Simple steps to give your business a competitive edge, on a budget.

Check out these low-cost marketing ideas for your new business.

Mike Dobbs is the group director of SEO at 360i, a digital marketing agency that drives results for premier brands. The agency recently released the Social Marketing Playbook, a guide for brands. You can follow 360i on Twitter.

With all the rumors suggesting that Google will soon offer real-time search capabilities, indexing Tweets and other real-time web data, now is a good time to take a closer look at your Twitter presence. Even now, what you tweet can be held against you on the engines, although it can also work to your advantage.

As an example, Google is already indexing tweets (albeit not in real-time) so Twitter pages and even individual tweets have already started appearing within Google search results.

[Mashable’s Twitter page appears in a search query on Google.]

[Tweets are even appearing on the first page of Google for non-brand searches, like in this example for the query “pac man tweet.”]

But, never fear, you still have time to start optimizing your Twitter presence before your random tweets about what you ate for lunch start appearing in searches for your name. By following these ten Twitter tips, you, your company or your brand can build up more prominent links in high places on the engines.

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1. Choose a good handle

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Be sure to pick an optimal handle that’s relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember. Your handle (also known as your Username) then becomes part of your customized Twitter URL such as twitter.com/yoursite or twitter.com/yourtopic. Doing this creates a static address for future search indexing, which also helps usability for other cross-channel promotions. So choose wisely! The fun challenge: doing all this while keeping your name short and succinct so it’s easily tweetable.

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2. Select an account name wisely

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Optimize the Twitter account name to best reflect your brand. Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your handle/URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand. You should also consider which variation of you brand name has the most search frequency every month.

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3. Make your bio count

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Optimize your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! (Yep, that’s right: They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.) Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.

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4. Spread the word

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Now think about ways to build the link reputation of this newfound social web address. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site’s Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.

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5. Remember your URL

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In the account settings, be sure to add your website’s URL or perhaps use it to promote your presence on another social platform, for example, yoursite.com. This is a great way to drive traffic back to your destination of choice; although, truth be told, the link does not provide any offsite reputation – a.k.a. SEO link juice – due to a “Nofollow” attribute that Twitter has in place. (Sorry Twitter spammers!)

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6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully

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The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though.

[The first characters of your tweet may have the most impact on its future SEO value.]

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7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible

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Wherever possible, start your tweet with a primary keyword phrase to theme each message. Take advantage of any “active lingo” or buzz words as this will enable you to capitalize on timely searches on those terms. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should fill your tweets with buzz words at the expense of providing value to your followers! Rather, think carefully about which word choices will best convey your message and also allow you to leverage the real-time and long-term index relevance across the engines that continuously spider and index tweets.

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8. Mind your retweetability

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Make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for optimal “retweetability.” If you want a message to proliferate on Twitter, it’s ideal to keep it under 120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. However, the exact number is different from everyone as it depends on the number of characters needed for someone to include the phrase “RT @yourname” in their re-tweet.

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9. Provide some link love

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Insert back links to redirect users back to your content. Twitter has proven to be a significant traffic driver for bloggers and others using the space to share links. If you do share links, use one of the many URL shorteners available (TinyURL and Bit.ly are two common shorteners). We recommend using the URL shortener Bit.ly, as it tracks click-throughs for the specific links you share on the platform. Bit.ly even has the power to track links in aggregate. For example, if multiple Bit.ly URLs were created and shared by separate users, all leading back to the same URL, the service can track and report click-throughs for all of them in aggregate. Bit.ly also tracks clicks over time, so you can see when people are clicking your links most.

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10. As always, give ‘em what they want

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When providing Bit.ly links or any other URLs, make sure the redirection leads to pages which provide a richer content experience. Twitter users are hungry for information and accustomed to getting it “right now.” Send users directly to the details instead of having them fish around for it.

Mike Dobbs is the group director of SEO at 360i, a digital marketing agency that drives results for premier brands through insights, ideas, and technologies. The agency recently released the Social Marketing Playbook, a guide for brands utilizing social media to connect with their customers. You can follow 360i on Twitter.

By Thomas Baekdal. Follow him @baekdal.

Twitter Search is just amazing because it can give you real-time feedback about pretty much everything. That is, if you know how to look for it. Here is how:

Before we start I need to point out that both TweetDeck and Seesmic (my two favorite Twitter apps - with Seesmic being the #1) allows you to open special search panels, allowing you to “follow” a search term, instead of a person.

This is a great way to keep on top of things.

The Secrets…

1: Get up to speed with all the latest buzz

The primary way that I keep up-to-speed on social networking is to follow a social networking search. For instance, let say you want to get all the new links about social media, not including the many re-tweets that people make.

Simply search for:

“social web” OR “social media” OR “social news” -rt filter:links

2: Find all the people who are not talking about you directly

Another thing you might want to do is to find all the people who talks about you (or your product) but isn’t including you directly. E.g. If I want to find all the people who mention my name, but aren’t replying to me.

