hal9000.ie

Tweeple are Twitter People.

Twitter users and members are referred to as ‘tweeple and their favourite form of communication are ‘tweets‘.

Retweets are tweets that have been re-sent, so that your followers can see them.

Read more about Twitter in our Guide to Business Tweeting.

To tweet or not to tweet?

This is the first in a series of posts on Social Media and their relevance for Online Marketing.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging site, where you have 140 chars to add real-time messages which are publicly available for viewing. Users ‘follow’ other people and then their followers ‘tweets’ appear on their Twitter Home page, as they are written. The limitation on space makes it very conversational in nature.

What’s Twitter all about?

So, it’s about conversation and sharing, rather than advertising or selling. It’s about engagement in a personal way, and it also offers opportunities for brands to follow what others are saying about them and to respond.

Is it useful for you?

Twitter could be useful in the following ways if your customers and industry are users:

• marketing your business with a greater online profile for your brand
• engaging with customers
• engaging with potential customers
• engaging with your business community
• accessing resources (the latest research, for example)
• SEO – real-time Twitter feeds to Google’s search results pages

Getting started

Twitter.com is the place to start. Twitter itself has resources on the site to help the novice and FAQ sections that cover most troublesome questions.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is do you want to use a personal profile with a photo (or avatar ), or a business profile with a branded logo.

Depending on your business, either may be appropriate. However, if your brand identity is important, then choose a logo and a profile name which is either that of your brand or close to it. For business, you are primarily using Twitter to engage with people on behalf of your company and your reputation is also important here. What you tweet represents the company. Also, it’s common now to add a ‘follow me on Twitter ID’ to business cards and email signatures.

Common terms

@                :           precedes a Twitter ID to identify a username and is used when replying

RT              :          retweet

#hashtag :         similar to other web tags but with a ‘#’ in front of the word. They can be used anywhere in the tweet,  and are used to identify tweets about a particular topic across Twitter, making it easier to find in search eg. bizcamp Dublin has the hashtag #bizcampdublin. Conferences and events in particular rely on them to track the conversation both before and after.

See our Weekly Web Word ‘tweeple’ for more.

Reputation Management

Aim to build a reputation as a trusted and relevant source of information. At the same time you can have personality, ask questions and engage people. Using it to push a marketing message will alienate followers. Or tweeting for the sake of  tweeting, ‘hello’ for example, will also alienate a lot of people.

How to find people to follow

Find out who’s tweeting in your space and who you want to follow by using Twitter Search on your keywords, search.twitter.com

Other useful search tips are:

“internet marketing” near:“dublin” containing the exact phrase “internet marketing” and sent near “dublin”.

seo filter:links containing “seo” and linking to URLs.

traffic ? containing “traffic” and asking a question.

Or, you can search on Google:

To search for ‘digital marketing’ in the title of profiles of Twitter users:

intitle:”digital marketing * on twitter” site:twitter.com

to search for a ‘seo consultant’ in the bio text of Twitter profiles

intext:”bio * seo consultant” site:twitter.com

You can also search by ‘location’ instead of ‘bio’.

Or, you can use www.twellow.com to search by category

SEO

Google are using Twitter real-time search as a feed for search results. If you’re contributing to the conversation on a trending subject then you may be returned in Google’s search results. All good for your SEO.

Tools

URL  shorteners are used to shorten the URLs for links so that the 140 chars of your tweet are not taken.

bit.ly

Tinyurl.com

short.ie – with this one you can customize the URL yourself – perfect for tweet links more meaningful and very useful for your Facebook Business Page if you don’t yet have 25 ‘likes’.

You can also register with Tweetscan.com to get alerts.

Metrics

You can see from your Google Analytics just how many referrals you are getting from Twitter.

Twitter Trends

Twitter itself is currently beta-testing it’s new Twitter Business Center functionality. This will provide for a specifically Business account (currently only an individual can be verified on Twitter) and allows for basic info on the business to be entered. There is a new feature whereby the business can accept direct messages from individuals who are not following them. This has implications for customer service businesses where they can get direct feedback from customers and will need to be able to address it and manage it. Read more at http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/twitter-business-center-toolkit/

Finally

Be humourous. Be informative. Be relevant. And build authority.

