March 20, 2009 at 11:46 am by Janet Tanguay

Call me a twit, but at a recent staff meeting, I mentioned I had signed up for Tweeter, and what I really meant to say was that I had signed up with Twitter. If you have no understanding about what I just wrote, read on, because, for entrepreneurs, the social networking scene is rapidly becoming the best place for personal branding, web marketing and business promotion. It is one key to success for your small business.

Sure, there are people who will argue that nothing is going on in these sites, that it is like showing up for a networking event and finding no music, food, or drinks. Sure, some people make updates about brushing their teeth and sneezing, but how can you argue that point when fifty billion dollars is currently being spent in on-line advertising? China alone spent one billion in on-line ads last year. Professional marketers are cashing in on these daily connections by taking the art of building relationships and networking from offline to online.

Here’s how social media marketing or attraction marketing works. You post something about yourself on your profile page. That message goes out to all of your friends and then to all of their friends. This helps you develop an on-line presence and is a powerful tool to add to your direct sales plan, get your message out to your target audience and find new business leads. It is always better to do business with a personal referral than to cold call a prospect.

Personally, I’ve been able to link in with many new artists and coaches on social networking sites, and those are the key contacts in my business. In fact, someone from the high school I went to linked in with me on FaceBook recently. It turns out he and his wife now live 6 months out of the year on an exotic island. We are now discussing the possibilities of my doing an island getaway retreat for some of my creative clients. I have discovered people I know now living in Australia, China, India, and New Zealand, and that helps me make global connections.

Read article…

March 19th, 2009 by Joe Manna, Community Manager
Posted in: Entrepreneur
Twitter has redefined the way consumers, peers and industry leaders communicate. Today, consumers are researchers; they’re also interactive. Through a concept as simple as micro-blogging or life-casting, you can reach the right customers and satisfy the needs of your existing ones. One might think that this is just for kids, but that’s just big-business thinking. Twitter can (and will) grow your small business. I’ll explain.

Preface.

Twitter is a service that drives the understanding of consumer-centric concepts. I do not advocate (rather, I harshly criticize) anyone who intends on spamming Twitter with affiliate links. Not that there’s anything wrong with affiliate links, but it relates to the value that you provide your community. For more thoughts on this, please see my previous blog entry titled, Affiliate Marketing on Twitter — Is it OK?.

People love to share status updates on Twitter and follow other people of interest. That is, you might want to know what Shaq, MC Hammer, David Matthews, Britney Spears, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki or what I’m doing. The value in Twitter is not the number of followers, not the number of messages, but the conversations themselves. In a matter of seconds, news can be broadcast across the network. With the help of Twitter, we’re turning the tide of participation inequality — that is, we’re all producing, consuming and re-syndicating content.

Big Business vs. Small Business in Social Media

Big business don’t see the value of services like Twitter. Neither do they think blogs or forums matter. They think it’s just “chatter” and “noise.”It’s no surprise that they fail miserably when they attempt to engage in social media because it’s a stunt to them. They really don’t care about their consumers, as they merely want to drive sales.

Read article…

Twitter is quickly becoming renowned as a social media marketing phenomenon.

President Barak Obama used it as part of his presidential campaign. Sir Richard Branson advertises jobs for Virgin on it. We at OE Design have advertised for future franchisees on it. Media outlets are also using it as a source of public sentiment on issues.

During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, it is reported that eyewitnesses sent an estimated eighty tweets every five seconds as the tragedy unfolded. In January 2009, a passenger on one of the ferries, rushing to help those being evacuated from US Airways Flight 1549 stranded on the Hudson River, tweeted a picture of the event via TwitPic. Then in February 2009, the Country Fire Authority used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the 2009 Victorian bushfires. In addition Twitter was also used by the Prime Minister to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood and where to seek emergency help.

But what has that all to do with the small business owner?

Here are seven things that I have at this point found is a useful way to start exploring the possibilities when it comes to tweeting.

