Twitter is a wildly popular microblogging service. It involves writing Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell your followers what you are up to. Although your Tweets are technically supposed to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter has moved far beyond that. Tweets are used to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. Twitter has also become an incredibly important tool for social media marketing professionals. Here are 12 ways in which Twitter can be used in your social media marketing campaign.
1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest
As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven’t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media.
2. Building Your Network
Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow.
3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network
People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts instantly rather than using instant messaging for that purpose. Furthermore, many people use Twitter to connect with their network during events like conferences.
4. Re-Distributing Content from Your Blog or Website
Twitter can be used to redistribute content from your blog or website. However, you should take care to do this thoughtfully since many of your Twitter followers may already read your blog. For that reason, you may want to avoid using a blog plug-in that automatically Tweets your posts. Your best bet is to Tweet your content manually and customize each Tweet so it doesn’t get old.
5. Get Involved in Live Tweeting Events
Twitter launched at SXSW last year, catapulting microblogging conferences to fame. Live Tweeting events are great because they are a form of citizen journalism that allow you to connect with several new people in your niche while making active and valuable contributions to current discussions in your community.
6. Pitching Stories to Journalists on Twitter
You can send a direct message to a journalist who is following you on Twitter to pitch a story idea.
7. Communicating with Your Team
You can use Twitter as a company intranet that connects all of your employees. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard if you have a virtual business with employees in different geographical locations. You can set your updates to private for security reasons. Anytime you are working on group projects, you can stay in touch with your team members using Twitter.
8. Brand Monitoring
Stay up to date with any mentions of your business on Twitter. If there is anything negative, you will be able to counter it quickly. You can also use Twitter as a way to receive feedback from your customers and improve your business. Just ask your followers to give their opinion on something. For example, if you designed a new website, ask your followers what they think about it and get their constructive criticisms so you can make your site design even better.
9. Acquire More Votes on Social Media Websites
If you have submitted a story to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or any other social voting website, tweet a link to that submission to try to score more votes from your followers. If your followers like what they see, they are sure to vote for your content.
10. Hiring People
Looking for a programmer, designer, or writer? Whatever type of professional you seek, try finding them on Twitter. Simply send your followers a tweet telling them you are looking for someone for a job. They can either recommend someone to you or offer themselves for the job. Using Twitter in this way is ideal for finding qualified freelancers. It is much more convenient than putting out a classified ad.
11. Build Your Personal Brand
When you use Twitter to talk about things as mundane as what you ate for breakfast or how you are going to sleep early tonight, you make your followers feel like you are casual and approachable. Even those with running a company that has a cold, corporate brand image could create more appeal and build a unique personal brand using Twitter.
12. Streamline Electronic Communications
When you use Twitter, you’re likely to find yourself using IM, email, and other electronic communication methods less. Twitter not only provides public chatting through Tweets, it also allows you to send direct messages. Twitter will help you streamline your electronic communications, allowing you to scale back online.
Ron Knight is a US based Internet Solutions consultant with many years of experience helping people and businesses out in establishing a stronger presence on the web. Many companies have benefited immensely from his advice.
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12 Ways to do Social Media Marketing with Twitter.
Can Directory Listing hurt your Site Ranking?
Theres a lot of this question flying everywhere, asking if directory listing can hurt ranking or can actually be a help to your site.. Well in my own experience, directory submission is my first choice when im doing Offpage SEO. Because theres a lot of resources already out there, ready and available for you to submit.
Now, directory submission is not just submitting your websites there is also a lot of things you need to consider. Its not about how many huge list of directories you have submitted but its about the quality and proper submission.
This are the methods that i do when im submitting websites to directories.
1. Always check the PageRank of the directories where you want to submit your site, it would not be lower than your Website. If your site is PR 5 then you have to submit it in PR5 and above.
2. It should not be 2 clicks away from the index page where you link will be place.
3. I check the page where my link will be place and make it sure that it was already cached.
4. Make it sure that this directories you have submitted is not a Link Farm.
5. Static page is a plus when submitting your links.
6. NO rel="nofollow" links in the code or meta tags
I will be posting more guides, so please do check more often and also if you want to add something just let me know so that i can credit you on this post.
4 Solutions to SEO problems of using Flash.
We all know that Flash Based sites are hard to rank (Except for those you are popular sites and authoritative sites) because of its nature that Google spiders cannot read the Flash Content. Google is now Developing Adobe’s Search Engine SDK to index flash/flex based websites, well, good news for the SEO peoples who care to rank there websites. But aside of that, i found a good article and a solution to most SEO problem on getting ranking for Flash based site. check the original post -> 4 Solutions to SEO problems of using Flash.
Free Forum Advertising.
Its been a while i havent updated this blog due to work loads! well to start back on blogging, Heres a list of Free Advertising Forums where you can market your sites/ blogs for free. As of now this is my current collections, visit this blog more often for updates.. Enjoy!
http://www.postyouradforfree.com/
http://www.thefreeadforum.com/
http://www.freeadvertisingzone.com/
http://freetoadvertise.biz/
http://www.workathomebusinessopportunity.com/
http://www.zobox.net/
http://www.freeadvertisingforum4u.com/
http://www.youradvertisingforum.com/
http://www.freeforumadvertising.com/
http://www.freeadsboard.com/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
http://freeadvertisingforums.org/
http://www.freeadvertising.com/
http://freeadsforyou.top-site-list.com/
http://www.freeadsplanet.com/
http://ads.forumarena.com/
http://www.freeclassifiedsforum.com/
http://www.freeadzforum.com/
http://www.freeclassifiedadsforum.com/
http://chuckysplace.top-site-list.com/
How to Use Forums to Drive Targeted Traffíc to Your Site.
