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Archive for September, 2009

Dear Twitter,

RE: Making Money to Support your £1Billion Valuation

I have money. Not a lot of it. And I don’t want to give it all away. But I do have some. I would like to reach out from my pocket and give you a few quid if it makes a difference. However, unlike you, I don’t want to give anything away free, so please find below some things I want to pay you for.

OK, I want to pay for the use of my a/c. It has made huge difference to the way I work and mix with my community. And because of twitter, I feel valued amongst my peers. So I would like to pay you a fee of £5 a month for the use of my a/c. Its not a lot, but like I said I have money, but not a lot of it. If you don’t want to charge me, I still want to give it to you to show my appreciation for a great service. Please let me know where I can send you the £60 a year.

I am a marketer. I love data. I am also very nosy. So I will pay you a further £2 a month to find out:

1. A time line of my followers and when the started following me.
2. Who left my followers count (I used Qwitter but it doesn’t work properly anymore. Any way I want the data in a dashboard please.)
3. I would like to know who blocks me.

I am willing to pay you an extra £10 a month to show me some real stats. Something like google analytics. Some of the stuff I would love to track:

1. Number of clicks on tweet links I send out.
2. Retweet numbers
3. Who retweeted and who clicked on my links. (yeah I KNOW you are tracking clicks – just share that data with me, please)
4. People who clicked on my profile link.
5. Incoming links to my profile from other sites.
6. Number of visitors coming through my profile from other sites and search engines.
7. What keywords people used to find my links.
8. I want it all in ONE place.

So as a simple user, I am willing to part with £17 a month for the above. I know you have an analytics service coming out for businesses, but I am not that rich. And I know there are third party tools that can give me a lot of this data. But they aren’t very reliable, and I don’t want to pay them, I want to pay YOU. So you can improve the service better. So I can show you my appreciation.

Regards

Rishi Lakhani

p.s I asked a few people whether they would like the service…

p.p.s Of the millions of users you have, even at a ceiling of £10 a month, and say 50,000 users buy the service, then you get £500,000 a month = £6M a year. Not a billion quid, but better than you are getting now right? Plus I am a cheapskate, I wouldnt pay more, although the hundreds of small / medium sized businesses may pay much more.

p.p.p.s Can I get a cut of that action?

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Running a social media campaign is a great way to get lots of visitors to a website but its very hard to target the campaign to a particular country. If your goal is to generate links, buzz or blog subscribers then worldwide traffic is fine but what happens if you are primarily interested in local visitors?

In the past most people have used Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon as the main networks to seed a viral article or blog post and this week I loaded up Google Trends to see which of these was biggest in the UK. As you can see below the daily traffic figures are nothing to get excited about and traffic to all of them seems to have dropped a lot in the UK during 2009.

However what is exciting is the chart below which includes Twitter data. Judging by these figures Twitter is the best place for doing a viral campaign to target UK users.

Of course Facebook is still by far the biggest site but it’s not really a link sharing site in the same way as Twitter & the other social media sites are.

London leads the way

According to The Telegraph London leads the way with social media and Digg is quoted as saying:

Nearly 10 per cent of traffic to news recommendation site Digg comes from London alone, making it the top city worldwide. A Digg spokesman said: “Nearly 10 per cent of traffic to Digg is from London and the UK is our second largest country next to the US.”

Apparently London is the largest city on Twitter too:

Last month, Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive and co founder, said that London is the service’s “top Twitter-using city”. Talking to BBC’s Newsnight, he said: “We have definitely noticed the UK has exploded for us recently… London is our top Twitter-using city.”

Whether this is testament to the way we use social media or the way all BT IP addresses seem to resolve to London remains to be seen.

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The UK Social Media Landscape

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There has been a lot of speculation since the launch of Bing earlier this year about whether the new Microsoft search engine could take a meaningful amount of search traffic away from Google.

Now that Bing has been up and running for almost four months, it’s a good time to measure its progress. Is Bing sticking it to Google? Is Yahoo catching up?

The short answer is no.

comScore recently released its August 2009 rankings for search engine Market Share. The results showed that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing) have market shares of 64.6%, 19.3% and 9.3%, respectively.

