According to the Twitter FAQ, "Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you're doing." But it's not only for social purposes ' there can be many benefits to your business as well. Follow a few simple rules and you can stay "top of mind" with your customers and potential customers.
I personally have been Tweeting for a few months. But I use the phrase "tweeting for a few months" loosely. I haven't been all that consistent with it, and I definitely didn't have a strategy. I just thought it was kind of cool.
Recently I've started paying more attention to it for a few reasons; my mother-in-law was at a librarian conference recently and attended a session on Twitter. I got into a conversation with her about it, and then the next day I saw John Reese's email about Twitter. It seems like there is a lot of twittering about Twitter going on. What is Twitter?
According to the Twitter FAQ, "Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you're doing."
Wikipedia says, "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available".
Basically Twitter asks the question, "What are you doing?" and allows you to send a short update (your tweets are limited to 140 characters) to your followers (family, friends, colleagues, customers, potential customers etc).
Twitter allows you to send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email, instant messaging clients and SMS (using your cell phone). No matter where you are, you can tweet!
I haven't been following Twitter since day 1, so I'm not going to comment on it's evolution but I will speculate that as its popularity grows, as more and more marketers use it, 2 things are inevitable:
1. Rules on Twitter etiquette will continue to evolve as we learn what we like and dislike about it, and as we respond to the inevitable abuse of Twitter (don't mean to sound negative but it happens with each exciting new opportunity ' people end up abusing it).
2. More and more companies will jump on board and try to get in on the conversation.
Start Twittering, (or is it Tweeting?)
Remember, when you first join Twitter, it can feel like a lonely place. When you aren't following anyone and no one is following you, you may find yourself asking "what is the point?" I've heard so many people say they just don't get it. In fact, I've said that myself.
The key is to find the Tweets you want to follow so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your niche. The next key is to start building your followers. More on that in a minute.
How can Twitter help your business?
The more contact you have with a potential customer, the more likely you are to get their business. You can stay "top of mind" through Twitter. Let them know what's new in your industry, in your company etc. You become a source of quick news flashes for them.
Here are just a few of the benefits of Twitter: - It reminds people that you exist
- It shows people you have something to say
- It shows them that you are human
- It allows you to mention new offers, sales and breaking news immediately
- It allows you to form a more casual relationship
- You can use Twitter to promote your social bookmarking submissions.
- You can ask for referrals, suggestions, feedback and help, and people will respond.
Twitter is also fun and is contributing to the new language we are constantly developing. For example "Twitterference" ' the intrusion of twitter updates on your phone making it hard to have a conversation on your phone.
Finding Followers:
Start by reaching out to your friends, family, mailing list etc. You can also add your Twitter link to your email signature line; add links to your website and Blog. Mention your Twitter account in your newsletter.
Twitter Rules
One cardinal rule (that is in your best interest to follow): if you use Twitter as a pure sales tool, you will lose followers quickly. As with all forms of social media, it is about creating a conversation and sharing news ' it's not all about you shoving your sales message down their throats.
Tweets are limited to 140 characters. This is to allow them to be easily sent over mobile SMS systems.
You aren't able to embed HTML with the exception of hyperlinks. (But they are no-follow links, so they won't help you in your SEO quest for backlinks) Bonus: Twitter automatically uses the TinyURL service to shorten links.
Don't tweet too much, or too little. There is no magic number and it varies according to your audience. Some people say don't update more than once per hour. Others say not more than once or twice a day. I tend to be in the once or twice a day camp. If there is breaking news and some days you just have to update more often then it's OK. If your tweets are valuable information people will be more tolerant of frequent updates.
On the other hand if you are too quiet, people have nothing to follow so make sure you find that balance and tweet just enough to keep people informed but not annoyed.
Don't forget that your profile shows a history of all your tweets, so if a new person comes along and sees that you don't have many tweets they may decide you aren't worthy of following. Also if your past tweets aren't informative or interesting, you lose some potential followers.
You'll find that sometimes you get involved in personal conversation with someone. Try to avoid doing too much of this. Not everyone will be interested in your personal communications. If you do need to do this, put the @ symbol in front of somebody's name ' this indicates that this message is for them.
One thing to keep in mind about personal conversation tweets - some people who are following you may not be following the person you are talking to. This means they get only one half of the conversation. One suggestion is to word your tweet so that spectators have an idea of what you are talking about. That way, they can feel more included in the conversation.
