Category: Social Media

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Viral Promotion in Action – My Own Paper!

Man I was shocked earlier today, I found out that my special mini-whitepaper, “Twitter Demystified for Business Users“, was on the home page of SitePro News. SitePro News is the web’s most widely read webmaster resource. It’s like the New York Times for my industry! (I linked to the article on its own page although by now, it has probably moved off the home page.)

Now, I am not sure if SitePro News picked up my article from Twitter or if they found it from one of the ezines syndication sites that I posted my newest article on, but the buzz on Twitter alone has been huge.

Today on Twitter as well, there was a flurry of activity and link love pointing to my paper. I picked up a steady and constant stream of new Twitter followers – just from one great article that got disseminated in a variety of ways.

This is an excellent example of how viral marketing using Twitter and article marketing can be used together to promote your business endeavors. Wow, even I’m impressed. I don’t always put my special edition e-newsletter articles on syndication services, but I will certainly look to do that more frequently with this particular reaction.

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Twitter Demystified for Business Users

Follow me on TwitterTwitter is the current top “hot property” on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business.

First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a “must have” application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit the number of Tweets (Twitter micro posts) to be shown at any one time, and also allows you to remove all Tweets you have seen with one click. Additionally, using TweetDeck, finally a Twitter search on a topic makes sense.

Since using TweetDeck, I have had a much better Twitter experience. As a Twitter newbie, visiting your own Twitter home page is intimidating; it consists of post after post from people who you are following, who you may not know much about, and it just seems like a huge volume of content. To get started effectively first group the people who actually have something interesting to say on TweetDeck and voila, you have a powerful tool that keeps you at the forefront of what is happening in your industry and on the Web.

So how do you get started with Twitter? Well the first thing is to start on Twitter yourself to understand what you like to read, who you like to follow, and to clearly identify what you like about Twitter. For me, it boils down to this: I like to follow people in my industry who say something of value, who provide a link to a new application or point me to an interesting new article, video, or blog site that I should review but may have never have found myself. Based on what I like, and the people who I find interesting to read, I now write my Twitter posts using this same formula to grow my own Twitter audience.

What I also like about Twitter is that the people who I follow also know how to show their true personality in their Tweets. Ye,s I do like to know what Danny Sullivan (famous search engine marketing guru) ate for lunch, but better yet is the link to the video he thought was funny. I love following Ashton Kutcher (movie star married to Demi Moore who just hit 1 million Twitter followers in April). Man, that guy is really funny and is having a ball with Twitter. His posts are great and he has just earned the status of the user with the most followers. This is why you can’t hire someone to “Ghost Twitter” for you. It’s about showing the real you – you can’t fake that!

So how can you use Twitter for business? Twitter is an excellent tool for linking and this is the real value for businesses. By using Twitter to point people to content on your website, articles you have written either on or off your website, or by linking to a service you want to highlight, you drive traffic. On top of that, Google actually indexes Twitter and so your Twitter page can appear in the organic search results so make sure your bio is well thought out. Don’t waste time using Twitter to point to blog posts, use TwitterFeed to post your blog posts directly onto Twitter. If you have a blog or website, you’ll get new Twitter followers by posting your TwitterFeed right onto your web pages. People who may not have known your Twitter ID can simply click the bottom “follow me link” and start following you on Twitter.

Twitter helps you to connect to others.What’s important to be successful in using Twitter is to identify what you personally like about this new media and then deliver the same type of things that you like back to your own followers – work to provide value not drivel! So you’ve got to play with Twitter and learn how to use it first before you can really become successful with it for your business.

So how do you get followers? Well, I started by following everyone (who I found by doing a Twitter search) who had the last name McCord. Then I searched for web design, search engine optimization, and pay per click. Any site profile that looked good, I clicked to follow the writer. It was that easy. Many times people who you follow yourself will choose to follow you. That’s how you initially build up your Twitter base. Over time you will start to identify your “Twitter voice” and refine the type of Twitter presence you want to have by changing your content style and the things that you Tweet about. As you refine your presence, you will build a following.

