Can Twitter Help Your Business?

Author: Lauren Hobson

Although Twitter continues to gain acceptance in the business community as a business communication and marketing tool, I’m still amazed at the number of small businesses that don’t see the value of using this micro-blogging service as a marketing tool for business.

Just in case you need a refresher, Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a unique micro-blogging tool that lets users communicate with their “followers” in quick text messages of 140 characters or less called “tweets.”

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube are typically most effective when they are appropriately integrated with each other and with a company’s existing marketing efforts, since each one provides distinct benefits and advantages in an integrated social marketing plan. But Twitter – even when used as a stand-alone social networking strategy – can be a powerful tool in any small business marketing toolbox.

Some of the benefits of using Twitter in your marketing mix include:

• Highly targeted audience: The people who choose to “follow” you on Twitter are already interested in hearing what you have to say, or they would not have followed you to begin with. This provides you with an audience of folks who have specifically opted-in to receive your messages and want to listen to what you have to say.
  
  
• Instantly reach your “followers”: When you post something to your Twitter account (referred to as “tweets”), the message is instantly sent to your followers in the way they have chosen to be contacted. This could be a text message sent to their cell phone, posted to their Twitter page on the web, RSS-fed to a Facebook page or profile, etc. Regardless of the method your followers have selected, your tweets appear within a few seconds.
  
  
• Generate traffic to your web site: By adding links in your tweets, you provide followers with direct access to your web site, to other social networking profiles, to your blog, etc. Again, if your social marketing has been properly integrated, all of this will lead back to your web site, generating more traffic and new visitors.
  
  
• Improve your search engine rankings: By optimizing your Twitter profile (and integrating your social marketing efforts), you can build valuable inbound links to your web site, which is key in improving your site’s position in the search engine rankings.
  
  
• Increase brand awareness and online visibility: Being active on Twitter gets your business name in front of customers as well as the general public everyday, which in turn helps build name recognition and improves brand awareness for your business.
  
  
• Enhance customer service: Many businesses have found that by using Twitter, they can respond to customer needs (or complaints) very quickly and efficiently, allowing them to improve their level of service while publicly demonstrating their responsiveness and commitment to customers.
  
  
• Manage your online reputation in real time: By monitoring Twitter for mentions of your business name, key personnel, product names, etc., you can keep track of what people are saying about your business and to respond or intervene quickly if necessary. There are also free tools available to help you monitor your reputation in Twitter (like Twilerts and Tweetdeck), which can make it very easy to monitor your reputation online.

These are just some of the ways in which Twitter can benefit your business, and as social networking continues to grow in popularity, there will surely be even more features, new uses, and business benefits to be gained by using Twitter.

Whether you are just thinking about using social marketing or have already started to use it, Twitter can be a great tool to integrate into your social marketing strategy as you go forward. And for small businesses that are serious about marketing, the value of Twitter is pretty clear.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/how-can-twitter-help-your-business-1156894.html

About the Author:

Lauren Hobson, President of Five Sparrows, LLC, has more than 16 years of experience in small business technology writing, marketing, and web site design and development. Five Sparrows provides professional website, marketing, and social networking services to small businesses and non-profits at affordable prices, giving clients access to customized services that meet both their needs and their budgets. More at www.fivesparrows.com

Keywords and Word Clouds

How To Maintain Your Market Share In Recession Times

by: Lynne Saarte

During times of economic crisis, what do most businesses cut back on to save on costs? If you are a business owner, you have probably answered marketing. True. Most companies look at marketing as more of an expense rather than a means to get back investments; hence, it can very well be taken off the list if you need to cut back on your budget. Printed posters – not this time. Color posters – cross it out. Brochure printing – another one off the list.

But this is where you are wrong. Especially during these trying times, there is a need for more marketing campaigns than ever. In order for you to gain profits, you need to spend first. And the only way you can get clients for your business is to market constantly.

