20 TWITTER PROMOTION INDEAS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Twitter – The short word rules the Internet marketing world. Twitter is one of the most powerful social medium which can bring us the business success in a tremendous way.  Twitter proves the power of social community and need of social bond for business.

Twitter for your business

We can define twitter as a social medium, money earning medium, social communication medium, entertaining medium and so on.  These all definition suites only for who knows the tactics and secrets of twitter for business promotion. I would like to share some of the twitter promotion tips for your business.

List of 20 Twitter Promotion Ideas:

1.Create a twitter account with url related to your business. Make sure that your business or website name included in it. For example http://www.twitter.com/webapprater

2.Upload image for your twitter profile and optimize the image using free twitter tools.

3.Add your corporate business website URL in profile, so that visitors come to know your website presence.

4.Promote your twitter presence by adding twitter link on websites, email signatures, customers newsletter and so on.

5.Do not forget to include your brand name as the title of your profile.

6.Use Free Google keyword tool to select keywords related to your business and add it with your tweets using the “#” symbol before it.

7.Use your keyword in first 30 characters of your tweet which will be easily track by google real time search engine.

8.Select some important keywords of your business and include in your “bio” section.

9.Find your targeted audience based on their interest and this is the most important part of twitter business promotion.

10.Use Twitter directories like twellow , Justtweetit to find your targeted audience in category wise and start follow them.

11.Start follow the influencers related to your business or industry which makes you up to date with industry updates.

12.Use twitter profile management tool like Hootsuite to manage your multiple twitter account, in case of various business.

13.Use collaborative tweeting tool cotweet.com – Make conversation using this tool. It will bring more exposure to your business.

14.Post tweets about useful links, resources, images, info graphs related to your business.

15.Search the topic related to your business and talk to influencer.

16.Send direct message to the people about your product or service. (people who is need of your business related service)

17.Post new product screen shots on twitpic.com portal.

18.Increase sales  using twitter by giving special offers and coupons to your followers. (Use twtqpon app to distribute your coupon via twitter)

19.Send your offers to your followers using twitter bulk message sending application.  Before sending direct messages analyze the interest of your followers

20.Security is necessary for your business twitter profile.  User strong password to protect your twitter account from hackers.  If you find any security issues, change your password immediately without fail. Do not link links send via direct messaged from anonymous.

Hope the above twitter tips will help you to empower your business with powerful social media Twitter. Follow the tips gradually to attain positive results on your business promotion.

Creativity; the only way to success

Creativity has always been the root for success; it is mother of all expertise and is the main source of creation. It is creativity of an institute or any functioning body which make it differ from other. The reason why I am trying to make the term ‘Creativity’ clear is because I want the reader to understand its vital role in creation of any functioning body and also help it stand aside and lead the market.

In the field of Marketing, Branding and advertising creativity has always played the key role. With the rapid growth of Internet marketing it has become more easy yet difficult for one to advertise, promote and Brand it. Easy is when you have to do nothing but just spending fortunes over Search engine marketing and promoting and branding your company (through services like Pay per click and lead generation), but it is difficult when you have to promote and brand your company online through Search engine optimization and social media networking, because here you have to use your creativity and your power of management.

Creativity is not something which is available online and one can just go and buy it through internet marketing, but it is something which is very difficult to get. To solve these problems of Brand promotion and marketing there are many Branding consultancy company all over the world, but among many Digital Branding Companies in India, Creative-Edge, whose main aim is Brand promotion through Digital media marketing, SEO, SEM and Social media networking with the help of creative ideas and thoughts which the company together with the help of staffs who are not only creative but also dedicated, plan and execute.

Today technology has enabled us to promote and market companies in different ways but it is Planning that counts, how and where to advertise, where to use your creativity is the main part of marketing strategies, one can achieve best results in least available technology if planning and timing is correct. Creative-Edge is one such firm which helps companies and institutes advertise and Brand their company name to the best with least available resource and minimal time.

Sources : http://www.creative-edge.in/

8 Small Business Social Media Tips From the Creative-Edge

Are you looking for some social media tips to grow your small business?

We asked eight small business pros for their hottest social media tips.

Here’s their advice for you to take your business to the next level.

#1: Show Them the “Real You”

Use Facebook to show prospects, clients and customers the “real you.” Sure, provide the occasional business tip. Or link to your new blog post. But that’s what everyone else is doing. So why not show them you’re a real person by posting updates about things you’re passionate about?

I love to cook, so I’ve been known to post pictures of my grilled masterpieces. Or I’ll quote something one of my silly kids just said. Or I’ll pose a question, such as “How can we encourage more young entrepreneurs?” Either way, I try to keep it interesting, humorous and different. And always authentic.

