Wednesday, 28 April 2010

Twitter Marketing Service - Social Media Marketing's New Weapon

The concept of Twitter contains messaging services, whether it utilizes a cell phone, instant messenger service, as well as using mobile texting, or through particular websites, plus other venues. It permits the consumer to send messages to friends and family easily and quickly. It's a way to keep family, friends, and co-workers up-to-date with what a person does.

Twitter is an exciting idea and has rapidly turned into one of the most common sites on the web with popularity ranking of 48 (the 48th most popular website on the internet). It is also known as micro blogging. It functions much the same way like a blog, only with the character limit. Twitter is a free social bookmarking service that enables users to share information through 140 character posts which is just enough for a fast update. Links to images, videos and just about anything on the web can be distributed in these posts. These 140 character blasts of information are known as Tweets. Once a Twitter is published online, people are able to easily discover what other people are doing. Individuals may, in turn, let others know what's going on with them as well.

One should create an account. Link the newly created account to a cell phone, web page, or instant messenger program, allowing the consumer to receive and send messages to and from others. A good update that is sent to friends is known as "tweet." Everyone is speaking about it. Everyone is signing up for it. Twitter is quickly getting the main spot on the net for individuals to connect. It's a part of the new social networking revolution. Social media is the new way that people discover, share and read information and news on the web through social networks or micro blogs such as Twitter. It is transforming people into content providers, not only content readers.

Twitter and other social networks are rapidly becoming the most popular places on the internet. Companies are finding that Twitter is a great place to share info on their businesses, talk with prospects and customers and offers an entirely new means of marketing. It can benefit business people and provide the best value through achieving business objectives such as:

1. It connects and networks your company with others in your industry.

2. It provides an instant access to what is being said about your business, industry, products or brands.

3. It enables sending out advice, press releases, article links or other tips to your prospects at a moment's notice.

4. It monitors what is being said about your customers to get a greater notion of how to serve them.

With Twitter you can easily create an account. Once the account is defined, it may quickly be personalized to complement any business personality. The next step is to start following people or companies with an interest in a similar industry. Soon followers may wish to learn more concerning the business. Tweet about the company, industry, specials or responses to followers inquiries. It is a powerful way to show a business expertise and to spread info and know how to interact with those that are following it. Twitter and social networks in general is quickly becoming a valuable internet marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. It is now time to start Tweeting.

For any individual who is interested to discover so much more relating to the twitter marketing service, an up and coming business process outsourcing sector which can most absolutely help jump start your small business and help you to save cash, then login to link building service. You'll love it!

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How to Combine Squidoo and Twitter

I think i do not have to explain what Squidoo is. I mean, go to their website and find out yourself. OK, that was the intro...

Like bloggers, lens masters are using Twitter as a widget to their page. Blogs, unlike lenses, are large and detailed, why Squidoo asks you to get straight to your point. That's why Squidoo is so great. People do not need to think, everything is placed right in front of their eyes.

What should you do?

One of the cool tricks is to create an automated notice that appears in your timeline after you've made some changes on your lens. The profile right under the bio setting has a section for "Social Application Settings". You can enter there your Twitter and Facebook details.

Now, put your Twitter username and password. Now, after you have changed something on your lens, a link will appear on your Timeline.

A useful tip: Before you do some changes, you have to build some suspense. Make your visitors wait for the changes. They will visit your lens, read all your material and maybe become they will buy something off you even before your "grand opening".

Another tip: Use a TwttrStrm page. It is really simple. Ask a question, enter your Twitter username, create a hashtag for easy tracking, place your page in the right category, add a keyword. This whole process will help people to find your page.

But to be honest, to implement this tactic you need a lot of followers. So, what are you waiting for?

I love writing articles. That's why i have so many blogs. You can check out my articles on Heart Diamond Rings. Surprise your fiance with something special.

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How to Sell Affiliate Products on Twitter

It does not matter whether you are into affiliate or direct marketing. At the end of the day, your aim is to sell your product or service and make your living out of the proceeds. There are some basic etiquette associated with affiliate marketing that you can use to increase your Twitter sales potential. Successful affiliate marketers have been using some proven Twitter business strategies to make sales through Twitter and you can also use these strategies to increase your online sales with twitter.

Create a nice profile. Include personal as well as business information in your profile page. Insert a link to your affiliate page or website if you have one. Upload a pleasing and smiling photograph and use a welcome message for your visitors.

Identify your target audience. Not everyone will like reading about your products. Use Twitter tools to find people who are talking about your products and create a database of such people.

