Top 7 Tips for Better Twitter Marketing
Perhaps now more than ever, it’s time for you to use Twitter to build your audience and promote your business.
The Twitter buzz has eased a bit with all the talk of Google + and Facebook, so those who are still using Twitter (and there’s millions of them) are a more captive audience.
For those of you wanting to know how to use Twitter more effectively for your business, here’s my top 7 tips for making it work!
- 1. Focus on Your Target Market
The first step is to understand who your target audience is. Communicating and engaging with the wrong people is a waste of time and effort.
- 2. Acquire Twitter followers
Now that you know who you want to be engaging with, you need to get out there and start acquiring followers. A good place to start is the people in your industry that have large spheres of influence. They’ll have large groups of followers that you can follow to start the engagement.
The larger your audience, the more likely you’ll find potential clients from your twitter marketing efforts.
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- 3. Engage with Your Twitter Followers
Effective Twitter marketing is all about engagement! NOT just broadcasting! The best way to cut through the clutter is to start discussions, ad value to conversations and share information. Just “pushing out” content alone will see you lose your captive audience.
Engagement takes on various forms, at the very least ensure you’re replying to your mentions, answering questions, using hastags, mentioning others in your messages.
To take your engagement to the next level, ask questions, hold competitions/contests, run surveys etc…give people a reason to engage with you.
- 4. Build Authority
One of the bets parts of Twitter is how quickly you can build your perceived authority in an industry. With some selective following and sharing and commenting on poignant industry information, you can quickly build your personal or business profile in the twittersphere.
- 5. Don’t SELL!!
Twitter is not aimed to be an obvious advertising platform. So don’t get caught in the trap of becoming impatient and then spamming your followers with a constant barrage of marketing messages. You’ll find your efforts to acquire customers will work better when you don’t sell directly.
- 6. Be Captivating
You’ve got 75 characters to get your point across…so dig deep and make sure you’re using your most persuasive writing skills to capture your audience’s attention. You need to make sure your content stands out from the clutter.
- 7. Be consistent
More often than not, small business owners go at hyperspeed for 2 weeks, twitting 100’s of times a day and then give up, because they don’t get immediate results. The key with twitter is to be persistent and measured. It’s rarely an instant ROI marketing channel – so take your time and keep focused on the long term bigger picture.
Twitter is not a set and forget marketing strategy, so don’t think it’ll be a silver bullet to your marketing needs…but with a well planned and strategic approach, it can really help you build your business.
Google Buys Motorola to Help Android Prosper
August 12, 2011 was a day of surprise when Google announced its acquisition of Motorola Mobility for a cool $12.5 billion and many are speculating that this is so that the Android operating can be given a chance to succeed.
Google CEO Larry Page said they went ahead with the acquisition for two reasons. Firstly, because the company saw Motorola Mobility as a dedicated Android partner that will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem. This will increase competition in mobile computing by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio against threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies. The second reason is because Motorola is the market leader in the home devices and video solutions business.
Page has no intention of merging the two companies and Motorola will run as a completely separate business. Android will remain the same – an open platform available for anyone who wants to use it and Motorola will continue to be one of the many Android licensees.
By acquiring Motorola, Google now holds more than 17,000 patents belonging to Motorola. These will help Google combat any patent-infringement claims from competitors. However, some experts are say that Google has taken a big bet by stepping into the messy physical world of selling hardware products and the success of this deal depends on how well the two companies can accelerate innovation and offer superior choices to consumers.
With Motorola holding only 9% of the market share, Google is surely under pressure to boost those figures. There is some good news though, Google can look forward to support from manufacturers, many have already given the ‘thumbs up’ to the acquisition including the CEO’s of LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and HTC.
Many questions remain with this news including how Microsoft and Apple will react? Will Microsoft go and buy its own handset manufacturer? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Expanded Sitelinks Now Dominate Google’s Search Results
In addition to the string of improvements Google has been making changes to its search results recently, we now hear news that sitelinks in the SERPs have now been expanded.
As per this update, some organic search results will include full-size links, display URL and a one line description below their listing on the search result pages.
For those who do not know what sitelinks are, when a website becomes popular enough Google adds additional links from the site (contact us page, terms & conditions page etc) below the website’s main listing to help users easily navigate through the site and quickly locate the information they are looking for.
So what has changed for sitelinks?
- Text size of the sitelinks, a green colored url and a one line description of the page has been added to make the sitelinks more visible and noticeable.
- Number and ranking of sitelinks has been improved from 8 to 12 depending on the type of query so that users have more choice while navigation. This is in total contrast to the earlier sitelinks settings that either showed all or none of the links listed in the websites sitelinks.
- The recent update has brought a clear distinction between the top domain and its sitelinks and the remaining results that are displayed from other domains.
- At the back end a combination of signals used for sitelink generation & ranking with the conventional ranking system has made the search algorithm more robust that will now serve out better and unified results for users on the front end.
Here is an example on what sitelinks looked before and after the update.
BEFORE THE UPDATE
AFTER THE UPDATE
Site administrators can manage their sitelinks from Google’s Webmaster Tools. Google is also giving webmasters the freedom to suggest a demotion to a sitelink if it’s inappropriate or incorrect, and the algorithms will take these demotions into account when showing and ranking the links. Google has also taken into consideration the fact that since sitelinks can vary over time and by query, webmasters can now suggest a demotion (up to 100 demotions allowed per site) of any URL for any parent page.
