Visit it here: Adventists on Google+ Directory .

You can see some visual help below in the included images.

Add yourself to the Directory

You can add yourself using your Google+ ID or using the “Sign in with Google” button.

For now we show your Google+ name, picture and tagline in the directory. Your name and picture are linked to your Google+ profile, so other people can contact you there.

To edit your tagline and make it visible edit your Google+ profile. Tagline is located right under your name, as shown in the image below. Set the visibility to ”Anyone on the web” to make your tagline public. This way your tagline will also show in our directory.

Search the Directory

You can search by name, tagline or gender (male, female). Also you can remove the search filter by clicking the x button showing the current filter.

Remove yourself from the Directory

If at a later time you decide to remove yourself from the directory, you can do so by signing in with Google and then clicking the x button beside your name.

You can read our Privacy Policy using the link at the bottom of our directory website pages.

Later on we may add more features to the Adventist on Google+ Directory, based on the people’s interest for it and available funding.

Visit it and add yourself today in the Adventists on Google+ Directory !

Share this article or the Directory URL (http://en.intercer.net/gplus) with your friends. Use the share buttons at the top of the page to send it on Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

Intercer Adventist News includes and promotes a list of selected News and Media Feeds from different Adventist churches, organizations and individuals.

The website provides excerpts of these news and media feeds, with a link back to the source article for full reading.

Intercer Adventist News helps Adventist articles, news and media to be better known to the global community.

Also at Intercer Adventist News we curate some Twitter lists with Adventist churches, organizations or individuals on Twitter.

Twitter lists are lists of people you can follow and are limited to 500 entries.

Adventists on Twitter – @intercer/adventists (~500 accounts)
Adventists on Twitter – @intercer/adventistas (160+ accounts, mostly Spanish)
Adventists on Twitter – @intercer/adventists2

You can follow us on Twitter: @intercer

Adventist Tweets – daily digital newspaper

Recently we started “Adventist Tweets” a daily paper.li digital newspaper, build from our Twitter lists and some other hashtags. You can subscribe to it at the top right of the page.

Feel free to visit our website, it is updated daily.

Adventist sermons and video clips

Another website section includes adventist sermons and video clips. You can find more information on that in the related article below.

http://en.intercer.net/news/adventist-sermons-and-video-clips.html

Come back often to our website or follow us on social media below:

Related article: Intercer Adventist News – Twitter lists and digital newspaper

Here are four tips to use your Twitter account effectively. Following other Twitter accounts that are in your target demographic will help you get an idea of what the conversation is. Then you need to post updates about your company, brand or product. As with any online medium, you want to be very careful to never spam any of your followers. Lastly, make sure that you follow successful online marketers, and look for other participants who are in your industry.

First Build an Account for Twitter Marketing

The first thing that you should do is to set up your Twitter account and populate it with several interesting Tweets, which are Twitter posts. Then begin following people who are also using Twitter, and you will find that most people will follow back. When your entire Twitter feed has blanks, though, most people will not bother to follow you. Once you start a micro blog post, you can get on with following any target demographic, and this can be done in either of two different ways.

1. Go to Twitter.com and do a search by typing in keywords that relate to the demographic that you are targeting. For example, if you are trying to sell an application for the iPhone, you would enter the keyword ‘iPhone’ or ‘iPhone app’ or anything that may find people who own an iPhone. It’s easy to follow people. If your posts are interesting and relevant, you will probably pick up some followers this
way.

2. Locate Twitter accounts that you want to follow by clicking the ‘Find People’ option. Then enter your keywords, related industries, locations or other defining detail to locate followers, and begin following them.

Twitter Marketing Uses Current Information

By adding news that is interesting and relevant about your services or product, you can keep your Tweets current. You can also add information about related news for your industry to keep Tweets interesting and informative. For example, if you sell cooking gadgets, you may want to post news about food and recipes.

As you work on developing your targeted demographic, you need to keep your followers engaged, so you will want to tweet, or post, often. Make sure to retweet relevant tweets from other Twitter followers. This is another great way to pick up new followers, and when they start to follow you, you also are plugged into their followers. Retweeting is one of the fastest ways to build your following or network.

By checking with search.twitter.com frequently you can look for brand names and see what customers are saying. You can follow these Twitter accounts and thank them. If you see customers who are angry or dissatisfied, you can follow them as well. Then you can retweet them and solicit solutions to the problem. Your customers will be thrilled with the feedback from you, and even more thrilled when you
rectify the situation. Twitter makes it easy to grow a ‘word of mouth’ reputation virally.

