Every business should have a website, right?

True. Every business, big or small, should have some sort of web presence. The internet is part of every day life and, as you don’t need thousands of pounds to get a business online now, there really is little excuse for a business not to a have a website created at some point.

But my question to you today is whether your website is a help or a hindrance?

Just because you’re online, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing anything for you. And worse case scenario is that your website could actually be working against you.

Let’s look at how the average person uses the web. Did you know that the average time it takes for someone to “read” a website is 3 seconds?

Think back to the last time you used Google to find something. You may have been looking for the best place to buy toner cartridges for your printer. It could have been that you were trying to find a villa or cottage to rent for your holiday this summer.

Do you remember how long you took to make the decision to hit that back button and go on to the next website on the search results listings? I am pretty sure it took you less than that average of 3 seconds on the websites that didn’t grab you.

How long would it take for a visitor landing on your home page to make a decision to stay or go? 1 minute? 10 seconds? Or less than the average 3 seconds?

And imagine if they were on hold to their bank at the time. Or waiting for a file to download on to their laptop, whilst they click through to your website. How is your website grabbing their attention?

It could be that your website is being more of a hindrance, than a help!

Here are some of the common “hindrances” that I see every day on websites that don’t generate any leads or new clients for a business.

1. A website that talks about the company and not the potential customer.

Look at your home page and for every “We”, “I” and your company name, exchange it for the words “You”, “You” and “You”. People are only interested in themselves when they are looking for someone to help them. It’s all very well that you are the market leaders in what you do, but how is that going to benefit your clients?

2. A website that is so obviously “home-made”.

You may have gone on a HTML programming course to save yourself a few pennies. You may have even used your next door neighbour’s son who is studying IT at Uni. But saving money on your website to end up with a site that doesn’t work in a particular browser or doesn’t display on a mobile phone will only push clients away. There is really little excuse not to have a nicely designed website. Using blog platforms such as wordpress.org, for example, mean that you can have a simple, professional looking site that works, set up for as little as £500.

3. A website that has a fussy design, clashing colours and is more concerned with how pretty or trendy it looks.

Internet users want to find their information quickly, rather than hunt for it in cleverly worded menus or images. Flash introductions just annoy – remember the 3 second time limit. Unless your clients expect to watch a dancing cartoon or slideshow, they will be gone before it’s finished playing!

4. A website with no obvious purpose.

Static brochure style websites just don’t “do” anything. They may look pretty and give lots of information, but what is that website visitor meant to do? Picking up the phone and making an enquiry may just be too big a leap to make. They will more than likely leave and move on to the next site on their search lists.

This last point has to be the one that I rant about the most. A website with no obvious purpose is a waste of time. It just floats around in hyperspace, gathering pixel dust and being ignored by by anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

For the majority of small businesses, the most effective purpose to give your website is to help build a database of potential customers.

The competition to be found through search engines is so fierce, you can’t afford to trust that your website visitors will bookmark your site and come back another day. They will have found what they are looking for by then and you’ll have lost a client.

Having a website whose primary purpose is to invite visitors to leave their name and email address has been proved to be one of the most successful online marketing strategies to have for the majority of small businesses.

It creates the opportunity for you to build a relationship with that visitor so, over time, they trust you enough to become a paying customer.

How do you do this?

Capturing names and email addresses by offering something in return is something so simple and yet so many small business owners don’t do this. And the easiest way of offering something in return is to offer a free newsletter, a free e-course or free report. The options available to you are limitless.

You may be keen to start your own email newsletter but feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information out there. I know I get enough emails asking me about them so if you haven’t started one or in the early stages of creating a database, then do check out my “How To Do Email Newsletters” programme starting this month.

In the meanwhile, start by checking out your website right now. Ask yourself – is yours a help or a hindrance?

And what are you going to do about it?

About the Author: Karen Skidmore helps small business owners work smarter and use the right marketing tools so they can attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice and marketing ideas that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.com

Right now showing up on page one of the organic search results is the holy grail of small business online marketing. Any business that spends significant time consistently producing keyword rich, educational content, draws links, and is active in numerous social network can eventually gain some real traction when it comes to search results.

For about five years rating a review sites like Yelp! and Insider Pages have been slowly bubbling up and impacting search results and buying decisions. More and more people are relying on search results combined with reviews. In other words, they might find you on page one and that was good, but then they find some so so reviews on CitySearch and that could kill the deal.

