6 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers
6 Ways to Get More (Real) Twitter Followers
It’s not about being insightful or clever (but if you are, it doesn’t hurt). Build up your following systematically with these tips.
Want more Twitter followers for your business? Twitter can be a great way to market to and engage customers—but the key word is “engage.” Ten engaged followers are much better than 100 passive auto-followers or, heaven forbid, 10,000 paid followers.
Here are six ways to build and maintain an engaged Twitter audience for your business:
Provide. We can’t all be witty or insightful or clever. But we can all offer something: discounts, samples, promotions, advice… offer something of value. Followers will appreciate the gesture, and if what you offer really is worthwhile, they’ll spread the word for you.
Twitter offers are also a free way to sense-check customer interests and do a little market research; if you offer a promotion and no one is interested, you learn more about your market—without spending money on conventional advertising. Use special offers and promotions to find out what customers value. When you hit on the right mix, your current followers will retweet to their friends… and your following will grow organically.
Talk about others. A great way to make a connection is to simply respond to something another person or business tweeted and mention them. Most people can’t resist checking out what other people say about them, so slip in something like @[insert Twitter name here] to make sure they notice. (Be honest: Don’t you spend way more time checking out who talks about you than you do checking out your Twitter steam?)
But don’t tweet or retweet unless you also feel your audience—and potential customers—will benefit from what you send. Always think value first, potential connection second.
Play in your sandbox. It’s tempting to tweet about a broad range of topics. Don’t. Stick to your area of focus. For example, I’m an avid MotoGP racing fan, so I follow @MotoGP. I don’t want tweets about bike manufacturers or motorcycle safety or epic rides; I can get that elsewhere. Too many off-topic tweets and I’ll unfollow.
The same is true for you. Choose a niche and stay there. If you’re a green space architect, be that guy. You will slowly build an engaged following when people know they can get lots of useful information—and zero fluff—about your niche.
Any followers not interested in your niche are of little to no value anyway.
Forget the schedule. Many people recommend following a tweet schedule to create a sense of consistency. That’s fine, but only if every tweet is valuable to your audience. Never tweet just because your schedule says you should.
Tools like Buffer let you schedule tweets. That’s great if you want to be sure to tweet at a specific time, like to announce a contest or a limited-time offer. Scheduling also lets you tweet when your followers are more likely to notice. So by all means schedule individual tweets, but never become a slave to an arbitrary tweeting schedule.
Only tweet when you have something valuable to provide or say.
Be quick… Commenting on breaking news is smart, since timely relevance attracts interest. But there’s a definite timeliness window; fall outside it and you always lose. Either tweet breaking news about your niche immediately, or wait a few weeks or months and let hindsight and reflection add flavor to your tweet. If you can’t be (relatively) first, let it go. Never send out stale tweets.
And be responsive. An incoming tweet is like an email; whoever sent it expects a response—a relatively quick response. Make it a goal to answer tweets within one to two hours max. Remember, engage is a verb—if you’re lucky enough to have someone initiate the process don’t spoil it by waiting too long to respond.
Debunking Entrepreneurial Myths
There are many myths about entrepreneurship. The 2011 spirit of Enterprise Finalists are living proof that many of these wildly held beliefs just aren’t so.
1. All the good ideas have been taken.
Whether it is going one better on an existing idea, or doing something totally new, entrepreneurs have an idea, nurture it, pursue it and grow it into a thriving business…despite the naysayers.
2. Entrepreneurs are all crazy risk takers.
Not true, well they may be a little bit crazy, but many of these entrepreneurs carefully charted their courses and tried to wring out as much risk as they could every step of the way. It’s one thing to swing wildly for the fences and quite another to be around year after year and stand the test of time.
3. Stay the course.
No way…if you don’t like the movie, get up and leave! Often, entrepreneurs are confronted with a challenge to their business; a physical disaster, no funding, no customers! The choice of just “keep doing what you are doing” is clearly a dead end. Re-invent yourself and figure out new and better ways to sustain, survive and thrive!
4. Entrepreneurs are born, not made.
This is a raging debate, but I’m sure that many entrepreneurs saw the light when they met opportunity at some crossroad and decided to take the plunge…whether it was in their DNA or an acquired talent is a case-by-case discussion.
