Web Design Development Articles

After reviewing feedback from over 120 professionals on LinkedIn on how they are using twitter we’ve distilled the strongest themes into 20 simple points on how companies are gaining an advantage to beat the economic downturn. It is true some companies are still getting familiar with this new tool and see it as a time consuming and there can be an overload of non-valuable information but over 80% of comments we received indicated the pro’s far outweighing the con’s

What we were delighted to see is that although twitter is strong in news and social interaction, it is playing a fundamental role in giving a number of companies a competitive edge during challenging economic times by:
- creating access to new customers
- receiving customer and public feedback that leads to more successful sales
- opening networking opportunities with contacts companies wouldn’t have had access to.

20 of LinkedIn’s Strongest Group Discussion Themes from over 120 Comments

Following are the strongest themes many companies said they’re enjoying as they’ve learned how to grasp the culture, grow their followers, and when needed apply external technology tools that simplifies the vast amounts of information.

Here’s how companies have benefited from twitter:

1. Build relationships with people they would have not met before
2. Exposure to lots of new business thoughts, technical ideas and leadership styles
3. Finding new clients by commenting back on others’ tweets
4. Access to thinkers and doer’s one wouldn’t normally interact with
5. Can follow businesses you want the latest updates from with less effort
6. Clients have asked for accounts to be opened so they can get regular updates
7. Can assist Google rankings, sometimes it gets first page results
8. Can assist in getting real questions answered real time during the day
9. Been a great way to gain interactive access with new clients by following their tweets
10. Received access to publicity: radio, TV, press, speaking engagements
11. Allows leaders to connect to followers on a personal level
12. Without being pushy, it can generate buzz/talk about your company
13. Great for bringing traffic to your site if you offer truly valuable information and links
14. Provides a premier marketing tool when used correctly
15. Can be a great resource for getting push information versus searching the web
16. Can act as a news wire for journalist who are looking for story content
17. Can save time by getting the latest news without having to go search for it
18. Enables expansion of your database by removing budget or geography barriers
19. It can increase your market reach if you actively promote your presence on twitter
20. A great way to showcase your expertise and differentiate from competition.

If you haven’t started using twitter but have wondered what use it could be; consider that twitter offers one of the simplest social networks formats with the least amount of time required to get started and maintain. Like any social media it takes a bit of time to learn how to use and interact with others, build your own branded twitter page, and build a Following, but compared to Facebook and MySpace the set-up takes only a fraction of the time and its ongoing use is low maintenance.

The good news is there are spectacular quality articles that give great tutorials and helpful pointers. Either start Googling away searching on your twitter topics or seek out the top twitter users and tune in to how they are making the most their communications.

Following are 10 reasons why twitter might be the easiest social media for your organization to break into for creating brand interactivity and real time relationships with your customers.

1. Twitter Is Free - Like all highly used social networks, the good news today is there no charge to get started and continue building an unlimited “Following” (database) of contacts that want your news.

2. Getting Started Take Only Minutes - Unlike LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook which can be great for growing your contacts and public relations, Twitter is simple and reasonably straightforward.

3. It Takes Seconds To Get Your Point Across - There’s no need for lengthy projects or hours of strategic thinking when all you have is 140 characters (one and a half sentences) to make your point.

4. Building A Database Can Be Easy - If you already have a database of contacts and prospects you can search for them on twitter or send messages via other advertising, like your monthly newsletter.

5. Masses of Customers Can Get Updates - If your audience is highly tuned into what your company does, twitter allows you to get the word and links out to your information in seconds.

6. It’s Not A Time Consuming Monster - You’ll need to decide how frequently you want to twitter (comment). You may only use it a few times a week in which case it will only take minutes out of your schedule.

7. No Technical Experience Is Required - If your firm does not have a ‘whiz’ with software, there’s no coding or technical experience required. It’s a simple as writing and line and submitting.

8. Google Loves Tweets - As your following grows; you’ll find that a variety of software applications will capture your content on their platform. Google catches their updates and keeps it for searches.

9. Easily Share Updates And Links - If you’re in a business where your customers are in front of their computer, you can note when new products arrived, regular policy/news updates, etc.

10. Create Real Time Relationships - By sending out regular updates, your followers can feel like they’re interacting with you. Most companies buy on trust and value as much as they buy because they need the products/service. Twitter can be monumental for building trust.

Most people using Twitter are connecting to new members so they can say what’s on their mind, what their doing, and sometimes throwing in their sales pitch to attract new customers.

