Social Media For Small Business - How to Use Twitter For Your Business

by: Urvi Mehta

Following up from the last set of Social Media Marketing webinars where we covered the basics of Twitter and other Social Media tools and sites, I have been getting questions about using Twitter for business purposes. In response to those questions, I wanted to write out a short list of Twitter for Business best practices and some of the most popular tools that make these practices possible. This list of tools, techniques, and what is possible is changing and expanding almost daily with the explosion of Twitter usage and discussions of Twitter merging with some other site/partner. Thus I expect to stay current on using Twitter for business purposes we will need to repost more on this topic from time to time.

• Be Real (don't hide) -

It is important that you completely fill in the registration and profile information when signing up on Twitter. If you set up your Twitter Id as a business name it is less real than using a personal name. If you still want the business name in there, you could possibly add the company after the persons name (like Dell computer has been known to do with names like "PatrickAtDell"). In the profile section, post your website. I wouldn't recommend a short URL here if you can avoid it since this is your brand and the full link helps in your SEO rankings. Also in the profile section you enter in relevant search terms in your profile description.

With the profile bio limited to 160 characters, you want to get the relevant keywords included. By doing so you don't have much space to talk about the business specifically. However you can also squeeze in more content about your business including other websites, urls, logos, or content by uploading a custom Twitter background. Be aware though that the search engines and tools people are using to find you will not pick up words or content located in the background image. That's why the keywords have to be in your description.



Finally and possibly most important is that you need to upload a picture. People want to see who they are communicating with, even if you are representing a company. If Twitters don't think you are real, they are less likely to be interested in following you and learning more about your business (we are Twittering for Business here remember). If you try to hide with no picture, just a logo, an incomplete profile or no description, the cynical side of social media marketing will take over, people will assume the worst and they won't follow you.

• Participate (be Relevant, contribute, share, respond) -

For a business or business person to be relevant in the Twitter conversation going on, they need to participate. Ask questions and elicit responses. Respond to other user's questions. Tweet not only your own relevant contributions but retweet (RT) other Tweets that you find valuable. Promote and/or attribute others where there's a reason to do so. You can build a following faster if you appear trust worthy (easiest way to do that is by actually being trustworthy), know your subject matter and don't look like you are just out the get them to buy something.

The graders and ranking sites look at both your following as well as your activity. There's a number of search tools that will help you here to see who is talking about what and who is specifically responding to you (for example with @replies). These tools can help you determine where you might want to jump into a conversation and build that relevance. This is important in being noticed by searches from other users. You build following with contribution, relevance, and responsiveness.

The number of keywords in your tweet cloud is also important. Are you an active Tweeter? If so, what are you tweeting about? Are you relatively consistent in what you discuss? There's a big difference between using Twitter like text messaging and blogging each trip to the grocery store and using Twitter for business with a targeted, specific approach to your online identity and the topics you take on. Again, the grading web sites will pick up on this targeted approach and quickly move you to "elite" status in your chosen keywords if you Tweet with some forethought.

• Automate (where possible) -

Reduce the time it takes you to research what is happening in the Twitterdom, speed up your own Tweeting, get yourself followed automatically, and build ranking faster and easier. There are several automation type tools available to help build your Twitter for business presence without having to hire a back room full of people:

--TweetBeep -Set up alerts for various keywords, people, different attitudes, and links.

--Summize (Twitter Search) - Search for your keywords, click a button and you have a custom RSS feed that you can read via your favorite feed reader, or put on your Google or Yahoo home page. A synopsis available on what's happening.

--Tweetlater - one of the more versatile tools related to Twitter. A quick list of services include; emailing a digest of Tweets (like TweetBeep), Pre-scheduling tweets to keep your tweet stream flowing, pre-saving Tweets or common snippets of tweets for faster Tweeting, Automating direct messages to people that follow you, and managing multiple Twitter Ids at the same time.

