If you read this blog, you may find that I have a few irons in the fire:

• a social network for Startup ideation and project launching
• Hashtag optimization and reaching beyond your followers
• Next-gen Twitter chat client

One of these will be a huge hit – or one of the concepts I develop in the future.  In this post, I would like to share how

My heart may not always be in the right place

Here are five startup concepts that I pitched in IdeasWatch which gathered a smattering of interest, but might not be worth building out:

Study Wagers

Just as people tend to enter a fitness club contract with lofty goals and self-motivation, for most of us that motivation does not last. The same with our self-improvement plans. We start strong, but too many people do not continue to meet goals.  In my vision (which you might change), we would provide a mobile and PC-based gambling site – where people bet that they will achieve various goals, mainly those set up in external sites – for study and self-improvement.

Pissederest

For our non-American Ideators, “pissed off” = angry.  We already have several other Pinterest mashups, like Pinstagram (Pinterest X Instragram). What about a Pinterest-clone – just for pinning what pisses you off, like the guy who takes two parking spaces because he is too lazy to park well, or the on-sale item that you wanted for which there are none left on the store’s shelf.

TrueTit

We don’t mind if you have little ones, big ones, if they hang or if they point in different directions. We do want to know that they are home-grown, and not made of plastic, silicone, or other non-bio-degradable substances. Silicone parts are made for toys, not for real men to play with.  Better than TrueTwit, we verify breasts, not simply that you wish to follow in Twitter, and rather than the boring capcha (type the words you see), you pick out the boobies that are not store bought, from a small gallery.  Sound like a plan?

CatSqan.com

Are you tired of seeing all the cute kitty photos in Facebook and Googleplus?  What about a place to get all those cute kitty photos and videos organized and indexed, and then with options to multi-send to G+, Facebook and perhaps other networks for photos, like Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr from one spot?

Make celebrities of the world’s worst parents

We could provide stories, photos, and videos of people who have been caught using a child to shoplift, punching their kids, or moving their car before a kid has gotten completely in or out. We could scrape Google Videos, and maybe other sources, and also allow users to submit exclusive videos just for our site.

Click on any of those idea headings above to see the original startup ideas I pitched, and interact on them – in IdeasWatch.  Here’s what they look like in my Ideas Board in IW:

What is the worst business idea that you ever pitched or affixed your name to?

While things look promising for RiteTag right now, we’ll know when we know.  However, in all honesty, I’d say that for every hit of an idea, I have dozens of no-where-nears.  I hear that this is okay, though, if we keep trudging onwards.

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

In this video, I show you exactly how I am using the latest offering from RiteTag: Tag Optimizer

I begin by showing merely the effect I am seeing on my retweets by using Tag Optimizer.  I continue by sharing the same article, both by tweeting immediately and also scheduling.  Each time I tweet or schedule the same article, I do this with different hashtags, and explain how to choose from the three ways of grabbing tag suggestions – that are just to right of the Tag Optimizer tweet box.  The how-to video is at the bottom of this article.

Tag Optimizer

I finish by giving a brief tour of the Stats RiteTag provides on tweets sent from RiteTag.

RiteTag Stats

• Tweet deletion/editing is a snap and allows you to edit hashtags and/or any elements of the tweet – and even the day and time it is to go out.
• Double-click Stats headings to see which hashtags gave you the biggest payout: link clicks, retweets, favorites, and even followers growth/change.
• Click on tags to send them to the Tag Bag and create new Tag Sets from hashtags that got you the most of what you’re after in Twitter.

Got 4 minutes to see how this is done?

Social Strategies

The article discussed is by Matthew Crawford of Social Strategies.  Read it here, and don’t miss his video how-to for the tools he presents.  At least one of us knows his Camtasia, eh…?  I do believe they nabbed the same background music for the lectures in my Coursera Python course, though!

So, have you tried Tag Optimizer and Stats?  We’d love to see your blog or video (or both) on your hashtag story.  We might even be able to “do something” with it…?

#keepinitinthefamily

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Thank you, one and all, for taking a serious look at the hashtag optimization tool that our team is still perfecting. Thanks for reviews of #RiteTag – in Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Polish, French, English & Dutch!