If you’re new to Twitter, setting up a new account takes just seconds.

Okay, Now what do i do with it?

This is the easy part…just talk about what your doing, or talk about events that happened during your day.

It doesn’t get any easier than that, does it?

Once in a while you put up a post about a product or information pertaining to your website.

This will help you get the exposure to your business…not to mention all for free, and from time to time, you’ll get a new customer, or someone will subscribe to one of your newsletters, or put a link to their site from yours.

The best part about this is that it required very little work on your behalf, and many of the masters of Twitter know what I’m talking about when it comes to this.

Just remember that if you do get a purchase from someone through Twitter, and the purchaser starts complaining about the product on Twitter, it could drag your website sales and creditability down the drain.

If you can, I would recommend that you try to settle the dispute directly with the purchaser offering them a refund for the product, or give them free incentives.

I would also recommend that you settle the dispute quickly, because Twitter posts spread like wildfire, and there’s nothing like having bad news going around about your website’s products.

Even if Twittering just gets you a few customers, then it’s a few more customers than you had before, so keep on Twittering, and who knows, you might get even more customers!

Happy Twittering!

Why are people flocking to Twitter? What is the reason that over 3,000,000 people so far are heading to this site? Why are technologically advanced companies using it?

Let’s answer this question in two parts. First we will describe what Twitter is and then we will talk about how people are using this new tool. Let me explain this as a list, to make it easier to follow. Hopefully these answers will explain why people are flocking to Twitter.

These updates, or tweets as they are called on Twitter, allow the user to share messages, status updates, what they are doing to anyone who has decided to follow each tweet and really connect with their followers. Members can get these updates via the twitter website, an RSS feed, text message, email, a number of applications including other blogging, social media web sites and so on.

Why Do People Use Twitter? (or as my spouse would ask, “Why in the world do people care what you’re doing?”)

Networking: It’s a great way to meet people. If you’re in a niche business you can easily find people who have the same interests.

Marketing: You need to market yourself, just like big companies such as Dell and Comcast market themselves. Whether for a big company or just for you, a strong brand is very important. You need to let the world see who you are and what you have to offer. Try marketing yourself via a social networking site like Twitter. It worked for me.

Stream of Details: I get urgent news and details on Twitter long before many news stations. A fantastic example was when the Bay area had their recent earthquake. In about 10 minutes Twitter had the details before CNN put it on their breaking news.

It’s great! People from all over the planet use Twitter. You can always find someone who shares your interests and wants to chat.

Twitter is simple and easy to use. Try it out if you haven’t already done so. You can also integrate twitter into your other social networking accounts via “cross posting”.

So unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few month you must have undoubtedly heard of Twitter. It really is something that is literally sweeping the Internet by storm. In this article I’m going to tell you what twitter is, why you should be using it and how you can profit from it.

Microblogging tool

So twitter is a microblogging tool. If you’ve heard of the term blog then you know that a blog is really just content published on a webpage. The content could be text , audio video. A microblogging tool is like a mini blog, where you’re content is usually limited to text and there’s a strict limit on the character length. Twitter has a character length of 140 characters.

Twitter allows you to create and publish your little mini posts. The nature of microblogs allow you to post text very quickly and easily almost like a stream of consciousness.

The interesting part is that you can search for and follow other people, and they can do the same for you. You can “direct message” to individuals meaning that you can send private posts. A twitter post by the way is also called a “tweet”.

Why You Should Be Using It Now

The reason you should be using Twitter now is simple. It’s a great social marketing tool. And it doesn’t hurt that it has mindshare and brandshare right now.

You can follow people you find interesting who discuss topics you’re interested in and engage them in conversation. I have an interest in Internet marketing for example. I can search for the topic Internet marketing on Twitter.com, find people discussing the term, and start following them. I can ask questions either posted on twitter for all to see or just to one particular person.

You Can Do Great Market Research

Twitter has reached a critical mass of people to the point where you can search on just about anything and find out how popular it is. This is great for market research. There are even tools (coming in another article) that allow you to track keywords in near real time.

Self Branding

You can actually virally brand yourself to a large audience and both directly and indirectly market products and services.

Do you want to learn how to use twitter and other social media to generate more traffic and more money for your own business or cause? Get my free social media marketing ebook right here.

Twellow.com is in the business of organizing and categorizing Twitter’s rapidly expanding social network. If you’ve been on Twitter for any length of time you know it can be difficult to locate people who may be worth following. And as social networks grow exponentially on the Internet, it’s become quite challenging to locate quality information.

