More Tips for Tweeting on Twitter

If you signed up for Twitter and just love sharing things that you have learned that are making your business bigger and better you probably have some of the basics of tweeting down. Maybe you read our post “Tweet, Retweet, Hashtags: The New Language of Social Media” that showed you a few of the basics. If you are finding that Twitter has been an amazing tool for your business and are in need of more, this article will take your tweets to the next level. While tweeting can be a great way to share information you shouldn’t forget that Twitter is a two-way-street and may teach you a few things, too.

A great tool, that isn’t the easiest to find, is Twitter’s advanced search. The advanced search feature can help you find posts about a term, a person, a topic, a location or even a certain date. The tool can be found by scrolling to the bottom of any page on Twitter and look for the “Search” link. There is also another link there that lists all the Twitter search operators like “from:” which allows you to find tweets from a specific person or shows you that putting words in quotes to find tweets about a specific term. Advanced search can really help you find information on exactly what you may need help with at the moment you need it.

Another cool feature that is available to Twitter users that also have a Facebook account is the ability to install Twitter on Facebook. This allows you to update your status in one place, instead of two and keep your social media endeavors efficient. All you need to do is go to twitter.com/widgets/facebook and click on the button that says “Install Twitter on Facebook”. You will be taken through a few steps and you can choose to either let Twitter update your Facebook or Facebook update your Twitter status. It is a bit easier to configure your Twitter account to update your Facebook and doing things this way will help you keep your tweets to the 140 character limit.

If you are used to desktop applications like AOL Instant Messenger there is a Twitter application that can be added to your desktop to make tweeting a breeze. Digsby is an application that Windows users can use to view postings from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all your email accounts in a long window that looks like an instant messenger window on steroids. It is a great way to keep track of things without having to sign in to multiple accounts. If you like a larger view you can use an application called TweetDeck which allows you to personalize how you see your tweets and can also be configured to see your Facebook updates and also has a ton of other features.

If you have realized how important social media marketing is to your business, it is important to make the process as efficient as possible, or you can easily find yourself spending all your time tweeting and updating your Facebook account. While these tools can be amazingly beneficial to you, it is a good idea to specify how much time each day you want to dedicate to this form of marketing. Remember, it is very important to utilize multiple marketing techniques for your business and never put all of your eggs in one marketing basket.

Keeping Your Social Media Strategy Professional

For those of us that have Twitter and Facebook accounts it can be a difficult task to determine how to keep things professional if your main focus is to build a strong business network. Even if you start with the intention of keeping things professional, all it takes is one tweet or one photo to transform a professional site into something that some may find a bit unprofessional. We love social media sites because things are so instantaneous, but we forget that a single tweet can generate a rush of replies in mere seconds. So, policing your own accounts can become a full-time job. It is very important to make the purpose of your account clear from the first moment it is activated.

One of the things that can cause an issue on Facebook is the fact that people can tag you in on pictures they post without your approval. Therefore, your profile can be open to risk of unprofessional exposure. It is very important to monitor your Facebook on a daily basis for photos that may not align you as a business professional. All it can take to turn a potential business contact away is an unprofessional photo that you may not even be aware of.

Facebook has a number of privacy settings that can help you keep things separated. For example you can create a number of different friend lists so that you can have one group for friends, one for family and one for business contacts. This allows you to set up privacy settings for each group. For example, you may want to share photos of your family vacation with your friends and family contacts, but not your professional contacts. There are also settings on Facebook that allow you to remove yourself from public search results. This will help keep your personal information separate from your professional information. It also may be helpful to remove yourself from Google. This can also be done by going to your personal settings page.

There are also settings on Twitter that can help keep your postings private so that only people that you approve of can see them. It is important to understand that once you change this setting it will make any new postings private, but postings made before you changed the setting will still be public.

Doing a little research and taking the time to learn how to safeguard your personal information is a good idea on many levels. It will also help you to separate the information that you want to share with your family and friends from that which you want to share with your professional contacts. These things will help you to keep a professional rapport with your professional contacts while still sharing photos of your vacations with your family and friends. This will help you keep things professional with your professional contacts and they will not be distracted by personal information. Social media sites can be a great benefit to your business if you just take a few precautions.

Using Facebook to Grow Your Business

Started as a way for its founder Mark Zucherburg to connect with friends at Harvard, Facebook has exploded to over 200 million users and growing each day. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family and even reconnect with old friends from years past, but it also can be a great tool for your business. Facebook makes it easy to share information with tons of people, all at once, all you need to do is update your Facebook page and bam, everyone you know now knows the latest news about you, your family and your business.

Just remember, if you are going to be using your Facebook page for professional purposes it is important to keep things professional. While, the more contacts you have the more exposure you may get for your business, you want to make sure that the exposure you are getting is positive. If you just go and add every person you may have rubbed shoulders with to your account you may be risking your page to some unprofessional exposure. So, it is important to be selective when you are inviting people into your professional network.

That being said, social media marketing is a great way to share information about your business with tons of people in an instantaneous way. Say you want to promote a sale for your business or promote a new product you just added to your site. You can just make a quick posting on your Facebook “wall” and you have just updated all of your contacts with the latest and greatest news about your company. As you build contacts from people you know you are sure to create new connections in the process. Those new connections can then give you additional exposure which will allow you to build your network with people you may not have even known a day ago.

People are always looking for ways to make their business or job easier and more effective. By posting information that can be useful to the masses you are building credibility for yourself as a business owner and an expert in your field. By sharing business tips, along with information about your specific products, you can build a strong following that can quickly expand your network and build exposure for your company. Say you have a great tip about organizing your emails. You can post the tip on your Facebook status box. This will let everyone that has followed you see the tip and see that you are willing to share helpful information with them. This will build a sense of trust and confidence in you which will translate to a sense of trust in your business.

