While reading an internet business report this week, I ran across two articles that give excellent advice about using Twitter.
Here are a few great take-a-ways:
“Guerilla Tweetfare” by Dan Nickers
Once you’ve set up your Twitter account, use Twitter’s search tool (http://search.twitter.com) and search for people who are discussing your particular niche or product.
Then, join the discussion and provide useful information and value. Dan suggests being funny, not spammy. He says, ”When you reply with value, the person will most likely follow you, reply to you and thank you.”
When someone replies to you on Twitter, all of their followers become aware of the conversation and may see you as a good person to follow as well.
Dan sums up his article with this, “The obvious goal here is to create buzz. The more value, humor and legitimate feedback you provide, the more followers and attention you will receive.”
“Sweeten Up Your Social Networking” by Carrie Wilkerson
She shares Dan’s perspective and suggests…
Guard your character. Twitter is a very large fishbowl. People are listening and watching at all times.
Be conversational. Interact with people, show interest in them and see how you can be of value in their space.
Be consistent and engaged. If you only go on Twitter when you’re bored, have a promotion, have a blog post or are seeking input, everyone will see right through you.
Carrie ends with…”When your audience knows you, likes you, and trusts you, they will want to know more about who you are, who you know, and what you have to offer.”
I believe Dan and Carrie did an excellent job of really drilling down to the core of how to best use Twitter as a marketing tool.
I admit I haven’t kept up with Twitter much in a few months. Effectively using social networking requires a commitment to spending some time on a regular basis socializing with the members. Remember, it’s all about the people and the community.
As I’ve shared before, getting quality inbound links to your site is pretty important. A book that I am reading talks about this and other great SEO strategies, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.
Directories are one source of these links, but there are a few tips to keep in mind as you search for directories.
2) Search for Niche directories. These are directories geared toward your industry. Here are a few ways to find them:
Check the incoming links for your competitors and see if any of the urls are directories that you may want to be listed in as well.
Reminder… type: link:www.url.com in Yahoo! (this should
be your competitor’s website address)
Note: You probably shouldn’t pay to be listed anywhere
Think about offline publications in your industry. Is there an online equivalent? See if they have a directory or if your company is listed on their companion website.
Search for your target keywords. Are there any directory pages among the top search results. If so, you can benefit from their rank by getting listed in their directory.
Search the search engines for relevant niche directories by entering “pet store directory” and “Richmond Directory.”
You may also find a directory for a certain part of the city, such as “Shockoe Bottom” a popular area in Richmond, VA.
3) When you submit your website, make sure you can select a category that suits your business.
4) Give submitting your home page a second thought. It may be possible that a different landing page may work better.
These tips, provided by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin, authors of Search Engine Optimization: An Hour A Day should be very helpful as you build quality incoming links to your website.
This week I want to share a tip that I learned in a workshop a few weeks ago:
As you develop your marketing plan, develop informal focus groups. Many people often view focus groups as an organized, select group of people that you gather and ask a specific set of questions.
Well, as long as a focus group achieves the goals you set and answers the questions you have, it can take many forms. It doesn’t have to be a group of people in a room.
It can be a group of people on a conference call. You can conduct individual phone interviews. You can also use Survey Monkey, Zoomerang or many of the other free online survey tools. Social media sites can also be vehicles by which you can gather the thoughts and ideas of your target market or any group of people. Twitter, a Facebook Group or even a LinkedIn group can serve this purpose.
As you brainstorm and develop ideas, run them past a group of people to get real, live feedback.
These examples are easy, free ways to develop informal focus groups that can be as effective as formal focus groups.
Google Alerts and Twitter are extremely useful tools to listen to what people are saying about your business, your brand, your products and your industry online.
Google Alerts allows you to set up a sesarch to receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
You can choose to receive an email or have the articles delivered to your RSS feed (like Google Reader) once a day, as it happens or once a week.
Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts – ‘News’, ‘Web’, ‘Blogs’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Video’ and ‘Groups’.
A ‘News’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
A ‘Web’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
A ‘Blogs’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
A ‘Comprehensive’ alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.
A ‘Video’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
A ‘Groups’ alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.
Many companies use Google Alerts for brand management/perception management. Try it out to stay in the loop about what is being said in your industry.
Twitter Search is a little simpler. Just enter your search terms, click Search and you’ll see what people are talking about right now about that topic. What’s really cool is that the search results are updated by the minute!
Okay…so, now you hear what people are saying, how do you determine what to focus on…
Here are a few tips from the workshop I’ve been telling you about:
Listen to identify…
Points of need – If you listen long enough, you’ll inevitably hear information that will give you insight into possible gaps in service or a new product that will meet your clients needs.
Influencers - Who out there has the ears of many in your industry? Provide useful comments on their blogs and build a relationship with them.
Crises - Maybe you can catch something before it “blows up” and out of proportion. Especially on Twitter, send the person a “tweet” and offer to help them
Complaints and problems – My advice is to offer help and own up to whatever problem they are having. To not do so will make you appear arrogant and turn more people against you. Lots of companies are doing this really well on Twitter.
Questions - Answer them sooner rather than later
Compliments - Thank those who compliment you.
Above all, be genuine and transparent. That’s what Web 2.0 technology allows business owners to do. People have voices and for quite a while all businesses did was talk at them…illustrated wonderfully by this video (also shared at my workshop):
1. Twitter is about sharing value in a fairly narrow band. For me that band includes ideas about marketing, selling, and succeeding as an Independent Professional. So when I tweet, that’s mostly what you’ll be hearing about.
2. My focus will be on sharing value with you, not talking about me. This will include links to blogs and other web content, ideas, tips, strategies, information and inspiration. If I share anything about me, it will be about insights that I think you’ll find useful.
7. I’ll ask questions and use my followers as a resource, if that’s OK with you. There’s still a lot I need to learn and with Twitter I can tap into this amazing network.
Yes, Twitter is an amazing network and one reason that I like it so much is that it’s okay to “do business” on Twitter. Unlike other social networks, promoting your business (from my observation) is understood, accepted and even expected at times. Tomorrow I’ll give you a few key ways that you can specifically use Twitter, that I learned at a workshop last week.
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Google Alerts allows you to set up a sesarch to receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. 