Twellow allows you quite simply to promote yourself, your business via a profile and improve access to other creditable folks or businesses via those profiles.

Twellow.com profiles are divided into keyword categories raised from thousands of member listings.

Twellow.com’s free services include profile updating and management and a new linking feature, which enables subscribers to build connections to their other web presences. These links can be edited by the subscriber.

Once the Twellow.com member has verified their account, they can edit their name, biography, categories, location and URL information. All Twellow.com subscribers update these fields. In the category field, members can add up to ten items designating their interests or talents. Most Twitter members will already find they have a Twellow.com listing. Twellow.com listings from non-registered members are compiled based on public data records posted on the Internet.

Once Twellow.com memberships are established, members may access and update their profile.

Once profile information is entered, Twellow.com lists subscribers in the applicable categories according to their biographical input and their categorical preferences. Upon viewing the listings, members can change their classifications. Twellow.com links may be placed on the member Urls.

This is another great Twitter tool to check out for your social media marketing strategy!

Do you want to learn how to use twitter and other social media to generate more traffic and more money for your own business or cause? Get my free social media marketing ebook right here.

Just when you thought there couldn’t or maybe “shouldn’t” be any more Twitter tools, yet another Twitter Application comes along. The three tools below allow you to track the most popular talked about topics that are going on in the “Twittersphere” at a moments notice.

Twit scoop

Twit scoop, uses an automated algorithm to scan tons of tweets every minute, and uses a tag cloud,to show you the most recently used words. Top words are displayed in bold and the most popular words are shown even bigger. You can hover over the word to see the most recent tweets with that word.

You can enter a search on the right side to see the most tweeted conversations that match your search term. You can also see a graph of your search results.

Tweetscan

Tweetscan is a similar search tool minus the graphical features. The Tweetscan home page displays the most popular tweeted words in a tag cloud with the more popular words displayed in larger font sizes. Click on a word and get the search results of all tweets with that word. You can search by keyword and twitter use. You can setup a search of up to 5 phrases and Get updates via email, rss

Summize

Summize is more of a bare bones twitter search tool. You don’t get any tag clouds here dude.

What you do get is a simple search page (think Google search). Type in your search term and get back the resulting tweets with the search term which basically looks like the search results you’d get if you searched on your own Twitter.com homepage. On the right hand side you’ll see sections for trending “twitted” topics and so-called “nifty” queries. Clicking on the advanced tab link will allow you to search by people, places, dates and attitudes.

The list of Twitter tools grows nearly every day. Check out the search and tracking tools above and see how they can be useful in your social media marketing efforts or just to keep up on your areas of interest!

So we’re talking about twitter, which is a micro-blogging service that has seen exponential growth in the last few months. Twitter has been in the news media more and more in recent times which has exploded the ranks of its users.

So in this article I’m going to talk a little bit about how to get people to follow you. What sorts of the things should you twitter about that will get people to follow you and more importantly, what are some things you should not twitter about that’ll most likely keep people from following you.

There are lots of different schools of thought as far as how to get people to follow you, this is what I believe:

1. Don’t spam: what I mean by this is don’t just send out offers to join your list, or send out offers for special products, and tweets that are only related to your business. Let me rephrase that, unless you’re Dell, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, or some other business that is on twitter, don’t only send out messages related to your business. Most people don’t care. Most people will care about you and what you are doing rather than what your company is doing unless you happen to be one of the above mentioned companies, or you happen to have or happen to be twittering under a company account.
2. Be engaging: like I mentioned people want to follow people not companies. What the above companies are doing on twitter is that they are engaging their followers. I’m telling you here to be engaging. These companies are going to where the users or customers are and then engaging their customers where their customers are at. Don’t just be a marketing robot. Yes, twitter can be a marketing tool. Having said that, I feel that you should not only use Twitter for marketing.
3. Be entertaining: say something fun, refer people to a fun website it can be your own website by the way, the more funny you are the more people will follow you. Of course there’s always an exception to the rule, however, most people want to have a good time on twitter so if you’re always recommending things that are fun, or interesting you’ll get a a lot of followers.

I should mention, that you should not look at your number of followers as a scorecard. It doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 followers, 50 followers or 10 followers. You should try to interact with everyone on your list at least once or twice. And if you have too many followers to always engage with then only engage the people that you find interesting.

These are just some general tips for what to do in order to get people to follow you.