5. Entrepreneurs all fly at 30, 000 feet.
Let someone else take care of the details.
6. Now is a bad time to start a business.
If one is looking for reasons not to jump in, there are always plenty. Bad economy, lack of capital, intense competition, too much regulation, and the list goes on. There is no time like the present, so get inspired!
3 Ways Social Media Can Help You Show Up in Search Results
Social media is changing the search engine world. The art and science known as search engine optimization is shifting to include social media. There are several ways this impacts your business.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about making sure that your website appeals to the search engines. Typically, that means original and regular content, proper titles and tags in the HTML code itself, and having other authoritative sites link back to yours. Now, social media has become a new category within that specialty because Google, Bing and Yahoo (among others) index or pay attention to social media activity, like tweets and status updates.
Here are three easy ways to optimize your social media for search.
1. Set your part of your Facebook profile to public
As many of you know, Facebook content does not easily show up in Google search results. Some of it does, if you spend time making things public in your privacy settings. But one area that is overlooked is your profile section: the “Info” section, which has an area for website links. You want this to show up in search if you are looking for traffic to your website.
2. Align keywords with social media campaigns
Many companies spend money on pay-per-click advertising and researching specific, relevant keywords to use in those paid campaigns. You should do the same thing with your social media efforts. This isn’t to say that every tweet or Facebook post should be massaged into keyword-rich shape, however, you should at least consider if your social media activity includes important, strategic brand mentions. Tailor your content and keywords to audiences in each social media channel. As you do, people who follow those terms will “like” your post or retweet your message and those are showing up within search results. Sometimes it shows up in Google as “Someone in your network” shared this content.
3. Monitor social media mentions
The main point is to monitor these mentions and then engage. Use them as a way to jump into new conversations. From a customer service perspective, you simply must monitor. You see large brands like Dell, Best Buy, and many others monitoring and interacting via Twitter. I test this all the time. I’ll mention a brand as part of a review cycle and see who answers quickly. You’ll see more monitoring and engagement teams on Facebook and Google+ in the near future. Remember, social media mentions by you, your fans, and your detractors, are showing up in the search results.
Overall, social media is not happening in a vacuum. We tend to see it as dramatically different or separate from search engine optimization and other marketing efforts, but it isn’t. Social media is impacting your marketing activities even if you don’t yet see that impact.
TJ McCue Owner, TechBizTalk.com
Is CEO compensation part of the economic crisis that exists today?
This week a study was concluded by a Washington think tank that
found 25% of the 100 highest paid U.S. CEO’s earned more last year than their
companies paid in federal income tax. Executive pay disclosure rules adopted in
the wake of the 2008 financial crash have everyone in Corporate America going
ballistic. Almost all analysts now believe that runaway executive pay, played
a key driving role in the run-up to the Great Recession. Executive pay
excesses, as President Obama has put it, “have contributed to a reckless
culture.”
To what extent do you believe the problems in CEO compensation
lead to the economic crisis that exists today?
Are you overloaded by Social Media?
Social media is fun. Social media is a great way to connect with other like minded people. Social media is a great way to interact with potential clients and customers for your business. But what are you supposed to do when social media becomes too time consuming and wraps up the vast majority of your time and you’ve been sucked into the black hole and cannot seem to get out long enough to keep your business floating? “Social Media Experts” and others will tell you that you need to get with the latest and greatest. Being everywhere at all times is time-consuming. So to help you avoid suffering from overload, here are a few “affirmations” that will help you focus your efforts and help you decide what sites you will jump in on, or pass up.
Social Media is a great TOOL for business – not the business itself
Currently, social media is something most businesses need to spend some time to focusing on in order to leverage it correctly, but while this is important you should also remember that a company is not solely built off social media. Balance. Balance. Balance. Social media is a great way to connect with potential clients and interact with people who can become part of your tribe and help broadcast your business to even more people. But social media is not the entire business, as you may have rudely found out. Finding balance is the key to a happy relationship in your home, at your job or with yourself. Finding that balance can be a bit harder than it sounds though.
