Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

The simplicity of Twitter is what helped make it one of the most popular and powerful online social media sites today. If used well, Twitter can be an effective and invaluable marketing tool that will let you reach a vast audience of potential customers and clients. The 140-character limit imposed on tweets forces your messages to be concise, and in this media-saturated culture, that is exactly the type of easily digestible format that people crave. Here are 5 tips for taking advantage of Twitter in your marketing strategies.

1. Enhance the reach of your business blog
The more popular your company’s blog becomes, the higher its standing will be in search engine results, and thus the more exposure your brand name will get to potential customers. Twitter provides a great way of increasing your blog’s reach. Use twitter feed to give your followers immediate access to your main blog page.

2.  Engage your audience in conversation
Engaging members of your target audience in conversation is one the key pillars of a good marketing campaign. It’s not enough just to shout your slogan at them. You have to see what they have to say so that you can deliver your message in more effective and unique ways. To see what other people are saying and to respond to their tweets, use TweetGrid and TweetDeck. Look for relevant topics and add your two cents to the conversation.

3. Valuable, concise tweets
The 140-character limit that’s at the center of Twitter’s success forces you to really think carefully about your tweets. The trick to gaining a good following is to put out immediately valuable messages that are concise and compelling. This is what will get you new followers and retweets.

4. Keep up on your market’s trends
One of the key elements of good marketing is to know what’s going on in your industry. Twitter Search and Monitter makes it easy to look up important industry topics and see what the market is currently leaning towards.

5. Build interest groups
By creating compelling interests groups you can initiate discussion about specific industry topics that are relevant to your marketing campaign. Building interest groups on Twitter is easy and is a great way to generate followers and buzz.

For more internet marketing information and SEM services please visit, http://www.bestrank.com, a Portland SEO agency  http://www.bestrank.com/services/local-seo/portland-seo 

Guest Post by: Ryan Frank  a 23 year writer and blogger living in San Diego, CA.  Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/5-marketing-tips-for-twitter-1283390.html

Everyone is talking about Twitter.

Some of us are using Twitter.

Does anyone know why?

OK I admit it – I signed up for Twitter and didn’t really know why…. but I am slowly beginning to see the value of it.

Facebook and MySpace have experienced massive growth over the last few years and are widely known as effective “friend management” tools.  To be frank, email has become a pain for a lot of personal and commercial users.  The amount of spam received means that you can spend valuable time every day just sorting through and deleting emails that are trying to sell you watches, pills and poker.

If you elect to invest in an elaborate spam filter then the chances are you still continue to receive some spam.  It’s a bit like getting a flu jab – you still get flu but your arm doesn’t.

On the other side of the coin the filter is “so good” you don’t get legitimate email that was intended for you.  I have personally received email from the person sitting in the office down the corridor marked as SPAM.

Facebook and MySpace eliminate this communication nightmare.  The concept is simple.  I invite you as a friend.  You say yes.  You get my messages.  If we decide we don’t want to be friends we don’t get each other’s messages.

Facebook has presented great advertising opportunities.  Facebook knows your age and habits (well some of them, so don’t panic) so it knows what sort of adverts to throw up on the page you are looking at.  This can be tedious.

Facebook is viewed by some as a little too revealing.  I have people who have asked me to be friends on Facebook who blank me when I see them in the veg aisle in the Co-Op.  If I let you be my friend you can, at your leisure, see every picture that I have posted of me on holiday, at a party, wedding reception – anywhere.  I find this all a bit too much and a little disturbing.  If I came home and found someone in my living room that I vaguely knew who had spread out all of my photo albums on the floor and was poring over them I don’t think I would find it acceptable if they said “…but I thought we were friends.”

Twitter is a de-cluttered version of Facebook and MySpace without all the intrusive bits.  The messages on Twitter or “tweets” are very short (140 characters including spaces) as they are designed to be received as SMS text messages.

You can follow someone on Twitter or be a follower.  If you want to follow celebrities then it’s easy to follow someone like Jimmy Carr and receive all their tweets.  However, this does have commercial applications also.  Using Twitter I can keep clients who choose to follow me up to date with changes in the marketplace.

I see my Twitter followers as my own mini “swarm” that I intend to grow.  My followers will belong to other swarms and so these swarms will be exposed to my Tweets.  This means I can potentially reach a huge marketplace of people who I have never rubbed shoulders with.