While ratings and opinions have dramatically impacted purchases made at hotels and restaurants, they haven’t had nearly as big an impact on other industries. After all the the searcher needed to use these rating sites and the reviews, while carrying some weight, were from strangers.

This past week Google added something they are calling Social Search. (Here’s the official Google announcement) For now Social Search is opt-in (you need to activate it in Google Labs), but when activated you will start to see the opinions, blog posts, tweets and reviews from your friends and those you follow in other social networks at the bottom of the regular Google search results.

Search for San Francisco restaurants add these social search results

If this feature becomes standard, which I think it will, a surfer looking for a good place to get a pair running shoes on a business trip can do a search and not only get results for the stores in the area, but also opinions and recommendations from friends. Do you think those recommendation, up or down, will carry more weight than those hard earned SEO results – I think it’s highly possible they will.

Getting great search engine placement and results is still essential. Paying attention to what your customers are saying, helping them say it, participating in real time conversations good and bad, and monitoring and measuring every mention may just become the new SEO.

If you would like to see what this looks like you will need the following
1) Google account
2) Google personal profile with some elements of your social graph added – Gmail contacts, Twitter profile, Facebook profile (This is where the Google gets the content to show)
3) Social Search enabled through Google Labs

____________

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

Visitors to your company’s site can now comment upon or criticize your brand and have their thoughts appear right next to your corporate website without your permission. How should business owners handle that?

On September 23rd this year, Google released a browser sidebar called “Sidewiki” which has already created quite a stir.   Sidewiki is a Google Toolbar addon which allows visitors to contribute and read information alongside any web page, enabling point-specific comments, expert opinions, and related links to be aggregated.

Sidewiki is available on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. If you don’t wish to download the Google Toolbar, you can still access Sidewiki on any browser via a bookmarketlet which offers only slightly limited features.

Upon installation, the Sidewiki notification icon turns yellow if others have made Sidewiki comments on the sites you visit. You can then read these additional comments on the browser sidebar and if you have a Google account, you may also contribute to any discussions about an entire site or specific content on a web page.

Once logged into their Google profiles, Sidewiki users can click the yellow Sidewiki icon in their browser toolbar which appears when they load a website containing Sidewiki comments. This brings up the sidebar. Users may then scroll down and click the “read entries” link at the bottom of the sidebar in order to see the Sidewiki comments I wrote on my Marketing Masala blog at www.sarahsturtevant.com.   I highly recommend that all site owners take a first step with Sidewiki and claim the #1 Sidewiki comment position for their websites. This first comment advantage is available to all site owners.

Google’s stated intent when it launched Sidewiki was to allow visitors to provide expanded information and helpful comments to enrich the online experience for others. Sidewiki provides a scoring system which allows other readers to vote for or against each comment, thus enabling the most helpful comments to bubble up to the top of the sidebar and potential “spammy” or malware contributions to sink lower. Some companies, however, fear that Sidewiki has opened up a Pandora’s Box by allowing detractors of their brands to post “website graffiti” next to their company sites.

What’s a Wiki?

If you’re still asking yourself “What the heck is a wiki?” then perhaps you’ve heard of Wikipedia. It’s one of the best known wikis on the internet. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia which is written collaboratively by its users. Here’s the Wikipedia’s own definition of a wiki:

“a website that allows the easy[1] creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.[2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.”

According to Wikipedia, many people are constantly improving its own site, making “thousands of changes per hour” to verify facts and improve grammar or spelling.

Wikis or collaborative websites are one thing, but what about sticky note-like comments that show up next to your website on the browser itself?

The idea of allowing website visitors to provide annotated comments and criticisms about any site they visit isn’t new. Third Voice launched a browser plugin in 1999 which allowed web surfers to annotate any site with their comments – without the permission of the website owners. Eng-Sion Tan and two other engineering PhDs from Singapore launched Third Voice to promote greater freedom of speech on the web.

According to Wired, the developers of Third Voice hoped their application would help spark “inline discussions among web users promoting a new civic mindedness that would keep corporations, government and the media honest.”

But was Third Voice was just a little ahead of its time? Back then, before the web became more social with thousands of blogging sites and social media platforms, this was a radical and very threatening concept to owners of corporate websites.

“Launching a grassroots campaign called Say No to TV, some 400 independent Web hosts banded together to gag Third Voice, which they likened to “Web graffiti.”

