• Which networks to join?
• How to participate?
• What’s enough, or too much?
• How will it help my business?

So, to answer some of these, I’d like to present my “Social Media For Dummies” overview. First, a quick recap of my favorite networks and what they’re about.

Facebook
The ultimate platform for keeping up with (stalking) friends. I joined Facebook way back in 2005, you know, when it was just for college students and before you could even share photos (gasp!). I’ve witnessed the evolution of this mega-network over the years, and it has become, not only the 4th largest website in the world, but the best place to find people, keep up with them, and inform them. It is the son of Classmates.com on every possible steroid ever ingested by humans. The ability to share and communicate with friends and colleagues is seamless. Overall, Facebook is a great place to start your social networking endeavors.

LinkedIn
A must-have in every business person’s arsenal of tools. If you are (or hoping to be) in business of any sort, LinkedIn is a great place to set up shop. Very similar to Facebook, minus the annoying applications, plus job postings and resumes. This is where you network with those in your industry, join groups, research companies, and prospect clients. Build your credentials by asking colleagues for recommendations or head to the “Q&A” section to offer advice.

Twitter – Share, Learn, Meet
I wouldn’t be surprised if Webster adds a new definition for “tweet” this year. Within the first half of 2009, Twitter has gone from nearly 5 million users to over 23 million. It is the social media platform of choice at Fortune 100 companies. Easily share links, pictures, videos, articles… Oh, and personal updates… with followers. Twitter is kind of like the cocktail party of social networks. Here, you can easily reach out to strangers by tuning in to their tweets or quickly replying to them. A limited amount of customization keeps annoying advertisements and outlandish profiles at bay, unlike the outdated MySpace.

Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, reddit, etc.
Social Bookmarking to share and store your favorite links. You just read an article over at NYT.com that you loved. Use one or more of these bookmarking sites to share it with the world. Looking for information or articles on a certain subject? Head to one of these sites and search your topic, you’ll be able to peruse a list of articles or sites that others have found useful or interesting. Not only are these great for sharing, but storing sites for later use as well. Say you have a home desktop, a netbook for travel, and a work computer… customize your bookmarks and easily access them on each computer without updating each machine.

FriendFeed
All of your networks in one place. FriendFeed lets you put all of your networks in one big stream. Users can see your Facebook status, latest Tweet, pictures posted on Flickr, blog post, bookmarked article and much more when they follow your feed. Much like Twitter, but a whole lot more.

These are the networks that I tend to spend most of my time on and are probably some of the key ingredients that should be in the pot. Every person and business is different and may need to change their recipe accordingly, but the key to all of these is to contribute and become a part of the conversation.

Now What?

So, now that we’ve covered some of the major players in the social networking field, it’s time to discover how we can use them. As a person in business, especially an industry with a significant amount of its target market online (which is really all of them now), you’ve got to understand that these networks are an integral part of their lives. Just like in previous decades where television commercials were considered a major part of any advertising/marketing plan because everyone watched TV… now, as many are leaving cable in the dust and turning to the Internet for their information and entertainment, it’s more crucial than ever to join the ranks of the digital pioneers.

However, the people using these networks are smart. They don’t fall for blatant advertising traps like they used to. They want to know that there’s something in it for them. If your product isn’t it and that’s all you’re talking about on Twitter, then they’ll ignore you. Social networks aren’t about advertising – they’re about building relationships.

Say you run a small business, maybe you own a restaurant, a clothing boutique, a PR firm or a chiropractic firm… What is in it for you?

• Take a look at your customers or clients when they’re in your office or store. Are they on their iPhone or Blackberry checking email? Did they mention finding you online? Did they hear about you from a friend? If you can answer “yes” to any of those questions, then you’re missing out on connecting with your customers and should probably put on a pot of coffee, cause you’re going to be here for a while.
• Social media is a chance to be at your market’s finger tips when they look at their phone or get online in a friendly and non-obtrusive way.
• You can quickly address customer service issues by communicating directly with the customer.
• Prospect new clients.
• Learn about trends in your industry, stay up-to-date with competition and network with power players in your industry.
• Offer existing customers incentives, coupons or interesting information to keep them tuned in to your brand.