1. This Hashtag Tool Will Help You Reach Beyond Your Followers

   I used to work for the Yellow Pages. Everything has a heading or category there. Whether you use printed directories or not, category bas…
2. Guida agli hashtag di Twitter e ai tool di analisivalijolie.it

   Se c’è una cosa che mi affascina della rete sono i fili che legano tra loro idee e strumenti in una trama circolare dove le cose ritornan…
3. ritetag, para usar las mejores etiquetas (#hashtags) en nuestros tweets, facebook, google plus…

   Si tenéis pensado cubrir un evento usando Twitter o en cualquier otra red social es importante que prestéis atención a las etiquetas util…
4. RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen | Twittermania

   Hashtags zijn, zoals we al eerder vertelden, al lang niet meer voorbehouden aan Twitter. Instagram gebruikt ze, Facebook overweegt het en… 
5. RiteTag pour trouver le… right Tag! – News Resources
   Atteindre son audience potentielle, la développer, aller batifoler sur les chemins de traverse des réseaux sociaux… Le rêve de tout mar…
6. Quoi de neuf ? : Les Explorateurs du Web

   Posté par Marc Tirel, le Mercredi 24 Avril 2013 à 06:49 César Harada est une émergence incarnée, il est le futur déjà présent mais encore…
7. Ritetag.com – Narzędzie do selekcji tweetów | wystartowali.pl

   Popularność serwisu społecznościowego Twitter jest bezdyskusyjna. Należy powiedzieć, że miliony ludzi na całym świecie, a także firm i os…
8. Sift Through The Twittersphere With RiteTag

   Twitter is an awesome way to access what your customers are doing and thinking, but with over 400 million Tweets per day it can be almost…

   KILLERSTARTUPS
9. ritetag, para usar as melhores #hashtags em nossos tweets …

   6 dias atrás … Se está pensando em cobrir algum evento usando Twitter ou em qualquer outra rede social é importante que preste atençã…

   
   
10. 

    Valentina Lepore@valijolie

    Twitter Hashtag: guida ai tool per analizzarli – Aggiornato il post con la recensione di RiteTag bit.ly/XFf4Tq
11. ライットタグと貴方のハッシュタグ・パワー(RiteTag Workshop – in Japanese)

    
    
12. #ritetag definition

    Feb 18, 2013 … ritetag: RiteTag is the only tool that helps you identify hashtags – for 9 social networks (so far) – based on a query…

    TAGDEF
13. 

    Brown & Company@BrownCoDesign

    RT @laughtercrystal: Use @ritetag to see what hashtags certain audiences are using in their convos. #SMBNH

     
14. 

    Ferdi Soetekouw™@FerdiSoetekouw

    Ritetag: hashtag analyse tool bit.ly/11Yem4i #twitter #hashtag

     
15. 

    Caja Holdings LLC@cajaholdings

    @RiteTag just learned about you from my friend @mimizelman and appreciate the #ritetag info

     
16. 

    Thomas Bauer@newsmelder

    Interesting #hashtag tool to reach more #followers with a multi-channel hashtag analysis ritetag.com
17. 

    Adam Lee@OilcanGuitar

    #RiteTag - Hashtag and content discovery tool.ws.knotch.it/knotches/og/kn…

     
18. 

    GGD Milano@ggdmilano

    RiteTag: un #tool per gli #hashtag vi aiuterà a raggiungere molti più follower. ow.ly/kh1s5

     
19. 

    Tweeps Nederland@TweepsNL

    Hashtags over meerdere platformen ontdekken en monitoren!bit.ly/11erCQO 
20. 

    Dawn Abraham@Dawn_Abraham

    How is the RiteTag hashtag search tool different? goo.gl/GYkpZ via@osakasaul 
21. 

    tweetvrienden.nl@tweetvrienden

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformenbit.ly/123YxJj
22. 

    SocialMediaTIPZ@SocialMediaDUS

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen: Hashtags zijn, zoals we al eerder vertelden, al … bit.ly/15zQmby 
23. 

    Twnieuws@Twnieuws

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen – Twittermania bit.ly/124h2xn
24. 

    Usenet Junkie@JunkieUsenet

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen: Hashtags zijn, zoals we al eerder v… bit.ly/13MS6hT #e-marketing 
25. 

    MV2 SocialMedia™@mvtwee

    #socialmedia #mkb RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen ow.ly/2wlhf9
26. 

    Twtrmania@tweetsmania

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen -bit.ly/15zP40c
27. 

    Accessible Media@Accessible_NL

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformenow.ly/2wlktB
28. 

    Yellow Cookies@YellowCookiesNL

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformenow.ly/2wm0uh
29. 

    Brian Stephens@PBJBusiness

    What I got from using RiteTag hashtags goo.gl/TNh4c via@osakasaul
30. 

    Ger Nijkamp@gernijkamp

    RiteTag: ontdek en monitor hashtags over meerdere platformen:ow.ly/kkd2R
31. 

    Jon Alzueta@jonmetricas

    Knowing @RiteTag thanks to @bitrebels Veremos qué tal!
32. 