Trust and Twitter
With so much hype in marketing, people are really looking for a company that can trust. You can build trust with prospects by allowing them to get to know you, and by providing them with information. Twitter allows you to do just that.
A great tip: look at your own Tweet history ' is the information valuable, does it build trust? Would you want to follow yourself?
Get tweeting!
It may take some trial and errorFree Reprint Articles, and you probably want to check out what others are tweeting about to get a feel for the style. But don't spend too long lurking ' check it out and then jump on in.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of http://www.EcomBuffet.com Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications.
April 28, 2008
April 26, 2008
Not Investing in Merchant Services Can Cost You
Online business people must invest in their business
The decision on whether or not to add credit card processing services to an online business' site is driven by several factors, one way to make the decision is by playing the "what if" game.
As in: "What if I (the Internet retailer) decide against the investment in credit card online processing? What will it cost me?"
Those are worthwhile questions. It is hard to put a hard-dollar figure on what the lack of merchant account services will mean to a business, but there are some facts that need to be weighed carefully.
Internet access into people's homes grows by the day. As does their access at work. Not to mention from their mobile phone. And we're talking about some form of high-speed access, which allows users to get the most from their browsing experience.
Not only are kids growing up with the Internet, as well as online shopping, but seniors are getting acclimated as well, meaning that 'net usage is touching every demographic segment of society.
And the shopping patterns on the Internet have come mainstream. There was a time when it might have been a novelty, then morphed into a way to get hard-to-find or specialty items, but now people are procuring all kinds of everyday items from their computers.
The cumulative affect of all of the above is that the potential audience for online shopping is enormous and only gaining users by the day.
Fold into this the fact that when people shop online they want to use their credit cards. Paying that way offers speed and convenience, as well as a measure of buyer protection from most of the major card companies. People shopping with their credit card in hand are the majority.
And here is where the lack of credit card processing is going to cost a company. With all those people going online, with more and more people shopping online and with the majority using their credit cards to shop online any site that does not have a merchant account is going to stand out like a sore thumb.
Loyal customers become loyal customers because they get what they want from a retail entity - whether it be real-world or virtual. And one thing they are going to want in increasing numbers is the option to use their credit card. They want it so much that if you don't have merchant services they are going assume something is less than trustworthy with your site.
So we're back to the initial question - do you really want to have your site seen as less that legitimate because you don't have credit card online processing. And what is it going to cost you when a shopper hits your site, only to realize after they have filled their shopping cart that you don't accept cards?
Two things are likely to happen. One, they will zip to a site that gives them the payment options they want. TwoFree Articles, they will never be back.
And what does that cost? Still think you can't afford credit card processing?
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
Jim Osterman is a Web content developer with Charge.com, a leading credit card processing company that provides innovative merchant services solutions.
The decision on whether or not to add credit card processing services to an online business' site is driven by several factors, one way to make the decision is by playing the "what if" game.
As in: "What if I (the Internet retailer) decide against the investment in credit card online processing? What will it cost me?"
Those are worthwhile questions. It is hard to put a hard-dollar figure on what the lack of merchant account services will mean to a business, but there are some facts that need to be weighed carefully.
Internet access into people's homes grows by the day. As does their access at work. Not to mention from their mobile phone. And we're talking about some form of high-speed access, which allows users to get the most from their browsing experience.
Not only are kids growing up with the Internet, as well as online shopping, but seniors are getting acclimated as well, meaning that 'net usage is touching every demographic segment of society.
And the shopping patterns on the Internet have come mainstream. There was a time when it might have been a novelty, then morphed into a way to get hard-to-find or specialty items, but now people are procuring all kinds of everyday items from their computers.
The cumulative affect of all of the above is that the potential audience for online shopping is enormous and only gaining users by the day.
Fold into this the fact that when people shop online they want to use their credit cards. Paying that way offers speed and convenience, as well as a measure of buyer protection from most of the major card companies. People shopping with their credit card in hand are the majority.
And here is where the lack of credit card processing is going to cost a company. With all those people going online, with more and more people shopping online and with the majority using their credit cards to shop online any site that does not have a merchant account is going to stand out like a sore thumb.
Loyal customers become loyal customers because they get what they want from a retail entity - whether it be real-world or virtual. And one thing they are going to want in increasing numbers is the option to use their credit card. They want it so much that if you don't have merchant services they are going assume something is less than trustworthy with your site.
