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How to Participate in a Tweetchat

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Web 2.0

You can get to know people on Twitter in your area of interest by participating in a tweetchat on a related subject.

What is a tweetchat?

It’s a stream of tweets on the same topic in real time. Imagine it as a gigantic instant messaging free-for-all on a stated topic.

First let’s talk about participating in one. Then we’ll talk about how starting one can help you market on Twitter.

Let’s take this scenario:

I announce that a tweetchat on #ficbkmkt (hashtag for fiction book marketing) will take place on a specific date and time. (I make sure to state what time zone in the U.S. this is.) I tweet about this ahead of time and get others to also tweet the topic, time and date.

At the specific date and time I use a third-party application to participate in a tweetchat in real time. This way I can follow the tweets of people I’m not following yet and people who are not following me yet can see my tweets on the subject.

While there are other third-party ways to participate in tweetchats, I like tweetchat.com the best. Just know that you can change the speed of how fast you get the new tweets. I’m a fast typist so I choose to get new updates every five seconds (the fastest). For others that may be too hard to follow and you’ll want to leave it at the 10 seconds default or even increase to a longer interval between tweets.

At the date and time I go to tweetchat.com and enter my Twitter username and password. Then in the room prompt I enter #ficbkmkt and I’m part of the conversation.

When I tweet from inside this “room” the hashtag #ficbkmkt will be automatically added to my tweet (which is why I don’t have the full 140 characters in a tweet).

If people not participating in the chat are following any of the people in the chat, these outside people can see in their regular Twitter stream the tweets with the hashtag of the people they’re following. And the outside people can respond from their regular Twitter stream but must manually add #fictbkmkt to their tweets so these tweets will show up in the tweetchat room.

Tweetchats are usually for an hour or more. Some are the same time every week and others are for a special event.

The regularly scheduled tweetchats may have a specified topic for each chat or they may be an open exchange of information. The tweetchat organizer decides the format.

I will admit that the tweets can fly fast and furious. Leaders of well-organized tweetchats often have a series of questions and ask people to put the question number before the reply to make it easier for people to follow the conversation. Thus a tweet reply inside the tweetchat that answers “How do you search on Twitter?” (which has been designated as question 4) may look like this:

Q4: There are numerous applications that allow you to search Twitter by different criteria. [hashtag of tweetchat automatically attached]

Now let’s say you want to host a special event tweetchat or start a regularly scheduled tweetchat:

Why would you do this? To establish yourself as a leader in a specific niche. To be known as someone who truly contributes to the conversation in this area. To help out someone.

For example, when getglue.com was new, I offered to host a special tweetchat with a representative from getglue so that he could explain to book authors how getglue could be used for book marketing. The tweetchat afforded book authors the opportunity to learn from the getglue representative and also share tips with each other.

Now I admit I offered to do a tweetchat for getglue for a self-interested reason: I wanted myself to understand how getglue could be used for book marketing. But I did put effort into promoting the tweetchat ahead of time plus I edited the transcript from the tweetchat and put it on my FictionMarketing.com blog so that others who didn’t participate in the live tweetchat could benefit from the advice.

This I utilized the Twitter marketing strategy of providing valuable information for others while learning information for myself.

One other hosting tip: Because many people on Twitter don’t know what a tweetchat is, when I sponsor a special event tweetchat I create an announcement through twitwall.com. This way I can have a headline about the tweetchat (which becomes the tweet) and then a link to the twitwall announcement with instructions about how to join the tweetchat.

P.S. And if you’ve added good information as a participant or host of a tweetchat, you’ll discover that a lot of people from the tweetchat who weren’t following you before will now be following you.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her FREE report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – download the report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

How to Tweet: A Few Tips on Using Twitter for Your Business

By Anton Pearce in Web 2.0

The newest player on the social networking scene is Twitter. Marketing in this venue still relatively new, and for the owners of small businesses especially, this type of advertising is not only cost effective but just plain effective. The great thing about marketing on any social networking site is that you do not have to know much about computers or marketing, and you can still run a really good marketing campaign.

