Twitip

When I start reviewing Twitter accounts it can quite often be the case that businesses who aren’t used to working in the social media environment are using Twitter as just another outreach to their marketing content. You can tell these accounts as generally all they contain are updates generated by the feed from their news page or if they have one, their blog. (more…)

Define Your Purpose

Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is.

Is your purpose to connect with friends and family?
Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business?
Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service?

If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion.

But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter.

Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter. (more…)

By Nathan Hangen of Making It Social. Follow him @nhangen.

If you don’t know what you are doing, measuring your brand online is like sticking a finger in the air and trying to gauge the direction of the wind. It just isn’t as easy as it looks. However, once you understand the tools required to make it happen, brand monitoring becomes 2nd nature. The trick then, is knowing what to monitor and how to do it.

In the past, people relied on Google alerts to send notifications of brand mentions, which usually came in the form of links. Although this is a great way to measure trackbacks and general sentiment, I don’t feel that it offers a complete picture. Not only that, but the results are delayed, meaning that if you get trashed on a forum or in a blog post, then you won’t be able to react until it’s too late. This is why Twitter is changing the way the game is played.

With Twitter, you can track your brand mentions in real time, using a variety of excellent tools. You can track via keyword or hashtag along with the standard mention/RT tracking on the homepage. If you have Twitter integrated onto your blog, then you can add even more firepower to your arsenal by using Tweetbacks and RT’s as comments, which might flesh out an otherwise empty post footer.

The beauty of Twitter tracking tools is that they tell a much greater story than Google does.
(more…)

By Jade Craven – Follow her @jadecraven.

Twitter recently introduced a new feature called lists to many users. This isn’t available to everyone – I’ve heard many reports of people who are unable to see anybodies lists. Basically, it allows you to organize the people you follow into several different categories. These can be made private and can be followed by others.

This is an awesome for those who are using the web interface as you can choose the groups you want to read at any time.

However, there are some considerations you need to make before embracing this feature.

1. People may be offended by not being included on a list.

Some of my friends created lists like ‘awesome friends’ and ‘top bloggers.’ They used these terms as generalist lists but some people took offense at not being included on a list.

This is very similar to the follow/unfollow situations that happened before people started to embrace groups on other clients.

So, what can you do to avoid offending?

• Have a disclaimer on your twitter landing page

• Make your list private

• Organize lists by geographic region – ie, Melbourne bloggers.

(more…)

You guys really answered the call on yesterday’s post, Answer A Reader Question: Multiple Twitter Users In Business!

Here’s a roundup of some of the best answers I saw thus far…

• Surely it would be best to use a single business account so that there’s a single point of contact and for the different members of staff to share this account through a professional Twitter platform. @imagetext
  

(more…)

I know we’ve seen this topic covered in the past (How To Handle Multiple Users Within Your Company and When One Twitter Account Is Not Enough), but I just received another email from a reader asking about using Twitter in a business setting:

(more…)

By Jade Craven – Follow her @jadecraven.

2 days ago, I met my friend Sam Mutimer (@sammutimer) for lunch. We talked about blogging, conferences and social media over lunch. I left with the opportunity to work with her team at Thinktank Media (@thinktankmedia) when they roll out strategies for new clients.

I was quite surprised – especially as I use twitter to hang out and connecting with awesome people when I have the time.

How I Got The Job

I don’t remember how I met Sam, but she soon encouraged me to go the the tweetup she founded called Tweetupmellers(@tweetupmellers) . She was great at getting me to talk to new people and was really encouraging.

I kept in touch with Sam, helping her out and just talking about her projects. I also focused on connecting with more people from the tweetupmellers community. (more…)

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Don’t let social media networks stop you from face-to-face communications – facilitate this new dimension as a stepping stone to enhance dialogue.

In a growing remote-administration society, more professionals are operational from their home offices opposed to public workspaces. Much of this has to do with the fact that a lot of what can be accomplished in a virtual office setting can be administered from your personal laptop, PC, or Mac. Whether you’re the Website administrator, analyst, the online marketing sales consultant, web copy writer, or the social media wiz, most of your efforts can be conducted from the Internet window on your desk – your computer screen, that is. (more…)

By Mark Hayward – Follow him @mark_hayward.

Do you own a small business? Are you having a hard time understanding Twitter?

As a small business owner and social media user going on two years now, I can honestly say that initially I did not really see the point or power of Twitter at all.

However, after sticking it out passed the learning curve, picking up a couple of followers, and following really intelligent people, thanks to Twitter, I get to make connections and learn something new every day. In fact, at this point I feel like Twitter is a tool that all small business owners should use as part of their overall efforts to build a distributed social media footprint.

Nevertheless, if you are like many in the small business community who have tried Twitter without success, then you might be fond of saying, “I just don’t get it.” (more…)

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

If you’re new to online business and are trying to surf through the sometimes murky waves of the Internet, then the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and relax. Nothing can get you more worked up than your own nerves doing a hoodoo number on your mind.  I’m going to offer you a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned along the way and hope that you’ll benefit in some small way.

1. Market Research and Analysis: This is where successful marketing plans spring to action. Justifiably, clients (or buyers) must want to achieve specific goals, so usability and receptiveness are crucial components that ultimately become the deciding factor for potential purchases. Analyze your products and/or services. Obviously, you must have a great product or service to offer your potential buyer.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:
(more…)