Read article…

Kevin Gibbons is the Director of Search at SEOptimise, a UK search engine marketing agency. Follow him at @kevgibbo or visit the SEOptimise blog.

A popular topic at the moment is the increasing importance of Twitter as a marketing and traffic generation tool. In the UK Twitter has been growing rapidly during the last 12 months and many people are now realising that micro-blogging is quickly becoming a very useful social media marketing tactic.

The Power of a Retweet

The following diagram helps to show the potential increase in reach when a message is retweeted:

So when I post a tweet it’s sent out to my 722 followers, if this contains a link it may send a handful of clicks, but this really is just the start of promoting a message. The real value is in the power of a retweet, this can potentially reach a far wider audience if retweeted, then maybe retweeted again and hopefully again.

If a tweet was picked up and retweeted by @problogger, for example, this would reach out to an additional 43,000+ followers, many of which are likely to retweet this themselves and hopefully create a snowball effect of RT messages across Twitter. It may also reach additional highly-followed users, such as Stephen Fry (as shown in the image above), helping to spread your message further. There will almost certainly be an overlap in users receiving tweets/retweets, but this also increases the chances of these users seeing your message as it could have been easily missed first time around.

How to find retweeting followers?

So how do you find new followers to RT your tweet? Firstly you should be tweeting the type of messages which your followers will take notice of. But you can take action to seek out new followers who potentially can help to retweet your messages too.

Bio Search - Find users in your industry by performing a query on Twitter bios on website’s such as Twellow. Also make sure you complete your bio using industry specific keywords to help ensure you get found by people searching for similar users to follow. Plus if you are trying to promote your own content try using the bio search to find bloggers and journalists who may be interested in writing about your latest posts.

Find users who like to RT - For example, if you’re looking to find users who will retweet your messages about SEO why not try searching for “RT SEO”? This will instantly show you users who have recently retweeted messages related to the topics you like to tweet about. These users may become very valuable in order to help spread your tweets to a wider audience.

Location Search - Find local users via an advanced search to help build relationships with Twitter users within your region. Try using top locational ranking tools to find the most powerful users with a specific location.

Analyse your traffic stats - View the full referral URL’s for traffic from Twitter, this way you can find the traffic sent from a user profile page and find the users who send you the most traffic. Make sure you are following these users and interact with them frequently.

Don’t use all 140 characters - Keep your messages as concise as possible, leaving more room for reweets and multiple RT’s without forcing people to edit your original message.

Retweet for others - Once you’ve identified the top users you want to connect with; you need to give them a reason to follow and retweet you. Quality content is key, but it may not be enough to get you noticed in the first place. Make sure you communicate with your targeted users and start retweeting some of their interesting tweets, this will help to improve the chances of getting them to follow you back and start to take notice of your tweets.

So those are my tips, what ideas do you have for increasing the visibility of your Twitter account and tweets?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

About The Author: Abe Cherian is the founder and CEO of AdClickMedia.com, an online advertising network and a subsidiary of Multiple Stream Media.

You’ve seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promotin efforts. The main reason is because marketers don’t realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog’s 140-character limit communication. The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!

Twitter for Marketing

If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition - Twitter makes it instant.

For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!

Read article…

By Rochelle Paul

We see it all over the internet, newspapers and TV: Facebook.  But what’s it about?  Isn’t it just a bunch of twenty-somethings talking about the party they hit last weekend?  Isn’t that where we tune in to see the face of some criminal in those days before they committed their crime?

Rori, you cannot be seriously telling me that as a small business owner I’m going to use Facebook as a marketing tool!

Yes, I am.

If you read my two part article, Is Facebook really a small business tool: part one and two, you know I really had my questions and doubts.  (I will address my reservations about social media in an upcoming article).

Yet, in the time since those articles first appeared, I’ve found that social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, really are at the forefront of marketing across the business board.

Not only are the twenty-somethings talking about their weekends, they’re also talking about the products and services that they use.

