Using Twitter API and Google Spreadsheets to know your audience

One of this week's fun tasks from my MA Social Media course was to fool around a little with Twitter API and Google Spreadsheets, and the result was awesome. I started off playing with my own twitter account and then it evolved to a very useful thing: now I have a list of all @igersbirmingham followers, their location, their twitter bio and other interesting data about them.

But, why is this useful to me? Well, I'm putting together an Instagram Photomarathon in Birmingham, and those guys are my target! Cool, isn't it? I have details about my target and I can use these details to communicate with them in a much more appealing way!

Here's how I got all this data:

- You must have a Google account and be signed in to it.
- Then, sign in to a Twitter Developer account at https://dev.twitter.com/

- Copy this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqGkLMU9sHmLdFl6bUh0WXJKUXRKWGt5bGxtMHlCZkE#gid=25 (Open it, go to File - Make a copy)

- In your Twitter Developer account go to My applications - Create a new application

- Fill the form, in the Callback URL bit you must copy this adress: https://spreadsheets.google.com/macros

- In the spreadsheet you created, there's a guide to what you should do next, which I'll copy here:

1. In this spreadsheet from the Twitter drop-down menu (next to Help) select 'Configure'. You may need to run this twice, the first time to authorise the script and follow the instructions for obtaining a Customer Key and Secret from Twitter. If there is no Twitter menu option click on the "Load Twitter menu" button 
2. Select Tools > Scripts > Script Editor ... and from the Script Editor window select Run > aTest. This should bring up an authorization message box, click on Authorize. 
3. In the Twitter Authorization window enter your login details if required and select 'Allow'
4. Close the Script Editor window and a dialog box in the main spreadsheet should indicate if you have successfully connected to Twitter 
5. If all is okay you can now select Twitter > Get Followers and Twitter > Get Friends (when these run your sheet may go blank, if so refresh your browser window)

- And there you go, now you can export your friends and followers and other people's friends and followers and make all these data useful! Your spreadsheet will be available anytime you need at your Google Drive, and you can create as many spreadsheets as you want to different clients and purposes.

So, that's it for today, hope this guide can help you! Please, give me some feedback commenting here, on Twitter or on Facebook! 

*This post was based on a task and on this blog post.

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#instaBrum: My enterprise project dissected in a blog post and a 2 min pitch

As I have told here before, I'm organizing an Instagram Photomarathon in Birmingham, and now is time to show where I have managed to get until this point of my journey.

So, the Instagram Photomarathon, which I'll call #instaBrum, is an event in which participants are given themes to photograph within certain time and post to Instagram. The target are photographers and photography enthusiasts.

I noticed, through research and talking to people, that photography networking events don't happen very often in Birmingham, so there's a market for this kind of project. I also though of having it connected with Social Media because networking today is strongly based on those channels, since they have become a powerful tool to get people to know your work and contact you easily. That said, networking is the main goal of the event, but besides that, having fun is also important!

The fact that pictures of Birmingham will be posted to Instagram, a Social Network with 100 million monthly active users across the globe, is also interesting to the image of the city, as it may attract visitors.

In this 2 minute pitch I answer the main questions about my project: what it is, why I decided to do it, who's the target, what are the benefits and how will I do it.

*Here's the automated Twitter account I mentioned on the video, in case you're curious.

Having been told by our teacher to watch videos like this one, from NESTA, and this one, with an idea from Steven Johnson, we have heard a lot of times that it is important to be passionate, but it is also important to listen to others and value their thoughts. And through the process of developing my idea and maturing it, I have learned that listening to people's opinion is essential. It can make a lot of things clearer, because different people see through different points of view.

Pitching is also a tricky thing, you have to say all that's important in a very limited time, and that's only possible through a lot of practice. Taking suggestions and criticism and making the most of them is crucial when it comes to this stage of the project.

Now, my next steps are to improve my business plan, decide on a date for the event and start selling my sponsorship packages. The date will probably be during the first or second week of june. As for the sponsorship packages, I'll work a little more on what I can offer and how much I can get for that, and start selling them next week.

