yellow (the Yellow Pages people) has announced free Skype calls to any of its listed businesses.

(If you haven’t tried Skype, it is really dead simple to use and includes inbuilt video calling. Download the free Skype software and then all you need is a web cam and a mic, plus headphones if you don’t want anyone else to hear the person you are talking to. Visit Skype here.)

And, in the U.S (though not yet in N.Z), Google has announced a service that offers dirt cheap calls but best of all its sweet range of fancy high-tech features — such as a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones; a central voicemail inbox that accessible on the web; text transcriptions of voice messages; and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

A video explaining Google Voice is here:

twitter – how to use it in business

Continuing with our Twitter theme, here’s a great piece from “internet psychologist” Graham Jones on how to use Twitter positively as a business tool, including for:

• Staff in/out status
• News headlines
• Emergency information
• New staff appointments
• Event listings
• Price list announcements
• Stock availability
• Share price index
• Public relations

twitter – what is it good for

Yesterday, we pointed you towards an article about a company using Twitter to improve customer relations.  Here’s another good one that explains the big picture behind the Twitter service.

twitter in the real world

Twitter – the microblog service where each post can only be a max of 140 characters – is getting hugely popular, even though many people are still working out just how to benefit from it. This article shows some real world Twitter uses that are getting good results for the U.S company involved.

free web conferencing product

Need to talk to customers or clients overseas or around the country – here’s a free web conferencing tool (for up to 20 people) that lets you share voice, video, webpages, presentations and whiteboards, live over the internet. It’s called Dimdim, but it looks anything but.

mind map plots digital technology use in nz

Find out how New Zealanders are using digital technology to help create not only a high-value economy, but also health, environmental and cultural services. (Click on a purple circle to start the mind map.)

Mind map of NZ digital strategy

nz’s fastest broadband

If broadband is critical to your e-business, check out who provides New Zealand’s fastest broadband, according to a new study from broadband benchmarker Epitiro Technologies.

Epitiro says Orcon tops their nationwide broadband speed survey and Telstraclear did best of the big three. Small providers Inspire and Snap also did very well but to very small customer bases.