Twitter page design for The Kennedys miniseries on REELZCHANNEL

Twitter page design for Robin’s Custom Travel

Twitter page design for Healing Compassion

Tip #1: Try to get the same Twitter handle as your website domain name.

For example, if your website is www.SMMcast.com, you want to try and reserve the Twitter handle / username, SMMcast so that your vanity link is www.Twitter.com/SMMcast.

Tip #2: Optimize your Twitter page.

Under Settings, their is a profile that you can add content to that includes a Name, Location, Website, Bio and Photo.

• Name: Your name should be the name of your business or your product/service that you offer.  For example, even if the company name is “SMMcast”, you can put in the name as “Social Media”.
• Location: You can add more than one area if you have multiple office.  For example, NYC/SF.
• Web: Make sure to include your website domain!
• Bio: Include a short paragraph that includes keywords.
• Photo: Use a company logo or a professional image.

Tip #3: Brand your Twitter page.

Under Twitter settings, you have the option to upload a custom designed background.  Your Twitter background should match the same design and branding as your website.  If you’re looking for someone to design your custom twitter background, click here.

Tip #4: Follow Tweeters.

The general rule in Twitter has also been that if someone follows you, you follow them back.  If you do a keyword search on Twitter that is relevant to your business, it will show you a list of people that have Tweeted using that word.  Then start to follow them.  You can also go to a competitors page and follow all of their followers.

Tip #5: Tweet at least once a day.

Try to tweet at least once a day and instead of using links to other people’s content, write a short post and tweet a link back to your own blog or website.  Even if you just post a short blurb on your own blog, it’s better than tweeting a link to someone else’s content.  Make sure to include keywords in your tweet.  Try to tweet exclusive deals or discounts.

Tip #6: Cross Promotion.

• Add your Twitter feed to your LinkedIn company page so it streams on your profile.
• Put it on your Facebook fanpage
• Put it on your YouTube background design
• Put it on all pages of your website
• Put it on all pages of your blog
• Include it on press releases
• Add your Twitter link to any newsletters and/or marketing emails you might send out
• Add your Twitter link to any direct mail
• Add your Twitter link to your business cards

Tip #7: Hashtags.

Create an official hashtag for your company or brand or use popular hashtags that already exist.

Tip #8: Email Signatures.

Add your Twitter handle to your company email signature.  Wisestamp is a great tool for this.  It automatically pulls the latest tweet as well.

Tip #10: Apply to get verified.

Get Verified to Gain More Twitter Followers

You might have seen Twitter verification for celebrities, athletes and movies, such as The Kennedys example shown on the right.   This shows that this is the person’s legit Twitter account and it really is who they say they are.

Tip #11: Promotions.

Do an email promotion where you give a gift if someone follows you.  For example, provide free shipping if you get 100 followers within an hour.

Tip #12: Consider using other websites to help you.

• www.SocialOomph.com – You can add an auto-message after someone follows you, such as “Retweet your favorite tweet from our page and receive $5 off your next purchase.”
• www.Twitterfeed.com – Everytime you post on your blog, it will automatically send out a tweet.  You can set this up to tweet anyone’s blog posts.

Tip #13: Paying for Followers.

Wefollow.com and UpHype.com are the two most known websites where you can actually pay someone to get you more followers.  The only problem is that most of them are not qualified, so it depends if you’re looking for quantity or quality.

Tip #14: Tweet Management.

Part of getting and keeping your followers is responding to anyone that tweets at you in a timely manner.  There are many mobile apps as well as websites and desktop apps that can help you manager your Twitter account, including HootSuite.com, TweetDeck.com and DestroyTwitter.com.

I myself receive the Yellow Pages twice every year and receive direct mail shoved into my mailbox daily.  Both go directly into the trash.  I don’t even glance at them.  I do feel bad for two reasons (1) I feel bad for the company still paying for these traditional types of marketing and (2) I feel even worse for all the trees still being cut down.

I’ve even gone as far as contacting my state legislators requesting a law that would require the Yellow Pages and all direct mail pieces to provide both a phone number and an email or website where receivers can go to request these mailings to stop; however, nothing ever became of it.  But props to cities like San Francisco for taking the lead and finally banning the Yellow Pages.  These bold moves by cities are only contributing to the fact that paper marketing is slowly dieing… as it should be.

