Twitter For Business

I recently read a great article on the 50 Ideas for using Twitter for business. It was originally written by the very smart Chris Brogan, check it out:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

21. You don’t have to read every tweet.
22. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
23. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
24. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
25. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
26. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
27. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
28. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
29. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
30. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

31. Twitter takes up time.
32. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
33. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
34. There are other ways to do this.
35. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
36. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
37. Twitter is just for technonerds.
38. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
39. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
40. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

41. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
42. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
43. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
44. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
45. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
46. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
47. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
48. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
49. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
50. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

So how are you using Twitter for your business?

Tips for Local Search Campaigns

There are many businesses that are local in nature. What I mean is local businesses who look for an increase in visitors to their website via local traffic online. The goal of many local businesses is to turn to search engines to advertise their websites online in search of this local traffic. Geographic targeting is an easy and sometimes an inexpensive way to reach this goal but there are a few things one must consider when building out these local pay per click campaigns.

In Google Adwords you can choose your geographic location. Not only can you choose the city and the state you would like your ads to appear in, but you could even include a zip code to narrow down your locations.

Choosing keywords is critical, you should not just target general words, consider targeting words that include the city and state as well like:

Blue Widget Ft. Lauderdale
Blue Widget Ft. Lauderdale Florida
Blue Widget Ft. Lauderdale FL
Blue Widget Ft. Lauderdale 33316
Blue Widget Ft. Lauderdale Florida 33316

Assuming you have an ad of interest these keywords should bring you some pretty targeted qualified leads.

Take it one step further; for those who are familiar with Google Adwords and understand the ins and outs of keyword matching you can take your Geo Target campaign to a whole other level.

Once you have your geographic campaign setup create an additional, or companion campaign that is “Nationally” targeted. Yes, I said nationally targeted. But make sure that ALL of your keywords used are listed as “EXACT” matches ONLY. This way you can ensure that you cast an additional net to those folks who may not be in the city of your specific location at the time of their search online.

This is important for businesses like, limo services, or spa services. You might want to just advertise to your cities location, but those who live elsewhere who may be traveling to your city would benefit from seeing your ads appear for services they might be interested while in your city.

Remember when building pay per click campaigns be smart about your local advertising. Should you ever need assistance seek a professional who is well versed in local search and paid search advertising.

Google Pulls The Plug On Yahoo Advertising Deal

After vowing repeatedly to go through with its search advertising deal with Yahoo no matter what the Justice Department does, Google reversed course today and pulled the plug on the deal.All I can say is WHEW! Not sure this was a good thing anyway!

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Google Tweaks AdWords To Reward “Quality” (And Juice Revenue)

Google is ready to make some more changes to way they are currently ranking Adwords ads. What does this mean for advertisers? It means you really need to be sure your keywords in ad groups are very relevant, along with your ads and landing pages. We know that is important but now it is crucial that you ensure your keywords are grouped together as tightly as possible so that your ads become that much more relevant!

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Marketing Through Tough Economic Times

Typically the first reaction to a market trending downward is to cut marketing spend. In these tough economic times savvy brand, and search marketers alike are seeing this time as an advantageous opportunity. Well how can THAT be, you ask!?

When things get quiet in the world of our competitors opportunities may present themselves in a way you have not thought about. Think about it, if you are considering cutting back on marketing spend what do you think your competitor is thinking, potentially the same thing, right? Therefore, continuing your marketing efforts as you were, or even increasing your spend, to gain more exposure can open a door of opportunity to increased brand awareness and higher profits in the end when all is said and done. As a business owner you just need to be wise in how you spend those marketing dollars. Tune into your customer base and present a message that will stick as well as make sense in these tough economic times.

Now you might ask yourself, well what do you mean by “stick” or “make sense”? If you are running a Paid Search Campaign in Google, Yahoo! or MSN, now is the time to be creative and test new ad copy that could have a positive affect on your traffic and overall sales. Change your call to action to something like, “Shop Online Now” vs. “Buy Now,” if you are running a special promotion try, “Save Now,” instead of “Shop Now.” Get it? You can also call more attention to your products or services by stating they are more “efficient” or “provide a better value.” These slight variations can really hit home with what consumers “want” to hear instead of what you want to tell them.

The bottom line is to be innovative, don’t be afraid to try new things, stand strong through tough times. Tailoring your message to consumers can really grab their attention and make a difference in your success. This is the time to be more visible, and emerge with a stronger brand when things get back to normal. Spending money wisely is the key, and focusing more on your consumers needs is crucial. But please be careful when you begin to ask untrained employees to make critical decisions for your business just to save a buck. Be smart, yes these are tough economic times but that does not mean you need to lose sight of your business goals. Plan ahead with thoughts to replace companies that probably won’t survive this economy, this should make your pain a bit more manageable don’t you think?

The 10 Truths Every CMO Should Know About Search Marketing

Last week I attended Search Engine Land’s SMX East show in New York City. What a great time of year to be in New York. My first day there I attended a couple of seminars, day one was not the best for me, but the one that really stood out to me was The 10 Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing.....
What amazed me about this track was how trivial it was...if you are a CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, I would think you should already know what those 10 truths are.
1 - SEO is an ongoing process – as an executive in a company please don’t ask for miracles, you cannot just optimize your meta tags and think everything is “A OK,” now where are our rankings!!!???
2- The #1 position is not always everything and sometimes not even possible--- NO KIDDING!!! Multiple positions can and should be a blessing...
3 - The long tail is your friend --- if you are a CMO and do not know what the long tail is and that it can bring in extremely qualified traffic then maybe you should not be a CMO! Sorry just my opinion.
4 - Both paid and natural search are equally important. Ask yourself, do you want to increase brand awareness??? Well being seen more often will allow that and then some....
5 - Customers -- hear “their" language not "yours" -- yes by golly darn you betcha -- you should be speaking to your customers telling them what they WANT to hear not what YOU want to say!!
**SIGH** half way through what a CMO should already know!!
6 - Web pages are not the ONLY assets you need to optimize -- come on folks there are Press Releases, blogs, articles so much MORE than just the web pages which should be optimized and even bidded on at times in paid search arenas.
7 - Integration is a must! -- if you are NOT sending the same message in print, that you are on the web there is a serious issue, get it together!
8 - Tools simplify everything -- well I was hoping to get some golden nugget from this statement, and well I didn't, yes tools simplify everything and yes you should be using them to make your life easier, but is there a new one, a better one????? I didn't get anything from this one other than if you are able to utilize tools to make your life easier and it does not have a negative affect on your consumer then good for you ... I already knew that – **SIGH**
9 - Bid on brand terms - if you are not doing this you are completely missing the boat ....enough said..
FINALLY – Number 10!!!
10 - Set goals -- ya think??? All CMO’s should know that goals need to be set, but you need to understand what you are trying to accomplish before you set those goals, be clear, and don’t be unrealistic, please!
Someone told me there were 11 things a CMO should know but I didn't buy it, this pretty much covers it unless someone else can think of something I might have missed. If so, please do chime in!!!

Google Says, Don't Rewrite Dynamic URLs To Static URLs

Google says that it's better to leave the dynamic urls as they are, than to rewrite them to look static, So now Google says do not rewrite dynamic URLs, they can crawl them just fine?? Well I tend to think that it would be easier to index, as well as being more user friendly, like this:

whereever.com/camping/tents/accessories
VS.
whereever.com?product_cat=camping&sub_cat=tents&sub_sub_cat=supplies

Who knows maybe this is a good thing for all those who do not know much about this, it will keep them from doing it incorrectly and could save a lot of headache. I am anxious to hear more about this at SMX-East!

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