maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Many businesses have realized that social media marketing is an important tool to have in their marketing tool belt. One of the problems businesses have, SMBs in particular, is that there are just not enough hours in the day to add more things to do, monitor, listen to, update, post, blog et. al. Most SMBs don’t have marketing departments, copywriters or the extra manpower to add more work to do by participating in this rapidly changing online social landscape.

Using this space and using it well is tough to do. Twitter alone is raw and happening at rapid tweets per second. A major part of using Twitter well for your business is making sure you have a loyal, interested and active list of people you are following and who are following you. Remember, this is networking not broadcasting. It is usually better to have a small active Twitter following who reads, reacts and republishes your content versus having thousands of followers but none of them contribute to your effort.

Each morning as I drink my coffee, I check for any new followers on my Twitter accounts (@Hall_Web and @amanda_pants). I manually (that is by hand not a plugin or bot that follows back anyone who is following me) check each new follower.

I look at lots of things when determining whether or not to follow someone back and with a collection of all the information, I make my decision.

Here is what I look for before following back a new follower:

• Avatar or image – Does the person have a picture? Is that picture of them, their face, a logo?
• Location – Is the person from my geographic location? Are they from someplace I have lived, traveled to, am interested in, do business in?
• Recent Tweets – What kind of content do they publish? Are they conversational or are they simply broadcasting?
• Number of Followers and Following – Do they have tens of thousands of followers? Unless they are super important or famous, they probably used some type of bot of following scheme to garner so many followers.
• Twitter lists – How many are they listed on and what topics are they listed for?

Twitter Lists

Twitter lists are pretty new. When they were first rolled out, not many people knew what to do with them, some thought they would hurt already standing Twitter traditions and some just plain old didn’t like them. Since the dust has settled, I have found Twitter lists very useful in determining if I am going to follow someone on Twitter.

First – How many lists are they on? The act of creating a list and adding people you want to it takes time. Someone took enough time to create this list and categorize this person because they wanted to organize or bookmark this person’s information. Time = Value in my mind. A human being took the time to categorize my content. I think that is a big deal. I have looked around and if you can get 5-10% of your followers to add you to a list, I think that is pretty good.

Second – What lists in particular are they on? Consider what lists people are on. Is their expertise something you are hoping to learn more about? Are they in your industry, local market, attending an event you are attending? Or perhaps they could just clog your Twitter stream with information you are not looking for.

This is also a good way to monitor your own Twitter content. If you consider yourself a Social Media Expert and you are being listed as an SEO expert, you could be sending people the wrong message (or tweets). If you are an HR Blogger and people are listing you as social media expert, whiskey connoisseur, running blogger and the list goes on and on, you could be sending mixed messages. By talking about all of your interests you may have diluted your message.

This is just one way I try to keep my Twitter efforts organized and make sure I am following and being followed by good people. I want both parties to benefit from this relationship. What other precautions or tips do you have for streamlining your Twitter efforts?

Photo Credit: ilevin

Perhaps you are just now getting to signing up for a Twitter account. More likely is that when you joined Twitter, you were not sure what you were going to do with this space so you chose a name you are less than excited about now. Many people choose a nickname or a confusing combination of numbers and letters, and find that it’s not appropriate to be using for marketing their business.

So what happens when you find a username you want and someone else is using it? Even worse, what happens when someone has your company name and they aren’t even using the account?

Name squatting is against the Twitter rules. Unfortunately there is little Twitter can do about the inconvenience unless you are covered under the terms of service or if someone is impersonating you. If you have your name trademarked you can email terms@twitter.com to let them know that you own the trademarked name. With any type of interaction like this you should provide all documentation you have and perhaps screen shots of the account you are discussing.

Before making your claim, it is important to understand what you are asking for. For more information about the difference between name squatting, impersonation or trademark infringement read this post from how-to-blog.tv, which also includes Twitter’s snail mail address and fax number.

Twitter is always working on releasing all usernames attached to accounts that have been inactive for more than 18 months. An account is considered a squatter if the account hasn’t been logged into or updated for 6 months. An account that has no activity, followers or people they are following can be immediately removed because they are considered squatting. Finding and ousting squatters is a manual process and can take weeks for Twitter to implement.

If you think you deserve a username that looks like it’s being squatted you can submit a request for someone to review the account.

Taking matters into your own hands

In some circumstances people feel it is best to take matters into their own hands. If you want you can contact the user and ask them to drop the name (politely of course). Send them an @ reply or DM (direct message) pleading your case. If you don’t hear from them on Twitter, try following the link to their website and see if there is a better way to talk to someone there.

If you think it would be easier to reach out to the account owner on your own you should also be aware that any attempt to buy, sell or solicit compensation for a Twitter username is also considered a violation of policy and could be grounds for your account being suspended.

Lastly, if you have the people skills to pull it off, here is a Twitter list of staff members at Twitter. With a little time and networking skills you may be able to make a personal connection with someone in-house that can help you resolve your name squatter issue.