Inbound marketing includes blogs such as TechCrunch, RSS, YouTube, Technorati; SEO including Bing, Google and Yahoo! and Social Media; including Facebook Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp and Foursquare are the new marketing medium.  Check out this video that show the social media statistics that are pretty alarming.  If your business is not already on all 5 of these social media platforms, you better get started!

Of course out of all of the inbound marketing examples above, Google is the one that everyone wants to know more about, as they should.  This is the #1 search engine and 2nd is YouTube, which is also owned by Google.

One of the best ways to increase the marketing efforts for your business is to take advantage of free tools that Google offers.  Check out this blog post on the 9 free Google tools that will help you move your business forward.

If you need any assistance, you can always call us directly at 1-855-SMMcast.  We want to help you take the lead in your industry.

The tools are as follows:

1. Google Adwords – set-up a paid advertising account on Google.  Also referred to as PPC.
2. Google Apps – allows you to run your emails via Google.  You can still use @yourdomainname.com and all you have to do is set your MX records toward Google.  If you have less than 10 users, this is completely free and gives you access to Google Docs, Calendar, Video and access to add any Google App to your menu.  You can sign up for free here.  So think of Google Apps, just like your smartphone – there is an app for that!
3. Google Keyword Tool – This allows you to enter a website names or keywords to see ranking of related words.
4. Google Alerts – This allows you to receive an email or set-up an RSS feed that shows anything posted online in real time about certain words or phrases.  Most business should set-up alerts to monitor the name of their company, industry key terms and largest competitors.
5. Google News – Find aggregated headlines and a search engine of many of the world’s news sources.
6. Google Reader - you can filter through relevant blog / news feeds very easily.  You should set this up and then glance through it every morning to find out the latest in your industry.
7. Google Places – Ever wonder how businesses get on Google Maps?  It’s by Google Places.  If you run your business from your house, don’t worry!  Just setup a post office box.  Most UPS stores offer a physical address instead of a PO BOX that you can use for this purpose.  Never give our your home address!
8. Google Analytics – Measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.
9. Rapportive – this is an add-on to Gmail and/or a Google Apps email account.  It creates a box on the right side of your email that pulls the senders social media profiles from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn including their image.  See example on the right.
   *You can see a full list of Google Tools here.

Your main goal with your business should be to create a Total Online Presence, but setting up all of the above accounts and monitoring it as well as monitoring your social media accounts, your website, your blog… can be overwhelming!

We want you to do what you do best – and let SMMcast do what we do best.  We can take care of your Total Online Presence including creating forms on your website to capturing leads and running your PPC campaigns, engaging your customers and potential customers via social media, and making sure that a majority of your information is hosted on your own website and/or blog so that you continue to increase your natural search engine rankings.

Call us at 1-855-SMMcast to find out more!

Website – 5 points max
If your website has NO FLASH, HTML titles are different and specific to that page, meta tags and descriptions are different and specific to each page, you have your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc logos on your website and you have at least 1 video on your website, give yourself 5 points.  Subtract 1 point for each item you are missing.  If your website has any FLASH, deduct 1 point.

Blog – 5 points max
Does your company blog match the design of your website, is every post tagged and categorized, do you blog at least 4 times a week, does your blog include anchor text back to your main website?  If so, then give yourself 5 points.  Subtract a point for each item you are missing.

Facebook – 5 points max
Are you using a fanpage (instead of your individual page), is your page branded with both an avatar and landing page similar to your website, does your vanity link match that of your website URL (eg. Facebook.com/SMMcast), do you have at least 100 fans, do you post every day of the week?  If so, give yourself 5 points.

Twitter – 5 points max
Do you have a similar vanity URL to your website and other social media sites (eg. twitter.com/SMMcast), do you have at least 100 followers, do you post everyday of the week, is your Twitter design simliar to that of your website, do you use hashtags?  If so, give yourself 5 points.

YouTube – 5 points max
Do you have a similar vanity URL to your website and other social media sites (eg. YouTube.com/SMMcast)?  Do you post a new video at least once a week?  Do you have at least 5,000 total video upload views?  Do you have a design uploaded that resembles your website?  If so, give youself 5 points.

Company Reputation – 5 points max
Do you have at least 3.5 stars on Yelp and 4 stars on the BBB Trustlink?  Do you have business accounts set-up on both of these sites?  Do you respond to all online complaints both positive and negative within 3 business days?  Do you have Google Alerts set-up for your company?  If so, give yourself 5 points.