A study of HubSpot customers shows even more Google dominance, as you can see in the chart below.

 

Search Referrals for HubSpot Customers

 

 

This data came from a sample of 40 HubSpot customers across industries for the 3-month time period from 6/1/09 to 8/31/09.

Google had over 85% market share versus Yahoo, Bing, AOL and Ask.com for this customer group. The results were fairly consistent for each industry with Google market share ranging from 82% for construction firms to 87% for software companies.

While Google’s astronomical market share for these customers is much higher than what comScore reports, it’s consistent with what we’ve been seeing anecdotally over the past year with other HubSpot customers.

More research would be needed to definitively know why Google holds such a strong position as the referrer to these customers relative to the other search engines.

It could be the sample set, a significant difference in characteristics of HubSpot customers versus the sites measured by comScore, or a difference in the way the data was analyzed by HubSpot and comScore.

Regardless, the takeaway is the same from both studies: Focus your SEO and traffic efforts on Google. 

SEO for Lead Generation Kit

Learn more about how you can optimize your site to get found online in search engines to generate more leads for your business. Download our search engine optimization for lead generation kit.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot’s free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

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I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.

CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.

Efficiently manage your SEO and Social Media campaigns with Raven’s powerful suite of Internet Marketing Tools

Interested in seeing your message here? There are banner and RSS advertising options available find out more information.

Advertisement: Need SEO help with your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Thanks to this Months Sponsors – September 2009

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by Sage Lewis

Dan Zarella has spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets. The findings show that there is a recipe for tweets that get retweeted. Check out this video to learn how you can become a retweet master. Oh. And PLEASE RETWEET THIS!

Check out our small business news site.

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by Stoney deGeyter

In the world of marketing and campaign measurement, the web has been a goldmine. Almost every conceivable metric can be measured online. But of all the things you can track, measure, weigh and analyze, the only metric that truly matters is conversions. Click through rates, page views, time spent on site, number of pages read, entrance and exit points, abandonment; all of these metrics are fantastic, but if you’re not using them to improve your conversion rates, then why bother?

Most people look at their website as a whole but in reality it is a collection of many parts. These parts (web pages) are essentially individual steps on a path that should lead your visitors to a specific goal: the conversion. If your site as a whole, and web pages individually, are working properly, you should see an increase in conversion rates and sales. If anything is broken along the way your visitors are led the wrong way at the wrong time and you open the door to having them leave before they’ve reached the conversion goal.

Each entry point of your site (wherever the visitor lands first, not just the home page) needs to be treated as the starting point that will lead your visitors step by step toward the conversion goal. In order to guide your visitors from this starting point to the end point, you need to make sure each step along the way is aligned with the next; in sync and unbroken.

The seven steps to strong conversions

Step 1: Build the path to the conversion point

Just like good book needs to have a beginning, middle and an end, your site should be no different. All the steps, from start to finish, need to work together to bring the visitor toward the ultimate goal. However, with a website the start isn’t always the home page. In fact, a website is more like a choose-your-own-adventure book than a traditional novel. The visitor starts at different points; wherever the search engine dropped. This could be the home page, product page, testimonial page, informational page, an article, or anywhere else.

This makes building the path to the conversion a bit more challenging, but it can be done. Each page must be able to act independently from the previous, having a beginning and a middle while guiding the visitor to the end. Essentially, every web page of your site needs to be able to be the very first step in the process, provide a link to or act as the middle step, and lead the visitor to the last step, which is the conversion.

Step 2: Create alternate paths to the conversion point

Not every visitor has the same wants, needs or desires as the next. If you plan only a single path to the conversion point, you will ultimately lead much of your audience down a path that isn’t meant for them.

Twenty visitors can land on the same page and take 20 different paths to the conversion. Some want to read about your company, others want to see your testimonials, while another group wants guarantee or warranty information. Yet still others want to read more about your products or services before learning more about you and then getting some testimonials for confirmation. And of course there are always those who are ready to buy now with very little persuasion having to be done..

