Tweeter is no longer something new. Today, everybody knows about Twitter;
your folks, friends and even grannies are all twitting. If you have an online
business, how can you take advantage of Twitter to grow your online business?

Here are tips and tricks that work.

Real Photos Count a Lot
Social platform users prefer to connect with real faces, not logos or some images.
So, use your real photo in your Twitter page instead of company image or logo.
Besides, using a business logo would only create the impression that it is all
about boring sales tone, this is a huge turn off for most social network users.

Your Bio LineYour bio line comes before your tweets; people would want
to know if you are worth following through your bio line. Remember, only 160 characters are available for your bio line, so don’t blab, ensure that you maximize it. Avoid using a sales pitch or making it spammy. Just use the right words to describe yourself and your business. You can also include the URL to your blog or website.

Tips on Getting People to Follow You on Twitter
Your email list or business contacts serve as viable tool for achieving twitter following. If these people are Twitter users already, invite them to follow you. Include your Twitter URL on your site, in your email signature as well as blogs – you are indirectly asking people to follow you on twitter. Other places you can incorporate your Twitter URL include your flyers, business cards and other conventional business materials.

A helpful thing to do is to register at twellow.com for free – this is the Yellow Pages of Twitter users. You will be listed in a Twitter directory in your business niche. Take advantage of every opportunity to spread the news about your presence on Twitter. Include your Twitter URL in your Facebook page and get the link spreading as you share it for your friends on Facebook.

The most beneficial following on Twitter is when you follow the authorities as well as regular Twitter users in your specific niche. This will help you to know how you can enhance your result and you will get to interact more with like-minds.

By nature, humans are very curious. They would want to know who is following who, so they will regularly follow the links to know the caliber of people following those in their niche. Thus, concentrate more on seeking followers who share the same business line and interest with you. Don’t be passive, be part of the conversations and give your own advice.

Establish yourself as an authority in your niche and watch followers flow naturally to you.

The best time to secure a business real estate on the number one Social platform is now. The rate at which Fan Pages for business are getting relevant for virtually all industry types is amazing. But, some people are not careful to carry out proper maintenance of their Fan Pages, thereby forfeiting valuable traffic as well as engagement with prospective customers. The two top techniques for growing your network and increasing your reputation on Fan Page, are the use of Applications and steady efforts with Updates.

As soon as a company or business creates its Fan Page, it would automatically start enjoying standard applications such as Video, Photos, Events, Notes as well as Discussion. But, these applications are simply basics – you need more than the basic applications to achieve a unique Facebook Page and social media marketing tactics as well.

Here are more enhanced Facebook applications that would help make your Fan Page exceptional:

1. Polls
   One of the top social media poll applications you can take advantage of to make your Fan page unique is the Polldaddy. This poll app is quite popular and well recognized. It is helpful for social media marketing and also serves as a strategy for engaging potential customers. Come up with a poll for your page; simply put up a question and provide answers (about four answers) for the question and post them. This is a great way to jumpstart a fresh campaign and also generate ideas for brand promotion or future sales.
2. Review App
   If you are providing a specific service or offering a particular product, the review app would be quite useful to you. In the past year, customer reviews was among the top marketing strategies that enhanced the experience of online shoppers, and boosted the customer service provided by the online business owners. A lot of online shoppers now depend largely on the reviews given to products and services to make their decision to purchase or look elsewhere. Now, it is possible for your fans to provide reviews on your business Fan Page, so take advantage of it.
3. RSS Feed
   You can find a couple of valuable RSS apps that you can take advantage of when you have news site, a blog as well as other feeds you desire to have updated on the Fan Page for your business. Social RSS is one all-in-one app that can be configured to automatically accomplish updates from different types of RSS feed intended to create a post on a business page. No doubts, a good number of fans in your network are more comfortable with genuine post from a business; but, you can as well employ this technique to achieve consistent update of your Fan Page.
4. Networked Blogs App
   If you keep a blog for your business, you can make the Networked Blogs app part of your business page as well as your profiles; this way, your fans and network will get the updates immediately they are posted. You would need to get a kind of coding installed on your business blog for this purpose, your blog developer can do the installation for you. It is also good to keep yourself informed of blogs in your niche or monitor trends in your industry – a great Facebook app for this purpose is the Facebook business app.

There are several other Facebook apps that can help your business soar through Facebook marketing and also increase your traffic tremendously.

You are missing out massively if you do not have a Facebook Fan Page for your business. With over 350,000,000 active users, Facebook can help grow your business rapidly and massively. Beside the massive potential customers you would meet on Facebook and other social media platforms, Google is now including social media sites’ contents in their search results.

