All Tweet and No Meat? Making Twitter Meaningful for Traffic Growth

All Tweet and No Meat? Making Twitter Meaningful for Traffic Growth

 

Cutting down on Twitter noise and focusing on a strategy for bringing more traffic to your site is an optimum use of Twitter and harnessing its networking capabilities. Recently, I wrote about 'Cutting Down Twitter Noise' where I focused on making Twitter use more meaningful, placing as part of a traffic building strategy. This was as opposed to just dedicating your marketing energy into an endless loop of Tweeting and Retweeting, without building any kind of new flow into the hub of your operations - your site.

I saw on HubSpot a similar article which really hammered home this point in 'Is Your Online Marketing Strategy All Tweet and No Meat?'

This article highlights the issue of "Marketers who are all tweet and no meat." This phenomenon constitutes heavy activity on Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) but the activity just stays there. Since Twitter of Facebook doesn't require much  in terms of developing rich, original content - but bite sized, sometime reconstituted work - the marketer fills the pull of an easy job.

They are "leaping into social media [and] are forgetting the importance of other online marketing channels. This is a problem because social media works best in conjunction with a site that's full of fresh content like blog posts, white papers and videos."

In other words, the real marketing effort is about creating meaningful content, to pull people in, spark discussions, and provide the starting point for sharing your content over social networks. This is in contrast to just straight Twitter activity, where you hope that your activity leads others to look into your profile.

Twitter's very premise works against creating a magnet, since most serious Twitter players are following many Tweeps and see their latest Tweets as a stream, and don't go into individual Twitter channels and go deeper.

So in short, only doing social media is treading water or just creating white background noise, but if you are banging out original content worth reviewing, and then sharing it on Twitter, you are pushing your strategy forward for driving worthwhile traffic to your site.

Cutting Down Twitter Noise

Cutting Down Twitter Noise

 

Twitter has evolved into a prime marketing tool. It has outgrown its initial concept as a micro-blog or micro-diary, and turned into a relevant and powerful promotional platform. However, the question to ask yourself is: are you promoting with Twitter or broadcasting Twitter Noise?

In order to look at what constitutes Twitter noise, we must first define general strategy and goals for leveraging Twitter as a marketing device. Above all, your website should be at the center of your ecosystem, with Twitter branch for promoting it. The website may be a full site, or just the blog. The Tweets on Twitter are a good way of keeping the world aware of what's the latest with your organization.

Of course engagement with Twitter is progressive. When you first enter the Twitter venue, you have no followers (and unless you are Oprah or Ashton), you will have to work for your followers. That means LESS ABOUT and MORE ABOUT THEM.

You have to follow others
You have to get noticed by others so they will follow YOU.
That means, the first stage of the Twitter process is Retweeting a lot of other information from other Twitter streams.

Retweeting with Less Noise
Your Retweets need to part of an overall Twitter strategy meaning the information has to reflect the niche that you want your stream to focus on, and the sources of information should be accounts that you want to notice you. Retweeting magazines and other news sources will mean you will be broadcasting their information, adding to your channel with (hopefully) relevant information, but not getting acknowledged in the source channel. Acknowledgement can be by a thanks or even retweeting something from your channel. This approach needs to remain focused, and the same information should only be repeated for time zone purposes or relevance.

Twitter Broadcasting
When you have reached a target amount for followers, reasonably around 500, you should change your approach to make sure you are broadcasting more. This means focusing MORE ON YOU and LESS ON THEM. You want to maintain your connections, so retweeting should be maintained, but now your information should come to the forefront. This will make it easier for your followers to be aware that you are more than just a conduit, you are an original channel of content.

Content Development
With a solid Twitter base, you need to focus more an your content development - blog posts, news, updates etc. This requires planning out your strategy and what you can expect to produce on a regular basis.

Twitter Channel
With a greater variety and depth of content, you can program your Twitter to tweet the content like news feeds. Regular repetitions are well spaced intervals will accommodate followers in different  zones. Your channel will be more powerful and attractive with new ideas, and insights. This will serve your ultimate goal of pulling greater numbers through Twitter into your website.

