Foursquare: what is it and how do you use it for business? Foursquare is a social media channel with tremendous potential to attract customers. It is very effective for your business and will definitely contribute to your business’s success.

Foursquare allows you to know where your customers are at any given time. This deepens the connection that you have with them. This connection gives you deep insight into your customers. It can also help you to identify the thinking of your customers through their visiting patterns.

Additionally, Foursquare will allow you to track what your customers are saying about your brand. This is vitally important because you gain customers through word of mouth connections and the people who are paying attention to your brand and your business will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc.

Engaging your customers

Foursquare helps you to engage your customers, especially those customers who are on the go a great deal of the time. It is much easier to communicate about all of your offerings if your messages reach your customers wherever they may be instead of having to wait for them to read your messages at the end of the day or at the end of their business trip. We are now in the age of instant gratification and instant information. Foursquare really helps make that easier for you as a business owner.

Enticing your customers

The Foursquare premise is based on checking into places around the neighborhood and within your online communities. When your customers check in, they are rewarded. The concept is often referred to as a game.

The following are some tools that will allow you to connect easily with your customers through Foursquare:

• Mayor specials: These specials can only be released by the Mayor of that particular community. The Mayor is your most loyal customer (you determine this by identifying the user who has checked in the most in the last two months). Once you have identified the Mayor, you should reward him or her with a special little gift.
   
• Wildcard specials: Wildcard specials are always available. However, your customers have to qualify before they can take advantage of those specials.
   
• Check-in specials: The specials are not released to the customer until they check in a certain number of times (you can set that number).
   
• Frequency-based specials: These specials are released every certain number of check-in times.

Communicating with your customers

When you are reading the customers’ comments, you will be able to glean a lot of value that you can apply to your business. It is very important for you to interact with your customers after you have become aware of how they are thinking and feeling. However, before you do interact with them, it is essential that you really listen to what they are saying.

That customer feedback will contain information on what your customers want and need from you. The more you pay attention to the needs and wants of your customers, the closer they will feel to you and the stronger your relationships with them will become. You can use Foursquare as your vehicle to keep in touch with your customers and to continue strengthening your relationships with them.

Measuring the success of your business on Foursquare

You can monitor the total amount of people who check in, the users who share updates on Twitter and Facebook and the number of unique visitors. Also, you are able to track the demographics of the users on Foursquare.

Once you are armed with that information, you can use it to reward your loyal customers. When you reward your customers, they want to be in a relationship with you. Everyone loves to be rewarded. The stronger your relationships become with your customers, the more those customers will tell other people about your business and recommend that those other people also become your customers.

Foursquare gives you a very good opportunity to increase the visibility of your business online, to strengthen your credibility, increase brand identity and awareness, and give your customers the feeling that they are important to you.

Exploring the neighborhood

With Foursquare, you are rewarded for checking into your community. As people build their communities on Foursquare, the interactions become more and more interesting. The more they check in, the more they are rewarded. The incentives make them want to keep interacting. When your customers check into a certain location, they will see which particular promotions you are offering. Everyone loves to get something for nothing or at least for doing very little.

Conclusion

Foursquare is an effective way of doing business and it is a great way to get your customers excited about your business and your business offerings. Your customers will find the Foursquare approach fun, interesting and entertaining. Because you have their attention, they will be connecting with you on a regular basis.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You own your own business and you offer products and services. How do you get people to buy what you are selling? That’s easy. You create a buzz about your offerings and you communicate through your social media marketing strategy.

Accomplishing this has absolutely nothing to do with magic. There is no fairy dust that you can sprinkle to cause the members of your target market to automatically start coming in droves to your website. In fact, what works well for one business may not necessarily work for another business. Creating a buzz involves social media and marketing that is spread by word of mouth.

When you first start designing your social media marketing strategy, there are several tools that you should include to make the strategy successful. In our article Developing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy, we discussed the importance of a strategy and how it is key to the success of your business. In this article, we are discussing the tools that you should consider using to implement the strategy.

The following is a list of some of the more useful and effective tools that will help you create a buzz for your business:

• Social media networks: Social networks are an excellent way to offer and share your knowledge as well as to build and maintain relationships. There are many popular social media sites that you can take advantage of and at List of Social Networking Websites, you will find a list of some of the most popular.
   
