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How To Use Twitter as Your Blog’s Next Launch Pad

October 24, 2011 By Justin 6 Comments

Back in 2007, nobody thought much about the social networking site called Twitter. With only 140 characters (including spaces) to be used for every post, people were reluctant to participate in this community because it seemed restrictive and a bit boring. What can you say with only a few words anyway?

Today the tides have definitely turned for Twitter as it is now one of the heavyweights in the social networking world. Twitter means different things to different people. It is through Twitter’s flexibility and utility that entrepreneurs and bloggers alike can find ways to promote their website.

You might feel more than a little restricted because you only have 140 characters with spaces to work with, but if you know how to play well with words you can definitely use your tweets to improve your site traffic and readership significantly. The best thing about Twitter is that it’s free, so you all need to do is invest your energy and time into making it work for you.

You can be lazy and use the title of your new post as a tweet, but that’s not going to hook your readers in and convince them to click through to your website. Here’s what you can do instead to effectively promote your website through Twitter and keep in touch with your readers:

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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: How To Use Twitter, Twitter Marketing

Twitter Hashtags – Know Everything About Them

September 21, 2011 By Hosting Coupons 1 Comment

Let us start with a clear understanding of the hashtags in twitter.

You may have commonly come across this symbol (#) in the website that has been located against specific topics and comments. This is better known as a hashtag that is used as a means of categorization or classification of topics of discussions. You will come across this symbol commonly when people are responding with their replies and tweets in the website at a time of discussion or trending of topics. This is to bring a relevant category or keyword before the view or notice of the readers. When you are reading the tweets or reply you can see the presence of a word with a hashtag before the same will only represent a category or separate reference. You will definitely find a link on the word and clicking on this will take you to another page related to the topic expressed by the word.

Users are always entrusted with certain levels of discretion when using hashtags in their comments or tweets. A sensible use of relevant hashtags will always be appreciated and there is a maximum of 3 that can be ideally added to a single tweet. If you over stuff the application of using hashtags for your comment it will appear like a Spam and thus will be less believable. It is important that these are attached when you feel they are relevant to the comment or tweet that you are entering. The use of these are also in a bid to bring certain topics of relevance and importance to the notice of those reading your comments – if they wish they can click on the hashtag and get to know more on the same topic.

Another important pre-requisite to the use of hashtags is research. Your application of these can be done only before available keywords and topics that are there for reference. Thus you will need to refer to the list of topics that are available and do some research on the keywords that you intend to speak on and use with hashtags in your tweets. There are plenty of suggestions about the ways and etiquettes of using these appropriately. You can refer to all the suggestive documentation available on the website. Firstly you will have to understand the list of keywords and the topics that are of interest to you; following this you can start tweeting on them and even use the keywords with hashtags in your comments.

You could substantially increase the credibility of your tweets with a sensible and balanced use of hashtags and keywords. There are plenty of these available and so you have to be discerning about an area of interest and the kind of significant comment you can make on the topic of discussion. This will also pique the interest of others in your group and encourage them to refer to the same topics and tweet back to you after they have gone through the similar keywords. This may take some time to understand for which you have to study the website intensely with all forms of helpful suggestions and tips that are also available.

Do you use hashtags when you tweet?

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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: Hashtags, Twitter Marketing

Why Does Social Media Matter To Your Website?

September 15, 2011 By Dr. Fortie 4 Comments

In this day and age, it is a given that your business needs a website. There is a lot of advice out there about improving web sites, SEO optimization and getting a google rank out there.

In addition, there is also a lot of information about leveraging social media. It is all but essential for a business to be on Facebook and Twitter these days. Other, smaller and newer social networks might be of value, for example, a bookseller might want to be on Goodreads. As a writer, I’ve found social media a highly useful tool, if sometimes a little bit distracting.

The problem is that many people forget to integrate the two. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve fallen foul of that myself. You can set up all of this great content, and then you can be active on Facebook, but the two simply do not connect. Here, thus, are some tips for optimizing and integrating social media with your website.

