Help Archives - Page 10 of 11

Oct 16 2015

How Entrepreneurs can Use Twitter for Business

Most small business owners and entrepreneurs may not have the money or resources for a dedicated marketing team. Fortunately, the miracle known as social media allows you to level the playing field and play like the big guys with the big budgets for marketing. Today I’m going to show you how you can leverage Twitter for business purposes.

Using Twitter to learn

As a small business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. One question that plagues us all is “Where am I going to get the time to keep up with industry information?” Here’s an idea – leverage what others know. How do you find out what they know? Twitter.

You can use Twitter to catch up with what’s going on in your industry. There are usually plenty of online discussions that you can read—and even join—so that you’re always in the loop. Try looking for industry-related hashtags as a first step.

Using Twitter for business connections

The beauty of Twitter is that you can interact on both a one-to-many basis (as with hashtags) or on a one-on-one basis. Twitter’s best benefit for your small business is that you can connect to both customers and colleagues and form bonds without ever meeting them in person.

One effective way to do this is to share and acknowledge other people’s content. You’ll have your own content, of course, but putting yourself forward and helping others makes them notice you. If you’re genuine and friendly enough, they’ll start engaging with you and will be more willing to help you out. Who knows, you might even know them well enough to meet them in person.

Using Twitter to share and promote

When using Twitter for business promotion the best approach is to not sell, but to help.

What do I mean? The most interesting and valuable content gets shared. So focus on creating really cool and helpful stuff, whether it’s tweeting a clever and poignant quote, a blog post with actionable advice, or a compelling video.

Once you have that, then you can share it on Twitter. Remember to use hashtags.

Yes, you can share your own company information. Typically you want to do this in an 80/20 ratio. 80% of the time-share content that is from other people in your industry and is helpful to your audience. 20 of the time promote your own information/company/brand.

How often do you use Twitter for business? Do you tweet multiple times a day or week? Let me know by sending me a tweet at @jenkellyjen or @newimarketng. I’d love to learn from you.

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Oct 13 2015

Twitter 101: What is a blog and how do I share my blog on Twitter?

As a modern business owner, you know you need to have a strong web presence if you’re going to succeed. A great website is an excellent first step, but you need to constantly update it and keep things fresh so that your visitors can start to get to know, like and trust you before they choose to do business with you.

What is a blog?

Blogs are kind of like online diaries. Typically businesses use their blog to share the latest news about their company, comment and share their advice on the latest developments in the industry, and post helpful information for their existing and potential customers. They tend to be updated often, from daily to once a month.

What goes on a blog?

Business blogs run a gamut of topics and formats, but a business blog should always provide value to your customers. This could be in the form of how-to articles, industry insights, or even personal stories that your customers and readers can learn from.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be text-only, either. You can add video, audio, links to other blogs and downloads for your reader. The most important thing is finding a topic and format that your visitors will appreciate, find helpful and useful.

How do I share my blog post?

Once posted, your latest blog can’t just sit there on the website. You need to share it to help build awareness for your company. Also, sharing content helps with search engine ranking. Sharing it usually means using social media.

If you don’t yet have a social media account, find out which one (or ones) your customers are using. For the purpose of this article, we’re focused on Twitter.

Sharing content on Twitter

To share your content on Twitter, take some time to think of a compelling headline (or several) which will catch your readers attention and convey the information they’ll find if they click through to read more.

Next, shorten your blog URL using Bitly (this one is our favorite). A Bitly link will save valuable space, since your tweet can only fit 140 characters. So every single letter counts.

Finally, one of the best tools I have if I want to share my blog on Twitter is hashtags. Research the hashtags that are currently being used for the topic your blog is about. Add one or two of those (max) to your tweet. This helps your tweet show up in the searches people do based on hashtags.

Here’s an example of what your tweet could look like:

You’ll be surprised at the difference that creating a good blog and sharing it effectively makes on your business. Go ahead and try it out! If you’d like more tips on content and using Twitter to promote it, check back here every week.

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Oct 06 2015

How Can Twitter Get Me More Content Mileage?

If you’ve just published a blog, uploaded a video, or shared a photo, you want it to reach as many people as possible. Not only does this help your website ranking, but it also increases your visibility and promotes your brand.

Twitter can help you with that. With properly crafted tweets, you can get a lot more content mileage than if you’d just pressed “publish” and let your content languish.

Here are some easy and effective tips to follow:

Go visual

Humans are very visual, and social media proves this. Tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets. Put an enticing image in your tweet along with a link to the content and a compelling text message. That three-pronged approach will be a lot more effective than just links and text.

But speaking of text…

Generate curiosity

Tweets only give you 140 characters to work with (including the actual link), so make it count! You don’t have to just tweet the title of your blog post. Instead, use great quotes from your content, or interesting statistics. Write short, punchy statements related to the post to drive people’s interest. Be sure to use your article’s sub heads, and sentences (in context) as tweets.

Repeat your Tweets

Twitter isn’t like other social media channels. There’s a big chance people will miss your content as the tweets stream by. So don’t be shy about sending the content out multiple times. Even if your audience is “local” people dip into Twitter at many hours of the day, even outside business hours. I’m sure you’ve read something on Twitter late one night at 2am, or early one morning at 5am. Same with your customers.