Here are some of the things you can do to take the best advantage of your Facebook Fan Page:

1. Attract people to become part of your Fans
   As soon as you’ve created a Fan Page, your next effort is to get people to become part of your Fan base. The use of giveaways or freebies is one of the most effective ways of building your fan base on Facebook and other social media platforms. Any type of freebie (which should also be cost-effective) would do – something like $5 off coupon on purchases made within a specified period would be an excellent incentive.
2. Establish a personal relationship with your fans
   The type of relationship that exists among people on the internet is usually impersonal in nature. Developing a personal relationship or connection with people is more result-oriented. The best tools for establishing interpersonal relationship with people include pictures and video. You can use pictures that feature samples of your company’s work as well as events. Video works in similar manner as pictures. Don’t forget to involve your staff in your fan-base building, by asking them to submit captivating content about your business.
3. Keep rolling out valuable content
   This is a great way to give people reasons to come to your page often. Keep the content concise but rich – such that would be difficult to resist. Don’t wear a high sales tone, keep it tactful and at the same time enjoyable. If you have new line of products or service, this is a good place to point it out.
4. Keep the line of interaction open always
   Of course, the whole essence of social media is interaction; so, if you keep the line of interactive communication with your fans closed, you may lose them faster than you can imagine. Be the one to initiate the communication, don’t wait for it to happen.Organize an interactive contest that would initiate interaction between your company and your fans – you must attach a price to this contest. Also, another way to initiate interaction with your fans is to come up with a poll that requests for users’ opinions regarding an interesting as well as important subject. Also, provide puzzles and games that are relevant to your business’s theme or offerings.

   It is also a great idea to peep at your competitors’ Fan Pages to know what they are doing, especially those that are making much waves on Facebook and other social media platforms.

No doubts, you must have created a username for your Facebook page as well as a username for your personal profile. The visibility of your username is quite prominent in your URL. Therefore, a common name known as ‘vanity URL’ has been assigned to it.

Here are 5 top essentials or facts applicable to your Facebook username:

1. Applying for a Facebook Username
   The first step towards applying for your username is to log on to your Facebook account. Then go to http://www.facebook.com/username. The next step is simple – just choose the name you would prefer as the ending part of your URL. However, you need to be careful. You are only allowed to use just one username, and you are not likely to change it. Click on the ‘Set a username’ text and choose the page you desire to set your name for.
2. How to select your username
   One of the important facts you should know about your facebook username is what should constitute your Username. For a company having chains of generic words in your company or brand title, the best thing to do is to bring the entire words together. Generally, you can use any of the alphabets, or numbers (0 – 9), you can also use special character such as dot (.) – but avoid using this latter option if possible.
3. Procedure for changing a Facebook Username
   I warned earlier that it is almost impossible to change the username of your Facebook page. But, you can succeed in doing that if you can pay sufficient money to them. It is not a bad idea for any company to arrange for a sales rep from Facebook, it is quite helpful in matters like these.Well, the rule is somewhat flexible for personal profile – in other words you can change the username of your Facebook page for a personal profile. However, bear in mind that you can only do this ONCE. Also, like the company profile, you can eventually succeed in changing the username more than once if you have sufficient money to appease Facebook with.

   This is how it works with changing of username; hit the ‘Account button’ (located on top right side of the screen) with a click of the mouse. Look for the ‘Account Settings’ option. Look through the display that would pop up and locate the “Change” option for your Facebook username.  Remember, after this change, NO MORE!

4. What works when it comes to transferring Facebook username to a different page
   Just as it implies in the case of changing your Facebook username, it is almost impossible to achieve this, except when you have the extravagant amount that may be required by Facebook. Facebook username is not intended for registration on another profile – this is a security measure. However, some savvy users know how to get around this. For instance, you can file an infringement report which would be made against you. This is quite shady, so desist in doing it if you are not smart enough.
5. Using the copyright infringements form
   You can file a copyright infringement if you perceive that someone has stolen or snapped your brand name. Facebook would investigate the matter and take proper action.

Knowing what to do with Facebook Page username is one of the excellent ways to make the most valuable use of this number one social platform.

]]> http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/social-media/5-facts-you-should-know-about-your-facebook-page-username/feed/ 0 http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/social-media/ways-to-take-advantage-of-facebook%e2%80%99s-2011-updates/ http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/social-media/ways-to-take-advantage-of-facebook%e2%80%99s-2011-updates/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:31:05 +0000 admin http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/?p=1958

Your initial step is to have a good look at Facebook’s promotion guide and determine what you want to achieve clearly before jumping into it. Subsequently, you would develop plan on how to achieve your goal and be willing to embark on the required efforts towards achieving your goal. Ensure that you are always timely, then be as simple as possible. It also pays off well to promote on your other marketing platforms or channels.