Many people will pay thousands of dollars trying to get these things with traditional techniques. Social media is free… despite, of course, any operating costs like time and possibly design fees to add a professional touch. You need to be on here… Do a Google News search for “small business social media”. BusinessWeek, LA Times, NY Times will be some of the publications insisting you buck up and make it happen.

How to Participate Effectively:

• Do not start a social media campaign if your intention is free advertising. No one will listen and you will waste your time. Period.
• Take a minute and figure out what you want to get out of being involved in social networks. Research how other businesses have been successful. Make a plan. Mashable is a great place to learn about social media.
• Twitter is a great place to find people in your area, geographically or by industry, and interact with them. Start a conversation, always give if you ever want to receive and don’t constantly advertise. No one likes spam… so don’t spam your followers with pleas to go to your website or go into business with you. Offer your followers a coupon or discount if you’re hoping for business from them… Keep them up-to-date on any changes to your menu or services… Share fun pictures from happy customers… Follow-up with an unhappy customer or use your competition’s bad customer service as a great way to introduce you into their lives. Just remember to keep it real, be you, because everyone wants to know that there’s a human behind your username.
• Facebook is generally most successful for companies with a large following or customer base. But that doesn’t mean you should skip it… create a personal profile so you can network with friends and family. By being there, you can instantly share things about your business with people who already like you and will probably listen more than the average stranger. By keeping your brand in their mind, they’ll be more likely to spread the word and pass you along to their friends, and so on. Word of mouth, my friends…
• LinkedIn is a must for anyone in business. Very straightforward here, like a virtual resume on steroids. It’s always good to network with past and present colleagues and continue to build relationships, because you never know when you may need them or vice versa.

Last Words:
Keep your brand consistent among all of the networks you decide to join. Monitor your brand using tracking tools. And remember to Collaborate, Communicate, and Participate.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

%%Social Networking for Business Guide%%

Social Networking for Business Guide

1. What is the website’s purpose or mission?

Sounds simple right? Defining your site’s purpose is the single most important step you should take prior to new website construction. For most, the purpose will be as simple as “produce quality leads for our sales teams” or “sell our products online”. Once the mission of your site is defined, incorporate that goal in every aspect of designing and developing your site. Ask yourself, “how does this feature help the website visitor complete the site’s mission?” It’s important not to lose focus and get caught up in ‘bling’ at the cost of realizing your mission.

2. What am I going to need in order to get this website launched?

• Time

It’s important to have reasonable expectations of time lines. Most business owners budget enough time for the website to be presented in “rough draft” but forget that testing is an important part of the process. This can take much longer than anticipated. While your development team will provide their best estimation of the time it will take, as a rule of thumb, add 50% to the completion time a developer tells you to allow for anything unforeseen.

• Cost

Cost is an important factor in the web developing process. Budget a little extra money over the agreed amount to allow for small enhancements to the project that were not originally specified. Unexpected enhancements costs are a really good reason to have a very detailed project description before you begin. It’s not uncommon for technology based projects to come in slightly over budget and by having extra money at your disposal, you’ll be able to keep the project moving forward.

• Resources

Have all your resources, such as having an assistant to help with planning or a graphic designer to help incorporate your company’s brand into the site, on board prior to starting. You may also need to bring in outside help, like programmers, internet marketing companies, social media marketing agencies and copy writers. Budget these resources into the total cost of your project and include them in the initial planning since having a seasoned professional working with you from the start will pay huge dividends upon completion.

3. How will I bring qualified visitors to my site?

Surprisingly, most small businesses have a website just to have a website with no strategy or plan on how they are going to bring qualified visitors to the site. It’s like having a billboard in the middle of the Sahara Desert – pretty but not bringing in customers. If you cannot hire an internet marketing company, you should tap into the many online resources geared towards small business internet marketing. At a minimum, you should invest into a properly managed Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing Campaign. Unlike Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the effects of PPC are immediate and can be controlled. I would also recommend working with a SEO professional to lay down the groundwork that will rank you high on the search engines.

Remember offline marketing as well. Your website should be part of your brand – put it everywhere! It should be on all letterhead, business cards, company vehicles, print and TV advertisements. Holding a contest that directs people to your websites is a popular and effective way to acquire a large number of back links to your site, which helps with search engine rankings.

