You know that Twitter is good for business, when both Google, and Bing, begin to index Tweets in the search engine results.
Although we’re not sure how they are going to accomplish it; last week, both Google and Bing, made their announcements to that effect.
If you need to be convinced that Twitter is good for business, just go to some of the “big boys” websites to confirm my opinion.
Twitter has been steadily growing in importance, attracting more and more followers every day.
Since so many consumers are now using social media sites like Twitter, more and more savvy internet marketers have noticed that online merchants, are also testing the waters, and experimenting with Twitter.
To date, most merchants still do not seem to be paying much attention to Twitter, or to the other social media sites; however, with Google and Bing’s announcement, things are about to change!
If you’re not currently on a social website like Twitter, your competition may already be out gunning you.
You should consider using Twitter to promote your brand, increase your visibility, and maximize your earnings.
It’s obvious that Twitter is good for business, when e commerce merchants like Amazon, Sears, and Walmart, start using accounts dedicated to Twitter.
This should tell you something.
Some merchants like Amazon, use multiple accounts to manage different sectors of their business, while others like Sears, use only one interactive account.
If you decide to experiment with Twitter, it’s important for you to explain to your customers, exactly how you operate.
You should clarify how many accounts you have; and what type of information you provide on each account.
This clears up any confusion your followers might have, and gives them up to date information on your products, or services.
Keep your customers happy, and give them Tweets with the information they are looking for.
Twitter is good for business; take advantage of it, and use it wisely!
This is how to get automatic Tweets on your Twitter page, when you get too busy or overwhelmed to do it yourself.
Twitter Feed, is a simple free tool you can use to pull in RSS feeds from your blogs, article sites, or any other site that has an RSS feed you want to hook up with.
You can use Twitter Feed with only your own blogs, or in conjunction with your friend’s blogs and other quality sites that you would like to use to update your blog.
This works great for people who are often too busy to post to their own blogs on a regular basis.
First do a Google search for Twitter Feed, go to their website, and sign up for your free account by providing your email address and creating your password.
- You will then be directed to the second step where you create your feed for your blog.
Here is where you name your feed, and insert the RSS feed URL for your website.
The URL of your feed will depend on which blogging platform is used, but you can usually find it by clicking on a button or icon labeled “RSS”, “Atom”, “Syndicate”, or something similar or by clicking on the icon located in the right hand side of your browser address bar.
If you still have trouble finding it, you can always check the documentation of the blogging platform software that you are using. This should tell you how to find the feed URL.
You can click on the advanced settings to further customize how you want your feed sent.
- Next you move to step two where you configure your publishing services.
Here you can get automatic Tweets on your Twitter page, Laconia, Ping.fm, Hellotxt, or Facebook by just clicking on each service and either joining, or activating and authenticating your existing subscription.
That’s all the work you need to do to finish your feed and to get automatic Tweets on your Twitter page.
You can create all the additional feeds you like by signing into your dashboard and following the above procedure.
This is probably one of the easiest ways to get automatic Tweets on your Twitter page, Facebook, and your other publishing services.
It’s important to understand the benefits of Twittering, and that Twitter can be used for much more than just personal updates.
With the introduction of microblogging to the Internet, Twitter has reduced the time it takes to market content from hours, that it used to take from using previous forms of communication; to minutes and even seconds, through the use of Twitter Tweets.
Although many users like to put in cat updates, or tell everyone what they’re doing in the bathroom at 2:00 in the morning; Twitter has many more useful purposes than that.
Initially blogs used to have the same stigma attached to them; but with microblogging, the world suddenly woke up and almost immedately understood what the power of simple publishing, combined with citizen journalism could accomplish.
Twitter is a place where you can freely accomplish many things.
The benefits of Twittering allow you to:
- Promote yourself
- Promote your business
- Promote others (affiliates)
- Get advise on almost anything
- Run polls to find a consensus
- Acquire human resources
- Immediately broadcast important breaking news
- Socialize
- And the list goes on ….
Microblogging has become so widespread, that if you participate in any social media community these days; people probably already know that you’re also on Twitter.
While Twitter doesn’t in itself have the best methods of finding people; you can always Twitter to see who your friends are following, or just join the conversation without being too intrusive, and simply ask.
