#1 Join FACEBOOK and TWITTER… They really aren’t scary or hard.
Twitter …. Well, I just LOVE Twitter. I only have about 5 face to face friends on twitter but I have gotten SO much from my short time there. (Look for another article talking about that soon). Here’s what you do.
- Sign up using a name that is catchy and makes sense for your business. A name like @ George239 isn’t very interesting, and @Hotchick4u is likely to get you booted out of Twitter. Sign up for Twitter
- Fill out your profile completely! People won’t follow if they don’t know who you are and what you might tweet about.
- change your twitter background from the original. (After you get going think about doing a custom background) I can help with that if you like.. email me at milehiweb@yahoo.com
- Go to Twitter Grader enter your @ name. Your score will be low, but that’s not the point for now, with that tool you can search for people using a keyword like “real estate” or “marketing” “Politics” and it will give you the top tweeters in that area.
- Follow them.. Follow who they interact with, look for other people in your other area’s of interest.
- There are two schools of thought about if you should keep all your Twitter following/followers with one account, or split into personal and business. That is your call.
- If someone’s tweets are spammy… you have the power, just stop following them.
- If you want people to follow you, build value and relationships with people, don’t just squack.. Look what I did, look what I wrote, look what I sell.
- Read TwiTips – a blog by Darren Rowse – A Twitter Must Read
- Follow @problogger Darren was one of the first people I followed and one of the first that responded to me (a nobody) directly. That impressed me!
- There are lots of applications that are free. Some of my favorites are
- Friend or Follow This tells you who is following you that you follow, who is following you that you don’t follow and who you follow that isn’t following you.
- Tweet Later You can use this to auto DM (Direct Message) people that follow you. If you use this, make it a friendly message not a BUY THIS FROM MY NOW! type. People will often unfollow you if you do. & auto follow people that follow you. This also allows you to send yourself an email targeting keywords you are interested in or a person you are interested in.
- Twitter Local - Shows you the people that live in your area that are Tweeters and an example of their last few tweets.
- OutTwit - This is an application that brings twitter right into your Microsoft Outlook. It can be configured in many different ways and their tech support is awesome
- Tweet Deck - A down loadable application that lets you see your Twitterland in all sorts of organized ways.
- TwitWall – A more complete profile of who you are, what you tweet about, perhaps a picture or two. I wish they had a place to actually link this on your twitter like a “for more info” link. Anyway, it’s kinda fun. See mine here.
- Advanced Twitter Search – Thanks to@denverish for sending me this gem. It lets you search the tweets by location, word, phrase, positive people, ?’s being asked. Very cool!
- I would also recommend going to the local #tweetups. the #mark is used in Twitter to help you organize events, groups. you search for #yourtopic and all of the tweets and twits about it come up. so watch for things like #DenverTweetup. This will give you an opportunity to meet some of the @ people you follow face to face.
- Read Don’t be a Twitter Snob here! & read this article on choosing your Online Profile picture wisely
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@yourwebchick
- Can you think of any other reasons to join these two social networks?
- Or great applications I missed?
- Please comment below!
Facebook isn’t MySpace… I have a page there just for the links but I NEVER “socialize” there… It’s best use is for the artsey folks, musicians etc. But Facebook is a whole other story, it began as a more “sophisticated” Myspace for College kids, but now those kids are 30 something plus and networking socially and for business too. Once you join Facebook,
- use the search tools to find friends and colleagues,
- create a Facebook page for your business
- look for colleagues and experts in your industry to “friend” and keep them up to date on what your business is doing by
- fill out the “what you are doing” part and send links to articles or interest or your latest blog postings…. or
- Add your blog to your Facebook account so it automatically posts new links.
- Become “a fan” of companies you like… Everyone will see this and you even get your name and face mentioned in the ad’s that pop up.
- Friend Mari Smith.. She is the GURU of Facebook for Business. See more about her on my Mari Smith the Facebook Guru post here!
