WHITE HAT SEO BLOG

As you are used to choosing the right meat for that BBQ, or the correct bread making machine, so should you chose the right social media site for your company.
The simplest way to choose a site is to do so with one that works for you. Pretty simple really.

You can be in various social sites and then narrow it down to the ones you feel most compelled to use.

Do you need a very friendly, young, hip hop site? Or do you need a serious business-like site? That depends on whether you are selling high priced sneakers to a young crowd or a warehouse full of these sneakers via B2B.

Alternatively, if you do not find a social media site that fits your needs, then go to Ning.com and create your very own.

The pros and cons to using a smaller site like Ning.com is that they do not have the visits, media exposure and is not as well known as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Therefore, just as you need the right meat for that great BBQ, you will need to find the right show size for those sneakers; otherwise it will be one sore foot at the end of the BBQ.

Your business will go nowhere fast if you have little or no followers. Even followers who join your group may come and go as quickly as night and day.

If you have nothing to say, then don’t. Your customers (followers) are interested in what you have to offer, i.e. how did that idea come about, the ease or difficulty in bringing the product to market, the funny side of the problems you faced, etc.

Reply to some of your followers, not all of them. Followers will be interested in what you did or say about something, but they will not follow 150 of your replies to each and every question asked. Keep the tweeting interesting and above all, informative and fresh.

Your bio is one of the most important FIRST THINGS to do after you sign on to Twitter.  “I develop anti-fart machines for Chihuahuas” tell people quickly who you are and what you are about. Maybe they have a grandmother who needs one and they will follow you!

Finally, be yourself. Don’t mimic others in the same business as you. Be an individual, full of ideas, will and wit, and tell people you enjoy what you do and wish to help others by your 140 character post.

As with any web presence or a face to face meeting, there are caveats to look out for, particularly with etiquette.  Here are the 3 dos and don’ts that could make or break you’re tweeting.

The 3 do’s are:
Share! Found a funny pic? A new recipe? An article about you? Tell someone! New product? Put that ever important link. Tell others about links other than your own. It makes you look fair and not judgemental.

Re-tweet. This means to reply to someone’s tweeting.  Converse! Someone commented on the item you sold. Acknowledge it with a positive or helpful re-tweet.

Shake hands. Remember that from the old days?  Get to know the people who are following your tweeting. Ask them who they are and how you can help. Maybe ask them why they are following your daily or hourly posts.

The 3 don’ts are:
Disregard your avatar. Put up a picture, any picture. No picture could speak volumes on how you run your business. Does this business care?

Not following. One of the endearing and very useful tools with Twitter is that people can “follow” your tweeting. Some people believe that you must follow everyone who follows you. Not at all. That is impossible. But follow the people or businesses that interest you.

Over expose yourself. Remember that song by Celine Dion, the theme to the Titanic? I won’t bore you with my rendition of it. Did you ever get sick of it? Too much about you will make your customers’ un-follow you and go with your competitor.

Cell phone ads are the last of the marketing campaigns yet to be conquered. Mainly due to users not wanting them and companies safeguarding the phone numbers as well as their true customer count.

Some of these limitations can be undone by opt-in advertising. Where the users can decide to accept them. Recent surveys show that about %20 of the cell phone users will accept this.

Even more users did not use premium services due to the cost involved. This opens up cell phone ads to acceptance.
High priced services like MMS and always on internet are clearly ripe for advertising. For example, at the bottom of an MMS would be a smaller picture of a brand and where to buy them. Sale of the week!

Perhaps double your online time if you click my link.

4 years ago a survey stated that %40 of users use non voice related items, such as MMS, email via their phone and text messaging.

And remember, you won’t get these phone numbers from your local friendly phone company!

The opportunities are endless. But to get the users to opt-in, you need a decent website that will drive the users to input their number.

Let’s face it; we all need customer service or some kind of help. We have that need of an immediate fix and preference is given to live help, as opposed to waiting days for an email answer. I mean, if you are willing to wait days for an answer, you might as well send it via the Pony Express!

There are various products on the market today that can meet your need. Here are some of the market leaders.  For example:

Live Person – The uniqueness of this service is that you can do it in-house or have an entire network of people waiting to help your customers. The range of expertise is simply awesome. From coaching to personal development, astrology and psychology.

Live Help – Features departments and operators. You also get free lifetime software upgrades. A plus during these tough financial times. And it is PHP based.

Omnistar – This product offers also a PHP based live person, ticket support and knowledgebase. It also comes with a staff calendar. Now that is useful.

CraftySyntax – This product allows multiple languages to operate at one time, along with multiple departments and multiple operators. It is a free PHP based product.