Don’t be bashful, join in and make your presence known.
When you get involved with the community, jump in and share your expertise. See what people are talking about, ask questions and give good answers when you have them.
Know the difference between pushing and pulling. For instance, when you post a link to your latest blog post to Twitter, you are making a push, or an action to grab the reader. Direct marketers have mastered the technique of pushing and have developed it into an art form.
Although some of your readers can ignore your posts; the people that appreciate your posts will immediately check you out.
On the other hand, RSS is a pull. Users generally check RSS at their own speed, and it usually takes much more time to get any “buzz” going around your content.
Read the Tweets that are already out there.
One of the benefits of Twittering is that there’s a lot of valuable information from a lot of smart individuals on Twitter, that you can use for yourself and your business, if you just take the time.
Social networking sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and even Twitter, can be great places to promote your website or blog.
Start by creating a group or groups, centered around your niche market and begin networking with other users who have the same interest in your niche topic.
FaceBook allows you to create a business or “fan” page that can be used to share and post information to promote your business website.
You can use your fan page to share information such as your hours of operation, location, etc. It can function as a marketing tool that can generate leads for and promote your business.
Twitter’s founders don’t actually classify their web site as a social networking site, but anyone using Twitter can tell you in a hurry that it definitely falls into that category.
Twitter is actually more like a micro blog; and although many people consider Twitter and Tweeting to be a total waste of time, if you learn how to use it properly, it can be a valuable sales asset and traffic generating business tool.
Just like anything else, social networking sites can be great promotion tools. But to get the best results, you need to learn how to use them effectively.
It will require a bit of testing and experimentation on your part to determine what works best for you. But when you DO get the right formula; you’ll be glad you “wasted your time” playing around with social networking sites.
We realize that social networking sites aren’t for everyone and that they’re not absolutely necessary to run a successful website or blog, but using them to promote your web sites can definitely make your life run a lot smoother.
Of the many free Facebook marketing opportunities you need to know about, the following ways to advertise your business are suggested as the most productive.
All you need once you’ve set up your free Facebook account to maximize your advertising, is the ability to be creative.
Here are some the free Facebook marketing opportunities that you can get creative with.
Facebook’s Marketplace is frequently used by College students to find roommates, used books, and scout for cheap used furniture for their pads.
Creative business owners can advertise their products and services here, or even use the Marketplace to search for new employees.
One of the free Facebook marketing opportunities that is often overlooked by business owners, is the Facebook profile page. Don’t underestimate it’s effectiveness.
All members get their own Facebook profile page when they sign up for their free account. Here you can upload pictures, your business logo, your business URL, and any other information about your company that you think will encourage friends to visit your business.
Use the Groups feature to network with your target niche audience. Using the Groups feature, you can create a group for your business to create a “buzz” about your product or services; or you can join an existing group to promote your business.
You can lose a lot of business if you neglect to list the city that your business is located in, your market niche or industry, your neighborhood, or any other pertinent information that potential customers or business partners need to know in order to find your business. Don’t ignore the Networks question when you create your company’s profile.
- The Facebook Events Application
The next time you want to advertise a company function event; use the free Facebook Events app. You’ll find it more effective and economical than printing flyers, mailers, or other conventional advertising methods.
- The Facebook Badge Feature
The customizable Facebook Badge feature, allows your Facebook friends to be linked to your business website. It is a way to share your Facebook information on other websites.
The FunWall allows you to keep in close contact with all your Facebook friends. You can create messages or send greetings to all your friends at one time using this feature.
Facebook’s Inbox allows you to send secure, private messages to all your clients if you choose or just to individual contacts.
The Top Friends Network can be used as a marketing tool to group your contacts demographically, and to effectively reach your businesses best customers very quickly.
- Facebook Notes Application
You can use the Facebook Notes application as a marketing tool to post your company’s important news information. With it you can post messages, links, photos, or anything else you would like to promote your business.
There are many other free Facebook marketing opportunities you can create to promote your business if you just use your imagination.
Among other things, traffic generation requires the proper placement of keywords in your page title and other key locations in your website.
Keyword research is a basic requirement for any traffic generating strategy.