Oh, and I know I’m going to ruffle a lot of feathers by saying this, but I really do believe that less is more. I get more engagement by updating five times per week than five times per day. Plus it fits my personality. Because offline, I would never call attention to myself that frequently.

#2: Pick One Thing and Do It Really Well

Small businesses are faced with having to prioritize their resources toward the activities that deliver the most impact. With social media, it’s easy to feel like you need to have a presence on every social media channel. It’s also easy to get lost in managing too many networks.

Being on 5 social networks and giving all of them half-effort will not generate results. Therefore, I recommend that small businesses first find which network has the highest concentration of their audience using tools like Follower Wonk, Facebook’s free advertising platform and LinkedIn’s search features.

Once you’ve found which social media network actually has a concentration of your target audience, develop a strategy to engage them. Rather than spreading your energy across multiple channels, put 100% of your “social focus” on the best channel for your audience and do it exceptionally well. If you’re successful, you’ll have a much easier time justifying the additional investment to replicate your success on another social media network.

#3: Turn Your Facebook Page into a Lead-Generating Machine

One necessary component of a thriving business is a strong list of qualified leads. Collecting names and emails is essential to any small business because you can communicate with your ideal audience on a regular basis. Some business experts say that without a list, you don’t really have a business!

There are many ways to grow your list and one of the smartest marketing moves is to create an opt-in strategy on your Facebook page. To keep it simple, use iFrames to create a custom welcome tab. On this tab you can create a 2-step process called a “reveal tab.”

Step #1: Include a call to action to encourage non-fans to click like and become a fan.

Step #2: Once you get the like, offer a valuable giveaway in exchange for name and email.

With this model, you are increasing your fan base and growing your lead list at the same time. It’s a double whammy for your business.

#4: Invest in a Great Twitter Design

If your business or brand is geared toward a particular niche market, make sure that you go all out when designing your Twitter profile. For an example, see @Hunger Games Pod. Make sure that it shows how serious you are about your niche and that by looking at your profile; people will see valuable content that they could get if they were following you on Twitter.

Next, go find other Twitter IDs that market to your exact niche market. For my Hunger Games brand, I did this with @The Hunger Games, which has over 76,000 followers. These 76,000 people are obviously interested in The Hunger Games niche and therefore might find my podcast on the subject interesting and want to follow.

Go through and follow that account’s followers. Most will get an email notification from Twitter, because they never turned off email notifications, telling them that you just followed them. Many will click through to your Twitter profile, check it out and if they’re interested, they’ll follow you back.

This is how I added over 4,000 followers to my Hunger Games Twitter account in less than a month.

#5: Bring Your Company onto Video

Without question, the hottest and most effective use of social media today is VIDEO. With all the recent changes in how Google and other search engines index web pages, adding short videos is the #1 way to get into the top of search results.

Creating a custom channel on YouTube is very easy. Creating a series of short instructional videos around your product or service and using testimonials from happy clients/customers are great ways to add credibility to your company and dramatically increase the chances of a viewer going to your website.

Use humor and graphics to get your key messages across. Remember, shorter is better—no more than 3 minutes.

Michael Crosson, founder of the second-largest LinkedIn group, “the Social Media Marketing Group,” with over 230,000 members.

#6: Learn How to Master Video Marketing

My hottest tip for small businesses to take their business to the next level is to learn how video content—when tagged, titled and published correctly—can increase your exposure in search results.

Video thumbnails in search results attract the eye more than text and can get your content seen over traditional text delivery. Plus, video can really highlight your company’s personality!

#7: Monitor Your Clients and Prospects

Create alerts for all of your important clients, add their blogs to your RSS reader, create a Twitter List and add it to a tool like Tweet Deck. Explore whether your CRM tool allows you to add the social connections for your clients (Batch Book, High-rise or ACT! all have this function and the Reparative plug-in for Gmail can do this as well).

Monitor what your clients and prospects are doing and saying in social networks to anticipate and serve their needs and build relationships much faster. Next you can do the same with key journalists and strategic partners.

#8: Give Away the Secret Sauce

In other words, start developing content about those industry secrets or how-to tips that no other competitor of yours would dare touch. This can be your competitive advantage. By creating the kind of content that really solves your customers’ problems, you’ll be linked to and shared. Your content will rise in the search rankings and be actively shared on Twitter and facebook.

How do you get started? Write down all of the most interesting and hard-to-answer customer questions and create online content from each question. Do this every day for six months and you’ll see a significant difference in your business.