For novices just entering Facebook platform : where should be your starting point?
This is very important for beginners on Facebook. Your first step is to create a Facebook Fan or Place Page. Ensure that you define your audience clearly to enable you structure the right content and grow an editorial library. Take advantage of content that your audience is likely to find interesting and valuable – device a simple way to share the content and ultimately engage your audience.

How does a Place Page differ from a Fan Page?
For those who have a physical location where followers can check in, you can make it a Place Page, which can be mapped with a given address. For instance, if you run a concert show, a Place Page would be more suitable – the venue will be the address featured in the map.

What is the best approach to Facebook ads?
The key is to use keywords associated with your business and add images as well – in all, ensure that you make the entire ad engaging, fun as well as creative.

Facebook Like – What way can a visitor translate to a client or customer?
The best way to engage visitors consistently and substantially is to initiate techniques to integrate events, polls and notes into your business marketing. When you embark on meaningful posting, comments, and also liking, you are working towards engaging your audience and ultimately converting them to customers. The Like Button has been made more robust to help you send traffic to your link posts and stats. Events are also helpful in driving traffic back to your blogs.

Who can I learn from?
These are known to be leveraging Facebook power substantially – Starbucks, AT&T, Dunkin’ Donuts and a few others. They are well ranked when it comes to speed and harvesting their content to those who need it.

What is the technique for making content visible on Facebook? Newsfeed of course!
You can rank high for top and recent news. Embark on publishing multiple valuable content, and come up with a means of letting users contribute by responding with question or photo posting. Embark on activities that inspire interaction as well.

Finally, it does not require any technological skills to create satisfactory welcome pages, you can take advantage of some free apps out there. Also, get familiar with Facebook Insights and how you can use it to control metrics and tracking.

If you look critically, you will discover that Facebook and other social media marketing platforms are saturated with marketers in almost every industry. It’s time to get back to multiple streams of traffic generation.

Here are valuable tips to leverage;

1. Be the One to Come Up with Discussion Threads in a High Traffic Niche
   This is an excellent way to break free from the social media marketing groove. However, ensure that the forum is a high traffic one, and that it is related to your niche. Also, you should come up with a signature link that would accompany each comment or contribution you make in that forum. When you’ve done this, go ahead and initiate a discussion thread about a subject that interests virtually everybody.You may be asking, “How can I create discussion thread effectively?” Okay, here are valuable tips to help you:
   • Come up with a question that would arouse everyone’s interest, and watch how answers would be pouring in as soon as one person responds with an answer.
   • Come up with a contrary response to a topic that people usually agree upon. Immediately, an uproar would spring up in the entire forum, leading to massive clicks on your signature link.
2. Make Comments on Multiple Blog Posts on other Niches
   This is one of the effective social media marketing strategies, yet people perceive it to be irrelevant. For instance, you can become part of the RSS subscribers of a blogger in another niche and endeavor to always be the first to comment on such blogger’s new posts. Endeavor to make meaningful comments that would add value to the blogs. Sometimes, you can also use a question approach style that may be directed to the blogger indirectly, just to engage and get the blogger’s attention. Before long, that blogger will start promoting you as well, and other subscribers would become interested in you and what you offer.
3. Offer Free Valuable Articles to Authority Blogs in Your Niche
   The reward for this effort is that you are likely to get backlinks from that blog. So, ensure that you choose authority bloggers in your niche.
4. Become Part of a Valuable Syndication Group or Tribe
   Make sure you join valuable syndication group where people would have incentives in reward for the contents they share among themselves. This is the best way to benefit from such a group; lot of traffic is also guaranteed through this means.

I must not forget to mention that pumping out quality and massive content consistently is as important as the other techniques outlined above.

B2B marketers are now massively involved in social media marketing. A recent research by Forrester shows that B2B firms are likely to spend over 50 million USD in 2014, as against less than $12 million spent in 2009. Sadly, a good number of those efforts are merely methodical with little or no full grasp of how social media marketing works.

The majority of the B2B marketers on social media marketing appear to concentrate more on message distribution – they tweet and post Facebook links particularly to the content they created, rather than coming to the level of engaging with prospects on a human basis.  This is merely a one-way communication profile and it does not provoke sharing as well as discussions.

Thus, B2B marketers need to concentrate more on the social aspect than the marketing; this is the only way they can maximize returns on social medial marketing.

Here are valuable tips:

Your topic should point to what you stand for

It is very important to be outright with words and language that highlight your major areas of specialization. You should also do this when participating on conversations taking place within your target community. Social networking content and blogs that are topically fragmented weaken the ability of a company to be exceptional among the different voices on social media platforms, and also the competition in search engine ranking.