You need to know which keywords are being searched for the most in your market niche, which keywords you need to target for your site, and what keywords your competition is using.
Once you have identified those keywords, the most important places to use them is in the title of your web pages and in your articles.
All the search engines use the title of your website and webpages as a major determining factor in ranking your site.
The titles of your web pages and website are also used by the search engines for your listing in the search results.
It’s important to remember that if you have a multi-page website, not a one-page static website, every single page of your site needs to be optimized for the search engines using the keyword phrases you researched.
Every single page of your website will show up separately in the search results, not just your home page.
It is essential to place the keyword you want to rank for in the title tag, the title of the article, and at least in one (<h1></h1>), heading tag. This is how your visitors will locate you through their searches.
Many businesses that are just starting out online, will place their business name at the top of every web page in their website, and nowhere else. They then wonder why their traffic is not up to par.
Although it’s important to have your business name in the title of your webpages, the fact is that you also need targeted keywords in the title, to get organic search traffic.
Organic search traffic, is the traffic you get from people who locate you through searching a specific keyword that is relevant to your market niche.
The truth is that most people don’t even care about your business name until they discover your services.
Let’s take an example.
An alzheimers community in Savannah, Ga. is named “Shadowmoss Plantation”.
After doing a bit of research, we found that many people were searching for “Shadowmoss Plantation” because it is a golf country club, ranked in the first page of the search engine results for that keyword phrase.
In order to show up in the rankings for that phrase; it was necessary to include “alzheimers” in the title and change the keyword phrase to “Shadowmoss Plantation Alzheimer’s”.
After the change was initiated, the business eventually showed up on the first page of the search engine results.
Proper placement of keywords in your page title is not only important, it is essential if you plan on getting ranked highly in the search engine results.
It is important to know what constitutes an authority site if you are interested in achieving a top position with the search engines.
Linking to authority sites make the job of attaining a higher search engine results page (SERP) ranking much easier, than to websites that have not already achieved this status.
Achieving authority site status is what we should all be striving for if you are an owner of a business website.
Some websites that have not undergone search engine optimization are already authority sites, but are not recognized as such by the search engines.
Websites that either lack sufficient content or enough links, are normally not considered authority sites by the search engines.
Authority websites normally dominate the top ten results for the highly competitive, high traffic keywords on most of the search engines.
Except for a very few exceptional sites, the search engines usually smile favorably on websites they define as authority sites and reward them accordingly with the top rankings.
When it comes down to exactly what constitutes an authority site; several things come to bear.
Generally, authority sites have quite a bit more content and web pages than other websites.
Search engines love content rich websites and feed on them. Websites that are loaded with a lot of web pages that are filled with a lot of content per page, generally do much better with the search engines than a smaller website with only a “tickler” paragraph on each page.
Links from other authority sites to your website, will help your site become established as an authority site.
The search engines will give more weight to incoming links from authority sites that have the same or similar main keywords as your site, than inbound links from other less established websites.
Now that you know what constitutes an authority site; you can go about establishing your site as an authority site.
Here are three things you must do to move things along.
- Add more pages to your website.
- Add more content to your webpages.
- Find some authority link partners that are willing to link back to your website.
It sounds easy, but it takes a lot of time and work to achieve authority site status.
Before you jump in and start adding more web pages to your website; do some research to find out why your competition is beating you out in the search engine rankings, so you can take appropriate action.
You can usually get some good ideas by checking out your competition to see what they are doing and how they are doing it.
When you know what type pages you need to add to your site; go ahead and either write some additional content yourself, or outsource the task to a copywriter or ghost writer.
If you know how to incorporate keyword rich text into your content, you can do it yourself. Otherwise, delegate the work or hire someone to do it for you.
The web is loaded with good “hungry” writers looking to earn some money who do this on a regular basis, or you can go to article exchanges where you can grab content for free, providing you include the author’s resource box which usually includes a link back to the author’s site.
After you have posted more pages with additional content, you need to start soliciting authority sites and get them to link back to your site.
You can solicit backlinks from webmasters by email or by commenting on sites that allow HTML or URLs in the comments section.