This article was written by David Clarke, an internet marketing consultant and a partner at DBS who offer UK 0845 numbers and web design in Lincoln and related telecommunication / internet services.  Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/twitter-an-introduction-in-laymans-terms-894038.html

It’s a Blog New World.  Social media has changed how we communicate. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger.com and dozens of other social media sites have given us a new way to communicate with friends and business colleagues.  They have also given us a new vocabulary.  We now “blog” and “tweet” and “text”.  We read “blooks” and “microblogs” and are concerned about “trackbacks.”

But most importantly, social media has given us a new set of communication rules.  And if you are a business leader, knowing the ins and outs of social media communication can be critical to your online reputation and your business presence.  

Here are eight guidelines executives might think about when communicating in this brave new social media world.

1.  Think Eternity. When writing a blog, tweeting, or commenting on any social site, the first thought in your head should be, “These words are permanent.”  Will you be proud to see the comments you wrote, let’s say twenty years from now?  Comments associated with your name can advance or tarnish your online reputation, so write with an eye to your future.

2.  Think Like Aretha Franklin.  Remember her famous song, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”?   No matter what social media you engage with, offering up respectful comments, recognizing and calling-out the efforts of others, and keeping a collaborative mindset will serve you well.  It’s also one of the most important brand traits for a business leader.

3.  Think Like Twitter.  Few people have the time or inclination to read rambling and lengthy articles or comments.  Twitter’s micro blogging 140-character limit forces us to be crisp and focused.  No matter what the venue, concise and to-the-point writing will help gain any business leader an audience.

4.  Think Like the Audience.  What do THEY want to read?  What are THEIR likes and needs?  Make your comments and writing more about your readers than about you.  That’s not to say you should keep your opinion in check, just make your opinion relevant and topical for readers.

5.  Think Story.  People all over the world love narratives.  You can never underestimate the power of a good story, no matter how long or short it is.  When commenting and especially when blogging, add stories, relevant business examples, and real-life people to make your writing come alive.

6.  Think With Your Ears.  Listen to the crowd.  Don’t just jump in and write to LinkedIn colleagues or respond to a blog post.  Really listen to the collective voice first.  Maybe read a post more than once before you respond, or review a few of the blogger’s key words.  By really listening, you’ll know how to more effectively frame your comments—you’ll add more value and be more a part of the social fabric.

7.  Think of the Venue.  Each social site has its own conventions and ways of doing things.  Spend some time checking-out the lay of the land before you land your comments on a page.  Conventions for Twitter are vastly different from those for Facebook or your corporate blog.  Think, “Editorial Guidelines” so your comments will be in keeping with the look, feel and flow of the social site you’re writing for.

8.  Think Twice Before You Tweet.  Does the world really care that you are going off to the slopes now, or meeting Mr. X for lunch, or taste-testing a new microbrew?  As a business leader, are you advancing compelling business ideas?  The types of comments that might be relevant to your favs or family might NOT be relevant to the corporate world.  If it’s not of value to the collective business crowd, think twice before posting.

Bottom-line, the social media is not like the American Wild West.  There are rules, conventions, etiquette and best practices.  And as a business leader, following or not following those guidelines can impact your executive brand.

Thinking about social media conventions before you jump in can make the experience a better one for both you and your readers.

Guest Post by : Loraine Antrim, co-founding partner of Core Ideas Communication, a PR and marketing communications firm serving corporate clients around the globe. We specialize in strategy, message & content development, media/analyst training and leadership development. Find us on the web at www.coreideas.com.  Loraine’s blog on executive presence can be found at: http://thecxomindset.blogspot.com/  Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/social-media-best-practices-for-executives-890082.html

There’s a new kid in town and his name is Twitter, and if you don’t know what Twitter is you most certainly need to find out. And that is my purpose here today. I would like to inform you about what could be the next most powerful marketing tool to come into the hands of anyone that is trying to do internet marketing. Some say it could have a bigger impact on internet marketing, then having a mailing list. As any good marketer will tell you if you don’t have a list your chances of making money online are very unlikely. I would like to add to that by saying if you don’t Twitter your at a great disadvantage in the market place.

The reason I say this, is because Twitter is a new type of web2 social site that allows there members to keep in touch with one another, by allowing you to post short messages (tweets) on your Twitter account about what you’re doing. This allows those people that choose to follow you to be able to see your messages (tweets).

Now to give you a bit of an idea how Twitter could be a very powerful medium for you marketing efforts. If you decide to have your Twitter account devoted to a particular niche, for example the diet food niche with people that might be interested in diet food and diet recipes and related information. These people would likely want to follow your tweets because they liked what you have to say and what you might have to offer.

When you make a tweet on your Twitter account you are allowed to place links in your tweets, to guide your followers to some more information for your niche. So when you start your twitter account you try to get only followers that are interested in what your niche is about. This way your followers are targeted to the market you are promoting. This can lead to very high click through rate on any links in your tweets.

