Twitter maybe the best website/tool for you to build an online communityFAST, no wonder it’s called Micro blogging. We have been fans of blogging for SEO, Search and Social marketing. They go hand in hand, and besides faceBook which to me is the best Social networking system in the world. Twitter is an amazing way to promote your website, blog or anything else by providing a short link in your micro blogging posts. This is done so fast and the communities in Twitter are so active that it’s mind boggling. Yes, Twitter also has amazing content naturally promoted and organized by humans, WATCH OUT GOOGLE! The search utility in Twitter is growing very fast, and finds human and member based information fast, very fast, and the most recent first.
This fast and update of information is really the key to Twitter’s success. And, it’s search functionality in my opinion will/could surpass Google’s influence. Three things to do on Twitter to be successful, also remember, you should have be blogging on your own site or URL to link to from Twitter:
1. Search for interests or hobbies you truely care about.
2. Read the posts and follow everyone you like, even people with thousands of followers
3. Post a lot, reply to their links, but with meaningful information, and you will get Followers!
It’s important that you are compassionate and kind as you develop a social community. You will develop a following, but you must spend significant time Tweeting, to really be effective. Here is a great article I got from Twitter today: http://socialmediarockstar.com/10-simple-ways-to-show-kindness-online
The hype cycle around Twitter rose to the top of everyone’s attention last week. Especially with the competion of the most followers won by Ashton Kuthcer, beating out CNN with one million followers first. In the recent months, I may have written an article of two about Twitter and it’s Live blogging. I have not been a huge fan, as I love faceBook and Twitter is too one dimensional at best. However, I do love the name, It’s the best name to come along in a long – long time. A great brand name can also make a website very popular. And, “this happens to be major reason for it’s popularity” as mentioned to me last night by a media planner for one of the largest Interactive agencies in the world. He goes on to say that his company told him and his peers to start using it to spread viral marketing. While they are using it, He however prefers faceBook as do I.
I do believe Twitter has promise as a live search and information service. I also have talked about how Google needs to watch out, and how Microsoft needs to buy it, not later, but now. The longer they wait, the more it will cost. Regardless of who buys it, they need to leave it alone and let it do it’s thing. In Microsoft’s case, they should extend their search engine on it, no matter what it’s called. They need traffic and cool brand association and Twitter will provide that.
I have been reading some great articles about the best uses of Twitter, and I can certainly say that it’s not fully tapped or utilized for this yet. Twitter is about live blogging and instant information broadcasting. It will soon become the instant information source, surpassing Google, CNN, or anything else. One of the best things is that it has a large commercial application for large brands to provide a platform for their message to their prospects, clients and users. As we wrote in my book and our tagline for the site MyTypes.com was, Blogcast your brand. So it really is the fastest way to blogcast your brand. FaceBook on the other hand may help you with much deeper development of your community and client base.
What’s really interesting about Twitter, is the fact that it truely can democratize information as Google has started to do. Here is a great article from eMarketer about the numbers of Twitter, and yes why it’s worth tweeting:
“Twitter lets people know what’s going on about things they care about instantly, as it happens,” Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, told The New York Times. “In the best cases, Twitter makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.”
A survey of Twitter users from MarketingProfs backs Mr. Williams’ views. On a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1 for strongly disagree and 5 and for strongly agree), the phrase “I find it exciting to learn new things from people” averaged a score of 4.65 and “I value getting information in a timely manner” averaged 4.58.
“Above all, people on Twitter are truly motivated by learning new things and getting information real-time, as it’s developing,” said Ann Handley of MarketingProfs. See full aticle here
If you have not updated your professional blog or social network within a week, it’s time to do so. Because if you don’t, people might think you are not serious about your web presence. I am as busy as anyone, and we all can find excuses to not do it. Besides the full time job, the two young kids at home, wife’s new book MomBite.com and social marketing to help with, (not to mention the physical exercise and church activities), who’s got time to regularly blog or manage their social network presence?
It certainly is not me, but I do it anyways, at least once a week. So the rule of thumb for blogging and social marketing is to update your content at least once a week, so this does not make the presence stale. Twice a week is impressive, and once a day maybe too much. The key is to never compromise the quality of your content. There is a site called DailyCandy.com that does a good job with daily content, and TechCrunch.com does a great job with up to the minute news and blogging. Unless you are trying to be a breaking news blogging service, I say once a day is too much.
Here is an excerpt from a great article on how to manage your social networking sites and adding content to them on a regular basis. You can go to the full article from iMediaConnection by clicking here, but here is the net of it:
Social application marketing (SAM) is about using tools to create multiple layers of distribution that can be grouped by process. That way, you spend less time talking to a machine and more time engaging with your desired audiences. There are a number of process steps.
1. Set up two email accounts. You’ll need Gmail and Yahoo Mail email accounts to activate and manage your profile and tools. I recommend setting up folders for each tool or application you create in order to quickly locate credential documents, as well as sort notification messages you may want to archive from each social network or tool site. Using a web-based email service also keeps your corporate email account clutter free from Twitter and Facebook account notification emails.