Twitter Marketing and Spam Do Not Mix

Spam in any electronic media is the kiss of death. If you begin spamming your followers, they will drop you like a hot potato. Spam activity would include only posting information on your own products, retweeting the same URL repeatedly, obnoxious Twitter handles, and frivolous tweets. Twitter followers are savvy consumers, and anything deceptive or patronizing is going to leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Twitter Marketing Can Assess the Competition

If you want to build a quality following, then follow quality people on Twitter. There are many online marketers that are experts on Twitter like Dave Peck, Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki, and they should definitely be included in your list on Twitter. Also look for corporations that are active on Twitter. They are blazing a trail with their marketing, and you can get good marketing information from them.

Do not forget to look at what your competition is doing. See how they are going about increasing their own following on Twitter. If you want to be a smart marketer online, then you need to constantly be aware of what your competition is doing out in cyberspace. You have a huge marketing opportunity if they rarely post on Twitter, never retweet, or attend to negative posts.

Twitter Marketing Requires Patience

When you are using Twitter as part of your Internet marketing plan, you need to give it time to work. Twitter results take a while to appear, because it is one of the more long-term strategies. You will have to build up your networks and following, and if you use the correct strategies, it will happen in a timely manner. However, do not start a Twitter campaign if you are not going to see it through to completion, because an unattended Twitter account is worse than no account at all.

Once you have built a good Twitter following, then you want to market with a gentle touch. Instead of using ‘in your face’ marketing tactics, pose a question where your product or service is the answer. Tweet that there are updates on your company’s blog instead of trying to cram the information into your tweet, and people that want to know more will click through to your blog.

Always respond when your followers tweet you. If you do not keep up with your following, it will begin to crumble. If you have too large of a following to maintain, then outsource your retweets or assign an employee to monitor and reply to your followers.

Twitter is an interactive marketing tool, and because of this it is valuable in two ways. While it is instrumental in getting your message out, it is also hugely helpful in taking the pulse of your customers. So make sure that your Twitter marketing efforts start strong and more importantly stay strong.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Tips and Tricks on Using Twitter for Business

If you just got a small proportion of those visitors to convert to leads or sales, that has cost you nothing but your time.

There are two hard facts of any internet business that you cannot escape.

To make money online, you need to generate traffic to your website and second, you need to convert that traffic into buyers.

You might try to do this directly by sending them to a sales page or you may do it indirectly by sending them to an opt-in page to capture their details or to your information site or blog.

First, you should focus on identifying your killer keywords – the ones that attract the right kind of people into you business.

With a good match between what people are searching for and what you are offering, the actual traffic you generate will be more highly targeted and predisposed to your offer and so more likely to convert into buyers.

If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income.

BUT, it doesn’t take thousands to generate website traffic to your site.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, the holy grail is knowing how to generate low cost website traffic without having to run up a huge daily advertising bill.

Here I present to you my top 7 strategies to generate low cost website traffic that could help make money online for you.

1. Link exchanges

This is a well known and proven strategy. It’s rare these days to see a website without a link to another site.

Many business owners are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more visibility for their sites.

The more you create back links to your website from other pages, the more the traffic you’ll see coming as you’ll start to rank higher.

If you’re exchanging links with other sites, it’s important that the link is relevant. This usually means it is in the same niche or a relate niche as your own site.

This strategy pleases humans as much as it keeps the search engines happy.

Exchanging links with authority sites or sites with high page ranks will also increase your traffic even more significantly, as it will boost your rankings in search engine listings.

This is known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

2. Article Marketing

There are many electronic magazines (called ezines) and online newsletters around on the internet which provide free space for you to submit articles.

If you want to keep your costs low, you can write the articles yourself. But you can save time, by using the many freelance writers who are willing to create articles on your best converting keywords or keyword phrases. The fees are much smaller than you might think.

Write articles that complement your website, product, business or other offer. Write on topics that you have expertise on so you develop your knowledge researching around the subject and can come across as an authority.

Write articles that produce tips and guidance on the subject or your niche. Looking at existing content on your chosen niche will help you find gaps so less competition and your article will rank more highly for those keywords.

At the end of the article submission process, you can insert a “resource box”. It’s here that can say something about yourself or your business and provide your visitors with a link to your site if they want to find out more.

