Social Media Marketing

A Personal and Real Twitter Account Will Not Be Closed

It doesn’t matter if your main purpose when using Twitter is to market a product or a service — that’s still does not constitute an excuse for being so careless in your tweeting that you end up stirring up the ire of powerful official Twitter Account Closers. In plainer terms, even if your marketing is not ever going to boast the most personal of outreach methods, you can still keep said methods in line with accepted Twitter rules. Doing so is actually very important because it will ensure that your account is not permanently shut down.

First words from the wise when engaging in Twitter marketing: Do not become a transgressor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The papery bulk was made official law in 1998 and should continue to be respected until through due process it is changed. Include yourself among its line touter and you will be doing much towards your account not being closed.

Another thing to be aware of is that Twitter does not look too kindly on accounts that have many duplicate posts or updates. Massive duplication is interpreted as spam, so avoid posting the same thing more than once. Occasional duplicate posts will not shut you down, but if the duplication is massive, then you probably will be.

Last few words from those in the know: Do not engage in massive Following or Unfollowing sessions. Both acts are frowned upon by Twitter officials; and, again, they’re related to spamming activities. Next, you also want to sidestep posting links all by their lonely selves. If you need many links up on your account, include them but lace them with personal touches. These can be comments about anything, really, just demonstrate that it is a person that’s writing the tweet, not some inanimate machine.

Marketing techniques can sometimes come perilously close to being taken for spamming activity. Spam in the bane of the web so it makes sense for Twitter to be on the lookout for it. Don’t get caught up in these crosshairs. You’ll keep your account soundly tweeting by abiding by the aforementioned points. Keep your tweets personal and real. Much luck!

Social Media Marketing

Twitter Your Way to Improved Brand Recognition

Want to try a proven way of increasing brand visibility and bettering your search engine ranking? Then it’s time to start a Twitter marketing campaign. Twitter, with its steady stream of micro-blog postings, or tweets, provides an excellent platform to build up a stronger and more committed customer base. Tweets can be used to introduce would-be customers to your brand and to engage existing customers through on-going, interactive, and digital conversation.

If you require some technical assistance or pointers for optimized marketing, it’s possible to contact someone like the folks over at iClimber. They not only offer 30-minute training sessions over the phone for Twitter, but they can also create your Twitter account for you and manage your posts. According to their website they will create 40-150 Twitter postings each month for your account (you select how regularly you’d like your postings to appear); the postings will be about favorable topical industry issues and, quite crucially, link to your business website, blog postings, and press releases. Twitter has the potential to significantly expand your customer base through consistent, powerful, and easy-to-swallow advertising.

There’s no reason to not do everything you can to better the reach of your brand or your search engine ranking. Get started on Twitter to foster loyal Twitter and brand followers.

Social Media Marketing

3 Relationships Building Tips in Social Media

Just as much as social media is about starting a conversation, it is important to keep in mind that it should be used to build relationships as well. This takes time. Yes, to convert skeptics into promoters and brand builders.

So, here are 3 relationships building tips that a company can follow:

#1: Avoid “faking” – be real instead

Insulting your audience’s intelligence is one of the worst things that you can do . It’s all been tried before – by creating fake profiles, blogs or even writing fake reviews, and they’ve been caught red-handed sooner or later.

#2: Listening is the key

Social media will help you to find out what you customers are saying, no matter how bitter the truth might be. What’s more – if you are able to listen carefully and show understanding while resolving their problem, the negativity press can turn out to WIN-WIN situation for the both of you. Most experts agree that this is one of the best ways by which you can find out how your customers feel about your product or service – thus, keeping you on your toes.

#3: Dedicating resources will speed up the process

Since one person can’t handle relationship building, dedicating a team for this very purpose is an excellent idea with unimaginable benefits in the future, if handled correctly. Since tasks can be anything from writing blogs for your site, leaving comments, uploading photos, reading blogs, managing friends’ lists, joining groups or even participating in forums, you can be sure that you will have to dedicate a team to speed up the process of relationship building.

Social Media Marketing

Three Relationships Building Tips in Social Media

Just as much as social media is about starting a conversation, it is important to keep in mind that it should be used to build relationships as well. This takes time. Yes, to convert skeptics into promoters and brand builders.

