Set Goals

What do you plan to use Twitter for? Networking? Customer service? Promoting your site? Before you even sign up for Twitter, take a minute and think about what you intend to do with it. Different goals will require different strategies, and some goals might require multiple Twitter accounts. For example, if you’re interested in promoting two different sites in two different niches, it’s better to set up two different Twitter accounts.

Fill Out Your Profile

Be sure to take the time and fill out your profile completely. Make sure you include your name, some information about yourself, and your website. Twitter users want to get to know each other, and filling out your profile is the first step to having someone get to know you. Be sure to put information in your bio that will appeal directly to whatever audience you’re trying to reach.

Keep It Short

Twitter only lets you post messages that are 140 characters long. If you want to convey a complex message you’re going to have to find ways to do so without going over the character limit. Start by getting familiar with some of the most common acronyms people use on Twitter. For example, AFAIK means “as far as I know”. A well placed acronym can save you quite a few characters in a tweet. Also, get familiar with link shorteners. There are a lot of link shortening services out there, but they all do the same basic thing – they shorten your link. When you enter a link into a link shortening site, it will automatically generate a short link for you that will redirect anyone clicking it directly to the link you provided. Most shortened links are less than sixteen characters long, so you can usually save a lot of characters this way.

Twitter can be a great addition to your marketing arsenal, but only if you have the proper tools to set your account up the right way. Be sure to keep these tips in mind when setting up your account, and you’ll be off to a good start in no time.

If you are a small business owner yourself, however, you might want to take a closer look at what’s going on.

In most cases, these location-based “shout-outs” are being done via an application called Foursquare. While there are other similar apps out there (such as Gowalla), Foursquare has emerged as the most buzzed-about geo-location tool, and the application you’re most likely to see pop up in your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream.

What Is Foursquare?

As the official website explains, “Foursquare on your phone gives you and your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points and unlock badges for discovering new things.”

While you will often see it integrated with social networks like Facebook or Twitter, Foursquare is not used in the same way as these sites. Whereas you might sign into Facebook or pull up Twitter to see what your friends are talking about, people use Foursquare, primarily via mobile phone, to make a “game” out of letting others know where they are at any given time.

For example, say you’re out and about downtown. You would take out your phone (be it an iPhone, a Droid or a BlackBerry), click on the Foursquare app, and via GPS, you would see a list of all the nearby locations. You would then click on the business where you happen to be and then “check-in,” adding a custom message and posting it to Facebook and/or Twitter if you’d like.

As you check in at new places, stop at multiple places or make repeat visits, you earn points and unlock “badges” in the game. Check in to one place regularly enough, and you get a chance to be named “mayor” of that location.

Sound silly? While on the surface Foursquare may seem easy to dismiss, many small businesses are already embracing it to engage with customers and build loyalty. Foursquare recently passed the milestone of 100 million check-ins, and it even made Entrepreneur Magazine’s annual List of 100 Brilliant Ideas.

How Local Businesses Are Using it

Geo-location is huge in social media, and will continue to boom in the coming years. In fact, at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference it was announced that spending on global location-based services is on track to exceed $7 billion over the next three years.

Realizing this, savvy local businesses are taking advantage of Foursquare by using it to offer specials, discounts and rewards programs to pull in new customers.

To illustrate, here are just a few examples of current offerings by businesses near me:

* Sports Authority in Cherry Hill, NJ: Get a $10 Cash Card towards a purchase as a thank you for being Mayor

* Exit Skateboard Supply in Philadelphia, PA: Get a free T-shirt for your first check in on Foursquare

* Whole Foods Market in Marlton NJ: Free small coffee for the Mayor anytime; plus a free reusable bag on your 10th check-in

* Tortilla Press Cantina in Pennsauken, NJ: Free appetizer on your first visit; Mayor at end of month gets a $20 gift card

Another bonus for business owners using Foursquare? Access to venue analytics tools that will let you explore some pretty cool stats. For example: who the most frequent visitors are, the total number of unique visitors, what times of day people check in, who the most recent visitors are, and more.