--Twitscoop - extends what Twitter Search can do with both real-time searches of specific keywords as well as what the overall Twitterdom is talking about using (the Tweet Cloud). It also shows you the hot trends in the cloud.

--Twellow - This is another research tool that extends Twitter for business use, Twellow searches people's profiles or what they are Tweeting about under specific, predefined categories, or a general search. Twellow will also show you geographically where people are Tweeting from in the US and Canada.

--Remember the Milk (RTM) - A real unique and cutting edge use of Twitter. RTM is a Task management service (set up reminders, tasks, things to do, etc.) for an individual or a small team or business. You can interact with Remember the Milk through Twitter. You simply follow the Twitter ID @rtm and then send it commands like retrieving your current tasks, adding new tasks, setting up automated reminders, even sending tasks to other Twitter users. This is a great adaptation of Twitter for business use.

• Re-purpose existing content-

With taking care of customers, blogging, keeping up profiles on numerous social media sites, all while running a business, maintaining your online presence can quickly become overwhelming. Use tools like Twitterfeed to automatically Tweet content from an RSS feeds of your other blogs or sites, and Alterthingy, another tool that helps you aggregate and repost your content across the multiple sites, and profiles you need to maintain.

In addition, several blogs (Wordpress for example) are building Twitter widgets to be able to display your tweets (and others) on your blog, thus keeping the blog actively changing and a target for better search engine ranking and more active visits.

There are any number of other ways you can use Twitter for Business and this note really only scratches the surface of what is possible. As the popularity of Twitter grows so will the unique and inventive ways of using this innovative tool.


About The Author

Urvi Mehta is a passionate Social Media Evangelist who thrives on teaching and consulting business owners and organizations on how to use Web 2.0 and social media tools and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to help create buzz and influence their branding online.

She is the co-founder of PR Easy (http://www.PREasy.com), a full service online marketing company which serves clients around the world. Urvi teaches her clients how to utilize social networking sites, such as, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to establish themselves as authorities in their industry, acquire more clients and ultimately increase profit.

Urvi holds a Masters degree in Public Health from the University of Illinois in Chicago and is considered by her peers as someone who "holds nothing back and gives real meat." She has recently started a blog, http://www.UrviMehta.com where she discusses Social Media Strategies.

Traffic Generation 101

by James Farias

Getting Traffic to Your Website

I'm going to share some internet marketing techniques with you that will drive traffic to any website you own, but first it's important to understand how traffic works. This article will not go into minute details (that's for upcoming articles and posts). Instead, you are about to be shown a quick overview of how traffic works and how you can get your share.

So You Have a Website…What Now?

Just because you put up a website doesn't mean that Google (or any other search engine for that matter) is going to start sending you traffic. In fact, search engines doesn't SEND traffic anywhere. The search engines simply display a listing of sites ranked by what the user enters into that particular search engine's search box. The user then has to actively click on your site's link to visit your site. That being the case, the key here is to show up in the search engine's rankings on page one or page two (where people will actually see it) while also ensuring that the user wants to click on the search result for your site.

Why Is Ranking Important?

If you have a website that is promoting a product or service, then there is a good chance that you are competing with thousands (if not millions) of other pages on the internet promoting the same thing. Over 90% of all search engine users never go to page 2 of search engine results. That's why it vital to get onto page 1 of search engine rankings. That is why you need to force your site's pages to rank higher than the pages of your competitors.

How Does Google Determine How It Will Rank Your Site

While the actual algorithms that Google uses for site rankings is secret, there are many things that have been discovered. What Google looks for when ranking your site is of course relativity. If your page is offering instructions on how to assemble wedding gift baskets, then Google will index your page as a page on how to assemble wedding gift baskets. That part is simple. It won't show up (or shouldn't show up) for pages on how to repair a computer. The problem comes in the fact that you will be competing with thousands of other pages that offer similar information.