Start following your target customers. Once you follow them, some of them will follow back. Discard the ones that don't follow you back and keep on adding new names to your customer database.

Send them regular tweets. Your tweets should not merely be sales pitches. Offer your customers interesting and relevant information in the form of links to articles and blogs.

Respond to what they tweet about. When people send you tweets, make sure you reply on time. Ignoring tweets would result in loss of sales and revenue.

Give them a landing page where they can see what they came for. You will end up with lots of customers purchasing right at the moment rather than putting their needs on the shelf.

Ask them to spread the word around so that your visibility increases and more people come to know about you.

Hannah loves the freedom her Internet marketing career created in her life. Instead of punching the clock, she lives by her wits. By competing against other marketers, she knows she's really earned that paycheck.

Social media networking was a lifechanger for Hannah. Learn more about her Twitter campaigns at http://getfreetwittertips.com - Free Twitter Tips

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How to Build Customer Relationships on Twitter

All the companies using Twitter Internet marketing strategies keep one point in mind - build a relationship with the customer. Enhanced customer relationships are a fantastic Twitter marketing plan because it engages the customers. Let us look at some of the ways we can engage our customers as part of our Twitter marketing campaign.

Customers don't like people who are too direct in their approach and obtrusive. You need not tell your customers that you are trying to sell or market. When you send tweets to your customers, make them feel that you are doing it for their benefit. For example, the tweet that says "5 ways you can reduce weight to lead a healthy life" is a very effective tweet. You are giving a concrete number to your customer and your tweet seems to aim at their well being. Some of your customers are bound to feel good about this tweet.

You must converse with your customers. When someone sends a tweet, you must send an appropriate reply. This act of yours will make the customer feel important and cared for. If you did something right, tell the world. If you did something wrong, make sure you admit quickly and without any conditions attached to it.

Send helpful tweets to your customers. When you know that a certain group of your customers are interested in a certain product, send them links to articles and blogs related to that product. Follow it up with a direct marketing tweet for the same product. They will feel happy and in some cases, obliged to follow the link contained in the second tweet.

The best way to build customer relationship in Twitter is to be discrete, honest and communicative. When you keep these points in mind, your Twitter marketing campaign is bound to hit the sky.

Hannah loves the freedom her Internet marketing career created in her life. Instead of punching the clock, she lives by her wits. By competing against other marketers, she knows she's really earned that paycheck.

Social media networking was a life changer for Hannah. Learn more about her Twitter campaigns at http://getfreetwittertips.com - Free Twitter Tips.

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Promoting Your Business With Promotional Gifts and Twitter

The way we promote our businesses has a lot to do with how we portray ourselves. It is all about standing out from the competition. With the current business environment as competitive as it is, this is becoming increasingly difficult. We all know and accept this as part of our ongoing struggle to be noticed by our target customers for all of the right reasons. Promotional gifts and Twitter can help you do just that!

Do you have a Twitter account? Have you spent much time on Twitter getting to know your followers? I have had an account for nearly one year but it was not until recently that I really started spending some quality time on the site getting to know the people who follow me. Most of these people are in business and could benefit from different types of products that are used in the office daily.

The one thing I like about Twitter is that it discourages the hard sale. People do tweet about their businesses and websites from time to time but for the most part it is a community of people going about their day to day business and letting others in on what they are doing or thinking. Getting to know these people could earn you knew customers over time and promotional gifts are the perfect tool, to help you really stand out. These gifts do not need to be nor should they be expensive. They are just another way of standing out form your competitors. Here are some of my favourite inexpensive gift ideas.

Promotional Pens

Pens are used by most people daily both at home and in the office. Printing your logo and details along with a message such as -'Looking forward to keeping in touch in the New Year on Twitter!' will do just fine. It will make them think of you when they read your tweets and perhaps when they need to purchase your products.

Highlighters

These are another very popular gift that are generally kept for a long time. Many people keep them in their desk drawers for years and bring them out when required.

Plastic Rulers

Inexpensive rulers can be purchased for pennies and offer a large print area for your logo and tweeting message. Again, your loyal Twitter followers are people who will probably be in contact with you daily. These inexpensive gift ideas are there just to reinforce your message and perhaps give them a little more information about you.

Adhesive Pads

These are inexpensive and can be printed up to full colour. They are the perfect way to get more information about your business in front of your followers. They are also quite useful around the office.

Plastic Mini Paper Clips

Everyone needs paper clips from time to time. Each clip only costs a few pennies and can be printed with your web address and other important details. They are so inexpensive you may want to send each of your Twitter followers a handful.

