Tag: Twitter

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Twitter Advertising Tips

Right now I am advertising on Twitter and for FREE thanks to American Express and Twitter! I’ve gotten $100 of Twitter advertising free in order to check out Twitter’s new small business pay per click program. This post will tell you a little more about the options you have in advertising on Twitter.

First off, you can’t link to a page on your website with Twitter pay per click like you can with Facebook pay per click. These are your options when you set up your advertising account:

  • You can choose to have your Twitter account placed in the promoted account section on Twitter profiles. That’s the spot where Twitter says “You may want to follow these people.”
  • You can choose to have one of your tweets be a promoted tweet, but the catch is you don’t necessarily pick a tweet, Twitter picks it for you based on click rates of your followers. Actually Twitter will select 5 of your top rated tweets and then rotate through five of them. You can select, once your account is running, which tweets NOT to promote, but not hand pick one to promote.

For people like me who don’t tweet about my own services constantly that may mean that the tweet that is promoted actually goes to a news site or blogpost on an interesting topic that is not about my own services. As Twitter advertising matures, I may be able to craft a tweet and select it specifically and so move people into the page on my site that I choose, but for now, you have to work with what Twitter selects.

So far in less than one week, I have spent $10.86 on advertising and gotten 12 new followers and had 13 clicks on my promoted tweets. I’ll keep you posted on the results once I’ve had more experience with the program.

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How Much Social Interaction Do You Really Need on Twitter or Facebook?

How much hands on fan interaction do you really need on your Twitter or Facebook business page? In my opinion, it depends on how large your fan base is. Here are some general guidelines to consider.

Twitter

under 100 followers – take time the first 30 days or more to follow people, sort them into lists, try to engage other writers and your followers. If you do not engage with people, your fan numbers will not grow. You may add one or two fans a month, but will in most cases your numbers will simple stay at a low level.

over 100 followers and up – your fan base with grow the more time you invest in interaction. I like five to ten tweets a day and then engagement with followers three times a week. For my own personal account I interact with followers on a daily basis, but if you don’t have the budget three days a week will still work out fine.

Facebook

under 100 followers – you will really need to buy ads to try to build your fan base. Try Facebook pay per click using sponsored stories. Be aware that you will add fans quickly, but may lose up to one third of your new fans when you stop advertising. I am not sure as to why, but this is what I have seen happen. If you do nothing, you may add only one fan a month. After you get 100 followers fans will grow at a steady rate, but only if your content is good. You don’t even need to spend a lot of time interacting with fans once you hit this level, it seems to be more a factor of the quality of your content.

over 100 followers and up – the frequency of posts as you get to this level appears to be important. One or two status updates a day appear to simply get lost in the noise that is now part of the Facebook timeline. I recommend five updates a day. I have not seen a huge increase of fans based on interacting with them, growth seems to be more a factor of memorable content versus engagement.

I invite you to check out our Twitter and Facebook page management services to see if we might be a good match for your business’ social media needs. You’ll find that we provide a number of service engagement levels at affordable prices.

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Social Networking Meltdown – Which Are Important to Use

One clients just left me this comment on the phone about my recommendation of Pinterest, and I think it is indicative of how many small business owners feel. “All I could think of is  yet another social networking site I have to add to my work load.  I am about ready to throw my hands up, I don’t think I can add one more thing in the social media area as I can barely keep up with what I am doing now.” These sentiments have been voiced by many as the online world is bombarded with new programs and platforms.

What social networks deserve your real attention as a small to medium sized business owner at this point?

  1. Get on Google+ and integrate your website and blog with the +1 button. This one is just too big to not have an early participation in. Why? Because it’s a Google property and Google is tightly integrating +1 votes and Google+ activity with its search engine.
  2. Make sure you are using Twitter. The viral nature and the ability to interact with a wide market is important to selling outside your local sphere. I’m watching sponsored Tweets very closely for small business and feel that in the long run activity on Twitter will be a key marketing strategy even for local selling businesses. Link sharing and interaction with others in your industry as well as prospects in a casual environment make this one of my top social networking picks.
  3. Make sure you have a Facebook Business page set up. Although right now I feel that businesses may want to have a minimal presence there due to poor fan growth, due to the changes Facebook made to how brands use Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2011, things could change, and change quickly. In fact, Facebook is announcing what changes they will be making for brands on Wednesday February 29th. This announcement may change my recommendations, but for now based on my research paper, I recommend a wait and see approach.
  4. If you are selling business to business or business to government, LinkedIn is the place for you to connect. Establish a full profile and then update your wall on LinkedIn at least twice a day. Get active in groups and ask questions. Not all businesses will thrive using LinkedIn, but many who cater to businesses and want to reach business executives should consider LinkedIn a top priority. I have not had success with LinkedIn advertising so steer clear of that for now.
  5. Pinterest is a hot new property, but unless you are selling retail fashion merchandise, I recommend you don’t take on this social network. Although you may check it out in the future, if you are strapped for time steer clear of this one for now unless you are selling retail jewelry or clothing.

I hope this helps you to decide which networks you should focus on, the bottom-line is get going on something and start building your network now. Social media will simply not get less important over time.

If you are overwhelmed by social media we can be your solution, with competent American college educated writers, we take on updating your profiles and pages; building your network for your future.

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Our Newest Whitepaper is Out: A Real World Guide to Facebook and Twitter

I’ve just released my newest white paper called “A Real World Guide to Facebook and Twitter”.

You can download the PDF file for free by registering to receive my monthly newsletter.

In this six page guide you will find my candid insights and recommendations on how frequently you should update Twitter and Facebook to grow your follower/fan base as well as my special insights on using both platforms.

To develop the insights for this guide, I watched 23 different Facebook and Twitter accounts for a period of three months and monitored over 2,865 status updates. I personally consider this a fairly small data set, but it is large enough to show some important trends that warrant consideration and further discussion.

As the clients that my firm writes for, are in diverse markets, purchase different service engagement levels, and have unique starting levels of follower/fans, it is impossible to state unequivocally how to specifically grow a social networking account from my data. However, there are some statistical averages and trends that I have found and wanted to share them with you.

I think that you will find this guide helpful, interesting reading, and insightful.