Simply search for:

Baekdal -to:baekdal -from:baekdal -@baekdal

Note: You can also find everyone who links to you via BackTweets

3: Get all reactions across multiple twitter profiles

Another thing you might want to do is to get all the replies and mentions that refer to you, across multiple twitter profiles. For instance, I have 7 twitter profiles and I would really like to see everything in one place.

Simply search for:

to:baekdal OR to:baekdalarticles OR to:baekdaldesign OR to:baekdalnotes OR to:baekdal24hours (etc…)

BTW: Seesmic will do this automatically in the reply panel (which is one of the main reason why I prefer it over other Twitter apps).

4: Follow what people are saying about your competitors

You also may want to follow not only what your competitors are saying on Twitter, but also how people respond to them. All you need to do is to simply search for:

from:competitor OR from:competitor

E.g. If your competitor is H&M (@handm), you can search for

from:handm OR to:handm

5: Only follow links from certain people

One of the problem of following people on Twitter is that you don’t get to decide what to hear. Sometimes you just want to know about the links that they share, and not hear all the chit-chat.

Let’s say that you only want to see the links that I share, then you simply search from:

from:baekdal filter:links

6: Only get the new info about a topic

One of the most common way to use Twitter search is to search for hashtags or product names. But the results are very often filled with identical tweets.

So if you want to search for anything about ‘American Airlines’ but without the re-tweeted stuff

“american airlines” -rt -via

7: Find all shared pictures about a topic.

It can be really interesting to see only the pictures that people post about a certain topic or event. During this year’s Le Mans, I was continually following every picture that people tweeted. You do this by simply searching for:

“le mans” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly OR twitgoo OR pikchur filter:links

BTW: Another way to search for images is to use Twicsy

Have you figured out any other ways to use Twitter Search that you’d like to share? How about trying these above techniques and letting us know what you think, in the comments?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

It’s a great way to get started quickly, but consider these factors.

I recently entered into a debate with a Direct marketing guru about email marketing. It’s amazing what you’re reminded of when you talk to someone with a similar background and a wealth of experience.

When considering a new campaign, we talked about our list. As you probably already know, studies have shown that the success of any direct marketing campaign is comprised of 40% the list, 40% the offer, and 20% creative. I often have to remind people of that stat when they start commenting on design saying that this box should be bigger, the blue should be a different shade, etc. Sorry, I digress.

So anyway, we’re having this discussion about emailing the entire list a few times each month or just simply emailing “new” people who have been added to the list - and obviously purging opt outs. My argument was that if an individual didn’t respond to the first few emails, they should be suppressed. I mean why keeping Spamming someone if they’re clearly not interested.

My friend said that a lack of response doesn’t mean they are disinterested, just that they are not interested at the moment. Hmm.. pretty deep but true. When life events happen, people often move from not interested to very interested and it can happen quickly. So if you stop reaching your audience just before a change, life event, or sudden need - and someone else comes in with an offer - you lose.

The motto of the story is that when using email marketing, don’t be afraid to reach out to your audience again and again until they opt out. Chance are that if they showed initial interest, at some point they will be ready for your product or service and you want to be there when they are. Vary your message a bit so that people don’t get annoyed. However, don’t be afraid of over communicating. A valuable reminder to anyone who using direct marketing!

You spend a little money and buy some drugs, and they make you feel good.  Then the effect wears off.  You spend more money for more drugs, and feel good again.  Then the effect wears off again.  You find more money and buy yet more drugs.  Pretty soon, you are out of money, and feel horrible, and have no drugs to make you feel better.  Big problem.

The same thing can happen to even the best marketers.  You start buying some Google AdWords PPC.  It generates some leads.  Then the sales team uses up all the leads.  Then you buy some more.  Then sales asks for more leads again.  So, you ask your boss for more budget.  You buy more leads.  Sales uses all the leads and wants more…  What’s wrong with this picture?

The problem with this situation is that you are not building any sustainable marketing assets for your business.  All you are doing is buying leads from Google that go bad very quickly.  There is no leverage in your marketing model.  To double in size, you need to double your marketing spend (if not even more).  Nothing you are doing helps you generate more leads next month, or the month after, with less effort.  You will always be working just as hard and spending just as much money, just to stay afloat.

But, what about another strategy?  What about search engine optimization, blogging and social media? Well, if you spend time/money to publish a few blog articles, they will start to rank in organic (free!) search results in Google.  And you don’t need to pay for that.  So, next month you have the 10 articles you wrote last month, plus 10 more you will write this month.  The month after that you will have 20 articles from the prior two months, plus 10 more you write that month.  Get the picture?  Blogging and SEO are asset-centric marketing programs.  You are building an asset that has a payout each and every month over time.

Social media is an asset-centric marketing strategy as well.  As you build a following in Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, you build on top of what you have already done.  As you attract more friends and followers to you and your company, the size of the audience you can reach increases each month.  The benefit you get increases over time.

Certainly not all drugs are completely bad.  Caffeine.  Alcohol?  Prescription drugs?  When taken in moderation and managed properly, they can be part of your overall life.  But only when balanced with other things.  The same is true of Google AdWords PPC.  I’ve used them.  But I also leverage asset-centric marketing programs as much as possible.

Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn’t available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

While we’re unable to manually change titles or snippets for individual sites, we’re always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the snippets displayed for your pages by providing informative meta descriptions for each page.

Read more about changing your site’s title and description here.

Savvy entrepreneurs are looking to social media as another way to market their businesses.

As Twitter surges toward an estimated 12 million registered users by year’s end (though some new stats may disagree), some of us are starting to deal with what we recently dubbed “followholism.” You’ve followed so many people, it’s hard to keep up, and it’s probably time to do a little housekeeping.

But where do you begin? Twitter’s own tools for managing followers are subpar. It’s nearly impossible to figure out who among your followers are following you back, and the interface for paging through followers is clumsy and difficult to use. Fortunately, Twitter’s API has given rise to a vast universe of amazing third party apps. So we’ve assembled a toolkit below of 10 services that can help you take control of Twitter and organize your followers. If you know any other tools that would be helpful for organizing tweeps, add them in the comments.

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Find Out Who You’re Following

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When I first joined Twitter, I started following people right out of the gate in order to get some utility out of the site — after all, the only way to join the conversation is to start following it. After I got used to Twitter, though, I had the urge to clean up my follow list. Eventually, I found that some of the people I had initially followed as a way to get into the community weren’t necessarily people that I was interested in continuing to follow. Here are some tools to help you investigate your tweeps and make an informed decision about whether to keep following them.

1. Twitter Grader - Using a detailed 5 piece algorithm, Twitter Grader assigns every users you run through its system a grade from 1-100. Using this tool you can investigate how engaged the people you’re following are and that can help you decide if you want to keep following them.

2. Twinfluence - Twinfluence is a scientific approach to measuring the influence of Twitter users. It’s another set of metrics you can use to help you figure out who you want to follow.

3. Tweetcloud - One of the most important factors when deciding whether you want to follow a Twitter user is what sort of content they tweet about. If someone tweets mostly about topics you don’t care about, they might not be the best person for you to follow. Tweetcloud creates a tag cloud of a person’s tweets to give you a bird’s eye view of the type of things they tweet about.

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Find Your Friends

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Not all relationships on Twitter are equal. Unlike many social networks, Twitter allows you to follow (most) people without their permission. There might be a bunch of people who are following you that you aren’t following back, and likewise there are probably some people you’re following who aren’t reciprocating. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — if their content is good, then you shouldn’t worry about whether they follow you back. But knowing who your friends are is helpful when you’re trying to organize your Twitter follows.

4. Twitter Karma - Twitter Karma is a great app that lets you sort through all of your follows and see who’s not following you in return, who you have a mutual follow/follow-back relationship with, and who is following you that you’re not following back.

5. Friend or Follow - Friend or Follow does essentially the same thing as Twitter Karma, helping you figure out who your friends, follows, and fans are on Twitter. The difference is in the presentation, and it might be a little easier to use for those with a large number of follows or followers.

6. Qwitter - Once you’ve done your initial cleaning, Qwitter is a nice app that will update you via email whenever someone stops following you. It will even let you know what you tweeted that caused them to stop following you, which could be useful (if you lose five followers every time you tweet about your cat, for example, that might be a hint to stop talking so much about your cat if you want to retain followers).

UPDATE: We’ve had some reports that Qwitter hasn’t been as reliable lately as it had been in the past. An alternative service that also notifies you when you lose a follower is Twitterless. If you really want to keep on top of when your followers jump ship, it might be a good idea to sign up for both services to make sure you have all your bases covered.

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Get Rid of Inactives

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According to a recent study, 80% of Twitter users have less than 10 total tweets. That might not be a bad thing — some people might join Twitter specifically to follow others and track their updates. But inactive users might also not be the best people for you to follow. Here are two tools that can help you weed out the inactives.

7. Nest.Unclutterer - Nest.Unclutterer will automatically block Twitter users who are following more than a certain number of people or who have been inactive for a certain number of days. You can specify those thresholds and white list certain tweeps so that they are exempt from the cleaning. Nest.Unclutterer is actually less about who you’re following, and more about making sure people following you are actually friends you want to be associated with.

8. Twitoria - Twitoria scans through your Twitter account and finds anyone who has been inactive for the past week, two weeks, month, two months, six months, or year.

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Manage it All

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Now that you’ve cleaned up your Twitter follow list, you’ll want to keep on top of things from here on out. Here are two apps that will help you better manage new follows and followers.

9. TweetSum - TweetSum digests all your new followers, rates them using what they call the DBI (”Douche Bag Index”), a number that supposedly weeds out Twitter users likely to be annoying, and then lets you easily follow them back or categorize them as tweeps you don’t want to follow. You can see a list of recent tweets for each new follower as well, which is helpful.

10. Tweepler - Tweepler is a new follower management application that lets you make quick, one click decisions about whether to follow people back or drop them into an ignore pile (out of sight, out of mind). In addition to being able to view recent tweets, Tweepler gives helpful stats about new followers, such as average tweets per day.