If they do go there, they are already impressed and predisposed to your offer, wouldn’t you say?

Once you have your article accepted in your primary article directory, you can also send variations to other article directories.

There is a lot of free article submission software available to automate the process and if you are doing a lot of article marketing, a great paid service I personally use is SubmitYourArticles.

3. Video marketing

Video marketing can send literally thousands Of visitors to your primary business. It really is the social medium of the moment. Just look at the popularity of YouTube! 5-10 minutes is all you need to get your point across.

You can either use a camcorder to video your own talking head or create a footage around your product or offer and add the audio later.

If you’re not yet confident on camera, you can also create a series of photos and powerpoint slides and record an audio commentary around that.

Don’t forget to add your website URL as a running title along the top.

Once you have a few videos made, you then need to drive traffic to them. The best way is to submit them to video sites. The most popular are youtube.com, metacafe.com and dailymotion.com.

To really maximise exposure and get the most traffic back to you website, you can use video submission tools. There’s a free video submission service, TubeMogul. An even better tool is a paid service I use is Traffic Geyser.

Once you’re registered on the main video sites, this submitter tool will automatically submit your video to a whole host of video sites for you, resulting in tonnes of free traffic to your website.

4. Forum marketing

This is completely free – it only requires an input of your time. Do some initial sculking around to identify the kinds of problems people have in this niche.

Once you feel you understand the community, you can start to feedback a comment, start a post, here and there, using your knowledge and expertise.

You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

With every post, you can add a link to your site. But remember first to give value, not just blatantly advertise your site.

As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

5. Twitter marketing

Twitter and blogging go hand in hand. They help you build your authority and social networks within your niche.

Twitter has totally transformed the way that people communicate online and since it’s free, it really should be an indispensable part of your overall marketing strategy and link to your blog.

Twitter is free to join and you can get set up with an account in a matter of just a few minutes.

Twitter has proven itself to be incredibly addictive and, for business owners, very valuable too.

Technology such as Twitter has the potential to give us more than just an opportunity to tell others what happened in our day. We can use it to reach more people in a meaningful way.

Imagine if you had cost-efficient and fast marketing tools that met existing customers where they are and that also helped you acquire new customers.

Imagine if you had the power to build a network of like-minded peers, a community of shared ideas and creativity.

6. Blog marketing

You blog should therefore be one of the main hubs for your business. It’s all about YOU Inc.

As your name gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list and RSS subscribe feed for people who regularly visit your site.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. A blog is like dating – you wouldn’t propose on the first date so why shove your sales pitch down a new visitors throat.

You can point your articles, videos, forum posts and social media activities all through your blog.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a blog but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many many sources of ideas and inspiration for your blog, which come from your day to day activities and your own personal development.

7. Facebook marketing

Social networking has always been a main part of many internet marketers strategy. But most don’t use it effectively at all. They flood the likes of Facebook and Myspace with offers and promotions. This won’t work.

If you want to use social tools like Facebook to generate traffic to your website, you first have to identify the right groups and then invest something of yourself.

You need to be prepared to make a personal connection with other folks in the community. This kind of media thrives on authentic networking.

Posting up useful content on social networks will get you some awesome rankings on Google. The search engines seem to put a premium on sites like Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Squidoo and Hubpages.

In all these free or low cost traffic generation methods, it’s all about giving value to your niche community.

Leads generated in this way will be far more valuable as leads back to you – interested, highly targeted, committed and profitable.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Seven Inexpensive Ways to Generate Traffic to Make Money Online

Your Twitter profile needs to be human

It’s no good to use Twitter for business marketing to consumers if you are hiding behind the “corporate veil.” In other words, your Twitter username can be in your business name, but even if you are representing a large corporation, your actual name should also be on the profile along with your photo. People relate to people, not business logos.

A real person tweeting for a company is able to establish relationships with consumers that an anonymous corporate/company Twitter user cannot. Add bits and pieces of your personal interests to help create relationships.

You need to provide information before you provide sales pitches

If, for example, you are a footwear company using Twitter to attract new customers, it’s not enough to constantly tweet about new shoe styles your company is offering. You need to also provide useful information.

You might tweet links to research reports on the effects of going barefoot most of the time. Or you might tweet a link to a blog discussing cultural differences in what is acceptable footwear for “business” dress.