Limiting your social media time
I know some people who spend 3-4 hours tweeting each day, while others only tweet for an hour or so while they’re stumbling and looking for other interesting links to read. Still some are on Facebook multiple times throughout the day, and it adds up. Set a limit of the time you spend on social media for the rest of August. Perhaps start with 1.5 hours a day; 45 in the morning and 45 when you wrap up your day.
Life will go on
Look, I know it’s tempting to sweat all of your Twitter followers or your Facebook Friends for a Google+ invite. The numbers of kool-aid drinkers sign-ups they have achieved in their first month are greater than what it took Twitter and Facebook years to accomplish. Plus, (pun intended) Google+ is still technically a “field test” meaning that Google is merely trying stuff out and seeing what sticks. So, the allure of trying to get in is…alluring. But if you never get an invite, or fail to completely adopt Google+ it will not be the end of the world. The same information being shared on Google+ is the same information that can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Tagged, and every other site you can think of. It will just be arranged differently. So relax, if you never jump on Google+, it’s not that deep.
Go with what you know
Which leads me to my next point: If you are a Tweeting God, or have fifty thousand Facebook friends, or already schooling folks on how you think Google+ is doing the most, and you feel informed, engaged, productive and just plain ol’ comfortable using those sites, work those and forget the rest. Spreading yourself too thin by trying to be involved in every conversation on every site is not a good look. So relax, you will miss something on your go-to platform if you are trying to be the King/Queen of all Social Media…It’s not that deep.
There will ALWAYS be something new
Tomorrow will come and the next new social networking site is currently being brainstormed in college dorms, incubated at start-up accelerators, pitched to venture capitalists and angel funds, and being spread around by PR Firms. So if you’re glad you’ve missed out on the insane amount of tweets that currently flood your average Twitter timeline, or can’t stand all of your family members answering “Questions” about you, your ideal social networking platform is coming. You may have to tune out all the noise that comes with people swearing by their weapon of choice. So relax, the “new hotness” will arrive. So right now, it’s just not THAT deep.
Anyone else have an issue with social media? Please share with us.
A recent study by BtoB Magazine states that 93% of all B2B marketers engage in some form of social media marketing, with most of the focus on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Marketers favor these three social media channels, and they rank as follows, LinkedIn – 72%, Facebook – 71% and Twitter – 67%. Let’s not forget other popular channels used by marketers; YouTube, blogs and communities.
Despite being used by 67% of B2B marketers, Twitter was only the top channel for 13%, perhaps showing that Twitter is an important piece of the overall social marketing picture but not the best channel for B2B marketers to find value. According to survey participants, many marketers only see Twitter as a way to support website traffic and product/event promotions.
Challenges:
When B2B marketers were asked to identify their top three obstacles to adopting social media marketing, 70% identified a lack of resources as being the biggest obstacle. Other challenges faced by marketers include: poorly defined success metrics and key performance indicators (57%), lack of knowledge about social media (44%) and management resistance (22%).
Measurement:
One of the most interesting statistic to come out of the report is the lack of measurement by B2B marketers. About 75% of B2B marketers who conduct social marketing say they do not measure the ROI of their social marketing programs.
The Study:
This results of BtoB’s exclusive research study Emerging Trends in B-to-B Social Media Marketing: Insights From the Field focuses on how B2B marketers are leveraging social media. Conducted in March 2011 and based on the responses of 577 B2B marketers, this study not only looks at the demand for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter but how marketers are using the unique applications to their best advantage across all marketing functions.
Does this data match your social media experience for your B2B company?
Read more: http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/04/93-of-b2b-marketers-use-social-media-marketing/#ixzz1RYDbADPR
How to Use Facebook to Enchant Your Customers
The process of creating a deep, delightful, mutually-beneficial and voluntary relationship with customers is called enchanting them. From Dale Carnegie to Robert Cialdini, people have explained how to make this happen, and now there’s another tool for you to use. They’re called simply Facebook Pages (often called “fan pages”), and there’s never been an online tool as powerful for enchanting customers.
