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15 Jan 2012

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The First Rusic Hack Day was amazing

by Mark P.

Yesterday was the first Rusic Hackday. It was awesome. Totally awesome. The skills that we saw blew our minds, with themes being created that we did even think were possible.

The £250 was split up between the designers as “Best use of Rusic”, “Best Design” and “Closest to complete”… Eveybody that attended voted, and by the end of the day there were a few friends of Rusic making it a little more interesting in the voting process (kindly sponsored IamKeir Inc.). Judging by the effort by all involved it wasn’t about the money though!

If you want to come to the next event please sign up at our Meetup page.

And the entries were:

In no particular order and with links to Twitter and the live application itself. It’s worth stressing that all of these applications were created from scratch in about four – five hours with Rusic. Some aren’t quite finished, but they’re not far off. Expect to see more of these themes…

@iamkeir – Rusicursive

Showing off the Websnappr'd entries to the competition

A really interesting theme that didn’t quite get where it needed to :) Essentially you add a website and it pulls back the web page as an image and adds it into Rusic. Very cool and with a bit more work it could be part of an interesting theme for building on in the future. As Keir is a friend of Rusic he wasn’t allowed to to enter the competition. (Don’t ask about the name)

@daleanthony - Best Recipes

Lovely design and use of Masonry

A really simple and beautifully designed theme built with Masonry. Add recipes and share them. Perfect for a cookery site. Dale is part of the Rusic team and built all of the deafult themes in Rusic, so doesn’t qualify for a prize.

@jamesGuest – Full English Breakfast

I want that breakfast

Building on one of the default themes, James after having to re-install pretty much everything in his laptop, spent a few hours coming up with this. Submit Cafes, their breakfasts and their location to find the best fry up in the UK. Combine this with the iPhone SDK and this is one awesome idea, anywhere you go you can find the nearest decent cafe. Seriously ESSENTIAL. Probably the best commercial idea of the day.

@tholder – Mountain biking locations

Lovely Google map integration

A really nifty geo based app for plotting the best mountain bike trails. Good integration with google maps and another app crying out for the iPhone SDK. While Tom would’ve liked some cash he’s part of Rusic…

@adambu1988 – 360k

A beautiful code snippet in Rusic

Adam’s tag line of “Three hundred and sixty thousand pixels & 360kb to do something awesome with…” is pretty cool. Reminiscent of the demo scene popular “way back when”…

This is one of the themes that blew us away. Adam has managed to make a “code gallery”. Coders paste in their code snippet and then other people vote on it. Slick interface, great idea and slick implementation. Hard to believe this was created in an afternoon.

@jegtnes and @mark_js – Blah Blah

Liking of Comments.

These two guys, students at UWE performed a minor miracle. I’m still not sure how they did what they did… Essentially they found a way to add “like” states to comments. This is not a core feature of Rusic, it may be one day, but right now it isn’t. Somehow they got it to work. Awesome. Really.

@scottifydotcom – FootoFan

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting!

I think this goes down as another really good commercial idea for an application, especially combined with the iPhone SDK. Essentially when you’re at the football you submit the match, and then photos and comments as you’re watching the game. I suspect this theme needs the most extra work as it needs some clever implemenation tricks to get it rocking… although Rusic that won’t take long.

@benjaminReid – Eye Bomb

The lovely action hover bar

A beautifully designed theme just for submitting pictures of inanimate objects with eyes on. :) Beautiful action menu appearing over the main image and a nice simple navigation. Worth mentioning the cool Google maps integration here.

A worthy mention goes to Roy that completely stripped and one of the default themes of CSS and javascript and rebuilt it semantically as HTML5. I can’t find your Twitter address or theme Roy. Where are you Roy?

And the winners were:

Best Design - Eye Bomb and 360k.

Best Idea - 360k

We didin’t do the “Nearest to complete” prize in try end as the guys that used the default themes were the closest to completion which we thought wasn’t on in the end. ;) So instead:

Generally Cool - Footo and Blah Blah

Overall a really awesome day and a testmant to the talent in Bristol. Feed back on Rusic from the guys was really positive, we learnt a lot as well. Thank you so much to everybody that came. Roll on the next one.

Just in case you missed it at the top of this post if you want to come to the next event please sign up at our Meetup page.

23 Aug 2011

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Social media, riots, politicians and humour

by Mark P.

You’ve heard the politicians going on about Twitter and Facebook and the riots? You’d have to be living in a serious hole or must have been on holiday a long time not to have. There’s been a lot said and a lot done.

We recently pitched the government via the Technology Strategy Board for a system to predict where this stuff might happen (better the devil you know!)… They are taking this stuff seriously, there was £600k available to research this “Minority Report” style software and while its not where it needs to be yet, it is not as far off as you might think.

Well now (via a new company) we’ve done the opposite of predicting the future and discovered an interesting twist – humour, however “dark”, plays a large part in social communication and trending. Using control data and then a continuous stream of “chatter” that fits targeted queries, the Churnbar system was “taught” what it should be looking for with minimal human interaction with some interesting results.