2. Claim your identity. Think of securing a username on a social network as owning a domain name for your company. In fact, screen name claiming needs to be integrated into your domain name buying process. You need to protect your online identity so that others don’t try to hijack your brand, product, or service name. To streamline the process, don’t check individual sites to see whether or not the name or names you need are still available, but instead look at 104 different sites at one time using UserName Check. The service doesn’t include every tool or network you may be considering, but it will save you a lot of time in the selection of your organization’s ID. If you’re planning on really locking down your identity, you’ll need to secure your i-names which are digital identifiers for individuals and organizations that begin with “=” for people and “@” for an organization. I like 1id.com, an accredited i-broker.
3. Register your identity and store your account information in an excel spreadsheet. When you’re registering 75 or more profiles and over 4,000 screen names, you will need to archive the username and password information for each account. When you archive account credentials, be sure to include links to login pages along with the username, password, and name of the service or site. You will also need a column in your spreadsheet for application keys you’ll need to remember for activating distribution tools (I’ll get to that in just a moment). One additional tip when it comes to registering screen names: Don’t use the same password for every account. Minimize unauthorized access to your organization’s accounts by using multiple passwords. That way, no single password grants an unwanted user universal access to all your accounts.
4. Populate your profile. Here comes the content (translation: here comes trouble). The best advice is to plan ahead. If you need legal reviews, disclaimers, insurance modifications (strange, I know, but trust me; this happened to a client), a corporate blogging policy, or even an online community guideline document, get them in place early so you can quickly plug in content from a Word document or spreadsheet. Content fundamentals you’ll need to have at the ready to decorate your profile include: An avatar or image, an “about” statement, links to sites, historic info (jobs, titles, timeline for the launch of a product), and links to third-party content you want to plug in.
5. Dashboard the process of updating your social network profiles. Browser plugins are nice if you’re just going to use one or two bookmarking tools, but if your organization is managing 15 to 25 profiles, you need to automate the publishing process across your accounts so you can spend more time talking to customers. This where many advertisers get stuck. They either don’t have a publishing strategy or they are overwhelmed with how to quickly recognize a follower. I use two tools to automate publishing and simple “reply to” messaging: Ping.fm and TweetDeck. These tools turn your content into software. Use them to leverage the power of a distributor to reach more audiences. See More of full article..
As always, don’t forget to download our marketing book on blogging and you can always buy a copy at Amazon.com!
I don’t have to tell anyone in college, recent graduate or in the Internet/Technology business that the faceBook is really hot. But in recent days, weeks and months it has caught speed in my 40+ high school community in Minnesota. Meaning, the middle aged non-techies are starting to get on it in huge numbers. And in fact, I am actually spending a lot more time on it myself. Communicating with friends and connections of the past. It makes one to many communication possible, and who doesn’t want to know what is going on with your friends. This is an easy way to stay connected with close friends, and people who we like or admire. Yes, there are people we admire or want to see more off.
There is even a trend of defriending someone, based on NY Times article of last week. I actually had done that for the first time with someone a couple of weeks ago. And Yes, faceBook makes that feature confidential, so you don’t have to broadcast that you are no longer friends. On a separate note, I even heard from a friend that his SEO value of his site goes up based on his facebook fan page. Wow, faceBook an SEO tool on top of a Social Marketing Tool?
Here is the link to the article that faceBook is HOT and will surpass MySpace in the US in upcoming quarters. I believe it already has a higher Alexa ranking and has more users internationally I could be wrong.
I have been writing about this for almost 2 years, but the connections are now stronger then ever. There are numerous articles written every day about SEO and Social Networking, and the popularity of faceBook only makes this more powerful. You need to learn about the impact of Social networking on SEO, read this great article on the recent SEO related topics.
Links to your site from relevant/authority Web sites.
These were right in 2000 and they’re still right in 2009.
Popularity = Rank
One thing that we’ve noticed within this past year is the notion that the more popular your Web site is (the more visitors that you have, the more pages those visitors click through, and the longer the visitors stay on your site), the better the likelihood that your Web site will rank. This isn’t an altogether “new” notion (Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld discussed this in 2003), but I’ve seen more evidence of this within this past year.
The search engines want to provide searchers with the best results possible. How they define “best results” may be up for debate, but they do a pretty good job.
Years ago, you might have to click through 20 pages of search results to find what you were looking for. Nowadays, through better algorithms and personalized search, few will bother to click through to page two of their results. Instead, they’ll probably search again using a different keyword phrase.
