Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Are you using Twitter to market your business? Are you looking for new people to follow that will hopefully become future customers? Do you think people tweeting near you may, at some point, be your customers?

Why is finding local Tweets beneficial?

• Target nearby Twitter users to encourage them to come to your store
• Build Twitter followers and fans of your brand by connecting with them
• Keep up on local events and promotions that you should/could participate in
• Pay it forward by helping out a neighbor that is looking for advice, a product or just a good place to eat around town
• Connect with people who share your interests locally

There are a few ways to look for Twitter users that are near your geographic area.

Here are three:

1. Try using Bing’s fancy mapto see who is tweeting in your area.
2. Try doing an Advanced Twitter searchfor people tweeting about particular things within a given area.
3. Use Tweets by City to see who is Tweeting from your city or about your city.

Happy local Tweeting!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

You many have noticed something kind of cool on Monica’s post yesterday. When Monica referenced Elisabeth Osmeloski’s tweet about Google+ effecting search results, instead of being a hyperlink to the tweet on Twitter, we could actually embed the tweet right into the post!

In the past few weeks Twitter has done a lot of design changes to it’s mobile applications and website. One of these changes was making it possible to take a single tweet and embed it onto a website. All you need to do is copy and paste the line of code and you can have the tweet right on your website. If you have a WordPress blog, all you need to do is copy the link and paste it. Now from your site people can reply, retweet, favorite and follow the person who wrote the tweet.

Pretty cool right?

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series.

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

I love the end of a year. I love the holidays. I love the fresh start feel of a new year. I LOVE end of the year lists! This week Techcrunch shared with us the Top Twitter Hashtags of 2011.

A hashtag (#) is a way to mark a conversation on Twitter. Then you can refer to that content later and/or connect with other people who are using the hashtag. To learn more about Hashtags you can read What is a #Hashtag or How to Use Twitter Hashtags and Search to Make your Twitter Experience More Valuable.

So without further ado, here are the top Twitter Hashtags of 2011

1. egypt
2. tigerblood
3. threewordstoliveby
4. idontunderstandwhy
5. japan
6. improudtosay
7. superbowl
8. jan25

So Twitterers were talking about Egyptian revolution, Charlie Sheen (#WINNING), memes, sports and the devastation in Japan. Actually pretty well rounded when you compare it to the top web searches of the year, which is dominated by celebrity names.

So that is what people were tweeting about this year. I found the list from 2010 and 2011 was definitely a more serious list of hashtags. Interesting how Twitter is becoming a voice for change all over the world. Wonder what we will all be tweeting about next year.

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

The other night I got to go speak to a great group of Credit Unions about Social Media Best Practices. As I was preparing my presentation, I was happy to find that there is a specific TweetChat exclusively for Credit Unions looking to use social media. What a cool way to connect with your peers on a topic and learn from each other!

If you are not familiar, a TweetChat is usually an organized regular event. The participants have a determined time to ‘meet’ on Twitter and discuss a certain topic. To mark their conversations, they use a hashtag. What you have is a large group chat and you can discuss your topic in real time with people from all over the world.

Why would you want to participate in a Tweet Chat?

1. Network with people like you all over the world – You can attend a Tweet Chat from anywhere. In your specific industry, you may have very different needs, customers, challenges and opportunities. Sometimes the most helpful ideas come from people who understand where you are coming from the best.
2. Establish yourself as an expert and build your network – An idea that may seem obvious to you could have been bogging someone else down for months. Share your experiences with your peers and establish yourself as an expert.
3. Get traffic to your blog and/or website – As you are meeting all these new people on Twitter, you can refer them to blog posts or services you provide around the topic you as a group are discussing. Also, just by networking with new people, you will generate some interest and traffic as they take a look to see who you are and what you are up to.
4. Get more qualified followers – If Twitter is merely a numbers game for you, you are probably not using it to it’s full potential. How many followers you have isn’t as important as WHO those followers are. By participating in a TweetChat, you will meet real people who share your interests, work in your industry, are experienced Twitter users and it will, in turn, boost your number of quality followers.

Participating in a TweetChat

Tweet chats can be whenever. Most are set to particular days and times of the week. Some have the same moderator each week while others cycle through guest moderators for a different feel each chat. Most TweetChats run about one hour.

So how do you find a good TweetChat for you? There is a pretty reliable schedule of TweetChats that you can refer to. Once you try one out, you may find others people like to recommend specifically for the topic you are most interested in.

Where to start?

Some of the more popular business TweetChats are:

• #blogchat, Sundays 9P EST – all about blogging. Mack Collier brings in some great guest moderators. This is a very popular one so be prepared to read a lot of tweets.
• #smallbizchat, Wednesdays 8P EST – for small businesses and startups.
• #B2Bchat, Thursdays 8P EST – a chat specifically for those of us in B2B industries.
• #LeadershipChat, Tuesdays 9P EST – leadership themed.

Some of these chats are more popular than others and keeping up can seem overwhelming. To keep up with a TweetChat you can either just use a Twitter search or if it is a popular one, use the service TweetChat to keep up with rapid tweets.

The first few times may seem a little odd but once you get into the swing of things you will really come to appreciate some of the conversations you have and people you ‘meet’. If you don’t feel like you have anything to say, feel free to linger in a chat until you do. As with all of your social media marketing and content – make sure when you participate you are adding value to the conversation!

Photo credit: opensourceway