    Copy and Paste@CopyThenPaste

    Unlike other Hashtag tools, you need not begin with a hashtag; you just need to know what you… goo.gl/fb/vzi8z
33. 

    Dave Faulkmore@usguyintokyo

    #ritetag report 4 #gold is public Learned these #hashtags: #metals#silver #economics #cashforsilver ow.ly/kiQGD

If you would like to interview the founder, please find me in GooglePlus.  Happy to!

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

One week ago I finished Startup Weekend Osaka.  Here’s me, attempting to explain what a Twitter chat client is – and learning that even many social media-savvy people in Japan do not know what a hashtag is (let alone how they can be used to bring together a Twitter chat):

Oh, Well

Of course, I knew that my pitch might not get picked by enough participants to get developed, and that I would be looking for an idea better than my own, in any case.   As I anticipated, a great time it was, and I hope to continue team-building and project development with people I met there.

My pitch for a next-gen Twitter chat client was not endorsed by enough people, so I joined a team: “Gohoubee” (rewards).

When I approached them I learned their beginning concept: track dieter’s exercise with one or more devices (including FitBit), let them select and pay for a reward for reaching a fitness goal, and when they reach it, they are sent their reward.  If they do not reach their goal, we would keep their money.  To this, I suggested that I might know a thing or two about dieting, motivation, and that I would like their 6-member team to consider my thoughts.  I suggested that we consider how insurance companies and casinos offer a reward with a far-greater value than the individual invests – because they know that most people will not meet the conditions for the payout.  I suggested that I – former fat guy – would be their customer, but would expect a reward with a value of several times my investment.  All six applauded – and asked me to join their project team, which I did.  I named the site, helped with images, visual thematic elements, and kept our people motivated with suggestions for value features we could add – after pitch day.

Unfortunately, a full six hours into developing our business model and site mock-up, one member decided that he did not feel right about betting against people who are working to improve themselves.  No one spoke up, and I decided that, what with me being the last to join the team, and how it could prove to be a  worthwhile exercise to “polish a turd,” so to speak, and pitch a flawed business model, we reverted to their original plan.  Our founder went on to pitch the original plan: hand us $100, work your diet/exercise, and if you reach your goal, you are sent something worth $100.  Fail, and we keep your cash.

The crowd went wild (with laughter)

The idea-man behind the project team I worked on threw in the towel right after the event.

That’ll happen.  I am fine with this; some business model flops cannot be fixed.  I am not sure I agree that the Gohoubee.com plan is not worth pursuing, but I respect the founder’s decision.  Having spoken with a number of people who were keen to re-team – some, as early as the post-pitch party, on the last day of Startup Weekend – I thought it would be good to build a contact list of those who are amenable to building new project teams.

What I did to foster communication and collaboration among SW alumni

1. Though a fast and simple way to add yourself to a database of members of community/event will probably soon be available in Doorkeeper (used by Startup Weekend for registrations and  payments), for now a Google Drive spreadsheet, to which participants could optionally add their email, Googleplus link, blog, LinkedIn link, etc., would be a good way to facilitate cooperation among participants – after Weekends end.
2. I connected with people in person, of course, and later followed-up by accepting and initiating Facebook friending; the Japanese continue to be most active in Facebook.  I tracked down over 60 participants, mentors and sponsors of Startup Weekend Osaka and created a circle in Googleplus, which I shared and encouraged others to share.
3. I created the first post-event “remixer,” to get people talking from home, with a hangout.  After all, having spoken with many other participants at the last-day party, it was clear that I was not alone in my interest in both developing our project further, but also in launching/joining other project teams as well.  The inspiration for this article was the reaction from the event space organizer – who asked me to not invite people to the Googleplus hangout event that I created – for all those who would, indeed, like to discuss projects other than the one they worked on during the brief event.  Once again, I do wish they would take a fair look at what I am doing, and how I have launched nothing in their organization’s name, or claimed to be anything but perhaps the one guy in Osaka who is actually bringing people together – after this event ended.

It’s right on the Startup Weekend site: 64% of participants will need to re-team

Kindly consider this: right on the Startup Weekend Site : “Over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months”

“Join a global community: Join over 45,000 Startup Weekend alumni, all on a mission to change the world.”

Ergo, 64% of us, whose projects will not, for one reason or another continue, should actually reorganize.  I am actively doing just that – and not only for myself, but for any and all who would like to re-team and had fellow participants in the first “Startup Weekend Remixer” event, Sunday, April 28 – one week after the three-day SW event ended.