1. Cross posting. It’s not uncommon to use WordPress to generate your website. Well, WordPress is a blog, and there are a number of useful plug-ins that will automatically update your status on Facebook and Twitter when you post. I use Networked Blogs myself, but there are others. This means you don’t have to remember to cross post and provides regular links from Facebook to your site. Of course, this only works if you keep updating your website content, but you should do that anyway to make it fresh.

2. Don’t forget to make it clear that you are on Facebook or Twitter to visitors to your website. Having a link to like your business’ Facebook page is very useful. Once people are there, encourage them to like your page, which will then be recommended to their friends. You could also embed your Twitter feed in your site, there are easy to use widgets that do this.

3. Integrate content between social media and your web site. It improves authenticity if people can tell at a glance that a website and a Facebook page belong to the same person. If you use a photo of yourself as your profile picture, then post the same photo on your web site’s About Us page. If not the same one, then at least one that is clearly the same person. If you would rather not have your mug on Facebook, then set the profile picture to your company logo. I like to use pictures myself, as it makes me more personal and ‘real’ to those who look at my profile. If you have employees with social media profiles, then link them as well…although for this to work, everyone needs to be on board. It’s embarrassing enough when a family member posts something ‘interesting’ to your wall. Oh, and use your name on your About Us page. The royal we is unfriendly. Third person is fine, so is first person, just avoid that hideous first person plural that makes the reader wonder just who wrote this content.

4. Make use of the ability to post photos and videos to Facebook. Oh, and get a Youtube channel if you post videos at all. Youtube is not just a video site, but it’s a social media site in its own way. Avoid disabling comments on videos…even negative ones are publicity and then you have a dialog going. Imbed these videos in your web site and everything will link together. Besides, people like to see a lot of visual content. Even better, if you can get them, are video testimonials from your customers. These are much more effective than dry text and fit with the way we use social media today.

5. Always promote dialogue. Twitter feeds and Facebook widgets do this. So does having a more friendly contact form. I know I hate to see that little list of reasons why you might be contacting a company. Most people do it, but it doesn’t promote dialogue. You need to be willing to devote a little bit of time to talk to your customers. Then they will see you as a person not a huge company. If you’re a larger company, putting a forum or Disqus comments or similar on your site will get interaction going between your customers.

You might think you don’t have time to do any of this, but it’s not that hard to find the time, and it will pay for itself in sales. Besides, most of this is stuff that only takes a few minutes to better leverage what you should be doing anyway.

Why does social media matter to you?

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Filed Under: Business Strategies, Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Video Marketing Tagged With: Social Media Marketing

Do’s and Don’ts in Twitter Marketing

May 16, 2011 By Marcy Gray 4 Comments

With the advent of social networking websites today, we, entrepreneurs, find more ways to reach out to current and potential clients. Other entrepreneurs have already taken advantage of twitter. Why don’t you do the same?

People make mistakes especially in undertaking new endeavors so it is possible that you might commit mishaps in this new age way. Don’t worry. This article lays out a set of do’s and don’ts to help you steer clear from these irreversible mistakes. In addition, your campaign will be more effective if you follow each one of them.

Twitter Marketing DO’s:

1 Communicate with customers in a relatable way – introduce your business in a way that your customers can understand you. Talk to them in an engaging manner so that they become interested in your business.

2 Post a link to your website – this will give your site a chance to get more followers and reach more people so that you can expand your target audience.

3 Build relationships first – many others immediately promote their business as soon as they register on Twitter. However, this is not a good method. It is best if you first build relationships with people. This will increase your popularity and later bring more traffic to your site.

4 Gain your follower’s trust – you can do this by being active on twitter. Be interactive. Join in conversations and answer your customers’ queries. Offer help if any of your customers need help. You can even extend your help to other people aside from your clients to impress the rest of the twitter community.

5 Announce events – make people feel involved and important. Announce company events, sales, or any other happenings.

6 Promote – if you write a blog about your company’s events (or anything related to your company), post a link of this to your twitter page. Or better yet, you can post pictures of your yourself to personalize your tweets on your profile page.