Social Media Consolidation for Maximum Exposure and Efficient Workflow

Social Media Consolidation for Maximum Exposure and Efficient Workflow

 

The proliferation of social media opportunities does not need to overwhelm you. There are now many solutions for consolidating your social media efforts in order to maximize your exposure, while streamlining the time you put into updating your network.

I will focus on several of the most widespread social media networks around today: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Twitter is by far the most pervasive system for connecting and interacting, giving you exposure and expanding your connections in directions that you didn't plan. A Twitter stream is easy to get going and the opportunities for growth are unstoppable. For some, getting there hands around Twitter takes some time and mental juggling. The success path in Twitter is somewhat counter-intuitive, where growth depends on promoting others. Some give the formula of for every 1 self promoted post on Twitter, you should be posting referenced (or retweeting) 7 times as much information from others. This principle helps to 'spread the wealth', and works on the basis of one good turn produces another.

Facebook has strong traction and is an easier model to grasp especially for marketing. Instead of being a location for featuring the latest shots of the kiddies, you should maintain a Facebook Fan page to highlight the latest with your business or organization.

YouTube has become the ubiquitous source of video the world over. This should also serve as a main new media communication tool. Creating video can be professional and expensive or simple and 'on the fly' with online screen recorder tools like Screen Toaster.

LinkedIn is by far the leading mechanism for maintaining your professional network, and keeping them updated on your latest projects, initiatives, and status.

Bringing the Social Media networks together
Just looking at these 4 options and trying to keep them all relevant with information about your activities seems daunting and exhausting. In addition, you will want to maintain a blog for more in-depth accounts of what you are doing. How can you do this without running yourself ragged? How can you still have time for your real work?

You need to consolidate your social media networks. Here are some useful tools for pulling them together.

1. Blog to Twitter: Push all your blog updates directly to Twitter, without even touching Twitter. Use easy online services like TwitterFeed. You can quickly have your blog directly publishing to Twitter, expanding your blog article exposure to the Twitterverse.

2. YouTube to Twitter: In YouTube account, go to 'Active Sharing'. You can setup that your YouTube activity will automatically publish to Twitter, including new uploads, favorites and comments

3. Facebook to Twitter: Out of your main Facebook account, create a Fan page for people outside your circle to follow your business or organization. You can keep your Twitter stream automatically updated about new posts to your fan page by using the Facebook to Twitter synch app.

4. Twitter to LinkedIn: You are making a strong effort to share relevant and important information over Twitter, but many of your connections may still not have joined the Twitter bandwagon. However they are still in touch with you over LinkedIn. You can set up a connection between LinkedIn and Twitter through your LinkedIn account, see more on the LinkedIn blog.

5. Twitter, YouTube to Facebook: As the Facebook format lends intself more to being a blog format, than the massive Twitter stream, many find it easier and preferable to keep up with via Facebook. Bring your other social media updates on Twitter and YouTube over to your Facebook page. Visit Involver.com’s Application Gallery, look for the Twitter app and follow through for adding both Twitter and YouTube as tabs to your Facebook Page.

Now you have all your networks covered, so no matter where you are making updates, and no matter where your touchpoints are with your connections, you will be maintaining maximum exposure, in an efficient workflow.

Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

 

As companies feel more pressure to enhance their online presence, marketing teams feel stretched thinner and thinner. The 'new media' paradigms of Web 2.0 and social media, demand more attention and of course - more time. Where can this come from? What needs to give in the marketing priorities? Who needs new focus?

Welcome your boss's nephew - a precocious, grinning 16 year old. To the maturing business world, the challenges of Web 2.0 seem insurmountable on the one hand and are perceived as a waste of valuable manpower on the hand. So why not leave your online marketing strategy to a 16 year old.