Startup Weekend Japan’s social presence: food and faces

I suggested to one of the Tokyo-based organizers that while a core principle in the SW movement is that we should be assessed by what we create, nearly everything they post to the one social network where they maintain a presence, Facebook  - is a steady stream of food and faces.

When I look at their updates in Facebook, what we are creating is what I would like to see, and what would go the distance in building interest in Startup Weekend: snippets, descriptions, brief videos of the pitches and projects that are, in fact the creations of Startup Weekend participants.  And yet, it’s all individual and team photos – and faces of the box lunches and buffets provided.  I counted less that one in ten of their updates with as much of our creations as a logo, even, from any of our projects (they could get our permission to post these, actually; it would just take thinking to ask for it) – mixed in with the onslaught stream of food and faces.  Perhaps they would do more to spread the word about what comes out of Startup Weekends if they showed what we made even more than what they fed us.

There was actually a professional USTREAM video director, Mr. Kazuhiro Yoshitomi / Rockets with us each day, who recorded our pitches and presentations.  It would have been nothing for him to break up the 2-hour video, add a Startup Weekend header, their overlay, perhaps, and share with each person from each team (or the main idea person, at least), the video of our project presentations.  Instead, all they shared was the full 2-hour continuous video.  If we had those ten-minute videos, with our presentations and Q&A with the judges, many of us would be embedding them in blogs – and sharing our enthusiasm for the SW movement.

Fascinating to me is how not once were we asked for any feedback whatsoever, or ideas for making Startup Weekends even better.

Those who have just completed a SW are likely to be their biggest supporters and local forces of advocacy.  I discuss SW in the 315+ member Bootstrappers Community in Googleplus – where we do regular hangouts, give each other feedback on our startups and ideas, and sometimes even join forces on projects.  I further created a circle and shared it with Startup Weekend Osaka participants, mentors, sponsors and organizers of Startup Weekend Osaka.  I invited the circle, and others who have interest in Startup Weekends in Japan.

Looking forward to the next Startup Weekend, I would encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to look into upcoming SW events and talk with people who have done one locally.

Preparing for a Startup Weekend is wise

I would read Eric Reis’ The Lean Startup and look into Steve Blank’s free course in Udacity: How to Build a Startup.  I would suggest coming with a solid, original and also easily conveyable idea to pitch.  Test your one-minute pitch with a few groups of people before the SW.

I’m guessing that the lack of interest in the ideas of anyone but their organizers and judges, for adding value to Startup Weekends is an Osaka thing.  Have you done one, and found that they follow-up with participants, facilitate connection and collaboration (i.e. my suggestion for a shared document, with Google Drive), or are receptive to the ideas that participants would like to give them?  As for that, and the reactions that I got to my suggestions, I will leave you with a quote from The Lean Startup, which is pretty much one of the main tomes that SW people and us startup founders have found the most useful:

“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else” - Eric Reis, The Lean Startup

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Unlike other Hashtag tools, you need not begin with a hashtag; you just need to know what you’re talking about – in your own words

+Krithika Rosenthal thanks for asking the question I most love to answer!

You want to reach beyond your followers.  You know what you’re talking about; you come to RiteTag for human and machine-suggested hashtags that reach.

The most important difference is that with RiteTag, you don’t need to begin with a hashtag.  You start with either a tag or simply a topic - in your own word(s).  Hashtagify (and at least 15 other tag sites) provides an attractive visualization and stats (based on less than 1% of  tweets with a tag, for 30 days) – but you need to begin with a hashtag.   I find this to be the case with nearly every other hashtag tool – or, they want serious money to go deeper for you.

If Tag search does not produce results, order reports (free, at least for now), and what we will search for are hashtags that have been used with your query word(s) in tweets.  Use them to get real things done.

Start with Tag Search, but order several reports, too.  Select networks you plan to share on; the hashtags will be different. 

Twitter is selected by default, but you have eight other choices.  Select any and all that you will share content on, with the Report query topic, but the more networks you select, the longer it will take for the Report to complete, please note. We’ll notify you when reports are finished.  Lot’s of data to analyze, which is why our interactive reports take minutes to hours to complete.

The RiteScore: our algorithm is different

Please search seo in hashtagify.me.  Try seo in Ritetag, too.