• Photos: Sharing photos as part of your social media marketing campaign has a similar, positive effect as videos with regard to the visual aspect of it. People like to be able to connect the name with the face. Some great photo sharing websites are Flickr, Memeo and Photobucket.
   
• Videos: Online videos as part of your social media marketing campaign have become very important. Videos are an effective tool in a social media marketing strategy because many people react more favorably when they are able to see you and listen to what you have to say than merely reading what you have written. Also, a lot of people don’t have the patience or the time to read a lot but when they are watching a video that you have made, it is received more easily. Two of the more popular video-sharing sites are YouTube and Vimeo.
   
• Blogging: Blogs are a wonderful tool when it comes to social media marketing. The reason that blogs are so effective is that, if they are optimized properly, they can drive a high volume of traffic to a website. An effective blog will be instrumental in creating internal links, content that is always fresh and appealing, active community, and website traffic that has nothing to do with the search engines. Always ensure that the content that you offer is enticing to your audience and that they find it helpful and informative. Some of the more popular and more widely used blogs are WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
   
• Microblogging: In the same manner that blogs allow huge opportunities to promote your business, microblogs do the same thing. Those opportunities are a result of both consistent content and good-quality optimization. Two popular microblogs are Twitter and Posterous.
   
• Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is a social media marketing tool that allows online users to search, organize, share and manage bookmarks of resources on the web. Some of the more widely used bookmarking websites are: delicious.com, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Reddit, Propeller, Slashdot.org, Yahoo!, StumbleUpon, and Buzz.
   
• Presentations: Another excellent way to get your brand noticed is by offering presentations on interesting and informative topics in your niche or industry. Presentation-sharing websites are becoming more and more popular these days. Some of the best ones are: SlideShare, Scribd, MyPlick and AuthorSTREAM.
   
• Forums: If you are looking for a new way to market your products and services, as well as a way to interact with other colleagues and customers/potential customers, use an online forum. You will see very valuable results if you engage your online audience for your brand and your business.
   
• Podcasts: Podcasts are a social media marketing tool that is used to promote your brand and your products and/or services. If you are interested in podcasting, you should check out Blip or RadioPodcast.
   
• Wikis: As I am sure you know, wikis are online encyclopedias. Wikipedia, AboutUs, Pbwiki (PBworks.com), Citizendium and Wetpaint are all informative and useful.
   
• Monitoring your brand: It is extremely important for you to understand the positioning of your brand in the market. Some great websites that you can use for this are: Buzzlogic, ReputationDefender and Radian6.
   
• Ratings and Reviews: One of the best ways for you to find out how your website is viewed by other people is through ratings and reviews. You can go to Yelp or GetSatisfaction to help you with this.
   
• Widgets: If you are trying to promote your own brand, you can create personalized badges using unusual widgets on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels by using SpringWidgets or WidgetBox.

Conclusion

The various tools that have been discussed are important for the success of your social media marketing campaign. Bear in mind that in order to really create a buzz around your brand and products and services, you also need to publish your content on business directories such as EzineArticles, eHow, Google Docs, IdeaMarketers and Yahoo Articles Group. If you do this, you will be gaining even wider exposure and creating even more buzz. Remember that it is important to choose the mix of social media channels and business directories that work the most effectively for you.

Always remember to be proactive in your marketing approach rather than reactive. It is important to constantly let people know that you are not just a brand and some products and services. You are a human being who has their best interest at heart and you have a solution to their problems.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

These days, many people are beginning to understand the potential use of social media to create event buzz. Whether the occasion is large or small, it can be enhanced tremendously through online communication.

With the popularity of social media, everything is different now. Social media allows planners and the organizations sponsoring the events the opportunity to have long-term interactions with the attendees well in advance.

Events have become much more exciting and part of that excitement is the anticipation or buzz that starts to build around the event long before it ever takes place. There are many ways to create buzz, and several of them will be discussed here.

• Intrigue your attendees: The vast majority of events have a website. However, not very many take advantage of the event management opportunities and free listings that are available to them. At the very least, you should have event pages on your website:
  • Facebook events
  • LinkedIn
  • Eventbrite.com – Eventbrite allows you to sell tickets, if that is something that you want to do
  • Meetup.com
  • Upcoming.yahoo.com

  Granted, it is a little more work to watch over all of the pages, however, it will be well worth it for you and the people who are going to your website. Additionally, another distinct advantage is that the search engines will recognize the pages and rank them.
   