A path to the conversion should be created to provide each of your users precisely what they need in order to take the next step. Every visitor has different needs, desires, and temperaments from the next. Their needs vary at any given time in the process. Keep your visitor’s options open but also be aware that too many options can create confusion or inhibit your visitors from choosing any path at all. Don’t try to be all things to all people, but instead try to narrow the options down to the most common and significant so you can be sure to meet the vast majority of your visitor’s needs.

Step 3: Inspect your conversion paths

Once you have created your paths you then need to inspect them. Put yourself in the mind of your visitors and follow through as many paths as possible. This is where you’ll find out if any steps are missing or broken, or if there are too many steps in the process.

Take notes of obstacles that may disengage the visitor or may be an impediment to them reaching the conversion goal. Look for missing information, errors on the pages, broken links and calls to action. You want to make sure that the visitor finds no hindrances to getting to the destination and are able to find all the information they need to make a confident purchase decision.

Step 4: Fix broken steps along the paths

This is pretty self-explanatory. Once you’ve uncovered any problems with your conversion paths, fix them. Patch holes, fill cracks or otherwise improve the performance of each step along the way. Use your analytics to identify problem areas and test different versions to see which performs better.

Step 5: Add or remove steps to create the most efficient path

Again, using your analytics, determine if there are places where steps need to be added or removed in order to make the conversion process more efficient. Your goal is to make the site as streamlined as possible. Add no more steps than are needed and no fewer than what it takes to get the job done.

Remember, each set of visitors is different. Some paths may be long, others short but you need to have the options there for each segment of your audience.

Step 6: Create and test new paths

Once you have tested, fixed and retested your original paths and everything is functioning as it should, it’s time to start building and testing new paths. Consider your users carefully here. The first pass at creating paths should have been designed to hit the majority of your target audience. Now it’s time to accommodate the rest. While the broader target is easier to hit, the smaller target is no less important. Build paths specifically for these users as they can be the source of many additional sales, and often result in higher conversion rates.

Step 7: Test new stepping stones

By this time your conversion process should be going strong and you have pretty solid conversion rates. Well, if it ain’t broke… fix it anyway. Never stop looking for new opportunities to improve your conversion process. Test, test, and test some more. Sometimes adding new steps in the process can help improve conversions with certain audiences. Just be careful to keep an eye out for any negative effects as well. The goal here is improvement, not to add clutter.

Building a cohesive path from your visitor’s landing point to the conversion goal isn’t easy. What makes it even more difficult is that you never know what any individual’s preference or needs will be. But by taking the time to know and understand your audience you can find ways to build and improve upon the conversion paths that will satisfy the majority of your visitors.

Follow these seven steps and there is no doubt that you’ll find ways to improve your conversions rates. It may be incremental or you may find huge gains all at once, but every gain is a good gain.

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In just under a week the annual Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association Summit will be held downtown Minneapolis at the Hilton. With keynotes from Seth Godin and Jackie Huba as well as a collection of local and national subject matter experts ranging from Greg Swan of Weber Shandwick to Scott Monty of Ford, it should be a veritable vortex of interactive velocity.  I apologize, that alliteration was so bad.

Anyway, TopRank has been asked to participate in the “Migrate” themed event on the topic of search engine optimization and social media convergence.

After writing, presenting and most importantly: being a paid consultant and self-practitioner of SEO (12 years) and Social Media Marketing (5 years) respectively, I thought it would be a good appetizer for next week’s presentation to highlight some of the most popular blog posts covering SEO and social media marketing from  Online Marketing Blog.

Top SEO and Social Media Marketing Posts from Online Marketing Blog:
(by traffic in the past 12 months)

1. 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips (Apr 27th, 2009) – This popular post offers specific advice on justifying investment in social media strategy, how to decide on tactics and measuring success from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and a mix of SMM consultants/agencies: Altimeter Group, Crayon, Ogilvy 360, Future Works, Doe Anderson, New Marketing Labs and others.

2. Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR (Nov 15th, 2007) – Excerpt: “The key with Twitter is not to look at microblogging as individual posts, but think of the overall impressions and value that can be created over time. Each 140 character or less entry serves as a seed of an idea for an overall objective. Over time, you’ll build a footprint and brand of influence within the Twitter community”. This post also includes tips from other early adopter Tweeple including:Andy Beal, Todd Defren and Michael Gray.

3. Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing (Feb 12th, 2009) – Many marketers are unsure about the difference between best and worst practices when it comes to commercial participation on the social web. Identifying best and worst practics is a work in progress of course, as communities develop, grow and change.  This post outlines the basic best/worst practices that will hold true for years to come. Internet years that is.

4. 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog (Jun 15th, 2006) – An oldie but goodie, this post contains many of the fundamentals for creating search engine friendly blogs and has been cited by over 14,000 web sites including Search Engine Land, Copyblogger, Mashable, Stuntdubl, SEOBook, Duct Tape Marketing a and HubSpot.

5. What is Your Social Media Marketing Strategy? (Mar 25th, 2008) – Social media is hot, every body’s doing it. But the question needs to be asked: why? This post offers several good business reasons why companies should invest time, money and resources into social media.

6. Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals (Apr 29th, 2009) – After presenting these ten tips at a public relations conference, I blogged the presentation and wrote another blog post detailing each of the ten tips. It should have been an ebook, but I decided it would reach more people as a series of 11 blog posts.

7. 16 Rules For Social Media Optimization Revisited (Aug 4th, 2009) – A follow up to a post originally published in 2006 that defined a new marketing category, this 3,117 word article by TopRank’s Adam Singer offers an update that resonated well with Online Marketing Blog readers. Is social media optimization still relevant and why?

8. 5 Link Building Tips for New Websites (Mar 20th, 2009) –  KISS, as in Keep It Simple Stupid. It’s sage advice for many things, including blog posts. This link building basics post from TopRank’s Dana Larson hit the nail on the head for many new web site owners in search of those ever elusive first links to boost search engine rankings.

9. Lowdown on Press Release Optimization (Oct 24th, 2005) – One of the first really popular blog posts we ever published, still gets new links every week from sites like WebProNews, Bruce Clay, Techipedia, LED Digest and Yahoo.

10. SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools (Apr 7th, 2009) – Google set the stage for formal search engine support of the webmaster community by developing Webmaster Tools (thanks Vanessa Fox) and TopRank’s Thomas McMahon wrote up this popular tips post highlighting some very useful features.

BONUS!  While not one of the most popular posts overall in the past year, a few recent entries made on Online Marketing Blog speak specifically to the presentation I’ll be giving at the MIMA Summit next week:

SEO & Social Media Roadmap – How do you plan for a social media strategy? How do you leverage the Yin/Yang benefits of both SEO and Social Media for objectives, tactics, specific tools and measuring goals? This post attempts to answer those questions specifically.

Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success – This post was published over at Mashable and focuses on making the most out of combining SEO insights with social media marketing tactics through development of a roadmap.  Like any digital marketing effort, a combined SEO and social media program is most effective that identifies a target audience, specifies measurable goals and a strategy to guide implementation of tactics.

Hopefully your appetite has been stimulated enough to come to our  MIMA Summit SEO/Social session right after Seth Godin’s keynote. If not, you’ll definitely have actionable tips you can use in your SEO and Social Media Marketing efforts today.

Session Details:
The Intersection of SEO and Social Media

Oct 5, 2009 – 9:45 am
Tactics Track, Salon C
Hilton, Minneapolis

Session Overview:
Successful social media efforts build community, better connect brands with customers and can influence both media coverage and increased sales. Yet implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content for search is literally “leaving money on the table.” Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio and applications) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach audiences that are looking.

Why do so many companies fail to leverage their participation on the social web for SEO? This session will provide specific “Do’s and Don’ts” of social media optimization and provide attendees practical examples of how companies can leverage SEO and social media content to improve their search marketing performance.

If you like video, here’s an interview with Phil Wilson of Minnov8 & myself talking about SEO/Social and what I’ll be presenting at MIMA Summit.

Win a Free Pass to the MIMA Summit!