So you need to do things to your site to leap frog over those other pages and come out on top. The biggest thing that Google looks for when deciding how to rank similar pages is popularity. In other words, how many other sites are linking to your site? Google does this because they feel that, just as our country is run as a Democracy where a single candidate gets elected into office by having the most votes, the people should also decide which sites are most relevant within a given niche. In Google's eyes, if another site is willing to post a link to your site, then you must have a quality site and deserved to be ranked higher. Getting enough links (or votes) will play very heavily when Google decides where to rank you. Links to your site from other sites are called "Backlinks".

Now here's the catch… you can have 20 links to your site and still get beat out by a site that only has 10. The reason is this… Google gives "extra credit" to links that come from quality sites or sites similar to yours.

So Where Do You Get Quality Backlinks That Drive Traffic?

So now that we know some basics of what Google wants, we will start to develop a traffic plan that will help us to start ranking higher on Google's search engine. Below I provide a traffic blueprint we are going to use to get those valuable backlinks. Don't worry if it seems overwhelming. I'm going to give you a blueprint that automates most of it, and here's the good news, in addition to getting valuable backlinks from the sources below, you will also be getting additional targeted traffic!

Step-by-Step Traffic Blueprint

The following is the blueprint that I use to create a massive amount of free traffic for my websites. Here's why it works: If you actually follow through with all of these steps, you will not only create hundreds of links back to your website, but you will also get tons of traffic to your site as well. You see this plan will give you more backlinks then 99% of all similar websites. In other words, you will be a top 1% websites within your niche when it comes to getting traffic to your site.

What Google looks for when it looks for websites to rank high is content lots and lots of relevant content. This is because when people visit search engines, that is what they are looking for. Content comes in many forms...it can be articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc. What you will need to focus on is building an accumulation of content and flooding the internet with our content. One thing to keep in mind when generating your content is that what will make your site rank higher is having an abundance of original content. So if you simply cut and paste content from other websites you will most likely be beat out by the site that already has that content. So you will want to make sure to focus on creating and developing original content.

Steps to flooding the internet with your original content:

1. Brainstorm ideas for an article. To come up with ideas for an article you can start by visit websites and blogs that are similar to yours. As you come across blogs, you should write a comment to their blog posts with a link back to your site whenever possible. For a detailed breakdown of how you can generate the necessary content you can see our article Creating Unique Blog Content.
2. Write an article. Use Microsoft Word or your favorite word processor and save it to your hard drive. This step is important as many people have a tendency to write straight to their blogs editor. the reason for saving this to your hard drive is that you will be using it again and again.
3. Turn your article into a blog post. Pretty self-explanatory...simply post your article to the WordPress blog on your website.
4. Distribute your blog post via social media marketing. Submit your blog post to all the major social bookmarking sites such as FaceBook, Digg, Reddit & Mixx.
5. Submit to Twitter. Generate a short Twitter blurb letting all of your follower know about your new blog article.
6. Create a Squidoo Lens. You can take your article and very quickly create a Squidoo Lens. Google loves Squidoo!
7. Post your article onto Hosted Blogs. Copy and paste the same (or slightly rewritten article onto several hosted blogs that you have created such Blogger, BlogSpot, WordPress.org.
8. Submit to article directory sites. You can publish the same article to article directory sites that get indexed by Google. A couple of good examples of these types of sites would be EzineArticles.com and GoArtilces.com
9. Send out press releases. There are many free online press release submission sites. You can rewrite your article slightly and blast it out as a press release.
10. Post parts of the article onto relevant forums. You can take portions of the article and put it out there on forums. When using forums don't spam, just add content that is relevant to an ongoing discussion or create a new discussion of your own utilizing a portion of your article and have a link to your site in your profile's signature.
11. Create a PodCast. Use the article and record it as an .mp3 audio file so that you can publish it as a podcast. You can do this with an inexpensive microphone that you can pick up from just about any retail or online store and the free open source audio recording and editing software Audacity. Best of all it only takes minutes to do.
12. Create a Video from the Podcast. Create a slide show utilizing free images you find on the web and combine it with the .mp3 audio file you created to produce a video utilizing the free screen recording software solution CamStudio. Upload the video to video sharing sites such as YouTube.