• Engage your attendees: You should reach out to your potential attendees very early on. A good way to effectively accomplish this is by sending out a survey and asking for their opinions on a venue that you are considering choosing for the event, speakers that you are thinking about inviting, etc. Another way that you might want to engage your potential attendees is by asking their opinions on content topics. After you have been able to gather several topics for the content, you can ask your potential attendees to vote on the topics.
   
• Inform your attendees: It is a good idea to allow your attendees to vote on certain aspects of your event. It is a great deal more efficient and “green” than using a lot of paper. Another type of document that you can offer online is the program evaluation. There is no need to put that on paper.
   
• Integrate information: Once you are on site, you will have a wonderful opportunity to leverage social media in a really big way. The impact will be huge and people will start to buzz about what you are doing. You will need a hashtag for your event so that people who will be attending can monitor the event on Twitter. The shorter the hashtag the better. After that, you should tweet about your event, which will start to get your attendees excited and really motivated.
   
• Syndicate: You should take all of the content from the event and syndicate it as much as possible. Your ultimate goal is to entice people who did not attend your event to want to come to the next event, based on reading your content. Of course, you also want to get those people who did attend to come back next time. You can syndicate all of the event presentations as well as giving Twitter transcripts to all of the event attendees. You can also post the content on your event pages (which were discussed earlier on).
   
• Propagate: It is a great idea to take photos of your event (or have someone else take them) and upload and share them with people who were not able to attend the event. As an incentive, you can offer a prize for the best photo taken. You can also do a podcast after the event has finished and interviews of the speakers, attendees and sponsors. You should try to learn from the event to improve future events and connect with even more people as well as interacting with people who had questions for you.
   
• Blogs: Get bloggers to blog about your event and you can syndicate their blogs using a blog widget.

Conclusion

There are so many ways to create buzz about your event. The harder you work on letting people know what you will be offering and how you can involve them in some of the decisions that will go into making the event interesting, exciting, and buzz-worthy, the more positive their reactions will be and the more attendees you will gather.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Many people try to avoid using Facebook to market their business. They don’t really know enough about Facebook and how effective it can be for marketing purposes. Some of the more popular myths will be dispelled here.

If you are looking for a great way to really increase your visibility and reputation online, Facebook is an excellent way to do it. It has a phenomenal number of users and they are growing in number all of the time. When you think about that in terms of growing your business, it makes no sense whatsoever for you not to get involved (as a business person) with Facebook.

The following are some of the myths that people have bought into about Facebook.

• Only kids use Facebook: Many people believe that Facebook has no benefits for business because the largest part of its demographic is young. That has actually started to change. The older demographic (35+) of Facebook has grown dramatically and is still increasing to this day.
   
• You are too old for Facebook: At the other end of the spectrum from the myth above, in addition to the demographic now being older, age has very little to do with your successful use of Facebook. All that really matters is that you have something to say that is valuable and interesting to other people with whom you connect online. If anything, older age can be an advantage because with age comes wisdom and insight.
   
• Using Facebook is too time-consuming: Regarding the amount of time that is necessary to make Facebook work for your business, it all depends on how you manage your time.

  If you put yourself on a structured schedule and you really are committed to sticking to that schedule, the amount of time that you devote to Facebook does not have to be overwhelming and all consuming. The benefits that you will receive from spending the time and effort far outweigh any disadvantages that you can think of.

  In order to get the most out of your Facebook time, it is best to have a strategy in mind before you even start. Ask yourself what your strategy is and which goals you hope to achieve by interacting with people on Facebook. It is very important to have a clear understanding of why you are actually using Facebook to interact.
   

• All you need is Facebook to get clients: We all wish that this were true. However, it usually takes more effort than that to build up your business and acquire new clients. Unfortunately, many people believe this myth and are so disappointed when it doesn’t happen that way that they totally give up on Facebook after that. Facebook should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. It cannot be the entire strategy. Facebook is a great way to demonstrate your credibility and expertise. As you start to build relationships through Facebook, people will come to trust you and to turn to you for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems because they will consider you to be the expert.
   
• If you have a personal profile on Facebook, you don’t need anything else: This is a myth that many people accept as the truth. You should have a personal Facebook page that includes friends and family and a Facebook Fan Page that you use solely for business purposes. It is very important to separate the two. You certainly don’t want your business associates to know about the details of your life that is personal in nature.