1. Be likable
Have you ever been enchanted by someone you didn’t like? Probably not. Thus, the starting point of using Facebook fan pages is to personify likability. This means every update, comment, picture, and video must be positive and uplifting—they should be the equivalent of a beaming smile. The pressure is on: you cannot have bad days on Facebook. If you want to wage war or argue with someone, do it privately with messages, e-mail or a phone call, but not in a public place like your Wall.
2. Be trustworthy
People can like someone, but still not trust them. Think of, for example, Hollywood celebrities. At an extreme, you could like Charlie Sheen, but not trust him. The way to gain trustworthiness on Facebook is to accept that the burden is on you to trust others before they trust you. You should think like a baker, not like an eater. Eaters see the world as a zero-sum game: if others have a bigger slice of the pie, then they get a smaller piece. Bakers, on the other hand, make bigger or more pies.
3. Create a great cause
Trust someone who’s tried to enchant people with great stuff and less-than-great stuff; it’s much easier to enchant people with a great product, service, idea or organization than with crap. A great cause is Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering, and Elegant (DICEE). Deep = lots of features and power; Intelligent = understanding and solving peoples’ problems; Complete = a total solution including documentation, revisions and support; Empowering = making people more creative, productive and efficient; Elegant = a beautiful and intuitive user interface.
4. Post pictures
On Twitter, my contributors and I focus on providing links to informative articles that people might not have seen. The primary value of following @GuyKawasaki is filtration and curation. At first, I did the same thing on Facebook, but there were few comments and “likes” for these updates. My theory is that Twitter is a link economy, and Facebook is not. Now, I post—and encourage fans to post—pictures. But pictures of what? Pictures of products, employees, customers and your office or building are obvious, but I would extend the range to whatever your customers might find interesting.
5. Optimize your thumbnails
You may be wondering: what should a business take pictures of? One of the consequences of the picture orientation of Facebook is that a picture the size of a postage stamp is crucial—it has to entice people into clicking to expand it. This means that you need to crop your photos and increase the level of brightness, exposure and contrast. Most of the time, you really don’t need to see people from head to toe, so get closer to your subjects and snap pictures from the chest up.
6. Answer every direct message
Speaking of a lot of work, you also need to answer all the direct messages to your account. This has nothing to do with your fan page per se, but it’s an integral part of enchanting people on Facebook. This is the hardest of my recommendations to fulfill because there’s isn’t an e-mail client like Outlook or Mail for Facebook to make responding efficient. I admit that I fail to heed my own recommendation here…
7. ABC: always be commenting
The ideal ratio of peoples’ comments to your responses is one-to-one. The exception is when there are many comments that are generic such as “Nice!” “Cool!” or “Love it!” Each of these doesn’t require a response, but when comments are more individualistic, jump in and comment back. People want to know that you’re reading your Wall and reacting to comments, so the three keys of commenting are: fast (within 24 hours); many (respond to everyone); and often (make commenting core to your Facebook activity). This is a lot of work, but enchanting people is a lot of work—otherwise more people and companies would be enchanting.
8. Show your gratitude
One type of comment that you should respond to every time is when a customer buys your product, uses your service, or does something for you. This goes back to likability: likable people are grateful for business and support. It may seem pedantic to you to keep saying thanks, but it’s not to the people you’re thanking. You may have thanked everyone else, but the person you missed or skipped will think you’re an ingrate. Anyway, you should be so lucky that showing your gratitude is a burden.
9. Use a “reveal tab” promotion
The most effective thing that I’ve done to increase the number of fans was to run a “reveal tab” promotion. This means that after people “liked” the Enchantment fan page, they were presented with a new landing tab. This landing tab provided a way to download the PDF of my first book, The Macintosh Way. Companies use a reveal-tab promotion to provide digital content, exclusive offers and discounts. It’s a way to reward people for becoming fans and to bring them into your community.
10. Repeat the proven stuff
When you hit the jackpot with a post (as you can see by the number of “likes” and comments), don’t be afraid to run it again. Yes, all the “social-media experts” will tell you that this is wrong and that doing so will upset your fans—leading to mass desertion from your fan page. But ask yourself this question: Do you read each and every update of each and every person or company that you “like” on Facebook? If so, you’re on Facebook too much. When you have a clear winner, run it again and see what happens.