If you want people to trust your company enough to buy its footwear, you need to demonstrate you are trustworthy by helping consumers to know more about your field of footwear. You want to be known as a source of good information besides good footwear.

You can offer special deals to your Twitter followers

Although the majority of your tweets should NOT be sales pitches, it’s certainly acceptable to offer special deals for your Twitter followers as part of your Twitter marketing campaign. You can do this by providing a promotional code to be used on your site. And Twitter’s 140 characters makes Twitter ideal for getting your offer across in brief messages.

Also consider doing a fundraising campaign on Twitter – your company name is thus linked with a good cause. For example, anyone using the promo code will have 10% of his/her purchase go to a specific nonprofit organization.

Encourage questions from your Twitter followers

Use Twitter for business marketing by getting immediate feedback on issues of importance to your company. For example, if you introduce a new style in limited quantities, solicit opinions. Yes, some of the opinions may be negative. But it is better to know these opinions now while your footwear is in limited production than to find out this information after you’ve produced millions of pairs of this new style.

And make sure you monitor all mentions of your company on Twitter. You want to jump on positive comments – and thank people for those comments – as well as jump on negative comments. It’s much easier to put out a small fire than a large blaze.

In conclusion, how you use Twitter for business marketing to consumers is limited only by your imagination. If you share information first and then gently pitch your products, you should be able to reap the benefit of new customers who are loyal to your products thanks to having a strong connection with a real person from the company.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Use Twitter for Business Marketing

Let’s face it, Twitter is a lot of fun! And it has spawned an entire industry of amazing Twitter tools that are not only fun – but can also help you maximize the power of Twitter, as well as enhance your business interests.

Following are 32 Fun and Useful Twitter Tools. Enjoy!

1. BackType Plugins
backtype.com/plugins

Backtype.com is a real-time conversational search engine that helps users find, follow and share comments from blogs, social networks and other social media. Very, very cool.

2. CureCRM
curecrm.com/net

CureCRM is a Twitter CRM (Customer Realationship Management) tool. It works on your desktop and gives you the ability to automatically record email conversations into salesforce cases, contacts, opportunities, and leads entries. It also schedules meetings, manages your calendar, and reminds colleagues to attend meetings.

3. Friend or Follow
friendorfollow.com

This is my favorite Twitter tool. It tells you who you’re following who’s not following you back. This tool allows you to stay on top of your unfollows, as well as “trim your Twitter fat”, so to speak.

4. Featured Users
featuredUsers.com

Featured Users is a Twitter application ad network. It appears to be affiliated with the aforementioned Friend or Follow.  Here’s how it works: When you purchase impressions, your Twitter profile is displayed on the Twitter applications in the Featured Users network. The more impressions you purchase, the more often your profile is displayed.

It actually looks pretty cool. I haven’t tried this one yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it. They also have a user referral program that will allow you to make money when you refer customers to their program.

6. GoTwitr
gotwitr.com

GoTwitr is a Twitter referral service. However, what makes GoTwitr different from other Twitter referal services is the fact GoTwitr gives you the ability to preview in detail everyone you follow or unfollow.

That way, your community will be made up of people who actually share your interests.

7. HootSuite
hootsuite.com

HootSuite is yet another free professional Twitter client. Here are some of the functions that HootSuite performs: Manages multiple Twtitter accounts, tracks how many people click the links you tweet out, pre-schedules your messages, submits your blog feed to Twitter and more.

8. OpenBreak (Formerly TwitterBerry)
orangatame.com/products/openbeak

Billed as “The evolution of TwitterBerry,” OpenBeak is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don’t need to use SMS. OpenBeak is the evolution of TwitterBerry, and the new name allows the app to grow beyond both the Twitter platform and BlackBerry smartphones.

9. PeopleBrowsr
peoplebrowsr.com

PeopleBrowsr is a real time data mine and social search engine. It allows you to monitor your brand, manage feedback, share accounts, run campaigns, track keywords, build widgets and engage across multiple social networks simultaneously.

10.Ping.fm
ping.fm

Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously. This is a really great tool!

11. Qwitter
useqwitter.com

Qwitter is a Twitter tool that notifies you when you get un-followed. Qwitter checks your followers and notifies you as often as it can, depending on how many people are using it and how many followers they have.

Now here’s what’s really cool about Qwitter. Not only will it alert you as to who is no longer following you, but it will also show you the tweet you posted that (may or may not) have caused the person to unsubscribe. Very useful.