There is no doubt about the fact that Forum posting works when it comes to driving traffic to a site. On many occasions, I have successfully used posting to forums to gain exposure to my affiliate landing page, squeeze page, sales page, etc.
I tell you, if you're really smart, the goal of every forum post you make is to get as many people to subscribe to your líst! Posting to forums is a very fast and powerful way to build your base of subscribers in as little as 30 minutes. Below is a step-by-step guide:
Step 1 - Find Forums About Your Niche Very Easily
Just Google the following:
+"your niche" +forum
or
+"your niche" +"discussion board"
For instance, if I am looking for Forums in the Internet Marketing field, I type +"Internet Marketing" +forum. The results show the top Internet marketing Forums such as:
www.im4newbies.com/forum
www.warriorforum.com
www.forums.digitalpoint.com
Step 2 - Join the Forums and Set Up Your Signature
Remember to include your website address in your signature. Signature is another name for your resource box. Your resource box is just like an 'about the author info'. This appears at the end of every post you make and drives traffic to your website.
Step 3 - Read the Rules and Regulations of the Forum Before Posting
This ensures that your posts are not deleted by the Administrators of the Forum. Now, don't go about spamming all members of the Forum with your website advert. In fact, I will advise you not to post an obvious ad. It's a pure waste of time because it will be deleted.
So, what's next?
Step 4 - Ask for Input
Approach from a weak man's position. Assuming you've written an article on your site entitled "13 Ways to Drive Traffic to a New Site." You could make a post asking folks to check out the article and see if you missed anything. Or you can ask for additional points to add to your article. Of course you'll have your opt ín box at the end of the article with a compelling offering.
Let's say you've written an article on meeting the right partner. You could post a message like this: "If you had a chance to learn how to meet your right partner now, what would you do?"
It's a great way to get the attention of forum members to your article. You also get them engaged in the article by asking for their input. And who knows, you may also get other publishers who would use your content in their ezines, thereby getting more exposure for your site.
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Step 5 - Ask for a Critical Assessment
If you are the type that is not easily hurt by honest feedback even when it hurts, you can go to a forum and ask for a honest critique. You may think this will not make people sign up for your líst, but I tell you, many people will end up subscribing to it. It's a more indirect and acceptable way to ask people to check out your site without blatant advertising.
Plus, the feedback they give you may help to make your squeeze page even more compelling. Ask them if it would persuade them to give it a try, assuming they were in your target market (of course, you already know they are by the forum you selected). And, if they say no, ask them why. You can get valuable information on what they want (and don't want) this way.
There are two types of forums where you should ask for critiques: the niche forum itself and a marketing forum. You'll likely get more sign-ups from the niche forum and good advice to test out from the marketing forum (although you'll get some opt-ins there as well).
Step 6 - Ask Your Target Market What They Want
Unknown to most people, this is one of the best ways to develop products and services. And most times, Forum members are ready to tell you what they'll buy and give you ideas for articles, auto-responder content, your blog posts, whatever you need. People guess the products their target market will want and create them only to discover no one is interested in the product, but with this approach, you have real people telling you what product they want, how they want it and how much they are prepared to pay for it.
The way you would use this technique to get them to subscribe is to post something like, "what's your biggest question about loosing weight?" Or "what's the single most important thing you'd like to know about building a business?"
Don't forget to ask if they're willing to pay for solutions to their problems and have them give you an indication of how much they would be willing to pay. Powerful stuff!
Let them know you've already answered 10 questions (your 10 step mini-course loaded in your auto-responder), for example. Then they'll be more likely to sign-up. Make sure you point out that you'll add to your mini-course with the answers to the questions they've provided, and that they'll get answers to the existing questions in your mini-course PLUS the new ones when they subscribe. Everybody wins!
Step 7 - Provide a Step-By-Step Guide or Video Tutorial
If someone asks how to create an ebook, give them a progression of steps they can take. Or, make a Camtasia tutorial video showing them how. Now that you've got them to your site, you'll want to "make them a proposal they can't refuse."
Provide a Líst of Resources and Websites
In addition to checklists, resource lists with website URLs make a great site for them to bookmark! Make sure you supply more than just links. Make it a huge info-page of information. A collection of resources, links to everything you have - articles, video, audio, your blog, other useful sites, tools, you name it.
Solve a Problem for People
If someone asks for help or asks a question, provide your experience and try to help them. But to maximize your odds of getting both the asker of the question and everyone else who reads the post to subscribe to your líst, try to phrase your answer in one of the following two ways:
1. Give them tips, techniques, shortcuts, secrets, or anything that offers both the promise of exclusive information and fast results. A shortcut to success.
2. Whenever possible, supply them with specific results. Think about it. When you want to learn how to make income online, you go to someone who is making revenue online to guide you. This quickly establishes you as an authority in that area.
And by helping them, maybe - just maybe - they'll click on the link in your signature to check out your website. If you direct them to a blog post or article you wrote to answer their question, they'll be even more likely to investigate.
That's all there is to it but at the end of the day, it's a failure-proof way to drive serious traffic to your website using Forum Posts. Apply it and see your traffic soar through the roof. Don't say I didn't warn you!
About The Author
Iyabo Oyawale is an established Internet Entrepreneur. Discover The Top 10 Ways to Make 100 Dollars Daily from the Internet from her FREE ebook! Visit http://askiyabooyawale.com for instant download!
