I’ve been using various tools as part of my listening strategy on Twitter for a long time now. Few tools have impressed me as much as inboxQ.
Gahlord Dewald clued me in on this one. He knows how much I desire to listen and we have shared a common listening strategy for years. We try to listen to help. Gahlord likes to look for “the special hashtag people use when looking to be helped.” It’s called a question mark. And it’s a powerful hashtag indeed.
The folks at inboxQ understand this: “We started InboxQ because we realized that there were lots of questions being asked by people on Twitter but most weren’t receiving very useful answers. In fact, most questions go completely unanswered on Twitter.” And that’s a fact.
What inboxQ does is find that special hashtag for you. Pop in a few keywords and inboxQ begins scouring twitter, looking for people you can assist. Your first step is to create what they call “campaigns.”
A campaign is simply a category of keywords or hashtags used to delineate possible questions to be answered. You can create as many campaigns as you wish. The campaign opened for view above is called “wordpress.” And I’ve been using the inboxQ Chrome extension to answer questions using the Zeek Interactive account on Twitter for a few days now.
It has been uncovering 20-30 questions each day.
You can answer the questions right in the extension’s window, without having to fire up Twitter or any of their third party apps, as you can see above. Of course, you can also see that I could be a bit more diligent about opening up the extension. Questions, after all, are best answered when someone is around to listen. Though, my results have been pretty good so far, even without constant attention.
Blog Post Fodder
Another thing the questions are good for is blog post ideas. I’m using the “TODO” tab to save questions I feel require more than 140 characters. Like these:
After a few days, the results have been very positive. I’ve been able to answer a few questions and create some good dialogue around WordPress, conversations we want to take part in. I’m not answering the question with any other desire than to help. But sometimes the questions open up an opportunity to talk about what we do as well. Witness this exchange:
I didn’t know James Hicks before I saw his question. And I know I would never have seen his question before inboxQ. I have no idea where it will lead, but I already consider the minute (total) I spent on it valuable. I hope James does as well.
What’s missing from inboxQ?
It does what it says it does really well, so there are only two things I’d really like to see added. First, the ability to add multiple accounts. I’d like to use the tool for other Twitter accounts I monitor, but it only allows for one account to be connected at a time right now. I can’t imagine this isn’t part of their future development strategy. Second, I’d like them to charge for it. I’m tired of seeing services like this drop off the map because they don’t have a way of making money. I’d pay for this one.
What kind of “listening to help” campaigns would you create?
But I don’t like their social sharing interface. Truth be told, I don’t like the social sharing interface for most apps. They too often force their thinly veiled sales pitches into the messages, either by brute force, not giving users the option to edit, or by hoping we’ll be too lazy to delete their suggested messages.
I am writing this post using Google Chrome (beta 4.0.249.30) for the Mac. I have only spent 10 minutes with Google’s new browser, but so far I am impressed. The UI is clean and simple. As a recent Android convert, I appreciate the minimalistic design approach across all the entire Google product line.
Gist Nails The Gist Of A Simple Training Game
We love games here at Zeek Interactive. We play them. We make them.
In 2003, we attempted to turn our game creation experience into a training solution for corporations. We created Motus Learning Systems with a couple of other partners to give it a focus. Motus built several demo games for different companies, and we even created a kids game to teach mousing skills. The initial illustrations for that kids game are shown above. And although this proved to be a short-lived venture for many reasons, it didn’t alter our belief that games are simply the best way to learn things that require repetition to master.
This past week, Gist launched their own training game. And I really like it.
Stated very clearly on the front page of their site, “Gist helps you build stronger relationships by connecting the inbox to the web to provide business-critical information about the people and companies that matter most.” Others, like Dustin Luther, have written about how Gist is helping them manage the many online relationships they’ve fostered. I like it too, but I really like their newest feature, a game called, “Learn That Name.” And it does exactly what the name implies… it helps you learn the names and companies of the people you follow on social networks.
It’s a simple game, as most good training games are. You’re presented with a person’s avatar and you get points for guessing their name correctly. The faster you guess, the more points you get. Get it wrong and you lose 50 points. Each round is five people. For my taste, it’s just the right number. In my first round I achieved the “Super Socialite” level, though I was lucky to get five people I know pretty well. The second round labeled me a “Casual Networker.” I think the game could do a better job of sensing the sex of a contact. If I didn’t know that was Geoff Livingston, it would be a lot harder to figure out if all four names were male oriented.
The game strips off choices as the time clicks by and the points drop. So, if you don’t know who someone is, it helps you. If you don’t get the name right, you don’t get the option of the bonus question, which is “Where does <first name> work?” I wasn’t sure who this next guy was, so the game gave me some help.
I haven’t used Gist much since I loaded it, but I’ll be using it more now. I think they did a great job with the game. I can see lots of potential for categorizing contacts based on upcoming events, recent additions, high school classmates, etc. In fact, I’d download this app JUST to play this game. After just a few rounds, I’ve already become more familiar with some folks I’ve been trying to get to know over the past year. And I was surprised by some of the faces I recognized and how hard it was to place their name.
Kudos to Gist. Well done.
Tags: adout, fun, Games, gist, learning, motus, Social Media, training
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Games, Site Reviews | 12 Comments »