All of the inexpensive promotional gift ideas mentioned in this article can be viewed and purchased online at compugift.co.uk.

Dan Toombs is Managing Director of CompuGift Limited, a leading UK based supplier of promotional gifts.

FOLLOW DAN on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/compugift

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Facebook Starts Serving iPad-Friendly Video

New or recent video uploads to Facebook will now play on the iPad. With this move, the social networking site joins a growing list of websites that now offer some form of video support for Apple’s newest device. In the battle over the future of web video, this is a big step.

Because Facebook hasn’t released an iPad-optimized version of its popular iPhone app, users who want to access the world’s most popular social network from the new device are forced to deal with some challenges, namely, the lack of Flash support.

Users often run into this limitation when playing games like FarmVille on the device, and watching videos uploaded to Facebook will frequently result in this message:

However, when it comes to viewing new video uploads, users are in luck. Playing back a video results in this:

As ReadWriteWeb notes, this implementation is not HTML5, which is what YouTube, Vimeo, Brightcove and a host of other video services are starting to support. Instead, Facebook is doing device-based transcoding (something that SaaS companies like Encoding.com provide) and converting the video so that it plays back in a QuickTime-compatible format within the iPad’s native video player.

The difference in this approach, for end-users, is largely cosmetic. Rather than playing back video inline (meaning directly on the page), a new video window pops up that fills the iPad’s screen. Closing the window takes you back to your Facebook page.

We should note that any QuickTime or .h264 compatible devices should be able to view video this way, assuming that the browser or device has been recognized by Facebook as compatible on the backend.

Before announcing its support of HTML5, YouTube used this same transcoding approach for the iPhone. Since then, YouTube has switched to using .h264 as its default file codec, which makes serving video or using HTML5 for inline playback even more simple.

What this strategy ultimately indicates about the future of web video is unclear, but for now, it’s at least a big win for users of devices that have neither a native Facebook mobile application nor Flash video support.

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Facebook Sends Window Decals to Local Businesses

Facebook may not have made any big announcements about local business marketing at last week’s f8 conference, but the company is certainly stepping up its efforts in that area. Today, we discovered that Facebook is sending out window decals with text-to-Like SMS instructions to select local businesses.

Twitter user B.J. Drums, who works with the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California, sent us proof thatFacebookFacebook is officially getting into the local business marketing fray.

The company received both a window decal and an accompanying letter (see below) that encourages participating businesses to place the decal “prominently on your window or sales counter, since businesses that promote their Page off-Facebook tend to see a 20% or greater increase in connections.”

The sticker in question includes a very prominent Like icon and the iconic blue Facebook branding, as well as a call to action that reads, “text like MuseumofMakingMusic to 32665.”

Facebook is even gifting beta testers with $25 in ad credits to help drive home the utility of the service and propel businesses to participate in on-site advertising as well.

This first step toward serving local businesses is an extremely smart maneuver very much like Google’s Place Pages offering. Also, the day that Facebook correlates your physical location in the real world with their local business Pages does not seem too far off.

If Yelp, GoogleGoogle, Fousquare and Facebook all get their way, local business windows will be covered in window decals. Realistically, one decal will prevail and we tend to think Facebook’s more than 400 million userbase and the value of an instant Fan will make Facebook’s offering especially appealing to local business owners.

Nobody Can Stop Facebook Because Nobody Understands Facebook

Can companies turn confusion into a competitive advantage? It occurred to me when attempting to explain Facebook’s Open Graph this week that the social web has become increasingly complex — relating the full implications to a broad audience is a Herculean feat.

How do you explain the Open Graph to the average user so he or she can make an informed decision? Should we take pains to differentiate between the “Open Graph API” and the “Open Graph Protocol,” or should we just gloss over the specifics to make the story halfway digestible to a reader who isn’t either a web developer or a social media professional?

Every time Facebook changes its privacy settings, we write a 500+ word post explaining what all the dials mean. Every time, it’s massively popular — Sunday’s article “HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” has more than 4,500 Facebook shares. Why the high demand for an explanation of what all this stuff means?

Have the nuances of online privacy become so complex that they’re beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? I’m not saying that Facebook intends to cause confusion, but the complexities of the open vs. closed debate and the prescriptive vs. descriptive nature of the “everybody” setting effectively shut down public discourse.

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9 Essential Social News and Bookmarking Sites for Designers


With so much content on the web, it’s nice to be able to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to help us discover noteworthy links and weed through all the stuff (and fluff) out there.