  Facebook fan pages are public whereas Facebook pages are private. Because fan pages are public, the search engines can detect them and can rank them accordingly. You can also use your fan page to spread the word (virally) about your business offerings and your brand.

Tips to help you to get a lot out of Facebook without putting a lot into it

• Turn off most of your alerts: Based on your schedule, your goal is to spend a specific (and relatively short) amount of time on Facebook. If you leave all of your alerts on and you receive frequent notifications that tell you when someone has reached out to you, you will become very distracted and you will end up spending more time on Facebook (most likely for non-business purposes) than you should or than you intended.
   
• Ignore meaningless applications: Facebook has a great deal of applications that are fun but that serve no purpose for you when it comes to business. It is different if you want to get involved with them in your “play” time.
   
• Update your status on a regular basis: You should choose regular intervals to update your status and if something significant changes in your status in between those intervals, you should update it as it happens also.
   
• Peruse your newsfeeds: You should pay regular attention to your news feeds, which consist of the status updates of your Facebook connections, and if something is of interest to you, either share it with others or make a comment on it.
   
• Respond quickly: If someone has placed a comment on your wall, respond in kind with a comment of your own. You should respond as quickly as you can.
   
• Announce your events: If you are involved with an event, share the information with other people. You should try to get as many people as possible involved.
   
• Share your blog: Use the NetworkedBlogs or Notes application to import your blog postings, which will subsequently in your Facebook fans news feeds.

What do you do next?

• Continually update your page with fresh content: An effective way to accomplish this is by posting blog articles on a very regular basis.
   
• Pose questions that require answers from other people: It is very important to engage your readers as much as possible. The more engaged you make them; the more discussions will be generated.
   
• Be good to your fans: Allow your fans to take advantage of your business offerings, including special promotions, events and free giveaways.
   
• Communicate: Let your fans know what you are up to in your business and allow them to interact with you regularly.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you have hopefully been convinced that what you might have been feeling and what you believed about Facebook for business are not true. You can use Facebook for your business and all that it has to offer. So, jump right in and start connecting.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Since November of 2009, LinkedIn has been integrated with Microsoft Outlook, which allows you to keep a careful watch on your LinkedIn contacts, including the last time that you sent them Email, scheduled a meeting and all other activities.

As a part of the integration, your LinkedIn connections show up in your Outlook contacts as a LinkedIn folder, which includes the photograph and contact information of your contacts. After you send Email to your LinkedIn contacts, the activity appears on the bottom of your Email stream so that you can easily access the recent activity of your contacts as well as their latest status updates and what they are reading.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc0On7Wl-0I

It is simple to integrate LinkedIn with Outlook:

Adding LinkedIn to Microsoft Outlook

• Download and install the most current version of the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft (you will need either Microsoft 2003, 2007 or 2010).
   
• After that is installed, you need to download and install the LinkedIn Outlook Connector.
   
• Finally, restart your Outlook and follow the instructions on how to connect your LinkedIn account to your Outlook account. Outlook will prompt you about which network you would like to connect with. You would then click on the LinkedIn icon and login to your LinkedIn account.
   
• If the LinkedIn information doesn’t appear automatically, you need to click on “View social network providers available online” for manual support.
   
• The LinkedIn contacts will then appear in your contacts folder as a separate folder.
   
• You will see a green + and the LinkedIn icon beneath your contacts photos. The green + will allow you to add your contacts to your other social media networks and will take you directly to those networks.

Advantages

One of the wonderful advantages to connecting LinkedIn to Outlook is that it will help you to keep all of your business connections in touch and up to date with what’s going on with you and your business. Of course, that will definitely serve to strengthen your existing business relationships as well as help you to cultivate new relationships.

Another great feature is that a history will be retained of the Emails in your inbox from related contacts and you will be able to see the attachments that you have received from them as well as calendar events related to that particular contact.

As simple and convenient as it was to grow your network of connections on LinkedIn before, it will be much easier if you have tied LinkedIn to Outlook. As I am sure you are aware, LinkedIn is one of the best and most used professional social media networks all over the world. Most people use Microsoft Outlook for their Email needs. Linking the two together is a brilliant move and it will make the communication aspect of your business that much easier and efficient, which will, in turn, lead to greater business success.