If you follow these internet marketing techniques you WILL see a dramatic increase in traffic to your site over time. The problem that plagues so many internet marketers is that they spend a little time generating and promoting content and when they don't see immediate results they give up. If you are persistent in your efforts and consistent in your methodologies your hard work will pay off in an unending supply of natural search engine traffic.

About the Author

To learn more about internet marketing and how you can dominate your niche visitIMBusinessJournal.com.

Google Secret Loophole Bonus And Review

by Greg Taylor

Google Secret Loophole reviewed on unique PPC method by IM marketer Matt Benwell. This Internet marketing product launch debuts on June 16th. Creator Matt will have a pre-launch video on his site around June 12th to build up the anticipation of this hot new PPC program that produces 20K per month income. Google Secret Loophole is a easy to follow Google backdoor formula created and developed by Matt while he was struggeling to make money online.

Benwell was in Finance before he went full time into online marketing and is a top online marketer. Matt started buiding sites around 2007 and has produced two other products that were very successful. Matt lives in the UK and relates to the average guy. This guy has struggled to make money online like millions of others and this must be why his products are very effective at helping the average guy out there that is attempting to make money on the net.

Many people new to Internet marketing might not know that Matt has a brother, Rob Benwell, who is a million dollar a year earner online. Rob is the worldwide authority on making money with blogs and his product that helped him join the ranks of top gurus is Blogging To The Bank. Matt is following in his brother's footsteps and is building his own reputation as a marketer that teaches others how to create online profits.

Matt's last product sold over $600,000.00 worth to online entrepreneurs. The first product was "Super Speed Wealth" and the next product was"Quick Fire Profits". The marketing forums are full of online marketers applauding both of these products and the frenzy is building for Google Secret Loophole.

So many marketers have been scammed with many of these new product launches that are reworked ideas and will ask is Google Secret Loophole a scam. GSC is not a scam product but a complete step by step Google backdoor formula that Matt created and perfected himself. This unique product takes the inexperienced marketer by the hand and manifest a solid income in 30 days as well as help the more experienced PPC marketer take their PPC business to the next level or two. GSL has a easy to follow video training that details the written material. $8,000.00 was spent for software to automate that makes this product totally unique.

Google Secret Loophole Review summary:Buy Google Secret Loophole and you willknow the method to profit from PPC. PPC marketing creates quick profits and experienced marketers take that success and scale it up to make millions online. This kind of marketing can empty your bank account if you don't know what you are doing. With Google Secret you will be able to copy Matt and generate profits safely and then rinse and repeat for higher income. Many marketers know you can get free bonuses for launch products when you do a search for name of the product plus the word bonus. To get cool bonuses for this do a search for Google Secret Loophole bonus.

About the Author

Greg Taylor is an Internet marketer that mentors Internet and Network marketers and teaches and writes about cutting edge Internet marketing methods.Learn more aboutGoogle Secret Loophole Bonus And Review

Targeted Content versus Keyword Density

by Kathy John

While looking for information about writing for Website pages, you simply can't avoid the topic "keyword density." I would like to start with a definition - Keyword density measures the percentage of keywords and key phrases compared to the total number of words in your Web page body.

There are many opinions about what percentage is the so called "magic number." I have seen recommendations ranging from 2 to 18 percent. This disparity can be confusing. Keyword density can make a huge difference in the quality of the text on the page and have a big impact on your conversion rate.

When you are too attached to hitting a percentage, you may be focusing more on the search engines as compare to your website's human audience. If you are doing so, this can detract from the original goal of the web page, which is to convert visitors into paying clients.