For designers who enjoy social media — or anyone interested in design news and resources — there are a number of sites and services for you to check out and participate in. Here are nine noteworthy social news and bookmarking sites aimed at designers and design enthusiasts.


1. DesignBump


DesignBump

This social news site’s interface will be familiar to those who use Digg, Reddit, or Mixx. The concept is simple: Get enough votes on your links and it will be promoted to the front page.

DesignBump currently has over 16,000 users, with some famous design bloggers among their active participants.


2. Image Spark


Image Spark

This free social bookmarking service puts a unique twist on the format: Instead of bookmarking web pages that you find, you bookmark images. Popular bookmarked images are displayed in a gallery-style format so that site users can see them for visual inspiration on their own projects.


3. design:related


Design Related

design:related is a community site that seeks to bring together designers from many disciplines. You can set up a portfolio on their site, share what’s inspiring you creatively, and submit news that members can vote on.

The site is a perfect spot for inspiration-seekers, and those looking to stay up to speed on important industry news in a single location.


4. DesignFloat


DesignFloat

Established in 2007, DesignFloat is one of the first vote-to-promote social news-sharing sites dedicated specifically to designers.

The site has a broad range of categories for users to submit links to, including Graphic Design, Interactive Design, Industrial Design, as well as design-related topics like Photography. Each category has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in case you’re only interested in specific topics.


5. Graphic Design Links


Graphic Design Links

Graphic Design Links is another destination for creatives looking for socially promoted info. To help users see the most popular topics being submitted to the site, they have a Tag Cloud page.

Among the site’s submission categories are Illustration, 3D, Typography, and Web Design.


6. The Web Blend


The Web Blend

The Web Blend only has about 1,500 members, making it a comparatively small community — but smaller isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Some of its top users are popular design bloggers, such as Jad Limcaco of Designer Informer and Sneh Roy ofLittle Box Of Ideas. This smaller community gives members a chance to interact directly with some of their favorite content creators.


7. zaBox


ZaBox Image

zaBox covers a wide range of design industry news, resources, and tutorials. Like most social news sites, a story’s popularity is determined by the number of people voting for it.

It also offers bloggers the ability to integrate zaBox into their site, including a button for voting and submitting their stories to the web service.


8. FFFFOUND!


ffffound image

Visual bookmarking is a popular activity among designers. Collecting images for reference and inspiration later on can get you out of a creative funk in a jiffy.

FFFFOUND! is a web service where users can post and share images they’ve discovered on the web. The website is intelligent: It recommends images you might also like based on your bookmarking history.


9. Pixel Groovy


Pixel Groovy

The amount of graphic design tutorials on the web is overwhelming. Pixel Groovy helps point you to ones that its community members like.

The community-driven site gives editorial control to their users, empowering them with the ability to vote on tutorials that they deem worthwhile to be published and indexed on the site.


Bonus: General Social News and Bookmarking Sites


Aside from websites that are geared towards designers, major social news and bookmarking sites also have strong design categories that are worth checking out.

Wednesday, 21 April 2010

Facebook Overtakes Google in Web Traffic


Another piece of evidence on social media going strong. :-)

The diagram below is shockingly impressive, isn't it?


Check out this story from The Financial Times:

Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.

In a sign that the web is becoming more sociable than searchable, research firm Hitwise said that the two sites accounted for 14 per cent of all US internet visits last week. Facebook’s home page recorded 7.07 per cent of traffic and Google’s 7.03 per cent.

It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.

Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.

The article continues …

Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com.

Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.

US users spent nearly six-and-a-half hours on Facebook compared with fewer than two-and-a-half hours on Google.

This article reinforces my belief about social networking.

Contrary to the view of some who view social networking as evil (for reasons that aren’t very good in my opinion), Facebook can be used as an avenue for building connections thereby making it a natural tool for ministry.

Facebook is here to stay, and technologically competent ministers ought to take advantage.

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Are you feeling lifted, Twitterers?


By the news in my last post? I'm sure we all are! :-)

Google adds Twitter feed in China, again defying that country's rules

March 25, 2010 | 7:33 am
In a move sure to anger Beijing's censors, Google has introduced a real-time Twitter feed on its search results pages -- in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China.

The feed appears alongside search results on Google's Hong Kong-based website, google.com.hk. Users in China have been redirected there since Tuesday when Google shuttered its China-based search engine.

The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China's Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China.

In another defiant move, Google has also added links on its Hong Kong site to the company's original statement explaining why it was leaving China, but translated into Chinese. The link appears on the home page under the search engine and also as a banner advertisement on some search result pages.