To quote Nigel Legg the auth of the post,

Care is needed when using social media to find the instigators of criminal activity. Law enforcement agencies need to determine whether a post is humorous or serious in intent.

For a full explanation read Nigel’s excellent post.

3 Aug 2011

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Custom tweets and Facebook posts from your Rusic account

by Paul

One of the great things about Rusic is it’s really easy to share your actions on the site with your friends. This is all done through your Twitter or Facebook account, and we’ve just finished adding a neat little feature to make this even better.

Soon you’ll be to customise the message it sends out whenever you create a new idea, like an idea or comment on an idea. And not only can you include your own content but you can also give the message some great context too. We’ve made it really simple to drop in tags for things like: the idea’s title, the bucket name, the comment text as well the user performing the action and the idea or bucket owner.

As a quick example, you could setup the twitter post for creating an idea to this:

Hey {{bucket_owner}}, {{idea_owner}} just created an awesome idea

called {{idea}} in the {{bucket}} bucket, have a look here: {{link}}

Now, whenever a user creates an idea, a tweet is posted from them saying (something like):

Hey @joebloggs, @johnsmith just created an awesome idea called

"Some idea" in the "Cool thoughts" bucket, have a look here:

http://cool.rusic.com/cool-thoughts/likes/123

This is all done using an amazing templating engine called liquid which was developed by the guys at Shopify, so hats off to them!

We’ll be rolling this out as a feature on all paid account soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

14 Mar 2011

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Facebook changes – what you need to know

by Sarah Bale

Facebook has made a number of changes to their pages recently and as a small business it is important that you know what these are; what you now need to do differently, and how you can make the most out of them! One of the best sources for Facebook changes, and where we found out about a lot of the below, is Inside Facebook and I would recommend having a look there every now and again if you are not sure about a Facebook change or want to be kept updated.

1. Bye bye FBML hello iFrame apps

We talk a lot about custom tabs and how you can make the most of these. Facebook have recently changed the way developers can create new apps, so whilst previously they were created using static FBML, now developers will need to use iFrame apps. This is not a big deal from a creation perspective, developers will still be able to create custom apps for your Facebook page in iFrame, but what it does mean is that if you have custom pages in Facebook already, then it may be worth your developer transferring them to iFrame at some point. Facebook are still supporting FBML and therefore your apps will not break immediately, but currently it is unknown how long they will support this for. Luckily Facebook appear to have made this easy to do! Also, as of last week, in the interest of privacy, apps must now use POST for Canvas. Again, this is nothing to worry about immediately, but it is definitely worth speaking to your developer about. For more information click here. Luckily, this is stuff that we know all about so if you are struggling to transfer information or are interested in creating tabs you can always contact us.

2. Increase your ‘likes’ – but strategically

Quite often I see emails or messages on Twitter where businesses are offering something in return for a ‘like’ on Facebook. One example was a 10% discount on your first order, another was entry into a prize draw. Both of these were being managed by the company themselves. Now however, you can get someone else to do the work for you! Insto.re is a site that enables you to reward your customers for ‘liking’ your page in a way to suit your business.

Business owners are able to visit the Insto.re site and enter in all the information they like – the reward details, the Facebook page, the name of the store etc. You choose how you would like to structure your rewards and hay presto you are away! If you are a coffee shop for example you may wish to offer a free muffin with every purchase for a ‘like’. This can be a great way to increase awareness and get your ‘like’ figures up! The only thing I would say is, remember what you are trying to achieve by doing this… Do you want to create a loyal community on Facebook who will engage regularly and be loyal to your brand? And will giving away free stuff aid this or just get you loads of fans who just want something for free and do not really care about you? Can you give away something with your brand name on it that people will want to keep but will not cost the earth? Make the most of this but do not jump straight in, think about your strategy.

3. Hooray for useful analytics!

Analytics over the past month has become a LOT more useful on Facebook. As we start to base a large number of online decisions on metrics and data, it was important that Facebook kept up with the trend and gave businesses useful information, and they seem to have done just that. For businesses there is nothing more important than metrics in terms of seeing whether your time on Facebook is really worth it, seeing what further developments could better improve your ROI, and seeing what you desperately need to change. From your insights page (login, click Adverts and pages on the left, then click insights) you can now see real time data about the performance of your Like button and Comments Box, what your most popular websites are, a lot more about the demographics of visitors etc – great news! For more on this click here.

Daily places activities

If yours is a business that people “check-in” to and/or “claim deals” then this might be enough to make you do a little dance. Page insights will now show you a daily places activity so you can see the number of people who checked in or claimed your deal.

4. Photos

Is your photo blurry?

Everyone’s profile photo has now been resized to 180 x 540 so if your image is looking a little blurry it might be worth you re-sizing it accordingly.

