Sharing Tnooz and other sociable things

One of the (many) reasons we picked WordPress as our platform for hosting Tnooz back in September 2009 was the ease with which various plug-ins could be, well, plugged-in.

From slotting in an email sign-up service to connect to our provider Mailchimp or integrating our ad-serving system, to the archive and search tools or Akismet spam comment filter, WordPress is a wonderfully easy publishing platform to use.

The system is also relatively easy to code from scratch on – our fab developer, James Cooke of Loopwhole, created the social media sharing sidebar which runs alongside every story we include on Tnooz.

Slotting in the Facebook widget on the right hand side was also also pretty simple.

This week we added a button so readers can share content on social platform-of-the-moment Pinterest.

Whilst we are unsure if Pinterest will be as helpful to Tnooz as perhaps it might be for tourism boards and DMOs, as outlined in this recent brilliant analysis by Troy Thompson, we are keen to experiment with new networks as see whether it helps with our own brand awareness elsewhere on the web and, of course, drive traffic back to the site.

In some cases it works.

Twitter, for example, brings in a healthy chunk of traffic every week (NOWHERE near as much as search, it’s worth adding here), but referrals from Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon are low.

But the really intriguing one for us is still Facebook.

Sometimes a Tnooz story will just, well, fly on Facebook – picked up by a few people, shared on their newsfeeds and then the viral effect kicks in.

The Tnooz Facebook page also serves us reasonably well. We’ve increased the number of fans from a lowly 650 or so in October last year to close to 3,300, we suspect because the Facebook widget was placed on our homepage.

But with the switch to the new Timeline being enforced tomorrow (March 30), brands are having to rethink how they approach their Facebook strategy.

This excellent guide outlines what travel companies should bear in mind as the change kicks in TOMORROW.

Tnooz made the change about four weeks ago and has since seen a lot more interaction with “fans” and Likes against older stories.

But we feel there is more that can be done with the Facebook page.

So beyond having a feed of stories, discussions with fans, posting photos and reminders about events, what else would people like to see on a Facebook page? Any other media brands doing interesting things with their new Timeline pages?

A lot of how Tnooz has evolved has been based on user feedback (we genuinely listen to and read it all), so we’re keen to hear what you all think about Facebook pages.

Related posts:

1. Are social networks killing the art of sharing information?
2. Flixlab wants to revolutionise on-the-road video editing and sharing
3. Carpooling touts the greener and more sociable option for travel