4. How will I track my website’s ROI or gauge effectiveness?

Once your site is up and running, you’ll need to know if your marketing efforts (both “on-site” and “off-site”) are working. Remember your site’s purpose or mission? That now becomes what is known as a “conversion”. A conversion is the action taken by a website visitor that fulfills the site’s purpose. In most cases, this is either entering a sales lead into your site or buying an item. Other conversions could be downloading an “e-book” or signing up for a newsletter. Whatever the conversion is, everything done both on and off the site must be to lead people towards that completing a conversion.

To track your website and marketing effectiveness you need a reliable analytics program installed on your site. I am a big fan of Google Analytics because it’s very user friendly, easy to setup and free! By defining the desired conversion in your analytics program (PPC accounts as well) you will see which marketing efforts produce the highest number of conversions. Keep in mind that you may have a scenario where you get reduced site traffic but more conversions – but this is a good thing! You should review your analytics each month to track if your marketing campaigns are increasing or decreasing your conversions. Internet marketing company can do this for you and suggest ways to increase your conversions

5. How will I use design and technology to enhance my website?

• Design

Websites should be clean, clear and clutter free. Ensure your designers are familiar with your brand and how your company is graphically represented by giving the web designer a copy of your logo and any promotional material. The site must be developed around your existing brand not the brand designed to fit the website. If you are a new company, take the time to develop a rich corporate identity before having your website designed and developed.

• Technology

I’ve found that a web developer’s choice of code is similar to a person’s choice of automobile – personal and really not making any difference in function. There are some cases when you will need something robust like a pickup truck or SUV but in most cases using a common form of programming like PHP HTML or ASP will still get you from A to B. As well, using a common programming language will ensure that you’ll be able to find programming help faster and less expensive than if you went with a lesser known language. Finally, try to keep away from Flash and JavaScript as they can hamper the crawling of search engines on your site.

As you can see, a clear and thought out action plan will greatly increase the effectiveness of your site. Don’t underestimate the power of a well designed, conversion optimized website since this can mean many dollars added to your bottom line. Good Luck!

About The Author:

Oliver Feakins is the President of the Internet Marketing and Social Media Company(http://www.webtalentseo.com) WebTalent SEO. Visit http://www.webtalentseo.com for more information or call 877-496-3327.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO Company Shares: 5 Things to Consider Before Starting Your Next Website

Create A Page

Creating a page for your blog is a great way to showcase and gain readers and fans. There are a lot of customization options and you can even add compatible applications to your pages. To get started you will need to click here to create a new page. After you get your page the way you like it, you can start sharing it with your friends and inviting them to become fans. One thing about Facebook pages is that it will not show you as an admin of the page; you will be listed as a fan of the page along with everyone else.

The first application you may want to add is some type of RSS feed importing application but, in my opinion, it’s better to import your posts through the Notes application. Importing your blog posts through notes (which I’ll explain in more detail below) will display published blog posts on the page wall as opposed to the boxes tab or some other small area of the page.

NetworkedBlogs

This is a great application found here, that works on both personal profiles and Facebook pages. If you add it to one of your pages, it can be added as a separate tab that will then display snippets of your latest blog posts. You can also allow the NetworkedBlogs application to update your personal or page status (depending on which you add it to) everyone time a new post is published. This application is kind of like creating a page for your blog but does different in a few ways. For starters, with NetworkedBlogs you will be shown as the author of the blog. Once you have your NetworkedBlog page setup, you can then invite people to follow your blog in which they’ll be able to rate your blog and leave comments.

Import Notes

Notes is an application that allows you to create notes, which are almost like blog posts, for your friends to see. Every time you post a new note it shows in the public timeline for all to see but, many do not know that you can import a blog into your Facebook notes. From the Notes application you will see an option in the right hand column under “Notes Settings” to import a blog. Setting it up is pretty easy, you’ll just need to enter either your blog or RSS feed URL. After going over the preview of an imported blog post and confirming the import you’ll be all set. Facebook will then check your blog every couple hours for new posts. As I mentioned above, this is also great to set up with your Facebook page.