Third Voice never became a killer app, garnering about 200,000 users before being discontinued due to financing issues in 2001.

While in the 1990’s consumers were very much in the grip of traditional corporate one-way, controlled brand communications, this is 2009 and things have changed. Customers have come to expect two-way interaction with their suppliers.

Responding to Sidewiki

Some manufacturers may frantically ask, “How can I block Sidewiki from appearing on my company website?” The simple answer is you can’t block it because it’s not on your site.  It actually displays next to your site on the web browser. Webmasters cannot opt out of Sidewiki currently unless they block all Google Toolbar users from accessing a corporate site which, of course, would be a poor online marketing strategy.

Sidewiki has not quite caught on in the mainstream yet, however, corporate website owners wishing to manage their own online brand reputations should be prepared. Here are five simple proactive steps your company can take to prepare for Sidewiki:

1. download and explore Sidewiki to familiarize yourself with it
2. write the first Sidewiki comment on your own website or blog and continue to participate to stay “above the fold” on your site’s Sidewiki
3. monitor all other Sidewiki comments via an RSS subscription which sends new comments to either your RSS reader (such as Google Reader or Feedly etc.), or to your email inbox. Here’s how create a RSS feed for your site’s Sidewiki comments. Paste this in your web browser: http:www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A%2 %2Fwww.google%2Fsidewiki%2Ffeeds%2Fentries%2Fdomainpath%2Fwww.YOURDOMAIN.com%252F%2Fdefault%3sortorder%3Dupdated%26includeLessUseful%Dtrue Then change YOURDOMAIN to your domain, and delete the “www” part if you don’t use it.  That’s it.
4. on websites where your brand or products are being discussed, own the Sidewiki comments by participating more on these sites.
5. use Sidewiki commenting on other sites to have your name or brand appear on important sites within your industry

What are your thoughts on Google Sidewiki? Is there an “up” side to all this online discussion and collaboration or do you think that Google has perhaps become a bit too “god-like” in its control of our online interactions and data – all seeing, all knowing and all powerful?

_____________

Note from Women Unlimited: I came across this posts via one of the Linked In groups that I follow and had not been aware of Sidewiki’s at all.  I felt it was so important that I asked Sarah if we could re-pulish it here, which she very kindly said yes to.  It is worth following Sarah’s advice and make sure you claim that first place in the sidewiki as you won’t have a second chance to take that spot!

About the Author:Sarah Sturtevant is President/Owner of Integrated Website Solutions Inc. a consulting firm that specializes in helping industrial suppliers across Ontario, Canada, develop effective online strategies which provide measurable ROI by increasing their sales, improving their customer service, supporting their sales channels and improving their business efficiencies.She has represented www.ThomasNet.com in Ontario since 1996. ThomasNet is the premier vertical search engine for industry in North America and attracts 40 million industrial buyers and engineers annually. Sarah offers her industrial clients an integrated approach to the internet which includes website evaluation, website redevelopment and hosting, along with a sound strategy to drive more qualified prospects to their websites and measure the return on investment of their online campaigns. Her Ontario clients include companies with 10 to thousands of employees.

People frequently say to me that Facebook is for friends and Linked In is for business.  This fantastic article from John Jantsch gives some insight into the three ways that you can use Facebook for business.

Facebook continues to grow in popularity with small business to the point where it’s no longer a matter of if you should be utilizing this platform as how. It’s really no surprise to me that Facebook is generally deemed more useful for the small business than other social media tools, such as twitter. The Facebook platform and applications are such that a business could feasibly build their entire web presence there – particularly now that Fan pages can be viewed publicly by non Facebook users.

So, the question I want to dive into today is this: What’s the best way to approach Facebook for your business?

Of course, I’m not entirely sure there’s one correct answer, so I’ll outline three approaches that might make sense.

1) Facebook Business Account only

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. A Facebook Business Account allows you to create a simple business presence by creating public business pages, but you have limited access to the profiles of people who interact with or fan you page as well as little access to other features on the site. (Note: If you already have a personal profile account this option is not available)

Here’s the Help Center FAQs on Business Accounts. This can be a decent option for people who don’t want to do anything more than create a presence on Facebook. If you do not already have a Facebook personal profile you simply create a page or ad here. Once you create a Facebook page via business account you will always have the opportunity to convert it and create a personal profile.