This update is great news for businesses. So only with a few minor changes in the meta-tag descriptions and optimization of pages added in their sitelinks list, businesses can now expect to see an increase to their organic click through rate (CTR).
New Google Related Toolbar Provides Recommendations In Your Browser
Google recently launched a new Chrome toolbar, Google Related, which shows you useful and interesting content related to your search while you browse the web.
As you roll the cursor over the thin bar along the bottom of your screen, Google will provide videos, maps, reviews and other information relevant to the search. Users can also share their search results with friends by using the built-in +1 button.
Google have provided more details on Google Related in the video below.
Google has put in plenty of effort recently to make search results more personalized/accurate and this latest addition falls into this category. Google hopes this toolbar will save searchers time and reduce their need to juggle between many websites without missing out on the relevant information on these sites.
For example if you are looking for a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will search and display relevant results. To preview one of these items just roll over the item and it will pop up in a preview box, so if you roll over the video result it will pop up and play in the same preview box without the hassle of changing windows.
Google Related works in the background to find the most interesting and relevant results on the subject you are searching for, however you can hide and or completely disable it through the Options menu.
Currently, Google Related is only available for Chrome and Internet Explorer browser users and only if you have configured your toolbar’s search site to be Google.com. Given that Google announced that they’re ending support for their Firefox search toolbar last month, I think we can assume that Firefox users are going to miss out on this toolbar. Apparently, we can expect to see Google Related for other country-specific search alternatives (ie Google.com.au) in the future too.
To learn more about this feature and get your Google Related toolbar, simply visit www.google.com/related.
New Google Related Toolbar Provides Recommendations In Your Browser
Google recently launched a new Chrome toolbar, Google Related, which shows you useful and interesting content related to your search while you browse the web.
As you roll the cursor over the thin bar along the bottom of your screen, Google will provide videos, maps, reviews and other information relevant to the search. Users can also share their search results with friends by using the built-in +1 button.
Google have provided more details on Google Related in the video below.
Google has put in plenty of effort recently to make search results more personalized/accurate and this latest addition falls into this category. Google hopes this toolbar will save searchers time and reduce their need to juggle between many websites without missing out on the relevant information on these sites.
For example if you are looking for a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will search and display relevant results. To preview one of these items just roll over the item and it will pop up in a preview box, so if you roll over the video result it will pop up and play in the same preview box without the hassle of changing windows.
Google Related works in the background to find the most interesting and relevant results on the subject you are searching for, however you can hide and or completely disable it through the Options menu.
Currently, Google Related is only available for Chrome and Internet Explorer browser users and only if you have configured your toolbar’s search site to be Google.com. Given that Google announced that they’re ending support for their Firefox search toolbar last month, I think we can assume that Firefox users are going to miss out on this toolbar. Apparently, we can expect to see Google Related for other country-specific search alternatives (ie Google.com.au) in the future too.
To learn more about this feature and get your Google Related toolbar, simply visit www.google.com/related.
Top 6 SEO Myths – Believing Them Will Get You Nowhere
Every business owner wants Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to work for their site. However, the field is constantly changing, and it’s hard to know what advice is still valid.
Every day a new SEO myth is born and unfortunately, not all old SEO myths die off.
To help you avoid some of the more common SEO and marketing pitfalls, here’s my list of the top 6 myths that you can safely steer clear of:
1. Don’t use Google Analytics because Google will spy on you and use the information against you
I think this idea comes from the conspiracy theorists who want you to believe Google is evil. Google has made numerous assurances that they aren’t using your traffic or conversion data. Mr Google himself, Matt Cutts, has gone on record to say his team doesn’t get access to Google Analytics, and the Google Analytics team doesn’t have access to their information. So they don’t use Google Analytics against anyone.
2. Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings
This is false. SEO expert Stephan Spencer suggests that Google won’t give a URL any more “juice” just because you include it in your sitemaps.xml, even if you assign a high priority level to it. Google will use your sitemaps file for discovery and potentially as a canonicalization hint if you have duplicate content.
3. Submitting your site to search engines increases your ranking
Submitting every page of your website in Google and Bing by using their submission forms will neither help you speed up the indexing nor improve your rankings. The search engines use web crawling technology that continually scans the Internet to find and rank pages.
4. PageRank determines ranking success
This is the most widespread myth in SEO. PageRank is a number which treats links like votes to determine how important a website is. However, it doesn’t have a direct correlation with search results, despite being calculated by several of the same signals.
Having a high PageRank is nice but it doesn’t automatically mean high rankings for everything, and it certainly doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to get tons of traffic and sales.
More important is building a site which meets consumer needs. That means functionality, information, ease-of-use, and relevance.
5. No-follow links are useless
“No-follow” was introduced as a way of linking to something without passing any value onto the site
Although the traditional meaning of no-follow was that the search engine crawlers didn’t actually follow the link (ignore it and move on) that isn’t what actually happens.
The crawlers do follow no-follow links, and crawl the content, but they don’t always pass on value. This means that there is still value in the links, because they can increase crawl rate and indexation.
6. Keep a High Keyword Density
The search engines don’t care how long your pages are, there’s no specific number. The goes for keyword density. There is no magical number of keywords you should have on each page on your website, you have to use your judgment. Your copy should be persuasive, informative and punchy: you’ll only serve to limit your copy’s punch by simply stuffing keywords into the text.
There are plenty more myths that need to be debunked, and I’m sure our team will revisit this topic again in the future.
Which SEO myths are you most sick of? What did I miss in my list? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
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