Twitter is a microblogging site. You can send tiny messages of 140 characters or less to whomever you wish. The newest flavor in social networking sites, Twitter can be used to build personal networks or business networks.

Different Ways to Use Twitter Marketing

While there are many different ways to incorporate Twitter into your marketing campaign, some of the more common uses are strictly to share information. Since you can share tiny blurbs of information with a huge number of people at the click of a button, Twitter is great for keeping your Twitter followers updated. It can be used to share public service announcements, news updates, business news and friend and family updates. It is built for disseminating information almost constantly.

Because Twitter is designed to constantly feed current updates to your followers, it is a natural for marketing a business. The proper way to share business information over Twitter is to tweet a link for a website containing the complete information. For business owners sharing their information over Twitter lets your prospects and customers discover you. Twitter does have very strict etiquette when it comes to advertising, and by offending the protocol, you can quickly alienate followers and potentially damage your brand.

Twitter is a great tool for promoting your company’s events. Twitter is designed to share timely news, so promoting today’s lunch special would be appropriate, but tweeting about month old news is not appropriate. Keep your tweets conversational and very personal in tone. Any advertising should be in a ‘by the way’ fashion, not ‘in your face’ advertising.

Twitter Marketing can have Lots of Personality

The more personality that your brand has, the easier it will be to tweet about. A unique voice will make your tweets entertaining. You can always wrap your tweets around a kernel of important information, and then deliver them in an entertaining and conversational manner. Your followers will look forward to hearing from you, and you will be able to get your message out constantly which is a great way to market your small business.

Another place where Twitter is incredibly valuable is with your customer contact. Twitter is designed to be conversational, and it is a great way to keep a dialogue going with your customers and prospects. It’s also useful for catching service problems and getting feed back from ustomers. This is particularly helpful to make sure that you are building a good reputation for your company. Twitter allows you to correct problems and retain customers.

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For a free report that shows you how to use online marketing to grow your practice, get all the clients you need and remove the stress of not knowing whether you will have enough clients or patients next month, grab a copy of Anton Pearce’s ‘Clients on Tap’ report. It’s your’s free and will set you on the right path for building your health or wellness practice online.

An Unconvential Definition of Engagement and Why It’s Important to You

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Web 2.0

What is Engagement?

In the marketing and traffic generation world, it refers to how deeply a person is involved in something, most often your site or your product. Some would go beyond involved to say bonded or connected, even. I say involved, because depending on the product and the person, not every product warrants the deep level of commitment that words like bonded are implying.

For example, to me, a carton of eggs is a carton of eggs. I’m not paying double for the brand name unless the eggs are made out of gold. So sometimes, if two products are of equal value to a consumer, it all comes down to the price, and they barely engage.

BUT.

Engagement can give you the edge if your audience cares about a certain difference between your product and the next one. My brother buys some kind of brand name egg whites. He’s the most physically fit person I know right now and it’s part of his regimen. He’s happy to pay more. For eggs!

And yet, some folks are going to tell you not to pay attention to engagement because its impact isn’t as measurable as say, the conversion rate of visitors to subscribers.

To which I say, there’s no measurement of how important taking a shower and brushing my teeth is to how well my face to face meetings go, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. If you think things that can’t be measured don’t impact the bottom line, don’t shower for the next 7 days, and see if one of your family members doesn’t impact YOUR bottom line with their foot as motivation to get cleaned up.

But I like the whole Devil’s Advocate game. Let’s ask again – if we can’t even agree on how engagement is to be measured, why is engagement important?

Because people who are not engaged don’t buy.

I may not have been thrilled about the eggs, but I bought them. Yes, I bought the cheap ones, but I bought them instead of, say, pre-cooked frozen bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches.

Yes, some people shop because they’re bored, because they’re addicted, or because they are pretending not to be hungry. But let’s not get the reasons people shop in general confused with the reasons people buy specific items.

