Now we have come to the meat and potatoes about using Twitter to help you achieve your business communication goals.  I say that you need to have a lot of tenacity to stick to going after building relationships with people that you meet on Twitter.  It is a major mind shift.  No longer are we just networking in person trying to get an introduction to someone important to our publicity strategy.  Now we need to understand how to play well with others on the digital playground or else we may not have many friends.

Use Twitter to connect with anyone you want.

Millions of people have a Twitter profile.  It can seem like a daunting task to really get to know anyone.

How do you connect and build relationships using Twitter?

Use Twitter to earn attention by establishing that you know what you are talking about.  You could:

Be the first to let the media know something is happening in your industry.

Be the first to report any news that you see along the way. It may seem unrelated to establishing your expertise but think about it like this, the squawking bird gets the attention.  The point is to just get used to using Twitter frequently and to get people following you because you are interesting.

Start blogging!  Twitter and blogs make a perfect pair.  Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so that it can be automatically tweeted whenever you create a new post.  Blogging is another way to be seen as the expert and it gives you the forum to put that expertise on display.

Give away information.  Write e-books, conduct surveys and give away the results in the form of a white paper or a PowerPoint presentation.  To get the most traction out of giving away information you should set it up like this: 

Create the content and build a landing page for it on your site,

Tweet the link to that landing page,

On the page, ask the person to fill out a form that ask for simple information (email the most important)

Let them download the content

Use Twitter to gain intelligence about the people with whom you want to connect.

After you follow the person, then go deeper.  You could:

Check their Twitter profile for links to their other places.  Are they on LinkedIn, FaceBook or do they blog?  Use the information to find out other places where you can connect with them a little closer.  For example, are you a 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd connection with them on LinkedIn.  You’d be surprised how many times you’ll find that you are already closer to the person than you know.

Notice what the people you want to connect to tweet about and find ways to involve yourself in the conversation.  Do they have a question you can answer or do you share a real love for dogs.  What can put you on common ground so your conversation will be natural.

Do you remember all those business cards in your desk drawer?  Get them out and try to find the people you’ve met in person on Twitter.  This will extend the conversations you started having in person.

Here’s a few tips that will help you play well with others on Twitter.

It’s about the business of being human, reaching out to people and creating community.

It’s ok to form communities outside of the ones under your own control.  For example, subscribe to someone else’s blog and really participate.

Always be humble. You’re not really the owner of your brand.

Listen and acknowledge.  Participation will help your community grow.

We’re talking about Twitter but building community is not about where. When you met people on Twitter you will find that they may be more visible on other sites and you’ll want to be willing to connect with them where they actually are.

Don’t you hate being at a party or event and end up talking to someone all night who just talks about themselves or who you feel only wants relationships as long as they are making money from you?  Once your basic needs are met, then the pursuit of happiness becomes more important.  In your desire to connect with people (and make money), think more about bringing happiness. Everybody needs that.  Listen to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.  He explains this much better and his company is one of the best examples of good use of social media and creating company cultures that work (community).  Tony was interviewed on HP’s Input | Output program.

You can’t outsource community building.  Don’t give it to interns or outside workers.  You can outsource some of the administrative work like setting up the profiles or dashboards, training, or research.  However, do use consultants to help you develop the strategy and tools you will use so you don’t waste time figuring it all out.

Should you separate your personal life from your professional life?  The lines are blurring but you need to think about whom your main audience is so can tailor your online message.  Everything about you does not have to be broadcast.

Are you using some unique ways to connect with people on Twitter?  What are you doing?  We all want to know!

In the last post we talked about some of the problems people have with using Twitter. A major concern that I run into a lot is the idea of how to organize tweets to create or follow conversation. By far, the first thing that needs to happen is to select the tools for organizing your tweets. Twitter has heard this concern too and recently they changed the Twitter home page by adding features to help us utilize advanced functions. It works great. But what about Facebook, Fan Pages, and LinkedIn. Is there a way to have everything thing in one convenient place you may ask. My answer to you is a resounding yes! Here’s how. Use a tool such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, or Seesmic . I have used all three and in my humble opinion, Hootsuite is the winner. However, I would suggest that you try out all three or whatever tool you like as long as it does the same as these. Now let’s take a look at Hootsuite as a social media organizational system.

