How to make Twitter a Successful Tool for your Business
At this point you’ve probably heard of Twitter, if you haven’t, “Where have you been?” Twitter is now becoming one of the most popular social media websites out there; behind Facebook. Twitter’s popularity has grown exponentially over the past year and you must be wondering, “How do I get in on this?” There are a few things you need to know about Twitter before you can be successful in using it.
Here are the Basics
Twitter is a social media tool that allows a user to update their followers on what they are doing right now. Users are allowed to enter messages up to 140-characters keeping your updates short and simple. Twitter uses its own terminology that is vital to everyday usage, here’s a list of those terms and what they do provided by Smashing Magazine :
- DM or Direct Message: This is a private message sent to another Twitter user. It’s preceded by a “D” and can only be sent to a user who is following you.
- Hashtag: Hashtags are single-word phrases used to organize different topics, chats, and events on Twitter, and are preceded by a hash mark “#”.
- Lists: Lists are a fairly new Twitter feature, and are just what they sound like: lists of Twitter users created and categorized by other Twitter users. You can follow entire lists rather than having to follow each individual user.
- Reply or @reply: To reply to another Twitter user, or include them in a tweet, you put an @ symbol before their username. If the @symbol is the first character in the tweet, the reply will be shown to them and anyone following both of you. If the @ symbol is not the first character, then the tweet will be shown to all of your followers, plus the person whose username follows the @.
- RT or Retweet: Retweets are re-broadcasts of another user’s tweet. This is traditionally done by including an “RT” before the original poster’s @username. This has long been an unofficial feature of Twitter, though Twitter has recently added official support for it. Some users use other characters (such as a full stop “.”) for brevity’s sake.
- Trending Topics: These are the most popular terms appearing on Twitter at any given time and may include hashtags.
Now that you know the basics and the terminology associated with Twitter you’re ready to begin tweeting. A few things you need to know about your Twitter page:
- Keep it Personal: When you keep your page personal it allows your customers to interact with you on a level they are not used to, it lets them know who you are and gives them the “warm fuzzies” when dealing with you in the future.
- Don’t Spam: Twitter can be a great marketing tool for your business if used properly. Yes it is okay to use it to tweet about new products, etc. BUT DON’T OVERDO IT!
- Don’t Blindly Follow Others in hope of gaining more followers, this would bog down your Twitter feed with useless Tweets and 9 times out of 10 they will not follow you back, so your attempts would’ve been in vain.
Finding Followers
There are many ways for you to find people to follow on Twitter, the easiest and most obvious of these is to find people you know. This could be classified as people from blogs you read regularly, friends and family, clients, or even websites or products that you use on a consistent basis. Well that’s the easy way, now to find people you don’t know. Twitter has the ability to search the site for topics people are interested in and are talking about, such as world events, consumer products, etc. Search for terms and topics that are relevant to you and your business; this will help you find people who may be interested in the type of business and/or services you offer. Another way to find followers is to enter yourself into Twitter Chats; getting involved in a chat about a topic you’re associated with will draw followers to you if you are informative and stay on topic. As stated previously, don’t follow a bunch of people who may or may not be interested in your company or have nothing to do with your interests. While there may be a possibility that they will be one of the courteous Twitter users and blindly follow you, this does not mean that they care about what you have to say and in turn the result is the lack of engagement of your followers with your tweet topics. Your best bet is to find people you find interesting, follow them, and see if they in turn find you interesting enough to give you a follow.
Communicating with others on Twitter
Twitter is an amazing tool for communicating with friends & family as well as colleagues and clients alike. Twitter is also a great way to find new leads and make new connections with others in your industry or with people who are interested in your services. Make sure to follow conversations that are relative to your company. Respond to topics that relate to your business, follow those who talk about your business and thank them for their criticism and support (whichever you may have received). Just remember; ALWAYS KEEP IT PERSONAL, you don’t want to sound like a promotional machine.
Using Twitter for Promotions
Like I stated before, Twitter is an amazing promotional tool as long as it’s used properly and tastefully. Sending direct sales promotions to individual users can black list you instantly among the Twitter community as a spammer and can eventually result in the cancellation of your account by Twitter. You want to avoid doing this at all costs in order to keep followers and keep your Twitter successful. Spamming your users with self-promotional material is not one of the ways to avoid this.
