Most people think of Twitter as a place others post what they ate for breakfast or tweeting ones every move. Millions of people send tweets every day and tweet about everything from an experience with a company, complaints or even a request for information. Twitter Search is a powerful tool you can use to connect with potential customers. Perform your search depending on the type of business you own. If you own an online flower shop type in “flowers” to see all tweets where the word “flowers” appears. If it’s a web hosting business enter “web hosting” to display all tweets mentioning web hosting. Just typing in a search term like “web hosting” could possibly yield several hundred tweets. You might have a flower shop business located in Boise, ID and only interested in local customer. With advanced Twitter search you can plug in your search term, specify a location and the distance from that location. You even have the option to filter tweets by specific dates or even someone’s attitude (smiley face or a frown in the tweet). Now that you have your list of potential customers you can consider sending them a tweet or put in a request to follow them. Below each tweet is the option to reply to the sender or view just that tweet. Just hit reply and start typing your tweet right after the @username. You might consider posting a link (use a URL shortener like bit.ly) to a special offer for Twitter users or recommend your business. Be careful not to make it look like you are spamming them. But most people looking for information will welcome your tweet. If you entice them with the right offer you might find some new clients. Keep in mind that you need to have a Twitter account to reply to or send tweets. The other advantage of using Twitter search is finding dissatisfied customers. Finding those who are unhappy with your business can save you heartache. Major companies like Qwest and HP are using this to connect with those who might be unhappy but don’t contact the company. Instead they post their displeasure with a company in the form of a tweet. Do a search of your company’s name to see what others might be saying. It might save you from losing a customer or a chance to correct a bad situation. You don’t need a Twitter account to perform a search so check it out today. How have you used Twitter Search to promote your business? Happy searching!
Blog your way to success using WordPress.com
Blogging is an important component of any businesses social media plan. This blog is a WordPress blog and using one of many free themes available. WordPress is the number one choice for bloggers around the world and open source. It’s possible to find free services for blogging like Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Both work just fine if you are just starting out and on a tight marketing budget. Before Facebook and Twitter, a blog was one of the first ways a business could interact with its customers. It allows 2-way discussion and communication with your customers. It is also an easy way for someone not familiar with website coding to get online. WordPress.com Blog – socialmarket.wordpress.com If you want to keep your cost down the free version of WordPress is the route to take. Create your free account by filling out some basic information so you can keep the account protected and secure. With the free version your blog address will be yourblogname.wordpress.com and you are limited in storage space. However you can upgrade to premium features if needed at a later date. You are forced to stay with WordPress and if you change your mind you can always import your blog postings into another blog service. If you want more control over your blog, better search engine optimization, better selection of themes and plug-ins then regular WordPress is the best option. You can get your own domain name (typically $10 a year) for your blog and monthly hosting is inexpensive. When done with the registration process you can start posting right away. There are a few other things to set-up like categories and tags but that can be done as you go. By setting up categories and tags you will help your readers find postings they are interested in. I suggest that you take a few moments and think about the goal of your blog and your target audience. Write out the categories that best fit with your blogs focus. If you were going to write about fashion your categories might be hats, shirts, pants, accessories and shoes. The tags you might use would be bonnets, derby hats, t-shirts, polo shirts, jewelry, watches, jeans and tennis shoes. WordPress starts you out with the default theme which you can choose to use or you can search through hundreds of free themes or find specially customized theme for purchase from many different sources. If you are a real estate agent you can find a theme geared towards the housing market or whatever line of business you might be in. If you are a hobbyist you can find lots of themes to showcase and blog about your favorite hobby. If you don’t like a theme all you have to do is find another that you like and install that theme. Anything you’ve already posted takes on the look of the new theme. Just keep in mind that with the free version of WordPress you are limited in your choices of themes. But there’s something for everyone and more are being added all the time. Check out more WordPress themes here: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ I’ll talk more about themes, plug-ins and widgets in a future post to give you time to get familiar with the free WordPress. Plus I’ll cover the differences between the free version and hosting a WordPress blog.
Blog Talk Radio adds talk radio to the social media mix
From the Book – Promote Your Business or Cause using Social Media by Dennis J. Smith