There is no doubt that today's generation of adolescents can slip behind a computer like a glove. They can surf faster than their parents, look up information in clever ways, and get onto sites you wouldn't expect. Yet should this precociousness dictate your online marketing strategy.

Just past the year 2000, the corporate attitude to websites began to change. Whereas the new website phenomena seemed like a cute fad whose businss value was unrecognized, company directors demanded of their manager to 'have a website'. This directive in turn was dumped on the secretary, to 'put something together'. Little strategy was put into motion.

- No consideration of measuring site traffic was considered
- No mechanism for gaining subscribers or sign-ins was enabled.
- Contact information was buried
- Product information was non-descript

Yet the directive was fulfilled and a website existed.

Today's WikiPedia, Facebook, YouTube and most of all Twitter are gaining the same fascination by a corporate directors. The old ring of that simple directive can be heard.

They demand of their managers
- to 'have a place on Wikipedia'
- to 'get on Facebook'
- to 'put something on YouTube'
- to 'use that Twitter thing'

Who can the experienced marketing managers turn to?
- Excel spreadsheet specialists?
- Experienced trade show organizers?
- Brilliant marketing writers?

How about a 16 year old.
Teenagers today know how to take video clips of their friends and have it on YouTube the same day. They know how to build friend following on Facebook of hundreds, updating other kids hundreds of miles away about what they did over the weekend. Kids know how to follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter and retweet links to new videos.

It can be said that the new marketer has 'Learned Everything you need to Know in High School.'

Despite this proven skill set, and access to online Internet tools, this adroitness does not equal marketing.

The same rules and approaches of Marketing 101 apply in the world of Web 2.0. Concepts like the lead funnel, measuring indexes, planning next steps, and analyzing data for making clear marketing decisions are still the rule and not the exception.

Sure today's 16 year olds are good at getting something on YouTube faster, but what value is this piece of media. What kind of traffic will it drive? Does it include an action item? Will it be attracting the 'right' traffic?

Yes the boss's nephew can Tweet and Retweet on Twitter, showing the latest Brittny Spears video, but can he put together a Twitter strategy? How will he build a solid set of followers? Has he vetted the followers for your business area? How does he interact with customers on Twitter or has he just been pushed into the Twitter arena to tweet up like a robot, saying a bunch of canned statements that have been created.

A 16 year old's competence in the Web 2.0 world can be very useful, but should not be solely relied upon. If you have 15 videos to add to YouTube, give them to a 16 year old, write the copy to go along with them, set the keywords that you need to 'tag' the videos with, and then let the 16 year old upload these and fill in the information in record time.

For Twitter, once you have built up a strong following of at least a 1000 followers, you can have the 16 year old set up pre-written scheduled Tweets in HootSuite. These Tweets should be carefully crafted to have keywords, hashtags, and most importantly links to your site. Your 16 year old go through the grind of scheduling this list of Tweets like a radio station schedules music for the day, carefully giving exposure to the same Tweets in the morning and the evening so that your followers in both Europe and North America can see them.

Don't under estimate the abilities of our 16 year olds. But don't throw all your online marketing strategy onto their shoulders.

Getting Serious about Twitter

Getting Serious about Twitter

 

So your CEO told you that he wants to 'see the company on Twitter.' What's the next step? What to do? How can this fit into the overwhelming marketing schedule?

To the uninitiated, Twitter sounds like a black hole of marketing bandwidth, sucking up every last drop of time, and forcing you into doing tons of overtime on a global salary. The next steps might look like
- signing up for Twitter and getting the closest username to your company name
- Tweeting a bit for a couple of days, until it feels useless

Then the effort is abandoned, until the CEO comes back with folded arms, asking 'Well, are we on Twitter?'

At this point, this can mean trying to connive a fellow marketer to step into the saddle and start moving your Twitter. An effort equally lost after just a few days.

Twitter does not have to be as much of a time drain as feared if executed properly.

The main elements that are required for moving forward with Twitter are 1) focus and 2) commitment.