[Updated at 6:05 p.m.: Google said it started rolling out real time search on google.com.hk earlier this month and that it had been fully available for more than a week. "We are constantly releasing new features to international domains as the functionality becomes available and this feature is completely unrelated to the redirection of traffic from google.cn to google.com.hk," Google said in an e-mail statement.]

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Monday, 19 April 2010

Internet Goldmine and Twitter

Internet is a goldmine! It has passed the stage of burning money
with no profit, now it's booming to replace the traditional mode
of business! Surely you don't want to miss this opportunity. It
has made work so much easier, and with so much lower cost, and
made possible of a one-man business! You can just stay at home
working in front of your computer for a couple of hours, then you
are free to enjoy the income it brings to you. Can you imagine
that? There is no big talk, it's all truth, as you can tell
yourself there have been so many newly self-made millionaires
just by doing Internet marketing in just a matter of several
months with little investment. You can build up a huge business
empire on top of it, or you can just make use of your spare time,
or you'd like to work at home and stay with the kids, whatever
your situation is, this is perfect for you!

Social media grows so important, and more and more sales made
over social media. Word of mouth has become worlds of mouth! So
everybody can have his own say! Everyone, no matter if you are
computer literate or not, can easily log onto a social media to
blog, to tweet, to facebook, to linkedin, and to youtube, etc.
What most of people don't know is that these social media are
really influential and powerful to affect people's purchasing
decisions, thus bringing in huge business potentials, thus
profits. You surely want to take a piece of this gold pie at this
early stage, don't you? No speak of its simpleness and
costlessness.

Twitter is a very easy but very powerful start toward that
career. All you need to know is to how to do it effectively
without putting too much effort in it, by learning what other
people have tested to be effective, you can save so much money
and energy. Here I highly recommend the Twitter Queen&King's
royal tutorials on twitter


They are called the queen and king on twittering for a reason.
Can you imagine to grow 200-300 followers in a day, and generate
traffic in minutes to what you sell, and get a system set up to
do all these automatically? It's really hard to figure them out
all by yourself without months of months hard work, there are
more important things to do in life! Why not grabbing this
tutorial and making BIG money while sleep? Together with bonuses
on facebook marketing, you are well equipped towards a real
internet business!

As a software engineer, I have a PhD in Computer Networking, I
only recommend quality products, and the ones that I've tried and
well tested. I have to say this tutorial is a must to twitter
marketing!

Twitter Queen&King's royal tutorials on twitter

I do hope you enjoy what this course offers you, and with
further marching towards the Internet business, I can't wait to
hear another success story, and see another millionaire born!


Ps. please share your experiences on this course with me. And if
you need tutoring on it, I'm here ready to help! Plus, if you
need all this twitter marketing done by other people for your
business, I'm the one you can rely on! Just send me a message,
I'll be at your service.

Friday, 16 April 2010

How to Turn Twitter Into a Dashboard-Style Web App


This is a screenshot of Twitter. No gimmicks, no PhotoShop. :) (Click to enlarge.)

Screen-shot-2010-03-03-at-8.03.06-PM

I’ll show you a simple way to turn your experience on Twitter.com into one very similar to most Twitter web applications out there, such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite.

Some may prefer this solution since you will have access to all of your Twitter data – your profile, your followers, your settings, your lists and searches – all in one place.

Firefox and Chrome users can turn the native Twitter website into a customizable Twitter web application that can do the following:

  • Add list columns
  • Add mentions column
  • Collapse and expand number of columns with a single click
  • Collapse right rail column
  • Add search columns
  • Share photos directly
  • Shorten urls
  • Save draft tweets to send later
  • and much more

There is only one requirement – you have to be using Firefox or Chrome. If you’re in one of those browsers, follow the following steps:

Firefox users:
1. Go to the add-on library and install monkeyfly.
2. Restart browser, go to Tools – Add-ons and enable monkeyfly if it’s not enabled already
3. Go to Twitter and use the plus sign to customize your page
or
4. Watch the 3 minute tutorial and then go to Twitter to customize your page

Chrome users:
1. Go to Google Chrome extensions and install monkeyfly
2. Go to Windows – Extensions and check that monkeyfly is enabled
3. Go to Twitter and use the plus sign to customize your page
or
4. Watch the 3 minute tutorial and then go to Twitter to customize your page

If you’re not using one of these browsers, give one a try so you can use monkeyfly.

Enjoy! :)

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