7 Make time – take time in replying to queries and postings that are related or your field of expertise. This will greatly help in reaching out to more potential clients. When clients see that you are good in dealing with people’s needs, they will put a good word out about you to their friends and family.

Twitter Marketing DON’Ts:

1 Start marketing immediately – this is a very common mistake. As I stated before, some entrepreneurs immediately promote their business as soon as they have registered in Twitter. Please remember not to do this. This is a big NO-NO. Doing so will only make you look like you only care about your business and not your followers.

2 Be too serious – doing this will only scare off people. Being professional is good but this will not do wonders for your Twitter marketing. Remember the first DO? Communicate with customers in a friendly way.

3 Just dump marketing messages – again, this will only make future followers think that you don’t genuinely care about them. Answer questions, give assistance, and do everything you need to show that you are human.

4 Spam – don’t post the same messages over and over again. It is very irritating to see the same messages on your wall.

The list of do’s and don’ts in this post are very easy to follow and understand. Forgive me if I sounded like a broken record but you would be amazed on how many twitter users make these social networking mistakes.

Remember, the key here is to make your followers and your potential customers feel that you are sincere in giving your services. I am sure that you can do this right. Good luck!

Which is your favorite twitter marketing Do’s and Don’ts? Leave your comment below.

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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: Twitter Marketing

Increase your Website Traffic for Free with Social Network Sites

May 4, 2011 By Marie Noelle Marineau 22 Comments

Marketing and advertising can be expensive if you are just starting your business, and you might think they are necessary to help you get traffic to your website. There is an alternative way to increase your website traffic and this one is free: use social network sites! I am not only talking about Facebook and Twitter here! There are a lot of different social network sites out there and they can help you increase traffic to your website.

Facebook and Twitter

I’m hoping you already have a Facebook fan page for your business and know how to use it well! If not, you will find all you need in Wayne Kessler’s article: How to Use Facebook for Business: A Complete Guide for A to Z (part 2).

If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, you should set up one right away. Twitter is great to develop your network and to attract people to your webpage but you should follow some simple rules!

First of all, if your Twitter account is for business, don’t get TOO personal… don’t share what you ate last night with your followers, they don’t really care. Second of all, always answer to @Mentions. If someone is taking the time to talk to you directly, that’s the least you should do! Finally, like I said, Twitter is great to attract people on your webpage but don’t spam your followers with links! If the only things you tweet are links to your own webpage, you might lose your followers… You should read Aaron Zitzer article 7 Essential Marketing Rules for Twitter if you want to learn more about Twitter.

Social bookmarking on Social Network Sites

Now that you have accounts on the most popular social network sites, you should think about some other sites that are good for your business: like social bookmarking websites. Social bookmarking websites are not for networking like Facebook and Twitter. They are mostly used to generate new traffic and to build back links to your website, which help for your site’s ranking on search engine. There are several bookmarking websites but you should concentrate on the popular ones: Digg.com, Delicious.com and Stumbleupon.com.

Once you have created your account on those sites, you are ready to share links that are leading to your website. The social bookmarking pages are more efficient if you have a blog (or if you update/change your website content often) because in that case, you can share every new post and use more specific keywords for each of them, depending on their topic.

If you post a new article every 2 or 3 days on your website, social bookmarking will work great for you!

Digg.com and Delicious.com

Digg and Delicious are very similar. They work the same way: you enter the URL you want to bookmark and this URL will be displayed on a main page where all the new bookmarks are. Then other users can vote for your link if they like it.If they do, your link will become popular on the site. Even if people don’t really vote for your link, some of them will click on it for sure. Just make sure you tagged the right keywords!

Stumbleupon.com

Stumbleupon is a little bit different. You still share a link and people are voting for it but when you click on Stumble Your Interest, you see actual websites. So when you submit your URL, you are sure your website will be displayed on some people’s computer screen! If you have a great design and killer content, you’ll easily win some new followers! Stumbleupon is also quite fun and addictive!

Don’t forget that building a strong traffic to your website can take some time. However, if you follow those tips, you will start notice a difference within a month… or 2 weeks if you post everyday!