Who cares why they’re in the store, or why they’re web surfing with a Visa debit card handy – we don’t have that much control over it. What makes them punch those numbers in on our order form, or swipe at the cashier?

That we can affect.

Now if you intuitively get that, you might not need to keep reading.

But if the profits in your business could stand to go up another notch, the worst thing that could happen is that you lose a few minutes of your life being reminded of something you already know.

I implied earlier that you have likely read something about our topic recently. And how could you not?

One of the most important new web traffic buzzwords is engagement. It’s the latest hip metric and it’s over-taking the discussion about page views – the measure of success is shifting to how long visitors spent on your site, not how many pages they flipped through.

And it makes sense.

Page views can be manipulated and inflated in many ways that engagement can’t.

Since engagement, is all about how attached, involved, connected or bonded your customers and clients are in relation your product, brand, website or other representations of your business, length of time spent makes sense as one effective measure. We humans tend to spend a lot less time on things that we are bored with or disinterested in. True, there’s some contention about how to measure it and if it can be measured.

But just because there’s not one exact science to measure it, doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

In fact, it may the most important factor to promoting your business. Because it’s the reason why you could do the exact steps of a traffic program as the person next to you, or as your competitor, and either get startling, mind-blowing over-the-top results, or fail abysmally.

So why do you need to pay more attention to engagement?

Because traffic is not enough. You *must* create fans to thrive in any economy. Your company, your products Must have personality, identity, to be noticed. The one thing that will save you when the waters get choppy is that you put some of that magic you into your communications about your business, from your sales letters, to your podcasts and videos.

I make mistakes all the time and I’m sure you’ve seen them. What saves me is that I am wiling to reveal myself, be open and transparent, let people correct me in public (okay, not the rude ones) and address those errors to the best of my ability. I also have some pretty great successes to back me up.

Many people will say things like engagement and branding doesn’t matter — and if you have an unlimited budget for ad spending, or want a series of one-time customers rather than a business with repeat buyers, well, maybe you’re right. However, when I want to know if something like engagement is worth committing to, I think about whether a hugely successful company would think so.

Let’s see. Can you name a big company that has a blog, a Facebook page or Twitter account, or is otherwise using social media to attempt to connect to its fan base?

I’ll do you one better. Skittles.com isn’t even a whole site. You log in on the first page with your DOB and you’re on their Facebook page, with a little navigation guy in the corner. Only 3 million people have signed up.

Even if it’s 3 million teen agers, it’s 3 million people old enough to go to the store and get their product. 3 million people who thought their candy preference was important enough for them to become a fan. Of a candy.

I pay extra close attention to what the sellers of items people don’t even need are doing in their marketing, because when they’re successful, it’s often as something that those of us who own tire stores or dental practices can emulate with positive results. Because we’re selling things that are higher up on the scale of desire or necessity.

But hey, if you’re the only staple-maker in town, who cares if you brand, especially if you’ll be the only one forever, and you know staples will be necessary forever. Do your Dundler-Mifflin thing.

However, when you are in a market with competition, when you can’t compete on price without sacrificing quality, when you’re the small business up against the big business, then you must give serious though to things like engagement or branding.

Why?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

No one gives two craps about some company selling some stuff.

Fans have died, literally died for the love of their favorite things, especially projects and hobbies. This year, think about how you can cultivate a following, a fan base – single out your devoted customers and study them.

And if you’ve got no fan base? Get one.

Even if you have a boring product, in a boring industry, the way you present yourself doesn’t have to be boring. Your customer service could be legendary, like Zappos.

Your product demonstration could be the talk of YouTube, like Blendtec.

Take some time to figure out how to increase your level of engagement, or the company that will take your place undoubtedly will.

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Tinu is a website promotion specialist who teaches traffic generation to entrepreneurs and builds custom traffic systems for larger companies. You can contact her through her flagship website Free Traffic Tips for a free consultation..

The Simple Secret to Getting Traffic from Sites LIke StumbleUpon

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Web 2.0

Some people get social media right away, but can’t really articulate why. Other people will never get it no matter how clearly it’s spelled out to them. In discovering why this is, I realized an important point.