2) Personal Profile for Personal and Business Fan Page for Business

Some people created a personal profile because they realized what a great tool Facebook is for keeping up with college and high school friends or sharing details about life with family and friends. When these same folks started realizing what a nice tool Facebook is for business, they faced the issue of mixing too much personal with business and visa versa.

For these folks the addition of a Facebook Fan Page is the most obvious solution. The Fan Page allows you to create a business only page with a great deal of functionality and settings that allow you to open your page up to the world far beyond your current Facebook friends. In addition, your updates and posts on your fan page spread to the wall of all those who become a fan on your page making your business presence even greater.

Of course, the way Facebook is set up there is still a very close relationship between your personal profile and the fan pages you administer. In this case, privacy settings on your personal profile probably become very important. You can visit your Facebook Profile Privacy Settings to make updates

Consider these privacy tips for business use:
a) Use the “Friend List” feature - This feature allows you to make lists to group people based on how or why you know them – family in one group, business contacts in another, cooking club in another, etc. The main reason this is so important is that you can issue different privacy settings per list and therefor be very selective about, for instance, what your business related contact might see.

b) turn off photo tagging – an often used feature on Facebook is to tag photos with the people in them. If you don’t want all your business contacts to see you kicking back with a few beers than make sure photo tagging is limited in your privacy settings.

c) protect your photos – change the settings on your photo privacy (a separate page) so that your darling two year old’s birthday pics are kept in the family – unless of course you want to share them with business contacts.

d) don’t share who your friends are – even before someone becomes a friend they can, by default, see who you are friends with, just without any details. You don’t have to make this information public and there might be some good reasons in this case not to. You can change your profile setting called Friends to show select groups of none at all.

e) choose who can see contact info – many people put personal contact details in their personal profile and as your business use increases and your start approving people you don’t know, you may not want them to have your personal email and mobile number.

f) control your wall settings – it’s a good idea to control who can view posts to your personal wall. If you allow your good friends to add comments, photos and updates, you may not want the business contacts to view this – change who can see wall posts from friends using the lists you build by visiting your profile settings page. You can also control who can post to your wall page, but this shouldn’t be a big issue if you control who can see posts. Of course you can also ban individuals from posting.

3) Personal Profile for Business and Fan Page for Business – when I started using Facebook my intent for strictly for business. (To my knowledge there are no pictures of me in hula skirts on my personal profile.) When Fan pages came along it became clear that this was also a great business tool so I added that as well.

I think this approach of all business is fine way to take advantage of all that Facebook offers to those who choose to use this platform.

My personal profile is open and public and I welcome friend requests from people who see this as a business page. I don’t reach out to family members and don’t have friend requests sitting in my daughters in boxes. I business stream content into my personal page, including my twitter, friendfeed and blog posts. These streams create a fair amount of interaction with friends, which I try to participate in.

I use the Fan Page to create additional awareness, answer questions, post video and publish events, including audio and video archives from those events.

Here’s the link to my Personal Profile and here’s the link to the Duct Tape Marketing Fan Page (Consider becoming a fan!)

The interaction and cross over of friends vs fans is likely pretty high, although I’ve never tried to gauge it. This all business approach allows me to continue to participate and build a stronger Facebook foundation as this platform continues to evolve.

Grabbing Green have created a small business guide to using facebook, which you can pick up here.

Why not become a fan of our Women Unlimited Facebook page.

____________

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

Everyone is talking Twitter at the moment, but let’s not forget some of the other social networks.  This is an article from John Janstch on one of the originals… Linked In.

A pretty common question these days is “which social network is the best?” – And to that I usually say – “the one that helps you meet your marketing objectives” – and in that regard, many are great, but for different reasons.

I really like some things about LinkedIn. It has always tended towards the service oriented professional, in my opinion, but it has plenty to like in the brand asset optimization world that all businesses live in as well. My advice for most business owners is to find a social network or platform that seems most suited to your business objectives and dive in pretty deep, focusing more casual attention on the others, at least initially. Going hard and deep into one network, like LinkedIn, is the only way to gain the momentum delivered by consistent work and engagement.

So, when it comes to LinkedIn – here are 5 tips to get more

1) Your Profile

This is a great brand asset so don’t waste it. Make it informative and optimized for search.

