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Twitter Hacks for Better Marketing

untitledAs marketers, creating compelling content through social media is the key to our internet success. But, without the ability to reach a large audience and attract followers, our content can be easily lost and forgotten. The world of social media is constantly changing, and staying on top of the latest tips and tricks to help make sure you stay present is crucial to your success. For many businesses, Twitter is the go-to platform for attracting customers, promoting products and services, and making sure people are actually noticing their content. Here are some useful hacks to make sure your Twitter posts are reaching the right people and attracting more customers.

Pinning Posts:

Pinning your Twitter posts can be used to highlight AND pin your key tweet. This is a great way to make sure your richest content has a longer lifecycle and is visible to newcomers. How do you pin a Twitter post? First, find a tweet you want to pin on your Twitter profile. This could be a post that received the most favorites, had the most comments, a retweet from someone who mentioned you etc. From there, click the three-dot icon that appears at the bottom of the tweet, next to the favorites account. From the drop-down menu, select “Pin to your profile page.” This can also be done through your mobile device! When you refresh your page, your pinned tweet should appear at the top of your most recent tweets.

It’s important to note that pinning the tweet does not add the tweet back to your follower’s newsfeed. Only people who look through your profile directly will see the pinned tweets. Pinning your tweets is affective because it helps direct newcomers to the content you feel grabbed the most attention. This leads to even more retweets and favorites with new followers, and overall more exposure to your Twitter profile.

Twitter Cards:

Major brands have been jump-starting their Twitter posts by using Twitter Cards. A Twitter Card allows you to decide how you want your content to be displayed within tweets and helps you stand out amongst the clutter. This leads to increased likelihood that customers will click on and retweet your posts. There are 7 different types of Twitter Cards that help your posts stand out and drive more traffic to your website.

One of the greatest Twitter Cards for marketers is the Twitter Summary Card. This allows marketers to customize the content description that appears in the summary before it’s posted. Whether you want to share your opinion, provide a short overview, or ask a question, the Summary Card makes it easy to eliminate the sometimes off-message default lines of text that appear with a particular link.

How To Enable Twitter Cards for Your Site:

  1. Using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, enable Twitter card meta-data from the Social>Twitter menu.
  2. Visit the Twitter Card Validator and enter the URL for your blog.
  3. Once your site validates, request that your url is added to the beta program. Twitter will likely have you validated in just a few days.

Organize Weekly Twitter Chats:

Twitter chats are directly tied to specific and original hashtags through which tweets are organized and tracked and are great for your overall Twitter marketing strategy. To have a successful Twitter chat, set a date and time when most of your followers will be online, then choose a hashtag. Keep your hashtag short and concise, but also memorable and unique. Before starting your Twitter chat, make sure you have staff to keep things running smoothly and to prevent your hashtag from being hijacked. There are various tools to help organize your chats such as Twubs, Nurph, and ChatSalad.

5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results | Twitter Hacks for Marketing | Marketing your business with Twitter | Twitter tips | Twitter How to | Twitter Marketing | Twitter for Bloggers | Twitter Social Media

5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results

1: Turn a Pinned Tweet Into a Feature Box

The Feature Box is an email form you place at the top of your homepage, which offers your website visitors a freebie in exchange for signing up for your email list.You can add a similar feature to your Twitter profile page by combining two of Twitter’s native features: a lead generation card and a pinned tweet. Simply create a Lead Generation Card that includes an incentive for people to opt in. Offer regular email updates, a special freebie or a subscribers-only discount. Pin the tweet to the top of your Twitter profile and you’re all set.

2: Communicate Less and Tweet More Links

A recent study by Dan Zarrella looked at the “reply rates” of about 130,000 random Twitter users and discovered that highly followed accounts tend to converse less. Keep in mind, the study results don’t suggest that Twitter conversations have a negative effect on your following, just that conversations aren’t what motivate people to follow you on Twitter. According to another study by Dan Zarrella, the way to get more followers is to invest more time tweeting relevant links to your followers, rather than communicating directly with them.

3: Ask Twitter Influencers for Help

According to BuzzSumo who recently studied the share counts of more than 100 million articles, when influencers share your content, the reach increases substantially. If one influencer shares a piece of content, it will get 38.8% more social shares. Three influencers double the social shares and five influencers quadruple them. It’s crucial to network with influencers and develop relationships with them. Then, when you have an important piece of content you’d like to get seen, you can ask the influencers you know to share it.