There is one major, simple secret to driving traffic via social media, from which all the other strategies, tactics and secrets originate.

Everyone knows this reason on the surface, but few truly and deeply comprehend it. And yet having a real understanding of this is the key to more partnerships, visitors and engagement.

The secret to benefiting from social media is simple. Social media is about relationships.

Not necessarily friendships.

Not always community.

Relationships.

From how the content relates to the person reading it, to how the information gets spread from person to person, why people vote for some stories and not others. Relationships to people, relationships between you and the content you read. Not just the fact that those relationships build community but how.

Every problem with social media has a solution that is based in fixing or forming a relationship.

Take a site like StumbleUpon. Why are some people hostile to one submission, but thrilled by another, on the same topic, sometimes even about the same issue? You’ll probably find the answer in

• Whether or not the submitter has found a niche community within the site and is respected/liked within it
• The connection or lack of, that the story has to the group that’s reading it
• The relationship of the submitter to the site being submitted (sometimes it’s considered okay to submit your own stories, sometimes not), or
• The relationship of that site to the story or the StumbleUpon community at large

You could go on forever, but if you go deep enough, you’ll find a relationship that needs to be fixed, formed, featured, or forgotten.

That’s not to say that if you don’t build a relationship, you won’t get traffic from the popular high traffic sections on a social news site. On the contrary, your first submission may get voted right into the popular section and stay there, for all I know. But on some level it will get there or stay there based not necessarily on just your content, or your network, though these are major factors.

So much of it will depend on relationships we mentioned – not just between people, but between content, even between people and the content they read. By that I mean that attempting to force technology information on people who are interested primarily in classical literature is never effective.

It seems like this goes without saying, but how often do you come across people who try to market their business to everyone on Facebook?

I like to think of social media web sites as a club where I’m not on the VIP list. Depending on that club, I might have to stand on a line and wait to see if I’ll have the privilege of joining, or if I seem cool enough, I might be let in.

It’s partially on that basis that I chose the clubs I go to, when I dress the part of a jazz vocalist, no matter how much I like metal, I won’t seem like I will relate to the crowd inside.

Yeah, it’s about relationships. Not just friendships – your friends may not be enough to keep you popular in StumbleUpon if your content sucks. If you can understand how relationships work, between people, between people and what they do, and why they relate to some stories and not others, you’ll likely do well, better than anyone who tries to figure out how to game the system.

Kind of like in business.

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Tinu is a website promotion specialist who teaches traffic generation to entrepreneurs and builds custom traffic systems for larger companies. You can currently get a free chapter of Social Media Success Strategies without entering your email address.

ABC’s of RSS

By Sharon Housley in Web 2.0

Implementing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) can be aided by an understanding of the terms relating to RSS. Learn the ABCs of RSS….

A – AutoDiscovery

Auto Discovery is code that is inserted into the header of an HTML web page, which then indicates to readers that an RSS feed is available for the content.

B – Blogs

Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. Blogs generally contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases, blogs are used as daily diaries about people’s personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever the author wants them to be. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.

C – Cache

Cache is a temporary storage area for frequently-accessed or recently-accessed data. Having certain data stored in a cache area speeds up the operation of the computer. Using a cache with RSS feeds will help minimize bandwidth and display an RSS feed’s content quicker.

D – Display

RSS Many webmasters post the content of an RSS feed on their website. They use either PHP, ASP, or javascript for such purposes. If done properly, the feed’s content will dynamically update as the content of the feed changes.

E – Elements

Within an RSS feed, there are various feed elements. The elements of an RSS feed are defined by tags.

F – Filter

Many RSS feeds contain duplicate or similar content. Publishers can filter RSS feeds so that they only see content that they wish to see, by filtering out duplicate postings.

G – GUID

GUID stands for Globally Unique IDentifier. The RSS specification strongly suggests that each RSS feed item have a unique GUID. If you are creating feeds, a GUID is important because GUIDs are often used by feed readers and aggregators to determine if a feed item is new or simply an existing item that has been updated. Each item in the RSS feed should have a unique GUID.