SEO in Hashtagify:

SEO in RiteTag “Tag Search”:

In Hashtagify, what you get are related hashtags – to the hashtag #seo, not hashtags that have come up together with the term SEO; this is why I see FF, job, jobs, share, socialmedia and teamfollowback.  Try “seo” in RiteTag in search and when want to see who’s using tags that we suggest, click the magnifying glass, and try the tabs in the pop-up.  Click tags to send them to the copy/save box, so that you can use them immediately – and have them for later, too.  Oh, and perhaps the closest things, in actual utilitythat I’ve found are Twitter Advanced Search and Socialmention.com.  Again, besides the hashtag section of search results being limited to Twitter, look at the relevancy.
Please let us know which gives you what you need:  hashtags that are likely to reach those already interested in the topics of your tweets, Googleplus updates – or even eBay deals.

RiteTag hashtag optimization: not just a Twitter thing

We even have Instagram, Flickr, DeviantArt, and Vimeo hashtag optimization integrated.

8 other networks to search – besides Twitter
You’ll see that in “Tag search” and “Reports,” Twitter is selected by default.  Note that you can also tick G+, and/or eBay, Vimeo… there are nine social networks already in RiteTag – and more to come.

“Uh huh, what else?”
You can curate and aggregate (for blogging and quoting people, etc., with proper attribution) content from Reports.

Save any content you find in the tweets/updates/presentations/images/etc. tab in RiteTag Reports

Curate content, aggregate it, find it in “Saved Content”

When you copy/paste it, just take the account information too – and you will include a link to the original post/content from the original content creator – for proper attribution.

This way, RiteTaggers save tweets, useful Googleplus updates, images, presentations and even Vimeo videos, organize them in a “Collection,” and when we select everything by highlighting (mouse), we can take all content per network from a Collection – including the account name and link to the profile from which the original content creator shared.   Attribution to the content creator is assured – and easy.  I demonstrate curation, aggregation and blog post creation in this video and show the results in this blog post.

We’ll suggest tags in Tag Search – but you need to save your own Tag Sets.

You’ll use them from the top menu “Tag sets,” and they will come up when you do a Tag Search – and later,  our Tag Sets and your own Sets will help when use our coming Optimize feature.  Of course, you will want to save your own Tag sets for hashtags per network you share on , of the nine we have in there.  Good hashtags for your Report queries tend to be different, network by network, with limited overlap – as you will see in “Cross-network tags, in RiteTag Reports.  Dave Tag Sets with hashtags selected, network-separated, for topics you post about again and again – either from RiteTag Reports and Tag Search.  While they are private by default, you can make any of them public with the “share” option.

What is the future of Hashtag optimization from RiteTag?

Optimizing tweets and G+ updates with hashtags and using our analytics to track pageviews, retweets/reshares, and favorites/plusses – from the RiteTag tiny URL that will track what you get from using tags RiteTag suggests.  This way, while you study this and that from the magnifying glass next to hashtags in Tag Search, and in Reports, when you try tags with Optimize, you’ll see what you get for using them with your content.  Then, refine to use just the tags that deliver.

Please let me know how it works for you, what you want to get done with tags, and if I can be of assistance, hit me up in G+ or SKYPE?  Happy to help!

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“Reach beyond your followers”

That’s the motto we came up with for RiteTag

That is it, right there: the essence of our value proposition.  You have your followers in various social networks that have topic-tagging and hashtag search capability.  Beyond your followers, there are those who passively and actively track or search hashtags to discover content and the sharers of such content.  Use hashtags that are relevant to the links, images, sales deals that you are sharing – but also most widely used, and you greatly increase the likelihood that in addition to your followers, your social updates are found by those who would not have seen them.  This is what we have been telling you.  Now, we are proving it.

I am ready to show you the value: what happens when you add a couple good hashtags to a tweet

After  first round of tests, I see scattered evidence of people finding my content through hashtags used with my posts to Googleplus.  I either do not use or am not active on the other social networks integrated in RiteTag and thus cannot easily test what I might gain from optimizing photos and images sent to Instagram, Picasa, Flickr or DeviantArt or presentations and videos uploaded to SlideShare or Vimeo.  I am not selling anything on eBay; can’t see what can be done with vs without hashtags in there, either.  Perhaps you can.  In Twitter the evidence is clear, however.

How I tested RiteTag hashtags in Tweets: two Twitter accounts, tweeting the same tweets, with and without tags

I gave the Goliath advantage to the account which would tweet without hashtags, using the @SaulSay Twitter account, which had 4,856 followers and Klout 46 when I began, March 27, 2013.  @OsakaTalk, with 366 followers and a Klout score of 38 would tweet the same content, but include 2-4 hashtags, as discovered from the fast new Tag search feature of RiteTag.  I tweeted blog posts and other tweets containing a link that I hoped readers would click on, but I would include no hashtags other than the one that a few of the blog post authors included in the title.  Of thirty such tweets, 4 had one word in the original tweet already hashtags (i.e. a word was prefixed with the # character), and while these got slightly more attention than those with no hashtags, they did not alter the results greatly.  I ended the test with the following tweet, which I formatted for Googleplus and tried in there as well as in Twitter :

So, @OsakaTalk with little interaction, a low Klout score and under 400 followers – but using RiteTag-suggested hashtags was to compete for clicks on links in tweets and perhaps retweets and Klout growth – with @SaulSay, with 8 points higher Klout (i.e. more history of engagement with followers) and 12 times the followers.  @Saulsay would use any hashtags the author had included already – but no more.