4: Use Twitter’s Recommend Feature

Recommend is a new feature of Twitter’s tweet button that many people don’t pay attention to. After a visitor tweets an article from your blog, the window recommends they follow you on Twitter, if they don’t follow you already. This is an excellent way to grow your Twitter account, since people who just tweeted your article are likely to want to follow you. Look at the code of your tweet button and make sure the recommend field contains your Twitter username. To double-check you’ve set up the feature correctly, ask a friend to unfollow you on Twitter and then tweet an article from your blog. If the recommend field contains your Twitter username, you’re all set.

5: Repeat Article Tweets

According to a study by Wisemetrics, the second tweet of an article gets as much as 86% of the performance as the first tweet. Clearly the performance will fade with each new tweet, but considering your followers are probably in different time zones, you still need to tweet your most valuable content more than once. Your new followers will appreciate it, since the content will be new for them.

5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results | Twitter Hacks for Marketing | Marketing your business with Twitter | Twitter tips | Twitter How to | Twitter Marketing | Twitter for Bloggers | Twitter Social Media

And finally! Here are some Tips for Writing Great Tweets!

Composing the perfect tweet isn’t easy.  With only 140 characters at your disposal plus million of users from all over the world generating more than 500 million tweets a day, it can be extremely difficult to get through the noise.

While there is no such thing as the perfect tweet, there are some guidelines to follow for writing one that will capture the attention of people.

Tips for writing great tweets:

Get to the point

According to studies, tweets with less than 100 characters get 18% more engagement. When writing tweets, make sure you keep it short, concise, and interesting. Get to the point. Make every character count. If you have a longer message to convey, we suggest that you include a link to a blog post.

Start interacting

If you want to reach more people, make sure that you interact with them. This can be done in many forms – by asking a question, retweeting other’s posts, responding to other users, following interesting people, engaging in conversations or sharing valuable information.

Command action

Recent studies show that tweets that command action receive better engagement and retweets. When writing tweets, make sure that you include a call to action. Whether you want people to follow you in other social networks, retweet your posts or enter your contest, you need to be clear about what you want people to do.

Use hashtags

A hashtag provides a way for new followers to find you. It is how you identify your content as relevant to a certain field or group of people. Make sure you include hashtags in all your tweets, but don’t overuse it.  You can use an existing hashtag or create your own.

Proofread

As a business professional, you want to make sure that your tweets are free from grammar and spelling errors. Your tweets will only be composed of 1 to 3 sentences, so make sure that you get them right.  Avoid slang and abbreviations.

 

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How LinkedIn Can Help Your Business

Since LinkedIn went public in 2011, the social media platform has grown to be the center for making connections, developing careers, and many other business related activities. With 2 million new users joining every second, and with 107 million users in the US alone, LinkedIn is continuing to skyrocket in the world of social media. Why should you your start making LinkedIn a priority for your business? It helps to attract new clients and accelerate market opportunities, while also allowing you to create and become a part of online communities and groups, helping your business to generate rewarding leads. LinkedIn has become a power tool for helping to strengthen millions of businesses around the world. Here are some tips on how to use LinkedIn to your business’ advantage:

Using Sponsored Updates:linkedin

Sponsored updates help raise awareness about your brand, build relationships, and drive leads. One of the greatest things about using sponsored updates is that it allows you distribute your content to the right audience, including those outside of your following. Sponsored Updates allow you to target your audience by geography, specific companies, industries, company size, job title, and more. You are also able to determine how effective your updates are with the help of the detailed analytics provided by LinkedIn. But, if not carefully planned, investing in sponsored updates could cost your business instead of benefiting it. To ensure that you’re getting the most out of this investment, make sure you are sponsoring posts that will be perceived as valuable to your target market. Focus your energy towards careful planning and great content, and this tool will help your business gain credibility and become more established in its particular industry.

Optimize Your Personal Profile:

When putting your business out there on LinkedIn, it’s important to make sure you are also building your personal profile. Having an equal focus on your personal profile and your business profile will help put a face to your business, help you gain credibility, and grow your relationships with your consumers. By optimizing your personal profile with related keywords and rich media content such as videos and presentations, this will help your business generate more leads. Make sure your personal profile is professional and not a “business logo”. Steer your focus towards grabbing the attention of your “perfect” audience. Also, remember to make sure your LinkedIn profile links back to your business website and blog.

Develop Relationships:

One of the greatest parts about social media for your business is being able to strengthen your relationships with your consumer. LinkedIn is especially great for this because it allows you to precisely choose who you want to connect with. Instead of worrying about the quantity of your connections, it’s important to focus on the quality of the relationships with your connections. Decide which of your contacts you’d like to know better and start reaching out to them periodically from your personal profile and business page. Share information, ask them questions and learn more about them. The bond with your customer is one of the most crucial aspects of growing your business. When you continuously reach out to your audience on LinkedIn and strengthen your bond over time, you’ll eventually become a go-to source if your customer needs help or has a question.