Both methods will get positive results when done properly. You will find that some people will answer your emails promptly, while others will not even bother to take the time to respond.
The better your website looks and the higher quality content you provide; the more likely authority sites will consider linking to your site.
After you have uploaded more pages with quality content to your site, and have acquired at least 10 authority links back to your website; you will need to make sure that your web pages are properly optimized for the search engines.
Once all these steps are accomplished, you can resubmit your website to the major search engines and web directories so that their robots can crawl your site, re index it and move it up in the rankings.
In Search Engine Optimization, knowing what constitutes an authority site is the first and most important step to improving your website’s search engine ranking.
Getting authority site back links isn’t rocket science, but you do need to know the basics of Search Engine Optimization and blog commenting.
The first step to getting authority site back links, is to install the SEO Quake add on for the Mozilla Firefox browser.
Once installed you can use the “authority codes” in Google search, to find a listing of sites in that category. Either .edu, .gov, .com, or .org sites.
The basic code is: site:.com inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
You can replace the .com with .gov, .edu, or .org at the beginning of the search query as you see fit and insert your keyword or keyword phrase in that parens group.
Using the SEO Quake add on, select good sites that are related to the topic of your site and that accept urls in the comment section.
Some sites accept comments and don’t specifically accept urls, but will accept use of html in the comments section. You can include your url in these sites by inserting a hyperlink with your keyword phrase.
The “Name” field in the comment box is very important, because this will be the “anchor text” that links back to your website
Write a compelling useful and interesting comment that can’t be regarded as spam by anyone and include your website url.
Make sure that you add value with your comment, give your opinion, and be a little controversial if you like, to gin up a bit more interest. Controversy is fine to a point, just don’t overdo it.
When getting authority site back links, avoid spammy comments. Spam is easy to detect and generally looks something like this:
“Nice article”
“Great post!”
“Thanks for sharing”
“You rock!”
Whatever way you comment, DON’T DO THAT!
As soon as your comment is accepted by the moderator, “ping” the URL of the site using any of the free pinging services that are available online.
Pinging lets the search engine spiders know that a change or addition has been made to the page and calls in the spiders to return to the page so they can spider it for new content and any outbound links, which you just created.
http://pingoat.net/
http://www.pingler.com/
http://www.pingmyblog.com/
http://pingomatic.com/
After you’ve pinged the pages that you commented on; Google will spider the sites, discover your link, and give your page credit for a quality in bound link, usually within just a few hours.
Getting authority site back links the quick and easy way is much better than using “black hat” techniques that get you ranked high for only a short period of time.
Auctiva is good news for Elefy, Amazon and eBay sellers who are looking to diversify their selling efforts and connect with more buyers.
Jeff Schlicht founded Auctiva in the late 90s to help expedite the eBay listing process.
Because of Auctiva’s time and money saving software, it has become a leader in the online marketplace and is now eBay’s largest third party Certified solutions provider.
Because of Auctiva’s history in e-commerce and it’s relationship with the hundreds of thousands of sellers; the next logical step for the company was the Auctiva Market Place.
Auctiva has been listening to consumers, expanding their time and money saving tools to support selling on other venues, and to help their users sell more of their items online.
Elefy, Auctiva’s new search driven marketplace, is dedicated to helping sellers improve their buying and selling of merchandise on the web.
The Auctiva Market Place will give sellers greater flexibility, functionality and reach within it’s online domain.
Auctiva will be adding listing support for two new channels this year; Amazon.com and Auctiva’s marketplace, Elefy.com.
Elefy will allow sellers to better showcase their items and give buyers an easier way to locate what they are looking for.
Later on this year you will be able to list your items directly to Elefy from your existing Auctiva account.
The functionality is being designed to be as straight forward and simple as possible for the user.
Although the beta version of Elefy is already out; it will undergo drastic changes on key features such as item pages, seller profiles, multi seller and multi item checkouts, item and order management, etc.
If you have done any selling on Amazon, you already know that it is tough work.
Auctiva is now working on tools to make selling on Amazon simpler and will be releasing their new selling features early in 2011.
With Activa adding support for Amazon and Elefy over the coming months; it will allow users to more easily diversify their selling efforts so that they can connect with more buyers wherever they are.