A Key Concept: The key concept to remember is "targeted content." While it is important to know the keywords that suit your product or service and use them within the content of your webpage, insisting that those phrases be repeated a particular number of times can make what you are writing dull and unreadable. So what is a writer to do?

First and foremost, when writing content for a Web page, there are several questions that need to be answered like:

What do you want to accomplish with this content? Are you trying to sell a product or get someone to sign up for a service? Do you want your visitors to subscribe to a blog or newsletter? Do you want them to visit a physical location or does your Website cater only to cyberspace? Are you trying to persuade people to see a certain point of view?

Every webpage should have a unique purpose. Once you have figured out your goals, the next question you need to ask yourself is:

Who is your audience?

You have to know about your targeted visitors and make sure that your webpage content should be effective and eye catching. One of the things I like to do once I have figured out my demographic, is to look at a picture of someone I know who fits that image. For example - if I am writing a webpage that sells gift items for young guys, I look at a picture of my mom sitting with my niece and nephew and I write the things that I know will convince her to buy that present for them.

Now that you have figured out what you want to accomplish with your writing and whom you are writing for, it is time to ask another vital question:

How is your target audience going to find you?

We live in an extremely diverse culture. Different segments of the population have many different names for the same things depending on where you live and how you were brought up. For example, you may call it a frankfurter, but someone else might call it a hot dog, frank, wiener, wiener dog, foot long or red hot. You simply should not assume that everyone refers to products and services the same way and it is vital to know the terms that searchers are using when they go to the search engines.

There are several keywords research tools that can show you which terms people are looking for and help you decide which keywords you should target with your copy.

Start Writing - Once you have identified your keywords, your audience and your purpose, it's time to get down to writing. So what should your keyword density be? The important thing is to keep the content on the page about your topic or "on target."

Four percent density is best, but that's a guideline. Often people take that guideline too seriously. Don't worry about it if you only hit 3.5 percent for a particular key phrase. Writing content for a Web page is a delicate balance of using your keywords enough so that the search engine spiders can find and index your webpage and not so much as to make the copy unbearable for your human readers.

The golden rule: Do not sacrifice the user experience in the hope that the search engines will raise your rankings.

The primary mission of the search engines is to help people easily find what they are looking for. The primary mission of your Web page should be to convert visitors into paying clients & the primary mission of the copywriter is to create original, relevant content that can accomplish both of those objectives.

General Guidelines for Keyword Density and SEO:

Put your keyword phrase at the beginning of your page title. Put your keyword phrase near the beginning of your page description. Put your keyword phrase first in your list of keywords. Put your keyword phrase near the beginning of your first paragraph. Include your keyword phrase once in every two or three paragraphs. Don't do it much more than that. Put your keyword phrase in the last paragraph

About the Author

Kathy John is an eminent analyst and writer of Information Technology Industry. He has authored many books on SEO India and Search Engine optimization . Currently he is rendering his services to http://www.profitbysearch.com.

Blogging Wars - Wordpress Vs Blogger Part 1

by Gobala Krishnan

There's a war going on in the blogosphere, and it has nothing to do with bloggers dissing each other on their respective websites. The war is about control of the blogosphere by several great, many good, and tons of terrible blogging platforms. The average newbie now has "too many" options to choose from, and the battle for blogging supremacy is hotter than ever.

At my website and blogs, I'm always asked the question "Is Wordpress better than Blogger?". The answer, of course, is "Yes". But to really understand why, it's important to look at both blogging platforms side-by-side and see which one you really need.

You also need to understand that there are different versions of Wordpress, the earliest now termed as "Wordpress" at Wordpress.org, and the hosted version similar to Blogger now termed "Wordpress.com" which is of course available Wordpress.com. Only the latter comes with free hosting on a sub-domain account. We'll discuss this in Part 2.