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Pinterest Tips to Help Strengthen Your Business

pinterestSocial media platforms have been the go-to business strategy for sharing content over the past couple of years. Recently, the main focus has shifted more towards visual content, which is why Pinterest has been on the rise for businesses. Pinterest has grown immensely over the past few years, with the latest statistics revealing that 70 million people use it daily, while 9% of all Fortune 500 brands are active on the platform as well.

Now is the time to get your business on board with Pinterest! Here is a variety of ways to help maximize your efforts:

1. Using Rich Pins

Rich pins are a new edition to Pinterest that add extra details to Pins from your website. There are six types are rich pins which include app, movie, recipe, article, product, and place. There are many advantages to using Rich Pins including real-time pricing and stock availability. They also help improve CTR and discoverability of pins by making them eligible for Pinterest’s own curated feeds.

 2. Focus on Pinning

Pin every new product, engage frequently, and keep it fresh. Knowing what types of images work best on Pinterest is extremely important. There are many tips and tricks to making your images high-quality and pinnable. Using colors wisely, keeping your mages anonymous, paying attention to size, timing, and your analytics through various Pinterest tools will ensure that you’re grasping your consumer’s attention and using Pinterest to the best of your ability.

3. Inspire

Rather than just creating boards that promote your product, create them around a particular lifestyle that appeals to your audience. Understanding your customer, knowing what they seek for, and exerting that through a Pinterest lifestyle board will help keep them interested and inspired by your brand. Many major brands use this strategy to promote what they stand for and to reach out to their consumer.

4. Running Contests

Increasing engagement is important on every social media platform, but not too many people use it to their advantage on Pinterest(and they should!). If done properly through following the Pinterest contest guidelines, contests can drive sales and help reach a wider audience. Be creative, make it worth it for your consumer, and look to other brands for contest ideas. Also, there are a variety of apps that can help organize your contest and host it on your site including Gleam.io, Wishpond, and Woobox.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results

1: Turn a Pinned Tweet Into a Feature Box

The Feature Box is an email form you place at the top of your homepage, which offers your website visitors a freebie in exchange for signing up for your email list.You can add a similar feature to your Twitter profile page by combining two of Twitter’s native features: a lead generation card and a pinned tweet. Simply create a Lead Generation Card that includes an incentive for people to opt in. Offer regular email updates, a special freebie or a subscribers-only discount. Pin the tweet to the top of your Twitter profile and you’re all set.

2: Communicate Less and Tweet More Links

A recent study by Dan Zarrella looked at the “reply rates” of about 130,000 random Twitter users and discovered that highly followed accounts tend to converse less. Keep in mind, the study results don’t suggest that Twitter conversations have a negative effect on your following, just that conversations aren’t what motivate people to follow you on Twitter. According to another study by Dan Zarrella, the way to get more followers is to invest more time tweeting relevant links to your followers, rather than communicating directly with them.

3: Ask Twitter Influencers for Help

According to BuzzSumo who recently studied the share counts of more than 100 million articles, when influencers share your content, the reach increases substantially. If one influencer shares a piece of content, it will get 38.8% more social shares. Three influencers double the social shares and five influencers quadruple them. It’s crucial to network with influencers and develop relationships with them. Then, when you have an important piece of content you’d like to get seen, you can ask the influencers you know to share it.

4: Use Twitter’s Recommend Feature

Recommend is a new feature of Twitter’s tweet button that many people don’t pay attention to. After a visitor tweets an article from your blog, the window recommends they follow you on Twitter, if they don’t follow you already. This is an excellent way to grow your Twitter account, since people who just tweeted your article are likely to want to follow you. Look at the code of your tweet button and make sure the recommend field contains your Twitter username. To double-check you’ve set up the feature correctly, ask a friend to unfollow you on Twitter and then tweet an article from your blog. If the recommend field contains your Twitter username, you’re all set.

5: Repeat Article Tweets

According to a study by Wisemetrics, the second tweet of an article gets as much as 86% of the performance as the first tweet. Clearly the performance will fade with each new tweet, but considering your followers are probably in different time zones, you still need to tweet your most valuable content more than once. Your new followers will appreciate it, since the content will be new for them.