So we're back to the initial question - do you really want to have your site seen as less that legitimate because you don't have credit card online processing. And what is it going to cost you when a shopper hits your site, only to realize after they have filled their shopping cart that you don't accept cards?
Two things are likely to happen. One, they will zip to a site that gives them the payment options they want. TwoFree Articles, they will never be back.
And what does that cost? Still think you can't afford credit card processing?
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
Jim Osterman is a Web content developer with Charge.com, a leading credit card processing company that provides innovative merchant services solutions.
How To Make Money With Social Networking
Making money with social networking is kind of like various other forms of getting traffic. Depending on who you talk to, you will get different opinions of whether they like it or not. n this article we want to take a look at how you can combine making money and social networking.
Getting traffic via social networking could be a great way of making money. Different people like different things and social networking is no different.
In this article we want to take a look at how you can combine making money and social networking.
It is hard to believe that as an industry Internet marketing is less than 15 years old. Social networking itself is really only a couple of years old and the first large social network was MySpace. Now today Facebook and many others, rival MySpace for members and opportunities to promote your business.
If they are trying to build an Internet business many people that join social networks also blog. This makes sense because you can piggyback the two easily together. Depending on the industry that you are in you can get new blog readers via joining a social network.
It is important that the social network you join relates back to the theme of your business. There are social networks that are available on almost anything. If you want to join a more broad social networks such as Facebook you can join or start a specific group the relates to the theme of your website as well.
Another thing you want to do is control who you let be your friend. Again using face book as an exampleFind Article, you can only have 5000 friends. If you let anybody and everybody join you will quickly fill up your guestbook and it may contain friends that really have no interest in what you're trying to accomplish with your business.
If you would like to eventually create business partners via social networking it is important that you participate in discussions and be helpful. You cannot always just be selling and in that way it's much like discussion forums.
If you are the type of person who is naturally curious you may be able to offer new ideas to your group that they are not aware of. This is an actual way for you to develop your own credibility as well as for you to build relationships.
People naturally become curious about what you do to make money and this really is where the benefit of social networking comes in. You are passively soft selling your friends without really ever selling at all.
This is the best way to combine social networking and making money. You will be great at this and a great opportunity awaits you in the future if you're the type of person that is naturally social.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
Mark Molina is a husband and father of two who never gave up on his dream to find the perfect home based business of Time Freedom. Now he can show you how to work at home on the internet too! To see the business that Mark found after three years of research, go to http://snipurl.com/23dww
Getting traffic via social networking could be a great way of making money. Different people like different things and social networking is no different.
In this article we want to take a look at how you can combine making money and social networking.
It is hard to believe that as an industry Internet marketing is less than 15 years old. Social networking itself is really only a couple of years old and the first large social network was MySpace. Now today Facebook and many others, rival MySpace for members and opportunities to promote your business.
If they are trying to build an Internet business many people that join social networks also blog. This makes sense because you can piggyback the two easily together. Depending on the industry that you are in you can get new blog readers via joining a social network.
It is important that the social network you join relates back to the theme of your business. There are social networks that are available on almost anything. If you want to join a more broad social networks such as Facebook you can join or start a specific group the relates to the theme of your website as well.
Another thing you want to do is control who you let be your friend. Again using face book as an exampleFind Article, you can only have 5000 friends. If you let anybody and everybody join you will quickly fill up your guestbook and it may contain friends that really have no interest in what you're trying to accomplish with your business.
If you would like to eventually create business partners via social networking it is important that you participate in discussions and be helpful. You cannot always just be selling and in that way it's much like discussion forums.
If you are the type of person who is naturally curious you may be able to offer new ideas to your group that they are not aware of. This is an actual way for you to develop your own credibility as well as for you to build relationships.
People naturally become curious about what you do to make money and this really is where the benefit of social networking comes in. You are passively soft selling your friends without really ever selling at all.
This is the best way to combine social networking and making money. You will be great at this and a great opportunity awaits you in the future if you're the type of person that is naturally social.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
Mark Molina is a husband and father of two who never gave up on his dream to find the perfect home based business of Time Freedom. Now he can show you how to work at home on the internet too! To see the business that Mark found after three years of research, go to http://snipurl.com/23dww
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