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  1. Improve Your Business Using Twitter and Facebook

    One of the aspects of link building that we tackle for our clients is making sure that they are effectively using social media apps like Facebook and Twitter. These are the two really hot social media apps right now and not getting up to speed on these fabulous services can be a detriment to the success to your business. One of the things I hear a lot is "Those things will never impact my business" and I cringe a little, because the people usually saying that know very little about what these websites actually do. I’m not saying that these sites or any social media is going to double every business’s revenue every time, but it could…and it’s free to use, so why not at least give it a try? Once you know what these services are capable of, I’d be suprised if you don’t see the value in it for your company. Here is a basic description of what these services are and a few reasons why all business owners should be in the know regarding the two currently most popular social media sites out there.

    Facebook for Business

    Facebook is a website that lets you connect to friends by entering the high school and college you attended and finding other people that may have been in your class. You can also enter tons of other information about yourself like where you work, what church you attend, movies you like, etc. and that helps other people to find you and request to be a "friend" of yours. When you become a friend with someone, any updates they post on their account will show up to you when you log in, so you’ll see if they uploaded a new photo from their vacation in Tahiti or if they’ve posted a status update saying they are "on their way to an internet marketing workshop." There are also functions that allow you to post notes (which are similar to blogs), photos, videos, events and even other 3rd party applications that let you play games, rate movies, identify all of the places you’ve ever travelled to and much, much more. Every aspect is centered around other people following what you do on Facebook and commenting on it. For example, if you updated your status saying that you are a Twitter addict, one of your friends may reply and welcome you to the club 😉

    One important aspect of Facebook is that you can create causes, groups, and more importantly "fan pages" for a company or organization that allows other people to become a your "fan." This is a good way to get more exposure for your business, share information about your company and interact on a more personal level with your clients or customers.

    Twitter for Business

    Twitter, in my opinion, is a very simple way for people to get a taste of how social media can affect your business. Twitter is, by definition, a "micro blog." That essentially means it is a way to share very short thoughts with other people. It could be a recommendation of a company, or movie, website or it could be a reply to a post that someone else has made (which is called a "ReTweet.") Blogging can be a very valuable way to build your online presence and establish your authority in your industry but many people are intimidated by the thought if writing a daily, or even weekly article. The great thing about Twitter is you are limited to 140 characters, so all rules of grammar (okay, maybe not ALL ) are thrown out the window in favor of brevity and it requires MUCH less of a time commitment.

    One of the more powerful aspects of Twitter is that people can search for relevant tweets and find people. So if you "Tweet" about a new special that you are offering at your business, someone may be searching on Twitter and find your post and then decide to start following you. Just like becoming a friend of someone on Facebook, when you follow someone on Twitter, it means you will see their posts when you log in, so you can keep up with what they have to say, and they will then see your posts from that point on as well.  This is very powerful for a business owner as you can follow other experts in your industry and grow your knowledge (not to mention more personally connect you with anyone in the world – even the President), but it also establishes you as an expert as well. The key thing to remember is to keep your personal posts to a minimum and try to remain focused on your industry, if you want to keep the attention of your followers. Chances are, they started following you to find out more about your industry expertise than what you had to eat for lunch 🙂 Read our article on Twitter for more information.

    Great, Why Should I Care?

    One interesting development of how people have responded to the increasing popularity of social media is they now check these sites when determining who they want to do business with. Having a Facebook fan page for your business with a ton of fans and positive reviews speaks a wealth about who you are and many people tend to trust this non-biased feedback over brand identity alone. So this means that you need to be careful to put your best foot forward when you post on any social media site, because they are public, afterall.

    Be polite, be relevant and keep it short and sweet.

    If you plan to use Twitter for a great deal of personal updates, great! BUT, create a separate account for you personally that is separate from your business account so you can create a distinction and allow people to follow what they are most interested in – you personally or you professionally.

    Another thing to be wary of is that there are people out there that use these social media apps for sending junk or solicitations. So it is best to get email notifications when new people follow you or become your friend and check them out to make sure you approve their association with you. And if you don’t like what you see, simply block them. 

    In conclusion, these tools are only as good as you make them. If you do not use them, they won’t help you. But if you do use it, it’s important that you keep up with your friends or followers and make sure that you are protecting your brand and actively participating with them. There are a lot of ways to burn your time on the internet, and these two can definitely fit that bill, but as long as you use these with a purpose in mind, you can build your business. Also, you can’t keep up with every social media site out there effectively, so pick a few to stick with. These two mentioned in this article are good ones to start with, and if you are feeling particularly spunky, another good social media site to check out for your business is LinkedIn.

  2. 5 Ways to Market Your Site Using Social Bookmarking

    Social bookmarking is a relatively new concept that allows people who visit a website to share information that they find with their friends or associates that they are connected to in a variety of social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious and more.

    This post will cover 5 ways that you can get more traffic to your website using social bookmarking as well as bleed over into link building in general as the two are closely related.

    1) Make it easy to share. Make sure every page on your site that you want to get links to has an easy way for people to share it with others – news articles, pages, ecommerce products, etc. There are a number of tools out there, such as Sharethis.com that will give you a snippet of code that you can easily drop in to any page on your site. Also, many content management systems have this feature built in.