Photo Strip

You will probably have noticed that you now have a photo strip across the top of your Facebook page with your most recent photos. Some companies have done some very cool things with their photostrip

For more on how to create a similar photo strip go here. The important thing to remember is that this is one of the first things people look at when they come to your page. Have some photos in there, if it is blank it will not look good. But also make sure they are great photos that tell people a bit about your business and give off the right, engaging, messages. If there are some not so great photos in there, hide them by clicking in the top right of the image, and pull through the ones you want.

5. Tabs

If you have spent time and money on custom made tabs, do not worry. They are still there, just a lot less visible. This just means you need to rethink titles, landing pages and how you can get people to look at them! I.e. posting messages throughout the week to get people looking there. You can reorder your tabs/list as well by pressing more – edit and clicking and dragging. To give you an example, you can see from the below that Coca-Cola have a special ‘Home” page which is also their landing page. The tabs so to speak, are listed are the left hand side. You can see they have ‘House Rules” listed in the top, clearly this is a priority they have moved up the list.

When you click on ‘more’ at the bottom of the list, a large list of other pages comes up (this is just a small section of them!). Each of these taking you somewhere different.

I would strongly recommend looking up some big brands on Facebook and seeing how they do it to learn from. Maybe look at you competitors? Or industry leaders? You will often be able to tell from their engagement levels and comment numbers on their walls compared to yours if they have something worth learning from!

6. Authority to the page!

As a page you can now ‘like’ another page and therefore not just favourite.

You can also post outside your page as your business. For example, if you want to comment on other pages or profiles as your company, you now can – this enables you to take your business on Facebook outside your page which becomes very interesting…

These are just six of some of the bigger changes from Facebook over the last couple of months. Please feel free to add others in using the comments and let us know what you think about the changes! What are you happy/unhappy about? What do you think needs to come next? I know better searching facilities is number one on my list…

Special thanks to scroobl.com for the use of their image

11 Feb 2011

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5 tips for getting the most out of your Facebook page

by Sarah Bale

1. Networking with other platforms

For example, make sure you link to your Facebook page from your website and anywhere else you may be online to enable the maximum amount of people to “like” you and interact with you there.

Would it be appropriate to add your Facebook link to your email signature for example? You would be amazed the number of people who have a Facebook page but do not tell people about it at every appropriate opportunity.

2. Content is king

A great way to keep your audience engaged and ever expanding is to create great content. Content that is interesting, relevant and most importantly that people will “like” and want to share. Use the information you gain from Facebook to help you create useful content. For example, if similar questions keep popping up on your Facebook wall from customers, it is clear that this is an area where people require further knowledge.

If you therefore create a document that fully explains the area that causes confusion, logic would suggest that people would find this very useful if they frequently ask about it. It also shows that you are listening to your customers.

If you are just starting up and do not have too many questions yet, why not look at your competitors’ Facebook pages and see if there are synergies that you can learn from? Are there things that keep coming up on their pages that you could use to your advantage?

3. Other reasons to “like”

If you do not want to become a resource portal and actually this way of engaging does not fit your business, then you need to still give people a reason to “like” you in the first place. This might be through use of a voucher or discount, for example having a Facebook only discount code , although this can be hard to monitor.

Alternatively, you could run simple competitions through Facebook. Competitions are a great way to tell people about you and introduce your brand, but also a great way to build your community. If the prize is good enough then people will be inclined to share the competition with their friends, a percentage of whom will then enter and share with their friends etc etc.

4. Develop custom tabs

Facebook enables you to be able to create your own customer tabs on your page. This can be very beneficial because it means you can have specific pages just for people who “like” you, which enhances a sense of community and also encourages people to “like” you just from a sense of intrigue and curiosity!

Clearly what people see when they do “like” your page needs to be worth it. This could be great content, a competition, a voucher code etc. Custom tabs also enable you to have a chosen landing page so that when people find you, they are not just taken to your wall but instead something a bit different, that tells them about you and why they might want to be a part of your community. As well as this, custom tabs enable you to be creative and show people what’s so special about your brand over competitors.

As we all know, it is no longer good enough to be one of many, you have to stand out from the crowd and be inventive. Facebook tabs may be a great way to do this and show off your USP’s.

5. Join the conversation

In order to get the most out of Facebook, you need to join the conversation and interact with customers. Where you think it is relevant, comment on photos, and videos.

Conduct polls to gain information as research but also engage your audience and show that their opinion matters. Share photos from events and encourage others to tag themselves. If people post on your wall, respond to them. Answer their questions and deal with any issues head on, honestly and publicly. People are often tempted to delete negative customer posts from their wall. Unless the post is categorically untrue, we would strongly advise against this.

Social media brings with it real time, in the moment feedback, and the way you choose to handle this feedback divides those who are in it for the long term and care about building a sustainable community, from those who are thinking too short term to understand the risks. Whatever the feedback, people appreciate honesty and respect people dealing with their issues quickly.

Thanks to Vasjen Katro for the image