One way you can attract followers is to follow other people that are in niches related to yours. Like in the case of our example “diet food”, we could follow those people that are into dieting or people looking for diet recipes. Most times when you follow someone on twitter they do you the same in return by following you back. Now you can’t get to wild with this business of following people. You want to start out with only following a dozen or so a day. You want to have a link on your webpage’s and in your signatures for your emails and forum activities, so those people can follow your tweets on twitter as well.

Now if you look at the big picture you can sort of look at twitter as building a mailing list of very targeted subscribers, but with some very nice differences. For one thing you don’t have to worry if your message is making it through to your subscriber’s inbox. You don’t have to have double opt-ins; hence it is easy to acquire subscribers (followers). You don’t have to worry about spam complaints, and Twitter is free so you don’t need an autoresponder.

Want some marketing leverage on the internet try the power of Twitter. Some say Barack Obama won the election because he was and is a Twitter. I’m inclined to agree with that statement.

Now Twitter me this, if you had two or three hundred targeted Twitters following your tweets, with a click through rates ranging from 3% to 10%, do you think you might make some money. I’m guessing a resounding yes.

Click the link and you can follow me on Twitter.
To learn more about using Twitter for your internet marketing come and visit us at. Twitter and get the latest and the best free information as well as e-books on internet marketing.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/twitter-me-this-881333.html

One big mistake people make is to make the tell Twitter that you’ve made a new blog post – this does not engage your audience in the discussion.  So instead of telling them all the time, why not

• ASK Your Twitter Audience For Their Opinion On A Topic You’ve Covered

I recently opened a discussion about whether it was possible for a 50 year-old grandad to sell successfully to the hippychick teen prom queen.  I got some very interesting posts I can tell you, including two from widely respected “gurus”.

• Alert Your Twitter Followers To heated Blog Debates

Post your blog posts to Twitter - especially when a specific post has generated several remarks.  If you alert your Twitter followers to a heated debate on your blog, you will get more traffic to it!

• Ask Your Twitter Followers To Share Their Experiences 

Encourage people who follow you on any and all social networks to participate on your blog by asking them to share their experiences.  Generally people love to talk about themselves so this is a good way to get them to visit your blog.   

• Make Sure You’re Moving Along The Twitter Experience Curve

I came across this slide presentation, which I think is worth sharing!

Please feel free to comment on your Twitter experiences.

Twitter is widely regarded as “the next big thing” in social marketing “Must Dos” and everyone is saying that the way forward is to have a huge following on Twitter… 

Well here’s a site that shows you a way of getting thousands of new followers on twitter, virally.

Check it out http://tinyurl.com/ald76r

It’s a simple concept, you retweet a message and start following the 6 people in front of you in the system.

A message posted on your twitter will automatically be formated with your unique link so that people following will follow you in position 1 to use the system themselves.  Their new followers will also follow you in position 2 and so on for five levels deep. 

Importantly for me, it’s totally “white hat”, 100% free and simple to set up.  All of this means that it’s likely to be followed up by a lot of people – and increase your following by hundreds if not thousands of people you would never had had the opportunity to meet.  Even the die-hard skeptics will realise that at least some of these will be responsive to your tweets.

This is brand new, so you’ll benefit if you are an early adopter.  I just started using it, so I expect to see a hike in my “follower” stats anytime soon!  Why not see if it’s for you?

First a confession – I am a relative newbie on Twitter.  I’ve only been tweeting about twelve weeks but it’s long enough to realise that some people (most people?) just don’t “get” social media like Twitter.

I decided to find out just how to use this red hot social medium properly.  I’ve done a bit of research and compiled my own list of Social Media Do’s and Don’ts. This is not intended to be exhaustive, so please feel free to comment!

DOs

• Do keep it personal: Twitter is all about one-to-one contact so posts should be sociable.  Having said that, one-on-one DM Tweets work best if you actually want to talk to someone.
• Do use your own name: Although if people know your website really well, using your website name on social media sites might make people more likely to follow you (NB - there is an argument that Google gives greater link-love if it continually sees the name of your website on social media sites like Twitter).
• Do balance personal tweets and dialogues with others with content posts
• Do be unique, contraversial, opinionated, noteworthy – great qualities on social media sites. 
• Do use your personality to get noticed.
• Do become a Real Member of the Social Media community - a resource, provide value, answer questions, retweet others useful posts.
• Do spend REAL TIME developing your social media profile – TweetLater is useful but Tweeting NOW is essential. 
• Do take time to build a loyal following – social media moves quickly but people take time to trust you.
• Do follow People – you’ll get more friends in a year by being interested in them than in a lifetime trying to get them interested in you
• Do engage in conversations
• Do take time to BUILD Relationships - this will NOT “happen” overnight
• Do syndicate your RSS feed across all social media platforms
• Do keep control – 10:10:10 rule – 10 mins three times a day only
• Do create an attractive, unique and professional profile – use the Twitter background to get more unique information about yourself out there
• Do upload an avatar/picture – Many people do not follow people using the default avatar
• Do build brand recognitions by using the SAME avatar for each social media service
• Do take time to find out which social media platform your target niche uses most
• Do learn the unwritten laws of the social media community
• Do be interesting – if you’re funny great.  If you’re not, be yourself.