 

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Tips For Your Mobile-Marketing Strategy

Did you know that half of all internet searches now take place on mobile devices? This calls for businesses to take action when it comes to updating their mobile strategy. The past two years have taken more of a simple approach to the design of mobile devices, but that is all changing in 2015. For businesses, having a site that renders across a wide variety of mobile devices is critical for doing business. untitled

Understanding your audience’s mobile habits is one of the most crucial steps in creating your own mobile strategy. Are they using tablets or smartphones? What activities are they doing on your site? What content are they accessing? Studying how your audience uses their mobile devices is the first step to bettering your mobile strategy. This will help you make content that is specifically focused on what your audience is looking for which will make them coming back to your site. Putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer will also help you to create headlines that will grasp their attention. When it comes to writing a headline for your mobile users, ask yourself whether it is highly relevant to your audience, whether it has a powerful hook, and whether it evokes an image or an emotional response to whoever is reading it.

After you’ve sparked your audience’s attention with the headline, now it’s time to lure them in with a good “lead-in”. The lead-in is what occurs in the first paragraph and is what keeps your reader eager to read on. This is your first paragraph and the most crucial. There is nothing wrong with delivering the most value early on because this is what will keep readers engaged. The readers with a screen that’s too small to read 2000 words on still get the value of a positive brand contact and are likely to come back for more.

Introducing video and visual content is another aspect of mobile strategy that is on the rise. Now is the time to make sure your mobile site has videos, infographics, images, and other visual content that reaches out to your audience. Video marketing is a great strategy when it comes to growing your business, and now with micro-video services like Vine, it is easy to compile your message in to 6 seconds. This may seem like a short amount of time to get your message across, but this can actually be more efficient for your users’ time.

In the past couple of years, we have seen tremendous growth for mobile devices. Our smart phones are becoming smarter than we have ever imagined. As the use of the internet on mobile devices continues to grow, this is giving businesses more opportunities in internet marketing. it is important to think more about our presence on mobile devices and developing a strategy that will help us become more efficient mobile marketers.

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SEO Practices For 2015

SEO has been changing rapidly over the past couple of years and Google and other search engines are getting smarter. For 2015, it is important to stay on top of knowing what search engines want and how to optimize your quality of the content and overall experience of your site to better your business. Here are some of the SEO essentials for 2015:Search Engine Optimization - Magnifying Glass

Considering the goals of Search Engine companies is a good place to start when thinking about your SEO strategy. The two most important things to consider are making sure that your site has the best quality content for keywords relevant to your site and making sure that Google and other search engines are aware of this. Over the past few years, Google and other search engines have become smarter in understanding both website content and user experience.

Making sure your site is free of spam, malware, and other problems is crucial to making sure that your site is reputable. Excessive ads, pages filled with nothing but links, and any deceptive practices are signs that your site is not reputable. If you sign up for notifications in Google Webmaster tools they will tell you if they detect any issues on your site. The fastness of your site is also a huge factor in ensuring quality experience for your users. Studies have shown that just a one-second delay in page load time results in a 7% decline in sales. Alexa Site Audit is a tool that can help detect your sites slowest pages to make sure your performance is optimized. Alexa Site Audit also helps monitor your site for broken links.

It is also important to be aware of the “freshness factor” when it comes to the quality of your site. A site that hasn’t been updated in months or years is most likely lower quality. With out of date content, this also probably means the site hasn’t earned any new inbound links. Without fresh content on your site, search engines will most likely pass over your site for newer, more current content.

Quality content that is original, clearly written, and relevant is integral for your website and business overall. Making sure that your content is effective in making the connection between what people are searching for and the pages of your website is crucial. The pages of your site should be more focused on individual topics rather than individual keywords. But, choosing the right keywords for your content is one of the most important parts of SEO. When choosing keyword phrases for your content, it is important to keep track of which ones drive traffic to your site, which ones drive traffic to your competitors sites, and how often people search for certain keyword phrases. The Alexa keyword tool, which is part of the Alexa Advanced subscription, can help you find keywords driving traffic to your competitors’ sites.

SEO has grown tremendously over the past couple of years and Google and other search engines are getting smarter and smarter. Staying on top of the current changes and changes in SEO is crucial in deepening our understanding of how to use it to our advantage. I the world of internet marketing, SEO is the key to understanding our customers’ needs and making sure you’ve got it.

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SEO Myths and Assumptions

For the past 7 years, SEO has been changing rapidly. Now that 2015 is among us, it is important for marketers to stay on top of the shifts in SEO including what’s outdated and what will be a waste of effort. Understanding these common myths and assumptions about SEO will ensure that you’re up to date for this year and that none of your efforts will be put to waste. Below are a few of the most common myths about SEO:untitled

Myth 1: Google Authorship is a necessity.