Tweeting the same tweets  from these Twitter accounts, each at the same time but with different and unique bit.ly URLs (to track click-throughs from those tweets, these are the accounts I’m using.  @Saulsay is tweeting without hashtags / @OsakaTalk is using RiteTag-discovered hashtags

Hashtag optimization or none: what do you get in Twitter:

I did not track Favorites, but they were markedly higher for the tweets with hashtags.  The difference for retweets is the clearest.

Compare the columns, tweets vs retweets:

@SaulSay, tweeting without hashtags.  Note the time-span for those retweets: 7 retweets in over two months’ time:

@OsakaTalk, tweeting with hashtags – again, note the time-span and how @osakatalk gets so many more retweets that it’s last seven retweets are just from the last 48 hours:

What’s more, courtesy of  RetweetRank.com, stats for @saulsay (for one week, the first week of the experiment):

@SaulSay – 5 retweets for 123 tweets

RetweetRank stats for @osakatalk: 17 retweets for 111 tweets:

So, where should I get these great hashtags, and enjoy more pageviews, Klout growth and Twitter goodness?

If you already know your hashtags, great.  Use them.  If you have an event or brand tag that is relevant to what you’re sharing, use it.  To reach beyond your followers, you’ll want to take your topic and search hashtags that have gone out with the topic word(s).  Several social media tools provide for this.

Hashtag optimization tools to know:

Hashtracking.com – like RiteTag, we log in with Twitter, even if registered.  Great layout, but no details on hashtags, or their ranking, in relation to the search query.  As such, it’s great if you already know and want stats on a tag; it doesn’t actually lead you to hashtags to consider using, however.  Hashtag information is provided for Twitter only.

Socialmention.com – the closest thing to RiteTag, but provides many more stats.  One section is for hashtags related to your query, but unlike RiteTag, data is not frequently updated.  The hashtags suggested for a query lead with your query, whether it has been used as a hashtag or not, and those that follow do not seem relevant, generally.  Also, hashtag data is limited to Twitter.  Upper-left areas showing sentiment, number of retweets of a hashtag, strength and reach are good – but unexplained.

Whatthetag.com – Hootsuite’s product has yet to give me a result. Widely touted as the hashtag search tool, it appears to be all about humans defining hashtags so that their meaning is known and this information is cataloged.  Nothing showing the hashtags used in context (in recent tweets) or how many times they are used.  Nothing suggesting other hashtags related to a query/ topic.  As with most tools, while over fifty social networks use topic hashtags, Whatthetag assumes that we are interested in Twitter hashtags only.

Tagdef.com – again, all about humans defining hashtags.  The site aims to provide hashtags related to a hashtag researched on the site, but gives results without ranking them or providing stats on the users using them, number of times used, or estimated reach.  Additionally, they ask us to manually suggest related tags.  My problem with this is that it begs people to game their tags by linking with well-tracked hashtags.   For TagDef as well, hashtags = Twitter hashtags.

Hashonomy.com – provides related hashtags (as with most tools, only for Twitter), but without stats on the number of times each have been used.  Data refreshes very infrequently, making stats unreliable.  For example, for the hashtag #SEM, after authorizing my Twitter account for the site (as I do with RiteTag, Hashtracking and other tag-search tools), I am told that the last entry for #SEM was a week ago.  I do not see who used it, or in what context.  RiteTag gives me up-to-the-minute tweets containing #SEM, shows the number of times accounts have used the tag, and for related tags, rather than listing them, they are ranked and with stats that help me decide if they are both relevant and likely to reach beyond my followers:

RiteTag.com (disclaimer: I am the founder) – give ritetag a topic and ritetag suggests hashtags that have gone out with your query word(s).  If Tag search doesn’t give you Reports or Tag sets that help, you can order your own Reports – with your query term(s) and noting any/all of the nine social networks that RiteTag analyzes hashtag data for.

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Companies, event organizers and those with a Twitter account and an understanding of hashtags are all reaching beyond their followers – this we all can see.

Where should I get these great hashtags, and enjoy more pageviews, Klout growth and actually get things done in Twitter?