• Add a photo – nothing says nobody’s home faster than the default icon
• Get the branded URL – something like this is what you want http://www.linkedin.com/in/ducttapemarketing – it’s something you pick during editing
• Links with Anchor text – link to your blog, products, workshops, etc. through the “other” tab and you can add anchor text for the link
• Be descriptive – use the “Summary” to tell your story in a compelling way and add lots of keywords in the “specialty” section
• Keep it active – LinkedIn has a status update feature, much like Facebook and twitter, that you should update routinely
• Link to it – put links to your profile in your email signature and other online pages. Optimization is a two way street.

The image above shows the links on my profile with carefully selected anchor text that links to pages on my site. LinkedIn is one of the few social profiles sites that allows this.

2) Give to Get

When people view profiles one of the top features is something called recommendations. While these may feel a little fluffy when you read them, lack of them can be a competitive issue. You should acquire some recommendations and I find the best way to get them is to give them. Choose people in your network that you’ve worked with and write an honest statement of recommendation. Don’t be surprised if you receive some in return.

3) Show What You’ve Got

An overlooked feature on LinkedIn, in my opinion, is the Question and Answer function. By jumping in and answering questions thoughtfully you can demonstrate a given expertise while potentially engaging contacts that are drawn to your knowledge. The key phrase is thoughtfully answering. LinkedIn even has a rating system to reward people who give the best answers with some added exposure.

The flip side of this tip is to ask thoughtful questions. This can be a great way to get useful information, but it’s equally powerful as a tool to create conversations, discussion and engagement with like minded connections.

4) Lead a Group

Anyone can launch a group on LinkedIn and lead discussions and networking on a specific topic of interest. If you take this tip to heart and put some effort into a niche group you can gain added influence with your network, but groups are also open to the LinkedIn universe as a whole and some folks find that this is one of the strongest ways to build their network. Building a group around an established brand is also a great way to bring users or customers together.

5) Repurpose Content

Since members of your network, and those of the larger LinkedIn community, may only experience your brand on the LinkedIn platform, it’s a great idea to enhance your profile with educational information. This is best done using some of the 3rd party applications that LinkedIn has collected for this purpose.

• BlogLink – displays your latest blog posts on your profile
• Box.net – allows you to create links to files such as resumes and marketing kits
• Slideshare – embeds slideshow presentations and demos
• Company Buzz – scrapes twitter for mentions of your brand or other topics you assign

Bonus Tip

Some organizations, particularly those searching for employees, might really benefit from the new Customer Company Profile offerings. Using Custom Company Profiles, a company can provide a rich, multimedia overview of careers offered, through a variety of modules including recruitment messaging, employee/recruiter spotlights, jobs, polls and videos.

____________

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

It’s very easy to jump on the bandwagon with social networks. All the rage. these communications tools can provide a great avenue to reach new customers and contacts. At the same time they can burn masses of time and divert you away from other business development tactics. So what are the obstacles that the uninitiated should try and avoid? Chatting with Chris Bullick of Pull Digital, here are 5 factors to assess if social networking makes real business sense for your organisation.

1. Follow your market

Is your market using social networks? If they don’t then concentrate on the communications channels they are more ‘at home’ with. Whilst there’s a tremendous ‘buzz’ about channels such as facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, you need to be absolutely sure the people you want to communicate to use them. Research is emerging about the profile of people using this media and their usage patterns. Make sure you check the findings out before you commit lots of time and energy to social networking.

2. Selling will switch people off

People don’t want to be ‘sold’ to on social networks, nor do they want to read loads of self-gratification, questions or dialogue secretly masked as such. An open, honest and interesting discussion is preferred and you need to be sure your products or services can stand up to this. The good news is this can add positively to your company or brand ‘experience’. To do so you need to think closely about best tone of voice to adopt as well as the interesting and engaging content you can bring to the discussion. If your mind goes blank at this prospect, perhaps now’s not the time to get involved.

3. It takes two

The best business relationships emerging from social networks originate from both parties showing a genuine interest in each other. So don’t ignore questions and messages that people post to you. Interact with them. Remember you are on display here. A company who only posts comments about itself, points people to its website and doesn’t respond to questions and comments from the public (including customers and prospective ones) is soon ignored or worse still, ridiculed.

4. Beware blending business and pleasure

If you are blurring the boundaries of business and personal life in your use of social networks, make sure one cannot harm the other. We have seen people who have clearly stated brand values and messages for their company, but through their use of facebook, blogs and twitter seem to deviate from these. Just like any other communication channel, when it comes to business, social networks need to be planned and strategically managed along with other media you are using. If not, you risk becoming inconsistent and confusing with your company/product/service message..

