4 Ways to Use Instagram on Your Desktop

You don’t need an iPhone or Android device to see your friends’ Instagram photos, all you need is an Internet connection.

Several websites let you view, search and comment on photos posted to Instagram, and some let you do things like search photos nearby that you can’t do in Instagram’s mobile app.

However, if you’re looking for a way to post to Instagram from your computer, it can’t be done. This is a common question on Instagram web-viewing sites. Some sites do allow you to download Instagram photos. But a word of caution here: If you’re downloading someone else’s photo, don’t reuse it without permission.

Facebook, Instagram’s new owner, may be working on an official website for Instagram, according to rumors that surfaced last week. Currently, you can manage your account online at Instagram, but that’s about it. But if you want to do a little more, here are four sites to try.

Instagrille

The PC app recreates your Instagram on the big screen of your computer in an enticing tiled format and adds some nifty features that even Instagram doesn’t offer. In addition to viewing your feed and the most popular photos, you can see photos that were taken near your current location. And, you can download any Instagram photo by hovering over the bottom of an image and selecting download.

Instagrille is available through Pokki, a new Apple-style app store for PCs created by SweetLabs of San Diego and backed by Google and Intel. For now, it’s PC only, but the company plans to release a Mac version soon.

Webstagram

One of the original web viewers, the site is not as visually appealing as newer Instagrille, but it does the job. After logging in, you can see your Instagram feed, comment, like and search just as you do on the mobile app. Webstagram just launched a forum for Instagram users that includes editing tips.

Webstagram will ask if you’d like to follow it on Instagram, but if you do, be prepared for long streams of comments that tend to disrupt the flow of photos on your feed.

Gramfeed

The site offers integration with Google Maps, so you can enter a city, see a tiled layout of all photos taken in that area and then select pins on the corresponding map to see photos taken at precise locations. Like with Instagrille, you can download photos to your computer, but it does entail an extra step. Click “Download,” and a new tab opens with the selected photo that you’ll have to “save as” to download.

Ink361

Here you see a rolling horizontal view of your Instagram feed and can create albums based on hashtag (keywords). Hashtags have become a way of identifying types of photos unique to Instagram, such as #jumpstagram (people caught mid-air on camera) and #fromwhereistand (photos that usually include the photographer’s feet) [Tips to 'Tell' Better Stories on Facebook]<

Ink361 also offers several fun tools. You can make Facebook cover photos, Twitter backgrounds and iPad wallpaper from your Instagram feed. Ink361 plans to release a new version soon.

Testing the Impact of Your Social Media Posting on Search Engine Results

The integration of social network posts and profiles within the search engine results pages, such as Bing’s recent social sidebar addition and the advent of Google+, has deepened the relationship between these two areas. Just last week Bing started to include Foursquare tips in its functionality and Google began experimenting with share links that allow search users to share a website to their Google+ account directly from the search results.

Moreover, since the primary search engine players revealed a year or so ago that they do take social media signals into account when determining what to serve in the ranking pages, social search has been a buzzword across the disciplines. Therefore, social media marketers have a responsibility to be better equipped to handle a more integrated approach; they must ensure they are applying their knowledge and delivering on the correct strategies. In December 2011, Econsultancy’s third Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing revealed that 25 per cent of company marketers regarded social signals as being ‘very important’ but when asked how important they would be in three years, this figure increased to 57 per cent.

Nevertheless, it is one thing knowing that social signals are important, but it is quite another to understand how your brand’s social network activity is directly impacting the visibility of the social profile or company website in search engine results pages. Here are a few ways in which you or your social media agency can start investigations in order to come to conclusions bespoke to your business.

When linking to your website in a post, trial -

• The use of different generic keyword terms
• The use of branded terms, such as the company name and products
• Linking to different pages, for example, the home page and ones deeper in the folder structure

Monitor the number of -

• Likes, comments and shares on Facebook
• Retweets, replies and favourites on Twitter
• +1s, comments and reshares on Google+

When linking to your website, by using a tracking code in the URL you can examine the following in Google Analytics –

• Clicks through to the site, or visitors
• Bounce rate
• Path to a conversion or to other pages

For any keywords used in a post, observe the website’s rankings in the global and local search engine results pages as well as the ranking of the social profile itself –

• Before the start of any activity to obtain a benchmark
• Immediately prior the post
• In half hour or hourly intervals after posting
• The days following

Finally, I would suggest undertaking separate tests on Google+, Twitter and Facebook, whereby the content and links used are unique, to understand the benefit that each platform brings for you.

Once you have collected the data, and of course there may be a number of other metrics that you have access to and are interested in analysing, you will need to map the relationships between each. There are various ways of doing this but I would suggest using a simple spreadsheet format, such as excel and make use of the graph and chart options. From here you should be able to see what influence your social media accounts are having on your organic search engine rankings, and I look forward to you being able to share some of the results on Social Media Today.

Harsh or completely sensible? Controversy over athletes social media usage.

2012 Olympic athletes are now under pressure to limit their use of social media during the games.

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) encourages social media by fans and athletes; however they only allow posts to social media networks which are written in a “first-person, diary-type format”*. Sharing videos from the Olympic Village has also been banned, and athletes are required to gain permission from fellow athletes before sharing photos of them.

The reason for this being that the IOC want to discourage athletes from providing information which may otherwise be reported by broadcast partners or other media outlets.

Is the IOC taking these rules too far?