Conclusion

If you follow the steps that have been given here, you will find the connection between LinkedIn and Outlook to be very useful. It is great that you can now go between LinkedIn and Outlook and the increased ease and speed will really make your time much more efficient and productive.

You save a great deal of effort and many steps by doing it this way. Another great thing is that if someone else wishes to connect with you, that person’s profile information will appear in your inbox and all you have to do is either add them or click on their profile before you connect. By doing this, you have completely eliminated having to go to your LinkedIn inbox to accomplish the same thing. Start connecting as soon as possible and keep growing your business and your connections with other people.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” — Rachel Carson. Social media has made sure that people will never be alone. There is always a way to connect to others.

Many business people regard social media as unexplored and mysterious territory. There is a vast volume of content that is being offered up online on a very regular basis. It may seem difficult at times to sort through the massive amount of content in order to find the gems that are really valuable.

The actuality is that social media marketing is a lot more straightforward than you might think. Basically, social media takes ideas that have already been presented to the world and presents them in a new way. The ideas are not new. Only the method or approach is new. In essence, social media is based on some very simple activities or techniques. They are:

• Listening: When you listen (really listen), you are embracing information that will keep you on top of what is happening in your industry or niche. You pay attention to what your competitors are doing, which trends are important to follow, which new products and services might help you in your business, what is going on with pricing, and of utmost importance, what people are saying about you and your business.

The concept of listening is certainly not new. Business people have been listening since the beginning of time. They have used a large number of tools to help them listen more effectively and efficiently, such as conversations with vendors, reading trade publications, analysts’ reports, trade association newsletters, seminars and other sources.

With the popularity of social media, your listening skills have become better because it is now easier to talk to people about your business and you have many more and newer tools with which to listen.

One very effect that social media has caused to happen is the elimination of a great deal of the negative feelings that existed in communications with customers. In the old way, people would write and mail letters to companies if they had a complaint about a product and/or service. That took a great deal of time and effort. However, with the advent of social media, it is much easier and quicker for customers to express their opinions, as well as people being able to reach many more people.

• Networking: Business people have been networking forever. Networking has always been an extremely important way to meet people and start to build relationships for business. For a very long time, all of the networking was in the form of face-to-face meetings, at conferences, forums, seminars and a myriad of other industry events.

Face-to-face networking should not be replaced with online social networking. Both types of networking are important and one complements the other. Everything that is connected to social media seems to happen much more quickly than when it is real time. The beauty of establishing and maintaining relationships with people through the Internet is that you are not limited to a specific geographic area. You can interact with people anywhere and everywhere.

Regular networking etiquette applies whether you are networking online or in person. You introduce yourself, ask the other person what they do, try to contribute something interesting and valuable to the conversation, etc. Just don’t try to give them a hard sell.

Also remember that your approach to social media networking is not the same as your approach to your social media marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is something that needs to be well thought out and executed carefully. The results will not happen overnight but they will happen. Social media networking will give you immediate gratification but your social media marketing strategy will not.

• Interacting: After you have successfully networked, you will want to interact with your fellow networkers. When people interact, they are starting to get to know each other better, gathering more information about one another and asking questions. Interacting used to be done over the phone traditionally. Over the last two decades, the phone has been replaced with Email.

Social media makes interacting with other people easier than in the past. It is very simple to answer questions from customers and potential customers and customers who haven’t even reached the stage of being potential customers yet. When you respond to questions, you are providing many people with instant gratification. When people interact, they discuss matters that are important to them and topics of interest to them. Many times, that includes speaking about products and services that are on the market, including yours.

• Engaging people: Engaging people online is a vital part of your success with social media channels. An excellent way to engage people is to end your content with a provoking question. You can even be the first to answer your own question to get things moving. You will see that people are interested in the discussion and everyone will want to give their two cents.

Conclusion

It is critical for all businesses to keep up with social media and what people are saying, feeling and buying. Any business that chooses to ignore social media and connectivity with other businesses will not be around for a very long time. Social media isn’t really mysterious at all. It is exciting, highly effective, and wonderfully compelling but it is not mysterious.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You have gotten used to using Twitter for your business. You have many followers by now and many people whom you follow in return. You must have noticed some tweets with a word and a # symbol attached.

Those words and symbols are Twitter hashtags. Hashtags are basically an easy way to catalog and join tweets together on a certain topic. Hashtags make it easier for you to find other tweets on the same topic, while at the same time, you are able to eliminate other tweets that are not relevant.