Focus
Taking strides to 'get onto Twitter' and make progress means being focused. This means being focused about the goals (acquiring a targetted follower base), staying on course for tweeting about your niche, and maintaining regular exposure in the Twitter stream.

One of the hardest concepts in 'staying focused' is idea of getting started in Twitter mainly by retweeting other people's information - primarily not even about your company or product. How does that work?

When you start in Twitter everything is set to zero, so the main focus initially is building the follower base. By simply tweeting continuously, you are 'Tweeting to an empty house.' No followers. No one hears your tweets.

They say you need to be marketing other people nine times more then you're marketing yourself. Still by being focused on the subjects that are Retweeted, that these topics remain 'in the same ecosystem' as your company, then you are attracting the right kind of people that will also be interested in Tweets about company and product. This is the path of building trust and credibility, and ultimately - a following.

Commitment
If I had a dollar for everyone that started Twitter and quit within a week, well....
The partner to focus is commitment. This doesn't mean abandoning all other marketing projects and sitting at Twitter all day. You can limit your main Twitter time to one morning a week. At this time, when using a Twitter client like HootSuite, you can schedule a set of repeating Tweets for mornings and evenings. YOu can collect relevant Tweets about your subject using tools like SocialOOmph that will pipe you emails about Tweets using designated keywords.

Results
Success and results on Twitter don't come overnight and not even in a week. However, if you persevere and stay on target your Twitter reputation will grow, and within a few months you will start to see the results that the CEO asked about.

How to pick a Twitter username

How to pick a Twitter username

 

Setting a 'username' in Twitter requires taking into consideration a number of issues.

First how are you recognized?
In Twitter, most of the time your followers will see you flying by in the Twitter stream they are following. That means they will see:
- your Avatar image
- your name
- your Tweet post

So bearing this in mind, in considering your username, you can be creative and select something that will COMPLEMENT your Avatar image, rather than repeat it.

For instance your company logo can be in your branded colors and serve as your Avatar, and a descriptive word can be your username.

Second, what impression do you make
The next line of engagement on Twitter is followers visiting your full Twitter page.
There your page is very identifiable and fully branded
- use a custom background image featuring product imagery, useful link information, and at a glance product info
- Fill in the bio section of your profile, using prime keywords
- show your URL

So rather than just picking your company name as your Twitter 'handle', pick a popular keyword for your market to conquer that area. For instance, if a computer manufacturer chose a Twitter name like fastcomputer, rather than Compaq, it could further their brand perception.

Tired of your existing social networks?

Tired of your existing social networks?

 

Today I received an invite to join Plurk (http://www.plurk.com/). It is (another) social network. I am already on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and diving into Twitter. I get updates from Plaxo, even though I still haven't joined.

My first thought was, 'Oh no, another social network to join, to have to update, to make friends etc...'

Then I saw: Tired of your existing Social Networks?

What did that mean? Am I sick of seeing my old high school friends and friends living in other towns on Facebook? Am I tired of getting ongoing updates from Twitter. Are my LinkedIn connections no longer serving my best interests?

How far do I need or want to fling myself in social networking? Before I even gotten my teeth into one social network, I can start all over in another.

There are more services like Plurk out there, for instance Ning (http://www.ning.com/) , which 'lets you discover and create new social networks for your interests and your passions'.

Exposure is very important for marketing, and the broader the exposure, especially for niche markets and products, the better. But how far and how much do we invest of ourselves. Can we make assumptions that most of our audience is already in the dominant social networks, and it is just a matter of directing our efforts to them. Or are there more untouched oases beyond the well known social media?

Vertical vs. Horizontal
Like many marketing considerations, this feels like 'vertical vs. horizontal'. Do I invest my time vertically and become well entrenched in leading social mediums, establishing a presence, following and even a brand. Or do I branch out horizontally into more and more networks (they are appearing every day).

Next killer app?
Maybe that will be the next killer app: maintain a presence and keep your updates fresh across the entire social media frontier from just one application.