American sprinter Nick Symmonds spoke to Mashable about the situation and described the rules as “ludicrous”,** and other athletes have stated the rules as “stifling” and “overbearing”. ***
This could also create confusion amongst fans and social media followers of the 2012 games – will sharing information about their favourite athlete be interpreted as a first-person post? Or simply overstepping the mark?

Watching the events on TV is entirely different from instantly engaging with contestants and spectators first hand – social media updates allow fans get to see what happens behind the scenes. In this day and age, this kind of exposure is expected with an event such as the Olympics. Allowing more digital freedom will allow athletes a larger platform and create more exposure for the games. It would also inspire people from around the world to interactively get involved, so surely allowing it will act as an advantage for both the IOC and the athletes.

Should athletes have more freedom when it comes to social media? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

*(News.com.au, 2012)
**(Mashable, 2012)
***(The times of India, 2012)

Facebook Now Lets You Edit Comments

We’ve all done it. Your friend uploads a picture of their new puppy to Facebook, and you somehow manage to leave a comment congratulating them instead on their “new pappy.”

So what do you do? Until now, the only thing Facebook would let you do to correct the error was delete the comment and start again.

But starting Thursday the site is also now offering the ability to edit your comment — and change that pappy back to the puppy you intended in the first place. The edit option appears in the form of a small pencil icon on the right side of your comment. Clicking on the pencil will bring up a drop-down menu with the option to edit your comment as well as the option to delete it entirely.

Facebook told Mashable the site will also be “showing the editing history for a comment so that subsequent commenters or likers have the full context of the conversation.” That way if someone responds to a comment that gets edited commenters in the future can see the history of the conversation and not get lost.

The editing ability went live on Thursday evening, and will be gradually rolling out to all users over the next few days.

Has the comment editing system kicked in for you yet? Let us know in the comments.

Now You Can View Facebook Events on a Calendar

All your events on Facebook can now be viewed on a calendar.Originally created during one of Facebook’s company hackathons, the new feature gives you the option to see upcoming events — as well as things like friends’ birthdays — on a calendar rather than in Facebook’s traditional list format.

“A couple of us felt there should be a better way for people to see their friends’ birthdays a few days in advance and make plans for the weekend. So we built it,” Bob Baldwin, the Facebook software engineer behind the project said in a blog post on the site.

“Before a recent hackathon, a few of us created a Facebook group called ‘Social Calendar Dreamers’ to spark discussion around making Events more visual,” wrote Baldwin. “At the next hackathon, engineers from the events, photos, messages and other teams hacked through the night to build a better way to view events. By 6 a.m., we had a prototype that worked.”

The new list and calendar view makes it easier to see upcoming birthdays, events, and suggested events. Suggested events are added based on a number of factors such as your friends, pages you like, places where you’ve checked in and the apps you use on Facebook.

You can respond to event invites directly from the calendar view page, without having to ever visit a separate event page.

Calendar view is gradually rolling out to all Facebook users. You can check it out by going to your Events page on Facebook and then clicking the “Calendar” tab on the top left side of the screen.

“The great thing about hackathons is that you get to dive straight into building a concept with your friends without having any concrete plans or directives,” says Baldwin. “It’s pretty cool that a night of hanging out and hacking on an idea can turn into something that my friends and everyone else on Facebook can use.”

Do you have Calendar view for events yet? What do you think of the new look? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

6 Ways to Stay on Top of Social Media

To be successful in social media and community management you need to keep track of the constant changes to that ecosystem. That’s because everything you know about Facebook, Twitter, and other social spaces today will somehow be different in six months. Layouts will be altered, features will be added or removed, and new social networks may pop up.

So how should you keep track of all these moving parts? Here are six tips for staying on top of social media.

1. Blogs

There are hundreds of blogs focused on social media. Keep it simple by signing up to RSS feeds and spend twenty minutes every morning catching up on your social media news. Stick to blogs that are updated daily and focus on providing content in social media and technology.

Consider adding these blogs to your RSS feed to get started: SocialTimes, Social Media Examiner, TechCrunch, and SocialMediaToday.

2. Webinars

Webinars are often offered by agencies and make for good social media resources. You can find webinars by searching on Twitter or registering on directories that list the week’s webinars. You can also attend paid webinars that go beyond the basics. In either case, you can find a good starter list at webinarlistings.com.

3. Trending Topics

Yes, reading your blogs in the morning is effective but information travels fast so pay attention to what’s trending on Twitter, too. First, make sure that you check your Twitter trend settings. Certain settings will spit out tailored trends, which you should probably avoid.

Also, if you don’t understand why a certain word or phrase is trending you can check out whatthetrend.com for explanations.

4. Newsletters

Not all newsletters are spam. Some are actually worth signing up for. If you’re OK with getting a daily newsletter, check out SmartBrief. If you prefer a weekly roundup then take a look at SocialFresh. These newsletters curate the best social media content from the web and create original highly informative articles as well.

5. Meetups and Tweetups

Whether in person at a meetup or virtually at a tweetup, chatting with like-minded individuals will keep you on your toes, help you predict what’s coming next, and teach you new things about how others are behaving in social media. To find a group of social media fanatics near you check out Meetup.com.

6. Training and Certification

If you are serious about educating yourself in the social space you may consider signing up for a training program or certification course. Whether you are looking for a six-week crash course or an ongoing education program, resources are available. To start, you can check out WOMM-COM and HootSuiteU.