Ask for a RT

Sometimes the simple act of asking can do a great deal. When you post a tweet with your content, ask for a RT. You’ll be surprised at how many people will do it! (Just don’t ask too often). It fosters interaction and can give your content a boost.

Use hashtags

Another great way to increase content mileage is to use hashtags. Generally, you only want to use one or two hashtags per tweet. Too many is going to be very annoying, and you want to attract readers, not drive them away.

Reference others

If you talk about other people in your content (in a good way) or are sharing an article written by someone else then mention them in your tweet. They’ll appreciate the credit and exposure.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways Twitter can help you increase your content mileage. And these aren’t complicated at all. Anyone can use these tips. They key to success is consistency.

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Oct 02 2015

Tweet to Meet: Using Twitter for Networking at Business Events

One of the best things about going to industry events like tradeshows and conferences is the people you meet. I’m talking about like-minded industry professionals and business connections. Introducing yourself at the event is the traditional method of networking, but you can also use Twitter for networking in advance.

This is a great idea for a number of reasons:

First, you have a much higher reach with Twitter than you would just walking around the show floor. You’ll be able to connect with people that you would otherwise just pass by in the aisles.

Second, setting up meetings in advance helps you save time. Arrange a meeting with people who will make the best connections (either because you can help each other with your businesses, or you just really want to meet them).

Here are some great ways to arrange for those meetings.

Make an Open Offer

Tweet an announcement that you’re attending the event, and make an open offer to meet up with anyone else who’s interested. If there is an event hashtag, make sure you reference it. If there are any other industry hashtags you can reference, you can use those to increase your announcement’s reach, too!

Approach Specific People

Another way to use Twitter for networking at the event is to respond to those who make the same offer. If other people tweet that they’d like to meet up with people, and they seem to be good contacts, then go ahead and reply! Take them up on their offer and set up a meeting time and place.

You can also try to approach other people who’ve announced they’re going to this event. But be aware that normal social rules apply here: strangers might not be open to it. The best scenario for this approach is if you already follow the other person on Twitter and they already know you.

Organize a “Tweetup”

A “Tweetup” is when you organize a meetup of a group of people who already interact on Twitter. If you have a large following, or have a large group of Twitter friends, you can organize a meetup of whichever Twitter contacts want to attend.

If you do decide to do this, you’ll probably to have to set the tweetup in a venue separate from the event, like a restaurant or bar. And be prepared for people you don’t know to show up! Twitter is an open environment, and there may be people who read your tweetup announcement and plan to go, but didn’t RSVP.

Tradeshows and events are lots of fun and great for business, and if you properly use Twitter for networking, you may be able to make some awesome new professional contacts.

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Sep 29 2015

Do my Tweets Improve my Website’s Google Rank?

There’s no denying that Twitter has a huge impact on the modern world, both from a cultural and commercial perspective. The impact is so great, in fact, that the U.S. Library of Congress archived 4 years’ worth of tweets.

But what about the commercial aspect? Twitter engagement definitely affects customer service and brand building, but what about SEO? Do those 140-character messages affect how your business’ website ranks in search engines?

Yes and no.

Speculation about how tweets affect SEO ranking

First of all, Google and Bing have never officially confirmed if tweets affect SEO. Nor have they released any details that give clues one way or another.

That said, many social media and SEO specialists believe that tweets affect SEO ranking—just not directly. It’s not as simple as “this many tweets = this many ranks.” It’s a complicated formula, and nobody’s really sure what that formula is. The number of your followers, number of shares, and the authority of the people sharing your tweets all seem to play a large role in how much your site’s SEO rank is affected.

Real life case study

The social media gurus over at Moz.com have experienced first-hand how much tweets affect SEO. They released a Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which was soon tweeted by Smashing Magazine. This retweet by a powerful influencer (someone with a lot of social media followers) prompted lots of other people to tweet the Beginner’s Guide as well, which led to a spike in traffic: but not the way they were expecting.

Suddenly, Moz.com ranked #4 for the keyword “Beginner’s Guide,” despite never having ranked for that keyword before at all. They were showing up on the first page of Google results for that term on the first day of the tweet.

Now, Moz does admit that they didn’t get much traffic from this ranking spike. But that’s probably because “beginner’s guide” is a general term that could apply to many things, and people searching that term wouldn’t always be looking for SEO advice. Also, the keyword “beginner’s guide” doesn’t get that many searches anyway.

Takeaways

Not everyone gets their tweets shared by prominent magazines, but you can still manage to bump your rankings by following a few best practices:

Get shared by real people. Many companies have tried to “game” the system before, and both Google and Twitter have gotten very good at rooting out the fakes. Send your tweets out with hashtags and by mentioning people you think would find your links valuable.
Write great content. The best way to get shared by big Twitter influencers is to create content that’s worth sharing. Write great blog posts. Take great photos. Make great videos. The more interesting, clever and relevant your content is, the farther it will spread.
Build your brand. The more of a presence and influence you yourself have on Twitter, the more your tweets will affect your rankings (or so it seems). So assemble an audience of real people, and maintain your connections by interacting with people on a regular basis.

I hope these tips were helpful! If you find that your tweets do affect your SEO ranking, let me know in the comments!