Hootsuite gives you very powerful tools that bring everything you need to stay abreast of what is happening in your social media world. When selecting a tool such as this look for speed first. You don’t want to be sitting around all day just waiting for the thing to load or refresh. Also, consider ease of use. How much information can you see right on the dashboard. Is it easy to make comments or follow conversations. Take a moment to view this short video created by Chris Voss, of the Chris Voss Show, (that’s the Chris Voss Show, he always says it twice) as he talks about his first impression of Hootsuite.

Which one you select is not as important as knowing that it is easy to use so you will, well, use it.  Here’s another short video from Melissa who blogs at Adverturoo.  She’s a new find for me but I already love what I just saw of her mommy plus marketing blog.  In this video you’ll get a basic overview of a few of the major functions of Hootsuite.

Now that we’ve comvered the basic of organizing your tweets and other social media sites, let’s pick up again next week with a talk about strategy for building followers, dialogue, and relationships that help you meet your desired goals.

What are your questions about Hootsuite?  Go ahead to the comment box and ask away!

1. Content is king.  People have questions and you have answers.  Plus, the search engines love variety.  When you post frequently, your SEPR (search engine page results) will continue to rise.
2. Blogs are interactive.  When you have interesting, educational, entertaining, or inspiring posts, people will respond at length.  This creates conversation of a caliber that doesn’t happen anywhere else other than eye to eye networking.
3. As a blogger, you become an author. There’s no need to get a publishing house involved.  You publish your own material and your reach is just as far as any established author.  As people get to know you through what you write about, you’ll gain a fan base.
4. Blogging helps you to develop your reputation as an expert in the industry.  Why should your friends and family be the only ones to benefit from your deep knowledge of your trade? Share it with the world. We used to say that everyone is only separated by 6 degrees, now it’s 2 or 3.
5. Links are love.  Linking is when another site actually puts your URL on their site in some way.  Maybe another blogger links to something you wrote in their blog post or perhaps your blog shows up on another blog’s roll.  Also, whenever you comment on someone else’s blog that links you to them.  So, getting linked to high traffic, high quality sites improves your chances of being found too.

I hope this helps you make the decision to start blogging today.  What are your questions about getting started and developing strategy for blogging?

If you’re like me, I love some parts of my job while other parts I would rather not deal with.  Take the whole subject of search engine optimization or SEO for example.  As a marketer, I know that the internet has changed forever the way we find business.  Yes, we will still use more traditional methods such as print, TV, and radio, however, the traditional married the new media and now they can’t get divorced!  They are linked forever.

SEO has always been the toughest part of my job as a marketer.  Yet, I know that it is a part that I must master at least to the point of understanding the definition of such terms as search engine results page, meta tags, H1 headers, and link building, just to name a few. 

Why is this important to a marketer?

It’s important because when people are in search of a product or service the internet is the first place they’ll turn to find it.  Will they find my clients?

Being found online is simple but not as easy as it might seem.  The most important thing to remember is this:

 Online sites must be a friendly as possible to the bots and spiders that go hither and yonder all over the world wide web looking for information to give to those who keep asking for information.   This may be giving away my age but, do you remember a movie that was very popluar many years ago called Short Circuit?  The scenario is that the military creates these robot warriors and one gets fried by lightening causing it to dump all it’s input.  For the first part of the movie, the robot just goes over the city looking for input (information).  As it gets more input, it starts to sort it into relevant themes and blurts it out whenever it recognizes a relevant prompt.  That’s what a search engine does!

Now, search engine friendly sites have three major threads in common.

They use relevant keywords.