Want to attend the sold-out MIMA Summit in Minneapolis next week but didn’t get your ticket in time?  Or maybe you’re a Seth Godin fan and just can’t stand the fact that you’ll miss hearing him speak in person.  Well dear readers, we just might have the solution to that problem.  TopRank Online Marketing has one extra ticket from the corporate table we purchased for the MIMA Summit and we’re going to give it away.

All you have to do is leave a single comment below with a creative and/or compelling reason why we should give YOU a free ticket to next week’s MIMA Summit ($595 value) OR if you Tweet a similarly creative link to this post, that will show up in our comments too. We’ll pick one lucky winner on Thursday Oct 1st.

Sound easy? Sound doable? Then get to it.  If you comment, be sure to enter your email address so we can contact you. If you Tweet, be sure to follow @toprank so we can DM you. We will ONLY contact you if you win and will not rent, sell, post, hack or do anything unsavory or sinister with the information you provide.

Obligatory Q and A:

Q: Does it include gratuitous coffee in the morning before Seth speaks?

A: If MIMA provides it with the corporate table tickets, then you get it. Pretty sure they’ll be offering coffee. Maybe even some bacon.

Q: Does it include lunch?

A: Pretty sure lunch is included. If not, I’ll buy you lunch.

Q: Does it include door to door pickup service from my home in Ham Lake to downtown Minneapolis with sidetrips to Starbucks on the way there and Lucia’s Wine Bar on the way home?

A: I don’t think so.

Q: OK, what about cab fare?

A: Nope.

Q: Transit pass?

A: Not going to happen.

Q: Bus fare?

A: That would be, ah, no.

Q: Schwag?

A: MIMA Summit events and sponsors have been amazing with their schwag generosity. Can’t imagine this year will be any different.

However, we might bring a TopRank mugs. We’d bring the TopRank Old English Sheep dog, but he has a sinus infection and believe me, you don’t want to be around when a 90lb sheep dog sneezes.

Any other questions? Please Tweet them to @toprank or email seo at toprank dot org

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
10 SEO & Social Media Posts To Read Before MIMA Summit |
3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Some people have said that advertising and marketing are even more important than the product or service itself. If no one knows about what you have to offer, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You also want to give people the most positive impression of your product, service, or website as possible, even before they have a chance to try it out first hand.

In an Internet filled with so many banner ads, it is easy to get lost in the mix and hiring a professional ad agency to design your banners can get very expensive, very quickly. There is at least one alternative, however.

The people behind Abracadaban ordered up this sponsored review on John Chow dot Com to tell you about how you can buy custom animated banners for only a few dollars. And you can make money doing it too.

It’s Not Exactly Like Magic

I understand that they’re trying to evoke certain connotations related to magic, but the Abracadaban (beta) name isn’t exactly the easiest thing to remember perfectly. Clearly an off-shoot of abracadabra, Abracadaban can easily be mistaken for countless other slight variations. This could present an issue with branding.

Regarding the service itself, Abracadaban (beta) gives you the ability to purchase a wide range of advertising banners, both in animated GIF and Flash formats, for between $2 and $7 per unit. A number of ad sizes are available too, including 125×125, 468×60, 120×600, and 300×250.

After signing up for a free account, you can work from both sides of the transaction. One unified account is used to create ads for sale and to purchase ads created by other designers. The user dashboard also gives you access to a myriad of stats.

How Much Do the Designers Make?

With each purchased ad unit, the designers within the Abracadaban community make a cut. The average commission rate is 40%. I personally think that the commission should be at least 50%, but it’s up to you to decide whether the 40% rate is fair. Remember that, based on this scale, a $5 sale only results in a $2 commission. The prices are low, so if you want to make money as a designer here, you’ll need to work on volume.

Using the Ad Creation Wizard

Since the banner maker service is still in its relative infancy, there aren’t too many options in the marketplace right now. This will hopefully grow in the future, because running a search using the tool in the sidebar does not yield too many possibilities.

For the time being, it may be more effective to use the category listing to find a banner that suits your needs. After choosing one of the banner designs, you can then select its size and look at related banners.

