I'm trying out a new social networking tool called Tell-a-Friend. Have any of you tried the Tell-a-Friend tool yet?
Here is how it's supposed to work... It should allow you to share blog posts with those you think might be interested in them via:
* email (various types)
* instant messaging (various ones to choose from)
* blog (different types listed)
* social networking (Twitter and Facebook)
Perhaps you've read something on this blog that you think might help someone else or lead them to a helpful resource? Maybe you'd like to try this tool and see how it works for you?
I've had mixed results trying it out myself but I'm interested in hearing others' experiences.
If you're interested in sharing info from one of the posts on this blog, click on the small, white "Tell-a-Friend" widget at the bottom of the blog post you'd like to share. A window will pop up. It will then give you choices of various ways to share the link. I had mixed results; some worked when I tried it and some didn't. (See details below)... When it worked, it was cool. When it didn't, it was frustrating. Since this is a new tool, I'm wondering if it's not fully functional yet???
Has anyone else tried Tell-a-Friend? I just heard about it via a ProBlogger email from last Wednesday. Is anyone else having trouble getting some of the functions to work?
Here are various ways to use Tell-a-Friend:
Email:
Direct email (manually typing address in): It worked fine.
Gmail: I couldn't get it to login to my Gmail to message myself even though I verified on Gmail that I was using the correct userid and password. Hmm.
Yahoo: It worked fine.
Windows Live: I didn't try this.
Social:
Twitter - It sent the message but it's not a useable hyperlink. So I really don't see how it works on twitter.
Facebook - It would not login to Facebook when I tried sending a message to myself.
Blog:
I tried BlogSpot only. It would not work when I tried sending to my own blog address.
IM:
I didn't try this yet.
If you try this out, let me know what you think! Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.
Here is a video on Tell-a-Friend. If you have tried Tell-a-Friend, please let me know how it worked for you.
Here is a video explaining Tell-a-Friend:
If you try it and you like it, here's where to get the code for the Tell-a-Friend widget:
Tell-a-Friend
This article was posted by Jeanne via "Jeanne's Endo Blog" at www.endendoat.blogspot.com.
5 comments:
Man! I am WAY behind on this blogging stuff :) And I THOUGHT I was tech savy...hehe!
My Endo Journey,
You're too funny! You're not behind on anything... it's brand new! :)
Seriously, the ***ONLY*** reason I heard of this was that I'm subscribed to ProBlogger.
I get their emails quite frequently and to be honest I usually don't have time to read them very carefully. I just happened to look at the email that announced this tool a little more closely and Tell-A-Friend looked like it might be worth a try.
Actually, I have yet to see this tool in use on any other site (besides the demo on SocialTwist and the video ProBlogger sent me)!
That's why I figured I'd post about it and see if people are choosing not to use it because of issues or whether it's just not very widely used yet.
Did you try using it at all? I'd really be interested to know if it works more consistently for you than it did for me!
Maybe I did something wrong? I mean... I know it's installed correctly because the tool shows up and parts of it do work fine. I just don't understand why other parts of it don't work for me as of yet!
Somewhere in the process of installing the tool and reading through the SocialTwist site, I saw something that made me think that Amazon owns or somehow manages SocialTwist?? (I'm pretty sure that's what I read, anyway). I know SocialTwist puts out the Tell-A-Friend tool.
So if it works fairly well, I'm guessing that it'll probably really start popping up lots of places!
Amazon is obviously well-known and ProBlogger has a book, a website, and lots of followers/social networking... So if they are publicizing it, I'm guessing this will become pretty popular (if any "programming bugs" it may have get worked out).
Please let me know if you do try it out. You don't have to install anything to try it. You could try it just by clicking on that tiny little white widget that now appears under each of my blog posts...
Or you can also try it out on the SocialTwist site.
I'm not sure why it worked great on some things and not-so-great on others. If it worked as well for me as it did in that video, I would love this tool.
With so many email accounts and userids to manage, it would be cool to minimize some of the flipping between windows. The savings of time and streamlining of effort would be cool.
Lately I tend to have about 12-13 windows open at once at any given time. It is annoying to me and I wish I could keep that down to a handful of windows open at once.
So if I can get this tool to cooperate, I'll be happy.
Let me know if it works for you. :)
Jeanne
This is just what I was looking for. After reading the ProBlogger posting, I was looking for real experience by someone who has used the Tell a Friend widget... and I found your detailed analysis. :-)
I tried the GMail and Twitter from your site and it worked well for me. Did you try again? How's the support of SocialTwist?
I am considering using this widget on my blog. It seems like a neat tool to promote my blog.
Hi Christina!
I looked at the link to the ProBlogger post you sent. Thanks!
I had seen ProBlogger's email about the Tell-A-Friend tool but hadn't seen the link you gave. It had some interesting comments:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/22/tell-a-friend-let-your-readers-promote-your-posts/
(How did you get "ProBlogger posting" to show up as a hyperlink in BlogSpot comments??? I've never seen that before)!!
I just pasted in the link in case your hyperlink doesn't show up again when I post this reply but that was cool how you did that!
Anyway I will try Gmail again but the other day when I did so, it would not login to Gmail with my password for some reason. I had opened another window and logged into Gmail fine. So I know I was using the right password. It just wouldn't accept that same password from Tell-A-friend for some reason.
How did you get twitter to work? Maybe I was too ambitious. I had tried sending a hyperlink and it sent it alright... but it didn't appear as a hyperlink. It showed up on twitter all written out (which then got truncated). I'll have to try it again now that I know you got it to work. Did you get twitter to show up an actual hyperlink?? Are you using BlogSpot?
I didn't try it again yet but I'll have to do so. I didn't contact SocialTwist support. I just didn't have the energy to find out how their support is.
That's why I posted this. I figured getting connected with other bloggers who are trying this tool might be a more direct way to explore what works, what doesn't, and why.
You're right, though, that SocialTwist should be the best-informed people about their own product!
I have the tool installed on my blog. I tried it that first day and haven't tried it since. At this point, it's just kind of sitting there not hurting anything.
I don't know if anyone besides me has tried the tool on my blog itself. The thing is, if someone has used it to pass along things from my blog to someone, how would I know they are using it? Would I?
In other words, if someone subscribes to my RSS feed, I can see them listed with FeedBurner and know they are using the feed.
However, if someone uses this tool, I don't even know if I'd have any way of knowing they did or didn't.
Would it be transparent to me? It's hard to know how it's working for anyone who might be trying it from my blog (besides me)... if I don't know who is trying it!
Would you consider trying it from my blog to see if it works for you? It sounds like you had tried it out on the actual SocialTwist site but not here. Is that right??
I think it could be a neat tool. You are the first person to respond in comments on this. (I did get a couple of emails asking me about it but I haven't talked to anyone besides you who has tried it anywhere or even heard of it).
I don't see an email/blog name listed for you so hopefully you'll see this.
I'd still love to know how you got that ProBlogger to show up as a hyperlink in the comment field!! That was cool. I always just paste the whole site address (like I did above) because I don't know how to do what you did.
I'd love it if you could share how you did that!
Thanks for the comment and I look forward to hearing from you again!!
:) :) :)
Jeanne
Just tried Tell-A-Friend for Facebook but the login just got stuck. :(
Jeanne
Post a Comment