Social media: connect, appeal and engage!

By Rosalind Carr, @Rosalind_at_O

In the last few weeks, the role of social media has been on our minds, and we’ve started to question how many of us really use this platform to its full potential. Everyone’s signed up, but we’re wondering how many accounts stay updated, with content relevant to followers and therefore considered noteworthy…

We’ve also been contemplating how personal social media handles appear, and how they attract leads for the brand that a personal profile represents. Associating a brand with a face builds connections from person to person which are unique, relevant and interactive.

At the Intellect headquarters in London last month, some of the team attended “Marketing and Sales Group Meeting: CRM and Social Business – Reinvigorating the existing and adding the new.” Here the managing director of Redd Marketing, Leigh Hopwood, spoke on how best to utilize your social media and truly connect with and understand your brand’s followers. Hopwood stressed the importance of social media, noting

New Twitter PR tool: Lissted launched by RealWire to curate the media on Twitter

By Olivia Shannon, @olivia_at_o

The Countdown team loves to explore new social media tools, so we were excited today by the news that RealWire, the UK online press release distribution company, has launched Lissted, a new web application based on RealWire’s growing database of over 10,000 journalists, media professionals and outlets on Twitter.

You can use Lissted to find journalists and media outlets (free), listen to relevant conversations going back 30 days (paid), and monitor media mentions of topics, brands and people that are important to you, including email alerts when you aren’t logged on (paid).

Lissted is a Twitter-based tool, so you do need to be on Twitter to use it, as users are required to sign in through their Twitter accounts.

All the details about Lissted, including a pricing guide, can be found here.

Visit Countdown2CloudExpo.com for an interview with blogger David Terrar

Countdown2StorageExpo readers may be interested in a Q&A session just posted on our cloud computing-focused blog, Countdown2CloudExpo.com, with David Terrar (@DT on Twitter). David is a blogger and CEO of a cloud service provider in IBM’s social media speakeasy. He has some interesting views on how to use the cloud and social media to promote your business.

To read the interview, please visit http://countdown2cloudexpo.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/dt/.

Second-Generation Geek: Q&A with Matthew Yeager, Storage Blogger and Computacenter Practice Leader: Part Two

By Rose Ross (@Rose_at_O) and Olivia Shannon (@Olivia_at_O)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Matthew Yeager left his position at Computacentre in August 2011. He is now the Chief Technologist at Colt Technology Services. Find him on LinkedIn.

As we mentioned before, we had so many great insights from our interview with Matthew Yeager (@mpyeager) that we’ve decided to run his Q&A as a two-part series. This is Part Two, covering Matthew’s experiences with social media, including recommendations for what he thinks are some of the best blogs, storage and otherwise. Enjoy! Part One, covering Matthew’s views on what businesses want from their IT providers and the storage issues he thinks are important this year, is available here.

Q. Are you a social media lover?

Yes, and frankly I think more vendors, ISVs, startups and others in technology really need to make the investment. The authenticity of the voice and the message is what you need to get right.  It isn’t going to be perfect the first time. It takes a while to get the hang of it. But it’s an investment worth making. If you can encapsulate your thoughts in 140 characters and make it interesting, you’ve got a much better shot at catching mine and other people’s attention.