Which is your favorite of all the Social Network Sites? Leave your comment below..

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Filed Under: Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing Tagged With: social media, Social Network Sites, website traffic

5 Great Ways to Promote Your Business on Social Media

April 7, 2011 By JJ Walker 4 Comments

Businesses have been increasingly using Social Media to promote their products and services.

Rather than spending so much money on advertisements through search engines, they are using the benefits of Social Media to gain more hits to their website and potentially more customers. This ultimately leads to an increase in revenue and overall success of the business. However, in order to get this kind of result for your business, you should know the best ways to promote your business using Social Media.

1. Facebook Advertising

Facebook is the leading social networking site and has brought Social Media to a whole new level. The wonderful thing about Facebook is that they have a special advertising feature that targets ads to specific audiences. If your business only relates to people ages 18 to 24, you can target your ads to only that age group. This goes for any kind of audience specification you have. Facebook has over 500 million users, so you are bound to reach a lot of people this way.

2. Create a Facebook Group

Having a Facebook group is a great way to really promote your services or products. When a customer enjoys your services and becomes a member of your business’s group, they can leave positive comments on the group page. This can only help your business. You can also send a mass message to every member of the group to let them know about discounts, sales that are going on, and newly released products.

3. Create Facebook Notes

Facebook has a feature where you can create a note and tag people in it. You can choose exactly who you would like to tag in the note and it will then show up on their Facebook wall. This is a great way to promote your business when you have something lengthy to say, when you want to target the note to certain people, such as previous customers, or when you want people to be able to comment on what you have to say.

4. Create a Twitter Account

Twitter has also become a popular social networking site and is used by nearly every established business. On Twitter, you can update your status by letting people know about your special services, updates about your business, current sales and discounts, and anything else you’d like to promote. Those who are following you on Twitter will see your updates on their page. If you keep your account public, anyone who comes across your account will be able to see your updates.

5. Add a Blog to Your Website

Your business website should look professional, but you should also be able to interact with your customers on a more personal level. Using Social Media in the form of a blog can make this possible. When you have a product or service you would like to promote, create a blog post about it. This allows new and existing customers to comment on it and give you feedback right on your website.

The use of Social Media is becoming one of the best ways to promote a business in today’s world. So many people use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter that your business may be at a disadvantage if you don’t use it. With these 5 great ways to promote your business on Social Media, you could be on your way to bringing back a substantial amount of revenue for your business.

Do you use Social Media to communicate with your customers? Leave a comment below..

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Filed Under: Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing Tagged With: facebook, Twitter

How to Use Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to Market Your Business

February 23, 2011 By Alex Simmonds 1 Comment

So you run your own business and you’ve successfully got your website up and running. You’ve tweaked the content for SEO and you’ve started working on back links to improve your site ranking. What else can you do to improve your online presence? The next step you need to take is to explore that brave new world of social networking and use Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to market your business and find new clients. In this article we’ll look at a couple of ways to get the best out of these tools.

Facebook:
In the last few years businesses have woken up to the advantages of using Facebook to interact with their customers and contributing to an online community to increase brand awareness, without overtly broadcasting promotional advertising. The first step obviously is to create a Facebook Fan Page in order to connect with communities, clients and potential customers. To do this the page needs to be socially active and offer enough to recruit new fans. This can be done by constantly creating fresh content, posting updates and promotions as well as new photos and by hosting events online. Add links to your business blog on your Facebook page, accept all friends requests and reach out yourself to everyone you know from friends, family, acquaintances and people you meet at business events.

Manage and Automate Twitter in 5 Minutes a Day – The 5 Best Tools and Strategies

January 28, 2011 By Zachary Smith

Do you want to know the fastest way to get more Twitter followers and how to Twitter your strategies automatically? Here is how to build a highly targeted list of real people and how to Twitter automatically including the process of targeting, following, setting up automated alerts whenever someone mentions you, and the best Twitter tools to organize and manage Twitter followers.