If you already know your hashtags, great.  Use them.  If you have an event or brand tag that is relevant to what you’re sharing, use it.  To reach beyond your followers, you’ll want to take your topic and search hashtags that have gone out with the topic word(s).  Several social media tools provide for this.

Hashtag search and optimization tools:

Hashtracking.com - like RiteTag, we log in with Twitter, even if registered.  Great layout, but no details on hashtags or their ranking, in relation to the search query.  As such, it’s great if you already know the hashtags to use and want stats on them; it doesn’t actually take a query and suggest hashtags to consider using, however.  Hashtag information is provided for Twitter only.

Socialmention.com - the closest thing to RiteTag, but provides many more stats.  One section is for hashtags related to your query, but unlike RiteTag, data is not frequently updated.  The hashtags suggested for a query lead with your query, whether it has been used as a hashtag or not, and those that follow do not seem relevant, generally.  Also, hashtag data is limited to Twitter.

Upper-left areas showing sentiment, number of retweets of a hashtag, strength and reach are good – but unexplained.

Whatthetag.com - Hootsuite’s product has yet to give me a result. Widely touted as the hashtag search tool, it appears to be all about humans defining hashtags so that their meaning is known and this information is cataloged.  Nothing showing the hashtags used in context (in recent tweets) or how many times they are used.  Nothing suggesting other hashtags related to a query/ topic.

As with most tools, while over fifty social networks use topic hashtags, Whatthetag assumes that we are interested in Twitter hashtags only.

Tagdef.com - again, all about humans defining hashtags.  The site aims to provide hashtags related to a hashtag researched on the site, but gives results without ranking them or providing stats on the users using them, number of times used, or estimated reach.  Additionally, they ask us to manually suggest related tags.

My problem with this is that it begs people to game their tags by linking them with well-tracked hashtags.   TagDef leads us to suggest “related” hashtags after we define or search for the definition of a hashtag.  For TagDef as well, it assumes that we believe that hashtags = Twitter hashtags.

Hashonomy.com - provides related hashtags (as with most tools, only for Twitter), but without stats on the number of times each have been used.  Data refreshes very infrequently, making stats unreliable.  For example, for the hashtag #SEM, after authorizing my Twitter account for the site (as I do with RiteTag, Hashtracking and other tag-search tools), I am told that the last entry for #SEM was a week ago.  I do not see who used it, or in what context.  RiteTag gives me up-to-the-minute tweets containing #SEM, shows the number of times accounts have used the tag, and for related tags, rather than listing them, they are ranked and with stats that help me decide if they are both relevant and likely to reach beyond my followers:

RiteTag.com (disclaimer: I am the founder) – give ritetag a topic and ritetag suggests hashtags that have gone out with your query word(s).  If Tag search doesn’t give you Reports or Tag sets that help, you can order your own Reports – with your query term(s) and noting any/all of the nine social networks that RiteTag analyzes hashtag data for.

How to put RiteTag and hashtags for Twitter marketing to the test:

RiteTag will show you what you get for your tagging trouble

Testing continues, as shown in the video above, and while we build our own system for tracking, here is what we are evaluating:

1. Clicks on links in tweets: tweets without hashtags vs the same tweets with Ritetag-optimized hashtags
2. Retweets of tweets without tags vs the same tweets with RiteTag hashtags
3. Favorites of tweets without tags vs the same tweets with RiteTag hashtags

Tracking tweets shared with unique bit.ly tiny URLs for the stats, I am tweeting with RiteTag-suggested hashtags from @OsakaTalk (420 followers / 44 Klout) and without tags from @SaulSay (4,839 followers / 47 Klout) so that the account with greater interaction (higher Klout) and 12 times the followers of @OsakaTalk has “a fighting chance” against the attention and “reaching beyond followers” that the @OsakaTalk is enjoying in this experiment.

Would you like us to see what we can do with hashtags to drive more people to your blog – or page of any kind?

Comment with a tweet, including a (non-malicious) URL and message.  Include “via @[yourtwitteraccount]” so you can see the results yourself.  If your tweet is selected, we’ll let you know.

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How to decide how you will use hashtags for search optimization

The following image was found in “nickable assets” on the London Strategy Unit site:

I speak with people every day on getting things done with hashtag marketing

Let me save you a little time, since I know how the majority of low-budget marketing campaigns will maneuver through that maze

This is what you are telling me about how you are thinking to use hashtags for marketing:

1. You want to use hashtags to broaden the reach of your brand through tweets and social media account updates.
2. People are not already using your hashtags.
3. You are not going to pay to promote the tags.
4. There is no reason to believe that the hashtags you will use will catch on – on their own.
5. You do not have the finances to incentivise use of your hashtags.
6. You will create brief but easily understood tags which will be of interest to those who are not already following you.
7. Your hashtags will either be used with event/news-cenetered major hashtags (and thus be of short-term value) or…

You need to understand that becoming known and tracked from your hashtags will require consistent use, over the long-term.