Organizers of events and conferences also commonly use hashtags for business. They use them as a way to keep all of the tweets about a specific event in one stream. The organizers may also use hashtags to organize and coordinate updates about events during emergencies.

How to use hashtags effectively

Using hashtags is an excellent way of extending your influence on your Twitter followers. Many times, Twitter users search for content that comes from people from all over.

Hashtags provide you with a way to build deeper relationships with followers with whom you have already established some sort of relationship online. There are many hashtags in existence that you can join as well as new ones being created on a regular and frequent basis.

You should use hashtags in your tweets. The hashtags should come before your keywords. To make it easier on yourself, you can do some research before you use the hashtag in your tweet to find out if the topic that you are tweeting about already has an existing hashtag.

Make sure that you introduce your hashtag to your followers by informing them about what purpose it serves and by requesting that your followers use it in their tweets on the same topic.

Hashtag etiquette

The rules of hashtag etiquette are still quite new and have not totally evolved yet. Common sense and proper social manners are good guidelines to follow. You need to make sure to use discrimination when it comes to deciding which tweets deserve hashtags and which don’t.

You should tag only those tweets that add significant value and interest to the discussion. Additionally, you need to be discriminating about how many hashtags you use in any given tweet. One hashtag is good, two are ok and three is the absolute maximum. You should be careful about using three hashtags on more than the rare occasion. You certainly don’t want to seem irritating to your Twitter community because of your contribution of hashtags.

Spam

With the wide usage of hashtags, unfortunately, the down side is that they have also become a vehicle for spam. Make sure that you don’t use hashtags on a tweet that is not related to that particular topic. Another thing that you shouldn’t do is fill your tweets with popular hashtags just so you will appear high in the Twitter results.

Choosing the proper hashtags

Your choice of hashtags depends completely on the type of business that you have and what you wish to get out of Twitter for your business. You need to make sure that your hashtags and topics are of the utmost relevance and usefulness to the people who are following you and to people who will be searching for you.

Starting your own hashtags

Hashtags can be used effectively to track social media campaigns that assist in creating a strong sense of community; a community that unifies your clients and colleagues with you. The first thing that you need to do in starting your own hashtag is to choose a tag word.

The tag word should be something that can be easily remembered, is easy to spell, and is as short as possible. Keep in mind that Twitter has a maximum of 140 characters per tweet and you certainly don’t want to use up most of that with your hashtag. Once you have chosen a tag, start using it and promoting it as much as possible.

Always make sure that your tweets that include hashtags are valuable and memorable to your followers. Remember that you can promote your tag via other social media channels, such as your newsletter and blog. Remember to include calls to action in your tweets at regular and reasonable intervals.

Monitoring your hashtags

One of the best ways to monitor your hashtags is by using Twitter Search. Twitter Search will allow you to watch people using your hashtags in real time and you can subscribe to an RSS feed so that you can see the results.

Conclusion

Hashtags are great way to boost the credibility and professionalism of your tweets for your business. They bring an entire new level to the quality of your Twitter content and it is yet another way for you to strengthen your credibility and expertise in the eyes of your followers.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

As a business person, you have great needs to search for information that relates to your business and your clients. Twitter has tremendous search capabilities that many people are not aware of and therefore, don’t tap into.

Within Twitter, Twitter Search is an incredible resource when it comes to finding answers to your questions and the questions of your followers, as well as finding a whole slew of valuable information. The information that you will find on Twitter will be relevant, timely and very valuable.

Twitter can also be an excellent tool to assist you in building, strengthening and promoting your brand. The search tools also give you tremendous opportunities to find useful information for your business that you can, in turn, share with your followers.

Using Twitter Search

There are many search tools available, such as Tweetdeck and seesmic. These tools allow you to follow a keyword or search term instead of a person. Another excellent way to keep up the pace with social media is to follow a social networking search. For example, if you are interested in finding all of the new links about social media, you would type “social media” OR “social news” into the search bar. You will be amazed at the results that you turn up.

Advanced Search Operators

Twitter provides an advanced search tool, which is also extremely helpful. You will be offered an online form to fill out, which gives you the option of finding tweets based on words and people. In the “People” section, you will be asked to list who the source of a particular tweet is, who the tweet went to and/or a reference to a particular person. An alternative to using the form is to type “search operators” straight into the search box. If you would like to find out what your competition is saying about you to other people, type “from:janesmith OR to:janesmith.”

