Tag Archives: Unveiled

Grow Your Business With Twitter – Guide to Starting a Twitter Account

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Twitter is an excellent way for small businesses to dramatically increase their relationships and revenue. Tweeting allows you to increase your search engine optimization and is an excellent way for you to brand your company. There are over 75 million Twitter users, over 6 million new users a month joining and over 50 million tweets a day being sent from users. Twitter is a great social network site that instantly allows individuals to share with all their followers anything. As a business owner you can truly capitalize on this by sharing anything that will cause individuals to want to do business with you, want to be informed about your business or find it valuable enough to share with their followers to get your business in front of them. Announce everything your community will appreciate from local specials, customer only promotions and availability for your service at a discount if you have a last minute cancellation.

Twitter allows you to communicate 140 characters maximum. Setting up a Twitter account is extremely easy and the process walks you through step by step. Set up the account with your company name to help people find you in search. When you fill out your info make sure to be as descriptive as possible to assist people in finding your company. Your bio is capped at 160 characters so be very informative and to the point.

Once the account is set up you can begin following anyone and hearing what they have to say. You can search for people based on the industry you’re in, personal interests or really any criteria you’d like as Twitter is very flexible in helping you find what interest you. The more compelling you are with information the more followers you can receive as your tweets can be searched based on keywords. People can choose to follow you as fast as they can choose to discontinue following if the information isn’t relevant, thus make sure to share information not spam. It doesn’t require much time during the day as you can tweet from your computer or mobile phone.

Twitter is an excellent place to build relationships with your followers. Good social marketing etiquette is to add value to your followers and the business will follow. Remember that constant promotional activity will result in a small following. Be as active as possible and tweet in a friendly tone. Retweet messages that your followers will want to hear from people you follow. Retweeting is simply forwarding a tweet you got to your followers. From a community standpoint retweeting can really help spread a message and likewise get your company name in front of a lot of people.

Twitter is growing rapidly and as a social media marketing tool a must for businesses. Twitter can link to your Facebook account easily and you’ll only have to manage from one source. Viral marketing is extremely effective and can help grow a business. If you’re not tweeting, get started today.

Social Media Musts: Your Guide to Helping Consumers Do the Marketing for You

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Your customers are talking about everything from sex, politics and religion, to the latest shade of eye shadow. Every responsible social media interaction from your company carries with it a set of “musts,” those things you have to do in order to remain ethical, above-board, believable, interesting and relevant. Your media marketing strategy needs to include a set of guidelines by which anyone who writes for your company operates, a code of ethics that will leave your reputation intact at all times, and make you invulnerable to unwarranted criticism or attack. Even small business marketing strategies need to include maintenance of a viable “corporate” image. With the right strategies even the smallest Atlanta based companies can be active on the world stage.

Your media and public relations policies should include the following:

Authenticity
Be original in thought, deed and word, at all times. If you are ever found out to be a mimic, a plagiarizer, or an overt over-the-top pusher of your brand, you will not only lose customers, but you will incur the wrath of the Internet in the form of unflattering reviews and comments from which you will find it difficult to recover.

Transparency
Being open with your public should become second nature, to a certain extent. While transparency means admitting mistakes publicly and responding to critics or negativity, it does not mean revealing trade secrets or divulging personnel matters, ever. Legally speaking, if you are going to quote someone, always obtain permission and attribute the source; treat every quote you make as if it were copyrighted information. And, with every entry on a social media site, include digital marketing information including your name, email address and web address.

Play to your audience
Remember who is reading you: Past clients, current customers, potential buyers, and even past, current and future employees. Before you publish anything, read your content with all of those people in mind, and edit accordingly. This is your public face; don’t embarrass yourself.

Common sense
Exercise good judgment about language, unflattering commentary, inflammatory remarks, or any other interactions that might be slanderous or hurtful. Businesses based in Atlanta for instance, have long used their social media strategy to build product support and moderate negative comments in their social marketing network. Your company image and media marketing strategy can have no room in it for below-the-belt social networking interactions. Let your employees know that your policies mandate that any and all interactions undertaken by them in the course of business, or even after hours, if they use your name, will be monitored. Stress the need for an ethical approach to social networking that keeps your code of conduct in media public relations intact.

Be value-added
Bring something to the table that is not only interesting and relevant to your company or product, but make it so people want to engage and learn more. It’s a balancing act, but you want to promote your company and ideas without seeming to do so. No one wants to waste time reading blatant advertising when they are casually surfing, or feel duped into buying something when they are browsing the web.