So, here are 3 relationships building tips that a company can follow:

#1: Avoid “faking” – be real instead
Insulting your audience’s intelligence is one of the worst things that you can do . It’s all been tried before – by creating fake profiles, blogs or even writing fake reviews, and they’ve been caught red-handed sooner or later.

#2: Listening is the key
Social media will help you to find out what you customers are saying, no matter how bitter the truth might be. What’s more – if you are able to listen carefully and show understanding while resolving their problem, the negativity press can turn out to WIN-WIN situation for the both of you. Most experts agree that this is one of the best ways by which you can find out how your customers feel about your product or service – thus, keeping you on your toes.

#3: Dedicating resources will speed up the process
Since one person can’t handle relationship building, dedicating a team for this very purpose is an excellent idea with unimaginable benefits in the future, if handled correctly. Since tasks can be anything from writing blogs for your site, leaving comments, uploading photos, reading blogs, managing friends’ lists, joining groups or even participating in forums, you can be sure that you will have to dedicate a team to speed up the process of relationship building.

Social Media Marketing

Essential Social Media Tips for Beginners

If you are a freelancer or run a business of your own, taking your first steps into social media as a beginner can be a confusing one as there are is a variety of strategies that you can choose from, and it can get confusing, to say the least.

What is for sure is that there is a learning curve that you must be willing to put in the time and efforts to learn (with great benefits, of course) and so here are a few social media tips that will help you get started with an appropriate strategy for greater reach and profitability:

Tip #1: The Importance of starting small

The best way to get started with your social media strategy is to start small even if it means using only two or three ways by which you can get your message across. It’s been observed that newbies often sign up for a lot of social media services only to struggle in keeping up with these services as they grow.

Tip #2: Building a number of followers the right way

There are several e-books out there that provide you with tips that can get you thousands of followers each day but most of the followers that you will get on your social media profile will be ‘bots’ and not the type that will engage in conversation with you on the social platform of your choice. Remember that it takes time to generate a large number of followers but these followers will be much better than the thousands of bots that you can generate in a day’s work.

Tip #3: Learn from the pros

Since learning about social media strategies isn’t just about following guides and books, there are certain people who are the real deal when it comes to developing social media strategies, and following these people can help you customize your social media profile with their innovative ideas.

Social Media Marketing

Is Google Plus a Facebook ‘killer’?

The highly anticipated Google+ Project has been launched and marks the entry of Google into the social media arena, and according to experts who have taken a tour of the features of this new Google product, will turn the rest of Google’s offerings into one giant social network.

There’s no doubt that this new social network targets Facebook as its competitor, and what it provides its users (even though it is restricted to invitation only) sets it apart from the popular Buzz and Orkut social media platforms that are being used these days.

Yet it’s going to take a while before Google+ can compete with the 700 million users of Facebook, there’s one of m any features that distinguishes it from Facebook in its current ‘avatar’: Circles.

Yes, you can create “circles” (smaller groups) that segregate your family members, colleagues, schoolmates for the purpose of being able to share specific information with each of these groups.

Until now, people would have to share information with everyone or message people in private if they wanted to convey information, and which can be a bit awkward especially in public – and this is where Google has customized the ability to share specific information with certain people only. Perhaps a feature that isn’t available on Facebook which makes one wonder why!

Now each of these Circles has their own streams (similar to Facebook’s Newsfeed) where you can share what you would like to each group without having to worry about any of the other groups seeing what you are sharing with the others.

Hangouts, a video group chat feature and Sparks, a search engine for hobbies are also two other features that this new social network has to offer, and even though the opportunity in this social network is by invitation only, people who are lucky enough to participate say that it is a winner alright.

Yet what is for sure is that there’s a long way to go before it threaten the reach of Facebook in the world of ‘social media’.

Social Media Marketing

Three Things to Remember When Using Social Media Networking For Business

Social media is becoming increasingly important to businesses these days as it introduces them to a world where there are several customers that are already looking for products or services that your company might offer.

However, with these benefits come certain caveats that people have to be cognizant of, and so here are a few things that you should keep in mind when using social media networking sites for your business:

#1: Whatever you post using these networking sites immediately go public, and one of the most important things that you must keep in mind is to keep your personal and business profile separate. Leaving comments that can be seen by both these groups might not be a very good idea.