What About Online Businesses?

While virtual businesses may not benefit the same as brick and mortar ones, online business owners can still use Foursquare to make connections-the same way they do via other social networking sites.

One example of a virtual biz owner using Foursquare successfully is a Facebook connection of mine, Rebecca Thompson of CLR Virtual Connection. Someone she “ousted” as mayor of a location ended up hiring her after becoming aware of what she did for a living in the process. In another instance, a Twitter follower engaged her after noticing that they often both checked into the same places. That conversation led to a request for Rebecca’s services.

It just goes to show-you never know where your next client or customer is going to come from. And while cutting-edge applications like Foursquare might not yet be as widely used as a social media behemoth like Facebook, with the exploding popularity of smartphones and location-based social networks, business owners would be wise to take a second look.

Scientists did an experiment with a group of residence who lived close to an airport runway, these people had the ability to sleep through anything. The experiment was all about how to get these people to wake easily. They tried many different approaches different sounds and sound volume. To their surprise you know what got their attention the whispering of their name.
The scientist were very surprised at their findings. It worked with all of their test subjects. Mind you these people could sleep with jet engines going off in their back yards.

Your business needs to cut through the noise on twitter. Your goal is to get targeted leads, not just followers. Get hundreds of cheap leads using twitter. You can drive twitter traffic to your blog posts, articles and press releases. You need to alert your prospect with their senses allow them to see and feel and the trust will follow. Remember twitter is a platform where people go to tell the world their interest, achievements and what they are interested in. By finding out with a little research what people are looking for and supplying them with their wants and desires they will follow you. That is the goal. It doesn’t matter how many people you follow you want followers. This can be done with a little research and a plan by following these simple steps.

People will pay attention to their @mentions tweets on twitter. The reason you are talking in public to them by name. Your whispering a tweet to them on a personal level. You don’t even have to follow a person to have the ability to do this on twitter. It does take a little more effort. By using the @mention tweet you are calling out to them in a whisper. Remember you want them to hear you and turn on the their selective hearing. This is not the opportunity to spam them with your latest and greatest interest this is about them.

Twitter Tips

Research what people are looking for you do this by going to search.twitter.com you are looking at what people are talking about. You want to search for people who are talking about a problem you have the answer for.

Example: You’re a plumber someone tweets leaking tap, pipe or bathroom remodel. Use the search link and enter the words into the search in quotes. and see what happens. You will see everyone talking about their plumbing problem. Do they all need your services maybe not. Can you offer some tips to help them probably. Why should you? Word of mouth advertising. Do you think they or their friends or family are going to need your services in the future? By replying to the cry for help and assisting them with their problem you have built an instant trust. Will they tell people about you? More than likely. Will they recommend you to their friends and family? More than likely. They will become a loyal follower on tweeter.
It is so simple and so profound just put yourself in their shoes. Stop thinking about yourself and think about them. You get what you give. This is the ultimate tweeter tip. Keep it conversational at all times. Talk to them about what they are talking about and they will follow.

Whatever the reason, sometimes you need to step back and really assess whether it is in the best interest of your business as a whole to continue to try and juggle everything alone. In terms of affordability, there are many reasonably priced virtual assistants out there who can take a lot of the administrative tasks off your plate so that you can focus on the activities that make you the most money instead.

If a virtual assistant charges $40.00 an hour and that frees up time for you to work with clients where you can make triple that amount in an hour, wouldn’t it be worth it?

Despite that, I know there can still be some real resistance to bringing on help. Even I still have to take my own advice sometimes, as I like to be in the thick of things in my business because I enjoy it so much! However, I’ve learned to delegate and let some things go. In fact, concentrating on your “genius work” and outsourcing the rest is absolutely necessary in order to get to the next level.