12. Seesmic Desktop
seesmic.com

Seesmic Desktop is a Twitter client and desktop app which allows you to view multiple accounts in one window. Not only will you be able to view multiple accounts, you will be able to view the window in columns (similar to Tweetdeck).

13. SocialOomph (Formally known as TweetLater)
socialoomph.com

SocialOomph is a free Twitter tool that lets you set your tweets to be sent at specific time intervals, track keywords, automatically send welcome direct messages (DM’s)to new followers, purge your direct messages and more.

14. Trendistic
trendistic.com/_help

Ever heard of Google Trends? Well, Trendistic is similar to that. Trendistic is a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches. It gathers tweets as they are posted, filters redundant ones and compiles the rest into one-hour intervals.

15. TwitterMail
twittermail.com

TwitterMail is a service for users of Twitter that allows them to redirect email to their twitter account.

Here’s how it works: When you give TwitterMail your Twitter credentials they supply you with a unique TwitterMail email address. For instance, abc123example@twittermail.com. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.com (By the way, that’s a fake Twittermail address, so don’t use it).

16. Twitbin
twitbin.com

If you’re a Firefox user, this one’s for you. Twitbin is a Firefox extension that allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar. Twitbin allows you to send messages, receive messages, share links, and more. Great Firefox extension!

17. Twibbon
twibbon.com

Supporting a cause? Twibbon allows you to promote your cause through Twitter. Twibbon overlays a small icon onto supporters’ profile images to create a ‘Twibbon’, making an impactful online statement. The user’s Twitter account automatically tweets to let everyone know about their affiliation.

18. TweetMeMe
tweetmeme.com

If you’re an article marketer like I am, you’re going to love this tool.  TweetMeMe is a retweet button for website and blog publishers who want to encourage viral activity of their content on Twitter.

The button shows a live count of the number of times your content has been tweeted. I love this tool!

19. TweetDeck
tweetdeck.com/beta

TweetDeck is your personal social networking dashboard for staying in touch with what’s happening now on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. In fact, you can do so many things with TweetDeck, you are limited only by your imagination.

20. Twitterfeed
twitterfeed.com

Twitterfeed allows you to publish updates from any RSS feed to your Twitter account. You then have the ability to decide how frequently you want Twitterfeed to check your feed updates and how many updated articles to post to Twitter.

21. Twitpic
twitpic.com

As its name suggests, Twitpic allows you to share photos on Twitter. You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, their API, or through the Twitpic site itself.

22. TwitterCounter
twittercounter.com

If you have a lot of Twitter followers and want to show them off, you’ll find this is an interesting tool. TwitterCounter is a statistics tool which allows you to display the number of Twitter followers you have on your blog.

It will also display whether your followers are increasing or decreasing. The service also has a Twitter Remote widget that you can add to your blog sidebar for more interaction with your followers.

23. Twitterholic
twitterholic.com

Want to know who has the most followers on Twitter? Then Twitterholic is the tool for you. But Twitterholic goes one step further, not only does it allow you to see who has the most followers, it also allows you to check your own ranking in the Twitter universe. Great tool!

24. Twellow
twellow.com

Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts. It features hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people in specific niches.

Here’s how it works: Twellow grabs publicly available messages from  Twitter. Twellow then analyzes and categorizes each of the users responsible for those messages into the various categories found on its website.

25. Twaitter
twaitter.com

Twaitter is a tool that allows team accounts, scheduled tweets, RSS integration, tweet calendar and more.

26. Twibes
twibes.com

Twibes is an interesting Twitter tool that allows you to find groups of people who share your common interests.

27. TwitterLocal
twitterlocal.net

TwitterLocal is an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to filter Tweets by location. You can generate an RSS or XML feed, which allows you to receive Tweets from a specified area, including city, state, postal code and  mile radius.

28. TweetBrain
tweetbrain.com

TweetBrain is a crowdsourcing service powered by the Twitter community. It enables you to get quality answers to your Twitter questions quickly – sort of like Yahoo Answers for Twitter users. Very cool.

29. Tweetvisor
tweetvisor.com

Tweetvisor is a web-based, multi-column Twitter interface that enables users to better manage multiple Twitter accounts. Tweetvisor returns real-time updates about favorite topics, news and tweets – plus, much, much more. Nice!