Resource: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com

How to Improve Content writing using SEO to Rank in First Page?

A Guide to write quality Content to reach your Readers by having SEO standards and factors in mind.

This blog post is about improving your content writing to rank in first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing by following set of SEO standards and factors. This post can help you reach your content to all your readers who search for similar information. Always write content for Readers first, not for bot's alone. Have the keywords in your content as reader friendly then search engine friendly. Read this post so that you "Don't give a chance for your readers to miss your Content".

 This post helps you to know how to improve content writing by formatting the content with HTML & SEO standards that can be easily understood by search engine bots about the importance of the content subject along with researched keywords. If you do not format properly, even quality content will not reach your readers. Make Google[1], Yahoo[2] and Bing[3] search engines, easily crawl able. Have your content to follow the SEO standards like Title, SEF page URL, Mata tag, H1, H2, H3, H4 tags, Image ALT, Anchor text, feed, formatted external CSS, JS and body content in Div code. Don't miss the chance and get to know how to use these standards.

Improve Content write-up to reach your readers with SEO Factors

Normally only few content writers thinks about SEO for Content, that is writing content and optimizing for search engine to make it easily spiderable[4]. One must follow SEO factors to reach readers local and global. Now a day’s SEO for Content is very much essential even for quality content to win search engine results and to reach readers who look for your quality information.

(a) SEO copy writing - Two Ways

You need to start a ground work of picking relevant keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6] for your content and you may start writing your contents with those single, two word key phrases and long tail key phrases. Do not make the content odd by stuffing those keywords. You can think of the keyword and write the content and if the information is clear and beneficial for it's users then you win the game. If content is written with related images and examples, if any, then you will get even better responses.

Another way is that you can first prepare your content drafts and based on the subject you can look for keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6]. Then related to the content you can add keywords and make the copy more meaningful and as well make sure that you don't add too many keywords[7]. Do follow Keyword Strategies that can help your to determine the best practice.

(b) Four Keyword Strategies

Here is a much enhanced keyword strategies that can make big difference in your new content write-up and as well to improve your existing content. The strategies are keyword density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.

(i) Keyword Density

To make your content win in search results you need to add top search keywords that your readers use in search engine. Your content may have those key phrases but make sure those are used in your content in correct format that meets keyword density.

    Keyword Density % = Amount of keywords used / Total amount of words in the content.

Keyword density in percentage terms is calculated based on the amount of keywords you have used and the total amount of words you use in the content. This strategy is used to avoid the chance of keyword stuffing[7]. Keyword density can be between 2% to 8% and not more than that.

(ii) Keyword Prominence

How prominently your keywords are placed in your content depends on how much top priority for the keyword is given in your starting content, Title, H tags and Meta tags.

(iii) Keyword Frequency

The number of times a particular keyword has been repeated. Referring to the example you can see how many times "Photograph Editing Software" Keyword appears on a page content. Some may think that more the times Keyword found in a page, then the page ranks better for that Keyword. It is not so. Stuffing Keywords in a page will result in penalizing since it looks like spam[7]. Here you need to follow Keyword Density.

(iv) Keyword Proximity

Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. You will achieve higher rankings if you place your keywords close together.

It depends on how you frame your two or more words to each other. If you are able to have words in your keywords close then you have chances to rank much higher. Here are two types of examples of how keyword "Photograph Editing Software" is focused.

Example 1: Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop.
Example 2: Best Software for Photograph Editing is Adobe photoshop.

Example 1 will work better when compared to Example 2 since in example one "Photograph Editing Software" is used as one single Keyword were as example 2 uses "Software for Photograph Editing". Words are not close and in order.

In detail, In Example 1, "Photograph Editing Software" 3 words are in same order as searched by users, whereas in Example 2, "Software for Photograph Editing" are not in order as you can see "Software" word is used in front of "for Photograph Editing" rather than after "Photograph Editing" as you can see from the actual keyword "Photograph Editing Software".

All the Four Keyword Strategies can be applicable in below tags and these are very much useful:


* Title.
* Meta Description.
* H1, H2, H3, H4 Tags.
* ALT attribute.
* Page name.
* Anchor Text.
* The body of the text.

(c) Maintaining the position.

It is not only about winning the game on holding the position in #1 page. It is all about maintaining the position in #1 page. I see some get into the position and then drop down soon. This is due to the lack of updates on the topic. Don't give any chances. This may also happen sometimes when you don't follow keyword strategies in your content and when you don't follow SEO standards.