Last post was the part 1 of how social networking is a great alternative to email. This post and article by Eric covers why businesses need to develop social networking strategies for marketing and truely connect with their customers, rather than try to get a quick sale. Here is the article link and brief description from it:
In our last article, we discussed how social networks are replacing e-mail – especially with Generations Y and Z. Yet, many companies fail to grasp this new concept. They build out elaborate YouTube or Flickr pages, placing callouts and click actions that send the user outside of the social network, often to their company Web site or a lead capture page. These companies still believe they need to get these users into their prospecting databases in order to market to them. They are doing a disservice to their loyal fan base and in turn a disservice to themselves.
It’s analogous to meeting a pretty girl within a bar and asking if she would like a drink. When she responds “yes” rather than ordering a drink from the bartender, you grab her and throw her into your car and drive her back to your place, since after all, you have beer in your fridge. This is not a sound courtship strategy, nor are analogous social media strategies employed by companies “courting” potential customers.
But, let’s digress back to our dating scenario on social media. Social networks are fantastic for meeting new people and dating. If a girl meets a guy out on the town and they exchange names and connect within a social media network – it’s a gold mine of data.
The more friends you have in common within the shared social network, the more secure you feel knowing the other person isn’t some form of lunatic. Photos are helpful, especially if the night before was a bit wild and a little fuzzy. If you are listed in a network for “Star Trek Fanatics” or “Dracula Oprah” that will be even more telling. What you do, who you work for, where you live and have lived, provides additional insight into your persona.
If all checks out, that first date is more like a fourth date. You aren’t asking question like “Where did you go to college,” or “what are your hobbies.” You’ll still probably ask these questions to make it appear that you aren’t a stalker, or to be polite by showing interest, but it is a completely different dynamic than the world baby boomers and even Generation X grew up in.
Social networks make it easier to stay in touch with someone new before you are at the stage of “let’s grab a drink.” It’s easier than face-to-face as you avoid awkward silences, deciding who is going to pay for the check, and it’s potentially less embarrassing (poppy seed between teeth anyone?).
Already gaining popularity on the dating side of things is leveraging the mobility of having alerts set up and sent to your phone so that you are connected to people that are currently in your area. Going one step further, some tools recommend locations based on your mood.
Instead of listing the top ten restaurants in the SoHo area of New York, for example, it would list the top 10 romantic restaurants, or the top 20 hip-laid back restaurants in the area. Hence, if it was your first date, you wouldn’t find yourself in the awkward position of being at a place with white-glove service and dining by candlelight.
The benefits of this type of relationship-building hold true from business to consumer as well. Businesses capture a lot more information via social media about their consumers than they’ve ever had before. Good businesses realize though, that the relationship still needs to be cultivated (see grabbing the girl from the bar analogy).
Good businesses realize that it’s not all about the instant win of getting someone into a database. Rather it is cultivated that relationship via social media, and if done correctly you will have a relationship that lasts a lifetime.
PLEASE DO VISIT the site and link above to pay respect to that service!
Two great articles were written recently about How Social networking may be replacing email. Here is the link to the first one, and a brief discription from it. I will go ahead an update the second one in a few minutes, they are both excellent: http://searchenginewatch.com/3632099
The “killer app” of the first part of the Internet boom was e-mail. Then came e-commerce, e-care, search, music, video, and now social media. E-mail has held on through the years as arguably the king of the Internet, used by the old and the young alike. However, the new inbox is shifting toward social media.
“I have a 16-year cousin and she listed off her favorite Web sites and applications and failed to mention e-mail so I asked her about it,” said Mike Peters, 37, of Detroit, Michigan. “I was shocked by the incredulous look on her face and even more shocked at her response that she didn’t use e-mail that much since it was too formal, she would rather use instant messenger on her phone or post comments based on people’s activities in social networks.” It turns out that Generation Z finds e-mail antiquated and passé, so they simply ignore it.
While this is shocking to some generations, it fits within the scheme of Socialnomics. E-mail isn’t entirely going away, it just may not be the first means of digital communication in a Socialnomic world. Foremost, the messaging is much easier to manage within social media versus e-mail because it acts like a real conversation among friends.
“As a sales person I see social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook as an invaluable tool,” said Allison Bahm of ResponseMine Interactive Agency. “It doesn’t necessarily shorten the sales cycle, but what it does is keep the information flow more open and also allows for a much deeper relationship than e-mail. I’ve started relationships and signed contracts exclusively within social networks. It is revolutionary for sales, it’s much easier than telephone calls and e-mails.”
Whereas e-mail functions in a non-fluid manner, open conversations within social media have an easier flow to them and replicate a normal conversation. Also, the conversational content is broken down into bit-sized chunks and are associated into more easily recognized compartments rather than just a long and daunting slew of 45 e-mails that you need to wade through systematically.
“Kids today prefer one to many communication; e-mail to them is antiquated,” said Bill Tancer, Hitwise general manager, global research.
But, let’s digress back to our dating scenario on social media. Social networks are fantastic for meeting new people and dating. If a girl meets a guy out on the town and they exchange names and connect within a social media network – it’s a gold mine of data.