Blog Box

This application is nice because once added, you can add a blog box tab to your profile, making it more easy accessible to those who visit your page. The Blog Box application can be found here. Once again you will need to import your blog into the application after which it will check every 6 hours for new posts. There are not many customization options for Blog Box. The great thing about Blog Box is that it allows you to edit your posts right from within Facebook. Doing this allows you to edit your title, text and tags plus you can even add your mood, what music you’re listening too, and a location.

Simparis Blogcast

Last but not least you can import your blog with the Simparis Blogcast application. Once again you’ll need your RSS feed and then you can choose to have Simplaris handle the updating, manually update yourself or setup your blog to ping Simparis. This application can be added to your info tab, profile column or box tab. Whenever a blogcast is posted it will show under your recent activity section on your wall as well as in the box on your profile if you are using it. There are a few option such as changing the update mode, showing pictures and links versus plain text and even specifying the post length. You can also choose how many post to show on the profile box.

How do you import and promote your blog on Facebook?

Do you use one these methods or is there another way you like better?

Feel free to share.

Written by Charnita Fance from Social Web Tools

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

5 Ways To Import and Promote Your Blog On Facebook

Well in this article I’m going to give you some great links to what I think are the best free keyword research tools on the web to help you with your keyword analysis. They’ll give you some great stats to work with and hopefully do the job you were hoping for.

There’s just one thing I want to mention about these free keyword research tools below and that is they only give you the amount of searches for that given keyword phrase. What they don’t give you is your competition for those given keyword phrases.

But what we’re really trying to do here is find out if there’s a market for your interests and passions before you start building and marketing your website.

So with that said here are the free keyword research tools I think are the best for you to get started with and are very easy to use.

Lets start with the first one.

1) Wordtracker

With this free keyword research tool all you need to do is enter a starting keyword to generate up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume.

Go to: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

2) Google Adwords

This keyword research tool I think is by far the best because it allows you to enter keywords for analysis or a website URL(Hint: Great for analysising your competitors sites).

Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3) SEO Book

SEO Books keyword research tool is powered by Wordtracker’s API, plus it cross references Google and Yahoo search results to give you a detailed view of your keyword analysis.

Go to: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

4) NicheBot Classic

With NicheBot Classic which also uses Wordtracker’s API allows you to insert your keyword and will give you the TOP 50 keywords and there daily search count and competing pages in Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Go to: http://www.nichebotclassic.com

5) Good Keywords

Good Keywords is a free Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web pages. Good Keywords is completely free. No registration, no payments and no nag screens.

Go to: http://www.goodkeywords.com

So there you have it, 5 of the TOP free keyword research tools available to you on the web for free to get you started with your keyword research.

There are of course paid services and software that give you more detailed keyword analysis but if you don’t have the money to spend these are a great starting point for you.

It all starts here with your keyword research because what’s the point of starting a website or paid advertising campaign without this valuable information in your hands.

I hope this list of free keyword research tools helps you and the best of luck with your websites and advertising campaigns.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

TOP 5 Free Keyword Research Tools For Web Developers And Online Marketers

Every month people are finding new ways to connect their marketing efforts to Twitter and while many of these Social Media sites eventually disappear, it seems Twitter will flourish.

The problem that most people have is finding how to make the most of Twitter and even understanding all its features. Although there are many tools available, we will only cover a few here and spend most of our time on how to use Twitter to improve your social networking status.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Twitter Account

If you already have a Twitter accounts don’t skip this section because there may be something you missed. Go to: https://twitter.com/signup and create your account. It is a simple process.

Now this is not a step by step tutorial, but rather a guide to give you some ideas of the things you can do. Creating an account is a pretty straightforward process that takes about 20 minutes to:

1. Complete the registration form
2. Connect with people you know
3. Create a profile to your main website and a bio about you or your company
4. Set your location, how you want to be notified of friends, updates and more

Take the time to go over all the settings as they are easy to follow.

Step 2: Customize your background

This is where it gets interesting.  You simply login, click on “settings” and the click on “Design.” Then you can either choose a design that’s available or upload your own image. If you have a designer or are talented with Photo Shop you can create an interesting layout for your profile. Here are a few examples of some custom layouts:

1. http://twitter.com/nytimes
2. http://twitter.com/lookielookies
3. http://twitter.com/remotedatabase

As you can see, the possibilities run from design to even some marketing messages. Take the time to customize your theme or take the time to hire someone who can.