As you can see, there are a plethora of products that suit your particular need.

As with any business, you must offer your followers something worth reading about. A hook of sorts. Keep in mind that with your hard earned followers, you need to keep them following you. Twitter is growing at breathtaking speed and your business should use it.

What do you offer? Ever ask that question? Twitter it.  Something that you offer which is singular to your business and only your business, will attract interest.

From customer relations, crisis management, press releases and even an event or product activation. Your business will only grow and prosper by the information you care to share with your followers (fans).

With the frame of mind that what you create, others will follow and then you engage those followers, you have a win-win strategy.

Another twitter idea is to create a quick response to a crisis, thereby avoiding the so called brand ambassadors (for damage control). By tracking the people who talk about you and your brand, it gives you an idea of what areas are needed for improvement and perhaps even ideas for a new product. Engage in dialogue!

In the end, you use Twitter to listen and learn from those who follow you. As they talk about your brand, whether it is positive or negative, it will give you a rare insight into your brand’s following – a bit of a “fly on the wall experience.”

Not many of us can do what the rich and famous do: Market ourselves with unlimited resources and have the help of thousands of friends and contacts and media.

Well, now you do. Twitter is used by those very same people. Look up a current talk show host, singer or movie star. They would inevitably be on Twitter; updating for ever more. From what color hair they had back in 1972 to why they kicked their guest off their show last night.

And Twitter’s fame is something you really cannot buy. It is like riding inside a Rolls Royce; priceless and people take notice everywhere you go.

What Twitter offers is blogs. You can write up to 140 characters in length and update as often as you like or need to. Daily specials? Sale next Sunday? Closed for vacation until June 5th? Put it there.

You do not need to create your own webpage, pay monthly or annual fees. No need to pay a web geek to put that soup of the day up, every day, 7 days a week.

Twitter is free. You control it, not it controls you. Why not add Twitter to your business card or email signature?

In the old days, you sold your product by building relationships. Don’t you miss it? I do. The main thing there is that those customers come back to you for your products. Facebook does exactly that: build relationships. The tools at your disposal are priceless and they do not hinder your ideas.

With that relationship you have repeat business, word of mouth advertising and that oh so important trust between you and your customer. Networking is an integral part of Facebook.

Going back to the old way of building relationships – when the lady of the house bought that important vacuum cleaner or steam iron, she told her neighbour and that neighbour told someone else, perhaps a relative. And so on. With Facebook and its powerful networking tools such as sponsorships, friendships, fans and blogs, your competition’s loss is your gain.

With their being heavy competition and a current global market crisis, this one-two punch to your bottom line would create a negative impact to your overall sales. Facebook actually helps you to achieve sales because of your location. Your web location and the other Facebook tool, group creation, you will be one step ahead of your competition and laughing all the way to the e-bank!

When we talk about reputation management, we usually think of EBay. Where a user leaves, usually, a positive feedback in exchange for another positive feedback. Many see this as a major flaw with this company’s reputation system.

Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) methodologies are often used to protect a brand name and reputation. Increasingly, due to user provided content such as blogs, everything is said about a brand and there is no real policing.

SERM and SEOs are used, along with content management practices to further protect a brand or reputation. With online content management, reputation management is time critical.

One of the tools that can be used for RM is Google Alerts. You will get an email whenever a keyword that you have entered is newly placed on the net. This includes videos, news, groups and images.

With this tool, you are notified within a set time, chosen by you, about you and that gives you the advantage of knowing when you or your product is mentioned.
Also, along with Google Custom Search, you create your “own” search engine. This provides you with specific site searches where your product is mentioned.
There are other sites that help you with Reputation Management, but the two noted above, if using them combined, that could be a great start to your RM control.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool to see what your visitors do on your site. It is an effective analysis weapon that can give you real statistics as to what it is your site is doing on the web.

Knowing the behaviour of your visitor is important, as you need to be able to identify the weak and strong parts of your site and tweak it. Along with AdWords, its integration with it is paramount for this tool to work.

It is free and all you need to do is register your account and add some java snippet to each page on your site.

Google Analytics is not without its limitations. For example, a custom report. It cannot do it. This is a major limitation. Another limitation is ownership transfer. You cannot do it.

The lack of support. Google has its help files, but forget about emailing them to ask a question. Choose some of the forums instead.

AdSense is not integrated with Analytics. You are not allowed to track users. There are hacks available that allow that. Included in the negatives here are two more: heat maps are not part of it. A site report simply does not provide this and, real time tracking is nonexistent. They are updated once every 24 hours.