30. TwitterFox
twitterfox.net

TwitterFox is Firefox web browser plugin that TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets.

It also has a small text input field to update your tweets. In addition, TwitterFox allows you to view Tweets within your own web browser, in a popup menu. This is extremely convenient and eliminates the need to constantly go to the Twitter website.

31. Wickett Twitter Widget
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wickett-twitter-widget

This is a popular WordPress plugin that display tweets from a Twitter account in the sidebar of your blog. It is without question the easiest way to add Tweets to WordPress.

32. Yahoo Sideline
yahoo.sideline.com

Sideline is an Adobe AIR desktop application that allows users to create and group custom queries by topics of interest.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

32 Spectacularly Useful Twitter Tools

Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners

1. Choosing a Username: A lot of Twitter users choose nicknames that are unrelated to the information they are offering. If you are using Twitter for personal use this is okay, however, if you are going to use Twitter to offer high quality information related to your area of expertise, you should choose a username that reflects your area of specialization. When people see your username they will know exactly what you are about.
2. Retweets: Retweet are also known as RTs and are used to resend a message sent by someone else. If you think the content of the message is relevant and useful, you always have the option of forwarding that person’s message. If you wish to send a retweet, all you have to do is type “RT @name” in front of their message and then proceed to post it. Whenever you post the tweet, always remember to acknowledge the person who originally created the message.
3. Communicating with the @ Sign: In order to reply to people who have posted tweets, the @ sign is used. If you wish to post a reply, simply place an @ sign in front of their username and then type in your message.
4. Locating Your Friends and Searching for Topics of Interest: You can use the Search function to find your friends and topics you may be interested in.twitter.com. It functions much like a search engine with the only difference being that you are using Twitter to find people and information that would interest you.
5. Receiving Mobile Tweets: If you have a cell phone you can receive tweets from Twitter on your mobile device by simply entering your cell phone number under the Devices tab in your Twitter account settings online.
6. Mobile Twitter Clients: Twitter provides mobile clients which enhance your experience with using Twitter. The clients include Twitterific and Twitterberry and work with a cell phone that contains Wi-Fi.
7. Categories: On Twitter, you can easily categorize your tweets so that other users can easily find them. If you are posting a tweet about a topic that is currently popular, all you have to do is place # sign in front of the topic of your tweet.
8. URL Addresses: URL addresses are website addresses that you can provide in your tweets if there is a page you want others to view. More often than not, website URLs are long and exceed the 140 character limit. Because of this, Twitter users prefer to shorten URLs with URL shortening services.
9. Direct Messaging: Any tweet you post on Twitter, the message can be seen by everyone, however, you can use the direct messaging service to send private messages.
10. TweetDeck: If you become a frequent Twitter user, it would be wise to install a desktop client like Tweetdeck on your PC or Mac. A desktop client application will help you to easily manage all of your communications on Twitter

There are a lot of other ways that Twitter can be used but these are the top 10 Twitter Tips that will help you understand the basics and get started using Twitter.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Top 10 Twitter Tips

• 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

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Social Networking for Business Guide

Twitter does break the usual trends somewhat, insofar as anything to do with social networking has an established “trend” of course. Twitter allows you to post messages, either through a web portal or on your mobile phone, letting everyone know what you think, where you are or what you’re doing. Your message is restricted to 140 characters or less, so it’s always succinct. You have the option of selecting who you want to talk to, and who you want to hear from – known as “followers” or “following” in the world of Twitter.

At this particularly early stage of its ongoing development, Twitter doesn’t really seem to have any business model as such. You can quickly sign up and start “tweeting” your message at no cost whatsoever. Marketers take a long hard look at the viral capabilities provided by this service and they begin to salivate. Opportunities await those who seek to harness its power.

Twitter is ideal for communicating news or interacting with your peers. You can send a message directly from your mobile phone using one of the currently available applications, without even having to visit a computer. It’s difficult to estimate the actual number of users because of the fluid nature of the platform, but many experts do caution that the number of avid users, or those who actively follow and get followed, represents a very small proportion of the total user base.

While the number of engaged users may be only a few percentage points of the total user base, the Twitter platform can still be viewed as having good marketing potential. Internet marketers need to approach the task of soliciting followers carefully. Whatever your niche, the first thing that you need to do is to seek out other experts who are regular “tweeters”. You can do this by using a simple search within the program. Once you find these experts, take a constructive look at their list of followers, as your job is to try and add friends or followers to your Twitter feed in a concerted and sensible way.