But, so are the folks in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.

And if you check out the article, Grandpa is… browsing your Facebook page by Beth DeFalco, you know that even the folks beyond their 50’s are tuning into what people are saying on Facebook.

Read article…

When it comes to creating relationships with other companies, take a long-term approach.
By Ivan Misner

I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who’s a partner in an international consulting and training company when we discovered we had a mutual acquaintance–a bestselling author and fairly well-known speaker.

In our discussion, we found out he’d contacted each of us individually to see if there were any possibilities for some type of strategic alliance with his company and each of our own, individually. We were both open to the possibility but couldn’t see an immediate and dramatic way our companies could link with his and undertake any specific projects at that time. We were both a bit amused to then discover that we were summarily “dropped” from his radar after that.

We sensed he was looking for that one big alliance that would help his company soar to the next level. Ironically, we’d had the same type of phone call with each other just 18 months earlier. We had come basically to the same conclusion: There was nothing on a grand scale that we could do together at that moment. The difference, however, was the rest of the story.

Read article…

New communications and PR tools offer marketers less costly (and equally effective) alternatives for building brand and product awareness
By Rachel Meranus   |   March 04, 2009

Tough economic times are forcing many companies to cut back marketing and advertising budgets. According to figures released by the Publisher’s Information Bureau in January, consumer magazine advertising pages dropped nearly 12 percent in 2008. While cost cutting may be necessary to remain solvent, forcing your marketing department to go on a crash diet can cause companies to lose the momentum and brand awareness they’ve built up through long-term campaigns.

Just because times are lean doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your hard-earned market share. Use this economic downturn as a chance to supplement your marketing and advertising activities with targeted public relations campaigns that capitalize on the brand awareness you’ve already cultivated.

So how do you do more with less?

Read article…

On Twitter yesterday Yaro asked me whether I like Twitter more than Blogging.

My reply was of course limited to 140 characters and as a result not overly comprehensive:

“no I like blogging more than Twitter but Twitter is fun and a useful part of the mix of what I do - both have their place”

I thought perhaps it was a topic worth expanding upon here on ProBlogger. While I’ve shifted most of my blogging about Twitter to TwiTip I thought it might be worth sharing a few of the thoughts on how I’m using Twitter here on ProBlogger.

What follows is both a more extended answer to Yaro (and others) but also a collection of thoughts on my experiences of working with Twitter over the last few months.

Blogging Remains My Primary Activity

While I tweet more often than I post to my blog - my blogs remain my primary focus and what I spend most time building.

It may not always seem like it when you look at the 20+ tweets that I produce a day on my twitter account but when you consider that a tweet takes seconds to write and a post can take hours - the blogs I run do take considerably more of my time and focus to produce.

My thinking around this is something that I’ve talked about previously in my description of how I use social media as outposts as opposed to my blog which I see as a home base.

In essence my use of twitter is something I do as a support to my blogging.

I guess the question will come at some point whether I will need to change this approach a little when my Twitter follower numbers go past my blog reader numbers. I suspect my approach won’t change at this point - however it’ll probably present some interesting challenges in working out priorities.

Blogging and Twitter have Different Strengths

Having said that blogging is my primary focus it is increasingly obvious to me that both mediums have their own strengths and that Twitter is able to achieve things that blogging can not (at least for me).

The immediacy of Twitter and the fact that it is a network that can spread word of a story, idea, question or thought quickly around the world to many thousands of people very quickly makes it unique.

For example one of the main ways that I find Twitter useful is getting quick feedback or answers to questions from a diverse group of people. While you can get similar feedback from a blog post Twitter is much faster. On the other hand a blog lends itself more to discussions among readers that are a little more considered, in depth and interactive (between those responding).

Blog are also great for more in depth posts. This post is a perfect illustration of this - when Yaro asked me his question on Twitter I had 140 characters to sum up a lot of different thoughts and experiences and ended up not really saying a lot whereas this post is able to explore the topic in depth.