Step 4:  Add friends and follow people

If you didn’t do this when you first signed up, use the friend features provided. You’ll be given 3 options to find friends:

1. Find on Twitter – You can type in names of people you know, companies or even famous people. Who knows, you may meet a celebrity online or at least someone who claims to be one.
2. Invite people from other Networks – Connect to your hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail and see if anyone in your current contacts is using Twitter so you can start adding them as friends
3. Invite by email – Add a list of emails you have on file to connect with friends.  You can add them all in one area and send to all of them instantly.

Keep in mind that if you invite people to be your friend, they don’t have to be a member. They will either already be one or they can become one by using method 2 or 3. Spend about 20 minutes doing this the first time and then about 10 minutes after that as often as you can.

Step 5: Connect your Twitter to your blog

There are many tools out there to use for your Twitter page, but I just love this one.  Alex King has created a great plugin if you are using WordPress that will automatically create micro blogs for your blog posts . Go to: http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress to read all about it and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip to download it.

Read all the instructions and support issues involved if you blog on a regular basis. It’s better to not have to post twice and it is a great way to get mini blogs on your Twitter account.

Step 6: Use another Twitter clone and connect it to your main Twitter account

There are many Twitter clone sites popping up and to use them all is a waste of time, but using just one is well worth the time and effort.

SiteProNews.com has recently created a Twitter clone account and has spend many hours perfecting this program and even going beyond the program’s scope to bring you a version of Twitter that puts all the others to shame.

You can create an account at: http://microblog.sitepronews.com/tw/home and in your profile settings put in your Twitter.com account so that when you post to your Twitter clone account it also posts to your Twitter.com account. This is a great way to gain exposure on Twitter and also a way to utilize another site with other features that Twitter doesn’t have.

Step 7: Monitor Your Twitter Grades

This is a fun tool that shows you how you rank in Twitter and how you fair against the Twitter giants! Go to http://twitter.grader.com/ and enter your user name to see how you rank from 0 – 100 possible points.

Twitter Grader bases their numbers on:

• Overall Rank
• Followers
• Following
• Updates

By staying active you can see how high you can rank.

Step 8: Build Links To Your Twitter Account From Social Bookmarking Sites

Why not take the time to build up your social networking account with Twitter by bookmarking it to your social bookmark accounts?  You might as well put a lot of effort into this Twitter movement and play to win.

Bookmark your site on your favorite bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Propeller.com, del.icio.us, dropjack.com and more.

Step 9: Use Twitters Advanced Search Features

This is going back to Step 4, but taking it a bit further. If you really want to connect with people related to your industry and target market, then you need to use Twitters Advanced Search features. Visit http://search.twitter.com/advanced and look at all the options. You can search keywords, names, locations and more.

Connect with people who truly relate to what you are doing. Be picky here and find those who have high grades and write great information. Find people who are active and will respond to your requests to be friends.

Watch your social status change as you optimize Twitter and take advantage of all it can do for you. Again, this is not a step by step guide, but an article helping you to see the potential in building up an online social networking site the right way.

Darren Dunner – Editor for SiteProNews, the leading webmaster news resource online. Follow us on twitter and our twitter clone. If you have any questions or are in need of services to have a site or blog setup properly feel free to contact me editor@sitepronews.com

Twitter for Marketing

If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition – Twitter makes it instant.

For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!

If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company’s tweets, you have a targeted líst of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It’s that simple!

A líst of businesses on Twitter:

http://www.twibs.com

As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.

Twitter for Customer Service

Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.

Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company’s transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.

Twitter for Product Development

Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.

It’s catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.

Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness

As you know, free publicity is priceless – and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.

With Twitter’s personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.

People will associate your Tweets with your company, and their trust will grow in your products and services.

Twitter Gives You Access to Important People

No other media gives you direct access to leaders in your market like the internet does. Twitter gives you personal access to leaders and mentors that you have only ever dreamt of connecting with.