Thus, you need an approach that spells out content/editorial plans, goals, social keyword glossaries, as well as customer personas. Using a content marketing strategy, you will be able to spell out the areas of interest for your company, its policies and the medium to relate the main messages. It would also add flavor to social network conversations as well as engagements. In essence, you would have a guide on how to comment, what you should not comment on, who to connect or not connect with, suitable words for blog posts, tweets and tags.

Remember that the number-one essence of social media is to ‘friend’ and socialize, so be tactful with promotional words, messages or posts. Also, use keywords that are directly or indirectly related with your topic when publishing content on social media platforms.

Ultimately, your promotion efforts and content creation should be targeted at linking and sharing, based on keywords and topics most relevant to your brand, and also inspiring discussion. The top benefit is that your target audience would perceive your brand positively each time they are looking out for topics on your brands either online or offline.

Your plan should target at winning

Most B2B marketers do not exhaust the possible resources for result-oriented social media participation. What they do often is to work with pre-structured best practices checklist given by some persons that professed to be social media pros – this is not a good way to engage a community. An obvious error I have observed with B2B marketers is that their social media profile is usually constructed in a common way. They also tend to focus on Twitter and LinkedIn in their publishing and do not even research these channels sufficiently.

The best result awaits B2B marketers who embrace the right approach to social media marketing.

Social media platform increases popularity exponentially. So, you need to know how to improve your social networking skills in order to achieve meaningful result with this traffic generation strategy.

Here are top tips to help you:

1. Find out the preferred communicating media of the individual
   Before you start following someone or giving them invitation to follow you on any social media platform, research the person’s preferred means of communication online. The best place to check is the individual’s contact page. Read their policies regarding connection with people online and simply comply.
2. Avoid long messages
   You must endeavor to bring people’s attention to your level of participation in a social media platform as sharp as possible. Therefore, concise and straight-to-the-point message is effective rather than a long episode. In fact, most people on social media platform do not have patience to read long messages, so keep it short and straight to the point.Today, Twitter has become a force to reckon with in social media world; with 60 characters, you can structure compelling message on Twitter platform.
3. Use social media network email effectively
   Avoid using the usual phrases that sound as though you are compelling people to respond. More often, social media participants receive emails that ultimately end in phrases such as ‘Please get back to me’ or ‘Please respond ASAP’. Endeavor not to sound desperate. People would naturally respond and connect to you if they see reasons to follow you. In fact, they may not respond when you sound rather desperate.
4. Be clear with your intentions
   You don’t have to start with needless ‘intro’, go straight to the point. If your intention is to ask for contact exchange, don’t start with needless pleasantries, say it outright from the onset. It is meaningless to start beating about the bush at first, only to wait till the tail end to say what you have in mind. The person may not be patient to read through your message.
5. Be honest and speak up as well
   Don’t mean something else when you are actually saying something else – just be real and be yourself. It doesn’t matter what you ask, but ensure that you don’t sound desperate or compelling. Prove that you can be trusted for a genuine connection and you won’t have problem getting yes as answer to your request.
6. Know when not to interfere
   Target the best time to get the best result in social media connection – whether you are requesting for friendship, sending mail or responding to mails. Also, it is good to follow up on posts and respond meaningfully, but there are times you may need to refrain.

The interest of common people is the major reason behind social media networking sites to enable them connect with a vast array of human identities who may be existing friends or new people. In summary, the value of social media cannot be quantified and this online platform increases popularity exponentially.

Here are useful tips to becoming a better and skillful social networking participant:

1. Invest time to research on what the individual prefers as his or her best communication media. One of the popular medium for becoming widely known on the web is a website. So, explore the author’s contact webpage and find out how open they are to others in terms of allowing other people connect with them. Simply adhere to their rules and line of advice as it relates to connecting with people.
2. Avoid lengthy messages: Social media basically targets at attracting people’s attention to us in the shortest time possible. A lot of people are put off by long messages – it is more effective to keep your messages concise. A 60 word-count is sufficient to create a compelling message on Twitter platform rather than a boring episode of 500 words. The rule also applies in other Social Media platforms.
3. 3. Don’t beat about the bush: If what you want is contact exchange with a new connection, say it outright from the word go – don’t corner around and wait till the last line of the message. Make your intentions clear from the onset.
4. 4. Don’t be careful about your demand: But don’t go overboard as well, keep it as fair as possible. Indeed, you can ask for anything that is fair from your connections, especially when they show good signs of friendliness from the beginning.
5. 5. Be prudent with your interferences: You must not dabble into every post and talk – also, learn to respond the right time and with choice words that would make you respected.  
6. 6. Avoid sounding anxious: It makes you suspicious and people may start avoiding you. Avoid using sentences such as ‘we need to talk urgently’. Be genuine and friendly indeed and not trying to impose things.