What will happen if you lessen your marketing costs? What if you stopped producing printed posters or color posters altogether? You are just going to lose your customer, that is what; and your competition might just steal them from under your nose. Is that what you need right now? Right now, what you need is more clients; more clients to buy your products and services. Do well to remember that marketing can generate for you your client so you might as well give a large chunk of your budget to advertising.

Now is exactly the right time to allot a budget for your marketing activities. This is the appropriate time because if your competition thinks like you, they might also be of the idea to put on hold their marketing campaigns to save their money. You can then get their market share if you continue to promote your business while they are abandoning their marketing strategies for a while. With even smaller amount of marketing expenses, you might just end up with the whole lot.

Bear in mind that the marketplace is an area of competition. Even your most loyal customers are fair game for your competitors. By providing your clients and prospects with carefully planned marketing efforts, your business can very well get the most of the market share without your competition having any say about it.

The idea is this: while your competition is taking a rest from marketing their business, you can grab their market share from under their noses by pursuing an aggressive marketing strategy. Not only that, you are also positioning yourself at this time so that when things are well again economically, you have the most prominent place in the industry.

The Best And Most Inexpensive Business Advertising Ideas

It is trendy right now to cut back and try to spend less money in business. You have to have some sort of advertising. There are less expensive ways to do it than what you may be accustomed to. No big ad firm or flashy TV campaign for right now. You can come up with ways that will surprise people . When you do something just a little different then people pay attention. Isn't that the whole point?

You can get very creative with some promotional merchandise. You can design it to stand out and you can give it to people in a way that they will remember. Think about how people did things in the past. It was not unusual to have someone sing the companies praises out in front of the business. That worked when there was a lot of foot traffic and crowded cities. Now you could hire an actor/singer to walk through a crowded outdoor public area while someone follows behind handing out small promo items.

The sign that you have in front of your business should tell people what to expect on the inside. If it is grubby and unreadable, you will not be attracting too much new business. Clearly readable and informative is a good start. If you have space in front of your store, make it more welcoming. A few large potted plants, that could be placed on rollers to move inside nightly if you fear thievery, look great. You could install a bench too.

A more recent grass roots method of advertising is flyers or door hangers. You can easily find a bunch of high school kids that will hit the streets with you for cheap. Remember do not put anything inside of the mail box. That will get you in serious trouble. If you attach a rubber band to your homemade flyer, it can be stapled, you can then hang it. It will go on the front door, the mailbox flag or even the front gate.

Thinking outside the box is what makes a good business owner and a successful business. Keep the budget under control with these great advertising ideas guaranteed to impact your business in grand way with a very small investment.

Should I Buy Gold?

by: Brian Cheek


Investors often ask me, " Should I buy gold ?" The answer is simple, in my opinion: Gold should be a part of every investor's portfolio. Whether or not you believe gold is going to appreciate short term or not is a matter for speculators, but smart investors who want a diversified portfolio will want to own gold for its protective qualities. Gold is a wonderful diversifier, and it offers protection against many adverse events in the marketplace, as we will discuss below.

Why Should I Buy Gold?

Gold adds another layer to a portfolio filled with stocks and bonds. Gold is a completely different asset class than stocks are. Even the ETF that trades like a stock behaves like godl because it is tied to the price of bullion. When compared to the stock market, gold has behaved in a roughly inverse fashion to the stock market since 1971 when the gold standard was abandoned. For traditional buy and hold investors, gold can provide returns when the stock market underperforms.

Gold Offers Protection of Value

Gold protects against inflation. Inflation occurs when the money supply is increased, causing each unit of currency to be worth less. Then this happens, prices for goods and services will rise. This will cause the price of gold to rise as well, because it will take more of the dollars (which are each worth less due to inflation) to buy an ounce of gold. The stronger the inflation, the faster gold will rise. Many investors keep some gold in their portfolio for just this reason.