I bet you didn’t think you would ever get the chance to be 1-on-1 with Brian Tracy on Twitter, right?

http://twitter.com/BrianTracy_

—
Editor’s Note: Several Twitter related sites provide a means to identify Twitter users in your geographical area or relevant to your business:

http://mrtweet.net
http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com
http://www.twitterlocal.net
—

Simply follow them, and open up the channels of communication with your tweets! The leaders of your field impart valuable knowledge that you can apply to your online business, and can be a great source of free marketing tips.

Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!

Twitter is extremely simple, but this fact also adds to its versatility. You may not realize the effect of Twitter on your business when your followers are at a single digit – but just imagine the scope of your business reaching tens of thousands of followers! Many online businesses are using Twitter now… what are you waitíng for?

About The Author
Abe Cherian is the founder and CEO of AdClickMedia.com, an online advertising network and a subsidiary of Multiple Stream Media.

For those of you who don’t know, an opt-in list is a collection of emails that have been obtained by permission. Unlike spammers, you have the consent of these people to send them offers, messages and information relating to your Internet marketing business. Because they opted in, they also have the ability to unsubscribe to your list at any time.

You’ve undoubtedly heard of how important list building is in the world of online marketing, and there’s very good reason for it. It’s been said that it takes a potential customer an average of 7 times to see something before they make a purchase on the Internet. The best way to capitalize on this is through your list. By sending several well-written promotional messages over a period of time, you build their trust in you and increase the chances of making a lot more sales.

As your valuable list increases into the hundreds or thousands, you’re developing an extremely powerful resource that you can tap into every time you want to promote something new. You have already gained their trust and selling to them is a lot easier than selling to anyone else. Can you imagine having the ability to exclusively broadcast to your own email list of thousands at anytime? It’s a pretty big advantage that can really boost your income online.

Creating an opt-in list isn’t a difficult thing to do. There are many websites offering tutorials on how to do it step by step. You can even invest in an autoresponder which you will eventually realize to be a necessary tool as your Internet business grows. Autoresponders make it easier to capture emails and are a great way to manage your list especially when it becomes to large and complicated to handle by yourself.

Once you’ve got your website setup to build your list, you need to offer some sort of an incentive for them to sign up. People aren’t just going to hand over their email addresses to you. Most marketers online offer free Ebooks, newsletters or any type of valuable and useful information in exchange for visitor’s contact info.

It’s important to continually build and maintain the trust of the people on your list. Don’t jeopardize that by selling their emails to anyone and resist contacting them too much as all of this can be seen as spamming. There’s nothing that will shrink your list faster than being accused of practicing spam. Developing a trusting relationship with your subscribers is key to maximizing your income with them.

If you’re not attempting to capture emails on your website, you are letting money flow rapidly down the drain. An opt-in list allows you to build a relationship with your visitors over a period of time. That’s extremely hard to do with a website alone, especially when you only have one chance to impress your visitors enough to return again. A nicely maintained opt-in list has the potential to generate a substantial portion of your income online.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How To Keep Your Website Visitors Coming Back For More

But I’ve had a few epiphanies along the way that have changed my thinking. The general background is on my professional blog with link above, so I won’t repeat it here. I also posted a piece on my Fastcompany.com blog. The bottom line for me is that Twitter is a great news source, a great place for learning about social networking and a great place for tracking general noise in the blogosphere, whether it is about you, your company, your competitors or any topic of general interest. If it is worthwhile, someone will be tweeting about it. And the noise level behind something is a good indicator of general interest.

There are two major things that you can do right now via Twitter from a metrics standpoint. The first is, measure what is happening with your tweets. The second is, what is the noise about your clients?

Using Twinfluence.com, one can get the equivalent of a research run, showing reach, velocity and social capital of leading Tweeters. Barak Obama shows up with the most “reach” (followers and their connections at one degree) at over 15MM. However, he has not sent a message since the famous post-election victory declaration and now the question is whether in fact it was him or his PR machine. Blogger Jason Calacanis is #2 with over 13.5MM “reach”. Due to a factor called retweeting, Twinfluence rationalizes that the followers of followers could quickly be reached through an important message being forwarded or retweeted. In fact, many of the rankings of importance of Tweeters take retweeting into account. (When they retweet you, your ranking goes up).