H – HTML

HTML, which is the acronym for HyperText Markup Language, is frequently used to design websites.

I – iTunes Namespace

The iTunes Namespace allows the user to add the information necessary to have a podcast listed on the Apple iTunes Music Store (ITMS). J – JavaScript Javascript can be used to display the content of an RSS feed.

K – Keywords

Keywords should be integrated into the RSS feed to help search engines determine what the RSS feed is about.

L – Links

Links are used to direct RSS readers to the original webpage containing information that directly relates to the feed.

M – Mashup

A mashup is a combination of multiple RSS feeds that have been merged together to create a new, single feed.

N – Namespace Extensions

The RSS specification allows you to create and use your own custom elements (tags) in any RSS feed by declaring your own namespace. Doing this is 100% in line with the RSS specification and the feed will validate. However, you should have a specific and well-planned reason to do so. No RSS readers, or other RSS processing applications, will be able to use your custom info for any purpose. Adding elements (tags) would typically be used only in an in-house situation where both the writing application and the reading application have prior knowledge of the new tags.

O – OPML

OPML, or Outline Processor Markup Language, is a file format standard that can be used to exchange subscription lists between programs. OPML is used as a standard to import or export groups of RSS feed subscriptions. OPML was initially designed by Radio UserLand as a file format for outlines. The purpose of this format is to provide a way to exchange information between outliners and Internet services. OPML has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators. OPML is an open format, allowing other services to extend the format. While OPML was not initially designed as a vehicle to share RSS feeds, it has become the de facto standard. OPML, like RSS, is based on RSS, and because of the similarities, those familiar with RSS have embraced OPML as a way to share RSS feed collections

P – Podcasting

Podcasting is online audio content that is delivered via an RSS feed. Many people equate podcasting to “radio on demand”. However, in reality, podcasting gives the listener far more options than radio does, in terms of content and programming. In addition, podcast listeners can determine their own time and the place for listening, meaning they decide what programming they want to receive, and when they want to listen to it. Listeners can retain audio archives to listen to later, at their leisure. While blogs have turned many bloggers into journalists, podcasting has the potential to turn podcasters into radio personalities.

Q – Query

Webmasters can create RSS feeds based on search queries for their websites.

R – RSS

RSS is a standard format for syndicating content on the Internet. The content can be anything! Information contained in an RSS feed is often syndicated on other sites, which expands its reach. Website visitors love RSS because they choose which feeds they wish to subscribe to. If at any point they are unhappy with the content contained in the RSS feed, they simply unsubscribe and no longer receive notification of feed updates. RSS is really a win-win for both subscribers and publishers. In order to get a better understanding of how RSS works, download an RSS reader or use a web aggregator and subscribe to an RSS feed (they are usually indicated by a small orange icon).

S – Syndication

Syndication is the supply of material for reuse and integration with other material.

T – Template

Many webmasters use templates to layout the contents of their RSS feed and make it match there website.

U – URL

URLs can be embedded into the description of the RSS feed items, so that when the feed is syndicated, the content originator gains backlinks.

V- Validate

Feed validation is important. If a feed is not properly formed, it will not always be valid for reading.

W – Website

Updates RSS feeds can be set up to notify visitors when a website changes.

X – XML

RSS is a subset of XML, or eXtensible Markup Language.

Y – Yahoo Answers

Yahoo’s interactive system of questions and answers can be tracked using RSS feeds. You can create keyword or category feeds for anything in Yahoo Answers.

Z – Zero Feeds

Not having RSS feeds for your website puts you at a competitive disadvantage. RSS feeds bring traffic and help the stickiness of your website.

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Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedfora ll.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

Run a Marketing Campaign on Twitter

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Web 2.0

Planning on how to run a Twitter marketing campaign requires, first, the assumption that you want to run a successful Twitter marketing campaign.