For years, marketers have been stressing the importance of getting Google Authorship set up on their blogs, but as of 2015, this no longer needs to be a concern because it no longer exists! Recently, in June 2014, Google removed Authorship photos from search engine results page. This was the first step that eventually led to completely getting rid of the Authorship program in August 2014. All byline information disappeared from Google’s search results, and with the dismantling of the program , that gives us one less thing to worry about in 2015.

Myth 2: The more links, the better.

“Quality over quantity” is a great mindset to have this year in SEO. Many businesses often hire someone for link building, but this often leads to a focus on the number and links and not the content. Focusing on relevant and diverse sources that link to relevant pages is so much more important than the quantity of links. Investing in someone to write content for 2015 is a steer in the right direction and will ensure that all content types will bring more links with them over time. Focusing on the number of links will only end up being a waste of effort and investment in the long run.

Myth 3: Keyword optimization is THE key to SEO

In the world of SEO, using keywords to communicate is crucial. With that being said, realizing that Google is no longer trying to match the keywords you type in to search engines to the keywords of a web page is very important. Google has been getting smarter and smarter every year and is now able to understand the internet behind the keywords you type in and match it to relevant, high quality content. So, for this year, it is important to keep in mind that overusing keywords is more of a waste of time than underusing them.

Myth 4: My homepage should have a lot of content.

Your homepage should be thought of as the “face” to your business. Put yourself in the shoes of whoever is visiting your homepage and visualize how you can make it clear and simple for them to get around. Not only is your homepage a change to make a first impression and convey what you’re all about, but it’s also a place where you can help make things easier for your visitors so they are not feeling overwhelmed. You can keep your homepage simple and easy to get around while also getting all the information you need on there. Clarifying who you are, what you do, where you’re located, your value proposition, and what you’re visitors should do next is all the content you need.

 Myth 5: SEO is not a usability issue

SEO is so much more than optimizing for search engines. Ensuring that your website is easy for visitors to use will lead to more contacts and customers overtime, helping your business grow. To keep visitors on your site, ensure you’re publishing content that’s personalized and relevant. You should also make sure your website is intuitive and easy to browse. Don’t make customers look for what the need to do next by providing clear and simple navigation on your website.

 

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Visual Content in Social Media

In today’s technological world, visual marketing is becoming a very popular trend. Marketers have begun to use visual marketing to their advantage through social media. Strengthen your business by catching the eye of your consumer with visual content. Below are a list of the most popular social media platforms for visual marketing and how to use it effectively:

Twitter:

What many people don’t know is that Twitter is not limited to 140 characteristics to get a message across. In fact, you can add up to four images in just one tweet, making Twitter a great platform for using visual content. This is a great way to showcase an event or tell a story that would be difficult to do with only one picture. Using an inforgraphic is also a great way to add visuals to the message you’re trying to get across through twitter. Some tools to create infographics are Visualize, Easel.ly, and Piktochart. Videos are also a great way to catch the attention of your consumer. Time-lapse videos in particular are a great way to tell a story or show a product in just a short amount of time. The Hyperlapse app allows you to create time-lapse videos in a simple manner. Once you’re done with your video, you can upload it to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.images

 

Instagram:

With Instagram, it’s more about the quality of your photos than how many you’re posting. With each Instagram, it is crucial to make sure they are capturing your consumers’ eye in a creative way that will make them want to learn more about your business. The 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by the Social Media Examiner found that over time, marketers with more experience prefer Instagram when it comes to visual content marketing. Using hashtags can have a huge impact on your growth. But, knowing the right words to hashtag is crucial in making sure you’re reaching your target market. There are many tools that help you find the perfect hashtags to use. Webstagram helps you find find the most popular hashtags and with the search feature you can find more relevant hashtags to your post. Also, using Populagram can help you find the popular hashtags, filters and people which you can follow to stay on top of Instagram community.

 

Facebook:

Facebook can be used for visual marketing in a variety of ways. What makes Facebook so great is that you aren’t as limited when posting content as you would be on other social media platforms. A great feature of Facebook is that you can upload video directly to your posts. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income recently did an experiment comparing views and engagement of natively embedded Facebook video versus embedded YouTube video and he found that Facebook performs better overall. Facebook is also a powerful tool for graphics. You can create a graphic and then upload it to Facebook including the post URL in your caption, or you can share a link directly to Facebook. No matter which way you choose to use it, Facebook is a MUST for businesses who are trying to reach their consumers through visual marketing.

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