Extra Credit – 1 point for each profile
Do you have any other social media accounts with which you interact with clients on?  For each, give yourself a point.

Scoring

31 points or more – A+
This means that you are at the TOP of your online game.  You have a full online presence.

30 points – A
You are doing a great job, but how about creating a Yelp, Foursquare or Google Places ad?  They are all free!

27 points - B
You are doing okay, but lets ramp up your TOP.  Have you set-up Google Alerts and responded to any posts about your company?  Have your blog posts received any ping backs?

24 points - C
Borderline on needing serious improvements on your online efforts.  Make sure all of your blog posts are put on your Facebook fanpage and tweeted via your Twitter account.  Also make sure that any new videos that you place on YouTube are embedded on your blog and also posted that there is a new video on your Twitter and Facebook pages.

21 points – D
You could use improvement in your online efforts.  Your customers are probably not as happy as they could be.

18 points or below – F
You are failing, but no worries.  You can get to your TOP easily by taking action and getting involved.  Call SMMcast at 310.882.9005 to find out how to reach the TOP.

I recommend reading the article and then taking my Quiz: How much do you know about how your private information is shared online?

Some of the items from the article I found extrodinary were that Facebook does not sell  your information.  Why?  Because they don’t need to.  23.1% of online ads no on search engines, video 0r e-mail run on Facebook.

Further, any data you put on online profile that you do not set to private has the possibility of being “scraped”; meaning it can be used and then sold to other companies.  You can avoid this, for example, but setting all of your information to private on Facebook.

Retargeting , when you look at an item in an online store and then an ad for that item follows you around to other sites, is currently being used by Zappos.com.  Although many have complained to Zappos about the annoyance of this feature, they have decided to take another approach.

Reputation.com is a company tht will help you take control of your online information by finding any content about you and removing your personal data from the sites that sell it.

Have you ever looked at a websites privacy policy?  This privacy policy must disclose any cookies that are put onto your browser and how the info collected about you will be used.

I bet you thought you were going to WebMD to look up that rash you got in privacy.  Think again!  WebMD has more words in their privacy policy than Facebook.

• WebMD 8,999 words.
• Facebook has 5,861.
• PayPal has 2,510. 
• Bank of America has 2,408.  
• SMMcast has 452 words.

You can download a browser extensoin that lets you watch the watchers watching you via Ghostery.com.

Just as you now have a credit score that business can easily check before deciding to do business with you, soon all of your online reviews, both positive and negative will be mined.  If you have excess negative reviews about companies, that company may decide not to do business with you.

Nearly 250,000 Germans have removed their house from Google Street View since last November.

My take:
The data is generally not looked at by humans and is used to provide better and free services that you would normally have to pay for.  Maybe all of this transparency will make some people behave a little better, eh?  Remember, that if someone wants any piece of this data, whether there was data mining or not, they would still be able to get it.  Your data is not usually displayed; however, just used to provide you with a better ad experience which are created by algoryhytms and data banks and code written by developers.  Humans do not see behind a computer and watch you looking at the Internert and push a button to make an ad pop up while your surfing. 

However, the sites I have issue with are those such as spokeo.com that have scrapped your personal data and put it one central websites where the entire world, billions of people, can access it.  20 years ago, if someone in India wanted divorce records on someone in the U.S., they’d have to fly to the U.S. or have someone in the U.S. go to a local courthouse to access that information; however, now they can access this data from their own home.  This I have an issue with.  If you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn’t be worried about data mining. 

The following are a list of websites that can help you:

1. Reputation.com
2. PrivacyChoice.org
3. Ghoestery.com
4. Google Chrome and Firefox – not only can you surf on private, but you can also now request that data companies not mine your data
5. NetworkAdvertising.org
6. AboutAds.info

Quiz: How much do you know about how your private information is shared online? Fill out your name and E-mail below and click NEXT to get started.

This quiz was based from “Your Data, Yourself,” by Joel Stein published in the March 21, 2011 issue of Time Magazine.

“We now generate as much information every to days as was generated from the beginning of time to 2003″ – Eric Schmidt Former CEO Google

We have to be more clever and more topical, urgent and genius.

• www.failblog.org
• www.theoatmeal.com