Thus you must plan a marketing campaign that actually does little selling and more connecting. Why? Because this “laid-back” strategy on Twitter is more likely to get you loyal followers interested in what you have to offer.

Let’s look at an imaginary Twitter marketing campaign scenario:

You join Twitter and immediately start tweeting only about your products and services. Every time someone follows you, you send that person a DM (direct message) with a link to one of your sales pages. You use an application to automatically bring your blog feed into your Twitter account, and every one of your blog posts focuses solely on pushing your products and services.

How many people do you think will be interested in continuing to follow you and clicking on your links?

Twitter is effective for marketing purposes only when you realize it is NOT about sales but that it is about relationships.

A different imaginary Twitter marketing campaign scenario:

This time you join Twitter with a marketing strategy in place. You find and follow people who might be interested in what you have to offer but at this point you do NOT tell them about your products and services.

If you still want to send a DM when someone first follows you, make it a personal appreciation for connecting without pushing any of your sales page links. If you really want to include a link, make it to a free report.

In your general tweets you share links to worthwhile articles that relate to your products and services. These articles do not have to be your own; in fact, sometimes they should be to other people’s material.

Then every so often you throw in a tweet about a product or service of yours and include a link. But even in this case what you say can make a difference:

Instead of tweeting:

Buy my super-duper widget right now and you’ll make tons of money in 30 days. You can tweet:

Check out my new widget training program – it can help you attract more visitors to your website.

See how the second tweet is much less selling and much more sharing?

Now if you’ve been sharing worthwhile information connected to this topic, people following you will be more inclined to click on the link because these people are already conditioned to trust you. You’ve established this trust by providing these people with valuable free information on the topic.

In conclusion, the best mindset for developing a Twitter marketing campaign is to take the perspective of your potential clientele/customers: Not constantly tweeting about how great your products and services are; instead consistently tweeting information that will help solve their problems.

And occasionally you can tweet that the products and services you’re selling are the solution to those problems.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her FREE report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – grab your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

Five Social Media Predictions for 2010

By Lani and Allen Voivod in Web 2.0

Do you think the evolution of social media defies prediction? The truth is, social media’s explosion in 2009 shares common traits with general business trends and the growth of the Internet itself.

For entrepreneurs, global brand teams, and key players in mission-driven organizations, heeding the signs of what’s ahead becomes the difference between survival and extinction. To help these professionals as they begin a brand-new year of opportunity, social marketing and success strategies firm Epiphanies, Inc. is sharing five trend-infused predictions for how social media will affect the business world in 2010.

1. “You” Goes Social

In 1997, business thought leader Tom Peters unleashed the concept of personal branding — “The Brand Called You” — to a new generation of daring doers. In 2009, Best Buy made headlines by requiring applicants for a senior marketing position to have a Twitter account with 250 Followers to qualify.

In the blogosphere, arguments ensued over that number. Still, the point is clear: The future of “The Brand Called You” is social. In fact, more than 80% of professional recruiters plan to use social media platforms to screen job applicants, and also source “passive” candidates – people who would consider a better offer from a different company.

Bottom line: Employees and entrepreneurs alike will discover, on a widespread level, their social media presence and social networks make or break their professional fates.

2. SSO Steals the Show

Back in the heady days of Web 1.0, a whole new industry cropped up around Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Gaming Google became a billion-dollar business, and they fought back with ever-changing algorithms. The only way to win over the long run was to consistently add information-rich, keyword-relevant content to your website

It works the same way inside social media platforms, too, with Social Search Optimization (SSO). As it becomes ever more important to be found inside Facebook and LinkedIn, and since Google and Bing are now aggressively indexing social media platforms, content continues its reign as king of the online realm.

Bottom line: Because social activity and relevant content inform search engine results, SSO trumps SEO with authority.

3. Professional Standards Proliferate

TraditiPagesonal marketing agencies have clued in to corporate interest in social media. Whether they add it as an in-house service or partner with a third party, these agencies know they have to offer social media services to stay competitive.