One last power tip: sign out of your Facebook account and view your fan page from an account that isn’t an administrator. What you see as an administrator is not exactly what everyone else sees. You need to experience your fan page as most people do.
Guy Kawasaki Co-Founder, Alltop
Sizable Refund or Adjust Your Withholding?
While it makes the best fiscal sense to adjust your withholding and not rely on a sizable refund, many taxpayers believe they would probably spend it if they received it as they went and prefer to receive a refund, thinking of it as a type of forced savings. Is this something that you’ve contemplated throughout your experience of being a taxpayer? If so, please share your story and your opinion on the subject.
Downfall of Social Media
Interesting article by Manon Leroux
Social media is exciting, especially for marketers as we get a better understanding of the potential that lies within platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and etc. Unless you set some clear boundaries you could end up sucked in the endless stream of content and conversations that are happening every moment of every day, 24 hours a day, 7 day per week, 365 days per year.
I would imagine you probably get my point by now.
One sure way to avoid getting sucked in is to become disciplined with how you use these tools. For best result you need to implement specific actions that lead to specific results. Following are 5 steps that will help you avoid the downfall of social media:
- Set a goal this is the starting point of any good marketing campaign social media is no different, so many jump right in to realize that it takes time and although the use of these platform are free our time isn’t do they get discourage and dismiss social media as a time sucking waste of resources. What do you want to accomplish set one goal, this could be a simple as getting a specific # of followers or as complex as getting a specific # of sales. Of course skipping this step will have an impact on the whole system, the goal will determine the action plan as well as the metrics use to monitor the efforts…so DO NOT skip this.
- Know who you are looking for…same as any marketing knowing your target market is crucial although it is easy to get a whole bunch of followers (big #’s are impressive) but the reality is that quality out weights quantity as you are clear to your desired end result. Having this information is very helpful to search for your target audience, tools like Twittersearch, Facebook Groups make is easy to connect with like minded individuals.
So now that you know why (your goal) and who (your target audience) it is time to put together a mix of ingredients so your recipe brings you results not frustrations. Important ingredients are as follow:
- Provide quality content
- Monitor your brand
- Listen and engage to build relationships
- Monitor your efforts
With this list in mind it is advised to map yourself a plan, here are some suggestions that can help you accomplish that:
- Establish how much content will you share per day and per week, this helps to per-schedule your post all at the same time. (Bulking this process is much more productive).
- Check daily of @mentions, replies and DM’s, you can sign up for a monitoring platform such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite (these are free to use) you can easily see if anybody is talking about your brand, services, products. Setting this up with the intention of monitoring you can check in daily and quickly respond to any questions and or problems.
- Acknowledge daily your new followers and connect with them this a simple way to start engaging (you will be surprise how little it takes and how big of an impact it can have)
- Consistently follow targeted people once or twice a week.
- Create a tracking spreadsheet for your results, if building your community is your goal, and then keep track of how many new followers you are getting. By seeing the results you can then modify you efforts if need be, maybe more content sharing is what’s missing or following more people daily, whatever it is at least you know and can act on it.
About the Author, Manon Leroux
Manon Leroux is the Founder of Savvy Social Solutions, a Social Media management and consulting company in Canada. Passionate about helping individuals and businesses get started marketing themselves online using social tools. Manon also freelances as a social media marketer, helping restaurants and retailers in her home town of Toronto Canada. She writes about her lessons in being a community manager, entrepreneur and anything to do with social media on her blog and can be reached via her many social networks..
Tips for those who hate tax season, but love the refunds
Ten Essential Tips For Those Who Hate Tax Season, But Love the Refunds
A recent national survey conducted on behalf of IHateFinancialPlanning.com, a new personal finance Web site, concluded that 77 percent of Americans hate financial planning and 72 percent don’t have a financial plan for the future.