Some other metric companies include TweetRush, which can give you an idea about the total volume (running about 300k people per day with about 5 Tweets per person); Tweetlists, which shows the most popular “conversations”; TweetVolume, where you can find the volume of a word or brand; TwitterGrader, which measures your rank (happy to say I am in the top 5% based on reach and authority); and Twitterrank, which for some reason does not rank me as high as TwitterGrader. (By the way, my Twitter address is mediadls.)

As mentioned above, another major use of Twitter is following noise about clients and client campaigns, as well as your own company. The easiest way to follow the noise about your client is Twitter search, which is search.twitter.com. Type in your company, a client’s company or a competitor and see what the chatter is. If you click on the advanced text link, you can add keywords to do with a campaign or many other factors. In fact, when the rockets started shooting from Gaza, I searched for “within 150 miles of Gaza.” Very interesting to see the tweets from both Gaza and Tel Aviv on one page. This parsing of Twitter is key to the future here.

In the future, we should be able to measure the metrics of individuals on Twitter and understand how much traffic they are getting, setting up the potential of an Adwords-type situation where the writer and Twitter share in revenue. We should also be able to do the same for individual topics written about, thus facilitating keyword advertising. Technologies for both of these situations exist today; it’s just a matter of Twitter deciding to open up APIs and to determine what this small company of 25 people who have achieved major influence wants to be when they grow up.

David L. Smith is CEO and founder of Mediasmith, an internationally recognized digital media agency with expertise in targeted media planning, execution and measurement.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Twitter Metrics

I recently saw this comment on a blog: “I’ve been tweeting but… from what I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, it’s either a ‘look at me’ or a ‘look at this’ arena.”

Sure Twitter is a great communication channel and as such, you do find a lot of self-promotion and name dropping. But there is so much more to Twitter. The comment got me thinking, would the critics feel the same if they could see more innovative ways to use it?

So I decided to put together a list of some of the more unique and inventive uses for Twitter. Some already exist while others are my own ideas.  Here goes:

1) Community Help Desk – I’ve already used Twitter several times to investigate an issue I’ve been having with my computer, or a problem one of my clients has come across. Just yesterday I was able to pinpoint the source of a domain redirect issue because my followers in other countries could reach the site even though I was being redirected.

2) Write a Collaborative Book – you and a bunch of your favorite Tweeps could write a novel, one sentence (tweet) at a time. The results could range from hilarious to Shakespearean. I thought of this while reading about the popularity of Japanese novels composed via mobile text messages, but it turns out that some attempts have been made at this already e.g. 140 Novel and Good Captain. You could do a similar thing with song lyrics.

3) Live Webinars/Tutorials – you could create a new Twitter account with protected updates and ask invitation-only participants to follow you. Then you could hold a *closed* webinar at a pre-arranged time using Twitter for delivery instead of expensive webinar solutions. Twitter allows you to live chat, post links, photos, videos, audio files and text so there is no need for any plug-ins. You could even use a Twitter buffer like Twuffer to space out the content of the webinar via tweets over a specific timeframe.

4) Free Market Research – Who needs to pay expensive market research companies to learn stuff about your latest product? Just send a link, a free sample or a short survey to your followers and watch the feedback flow in.

5) Online Reputation Management – Twitter is ideal for tracking what people are saying about you, your company or your product. You can use Twitter Search to enter keywords or hash tags. Or you can use purpose-built widgets such as TweetBeep which work just like Google Alerts and send you regular emails containing any discussions involving your chosen Twitter accounts or hash tags. These work well for competitor tracking too.

6) Laugh a Day / Therapy – I’m consistently amazed how many long-term Twitter users fail to use the favorites option to bookmark tweets that they like. Whenever I read a tweet that makes me laugh out loud, I favorite it immediately. Then, whenever I am feeling a bit flat, stressed or sense a bad mood coming on, I turn to my favorites list knowing I will be giggling in no time. You can also rely on your followers to sense when you’re down and cheer you up.

7) Competitions – Companies like Zappos and Hand Bag Heaven have been holding competitions on Twitter for a while now. You basically elicit a response from your followers in exchange for the chance to win something. You could ask a question about one of your products or ask followers to find something on your site to win a gift certificate. But with a bit of ingenuity, you can be even more inventive.