For Part 1 of this article, we look only at the self-hosted version of Wordpress. Here's the comparison scale:

1) Ease of Set-up And Use

Yes, it's much easier to set-up a blog with Blogspot.com and get your own Bloggger account. You can be done in 10 minutes flat. Once you're set-up you can start posting immediately. If you want to add a designer's touch to your blog, there are also tons of blogger templates available for free.

Installing Wordpress however can be a major headache if you don't know what you're doing. Since you're going to host it on your own account, you'll need to download the installation files, upload them to your server, set-up a database, and run the configuration script.

However, if you know which hosting account to get, you can choose one with Cpanel included. With Cpanel, you can do a one-click installation, upgrade and removal of your Wordpress platform.

2) Customization & Advanced Use

Blogger doesn't allow categories. You can't sort your articles into different focuses, unless you know how to hack the platform. With Wordpress, not only can you add categories, you can also display each category differently on your main page. In fact with the correct plugins you can even turn your Wordpress into a magazine-like portal.

Publishing with Blogger can extremely furstrating. It can take forever to post articles, especially if you're making changes to the entire website. With Wordpress, publishing is much faster, although if you load your system with all kinds of bells and whistles it can be just as frustrating.

With a Blogger account, you can get additional features like "Shout Boxes" that improve interaction on your site. You can also get pretty themes and nifty little tools that you can add to the core template files. However, that's as far as you can go with Blogger.

With Wordpress however, the sky is the limit. As cliche as that may sound, not only can you get themes, additional "plugins" and advanced tools, you can also extend Wordpress to far beyond just a blogging platform.

The talk today is about using Wordpress as a complete, user-friendly Content Management System or CMS. Unlike complicated predecessors like PHPPostNuke, B2, Mambo or even Joomla, Wordpress is user friendly. Plus, the availability of source codes in this open-source system coupled with a strong community makes it possible to use Wordpress as an article management system, classifieds system, direct-selling site and even a paid membership site.

4) Copyrights and Ownership of Content

I started with Blogger and I won't say that it's bad. But after a while I started to get frustrated with Blogger, and here's why: Google Owns Your Content

Google has the authority to shut down your account without warning if they don't like what you're blogging about. You don't have absolute control over your own blog. With Wordpress, you own the domain name and the blog is hosted on your own account. You have full control over your content.

With the self-hosted version of Wordpress (not Wordpress.com), you're free to write about anything you want, and use the software in any way you want. Yes, Blogger allows you to publish to your own domain, but they still own the database that holds your content! Don't forget that!

5) Search Engine Optimization and Traffic

There's this propaganda that since Google owns Blogger, they tend to favor Blogger accounts. I won't say that this is illogical, but from my experience, there's no such favoritism.

I've heard as many stories of getting indexed fast and ranking high in search engines from both Wordpress and Blogger users. As long as the content is good, the spiders will come.

When you post in Blogger, you can only "ping" a limited amount of sites, whereas with Wordpress on your own domain you can ping as many blog directories as you want, and start getting more traffic.

As a conclusion, I would say that Wordpress is only slightly ahead in terms of optimization for search engines, and building large amounts of traffic.

6) Money-Making Potential

There's no doubt that it's easier to get started with Google Adsense if you have a Blogger account. In fact you can now apply for Adsense from within a Blogger account. Not entirely surprising considering the fact that both are owned by the same company.

With Wordpress, it can get tricky. The default installation is not enough. You'll need a couple of plugins and even a better theme to really maximize the Adsense potential. However, this seems to be getting easier and there's even "Adsense revenue sharing" plugins around that allow you to share ad revenue with other contributors and writers for your blog.

When you start using Wordpress to build your Adsense websites, you'll soon discover what I mean. It's something you need to experience for yourself. I can tell you one thing though - when you go Wordpress, you don't go back.

About the Author

Gobala Krishnan is a micro-niche blogging specialist. Get a copy of his report "Wordpress Adsense System" at http://adsense.easywordpress.com