Twitter processed 1.76bn tweets in April. This is 47% increase from the number of tweets in January this year

[source: royal.pingdom.com, May 2010]

105 million registered users on Twitter globally

[source:
mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2010/04/15/twitter-goes-public-with-user-numbers/,April 2010]

First of all, SEO in Ireland is primarily about Google (though not all, Bing and Yahoo are relevant also). And it’s about giving Google what it wants. Let me explain what I mean by that. If you have a business, say you give karate classes to kids in Dublin and you have a website. How do you utilise the web to find yourself new customers using organic search (which is, after all, a relatively inexpensive form of advertising)?  An SEO person can tell you what you need to be doing online – both on your site and in other ways – to present yourself to Googles bots in an attractive way. For example, how to optimise your pages with your keywords:  ’karate’, ‘classes’, ‘kids’, ‘Dublin’.

There are a number of things an SEO person can see and do straight away, the success of which depends very much on the competitiveness of the area. Many of these can be seen in the SEO Starter Guide provided by Google (pdf).

After these tasks and issues have been dealt with, SEO can be become a bit of a grey area. This is because Google does not give away the secrets of their algorithms, they do not reveal exactly how they rank websites. This is for the very good reason that they do not want people to manipulate rankings. Overt manipulation contrary to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is referred to as ‘black-hat SEO’ (whereas ‘white-hat‘ SEOs are the good guys).  The goal remains to serve up search results pages (SERPs) that are relevant and provide quality content. Therefore, you can get disagreement amongst SEOs about certain issues, duplicate content for example. As SEOs do not have access to the algorithm, it’s impossible for them to say exactly the effect of a certain approach. Also, the algorithm changes constantly, so what worked a year ago may not work today and effects seen before may not be re-created subsequently.

So if you’re new to SEO, here are the kind of questions you should be thinking about when you consider engaging an SEO consultant to work with you on promoting your website:

1. Do they have clients testimonials that you can check out?
2. What do they consider the most important SEO techniques?
3. What is the timeframe involved?
4. How do they intend to measure results?
5. Will they tell you exactly what they’re doing and why?
6. Will they leave you with ownership of any changes?
7. Do they engage with the SEO community in Ireland?
8. How long have they been established in SEO?
9. Do they follow Google Webmaster guidelines?
10. Do they see SEO and online marketing as inter-related disciplines?

Now you have a starting point to kick off your initial meeting with your SEO. It’s important in any meeting to go in there with your questions prepared. How often have you gone to the doctor and found it all very satisfactory until you went home and realised you didn’t ask the obvious questions!

The Google ‘sandbox‘ is not a fun place. In fact, it’s probably not even a real place. Rather, it is a perceived place where Google sticks your website until it feels it is mature enough to come out and play on it’s own on the web!

Today, it is generally felt in the SEO community that it does not exist. But you still come across the term and the idea that a new website will not rank well for some time still holds water. Google relies heavily on inlinks to determine ranking and it seems to favour those that appear to occur naturally (or organically). And this takes time with a new website.

There has been much conjecture on the subject and Google have not indicated that the dreaded ‘sandbox’ exists. Instead, they reiterate the goal of having quality, relevant, content on your site as the way to naturally get traffic, get links and, ultimately, to get Google’s attention!

What is it?

Technorati (from the words ‘technology‘ and ’literati‘) is a blog directory with a search engine. It’s most useful feature is that it allows you to search for blogs on the topics of interest to you. And they are given a ranking or rating. You can browse the top 100 blogs or browse by category, and there are also links to the most popular posts that day. If you set up a profile you can organise your favourites, or simply subscribe to them using a Feed Reader like Google Reader.

It was originally the place for real-time search of blogs, but now Google and others are in the frame there. Now, Technorati appears to have changed focus to being a blog itself and takes new writers on board. So this is an opportunity to share your message.

The Technorati Authority of a blog is based on the number of blogs linking to it over the previous 6 months. It has enormous reach, as you can see from the stats below:

Do you need it?

Having your Business Blog listed with Technorati offers the potential to get you more traffic.

Get your blog on Technorati

To get your blog listed, you need to get an account with them (easily done) and ‘claim your blog’. To verify that you are the owner of the blog, Technorati ask you to place a piece of code in a blog post, like this:

2EY4WD35VWQV

They then verify the site, though this can take some time.

So what can a Business Blog do for you? How can it return the cost in setting it up and the on-going investment in time in updating it? Does it suit your business? 

Here’s a 10 point guide to your own part of the blogosphere.

Why blog for business?