As it appears that the vast majority of members do not actively keep up with Twitter, it follows that there is no point in adding followers without trying to qualify them. If you can see that the potential follower has an active list of people who he or she is following and, in turn, is being followed by, then they are potential targets for you.

Work toward building a list of followers by initially just following the individuals who you think might have a particular interest in your specific products or services. If you’ve taken the time to qualify them and you discover that they follow you in return, then you’re well on your way.

While you can get away with just including your information in the profile supplied by Twitter, most internet marketing experts recommend that you also design some sort of banner or customised template rather than using a generic wallpaper background. This should include your branding, logo and message and it’s something that all serious marketers maintain.

As is the case with any form of Internet marketing, make sure that you do not spam and that your messages are always relevant, informative and/or entertaining. There is a time and a place for you to include your marketing message, and you must always do this in a subtle way. Happy Tweeting!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

%%Tweet Your Marketing Message%%

Tweet Your Marketing Message

So when it comes to deciding which social media platforms make the most sense to use, the options can be overwhelming – if you let them. However, with a little focus, guidance, and strategic thinking, you can just as easily simplify your choices.

What follows draws from our 6-week “Social Media Kick Start” Virtual Boot Camp, which expands on these topics with self-paced learning modules.

Let’s start by keeping these two very important questions in mind: Where is your audience now? And where are they going to be?

Even if your target audience isn’t on a particular social network right now, consider the fact that involvement is social networks is growing exponentially. (Heck, if Facebook were a country, it would have the 4th largest population in the world!) Not everyone was on the Web 5-10 years ago, but you could see where the trend was going. Same thing with social networks. Here’s how to dive in confidently.

1. Start with the Big Three.

That’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The odds that your audience is on one or more of these platforms right now is very high. And if they’re not on there, they will be by the time you finish reading this. Now, of the three, LinkedIn is the only one that doesn’t get tarred with the “It’s just for kids goofing off” brush. But consider this: The measurement company ComScore reported in April that the majority of Twitter users are 35+, and the 18-34 age group is growing as fast as the 55-64 age group. As for Facebook, InsideFacebook.com reports the largest group of users is between 26 and 44 years old, and the fastest growing demo is women 55 and over.

2. Budget your time and money.

These are your resources, and if you’re a small business owner, you’re using them with care these days. A platform like Twitter is about as simple as it gets – 5-minute sign up, a few communication conventions to learn as you go, then the Twitterverse is your oyster. Facebook, on the other hand, goes about as deep as they get in terms of customization opportunities. Consider learning and growing in this platform as a work in progress, and add, edit, expand and refresh as you go. Even LinkedIn has a lot of detail possibilities, too, but they also have a very helpful tool that tells you how complete your profile is, which can guide you through what options you need to finish to take maximum advantage of its features.

3. Follow the FUN!

It may sound frivolous at first, but there’s sound business sense behind it. First of all, as you play with each of the Big Three platforms, you’ll learn more about your own communication style, and how you like to experience your friends, contacts, and colleagues. Twitter presents quick snippets of insight, links, conversations, and opportunities to brainstorm on the fly. LinkedIn is more professional, following traditional and formal conventions. Facebook is all over the map, with nooks and crannies that’ll surprise you even after months of frequent use. In other words, if control is what you want, Facebook may be your nemesis, but if you dig spontaneity and possibilities from any direction, then hop on board.

The bottom line: if you pick a social network that you dread going to, you’ll find a way to put it off. If you’re not participating in the social network, then you won’t get much value out of it! What’s more, if you hate doing it, that’ll come through in your interactions. No one wants to connect with an unpleasant person. It’s just not good for business.

On the other hand, when you “follow the FUN,” you’ll make time for your social networking. You’ll laugh at the countless pathways – and diversions – available, and you’ll be able to get focused on the results you’re after with confidence and nimble clarity.

Then, as you expand beyond the Big Three, you’ll have a better sense of how to play in the social arena, and what features support your goals and style. Love taking photos? Love talking? Want to try out video? PowerPoint wiz? There are networks that support all media channels.

Some say at least 537, and counting.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

%%3 Tried-n-True Ways to Decide Which Social Media Tools to Use%%

3 Tried-n-True Ways to Decide Which Social Media Tools to Use