The best and most-effective way to promote yourself on Twitter is to tweet content that is relevant to your business that your followers and clients may also be interested in. The occasional company status update is not frowned upon as long as it does not come off as overly self-promotional. A good example is: “Hey everyone, Check out this project we just finished [link] let us know what you think!”, short and simple, and to the point. Another great method, if you’re a blogger, is to tweet recent blog topics for people to read, this is self-promotion, but is rarely looked down upon as twitter is considered a blog tool.
You can also promote yourself on Twitter by reading what people are asking questions about in your topic field. Answer the questions professionally with examples to gain respect and to be considered a knowledgeable source of information when it comes to these topics by doing so.
Finally, customizing your background of your Twitter page can be the easiest and most-beneficial ways to self-promote. This is “the” area you can promote yourself without being frowned upon.
Connecting with Twitter
The next time you post your blog, don’t forget to include a re-tweet button. Sites like TweetMeme offer code that can be embedded into your blog allowing users to re-tweet your blog to their followers. Also, don’t forget, when promoting something it isn’t impolite to ask your followers for a re-tweet. Some may jump on it, some may not. Your followers aren’t going to re-tweet everything you post, and you definitely don’t want to be doing it either. Only re-tweet what is important to you and what your followers may find important as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, you now know the basics of Twitter and how to use it as well as how to be effective in promoting your business through Twitter. There are also many tools out there that can help make this all easier for you and that allow you to stay organized. I hope this information has been informative for you, please look below for a few helpful links to resources and tools that can help you with Twitter.
AF
Resources
http://www.tweetqa.com/ – helps you find users to share your expertise with
http://tweetmeme.com/about/retweet_button – code for retweet button in your blog
http://www.tweetconvo.com/ – allows you to see full conversations you have with other Twitter users
http://twitterfeed.com/ – lets you automatically update Twitter and other social media sites whenever new content is posted on your blog.
http://twittercal.com/ – integrates your Google Calendar with Twitter
http://www.tweetcube.com/ – allows you to share files through Twitter
http://www.twitpic.com/ – hosts photos and allows you to post them to Twitter
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/ – Free Desktop app or iPhone app that allows you to organize and keep track of your Twitter
http://bit.ly/ – free and simple URL shortener that allows you to post long links into your Twitter updates
What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization?
What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing traffic to a web site from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing for FREE! Optimizing a web site will increase its ability to show up at the top of the search engine rankings page.
Why is it important?
Search Engine Optimization is important because there is an increasing amount of searches conducted daily. According to searchenginewatch.com there were an estimated 91 million searches conducted in march of 2006. That number in June of 2009 increased to an estimated 304 million searches conducted daily. These are staggering numbers that are going to continually increase. Think of a service you offer, type the name of the service into Google with the city you work in and see what comes up. There’s a good chance your competition is reaping the rewards of a number 1, 2, and 3 spot.
How does it work?
Search engines have to determine whether a web page is relevant to the keywords searched by a user. So when a search is conducted the Search Engine goes to its database (index) and looks for the best result based on the keyword searched by the user. It’s the job of the search engine to provide quality search results on the first try (this is why Google dominates the search market). Google has an algorithm that is a mathematical formula used in ranking a web page for keyword relevancy. Though keyword relevancy is important for a search engine what web page will show up number 1. It’s not the only thing it takes into consideration when ranking. Inbound links to a web site or web page are important elements in which a search engine looks at when ranking a website. Search engines need to understand the credibility of a website which they do from links. Search engines count every link that points to your website as a vote. This will determine if you place number 1, 2, or 3.
I hope this gives you some insight as to what SEO is and how it works. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions feel free to ask by posting a comment.
Social Media Marketing Will Change The Way Businesses Market
What is Social Media?
Social Media uses the Internet and web sites to connect millions of people across the world and allow them to communicate, participate, and socialize on the Internet. Social media has been made possible by new web 2.0 technologies that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content.