Facebook is a great tool to help promote your business and build your brand. Sharing helpful business tips can build trust with followers which will translate into a larger network than you can imagine. Just make sure and keep things professional if you are using your Facebook for business purposes, otherwise, your exposure could quickly switch from professional to unprofessional and that can be hard to change back.

Tweet, Retweet, Hashtags: The new language of Social Media

Twittering is all the rage lately. Even if you are watching TV or listening to the radio you will hear the mention of Twitter, Facebook or MySpace as a way of following the moment to moment thoughts of TV stars and entire news channels. Everyone is jumping on the Twitter train and if you are not yet an expert you better get started. Social Media marketing is a beast all of its own and learning the intricacies of how it works can be similar to learning a new language. A few of the terms you will need to know to get started on Twitter are tweet, retweet and hashtags. There are tons of Twitter terms already in existence and new ones are created all the time. Twitter can keep you connected to customers 24 hours a day 365 days a year so you can keep them informed of things like new products or sales events, but it must be done in 140 characters or less.

First, we will discuss who a tweeter is. A tweeter is a person that posts messages on Twitter. So anyone that puts down a thought on Twitter has the title tweeter. There are currently over 14 million US visitors on Twitter alone from Joe the Plumber to rockstars like Bono. You can keep track of what they are doing and what they think is important enough to share with their followers. Twitter is an amazing networking tool if used correctly. Remember, people have to follow you and if you are not keeping them interested you are sure to lose their interest quickly. Which brings us to our next Twitter term, tweet. A tweet is simply a posting on Twitter. Now, Twitter tweets are limited to 140 characters or less so you have to get your point across quickly. Fast and furious is what Twitter is all about. You need to become an expert at getting your point across in a few words and in an intriguing way.

This marketing tool can really make your business soar to new levels. You have the power of viral marketing right at your fingertips. Think about it, you tweet a message to your followers and if they think it is interesting enough, they can comment on your tweet to their followers or simply retweet your message. Then the followers of those tweeters will do the same, over and over until thousands of people have seen your message within minutes. Think of the power of that, not only are you reaching potentially thousands of people, you are doing it for free. Not one penny of your marketing budget is being spent, that is a truly powerful marketing tool. So, in case you didn’t catch it, a retweet is simply to repeat or quote another person’s tweet. In order for a retweet to be seen by the masses it is important to put some type of notation before the @name of the person whose tweet you are retweeting. Many people write retweet or R/T or simply RT before the original tweeters name to show that they are retweeting a message. Retweeting is one of the highest compliments you can pay a fellow tweeter. It means that you think that their tweet is important enough to share with your followers. It is also a common courtesy to thank the person that retweeted your tweet.

Lastly, I wanted to mention hashtags. Hashtags are an important tool for serious tweeters because they give you a way to add additional context and metadata to your tweets by simply prefixing a word with a hash symbol, #hashtag. A hashtag is a way for others to find information about your keywords even if they are not following you, yet. It is a great way to get new followers that are interested in your topics and can give you even more exposure. Hope these Twitter tips help you get start on Twitter. It really is an important part of your internet marketing strategy, so go get some followers!

Social Media Marketing – How to be Effective

As the internet has evolved it has created fresh and innovative ways to reach new customers. Many people have heard of the term “social media marketing”, but many find it a difficult concept to grasp. Those of us that are used to the traditional forms of marketing such as TV, radio, newspapers, mailers and so on, may find ourselves a bit confused when it comes to this new form of marketing. Social media marketing has created a shift in how people can discover, read and share information and news. It has transformed consumers from mere content readers into content publishers. This hasengaged the consumer in an aspect of business that used to be owned by the marketing experts alone.

Since social media marketing has opened up the Pandora’s Box of marketing to anyone with a computer, there is more information available to consumers than ever before. People can create and comment on the millions of internet forums, blogs, social blogs, podcast sites and video sites on the internet with a few clicks of a mouse. They can have a video up on YouTube in minutes, post a comment on Google Groups and provide information to Wikipedia. They can comment on anything from products to politics and have instant access to thousands of people instantaneously. Whether they are good or bad, social media marketing allows anyone to voice their opinions and influence the thoughts and choices of others.

The easiest way to understand social media marketing is to realize that it is completely different than the traditional means of marketing that we have been used to for so many years. Where the traditional forms such as TV, radio and newspaper are a one-way interaction where the publisher feeds information to the consumer, social media marketing is very different. It provides a two-way interaction where businesses actually exchange ideas and thoughts with their consumers. The easiest way to fail at social media marketing is to leave out this interaction. You cannot just post information on your products or services on a blog and expect that to work. You need to engage the consumer and get them talking about your company and your products without them even realizing it.

What I mean is social media marketing is a way to build awareness of a company. It may not perform very well as a direct marketing tool, but that is not what it is meant for. You want people to want to hear what you have to say, so the information you are providing has to entice them into talking about it themselves. Simply placing an add for a product on a blog will not engage a consumer into an interaction. This type of media has to provoke a conversation. People look to social media marketing to interact with others and share information and content. They do not look to social media marketing as a way to receive advertisements. Like I mentioned before, this form of marketing is a two-way street. People who use social media marketing really want to make the world a better place. They hope that the information they are providing will help others to make a more informed decision whether they are buying a toaster or picking the next President.

If you can understand these significant differences between traditional forms of marketing and social media marketing, you will be able to indirectly build awareness of your company to more people than you can imagine.