1. Truetwit.com is a great way to automate following real people. One of the problems with Twitter is the fact that there are a multitude of spammers using fake Twitter bot (robot) accounts. If you want to get some of the best Twitter followers, you need to sign up for Truetwit which is a free service. Many Truetwit users require Truetwit validation or they will not follow you. These are the type of people I want to follow me. So I signed up, verified that I was a human, and I set my account to auto-follow all Truetwit accounts that followed me.

2. Do you want to receive a quick update when anyone @ mentions you on Twitter? Just sign up at Twistra.com and they will send you an email whenever anyone mentions you.

3. TwitterCounter.com is one of the best Twitter tools to see who the most influential Twitter users are. The default view shows the top users by total Twitter Followers but you can sort by the number they are following and total tweets. You can look up your own Twitter Stats and global follower rank. Rank is the total number of Twitter followers against all active Twitter users as wells as track growth of your account and make your own Twitter count widget for your blog. I want to discuss one very practical discovery I made with this site.

When I first started using Twitter, I used this site to find some of the most influential Twitter Business users by follower to see how they use Twitter for business so I would know how to Twitter like them. What I found is that most of the business users with the highest follower count were quite famous and did not build their following through social networking expertise. They already had a huge following from their books, email list, RSS feed, etc that they just transferred over to their Twitter account. The one takeaway I did see was that these business celebrities were very active on Twitter. If you want to succeed on Twitter then post regularly.

4. Tweet Adder excels at building a highly targeted list of Twitter followers and users and doing it automatically. Once you build the list of highly targeted Twitter users with the Tweet Adder search engine, you can download the entire list so Tweet Adder can automatically follow your targeted list for you. Here are the ways you can find a targeted list for your niche with their powerful and simple search engine:

Keyword
Location
Location and Keyword

If you have found some specific Twitter users who are leaders in your niche, and you have a global business, Tweet Adder can also automatically download the Twitter followers of a specific user and then follow them automatically. You can configure how many Twitter followers it follows at a time by number or ratio. Then you can set up times to run these tasks in the background. If you want to build up a highly targeted list of real Twitter followers and you are not a celebrity already, Tweet Adder is indispensable. Tweet Adder also automates unfollowing those who do not follow you back, scheduling future tweets, and many more features. Tweet Adder is one of the best Twitter apps and the only application I recommend that you will have to buy. But it will pay you back the first day you use it by automating hours of your time and building a large list or real, targeted followers in weeks.

5. Are you overwhelmed or confused as to how you should manage your Twitter followers, see only the updates you want, and tune out the noise? Seesmic is the easiest way to start using Twitter today. And since it integrates all the major social networking sites into the application interface, you can manage Facebook, Google Buzz, Google Reader, Evernote, or post updates to all these sites plus many more (including all of the Ping.fm social networking and bookmarking sites) all from the Seesmic application.

I use the Seesmic desktop and Blackberry web apps to manage Twitter and all my social networking accounts in one application. The reasons I use Seesmic instead of Tweetdeck are:

Seesmic has Blackberry, iPhone/iPod/iPad, Web, and Desktop easy-to-use applications. Tweetdeck does not offer a Blackberry app.
Seesmic integrates all social networking into one application seamlessly primarily because they own Ping.fm. You can manage Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, LinkedIn (post to dozens of social networking sites automatically), save to Evernote, use Google reader, and any social networking site you need either directly from Seesmic or via Ping.fm.
Seesmic just runs faster than Tweetdeck.

In summary Seesmic is the fastest, easiest to use, and most comprehensive Twitter and social media management tool available, whether you are using Twitter for business or personal tweets. I still cannot believe it is a free application. Go to seesmic.com and start using it to simplify your Twitter management. Enjoy using Twitter in their intuitive interface and when you are ready, you can start viewing, posting in one click, and integrating Twitter with all of your other social networking and bookmarking sites in one application.

Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: how to twitter, social networking, twitter account, twitter apps, twitter bot, twitter followers, twitter for business, twitter tools, using twitter

How To Use Twitter as Your Blog’s Next Launch Pad

Twitter Hashtags – Know Everything About Them