A keyword is a word or phrase that the person who is search for something online will use in the search engine browser in the hope that a list of relevant sites will be displayed for them to explore.  It’s important to remember that the use of keywords is an on the page and off the page effort.  On the page, keywords can be used in titles, headers, and links, and the body text.  Off the page, keywords can be found in meta tags, title tags, the URL, and other digital assests such as Micorsoft Word documents or YouTube video.  The biggest mistake when using keywords is just being random and stuffing the words on a page. 

A good quantity and quality of inbound links.

Inbound links are any other site that uses your URL on their site.  Having great inbound liknks is a way for one site to align itself with another one.  For example, an insurance company might want to have a link back from a major, well-respected car dealer.  Some one looking for a car online might need to have new insurance too and find it very convenient to use the links it finds associated with the dealer’s site.  Plus, if the car dealer is well-respected then the insurance is well-respected by defualt.

Fresh content on a regular basis.

Search engines thrive on change.  New content, links, videos, photos, or whatever is new will attract bots and spiders to crawl a particular site over and over and deliver that site in the search engine results list.

Now before I lose you as you drift off to sleep, go ahead and hit play on the video below.  This is one o f the most user friendly talks on the subject of SEO that I have heard.  It is part of a class that Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing delivered through Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University.

SEO Crash Course to Get Found (GF102)

In today’s market, every business knows that blogging is a very effective tool to use for finding and converting more leads through inbound (online) strategies. No matter whether a company is B2B or B2C, blogging can help reach more people who will turn into leads to be converted. 

So, why does blogging continue to be so important for businesses these days?

First, blogging generates more leads.

 A lead is someone who comes to your site and leaves their information.  Blogs provide a great reason why someone would want to visit a company’s site again. The more the visitor returns, the more opportunity the company has to convert them for whatever goal.

 Source: State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report – http://bit.ly/cVMpkn

Second, blogs do well with the search engines.

That is active blogging does well.  Search engines are looking for new, fresh content that matches what the searcher wants.  Blogs are easy to update so there can always be delicious content for hungry little web crawlers.  A website is standard, but it should include a blog so that it does not become stagnate.  There is no dyed in the wool standard number of times to update a blog that stands out as the magic number for being findable with the search engines.  So active could be once an hour or once a month.  The key is to be consistent.  

Third, and perhaps the biggest benefit of blogs, is that they provide visibility.

We are talking mainly about blogging for business but it is fair to say that individuals could benefit from blogging as well.  After all, we all have a story to tell and if we do not tell it, someone else will.  In the past, it was a little harder for others to spread stories about us or our company.  The storytellers had to have enough influence themselves before the story spreaders like journalists and news reporters would even pay attention. Today, anyone who wants can put up a blog, video, newsletter, etc, and actually gain attention very quickly because of the internet and search engines. 

Blogging increases the chances of being an expert in your subject or industry.  Even if you work as a clerk in the payroll department, there are many aspects of what you do that brings others to you when they have questions.  The same goes for the CEO or entrepreneur.  When you are already telling others who you are and what you know, the storytellers job becomes more difficult as they have to revamp what people already believe.

Here are three best practices that you could adopt to make your blogging strategy more effective.

Make good use of the sidebar.  Do you have a fan page?  Then put a badge in the side bar and tie the two together.  The same goes for Twitter.  This is a good place to put video such as a welcome message for your readers.  The goal is to create interest or perhaps invite your readers to other relevant sites.  So, don’t overload the sidebar just try to have a plan for what you put there.

Increase your activity.  There’s nothing worse than going to a blog, enjoying it, then coming back time after time for nothing.  Make a commitment to blog on a regular basis.  Readers and search engines will love it.

Ask others to be guest bloggers on your blog.  This is a great way to increase the activity on your blog without it becoming an increased burden for the blogger.  One word of caution though, be very selective about who you accept because this person will now be linked to you. 

Blogging may not be for every business or individual, however, because of  it’s highly positive impact, it should be seriously considered and not summarily dismissed as a great tool for finding and converting leads that meet your desired goals.