DVDQuotes posts questions starting with WMITF, (which stands for Which Movie Is This From?) and gives away random DVDs to the Twitter user with the first correct tweet. Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry declared December 1 to be Oscar Wilde Day and asked his 30,000 plus followers to post Wildesque tweets using the hash tag #oscarwildeday for a chance to win downloads of his audio book. The competition took on a viral quality and earned the comedian at least 2,000 new followers within 48 hours.

Virtual Alarm Clock – Did you know you can use Twitter to set appointment reminders for yourself or others? You can use tools such as the Retweet Timer and Twittercal to tweet events from your Google Calendar as @replies to your Twitter profile at pre-set dates and times.

9) Idea Sharing / Community Mind Mapping – So this amazing business idea comes to you in the shower and you are busting to make it happen. But you want to be sure that your stroke of brilliance is fabulous and not folly. This is where your Twitter followers come in. Whether you tweet publicly or DM only your most trusted followers to keep it under wraps, you’ll get unbiased and practically instantaneous feedback on your big plans. Would you use it? Could it work? How much would you pay for it? What features should it have? Tapping into the combined brain power of your Twitter community is a great way to flesh out a business plan.

10) Competitor Tracking – You can use Twitter to monitor the activities of your enemi… er competitors without alerting them. Simply create an anonymous Twitter account and start following them. If they bad-mouth your company, or tweet about a product that may threaten your market share, you’ll know immediately.

11) Bug Testing – Along the same lines as 4), you can use your Twitter followers as live BETA testers when you roll out a new product or software version. Your followers will often report bugs faster than paid customers because they *know* you and want you to succeed.

12) Become Your Favorite Character – Ever idolize a particular movie star or TV character? Why not create an account for them and tweet in character? A few tweeps have done this already, with hilarious results e.g. Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie and wheelchair-bound Andy from Little Britain. Just make sure you don’t step on the toes of the official sites representing the character in question.

13) Sport / Treasure Hunt Aid – With it’s 140 character limit, Twitter is the perfect medium to deliver clues for online and offline scavenger hunts and popular sports such as geocaching.

14) Live Presentation Aid – Presenting at a conference or other event with Internet access from your laptop? You can tweet on the big screen to a) make a point b) elicit a response from Tweeps in the audience c) conduct live research d) gain instant feedback on a topic or question. I’ve used Twitter this way in the past and not only is it entertaining for the audience, but it’s also a great way to overcome stage fright.

15) Build a Twitter Application – Despite not being monetized yet, Twitter’s phenomenal growth has spurred the development of hundreds of applications that make money from Twitter either via advertising or donations. Why not build your own application around Twitter and make your fortune?

About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

15 Innovative Uses for Twitter (That You Probably Haven’t Thought Of)

1. Start a Group

Starting a group is a slick strategy at Facebook, because it allows you to build an additional list tied to the one you are currently building for your business. The ideal concept here is to invite other users to join your group once you create one, and slowly but surely you will see high potential prospects join your group. Once you attain a good number into your group you can send out to the entire list with one click.

2. Build the Relationship

I see numerous network marketers and other business owners go wrong in this area. Social and networking go hand in hand. If you are not trying to create conversations in order to build relationships, then you will not succeed on Facebook. Rest assured, others will notice if you are out only for yourself and not for the interest of others. Write on someones’ wall, make a valid comment, or just send someone a message to spark conversation. Don’t go around trying to convince others to join your deal. This will cause you to lose all credibility that you have gained thus far.

3. Exhaust the Media

Facebook has so many features to get the word out as quick as possible about your business, and who you are as an entrepreneur. You can also tie in your Twitter account to making it so simple for your friends to see your updates. Using video marketing will be a blast on this social marketing giant. Each time you upload a video, you get the option of tagging some of your friends. When this happen, your video will show up on their profile giving you extra traffic to your website(s).

If you haven’t set up a profile at Facebook yet, now is the time. These social marketing strategies are sure to help you get a good jump start in gaining more exposure and credibility for your business. Taking all 3 of the tips above into consideration will help you succeed in your internet marketing efforts.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Best Internet Marketing Tips-How to Use the Social Marketing Giant Facebook To Attract Pioneer Doers