Bretts Marketing Bytes

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Do you tweet on a regular basis? Why not get paid for it!? With Ad.ly, you can! ( I know that sounds like an infomercial, but it is true, and I just had to write about it. ) I signed up here as soon as I read about it.

This service is really easy and totally cool. Essentially all you have to do is sign up to be a publisher, and advertisers find you. They will send one tweet advertisement per day from your account. You don’t have to do anything. The best part about it is that they are expecting some large advertisers to pay out big. That means people like us get paid well for tweeting.

The best part about it is that you don’t have to have a huge following. In fact most people who have 200-500 followers will make out better than others. This is because the advertising is built on a quality score similar to other online marketing.

The quality score is based on “real followers” not bots that auto-follow. Since most of us with a lower amount of followers have real followers, we are better off.

I would recommend this to anyone. What a great idea. What’s the worst that can happen. Sign up, its free. If you don’t like it, then cancel. I signed up right away.

Click here to sign up. Good luck and I hope you make a million dollars.

Update: Another good one to join is Sponsored Tweets

Are you impressed by someone who has 10’s of thousands of followers on Twitter? Do you wish you had that many people following your company?

According to Seth Godin, having many followers doesn’t always help with business. Check out this interesting video of Seth Godin answering the question, “Is social networking good for business.”

My opinion.

I will have to agree with Seth. If you are just trying to get as many followers as you possibly can, it is useless for your business.  On the flip side of that, if you have real relationships, whether they be on Twitter or not, that is where the true value of Social Networking comes into play. Anyone can get 10’s of thousands of follower on Twitter, it’s easy. I did an experiment and gained 200 follower in 2 days just by following other people. The bad part is those people are not my friends, and don’t give a hoot about what I have to say. Useless.

New research by Citibank reveals that social media has yet to penetrate the small business world, finding that 76% of the 500 organizations surveyed have not found social media useful in generating business.

So is Social Media good for business?

Yes if you do it correctly and not try to gain as many followers as you possible can. Let it happen organically, provide good content and you will have a much greater chance of leveraging  these tools for your business.

For those of you who are going to be in the Buffalo NY area, I am speaking at a Social Media conference put on the by the  Buffalo Niagara Partnership Wednesday Aug 26th at 8am.  It should be really interesting. The event is a total of 3 hours with three very impressive speakers. See the line up below.

• Brett Burnsworth – Search Marketing
• Adrian Dayton – Twitter for business
• Bryan LeFauve – Facebook & LinkedIn

If  you would like to attend register here . You will enjoy every minute.  I hope to see you there.

The last article I wrote was How to feed your blog into your Facebook page. This post will show you how to feed your blog into your Twitter account.

There are several applications that will work to complete this task, but the one that I like best is Twitter Feed. Twitter Feed takes about 3 seconds to set everything up and best of all, it is very straight forward.

Here is how to set it up.

1. Sign up for Twitter Feed.
2. Login to your new account.
3. Click on the “New Feed Button”
4. Name your new feed.  Example : A blog about adobe training would be something like -  Adobe Training Buffalo
5. Copy and paste your RSS feed from your blog to Twitter Feed.
6. Click on “Advanced settings” and set your Update frequency and other options.
7. Click the “Create Feed” button and you’re done.

I use a post prefix of  “Blog Post-”, so that my Twitter followers know that it is a blog article. Hope this helps.  Good Luck.

So you want to have your blog feed into your FaceBook Business page? Thank god for RSS feeds.

This task is pretty easy if you know the right Facebook application to use. I find that RSS Social (Formally known as RSS Connect) seems to work the best. It is easy to setup and works like a charm. Follow the steps below.

1. Make sure you are logged in to your Facebook page.
2. Click on this link
3. Click the  “add to page” button
4. Another page will appear. Along the bottom you will fill out the information. In the URL area, you will paste your XML feed from your blog.
5. Click on the News feed tab, and choose “yes” for news feeds. This will automatically post it to your business page wall.
6. Click update
7. Your done.