Even some social media activities can be delegated to an assistant, as long as those activities don’t require your personality or voice. Here are some examples of those types of tasks:

Researching quality content for you to share via social media

Finding ideal people to send friend requests to

Uploading videos

Creating events on LinkedIn and Facebook

Pre-scheduling certain social media updates

Additionally, there are many different administrative-type activities that could easily be delegated as well (just think of all the time you’ll save!):

Handling registration for events

Bookkeeping

Proofing written material

Shipping products

Managing your inbox

Responding to inquiries

Website/blog maintenance

Creating graphics

Submitting your articles to article sites

So remember, just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you should. There are lots of things an assistant can be doing instead of you-freeing you up to work on true, money-making activities. After all, isn’t that what we’re in business for?

Say you own a business but it is only local and small and it seems tough for you to figure out which good steps to take in order to drive new customers when it comes to Facebook. The answer would have to be spending a bit more extra time in the day to understand better the process of promoting your business in Facebook.

Alongside the challenges of running your small business it should be understood the time spent in promoting your business online is just as important. This and still more other strategies could actually help you ease the process of giving your business a “move on” despite its size. Here are a few things that could help your small business “feel the water” with Facebook advertising.

Remember: the difference between Facebook and promotional channels that are traditional is that if you are a small business, investing a bit of your time and extra effort could actually go a long way for you. Here, customers can provide feedback and can communicate directly with you making your experience here pretty educational on your part as feedback could actually give you notes to improve your business and strategies.

Building up your fan base steadily is the key as this could be very beneficial. Where other digital media companies and large bands which have thousands of fans, what you have – even if it is but a small number to start with – can be dealt with better by being more “personal” with your fans. It can be a good idea for small business owners to take the time and converse with individual fans by sending them messages as this creates the kind of relationship between you and your fans that could lead to loyal patronage.

Given the fact that you are a small business, you can’t actually afford to blow out your budget in the first steps of your promotion so it is a relief to note that in Facebook you don’t actually need to spend much money. You could always have the option to start off with Facebook advertising campaign which can fit a “limited budget” and perhaps just follow it up with something different once you get a steady footing.

Advertising in Facebook is appropriate for small business because it can be very educational and not pricey. In the process, you will get to learn more strategies and most may even come from experimentation.

Once you have already gotten the profile characteristics of people who have the highest potentials of providing you a positive response to your product promotion, you can channel your ads particularly to them. This means that you are able to save a lot of time, energy, and money in your paid advertising in Facebook.

What you will appreciate most out of this method though is that you can be guaranteed a better conversion. Your ads, unlike those that can be done indiscriminately online through Google Ads or offline through print, can be more effective in providing you the best leads that can bring in the money.

To create Facebook ads though, you must first have an account in this social networking site or else you cannot proceed with your money-making ventures. Once your account is opened, you can go to Facebook advertising page and comply with all the requirements necessary for setting up your ads.

Even if you use a very popular venue for advertising though, you must still make your ads as interesting and appealing as possible. If you fail to do so, your efforts in seizing the opportunity for promoting your commodities in the site may still come to naught because people may not be convinced enough about what you are selling.

To make a good Facebook ad, think of a catchy title of 25 characters, an informative and persuasive body text of only 135 characters, and an appealing photo of 100 x 80 pixels. You can realize all this once you are in the Design Your Ad tool in Facebook’s advertising page, where you are also required to place your URL.

After you have done this, you can go ahead in determining the customers for whom your products will be addressed. You can do this by deciding on the common characteristics, the likes and dislikes, of the people who may be interested in what you are offering – using keywords for this is necessary.

With the customer characteristics already determined, you can now choose which payment method you will use for your advertising, whether it is pay per click (PPC) or pay per impression, otherwise called as pay per view. There is basically no difference when it comes to the effectiveness of the two methods although there may be a slight variation in terms of cost, which is why you do not have to worry which of the two is more effective.