Are you ready to try guerrila hashtag marketing?

If you remember nothing else, as the Rob Bass song went, it takes two to make a thing go right.  (He was rapping about hashtags, no doubt.)

Use your business, event, or campaign hashtag together with a relevant major hashtag: it takes the two, together, to make a tag get followed.  Order RiteTag reports for the networks you share updates/images/presentations/videos/ebay offers to, and think like your audience for terms to order reports for.  For example, if I am talking on hashtag optimization, I look at my RiteTag Report for this query (public – just click on that to open it; you don’t even need to register for RiteTag to see and use this interactive report), tick boxes  under Twitter and Googleplus for tags with long pink lines – indicating the reach of the tags, relative to other that have come up with my query over a long period of time, and decide on the following hastags to use with #ritetag.  They are hashtags that are used far more than #ritetag, as I see in the RiteTag report, and relevant to my post, so I will use them with #ritetag – to introduce our tag to more people:

 #channelbranding #hashtag #hashtags

Three hashtags is a lot to use with my content and also our tag, #ritetag, in Twitter, but in Googleplus, where I have plenty of text space for posts, I can do that unobtrusively; I will keep the tags below my content, and use all of these and also #ritetag.

In Twitter, I may integrate tagged word in the content, as I did here:

Are you doing what it takes to reach beyond your followers?

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“Star tag” was a proposed way for users to assign a numerical rating to their posts in social networks.   The star tag was to be prefixed with the asterisk “*” and given a numerical value of 0 through 9 based on a user’s rating.  This is similar in concept to the rating systems used for Yelp, Yahoo Answers, Quora or Amazon, but would be used in topic hashtag-capable networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Googleplus when discussing any subject or location.  For example:

Just tried  #ritetag, a hashtag thingee *3

It was proposed  in 2009 at Gnomedex, a technology conference hosted by the staff of Chris Pirillo’s Lockergnome LLC, as a further school of taxonomy, but it did not prove popular and was not adopted by any substantial amount of Twitter users or applications.  I think it had merit, but just didn’t go over.  Twitter and other social networks with topic hashtags are still changing, so it may be a thing we’ll see in time.

TagDef, RiteTag and hashtags for search optimization

A similar idea has been initiated by TagDef, in which people nominate hashtags and describe them, upvote their meaningfulness.  We may do something similar with the hashtags that come up as related to a query (custom report order) in RiteTag.

Do you know tag stars – those getting real things done with hashtags?

Hashtags can be used for organizing content, and they can be used to get your initiative, campaign, event or even thought leadership seen.  People tell me that tweetchats, organized by those using a tag like #smmanners or #toolschat, #blogchat, are great for networking.

Other important things to do with hashtags  include:

• organizing your own posts, so you can find them later, by topics (hashtags)
• discovering who is focused on an agenda – from the hashtags they use, and how often
• creating a brand identity through a one word description of what you should be known for 

I would love to hear stories of what people are doing to get real effects, such as #ows (“Occupy Wall Street”) did.  Please tell me in comments, or let’s discuss cases you know of, in Googleplus.  Connect from http://iplus.im/saul and message me to “hangout” and talk on this.

Here is a quick video I did on Using the “elearning” RiteTag Report – to curate hashtags with reach and relevance

Do you have a mission, a project, an event, or a brand, with which you want to reach beyond your followers?

Have you used the ultimate hashtag search and dominate tool yet – RiteTag?

I’d love to hear your story.

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Internet Startup Bootstrappers: we build internet startups & we own them

(For a while longer, at least)

When a great new addition to the Bootstrappers G+ Community, Joseph Anderson who suggested, “…an introduce yourself section for this group? I think it would help ease people into the community.”

I want to get people knowing each other, their ideas, and then talking with each other.  I thus replied:

Here’s my self-introductory video:

Bootstrappers: we build internet startups & we own them

I totally forgot to mention that I started the Bootstrappers community to do what IdeasWatch also does: bring people together on startup ideas, improve them, build team, and build inventive apps, games and social media tools.  Hardware too, maybe?  That’ll take better .py than mine.  (I have other superpowers, fortunately.)

Do you have something to bring to a team?  Get with us in the Bootstrappers G+ Community.

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