Few other things to remember…

• Try to get there first – Twitter will do its best to do what is right but the easiest way to avoid any of this hassle is to make sure you secure your name first. If you are not ready to take on a full Twitter strategy for your business just set up the account with your information, website, upload a logo and put one post up to secure your name and make sure you aren’t deemed a squatter. For a first post just say ‘Thank you for visiting us on Twitter. We are not quite up and running but if you have any questions please email us at email@company.com’.
• Keep your username short – Usernames can only be 15 characters long. The longer the username, the harder to RT someones content due to lack of spaces in a standard tweet.
• Pay someone else to secure your company name – It is possible to secure your company name on social networks with services like Claim.io
• Check the copyright of a name you want – Before you make a stink, check to make sure someone else doesn’t have the name you want already copyrighted. You can go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and search for existing trademarks.

Photo credit: Search Engine People Blog

Social Media is just conversations happening online. We have covered that. People are talking online with people they know and people they know only virtually. In those conversations they are also inadvertently reviewing products, services and looking for advice about their next purchasing decision.

By participating in social media in the B2B world you have the opportunity to reach new customers at a new touch point, share content about your company online in other spaces than just your website and the potential to create trust with your audience… All so when it comes time for a purchasing decision or expert advice, they come to you.

Should your company be participating in social media?

I have two things to answer that today:

1. Are your customers participating on social media sites? And are your BEST customers there?

   Figure that out first. Send out a survey with your next newsletter, have a conversation with your best customers, ask other people in your industry etc. Don’t set up your business on social media because your favorite author is or your marketing buddy told you to after your hike last weekend.Your company has a unique niche of people who use your products and services (doesn’t it?).

   You are trying to reach those people and probably not your friend or your favorite author. I also just read a blog by Seth Godin, Some people are better than others. I like Seth’s blog because it makes me think. You aren’t just trying to reach everyone but your best customers.

2. What are you missing out on by not participatingIn Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s book Trust Agents, they remind us that you will survive if you don’t participate in social media. You will probably be just fine actually. What you need to weigh out is what potentially will you be missing out on by not being a part of these online discussions?Tom Hall has had great success using LinkedIn to foster business relationships, I have put quite a few people in our sales lead column through Twitter. Social Media is a tool that we find very valuable for both B2B and B2C industries.

   Use tools like Google Blog Search, Twitter Search and the new social searches to see if people are talking about your business right now. Is there benefit for you to be participating in social media to react and respond to content in these networks?

All the world a Twitter

The social network we get asked about the most is Twitter. It is still pretty new, it is unlike anything else we have seen yet and those who are participating seem to be addicted and that is all they can talk about.

Unlike any other social network, on Twitter you choose to ‘follow’ people or not by the content they produce (their tweets). Sometimes you follow people because of their geographic location, their picture or because you know them ‘in real life’ but generally people find people to follow (or subscribe to) strictly on their content they produce.

This unique phenomenon is still being figured out but I am seeing some really great work done by people in the B2B space who are using Twitter effectively. I will be doing a webinar next month Tweeting For Your Business! An introduction to Twitter.

Laura Fitton aka @Pistachio, co-author of Twitter for Dummies, tackled the “Twitter for B2B” question recently. A video of her interview with Jeff Cohen from Social Media B2B is on his site. Check out her interview here.

After The Big Conference last week here in Portland, I had the idea of changing what I’ve been doing on Twitter a little and start following conversations about SEO on Twitter and responding to questions and concerns that people had.  So I added a Twitter Search column for “SEO” and “Google Rankings” to see what would turn up.

The outcome of this experiment was at once both enlightening and alarming.  The amount of misinformation that’s still out there about SEO is shocking and left me hoping that the people feeding this stuff out have as few followers as possible.

What I Observered (Not Necessarily Scientific)

#seo and “seo” seem to be used largely by SEO companies, not by ordinary people.  Of the 1000s of posts I reviewed, roughly half were links to blog posts, created by and promoted by a search company (or consultant, or so-called “expert”).  Approximately 10% were direct solicitations with no benefit to the reader (“Do you need free SEO advice regarding your website? Just let me know and I can help with free tools and help anytime. Thats right, free!” or this gem: “Link Builders pls add me for Link Exchange at xxx@xxxx.com.”  The remaining 10% was split between foreign language tweets and legitimate questions and chatter.

“Google Rankings” was better, with a large number of terms being people talking about how to improve Google Rankings or wondering why their Google Rankings suddenly tanked.  Unlike SEO, which seems to suck in black hats like a magnet, much of the chatter here seemed legitimate (if not always accurate).

SEO myths still being propagated by Twitter?

• Submitting your website to Google and Yahoo is still important (it’s not, way not!)
• META Keywords are still important.  Um, no.
• The META Refresh command is an acceptable way to redirect a website.  No!  Use 301 redirects.
• Reciprocal links, links pages, and link directories are good link building strategies.  They aren’t.
• You can buy your way into Google Organic results.  Eh?  Seriously, there are articles out there that seem to blur the definition of organic search and pay per click.

I also learned some fun things – “Google Slap” seems to be a trending term, and I came across the Derek Powazek SEO controversy as it was unfolding.

The key takeaway? “SEO” is a word used by those in the know, and good luck separating the wheat from the chaff if you’re using Twitter to start your education about search engines.  That said, organic search is more important than ever for businesses and seeing how wild west the landscape still is re-affirmed the importance of putting out good quality and useful information out there.