Plan of Action to Rank in First Page

1. Improve your content writing for readers and DO SEO[10].
2. Make sure you have fresh and informative content in your content[8].
3. Avoid thoughts of using content only for marketing.
4. Make your content unique so it stands out from the rest.
5. Work on your content regularly.
6. Do add relevant key phrases to your content and avoid stuffing.
7. Do apply HTML standards and SEO factors to your content for effective search engine listings.
8. Always set right balance for users and Search Engines.

Example on SEO Copy Writing

Here is an example based on optimizing the content. Suppose you plan to have a write-up on "Photograph Editing Software" as below. Here are the steps to show how to use Google Keywords tool to pick relevant keywords and optimize content for those keywords.


Step1: Now to start with optimization you can look for "Photography Editing Software" keyword search count and related keywords using Google Keyword tool.

Click Google Keyword selector tool and paste the keyword "Photography Editing Software" in the "Enter one keyword or phrase per line" text area box, next enter captcha security characters and press Get Keywords ideas button as seen in Figure 1.1

Step 2: Now you gets two types of results. One is "Keywords related to term(s) entered" and the other is "Additional keywords to consider". If you feel Additional keywords are useful you can very well use them.

Below keywords shown in Figure 2.1 are from "Keywords related to term(s) entered" section:

Figure 2.1

Step 3: Now we have 5 keywords to optimize and the write-up is about Adobe photoshop and we all know Adobe is not free so we can eliminate 5th keyword. (Refer Figure 2.1)

Now we have 4 keywords to consider to optimize the content. Here is an example how we add those keywords to the content.


    "Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop. One of the Best photography editing software for Digital and Professional editing."


SEO Standards - Content formatting and practices

The content formatting and presentation is very much important.

(1) Title Tag

This is the main tag for search engines to know all about the page content. Keep your title tag Keyword rich and catchy since many search engine uses Title tag for search listing.

(2) Page name:

Page name can be same as Title tag (keywords). So again have the title name catchy, meaningful and keyword rich.

(3) H 1, H 2, H 3, H 4, H 5, H 6:

Have your Heading H1 and sub headings in H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. Make sure they are meaningful to the content.

(4) Image ALT Attribute:

ALT attribute for an image can be about the information on the image and related content. It also helps visitors with text-only browsers. ALT attribute text pops up when the mouse cursor is moved to the image.

ALT attribute plays important role in SEO factors and Googlebot and other spiders like to take up the information and ALT with relevant keywords helps keyword frequency to get better ranking.

[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here"] (Not compatible for FireFox)

[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here" Title="Insert your alternative Text Here"]

(Compatible for all Browsers. FireFox browser support IMG Title instead of ALT)

Make sure ALT attribute is useful and not written only for search engine bots[9].

(5) Meta Description:

This is an important tag for ranking your page. So make sure the description has most important meaningful researched keywords. Meta description content is been used as a Search Engine snippet for your page search users queries.

(6) Anchor text:

Anchor text helps the readers to know the information about the text to which the link point. Anchor text tag looks like,

Many writers use additional words to link a word string like, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name. To know more, click here

A much proper way of Anchor text in few words is, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name in Google Knol

This Anchor text code helps with linking benefits for readers as well as for search engine rankings.

(7) Activity Feed & Link Distribution:

Start populating your content and profile activity feeds through blog posts and feed submission sites. These ways will help to increase content popularity and increase the chances of referral hits and external link popularity.

Link Distribution can be done through content page link submission to external resources, tutorials and articles directories to help increase popularity and as well you can inter link your and other authors site related to your content. Make sure that the link distribution serves readers and they are natural[10], and not exclusive for search engine bots[11].

(8) Google Analytics:

Configure Google analytics for your content pages to track visitors and source of visit. You can also find user searched keywords for your content in Google analytics[12]. Pick those keywords and find the page position in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Update your content with those keywords till it meets keywords density and if the content already meets Keywords density then you might need to improve your content for users and increase page link popularity rather than adding keywords again that leads to Keyword stuffing.Be sure that the content should be meaningful and should meet users queries in search engine. And by following plan of action you can see extreme progress in site traffic.

Conclusion:

Congratulations on reading the post, as this covers all the practices that helps to improve your quality content to rank in First page. To summarize, now you have learned the importance of Content SEO with example of using Google Keyword tool for getting related keywords and optimizing quality content, implementing four types of Keyword strategies, applying HTML standards that supports SEO with content formatting and practices. By adding these content improvement standards and SEO factors to your quality content, you can see extreme difference in your page traffic and the analyses mentioned in this post help you to reach your content to all your readers.
Resource: http://www.seoaday.com/

The History of Social Media

From the first e-mail to the domination of Facebook, social media has come a long way, baby.