While some people see the strengths of one and the weaknesses of the other as reason to choose between Blogging and Twitter - I’ve come to see the power of using both in tandem. The key is to know what you’re trying to achieve with your online presences and to understand what each medium can do to help you achieve this.

Twitter and Driving Traffic

I’ve written previously about the topic of Twitter driving traffic to a blog and each time have talked about how much traffic ProBlogger gets directly from Twitter. The figures have increased each time I’ve written on the topic as my own follower numbers grow and of late the numbers have continued to grow considerably.

My Google Analytics stats show that Twitter.com is now the 3rd largest referrer of traffic to this blog (only behind Google and Direct Traffic). This probably sounds a little more impressive than it is - overall it sends around 4% of my traffic (Google is 46% and Direct Traffic is 21%). This doesn’t count traffic arriving from Twitter applications - so the figure is probably closer to 10%.

My other two blogs illustrate that Twitter’s ability to send traffic is varied depending upon your site. TwiTip has over 16% of its traffic directly from Twitter.com and Digital Photography School gets 0.34% of its traffic from Twitter (although my DPS Twitter account has considerably less followers).

Twitter is Quick but Takes More Time to Use Well as Follower Numbers Grow

Actually tweeting on twitter is a relatively quick and easy process. I’ve used a variety of tools in my use of Twitter that have helped me manage the process really well - however as my number of followers has grown so does the amount of time needed to manage the account - at least if I want to remain interactive and engaging.

The number of @replies and DMs that one gets as follower numbers goes up also rises and there comes a point where a Twitter user needs to decide how interactive that they can be.

As I write this my follower numbers are just over 42,500 - to this point I still read all replies and DMs but it is becoming more and more challenging to do and I’m aware that I’m going to have to make some tough choices in the coming weeks and months if the number increases as it has.

The ReTweet is Powerful

The practice of ‘ReTweeting’ has really come into its own over the last 6 months. While people have always ‘re tweeted’ what others have tweeted - a lot more tools and services have risen up around the practice of late. Some see retweeting as a measure of authority of a twitter user - I’ve personally been more interested in its viral nature, particularly when your link is the one being retweeted.

If a link gets retweeted widely it can drive many many thousands of visitors to a blog post.

In the last few months we’ve seen more and more bloggers adding retweet buttons to their blogs in a similar way to how social media buttons are often added to blogs - I’ve done it on TwiTip with a button from Tweetmeme which has worked well but I suspect we’ll see more and more tools released.

Usefulness Remains the Key to Both Mediums

I can’t stress it enough - the key to both success in both mediums is to become the most useful resource that you can to those who you come into contact with online. Solve problems, meet needs, connect with people where they are at and both mediums will come into their own for you.

All in All….

All in all I’m continuing to see the fruits of investing time and effort into both Twitter and Blogging. What about you?

We’ve all heard people say “I won’t follow you back if you don’t have a link and bio” etc. But do people really mean it? Does having a bio and website link in your Twitter profile really make a difference in the number of followers you have? The answer is yes.

I dugg back into the data we’ve collected from Twitter Grader. We have a bunch of different information on over 1.6 million Twitter accounts, including bio, link and follower data.

The first “aha” moment from this slice of data is the sheer number of users without bios and links. Almost two-thirds of users don’t have a bio or link listed on their Twitter profiles.

Looking at the average number of followers shows a very distinct trend. Users with a bio have over 8 times more followers on average than users without a bio and users with a link have over 7.5 times as many as users without.

Beyond sheer number of followers, power users are even less likely to follow you if you don’t have a bio and link. (Power users are Twitter users with high Twitter Grades.)

Users with a bio have over 15.5 times more power followers than those without a bio. Users with a link have over 22 times more power followers than without.

And of course your Twitter Grader score is effected strongly.

The bottom line here is that if you haven’t already specified a site and a bio for your Twitter profile (and lots of you haven’t) go do it now.