5. Let your advocates do the talking

Social networks really do give more power to the people. If your clients and customers love the experience that your products and services give then let them do the talking. Recommendations (especially when the economy is difficult) speak volumes and will be noticed far more than any sales message spiel you can put together.

And don’t forget…

Whilst social networks have been enabled by new technology, they are governed by human behaviour and that is slower to change. Social networks facilitate socialising and satisfy a desire for community, knowledge and entertainment. With each of us those desires take different forms and different weightings. On top of this, each of us only has so much time in a day to interact with them. So people often try out different mediums and then settle with what they’re happy with. That’s why you have to be a) doubly sure you’re interacting with the right network for your market, b) you understand why, when and how they use it and c) you produce content they will engage with.

During the last six months Twitter has gone crazy. In fact 75% of the tweeps now using Twitter have only joined this year. There are loads of articles, blog posts and forums all writing about Twitter and how great it is for business.

But this post is a quick and practical guide to actually using Twitter. And follows a call I had from a friend and colleague this week who said ‘I’ve just opened a Twitter account. Now what?’  

So. You’ve opened your account. And I’m assuming you’ve used your real name where it says name and your company name where it says username. Your username will be the name that shows in all your tweets so it’s worth not choosing something daft.

Stage 1 Do all the admin bits
Click on Settings and under Account make sure
1. You’ve got a link to your website (you want potential followers to see what you’re all about, don’t you?)
2. You say where you are in the world. This will make it easier for people to find you by location.
3. You’ve got a great bio. Explain in as few words as possible what you do, what you’re offering or what you can do to help. Don’t be all serious and corporaey here. But give it some thought. This is the first time someone is meeting you on Twitter. So don’t sound like a loon.

Click on Picture and make sure
4. You have a great picture. Of you. And not the company logo. People want to chat to a real person, not a brand. Your pic should be face on and ideally make you not look like a felon.

Click on Design and
5. Choose something other than the standard blue. See Twitip’s excellent post on creating custom Twitter backgrounds.

Click on Notices and
6. Choose whether you want to be notified by email every time someone follows you or sends a direct message. This is your call. (I have them all ticked so I don’t miss anything.)

Right. What next. Write tweets with no followers? Or start following people in the hope they follow you even though you have no tweets?

Aaaah. The proverbial chicken and egg. I’m going with following first. But get some tweets on there pretty darn quick as well.

Stage 2 Start following
Start following people you know pretty well. They will probably take pity on you and follow you back. So click on Find people and search for their name or email address.

Also look for people in your industry or community. And see who they’re following. Anyone interesting? Click the follow button. You might want to follow some big ‘uns. I follow BBC Click, Guardian Tech and Google, as Turner Ink is into that sort of thing.

Remember you can easily unfollow at some point in the future.

Note on following: Quite oddly you’ll get people following you almost straight away. But before you get excited, there are bits of software that automatically follow people. Bah. So before you follow back, take a look at their Twitter bio and their profile page. What are they tweeting about? Anything good? Or useful? Or to do with your industry? If so follow them. If not ignore them. If they look like they’re porn stars, sellers of dodgy medicines or claim they can earn you a $1 million in five minutes, block them. Just click on followers, click the actions button next to their name and click block. You don’t want these tweeps in your community.

Stage 3 Get tweeting
Ok get tweeting. About what though? You might want to think about your Twitter strategy before you set up your account. And decide how many hours a day you can commit to Twitter. Just kidding. But be aware that Twitter can be more addictive than crack. So be strict with your time.

Now, if you’re using Twitter for business you might want to avoid tweeting ‘I’ve just got up.’ Especially if it’s midday. Or ‘It’s a beautiful day.’ Or ‘I’m really hungover.’ Do people really want to know this? I think not. You can show your personality or course. And you should. But try and make it work related or useful and interesting to your followers.

And don’t forget: Once you start tweeting don’t give up! Don’t write heaps of tweets in the first week and then abandon it. You gotta keep going with it. It’s the law.

Stage 4 Get TweetDeck
Right. Next step. Abandon the Twitter website and download TweetDeck. This is a cool application which makes it really easy to see all your tweets, mentions and direct messages.

Note: There are a few other apps so have a play around and see which one you like best.

