Get Your Business Started On Twitter In 7 Steps
Twitter is about building relationships, if you go back to the 50′s and 60′s it was all about relationships. Twitter has brought back this avenue of business building, but it doesn’t happen overnight.
When you look at the phrase “Social Media” most people look at the second word “Media” to build their opinion and this is backwards. Small businesses look at the media aspect and believe this what should be evaluated in hope to leverage it for sales. The problem is Twitter is social – not media. Social = building lasting relationships. In business lasting relationships = long term repeat customers and referrals.
Use these 7 tips to get your business started on Twitter:
- Be sure to create a complete twitter profile. Take your time with your Twitter profile, be sure to add a picture, your name, information about you and your company. You have to remember that people want to know things about the people they are following.
- Follow others. A good place to start is to look for others in your local area who share the same interests as you do, as you follow people, many will follow you back.
- Keep your ears open and Listen. look at what others are saying, a piece of advice would be to look what others are saying and how they are using Twitter.
- Don’t sit on the sidelines – JUMP IN! Don’t discouraged or intimidated when you start using Twitter, there is a reason some of the biggest corporations are using Twitter as the foundation of their social media strategy. The key is to get involved, engage and tweet it up.
- It isn’t a monologue. This isn’t a commerical, it’s a conversation.
- Don’t be one dimensional. Basically, you are a person – don’t always speak as your business. People don’t get emotionally attached to your business, but the person that makes the business go.
- Don’t sell to hard. Focus on engaging, be natural with your product or service
Think of Twitter as a cocktail party, build conversations and relationships and the business will come.
5 Tips To Rank In Google’s Places Listings
As Google is changing it is important to stay up to date with the ever changing world of local online marketing and the key factors that place you on the first page. Google places listings and optimization is getting tricky and harder to navigat, here are 5 tips to rank higher in Googles places listings.
1. Focus on building more local links that mention your companies business name, address, phone number and URL. These constitute links that have a local search focus, or can possibly be guest posts in other local search sites, youtube, videos and tweets. Your goal should be to get these links fromother local sites such as local bloggers, businesses, directories or your local Chamber of Commerece.
2. Make sure your place URL matches your website URL exactily.
3. Check the accuracey of your existing citations. It is important to make sure your Google places listing and your website have the correct Name, Address and phone number and that they both matach exactly.
4. Perform updates on your Google Places page. Editing the main areas of your Google Places page can often jump-start the integration process. Edit areas such as the description page versus adding videos and images.
5. Just because directories don’t rank anymore doesn’t make them less useful. Since the new integrated results depend on strong organic and local search optimization, getting links from respected local, niche, or industry specific directories is still important. Just take any claims that being included in such as directory will propel you to the top with a grain of salt, as all it takes is a basic listing (often free) to deliver the desired results.
It is very important to keep up to date on Googles changes and proposed changes so you can keep your website high in the rankings. If you have any questons plese give us a call at (503) 737-9363 or contact us by email.