I'm really fond of listening to opinions, suggestions and criticism, so please, let me know what you think of my idea! Here's a few questions you could answer to help me: Would you participate in such event? What do you think I can do to improve it? Is there anything I should change? Who do you think would be interested in sponsoring it? You can see my latest business model canvas here and the business plan sketch here.

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Mix, match and tweet: feeds are fun!

So this week we had to create an automated Twitter account using combined feeds and other sources. As my enterprise idea is an Instagram Photomarathon, I figured I should create a Twitter account that would be somehow useful for that.

I mixed Instagram tags and a combined feed of Birmingham's events to create the InstaBrum Twitter. The "robot twitter" Tweets every Instagram picture with the tags #birmingham, #bham and #igersbirmingham, and also tweets updates about events in the city.

To get that to work I used FeedBurner, IFTTT and RSSMix. Here's a 10 steps list of what I did:

• Created an e-mail account on GMail to my new Twitter account

• Set up new Twitter account

• Set up IFTTT account

• Created IFTTT recipes to tweet all Instagram photos with the tags #birmingham #bham #igersbirmingham

• Set up FeedBurner account (it's actually a Google service, so you don't even need to create a new account if you have a Google account)

• Burnt a feed for a site that lists all events in Birmingham

• Burnt a feed for a site that lists free events in Birmingham

• Used MixRSS to mix both feeds

• Created IFTTT recipe to tweet every new post of the events and free events combined feed

• Voilá! InstaBrum is working fine, and the process of creating it wasn't painful at all!

Any doubt about any of the steps above? Just ask me here, on Twitter or on Facebook!

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The evolution of a Business Model Canvas

Since I've started putting my entrepreneurial idea in a business model canvas, about two weeks ago, it's been really nice to see how the project is starting to get clearer. The project is still an Instagram Photomarathon, but besides that, it's really easy to see it's evolution through this three different canvasses:

1.

2.

3.

As you can notice, on canvas 1 I already knew what I wanted to do, but had no focus yet. All ideas were to big, idealistic and spread all over the place. On canvas 2, target was already defined to students at a certain age, but everything else was still a bit confused. 

Canvas 3, on the other hand, was filled after meeting people and building a bit of a network in Birmingham. I realized I was targeting my event wrong and things were still too broad, so I decided to narrow down a lot of things: target, partners, activities, values, that's all changed.

And things will probably keep changing as the idea becomes clearer and more feasible. But that's a good thing, isn't it? Right now I'm waiting on Ms. Karen Strunks feedback on my project and hey, why don't you all comment and tell me what you think of it, what would be good, what can be different?

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Students Union fun guide to International Students

So, our task for Social Media as Practice this week was to devise a podcast series for an organization. Me and my classmate Mariana Pereira, from Portugal, decided to create a guide with fun and weird facts about studying in the UK for the BCU Students Union.

The idea is to make fun of situations we have to deal with daily, such as the weather, the food, the language and the cultural differences. The goal is to help international students feel more confident and comfortable being abroad by realizing these things get to all of us.

We planned the SU fun guide to International Students to be a weekly podcast, 2 to 5 minutes long, with informal and simple language, carried on as a nice chat between the two of us. As language and time are common issues for International Students, we figured that would be the best way to get the attention of our target audience.

The first episode was recorded straight into SoundCloud without any kind of editing, so that the podcast would sound as natural as possible. We've only used a MacBook Pro to record it, not any kind of voice recorder or special microphone.

On the next podcasts it's possible to go through a lot of subjects and after a while we could start using the audience's suggestions and stories to make it more fun and real. What would you like us to talk about?

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VinED!

Today, during SM as Practice class, Ms. Caroline Beavon introduced us to the wonders of Vine (in case you're wondering, no, she didn't get us drunk or anything like that). Do you know Vine? Well, it is the new Twitter Video app.

Basically, you can record videos up to 6 seconds just by taping your iPhone's (I think it works with Android and Windows phones too) screen. And you can start and stop the recording as many times as you want, meaning you edit your footage while doing it.