But how does anyone know who’s reputable, and who just hung out a shingle? To answer this as an industry, social media is going the way of other serious vocations. Certification programs are coming online, from Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University to the International Social Media Association’s (ISMA) various designations for professionals and virtual assistants. Other programs, like Social Media Magic University, provide niche training, and brick-and-mortar colleges now offer social media coursework.

Bottom line: Social media education and accreditation will be a significant factor in 2010 hiring and outsourcing decisions.

4. Business-to-business (B2B) Gets It

As a rule, businesses that sell to consumers (B2C) adopt new communication tools before the B2B world does. Until now, B2B has been resistant to social media, but in 2010, the B2B world will get over their reluctance and start embracing it.

There have been enough success stories to make it happen. Avaya sourcing a $250K sale through Twitter. Serena Software reporting cost savings with its “Facebook Friday” network building. Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” YouTube videos tied to a 700% sales jump. There’s no point in taking a “wait and see” approach anymore.

Bottom line: With 92% of B2B buyers using the Internet for their purchasing research, and social media ever more critical to being found online, B2B adoption will accelerate.

5. Networks Consolidate

Social media companies may not have found the right money-making business model yet, but the life cycle pattern looks very familiar: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. In 2010, social media will officially shift from Growth to Maturity.

Minor microblogging sites are disappearing. Facebook adoption continues to accelerate, squeezing out smaller sites. Only 1/5th of all custom Ning sites were active earlier in 2009. Maturity is coming, and it’ll reveal its full force very soon.

Bottom line: Wikipedia currently lists 173 “major active social networking websites” (excluding dating websites). Expect this number to drop significantly in 2010.

With 2010 upon us, any fears of the new world of social media, of the loss of control, and of criticism need to be set purposefully aside or addressed head-on. More than anything else, it’s essential to take action now in the social arena. There’s simply too much to lose, and countless opportunities to gain.

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As Certified Social Media Strategists and Certified Inbound Marketing Professionals, Lani and Allen Voivod of Epiphanies, Inc., train teams, craft strategies, and serve as long-term success partners for a handful of global brands, industries, and mission-driven organizations. Find out how they can help your business boost visibility, community, competitive edge, memberships, and profits at http://facebook.com/AhaYourself!

How to Use Twitter for Business Marketing

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Web 2.0

If you are active on Twitter and want to promote your business, it’s important to know how to use Twitter for business marketing to consumers. Twitter isn’t an open invitation to spew sales messages at consumers; rather it’s an opportunity to create relationships with consumers.

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.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her free report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – grab your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

Squidoo Lenses – How To Pick Your Name

By Riley West in Web 2.0

Squidoo was a term from the 20′ and 30’s I think, and it was a slang phrase for “Get out while the gettin’s good.” Nope… that’s 23 skidoo! My mistake.

So then I looked it up in Wikipedia and this is their words exactly… “Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 300 most viewed in the United States.[1] Squidoo grew 91% in 2008, and had 900,000 handbuilt lenses as of February 1st, 2009.

Wow! 900,000 websites! Just on Squidoo! It boggles the mind.

But here is how it can work for you. This coming from the perspective of an online marketer AND a traffic hog. The more the better…almost, but I’d rather have good quality traffic than just big traffic.

First, when you get to Squidoo, you get a domain name AND a website hosted at that URL. Squids, who are just people who use Squidoo, refer to their their websites as “lenses.” Maybe it comes from being able to view a slice of the world through one of their lenses.

But a FREE domain name and website! And they make it easy.

That clears up a big hurdle that folks who want to earn money online face in the beginning.

One method by which small online marketers get the right people to their sites is by selecting a keyword that they can rank for. The keyword also has to be highly relevant to the content of their site.

So, say you had a good supplier of umbrellas and you wanted to make some affiliate sales for them.

You need a keyword that will let you into the market.

I checked “umbrellas” as a keyword except that the word is too broad and will have high competition and low quality of traffic.