The following are helpful and commonly used advanced search operators that you will want to use when you are searching:

• news source:twitterfeed This is for finding tweets that contain “news” and searched through Twitterfeed
• traffic ?  This is for finding tweets that contain “traffic” and asking a question about that subject
• flight This will give you a search result about “flights” and tweets with something negative
• movie romance This will give you a search result about tweets that are about romance movies and a positive message
• near:NYC within:20mi This will bring up tweets that have been sent from within 20 miles of New York City
• “happy hour” near:“Buffalo” This will bring you tweets about happy hours. The tweets will have been sent from near Buffalo
• @mashable These are tweets that reference an individual on Mashable
• superstar since:2008-04-08 These are tweets that contain “superstar” and were sent since 2008-04-08 (year-month-day)
• writer until:2000-01-02 These are tweets that contain “writer” and were sent up to 2000-01-02
• to:Microsoft These are tweets that have been sent to Microsoft
• from:johnsmith These are tweets sent from John Smith
• #sonnet These are tweets with the hashtag “sonnet”
• pea –nut These are tweet that contain the word “pea” but not the word “nut”
• black OR white These are tweets that contain the word “black” or the word “white” or both
• “strategic partnership” These are tweets that contain the exact phrase “strategic partnership”
• twitter search These are tweets that contain “twitter” and “search.” This is the default operator.

Another way to search in Twitter is to use the Advanced Search interface. This tool allows you to drill down your questions in a detailed manner. The search tool will even allow you to search for date ranges, tweets written in foreign languages, tweets that originated with a specific individual or an individual to whom a tweet was sent, and referencing specific individuals. Another interesting feature is that it will allow you to search for tweets with a specific “attitude,” (for example, positive-sounding tweets).

Location

With Twitter, you are able to search for tweets in specific locations. You can use a certain mile radius as part of your search criteria. You can use the feature “Allow Twitter to see your actual location,” which will really produce accurate results for you.

Tweets with URLs

If you only want to search for tweets that contain URLs, you should use the “filter:links” feature and look for updates from specific sources, use the syntax “source:Tweetdeck” and replace Tweetdeck with the 3^rd party application that you are looking for.

Saving searches

In Twitter, you are able to save any and all search results that you turn up. It is a good idea to save whatever you want to come back to at some later point. On your Twitter homepage, the sidebar on the right side of the page has a search box built in. Whenever you run a search query, you will be offered the option to save the search string for later. Once you have saved the search results, it will appear in the “Saved Searches section of your Twitter page under the search bar. If you ever want to delete the saved search, all you need to do is click it again to run the search and click on the “Remove this saved search” box.

Conclusion

Twitter searches are very effective, quick and valuable for you and your business. Remember; however, that this is only one component of your online marketing activity. You need to establish the best and most efficient way to use Twitter to find what you are looking for. It is important to use as many online tools as possible for your business so that your capabilities and resources are rich and diverse.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You understand that Twitter is one of the most popular social media channels and you know that you can use it to increase your business. So, how do you get others to retweet what you post?

There are several ways to get people to retweet (or share) what you post on Twitter.