    2) Share your own articles. Once you write a killer article or press release, share it with your group of contacts in the social media sites that you participate in. Don’t be afraid to endorse your new article on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

    3) Bookmark other sites. Use a service such as Delicious to develop your own directory of useful links. Other people who trust your opinion will see what other sites you’ve found to be interesting. This also works with link promotion sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati (if it’s a blog post) and many, many other sites.

    4) Comment on other people’s bookmarks. If other people are alredy drawing traffic from a great link, post a comment if you can to get your branding associated with that person’s success as well. This is great for blogs in particular. Comment on other people’s posts (but keep it pleasant!)and offer additional thoughts or just some encouragement.

    5) Ask people for links. If you know that your article or post would be particularly of interest to another website community, trade organization, etc., ask them if they would mind linking to your article. In fact, use our free link-building tool to make sure you get the best formatting for that link. If it is truly a good article or post, there’s a good chance you’ll get good links to it.

    These are just a few tips to demonstrate how you can leverage social bookmarks to better promote your site. Stay tuned for more tips!

  3. Local Internet Marketing Firm Provides Workshop for Helping Small Businesses Leverage the Web

    On June 30th, at 9:30 AM at the Capital City Club in downtown Raleigh, Daniel Trimpey, CEO of Page Progressive, will be providing a workshop geared towards orienting small businesses in Raleigh, NC to the importance and capabilities of using the internet to market your business.

    The workshop will run for approximately two hours and there will be a lunch afterwards at the club for attendies. The topic will be "The Basics of Internet Marketing for Small Businesses" and will address very broadly the aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), link building and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in the efforts to generate more traffic and business. "All three aspects of internet marketing are key to getting the best results," says Daniel Trimpey. There will be plenty of time built-in for questions, since this has been a very hot topic for people in the past.

    —

    If you’d like to RSVP for this event, please contact the Capital City Club at (919) 832-5526‎. The event costs $15 and includes lunch.

     

  4. Blogging on Blogging

    Well, I’m sitting in a workshop on blogging this morning. Although I’ve been blogging for years, I figured it’s always a good idea to keep learning and it never fails to surprise me how much there is to know, even on a topic that you consider yourself an expert in. I figured I’d take the opportunity to blog about it 🙂 The speaker for this event was Denise Tawwab and you can check out her website here: http://ncconnected.org

    The bad news – In the pre "Web 2.0" world, when customers or
    clients were disgruntled, they would typically call your support number
    and let you know…and perhaps, at worst, tell a few of their friends.
    But with the current online social media phenomena, if you make a
    client unhappy, they are only a few clicks away from telling the whole
    world about it. And posts on the internet never go away.

    The good news
    – Because of the accessibility, you can wield the power to promote your
    company in a very large arena with a very small budget. All it takes is
    your time.

    Types of Blogs:

    1. CEO Blog – this is when the owner of a company blogs, usually for promoting the business or industries related to the business
    2. Executive Blog – Just like #1, but involves a group of people
    3. Group Blog – When any group of people share a blog
    4. Company – supported Blog – When employees are encouraged to blog internally to the company
    5. Topical Blog – Blogging on a particular topic (duh!)
    6. Promotional Blog – Blogging for the purpose of promoting something
    7. Advocacy Blog – Blogging for the purpose of raising awareness about something

    Links:
    http://www.technorati.com
    http://blogsearch.google.com
    http://blogpulse.com
    http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com

    For 50 Power Tips for Blogging, view Denise’s blog here: http://denisetawwab.wordpress.com

  5. Use Twitter From Inside Gmail or Google Apps

    Like to Twitter and use Google Apps? Here’s a gadget that lets you update and view Twitters from within your Gmail interface:

    http://www.twittergadget.com

    Not bad.

  6. What is Twitter and Why Should I Care?

    When I first heard of Twitter a couple years ago I thought "Nobody will ever use that!" Apparently I was wrong, as Twitter has become the "Next big thing" in the social media arena and is poised to outpace Facebook in the next year. I get asked a lot from our clients what Twitter is, so here’s a brief explanation to the non-tweeters out there.

    Twitter is basically a micro blog. So instead of writing a long, thought out post, you can keep it short and sweet. In fact, you have to, as each "tweet" is only allowed 140 characters. You can tweet text, links and even photos and you can do it from your computer and even from your cell phone.

    So why tweet? Good question. It’s a great way to let friends and family know what you’re up to and share the little things that happen in your day. Often people use it for sharing a random funny thought or a great website link or a photo of their kids. Professionally it’s a great way to find other people with similar interests and learn from them and share things you’ve found to be helpful too. Often people use Twitter for posting questions to friends and colleagues as well.

    Recently Twitter added the ability to search tweets. This is huge. Now you can see trends of what people are talking about right this second, unlike searching on Google and finding pages that were indexed days or even weeks ago. It’s like a giant, world-wide chat room. For example, your wife may be a huge American Idol Fan (This is all hypothetical, of course).  You could search on the term "Idol" and find what a bazillion other people are talking about right that second regarding American Idol. And it’s usually pretty amusing.Will Twitter replace Google….I doubt it, but it does have it’s place for searching for things that are very time sensitive, like news.

    So anyway, it’s a very interesting piece of technology and definitely worth checking out. If you’d like to follow Page Progressive on Twitter, click here, or to follow Daniel Trimpey, Click here.

     

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