Different Types of Social Media
Blogging
Blogs are web sites maintained by an individual or organization that are frequently updated. Internet users or blog followers are able to comment on the blog and share their thoughts.
Social Networks
Social Networks are websites designed to focus on social interaction between users.
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a way for Internet users to share, organize, search, rate, and manage their bookmarks.
Video Sharing
Video sharing allows indviduals to upload video clips to an Internet website such as YouTube.
Social Photo sharing
Similar to video sharing, photo sharing allows users to share photos over the Internet.
Wiki’s
A wiki is a web site that allows easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages, they’re great for collaboration.
Presentation Sharing
Presentation sharing gives people the ability to, of course, share presentations over the Internet.
How to market with Social Media
Social Media marketing over the Internet for business must be approached differently than a traditional marketing campaign. In a world that is becoming more immune to advertising and one-way messages, its essential that you understand how to use these new tools that will promote your brand effectively. We have to forget about directly marketing to our customers when using social networks like Facebook. In today’s market the power is in the consumer’s hand. It’s your job or the job of your marketing company to think of a creative way to build a community and provide them with valuable information or content that customers are interested in. By engaging customers on social networks you have the ability to farm their thoughts on or about your products or services because social media is also a huge market research tool. Companies can take the feedback they receive whether it’s positive or negative and improve their quality of service.
Its important to understand what social media is and how it is revolutionizing the way we market to our customers now and in the future. Building on the Internet and watching it evolve over the last 10 years has been really amazing. If I could recommend one thing about social media to businesses, it would be to start building your communities and making your digital footprint. This is one game you done want to start late.
Pay Per Click is very effective at generating leads
What is it?
Pay Per Click advertising is used to drive relevant, targeted traffic to a web site when someone performs a search for a keyword phrase you have targeted.
How does it work?
The big three search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have a pay per engine that advertisers can use to send specifically researched and targeted traffic to a web site or landing page. Once your account is setup and research is conducted your customers will perform a search and your ad will placed at the very top of the search engine results page or down the right hand column.
Why you should use it?
Unlike SEO/Search Engine Optimization, Pay per click advertising is the quickest effective way to drive quality traffic to your Web site. There are billions of searches conducted daily and many of them are for your product and or service. A lot of people don’t understand the effectiveness of pay per click advertising and right of bat don’t think that it will be effective. I break it down like this. You can spend massive amounts of money on TV, Print, magazines, cold calling, and maybe get 2 or 3 leads. Why is this ineffective? Because you’re calling on people that probably are not interested in your product or service. With pay per click advertising you are able to weed out the people that have no interest in your product or service. When people are conducting searches for a product or service they have already come to the conclusion that they need that product or service and now they just want to find the best company to provide it to them. With pay per click advertising you can directly target those individuals with keyword research. As long as the user you have targeted finds the information they’re looking for on your landing page, consider them a new customer.
When setting up a PPC campaign its important to understand the funnel process the user takes.
1. I need X service.
2. Search X service in location.
3. Sees ad on X service, clicks on the ad
4. Lands on the web page of choice
5. Looks for the information needed to convert (service info, hours, location, contact info)
We advise that you always consult a professional that has experience setting up pay per click ads (a company like Graphics Tech). If you don’t target your customers properly you will probably spend a lot of money on ad dollars that don’t yield results.
Email Marketing is Still Effective
Should I still use email marketing?
Email marketing is an important media channel all companies should use as part of their marketing mix. A lot of people think of email marketing died long ago when it was coined as SPAM. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average generated $43.62 for every dollar spent on it during 2009.
How should it be used?
Email marketing works well when used properly.
1. Organize your list so you can target different customer segments.
2. Target each customer segment individually, have purpose for the email, don’t SPAM maliciously.
3. Use it to build loyalty and trust
4. Use it to support sales through other channels
5. Track each campaign for effectiveness.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action including sales, downloads, inquires, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and loyalty.
Graphics Tech offers two services for customers looking to use email-marketing services. One gives you the ability to manage and deploy your own email marketing initiatives. Or you can outsource your email marketing efforts to us.