Twitter is a revolutionary social media that has changed the way people communicate with each other. You get 140 characters to share your thoughts with the world and provide value to others. And if the community finds you useful, there is a good chance they are going to follow you. If you have been involved in Twitter, you have probably seen all these gurus that have thousands of followers. A lot of folks can’t even get their first thousand. And you’d have to have a lot of followers to have the community disable the rule that doesn’t allow you to follow more than 2000 people. You may find getting that many followers daunting, but in reality, there are legitimate tactics you can use to increase the number of folks who are following you.

Here is how you can increase the number of your Tweeter followers:

• Don’t be stingy: if people take time to follow you, don’t just ignore them. Read their profiles. See what they are about. If they are providing value, it never hurts to follow them back.
• Follow the masters: by following the top folks in your market you can not only see what they are about but also get a lot of followers as a result. You see, a lot of folks follow the top guns’ followers, and you can benefit from it.
• Give away an ebook: if you have a report or ebook that you are giving away to your e-mail list, you can do the same thing with your followers. Ask people to follow you and reward them for it.
• Give away your product: one of the best ways to gain followers on YouTube is by giving away a product in return for them retweeting about your product and following you.
• Provide value: don’t go off tanget on your Twitter account can only cost you. Stay on message and provide value your followers are seeking.
• Join the game: there are many things going on in this community. By joining the events going on, you can gain lots of new fans. Take Follow Friday for example. Join the game and recommend folks whom you feel are worth following, and the chances are they’ll return the favor.
• Giveaway goodies on your blog: similar to the above approaches, but this time you are using your blog as a method to drive you new fans.
• Create a video: videos are hot these days, and you are going to get a lot of fans if you provide valuable content in your videos.

There you have it. The key here is to provide value and think outside the box. Freebies work great, and so does great content. Don’t expect to become a superstar overnight. It take a bit of time, but as long as you are adding to the community, you’ll get there.

Marketing and PR- a tweet away!

Not enough sales coming your way? Having a hard time finding customers and making your brand visible? Here’s a one stop strategy for all your marketing and PR needs- Twitter. A popular social networking and micro blogging service, Twitter has truly made the world look smaller and now more and more people use Twitter for marketing and PR. Twitter, with its wide network of users has an incredible potential for expanding your marketing and PR campaigns, efficaciously. Innumerable internet savvy companies have used twitter to their advantage, so why not you?

Start tweeting!

Sign up with Twitter services for free and invest your time to increase your profits. You can post your updates or tweets and also find somebody to follow by checking out the face book profiles of the other members. Try to post something interesting and informative in your posts. You can even provide a link to that information. Build a big network of friends by finding your friends on Twitter. Then, post comments and discuss professional, personal information and business through micro-blogging. Blogging is considered time consuming but micro-blogging in Twitter, with its 140 characters makes posting updates easy and simple.

Why Twitter?

Twitter, with its myriad users and followers is the best place to meet people and improve your business potential. Using Twitter for marketing and PR can be the best way to build relationships with prospective business associates and partners. You can post information on the company, events, new products, press releases, collaborative efforts, etc and you can increase the traffic to your company’s website by creating a commendable impression about your company among your followers. Sometimes a creative and intelligent post can give your company that extra mileage that can steer you to greater heights.

Twittering, marketing and PR!

Using twitter search, you can monitor the people who talk about your company. Follow everyone whom you find talking about the company and strike conversations with them. Among these people, you might find prospective clients, employees and customers. Interact with them constantly for better communication and collaboration.

* Convince the CEO of your company to use social media for marketing and create a company page.
* Identify a few top users and influential people in the field of marketing and follow them.
* Engage your community with the latest updates on the company, events, products, etc.
* If a new product is to be launched, build the expectation by asking your followers to subscribe for the company newsletter and so on.
* Publish contents about your products that are simple and very helpful.
* Interact with your customers and listen to their opinions on a product, which can even allow you to create a better product in the future. This will improve the customer-company relationship.
* Twitter can be used to announce special offers, deals, discounts and sales to a larger audience.
* Provide updates on conferences, events, last minute changes and exclusive events on Twitter.
* Post links to webinars, blog articles, pictures, upcoming events, etc on Twitter.
* Encourage discussions on your products and company.
* Follow what people have to say about your brand/product/company and make necessary amends that are possible.

Improve your online brand reputation and enhance your companies image by becoming accessible to multitudes of people around, through Twitter. Twitter has revolutionized the concept of traditional marketing and has become the best tool for online marketing and increasing PR. With a tad bit of innovation and imagination, you can use Twitter for marketing and PR to your company’s advantage!