I went to Google this is what I typed in… site: squidoo “umbrellas” and got Results 1 – 9 of about 11,700 for site: squidoo “umbrellas”. Way too broad! Plus I can’t compete! Good grief! There are 11,000 “umbrella” squidoo competitors. Give or take a thousand.

Why is that so important? Well, it’s more important than it would be if you had a free standing, self hosted site simply because Google will only show ONE Squidoo result most times and occasionally two on a page of ten search results.

So I went to Google this is what I typed in… site: squidoo “rain umbrellas” and got Results 1 – 10 of about 101 for site: squidoo “rain umbrellas”. Wow!

That’s a fine example of a “low competition” keyword. That’s just may way of saying not too much competition.

Now, go get a Squidoo site with rain-umbrellas first in the domain name and you are ready to to go. IF you have an umbrella supplier.

Now, go ahead and fill your site with all things rain umbrellas and do what it takes to get indexed by Google. This is imprtant because if you are not indexed Google WON”T show your site!

So what does all this show us?

It shows you where to get a website and domain name free.

It shows you how to pick a Squidoo lens domain name so that you will have a really good shot at Google showing YOUR offer up on Page One.

Page One on Google translates into traffic.

I think you can take it from here fairly easily.

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Riley West – Squidoo Lenses can easily get traffic to your offers! And it’s quality traffic too. Use the information in this article AND in the FREE EBOOK at Make Money With Squidoo. Start now, get some commissions coming in. You can do this!

The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Twitter Hashtags

By Cory Threlfall in Web 2.0

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that was originally launched in March of 2006 and has since grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Twitter enables users to stay in touch and share information with each other in real time. Users can use a maximum of 140 characters per message or “tweet” as they are called. You can tweet as little or as often as you want, as long as each individual tweet does not exceed 140 characters.

Once you have joined Twitter, you can use their search tool to find specific people, companies, and their tweets. Hashtags are an effective method of allowing users to sort topics into useful categories to revisit later. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for users to provide add additional context and other relevant info to their tweets. The basic structure of a hashtag is simple: it’s the pound sign (#) followed by an acronym or word.

Twitter didn’t itself create hashtags; they were borrowed from IRCs (i.e. Internet Relay Channels such as chat rooms). Rather, the Twitter community adopted them as a means of creating “groupings” on the service without having to alter the basic service itself.

The Twitter community uses a hashtag in front of frequently used terms in order to categorize them for searches and filtering. So, when talking about an iPod for example, people might also reference “#Apple.” If you’re looking for company specific news that’s happened recently or what’s being said about a company’s product, the hashtags can be very helpful.

Using hashtags to search Twitter for specific information is now even easier since the company purchased the search engine Summize in July of 2008. Twitter can now track hashtags itself at search.twitter.com. The engine tracks keywords too, which makes hashtags not quite as necessary for trend tracking as they were in the past. Nonetheless, they still possess unique advantages. For example, you know that anyone tagging their tweet with one of these acronyms means for it to get categorized within that topic. It also serves as a visual indicator to others following their Twitter stream that they’re tweeting about a particular subject.

One of the potential disadvantages of hashtags is their very popularity. Hashtags are so prevalent on Twitter these days that it can be hard to keep track of them all as well as what they mean. However, there is a resource available that can assist with this as well. Tagalus is a service that acts like a dictionary for hashtags. Tagalus enables users vote on definitions for tags if there’s more than one version. The definition with the most votes will be the one that defines the tag. If you invent any new tags or just want to help build the resource, you can send a tweet to @tagalus to suggest a meaning for a tag. The format for doing so is as follows:

@tagalus define mynewtag as a new tag that describes everything about me

You can also use Tagalus to provide you with a meaning for an already existing tag. The format for this is @tagalus define ____ (fill in the tag that you want the definition for).

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Cory Threlfall is the Editor and Publisher of a online web development publication called… The Web Development Central BLOG, where you’ll receive via the Web, Mobile or RSS syndication Expert Articles, Video’s, Product Reviews, HOT Tips, Resources and More on how to Promote and Build your business(es) online. Visit ==> Web Development

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