Ok, if you’ve picked TweetDeck, take a look at the far left column. This shows all the tweets from people you’re following. If you hover above a picture you’ll see four little buttons come up. If you want to send a reply to a tweet just click on the top left button (the backward arrow).

So @kevgibbo would appear at the beginning of my tweet in the message box. Now in the old days an @reply could been by all the people following Turner Ink. It was public. This has changed quite recently (it may well change again so keep an eye out on the Twitter website) and now @replies can only be seen by people who are following both me and Kevin. Phew confusing or what? It just means people can follow a conversation more easily and not see half of it.

Click on the bottom left button (the arrow) and RT @kevgibbo now appears in the message box. This is a retweet. It’s a bit like forwarding an email from a friend to all your other friends. So if someone you’re following writes a good tweet or includes a really interesting link, and you want to share it, just click the retweet button.

Note on retweeting: Retweeting is a great way of building relationships and someone is more likely to retweet your stuff if you retweet theirs.

A retweet can be seen by all the people that are following you. If someone retweets one of your tweets (RT @TurnerInk ), or replies (@TurnerInk) or mentions you in a tweet (Ha ha @TurnerInk is hilarious) these will all appear in the Mentions column, so you can see at a glance who’s sharing your stuff or tweeting about you.

Click on the top right button (the envelope) to send a direct message. So the tweet would now start D @kebgibbo and only Kevin would see the message. The message would appear in my Direct Messages column. And it would appear in Kevin’s Direct Messages column.

The bottom right button is other actions. These include looking at someone’s profile, unfollowing and adding to a group.

If your tweet includes a link to a blog post you’ve found, or a news article you’ve enjoyed, just chuck the URL into the box where it says shorten URL and click the double arrows box to the right. This will – guess what? – shorten the URL so you don’t use all your 140 characters up in one go.

For more on using Tweetdeck check out 1^st Web Designer’s brilliant blog. Note that the Replies column is now called Mentions on the latest version of TweetDeck.

Stage 5 Be nice
Share information. Have conversations. Enjoy a bit of banter. Ask questions. But don’t try and sell. Trying to flog your wares straight away on Twitter is a turn-off.

If someone retweets (RT) you say thank you. If someone direct messages you (D) tweet them back. If someone puts out a question, answer it.

Take a look at Tec N’ Marketing’s blog post, 11 things to avoid on Twitter for more on Twitter etiquette.

And most of all have fun. Twitter is a handy little tool. Enjoy it.

More reading:
Grab yourself a copy of Paul Chaney’s Complete Guide to Twitter for Business which is now free to download.

Also check out immediate future’s Guide to Twitter for PR and Marketing Professionals. Also free to download.

And finally, a mighty long list of Twitter terms and tools from Sitemasher.

Are you already using Twitter for business? How’s it going?  Share your success stories or tips in the comments section.

___________

About the Author:  Sarah Turner is a freelance copywriter, who offers a range of expert copywriting services in London. In fact, throughout the world. Although the meetings are harder to get to.

If you’re looking for a copywriter who can spout superlatives or write words with four syllables you might want to go elsewhere. She’s allergic to business bull, long words and waffle. And she has a particular loathing for the word ‘solution’. Yuk.  You can find out more about Sarah at www.turnerink.com

Look beyond traffic and links and you will find the real value.

Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social networking and social book marking sites, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.

But, if that’s the only way you view social media, as a set of tools to perform a set of tactics to reach the set of objectives you have always tried to reach with your marketing, then not only are you really missing the opportunity, you will probably find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about.

You can’t approach new media with old thinking. Taking full advantage of social media requires understanding and adopting a specific social media strategy.

First and foremost you must appreciate the differences between social media and, say, direct mail. With direct mail the outcome is likely, to create an action. With most social media, it’s to create a connection. Both of these have equally important places in the long-term health of a business, but how they happen is significantly different.

Try to do one with the other and the results may actually backfire – ie: Ads on Facebook? There are definitely instances in which a social media play can align with an organization’s industry focus and become natural facilitators of lead acquisition.

I think the best way to look at social media, though, is to view it as a way to open up access points. These points can then be leveraged to create content, connection, and community. Do that well, and they can also add to lead generation, nurturing and conversion. Think of your web site as the ultimate destination or bucket to catch what comes through your social media access points.