1.  A Blog offers you the opportunity to show how much you know (though not to sound like a know-all..)! It presents you with a platform where you can establish yourself as an authority in your field. 

Would you prefer to do business with someone you don’t know and aren’t sure how much they know about what they’re doing? Or with someone who has a personality and seems to know what they’re talking about?

2.  ‘Content is king’: The old adage rides again. One of the key benefits of a Business Blog is in the SEO. The regular content updates on your site (via posts to your blog) attracts the search engines. The more frequently you post, the more frequently you will be crawled by the bots (search engines). It offers you the opportunity for more keyword placement, allows you to interlink your pages as you link back to your own pages and other posts. All of which will drive more traffic to your site.

‘Sharing is caring’: (we’re full of pithy aphorisms today). As people come to your blog and it becomes popular, you will get people linking back to it from other sites as they share your content, thereby getting ‘deep links’ back to your site. All good SEO.

3.  A blog allows you to share information with your customers and prospects and others interested in the same area and it can act as a channel for news updates relating to your business. 

4.  It also gives you the chance to interact with your customers and prospects. You can ask questions and receive feedback via the comment forms on your blog. You can ask questions, perhaps about new products, and answer questions. Your customers and potential customers can engage with you in an informal way. They are then more likely to do business with you subsequently.

 How do I set it up?

5.  WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform.

WordPress

This is an open-source software (ie. free) which can be installed very easily. The software is easy to use with a user-friendly CMS (customer management system) and comes out-of-the-box with all the blogging functionality you need – posts structure, tags, categories, comment forms etc. You can use categories to organise your posts. So, if a visitor is interested in a particular topic, they can view posts by Category. You can also use Tags to give a more granular way to search through your posts. Comments can be moderated, with options for different levels, so that you might moderate the first comment of a visitor and let the others through automatically, or you may choose to moderate all comments. So no nasty or spammy type comments.

Plug-ins are available to control spam, optimise for search engines (SEO) and sharing buttons, aswell as many others. Sharing buttons are important to allow your content to be linked to across the blogosphere, this will bring you more traffic as time goes on.

6.  For SEO benefits, it is important to have your blog hosted on your own website. You can quickly set up a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com, but these will not bring traffic to your own website. 

How to I blog successfully?

7.  The success of any blog depends on the goals starting out. First of all decide what your content will relate to and determine who your target audience is. Your business blog should keep to topics which are of interest to your target audience and are within your realm of expertise.

8.  The blog must be regular. Some blogs start off well, but after a few months, the posts taper off and the benefits are lost. Start how you mean to continue and decide how often you are going to post, and stick to it. It should be scheduled as an activity, and not something to be done when you have a few minutes free (because you never will have!). The posts do not have to be done by one person, as long as the person writing is in a position of knowledge on the topic.

8.  Use keywords in your blog titles to increase your SEO. Each post has it’s own web page and URL and these are known as permalinks and do not change. So, having a keyword in the URL of the post is beneficial for SEO and as people link to the post, the link remains in place and will not change as time goes on. This is important for search engines, as they don’t like to have pages indexed that subsequently have broken links.

9.  Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your blog. Have a RSS feed option and an option to subscribe by email. FeedBurner is a free service which allows blog subscriptions by email and is easy to place on your site.

10.  Write in an engaging way and keep it short and snappy. Structure your posts so that the reader can see at first glance what it’s about. (No-one wants to see what you had for breakfast or what you thought about it.)

• keep sentences short
• use headings 
• use bullet points
• use active verbs
• ask questions and look for feedback
• highlight key words and phrases
• link to relevant sources or other posts
• have personality!

Thinking of outsourcing your Blog?

If you’re thinking of outsourcing your blog, then beware. A blog is not likely to be successful if the person writing it is not close to the subject matter and it will quickly become evident.

And don’t consider setting up a fake blog to promote your business. These ‘flogs‘ (fake blogs) will only serve to undermine your reputation when you get found out – which you probably will. They are akin to ‘infomercials‘ and ‘advertorials’.

See examples of Business Blogs in the Irish Blog Awards Shortlist for 2010.

It’s getting closer to real-time. Google now has a real-time feed from Twitter showing a scrolling feed as people are tweeting on the given search term.

Even Blog postings are indexed practially straight away. Our post on ‘deep links’ was indexed within an hour and displayed in Google’s search results:

How fast is your new content being indexed?