Here’s a visually organized look at the past 30 years or so of social media history, from Usenet to AIM to Friendster and beyond. This particular infographic comes with some fun facts; for example, did you know that the first version of MySpace was coded in just 10 days?

Whether this is a walk down memory lane or entirely new information for you, we hope you’ll enjoy this infographic, which was created by OnlineSchools.org. You can also check out our infographics on Facebook facts, online dating and our general obsession with social media.

In the comments, tell us where you set up your first “social” online account and where or when you think social media truly began.

HOW TO: Manage Successful Social Media Promotions

With holiday shopping in full swing, social shopping is already making a big impact. Data from Hitwise shows that downstream traffic to the Retail 500 coming from both Facebook and Twitter increased 36% and 15% respectively on Thanksgiving from the previous day. Downstream traffic to retailers grew again on Black Friday and Cyber Monday as many retailers promoted sales through fan pages and tweets.

This data is very encouraging for marketers, but a social media campaign must still be managed correctly for maximum ROI. Here are some tips on how brands can best engage their customers by offering what everyone now looks to social media for – a bargain.

New Strategies to Turn Buzz Into Buy

Other recent research confirms the fact that people are increasingly turning to social networks to get deals on products and services. Razorfish found that the primary drivers of “friending” or “following” a brand were promotions and discounts. Over one-third of social network users and 44 percent of Twitter users engaged with a brand through discount promotions. This is good news for marketers, but the stats also pose challenges to the way marketing programs and advertising budgets will be structured in the future.

Brands have long spent big money on commercials, media placements, direct mail, and more. With most of these methods, there is little way to measure the impact on your bottom line. You either get lucky with a surge in sales after your campaign, or it didn’t work. Either way, success or failure was impossible to measure.

If done right, social marketing is a fantastic way to get the best of all worlds from a campaign – wide-scale and targeted distribution of your offer, for free. But to get it right, marketers have to step lightly. If you’re too pushy with too many promotions, your followers will feel “marketed at” or “spammed.” If you don’t offer good enough deals, your customers may become frustrated and stop following you. After all, they don’t really want to be your friend. They want bargains. Here are some steps for getting social media promotions right.

1. What Are People Saying About Your Brand?

Find out what people are saying about your brand, why they are saying it, and who they are saying it to. You have to do more than just get a vague reading on brand buzz. Track the actual pass-along of your brand’s social content via tweets, blog posts, Facebook postings, etc. to see which content is driving the most sharing on which sites. You can use social media traffic tracking software to do this.

Tracking this word-of-mouth buzz is crucial to formulating the right marketing messages and promotions. You must deliver relevant social deals that resonate with people’s interests.

2. Create a Social Promotion

Once you figure out what people want using the tracking methods above, go ahead and give it to them. For example, you might find that everyone loved your last 20% promotion – it was shared to hundreds of thousands of people via social sites and email – but that the most frequent negative comment was that shipping costs were too high. In your next promotion, offer free shipping.

Or, you may find that there was a huge surge in Twitter searches, blog comments, and Facebook updates about your brand’s winter boots during a snowstorm. This is a great opportunity to immediately put out a social promotion for 20% off boot purchases for one day only via Twitter, Facebook, and/or your company blog.

Have fun with your social promotions. Unlike paid search ads and other media buys, you don’t have to plan and budget for them. Instead, just try one or two out and see what happens.

3. Did It Work?

Figure out whether your promotion worked, and what bottom line impact it had on sales and profits. Go back to your social media tracking and measurement tool and find out how much your promotion was shared, what increase it caused in traffic to your website, and what direct impact it had on conversion. You might want to compare two different promotions run during a similar time frame to see which worked better and why.

For example, did a 50% Off promotion drive more sharing, visits, or conversions than a Two-For-One? In addition to doing simple “A/B” tests, compare results for promotions like these against the data from your regular marketing analytics platform to see whether your social media promotions are performing better or worse than traditional paid marketing campaigns. Social promotions almost always perform better than paid media ads in terms of conversion, but paid ads may drive a higher volume of traffic to your site.

Lastly, do an ROI analysis of your social media promotions to find out their real impact on bottom line profits.
 
Conclusion

Social media promotions are here to stay. Make sure you use the social channel to deliver “exclusive” deals that make your friends and followers feel special. They’ll thank you by making purchases.

What social media tools do you use to increase sales and measure your brand’s reach? Please share them in the comments below.

Resources: Mashable.com