#2: Keeping your social media site updated with the latest information is one of the most important tasks that you must follow up on. Imagine a potential customer visiting your page to find that the information regarding your product or service is outdated. That won’t necessarily set a good impression with them.

#3: Don’t hard sell

One of the most important things that you must remember is that using any of these social media sites is for the reason of “building leads” by using a forum (of sorts!). If you understand that this is more of a marketing initiative with the purpose of having people to get to know your company and products rather than pushing your products down people’s throats immediately, then that will be the right approach to using these online tools to get the word about your business out.

Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Learn How to Make Your Website Search Engine-Friendly at SES San Francisco

Is your website as search engine-friendly as it should be? If you don’t know the answer to this, chances are that it isn’t. A website architecture which makes it easy for major search engines like Google to find your content will increase the chances of higher placement and better results.

If you want to learn more about building websites that are as search engine-friendly as possible, you need to attend the “How to Architect a Search-Engine Friendly Website” training sessions at SES San Francisco on August 20. Taught by Omni Marketing Interactive founder and SEO director Shari Thurow, this session will teach you all of the tips and tricks to ensure that your website is as accessible to search engines as possible.

The half-day session covers such topics as information, site, navigation design and webpage architecture and how they relate to SEO. Learn something new if you are a veteran webmaster or someone with no HTML experience! Visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanfrancisco/training.php for more information on this powerful training session at SES San Francisco.

Genreal, Social Media Marketing

Using Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Twitter is a fantastic medium to get through to a wide spectrum of people. While it started off as micro-blogging tool which was to let people stay in touch with each other and let everyone know what they were doing, it has now turned into an excellent marketing tool. Users from all walks of life like politicians, musicians, authors, internet gurus, etc use it to promote themselves.

The important thing to note here is that the smart ones will never ever say “do this because I say so” or “buy my album – it’s great” or any such thing. Twitter marketing is about being subtle. The celebrities are using it simply as a way to keep their name in the top of people’s minds. For example it’s a long time since Soleil Moon Frye did anything big, but she constantly Tweets and therefore people still remember her.

If you want to push your product using Twitter, you have to understand that it is a gradual process that has to be carefully attended to. For example if you are selling Red Roses, you should search with the keywords that are relevant to that matter – like “red roses”, “flowers”, “fresh flowers”, etc. Then pick the people with the largest amount of followers – these are your base accounts. Now start following the people who are following your base accounts.

From this point make your Tweets interesting. Any reference to the fact that you sell flowers should appear somewhere down the line. For now ask questions, post links to interesting plant & flower articles and most importantly reply to other people’s Tweets and engage them. The key thing here is to build relationships.
Now you can slowly start dropping in a Tweet about your business activities. Perhaps one in 5 or more Tweets is the best way to go about it.

For those in need of professional social media marketing services, iClimber offers Twitter Marketing & Promotion services.

Featured, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Achieving success with Social Media Marketing

Using Social Media to do online marketing is being done on a large scale. You may not even be aware of it, but your are part of the target market for someone and therefore you are being subject to some sort of Social Media Marketing every time you use a Social Network.

The trick is being subtle and using a lot of finesse. Try out these simple tips and see the results for yourself.

1. Hit the right target audience. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then your marketing efforts simply boil down to shooting in the dark. Very few products appeal to every age group. Even in that situation, your marketing efforts should be tailored to suit those age groups. For example if you sell high performance mountain bikes, your target audience is generally between 14-35 years in age. Even this can be broken down in to a 14-19, 20-35 demographic and targeted differently.

2. Add value. Communicate with this target group. Figure out their likes and dislikes of the product, what they want, what they need, etc. Then try to figure out how you can give them what they want. This is what will make you unique when you eventually start selling. In the meantime give them as much information as you can in helpful videos, articles, advice etc. Basically you have to appear as a Guru in the making.

3. Get personal. Have one to one discussions with people from the target group. While this maybe time consuming, the bond you form will help you get a sure sale when the time comes. Once they do become your customers, this bond will prompt them to promote the product for you as well.

If you need professional help, we recommend the social media marketing services by iClimber.