Wait a few hours and you will start seeing your blog post on your wall.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below. My next blog post will be how to automatically have your blog feed into Twitter.

The fact that I am writing this post on my iPhone is probably a clue to what I think is the best Internet marking mobile device.

All of my favorite tools can be used either on the iPhone browser or via an app. For example, right now I am using the wordpress app to connect to my blog and write this post. I also use another app called JAM to make extensive updates on my Joomla websites. Social networking is also a breeze.

The Facebook app for iPhone makes it easy to post status updates, pictures and interact with friends. I also use a LinkedIn app that allows me to easily accept requests, look people up and send “inMail” items to my network. Let’s not forget about Twitter. The Twitter apps are endless. Tweetdeck for iPhone and twitterfon are just a few that are excellent and free. Because of the camera on the iPhone it also makes uploading pictures to Flickr extremely easy. It doesn’t stop at social networking though. Search Marketing research can be done via this device as well.

Keyword research, link building and website analysis can all be done while waiting at the doctor’s office or in the airport. I give the iPhone a thumbs up when it comes to Internet marketing.

I have had many other devices and none of them have lived up to the functionality of the iPhone.

I can’t tell you how many times a day I hear “I don’t get twitter” or “twitter is lame” or “I don’t see a use for it.” Does this sound familiar? If you answered yes, you are not alone.

The reason why twitter is so confusing to most people is because it is a vague product/service. It is one of those things that has no true meaning or usefulness until you give it meaning or usefulness. It doesn’t just come naturally; it takes a little thinking on your part to make it work for you.

Why some people think it is lame.
Let’s pretend it is your first attempt at twitter. You chose your username, created your account and are ready to write something. Then you sit there… uhh ok, now what? You ask yourself “what do I say?” Not sure what to write you decide to see what others are writing. Naturally your first thought is to look at someone’s profile that you know. Let’s say it’s your cousin. On his twitter page he talks about how he just took the dog outside, cut the lawn and is now cooking a steak dinner. At this point, you start thinking… Why is this important? You get frustrated and give up thinking twitter is useless. Does this sound about right? This is the average initial experience on twitter.
I suppose if I had no followers and the initial tweets that I viewed were about my cousin taking the dog for a walk, I would think it is pretty lame too. But guess what?
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twitter is so popular for the same reason that talk radio was such a hit in the 80’s. It is interactive!

As humans we like to have a voice and are sick of  big media giants telling us what to listen to, watch and read.

If you have ever read the book, "How to win friends and influence people " by Dale Carnegie, you know that the whole premise is based on the fact that people love to talk about themselves and want to be heard. It is a natural behavior that is ingrained in us as humans.

twitter gives us the medium in which we can start to act natural again. It allows us to voice our opinions, ideas and views in a way that has never been done on such a mass scale before. Sorry media giants, but you have been telling us what to listen to, watch and read for way too long.  It is our turn.

What does all this mean for business?

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It is easy to see what others are saying about your company on twitter by utilizing a few tools.

Who is responding to you?
To see who is responding to your questions or posts use the "@yourname" link on the right hand side of your screen.  Example: @bburnsworth

What are tweeple saying about your company, product or service?
If you want to monitor the brand of  your company name, product or service, simply use the Twitter Search feature (search.twitter.com) In the search type your name, product or service.

If you want to use this search again at a later date, click on the save search link.

Happy monitoring. Hope this helps.

Social Networking is such a huge part of business these days. However, most companies aren’t sure how to leverage it. This is partly due to their thought process. Business people think in dollars and cents, but with Social Networking you have to think in friends.

"Social Networking is NOT about making money, it’s about making friends or connections."

You should treat it like a networking party that never ends.  Good networkers don’t go to an event and simply pass out their card and ask you to buy their stuff, they become your buddy by sharing thoughts and personal information about themselves. They may even join you for a cocktail or two.  In fact, they may never even bring up business at all. People that are really good at this get you to ask them for their services without ever bringing it up.

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