According to Judy Lissick, vice president with IHateFinancialPlanning.com, now would be a good time to make a Tax Day Resolution – vow to get your arms around your finances once and for all. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Quit overpaying your taxes. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the average tax refund in 1999 was $1,589. If you’re someone who looks forward to this once-a-year cash bonus, you should understand the consequences. By overpaying your taxes, you’re giving the government an interest-free loan. Lower your W-4 withholding and you’ll receive more money from each paycheck. Instead of giving this money to the government each month, you can invest the extra dollars in your company retirement plan, an IRA or a mutual fund. To quit overpaying your taxes and lower your withholdings, ask the accounting or human resources department at your employer for a new W-4 form.
- Timing is everything. By law, employers are required to distribute W-2 forms by Jan. 31. If you’re expecting a refund, be sure to file early. The sooner you file, the sooner you’ll receive your refund, which you can use to pay down debt or invest. Likewise, if you owe money, it’s smart to wait until the April 15th deadline (this year it’s midnight, Monday April 17th because April 15th falls on a Saturday).
- File electronically. Not only is it faster and more accurate to file electronically, you can get your refund in half the time, according to the IRS. In addition, filing electronically allows you to deduct your tax preparation fees from your refund and receive proof from the IRS that they’ve received your return. To file electronically, visit www.irs.gov.
- Explore IRA options. Confused about Roth IRAs, deductible IRAs, non-deductible IRAs? The bottom line with IRAs is that they provide tax advantages to set aside money for retirement. For example, by contributing to a Roth IRA, you don’t pay income tax when you withdraw the money (including gains, dividends and interest) assuming you are age 59- and the account has been open for five years. If your annual income is less than $95,000 for a single taxpayer or $150,000 for married couples filing jointly, you can contribute up to $2,000 per year, per person to a Roth IRA. In addition, you have until April 15 to contribute to an IRA (traditional or Roth) to reduce your tax burden for the previous year.
5. Don’t skip tax deductions. It no longer requires a lot of homework and complicated forms to take a deduction. By preparing your taxes online or purchasing tax preparation software, you can learn the ins and outs of the tax code. Did you know you can deduct your expenses if you started a small business, enrolled in continuing education courses, paid a child care provider or incurred travel expenses while volunteering? Be sure to keep records of these expenses and document your contributions. And keep in mind that if your charitable contribution is more than $250, you’ll need written documentation from the charity.
6. Keep a paper trail. Start a filing system for all paperwork (charitable receipts, un-reimbursed employee business expenses). As a general rule of thumb, you should keep financial records (tax forms, investment statements, bank statements, proof of deductions, etc.) for at least six years. Although the IRS has up to three years to initiate an audit, if they suspect income has been misreported by greater than 25 percent, they have up to six years. Therefore, any records pertaining to capital gains and capital losses, or the carryover of capital losses or charitable deductions, should be retained until they are no longer pertinent.
7. Max out your 401(k). If you’re working, you should be contributing to your employer’s 401(k) retirement plan. This is your best opportunity to take advantage of tax-deferred savings and contributions from your employer. Ideally you should contribute the full amount that you can, but at the very least, contribute up to the match offered by your employer – that’s free money!
8. Live within your means. Spending less than you earn is the key to any financial plan. Experts recommend that if you’re working, you should be saving 10 percent of your annual pretax income. After you’ve maximized your 401(k), consider an automatic withdrawal from your paycheck into an investment program. By lowering your take-home check, you’ll train yourself to spend less, just as you did when you were making less money. If you receive a raise, before you get into the habit of spending it, increase your automatic investment.
9. Time your income wisely. If you’re thinking about selling stock that will result in a large capital gain, consider postponing the sale until next year or balancing the gain with a loss from another sale. Similarly, consider the timing of your year-end bonus. Your employer may be willing to postpone the payment of your bonus check until the new year, which would avoid paying higher taxes this year.
10. Move your money from low- or non-interest paying accounts. According to the American Bankers Association, Americans keep $700 billion in commercial bank accounts that pay little or no interest. Millions more earn 2 percent or less. Alternatives to low- or non-interest paying accounts include credit unions or mutual funds. A good starting point is a money-market mutual fund paying 4.5 to 5 percent that offers immediate access to your contributions. Online investment sites now make it affordable (as low as $25 per month) to start a regular and rewarding investment program. Credit unions are typically sponsored by employers, unions, community groups or churches and are much easier to join thanks to new federal laws. Stop giving away money and start investing.