The banners are not static, both in terms of content and color scheme. The customization tool allows you to adjust the text and the background color (including gradients), add your own images and music, and switch up the animation effects. Each banner can accept up to four sets of text that animate one after the other.

The wizard is very easy to understand, but it also offers a great deal of personalization possibilities. For the 468×60 banner that I created for my freelance writing services site, the total cost with animations was just three dollars. This is very affordable and makes for a more interesting banner than a static image.

Should You Go Pro Too?

In addition to the regular free account, Abracadaban also offers a premium pro account for $4 a month. This gives you unlimited upload space, help desk support, more pictures per ad, monthly reports and more.

To help kickstart the community, the developers behind Abracadaban are offering thirty free “Pro” accounts to the first 30 confirmed users coming from John Chow dot Com. You can’t beat the price of free and if you happen to sell a few banners along the way, you can come up with a healthy profit too.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS ON ABRACADABAN

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Earlier this year I was on sell mode. Basically I was doing a clean up on my properties, getting rid of what was not aligned with my strategic plans. Now I am back on buy mode, and I am looking specifically for websites that make money with Google AdSense. If you have one and could be interested in selling, read on.

Here is the profile that I am looking for:

• The website made at least $200 in monthly AdSense earnings over the last six months ($200 per month, so $1,200 over the six months).
• The website is at least one year old.
• At least 50% of the traffic comes from search engines.
• The website is written in English.
• The website has unique content.

If your website is aligned with what I described above and you might be interested in selling, drop me a message via the contact form and we’ll talk business.

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Original Post: Want To Sell Your AdSense Earning Website? I Wanna Buy It

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Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.

Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.

Kodak is an excellent example of a company that’s put a face to the brand on Twitter. The company’s official Tweeter, chief blogger and social media manager Jennifer Cisney (@kodakcb), leaves no guesses as to who she is and what she does. Her Tweets strike a healthy balance between letting her personality shine through and offering too much irrelevant information (i.e., “Sitting on my couch watching Desperate Housewives and eating popcorn.”)

2. Show some personality. It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. Have some fun with your Tweets by telling humorous stories or poking a little fun at yourself every now and then.

Part of what makes Ford Motor Co. head of social media and Tweeterati Scott Monty (@scottmonty) so successful and popular is his ability to make followers feel like he’s an old college buddy or family friend. His bio tells his followers he’s “a generally nice guy.” But his genuine Tweets—a combination of marketing insight, Ford and auto news, and his own personal anecdotes—lets them know that’s the case. (Scott Monty video interview here)

3. Admit when you’re wrong. With the explosion of social networks over the past few years, bad decisions and unfortunate snafus are exposed sooner rather than later. So it’s important for brands to fess up first and show their willingness to rectify the situation. With that said, why not turn a negative situation into a positive one?

After you’ve admitted to a mistake, strike up some friendly competition by asking your followers to submit their own “biggest oops moment.” Choose—or better yet allow followers to vote on—the best story. Offer some sort of an incentive to the winner, whether it’s a coupon, a free product or a gift certificate.

4. Get to know your followers. Let’s face it: Your followers—and potential customers—have more on their minds than just your brand. Ask your followers questions about themselves, gain a sense of who they are and customize your responses to them based on their personal details.

In the end, not only will you be viewed as an authentic and trusted brand on Twitter, you’ll also obtain valuable information on customer demographics.

5. Don’t get carried away by your accomplishments. With trial-and-error, know-how and a little luck, you’re likely to find much success in your social media and Twitter efforts. But don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind that it’s your followers who gave you that success.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Twitterati that’s been more successful at using Twitter for customer service than Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) from Comcast. But what keeps them relevant and useful for followers over the long term is their ability to remain genuine and humble amidst widespread popularity. (Frank Eliason interview here)

While there are any number of ways to fail while trying to effectively market on Twitter, social media usage by companies has matured enough for a growing number of good examples to emerge. Being aware of what’s working for others can be priceless insight for how to develop your own genuine communications and brand experience with customers on the social web.

What are some brands that have done a good job at staying authentic and transparent on Twitter? What other Twitter tips do you have for remaining authentic and transparent?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent |
3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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