Another cool Twitter use is that you can reply to any of your followers by simply putting an @ in front of their Twitter ID. For example to send something to my attention use @mccordweb at the very front of your Twitter posting and click enter. Just remember that this post is seen by all followers on my site and on your Twitter site. If you need a more private exchange, go to the direct message link on the Twitter.com site and select a follower by Twitter ID name and send your message from there. This note will be private. If you are using TweetDeck you can click on a follower’s Twitter ID icon and then select to send a direct message or @reply to them. TweetDeck will automatically insert the correct syntax for you in the Tweet.

For many businesses the ability for users to communicate with top management using Twitter is an invaluable resource. This one-to-one exchange allows a company principal to keep tabs on customer viewpoints, concerns, and interests. As a Twitter reply or direct mail does not use email and does not require a response, this is a great way to tap into social networking to test new ideas and to ask for user feedback. For example, if you have a new software product ask your Twitter followers for feedback on a specific feature, or provide a link to your beta version for their testing.

How you use Twitter is all about your personal business needs. The best advice that I can offer to you is that you need to use Twitter a bit yourself first to understand the medium and to find out what you like to read best using Twitter. Then, create your own Twitter network sharing information that you find interesting and have some fun.

Currently I am following 204 people and 183 people are following me on Twitter. Personally I find Twitter great fun and a very cool way to find out first what’s happening in the world before you see it on TV, read it on the Web, or see it in the newspaper. That’s the real power of Twitter; you share, you find out, and you know, all by a person-to-person exchange of information.

This article actually continues and shows you how to use free applications to get the most of Twitter, visit our download page to grab the PDF file to read the rest of the article or read it online in our instruction section.

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Are You Using Facebook to Win Clients?

You know sometimes promoting your business is not all about you, sometimes its about having fun and becoming a “real person” to people who are looking to connect and not a “corporate profile”.

I got one of my large web design projects from an exchange on Facebook. It was a random thing. I invited a whole bunch of people to join me on Facebook from my e-newsletter mailing list. One of the people who I invited joined and we interacted online for a few days. When her boss told her to find a web designer, I got the job. You know why? Because I invited her (the office manager and gal Friday to the boss) to join me on Facebook and she loves using it.

If you totally sanitize your message on Facebook and other social networking sites to match your “corporate face” you may have on your website, you are missing the power of connecting with others. People want to know and interact with the real you, not some cardboard cutout or marketing message! They want to see YOU warts and all. People want to see your family, your kids, know what you are doing, and what you like. This is the real world view that I have received from prospects who have interacted with me and become clients from social networking platforms.

For business owners who say they want a separate corporate site from their personal Facebook site, I say be careful there. If you are a big corporation this may make sense, but if you are a small to medium sized business and a business owner with “personality”, you are better served showing your full profile and letting people into your “circle of trust” to experience who you really are. I think you will find, as I have, that you can win business doing just that.

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Are You a Quitter on Twitter?

Okay are you? Let’s be honest, a lot of people use Twitter like they use a blog, set up an account and then tweet the first few days and then stop. They just can’t seem to make sense of the application and so drop out becoming a Twitter Quitter.

Well I am here to say that you can make sense of Twitter by using TweetDeck. In fact I don’t recommend any other way to do Twitter now. Don’t waste your time trying to do Tweets from Twitter.com or waste time reading your Twitter page using a browser, it is too much content in one spot.

Although it would be great if TweetDeck instituted some security and completed the security certificates on the application to encourage more people to feel comfortable installing it, I swear by it. I too could not make sense of the volume of information on Twitter until I started to create groups within TweetDeck. Now I see the real power of Twitter and have totally increased my use of the application and am having way more fun using it.

In fact, I am in the process of writing a new white paper on demystifying Twitter for business owners and TweetDeck was the first thing I installed as part of my own research. I even use TweetDeck to update my Facebook profile at the same time. (@LinkedIn – you need to get with the program, you are falling out of the popularity mix on social networking.)

I’ve been watching Ashton Kutcher this last week on Twitter gaining 200,000 new followers in a matter of days to a total of about 1 million. In fact Ashton Kutcher has been so hot using Twitter on the Web that he even has Oprah doing Tweets as of Friday the 17th. Her first tweets were lame, so she totally needs to get with the program, but as with all Twitter newbies, you’ll get the hang of it if you watch and try it all out.

If you like the idea of using Twitter but don’t know what to do or where to start, you will want to subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter so you can read my Twitter article in the May 1st issue.