Twitter Training Guide: 10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Twitter

Branding

Twitter provides many ways to help build your brand. From publishing great content to responding directly to people having relevant conversations, Twitter can allow you to show people what your business is all about.

Connect with Customers

Because Twitter is all about two-way communication, it’s an excellent tool for connecting with customers. Whether someone wants to sing your praises or they’re unhappy because of a customer support issue, having the ability to immediately respond is very powerful.

Marketing

Once you get a feel for how Twitter works, you’ll be able to create a great Twitter marketing strategy. This will enable you to help get your brand in front of as many relevant Twitter users as possible.

Get Feedback

A simple but very effective Twitter best practice is to ask your followers for feedback. Whether it’s about something you publish or an idea you have for your business, asking for feedback is a great way to engage with people who are interested in your business. Additionally, you never know what types of truly valuable insights you may gain from these conversations!

Monitor and Make News

Twitter is a great tool for staying on top of what’s happening within your industry. And when something major happens with your business, you can easily share that news through Twitter as well.

Increase Your Content’s Exposure

Writing and publishing great content takes time. If you want to get the best return on that time, Twitter can help by putting your content in front of more people. When you publish something and it starts to spread through Twitter, you’ll get to experience just how powerful this type of viral effect can be.

Hold Giveaways

If you want to boost customer engagement and business, giving away coupon codes or holding other promotions can work really well. This will not only get people excited, but it will also get them talking to others.

Keep An Eye on Competitors

One of the advanced tactics you can learn in a Twitter training course is how to use this platform to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Not only will you be able to see the types of updates they’re making, but you can even dig into analytics tools to see which of their updates are performing best.

Build Loyalty

There’s nothing better than customers who not only buy from you multiple times, but also help spread the word about your business. By using Twitter to build relationships, you’ll find that this type of loyalty becomes more common.

Generate Sales

While you don’t want every update you make to be a link to “buy now,” Twitter can definitely be used to generate direct sales. Once you’ve built up a following, if you have a compelling sale or other special offer, tweeting it out can bring visitors to your site who make a purchase.

This is the syndicated copy of an original article posted at Web Media University, provides social media marketing courses and certifications for businesses, community managers and internet marketers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8637661

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Social Media Marketing for Small Business – 7 Steps to get found today

Using social media for marketing a small business makes a lot of sense these days. Conventional advertising has become too expensive and produces less results than ever. Social media marketing lets a business get all the exposure they need… for FREE!

Today, thanks to the power of the internet, a small business can reach its community of prospects. And the best part of all, they can do it without spending a dime.

Here are the 7 basic steps of a good social media marketing plan:

Step 1 – Your landing page

A landing page is usually the part of your website where a visitor first comes to. This can be as simple as basic information about your company or it can be designed to get the visitor to take some more steps.

The one thing you want to be sure your landing page has is a strong call to action (or CTA). This is simply instructions on what you want your visitor to do. It could be to pick up the phone to call or fill out a form so they can receive more information. Regardless of what it is, your page must tell the visitor what to do.

Step 2 – Search Engine Optimization

You’ve probably heard all sorts of complicated things when it comes to search engine optimization (or SEO). There are hundreds of experts giving out all sorts of “formulas” on how to get to the top of Google and other search engine result pages. But the truth is, SEO can be very simple.

Now I admit, there are some super advanced techniques out there being used by big companies in highly competitive niches, but more than likely you’ll never need to know or use that level. Here’s all you need to do:

-Find your main keywords and be sure to be as super specific as possible, avoiding broad one word keywords.

-Use these keywords on your website title, headlines, meta tags, and content.

-Get other sites to link to you with those keywords as the anchor text (the text used in the link).

That’s it! Basic SEO in a nutshell.

Step 3 – Content is King

The absolute best way to get search engines and people to find you is through targeted content. And the easiest way to produce and distribute this content is with articles.

Now don’t start panicking if you don’t like to write (or have flashbacks of writing papers in school). Writing articles for content is simply putting down tips, techniques, frequently asked questions, and other advice about your business that people are searching for.

By doing this, people who read your articles will trust you and think of you as capable in your business, you also get search engines around the world displaying them to people’s searches. Be sure to use the basic SEO we discussed above.

Step 4 – Video

The next best way to produce valuable content for your prospects is with video. This is an especially great option for those of you who hate to write.

For video ideas, try simple 2-4 minute tips and tricks, or find the 10 most asked questions in your business and answer each one as a separate video. As an added bonus, you can then go back and transcribe your videos and turn them into articles! This way you have two pieces of content with one effort.

Again, be sure to use the same basic SEO we discussed in video titles and descriptions.

Step 5 – The almighty Facebook fanpage

There is no doubting the power of Facebook anymore. On any given day it is the number 1 or 2 most viewed webpage in the world. Even billion dollar multi-national companies have switched all their marketing to their Facebook page rather than their website.

While you get pretty crazy with the fanpages in terms of graphics, animations and inter-activeness… for most businesses, a simple fan page is more than enough for your social media marketing. When you sign up, be sure to brand your business name and use it as your Facebook username. That way you can place it on your other marketing materials such as business cards or signs.

The key with Facebook marketing is to update often with a mix of fun and useful information. You can post links to new articles or videos you have posted, post inspirational quotes, mix in some funny webpage you saw, and be sure to post any offers or specials you are running that day or week.

Keep it active and try not waste 5 hours a day on it (it can get addicting fast!)

Step 6 – Tweet with Twitter

Twitter has quickly become one of the most used social media platforms in the world. It allows you to send short, 140 character tweets (messages) to a list of followers (people who follow you see everything you post)

To make Twitter work, use a similar strategy as the one used for Facebook and mix up the the different types of messages you post. Try not to be overly promotional with Twitter and concentrate and getting a loyal group of “followers” first.

Step 7 – The fortune is in the follow-up

In order to make the strategy we just discussed work and work well… you need to be consistent.

If you expect to see results just by posting a single video or article a month, you’ll be gravely disappointed. Most businesses should be posting at least 3 pieces of content a week to get good traffic and momentum. Try to do each of the steps below 3-5 times a week and you’ll start seeing some very nice traffic.

The more content you post and more you update your various social media accounts, the faster and the greater the visitors will be. And pretty soon those visitors will turn into customers. With the best part being, you didn’t spend a DIME getting them to do business with you.

Now that’s the power of social media marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6224186