It may seem a bit confusing at first, but Vine has really caught me, and I must admit I'm completely VinED. And to get you into it with me, I found some cool links about Vine that are worth sharing:

• Vine's Twitter
• Vine's Blog
• 10 artists to follow on Vine - by Tribeca Film Festival 
• Pro tips for making your own stunning Vine - by Mashable
• Why Vine's going to grow into something huge - by Wired

Vine's still have a few issues with filtering content and searching for friends, but hopefully this will be fixed soon. Remember we're talking about a newborn here, since Vine was launched only about a month ago.

Give it a try! I hope you enjoy it. By the way, you can follow me on Vine, my username is julianageller.

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Working with a Business Model Canvas

I had never tried to work with a business model canvas before today and I must confess that's not a simple task if you're not used to business jargon and concepts. That said, I have found this short video that makes it easier to understand the process:

After researching the terms and getting familiar with them, things start to flow, and the Business Canvas Model starts to make it's magic: questions pop up in your head and your enterprise idea starts to clarify, show it's difficulties and it's weak points, as well as it's strengths. Well, I'm still trying to figure the canvas out and to fill the blanks with my InstaMarathon data, but that's what I've got so far:

So, what do you think of it? Any suggestion on how should I look for sponsors, what kind of sponsor should I aim for?

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Digital Classroom

Have you ever learned something through the Internet? I mean, watching video tutorials on YouTube, following DIY steps from a blog, getting instruction on how to use a software from a forum, all of those are ways to learn, aren't they?

Tomorrow we'll be talking about the use of digital and social networks in classroom as an educational tool at the Digital Classroom. The event is a one-day workshop aimed at teachers from primary to higher education.

Our professor Dave Harte will lecture at 11 am, and our group presentations are planed to start at 1.45 pm and end at 3 pm (you can see the whole schedule here). I'll be talking about Social Media channels and how the integrate and I've put this presentation together with the help of my group mates Kelly, Michelle, Catherine and Angelina.

• What? Digital Classroom
• When? Tomorrow (12/02), from 9.15 am to 4 pm
• Where? Birmingham City University, City North Campus, Dawson Building, room D123
• Why? Learn about the use of digital and social networks for education

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#InstaMarathon

We had about a week to come up with an entrepreneurial idea for the Enterprise course. I have though of social networks, business models, free lancing stuff and finally decided to go for an event. I'll put an Instagram Photo Marathon together, to happen in Birmingham on the spring.

A Photo Marathon, according to Photomarathon.com, is a competition in which the photographers are given certain topics to interpret within a time limit. An Instagram Photo Marathon means the photos must be posted to Instagram.

Instagram photo of Birmingham City Centre

The idea of making the event a social one have also crossed my mind. That's all I know so far, and i'd love if you would help me getting there by making suggestions. You can comment on this blog post, Facebook or Twitter. I'm eager to hear (read) what you have to say about it!

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Discovering Pinterest

Our first task on the Social Media as Practice module was to explore a social network we didn't know well and make a video guide to it. I chose Pinterest, although I had already used it before.

I joined Pinterest about a year ago, but I haven't really got into it.  I logged in and pinned some stuff, but I only did it once or twice, and I didn't know much about the ethics, economics and processes of the network. Besides that, it changed a bit since the last time I used it!

By that time, there were a lot of brides planning their weddings and girls pinning make up and style tips. Now, Pinterest has become a great tool for e-commerce and for getting good ranking on search engines.

So, this is my video tutorial for Pinterest noobies.

If you are in the Social Media marketing business, this article might be useful: 4 Ways to Use Pinterest to Rank High in Search Engines.

p.s.: I'm sorry for the video quality, I had a little trouble with the Quicktime Screen Recording. Promise to improve my skills for the next one!

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Starting a blog...

I was really glad when it was suggested in our first lecture that we started a blog to post our tasks, videos and stuff during our MA Social Media course. I had already been thinking of starting a blog for that matter anyway, so... Welcome to We master it!

And, as it is my first post on the new blog, I'll share something I find really cool. This video was produced a few months ago by Box 1824, a brazilian company specialized in innovation, consumer and culture research. It is about how working relations have changed along the decades, what are this relations like in the present and what they'll be like in the future. Enjoy it!

So, are you a millennial? Do you love what you're doing right now? I do! =)

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