DON’Ts

• Don’t hard sell
• Don’t publish press releases to the exclusion of all else
• Don’t over-automate – social media is about being sociable
• Don’t get verbal diahorrhea
• Don’t stalk – if the gurus don’t want to talk to you, hassling them across every social media site will NOT help your cause.

Well, that’s my two cent’s worth! Feel free to follow me on Twitter!  And feel free to comment!  Over to you!

OK – I’ve wanted to post about Twitter for a while but to be honest, I’ve been too busy tweeting! 

It took me a while to actually join Twitter – largely because I thought it was one of those social sites that was mostly populated by teens with loads of time to have a social life!  However, on one of Alex Jeffrey’s coaching modules before Christmas, he said it was vital to have a presence on Twitter.  And as I bought into his coaching program to learn, I decided to take some time to ”get” Twitter.

The facts are: - 

• If you’re not online on social platforms, you’re missing out on a huge percentage of potential subscribers/customers/affiliates/jv partners ie your market.
• But it’s not good enough to **just** be on these social platforms, you need to build a presence, a following, establish a “brand”
• And that means you need to understand the strategic marketing implications of these social platforms at the deepest level.

But the mistake a lot of people made in the beginning of social media marketing, myself included, was assuming that we needed to belong to vast numbers of communities in order to be visible to the bulk of our niche markets.  Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others – all of which needed to be updated regularly was very time consuming.  After all, it isn’t possible to be on these sites for a even one hour a day each and still have time to build your business.  (Hint: you don’t have to be – use your RSS feed not your blog URL - but that’s for another post)

But all this isn’t necessary it seems.  Serious internet marketers have now largely left MySpace, and also to an extent, Facebook.  And as YouTube is now the third most surfed site (after Yahoo and Google) and Twitter is the “next big thing” these are the two “biggies” that you MUST be seen to be on if you are going to make it big online.  

And “big” is whatever you need it to be in your niche to make a living off your blog. 

So the number of social sites you work with daily regularly should be fewer in 2009 than previously, but your presence on them, your “brand online” should be much more significant. Your blog should be “YOU” online and your brand should be syndicated to Twitter (and Facebook – according to Maria Andros, and who am I to argue?) - to keep your followers “fresh”.

Not spreading yourself so thinly, but engaging in an online community much more deeply, means that you connect with people more significantly.  Your tweets are more likely to get retweeted and when they do, your traffic will go viral.  It really spreads.

But make sure you are actually present on Twitter at least part of every day.  By this I mean you need to actually **answer** Tweets rather than posting to Twitter only through TweetMyBlog – or exclusively automating your account using TweetLater.  Both of these are plug-ins I highly recommend, and which should definitely should be part of your Web 2.0 arsenal – but don’t forget that the power of Twitter is as a SOCIAL relationship building site.  That means you need to be there – at least sometimes. 

And you must be genuine - help first, receive later, and you’ll not go far wrong.  And don’t be shy to tweet about everyday life stuff.  It helps people connect with you.  And when they connect, they begin to trust you.  Which means that even if you don’t have your own product to sell, you’ll be in a much stronger position to be able to recommend affiliate products, because you’ll be trusted! 

As you progress, you will find people finding you in the most unusual ways and becoming avid fans, customers and evangelists for your “brand”.  So when you find someone you truly connect with, click to see who they’re following… and then follow their followers.  This gives you instant access to people who may be interested in what you’ve got to say, but whom you may not have come across otherwise.

So Twitter is not just the latest novelty to stay in touch with friends – it is actually the ”next big thing” marketing wise.  It is strategically a very powerful tool for generating more traffic to your blog.  Twitter is a cutting edge marketing tool.

Get on it!  Get Tweeting and start a following!  Follow me, I’m SusanOT.  Check my Tweet Counter and see how I’m building my following! 

Tweet you on Twitter!