Gold Investors are Prepared for Disasters

Since the economy of every nation (and the worldwide economy) is based on trust, it can collapse when that trust is eroded. Think about this: the paper that money is printed on is not worth anything. It is worth value because of the trust that people have in the government and the economic system. As soon as a nation defaults on its debt, the money becomes worthless-it is literally not worth the paper on which it is printed. Gold, however, will always be worth something. In this way, it is currency. So, some people like to have gold around as a protection against a bank failure, a war, civil unrest, or severe political climate changes or any other disaster that might cause a currency decline or failure. Indeed, history shows that when a nation is facing war, economic or political uncertainty, or a financial crisis, the demand for gold rises sharply.

Know Your Investment Strategy

You have to decide what type of investor you are, so that you can determine how to work gold into your portfolio. For instance, if you are risk averse, and you do not want to store gold in your house, then you may want to get a gold account, gold certificate, or buy shares of the gold ETF. If you feel gold will appreciate in the long run, and you want to reap higher rewards, you can invest in mining stocks and the gold miners ETF, both of which are leveraged, meaning they multiply advances and declines in the gold price. For a buy and hold investor with average risk tolerance, 25-30% of a portfolio invested in gold is reasonable. A more speculative investor may choose to hold a higher percentage in gold, and use more leveraged instruments like gold stocks and futures. There is no right or wrong amount of gold to hold. There is only the amount that is right for you.

Knowing Where to Buy Gold

Owning gold has never been easier than it is today. Once you know your strategy, then you can start to pick out which investment vehicles make the most sense to you. There are many ways to own it, several of which can be done with clicks of a mouse. You can, of course, opt for gold bullion or gold coin ownership. If you want to own it but have someone else take possession of it, then gold accounts and/or gold certificates are for you. If you want to trade it like a stock, then the gold ETF will be your choice. For those who want a little more risk with the potential for higher rewards, there are gold mining stocks, the gold miner's ETF and leveraged ETF funds.

Spending Money Like It's 2012

Obama is now wanting to spend 2.5 $Billion for electric car subsidies, on top of another two $Billion in "Cash for Clunkers" money. Hundreds of billions here a few trillion there, but no tax increases everywhere. It's almost like Obama knows that after December 21, 2012 nothing needs to be paid back.....ever!

Fiscal conservatives and anyone with common sense can figure out with a pocket calculator, that increasing debt, continued lowering value of the dollar, and printing of valueless currency leads to a disaster that can never be overcome!

But suppose, just suppose all those Liberal, free thinking, over educated, yes men of Obama's know that the end is December, 2012. Than it all makes some sort of bizarre, "What the hell you can't take it with you!" sense. We'll see...we only have to wait three years, four months, and fifteen days to find out!

7 Rules of Successful Freelancer

Article by Aleksei Miheev


I've been a freelance programmer, web developer and system administrator for three years. Not that much, you'd probably say, you may be right. You may be wrong either. Anyway, when you're 21, three years don't seem to be a little time.

I started when I was 18. I had a part-time job in dental clinic (I'm terribly afraid of dentists since then, though I wasn't afraid of them before) and my salary could just cover my Internet bills (in a small town ISPs have very high prices while students can't get much money for work) and leave a little spare money to spend them later on my friends' and parents' birthdays and New Year. I'll tell you the full story some day, now I just want to note that I started from barely nothing and today I only get money from freelance. No full-time office work.

1. Work regularly. Don't depend on you mood.
You should choose time for you to work, and you must work every day from, eg. 6 pm to midnight, and you mustn't do anything but work during this time. Yes, it's very tempting to have a break, read forums, chat, play quake, make love, go skating, etc, and finish the work next morning. That's completely wrong attitude. You work at home, it gives you more freedom and more flexibility, but it's still work.

Of course, if you feel tired, you should rest. Make coffee, smoke a cigarette, clean your cat's toilet, but do not start doing anything time-consuming and interesting – you'll lose a working day.