• WIIFM: People don’t want to know how wonderful you and your offerings are. They want to know how you will be able to solve their problems. If you follow the concept of “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM), they will pay attention to what you are saying.
• Short and sweet: Each tweet must be no more than a maximum of 140 characters long. If you keep your tweets to 100 to 120 characters, you will be allowing people to share what you post and still have room for comments of their own.
• URL shortener: Using a URL shortener with a medium like Twitter (where you have such a strict character limitation) is essential. It will allow you far more effective communication with your followers.
• Links: A high percentage of retweets contain links. The reason for this is that when people read something that they consider useful, their natural inclination is to share it with other people. Twitter is an extremely effective medium for creating conversations and sharing the valuable pearls of the conversations with other people who were not a part of the original conversations.
• Great content: One of the best ways to get people to share your content with others is to make sure that the content that you offer is of the highest quality.
• Long words and syllables: Most retweets have long words and numerous syllables in them. They grab the attention of the followers very well.
• Popular keywords: Some words that are popular with Twitter users and will cause others to want to retweet your content are: you, Twitter, post, blog, social, retweet, free, media, help, social media, check out and new blog post.
• No self-promotion: Twitter is about valuable and useful content. It is also about helping other people. It is not directly about selling your products and/or services.
• Wise words: Generally, people tend to scan rather than actually read tweets. With that in mind, remember that the words that you choose must be real attention grabbers. You have very little time to make an impression.
• Intelligent retweets: Most retweets use sophisticated words and content, in general. It is not necessary for you to use simple and unsophisticated language to get people to pay attention to what you are saying.
• Unique: Retweets tend to be unique. In other words, the terminology and the concepts are not used that often. If the topics of your content are unusual and interesting, people will find it fascinating and compelling and will want to share them.
• Lots of nouns: Most retweets contain a lot of nouns, proper nouns and adverbs. The more you put in, the better.
• Emotion: You should make sure that your tweets contain concepts and a voice that touches other people in some way. People react on an emotional level. If you do that, people will want to share what you have to say.
• Logical order: The most popular categories of tweets that are shared with others are News, educational material, entertainment, opinion-driven tweets, products and small talk (in that order). You should start with News and work your way down the list.
• Target audience: It is very important to understand your audience when it comes to retweeting. You need to educate yourself about what their interests are and where their passions lie.
• Timing: The most effective time of the day to tweet is in the afternoon (between 1 pm and 10 pm). Those are the hours when people will be most inclined to be using Twitter. The morning is not as good in general because people will either be sleeping or trying to work on other tasks in the morning.
• Show gratitude: You should express your thanks to your followers. People love to be appreciated and valued. Another way of expressing gratitude is by sharing their content.

Conclusion

If you follow the tips that have been offered here, you will see that people will start to retweet your tweets much more than they did in the past. Using Twitter (whether it is for business or personal use) is all part of your online communication strategy. The more people share what you have to say with other members of their online communities, the more people will get to know you and to consider you an expert in your industry and niche.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

“The future is here, it is just not widely distributed yet.” – William Gibson. Social media engagement is essential to the success of your business. The more you engage, the greater your success.

Social media has had (and continues to have) a tremendous impact on how people are marketing and branding their businesses. It has put a wonderful and creative new spin on communications, marketing and the sharing of valuable information. The true value of social media is in the connections that it fosters among business people in a wide variety of industries and niches.

Social media encourages and supports the concept of business people gaining more visibility and greater exposure online. The more people engage with others through social media, the greater their reputation and exposure will be. With that said, it is critical that the rules that everyone must follow are understood and respected so that using social media as a tool is as effective and successful as it can possibly be. If done correctly, the interactions among people will help strengthen branding, customers, colleagues, potential customers and business in general.

The following are rules of engagement that should be followed in order to get the very most out of social media interaction:

• Contribute to social media discussions when you feel that what you have to say is relevant and appropriate. Your discussions should not be only about selling your products and/or services. Your main goal should be how you can help others.
• Once you find a topic and discussion about which you feel passionate and/or you feel is extremely relevant to your business, jump into the conversation with both feet. The social media channels all invite you to leave as many comments as you wish. Engagement lets your new online connections know about you and the better they get to know you, the more they will want to know you.
• Your engagement approach is very important. There are several ways in which to engage with others online. You can choose to educate, converse or just offer comments that really don’t require a response from others but that you feel have value.
• Choose the social media groups extremely carefully. Your choices should be based on common interests, knowledge and your ability to help other members of the groups of which you are a part.
• Establish relationships with others with whom you are able to interact on a regular basis. The stronger your relationships with your online connections, the more they will trust you and consider you credible.
• Understand and be sensitive to the needs as well as the personalities of the other members of your online groups. Your interaction with them will be determined by who they are as individuals and what you can help them with.
• Make sure that you don’t just listen to the other members of your online groups. After you have really listened what they have to say, go to the next level. Help them to find a solution to their problems.
• Try to glean information from your online discussions with others that will allow you to make improvements in your products and/or services.
• Through the establishment of online relationships, you need to give others the feeling that you are empowering them (through your knowledge) to help themselves in addition to helping them.
• Try, whenever possible, to take your online relationships to the next level by also connecting face to face.
• Try to be a “giver” much more than a “taker.” Of course, if each and every member of your online communities wants to give more than they receive, everyone’s needs will be taken care of.

Conclusion

Using social media to engage with other people with whom you share an online connection is critical to the success of your business. The more you engage, the stronger your business relationships will become and the greater your chance at becoming very successful.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.