Blogging – If content is one of the golden measures, blogs are a given. This one has become so mainstream it’s hard to think of in the same light as say Facebook. Blogging enhances all forms of content creation, drives search traffic and enables the start of connection and community in the form of comments and conversation. Employing this tool effectively feels a bit like social media 101 – a required course of action before advancing.

In Action: A blog connected to or functioning as your website, a blog network for your customers, a blog network for your strategic partners, an idea blog for your industry.

Tools – Typepad, Wordpress, Wordpress MU, MovableType, Drupal, Square Space, Twitter

RSS – Perhaps best known as a subset of blogging, RSS is what drives the spreading, filtering and aggregating of ideas and content. RSS technology has the ability to make content more useful.

In Action: Simply researching through news, republishing news and search results, reformatting information – data and calendars, creating custom news feeds, mashing lots of feeds into one.

Tools – bloglines.com, Google Reader, GoogleNews, YahooNews, aideRSS, mySyndicaat, Feedburner

Social Bookmarking and News – Social news and book mark sites live to promote ideas and reward the creators of those ideas for creativity and consistency. The best social news plays consist of targeted campaigns focused at a specific site or audience.

Getting on page one of Digg or del.icio.us or creating this week’s viral hit on You Tube can send your site’s traffic through the roof, but there a couple things to consider.

These are communities that reward participation and hard work (that’s not to say people haven’t figured out ways to beat the system, but go in realize that methodical work is ahead.)

Choose a community with the proper focus. Digg is technology heavy, Small Business Brief is for small business

Tools: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, YouTube, Google Video, Mixx, Small Business Brief

Best Practices: Build deep once, Study and read, Find and pitch influencers, Make it easy for you and your readers, Build networks, Promote your chosen site.

Social Networking – The recent rise in popularity of sites like MySpace and Facebook clearly points to the desire for community. As marketers rush to these sites it becomes clear that virtual “no soliciting” signs are hung out.

Networks are networks and while the meeting place may be new, the rules (manners) are the same. If you goal is to establish yourself as an influencer of an existing network, you must be prepared to earn the right, mostly by giving, helping, guiding and building relationships without overt efforts to cash in.

The long term can be very fruitful, with patience you can make connections, improve your visibility and increase sales.

Tools: ecademy, Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Jigsaw, Ryze

Best Practices: Participate actively, Pitch influencers, Make it easy for yourself and your network, Find connections

Building Your Own Social Network – The next wave in community building is the personalized, niche, hand-build community. There are some emerging tools that make this idea much more doable, but creating your own community is a serious investment in terms of time and resources. Done well it can be the ultimate in terms of building a brand.

Tools: Drupal, Ning, KickApps, OneSite

__________

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

One of the most common reason stated by small businesses for not embracing social networking is that they can’t measure or, worse yet, don’t believe there is any solid return on the investment of participation. I get emails almost daily from frustrated marketers who want to dive more fully into social networking, but can’t convince the boss that it’s worth it.

My response to the ROI roadblock is this – How does your boss measure the ROI of attending Chamber mixers, participating in Associations, and dropping in on networking luncheons? Done correctly, social networking on sites like Facebook is really no different – you don’t measure participation based on direct sales, you measure success based on identifying one potential strategic partner, acquiring one actionable bit of advice, or striking up a conversation or two that may eventually lead to developing a new customer. That kind of sounds like a set of solid networking objectives doesn’t it?

Of course this line of thinking assumes that you have identified a set of objectives for your offline networking, which often is not the case. But, the primary point here is to align digital networking with face to face networking and then create a set of objectives and subsequent strategies and tactics to get the most from both. But, job one is to wrap your head around social networking as, just that, networking.

Now, with job one out of the way, you’ve also got to tackle something I alluded to earlier – “done correctly, social networking on sites like Facebook is really no different” – this is where the boss is really coming from when they say there’s no ROI. So many people see social networking as a 24/7, hang out all day excuse for a job – and it can easily become that if you don’t identify and state objectives. You could also quite easily hang out at every at every networking event or meetup, join unrelated trade groups, and sponsor the local knitting club. (which would only be good if you sell yarn)

By identifying and clearly stating your objectives for social network participation (objectives not unlike those of participating in your local Chamber) you can more easily identify the networks that make sense, the type of engagement you need to create, and, most importantly, how much time and energy you can afford to invest to reach your objectives.

When you think strategically about all forms of networking the ROI picture becomes much clearer.

__________

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com