If you don't want to do anything right now, force yourself to do. You want money? You want to finish this project? So work, you bastard! Start from simple things, do some routine stuff you didn't want to do the day before.

Also, it is very important to make your family understand, that this is work, too, and they should try to not to disturb you when you're working.

It's hard at the beginning, but soon you'll get used to working on schedule, and become as productive as never before.

2. Don't lie to your clients.
“Of course, I do not!” – you'd say. Lie! Terrible lie. There are three kinds of lie to client I know:


When you weren't working or didn't yet do something, but you say you were or you did.

Sure, you don't want to look lazy. But you aren't, are you? So what are you afraid of? Tell you client honestly, that you lost a couple days, tell him, why is it so. Don't make him distrust you. Tell him, what are you going to do to outweigh lost time.

When you have problems with some part of work, but you say that everything's okay or that there were some difficulties, but you overcame them.

Are you afraid to look not good enough? You aren't then. I'll tell you more about that a bit later. Remember, noone can know everything, no one can overcome each and every difficulty. You understand it, right? So why do you think, your client doesn't? Don't let him think you're a lier. Tell him, that you are not very familiar with 'XXX', but you can work it out, and say how much time do you need to do that.

When it was easy to do something, but you say it was a great achievement and you had to go through terrible difficulties to implement that feature.

Are you afraid to get less money than you could? If you want higher prices, take harder work. Any work should cost what it is worth. And do you really want to look that bad, so you are hard to do even simple things? Clients are not coders, but in most cases they realize what is easy and what is not.

3. Don't think you're smarter than your customer.
If you're that smart, where's you money then? You not smarter, and neither he is. You now how to code, he know to make money. Everyone is an expert in his own sphere, so cooperate. Ask him, why he needs the features he needs. Understand what are priorities. Tell him, why is 'XXX' bad in your opinion, and how could it be improved. Extreme programming adepts call it 'planning game'. Work together. You'll see the resuls.

4. Communicate.
Yes, it's obvious, but many people underestimate the importance of communication. At first, people like when you're open and communicative. Be a nice guy. Let them like working with you. Of course, you met to work, not to chat, but a couple lines in IM isn't a big deal. Just let client know what are you working at right now. Be alive. It is okay to say “Be right back, gonna make some coffee”, you're a coder, coders are known to drink litres of coffee every day. That's thought to be funny, use it. Be a geek and be a normal person at the same time. But do not chat too much, you should be working. And your client surely have things to do, too. Remember (or write somewhere) clients' names. Let them feel you remember them.

And the second, not that obvious, benefit of communication is that it helps you track the progress. When you tell someone what are you doing, you know better where you are now and what are you going to do. IM is optional, but weekly email reports are the must, even if client doesn't require them. It would be very good if it's your idea to file the reports. They are not only to let client know how much he has to pay you. they are for you, too. Without them you may have lost the feel of progress and start working slow and inefficiently. I recently made that mistake, and right now I'm finishing the project I would finish two months ago, if I had reported regularly.

5. Do what you can do and a little above it.
If you're afraid you aren't good enough, you aren't. We are programmers. We can do anything. If we don't know how to do something, we read manuals, look at the examples, and do it. But, on the other hand, you must clearly know, what you aren't good at. Never take the work you're sure you can't do. But don't be afraid if you have to deal with something new. Ask for more. Get experience. You can't get experience in any other way but working.

6. Love your work.
Obvious. Never deal with what you don't like. Be good at what you are interested in. Find your niche, but ensure it's not too narrow. Discover new areas of expertise for yourself, but always keep yourself interested. Enjoy your work, programming is almost like sex, didn't you know? If you don't get any pleasure from your work itself, maybe you should try to find someting more suitable and joyful for you?

7. No step back.
Never ask for less bucks/hour than on previous project. No, I don't mean asking more and more and more. You'll lose all your client then. But the work should be paid what it is worth. So don't take the work that is too cheap'n'nasty for you. Be professional.