Archive for May, 2009

Guest Post: Top 5 Tips for Building an Engaged Twitter Following

Posted by Jason Shindler in business tips on May 25, 2009

We’ve asked PR guru Christine Kirk to write this Guest Post on how to make Twitter work for your business. This post is aimed at new Twitter users and those without a lot of experience.

By Christine Kirk / @luxuryprgal

Everyone with over 100 followers on Twitter is calling themselves a “social media expert” these days. Some speak of Twitter as the Holy Grail of marketing. Amassing tens of thousands of followers on Twitter might sound impressive initially, but the real testament of success is how engaged those followers are. How many click-throughs do you get on an article you post? How many people RT (re-Tweet) your posts and comment directly back to you with @ replies? Twitter is a wonderful tool for your toolbox but should not be viewed as the end-all, be-all of a brand’s marketing efforts. Marketing should be looked at comprehensively – how are advertising, public relations, and marketing working together to craft a brand image and an authentic brand voice? While Twitter can certainly help you with both image and voice, it is not the ultimate answer and instead, should be a piece of the overall program.

Being retweeted is flattering because your followers are expressing confidence that what you’ve tweeted is interesting and falls in line with their opinions and beliefs about that particular topic. As Twitter guru @guykawasaki has said, “…the best measure of someone’s quality as a Twitter user is not the number of followers but the amount of retweets.”

Keeping all this in mind, here are my top five tips for building an engaged and enthusiastic Twitter following:

1. Pick a Theme. Once you’ve set up your Twitter account, think carefully and thoughtfully and select a few key themes that your Tweets will center around. Many marketing pros talk all about what Twitter does for them, but Twitter is about what you GIVE…and then maybe, later, what you get in return. Select your themes based on your own background and provide your followers with articles, insights and perspectives into an industry they might not otherwise have.

2. When possible, provide a link to the story you’re discussing in your Tweet. This provides your followers with a credible, third-party source to what you’re saying in addition to simply being able to elaborate on the story, since Tweets are limited to 140 characters. (Hint: Use free sites like, TinyURL to shorten really long links).

3. Don’t promote yourself. No, really – don’t do it. If I had to put a number to it, I’d say that about 15% of my Tweets are directly related to my clients or articles that I’ve secured on behalf of a client. The other 85% of my time is spent Tweeting about the various industries I represent – food/beverage, luxury travel and luxury real estate, in addition to providing information about general media news, publications folding, and articles on how brands are effectively using social media. I pepper in my client announcements and placements and find that my followers are more receptive to retweeting that information because the rest of time, I’m providing valuable information in areas they’re interested in.

4. Retweet your followers’ content. I often RT posts from my followers that are relevant to the themes I generally Tweet about. Showing appreciation for your followers content makes it much more likely that they will engage with your Tweets by RTing and @ replying to you.

5. Participate in #followfriday. #followfriday takes place every Friday across Twitter where people make suggestions for who to follow on Twitter. It helps everyone find interesting Twitter users. Calling out your followers, colleagues, and Twitter icons in #followfriday is giving them kudos for the quality and content of their Tweets. Paying people compliments is always nice and almost always, the favor is returned. Especially if you’ve followed the previous four tips…

Christine Kirk is a PR representative and social media explorer for luxury brands including travel, real estate and food/beverage, at Murphy O’Brien Public Relations in Los Angeles. She also holds the position of PR Manager for the Los Angeles chapter of Girls in Tech. She can be reached at ckirk@murphyobrien.com or @luxuryprgal.

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How To Get Listed on Page 1 of Search Engines — Part 1

Posted by Jason Shindler in newsletter on May 22, 2009

Before we can discuss how to use search engines for your greatest benefit, we must first investigate how they work. According to Wikipedia and other online resources like HowStuffWorks.com, search engines work by storing information about many webpages and are designed to do three things: by a complicated, automated algorithm the search engine browser follows every link it sees; it then determines what information should be catalogued and ultimately stored. Some search engines store every word on every page, while others store all or part of a source page, called a cache.

When a user enters key words into a search engine, the engine examines its index for relevant Web sites and webpages, and provides a list of those that best match. How the list is ranked varies among search engine companies and may change over time based on Internet usage and new technologies. And, while we don’t know the exact algorithm (Google reportedly uses over 200 factors in its equation), there are a few easy things you can do to increase the ranking of your site in search engine queries.

Use Meta Elements with Care
Many search engines catalogue webpages based on the page’s title, or meta tag. This is the stream of words you’ll see at the very top of your browser. For instance, Wikipedia’s meta tag is “Web search engine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Your own company’s meta tag should include your company name, and possibly what your company does. Other elements, or meta elements, that you have control over are the keywords and description attributes. Keywords are just like the way they sound – what common keywords potential clients are most likely to use when searching for a business like yours. The description attributes are a short sentence or phrase that describes the content on a specific page of your Web site, and can be helpful to search engines if they aren’t able to automatically generate their own description based on the content of that particular page. But, don’t drive yourself crazy by placing too much importance on these attributes. Some search engines, like Google, don’t rely on meta elements at all when indexing Web site pages, since they can be easily manipulated.

Examine Your Written Content
So what ultimately ranks Web sites? Search engines look at the whole package; they relate a page’s content to the meta keywords, title and description for that page. But, what ranks the most in importance is the quality of your content. It should be well-written, concise, and accurately portray what your company does. The content will include your chosen keywords and phrases, but not to excess (keyword stuffing – the overuse of keywords and phases – is penalized by many search engines, often resulting in a lower ranking). It will directly and precisely relate to the page description. It will be free of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. The bottom line is that every word counts.

Hire a Search Engine Optimization Company
After you’ve created quality content, and utilized your meta elements, you may wish to consider hiring a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company. They can examine your site, and provide suggestions for increasing your chances of getting seen and ranked by popular search engines. But another word of caution here – beware of SEOs that promise you the moon. No company has the magic key. Search engines don’t make their ranking systems public, and they update these systems frequently. So, no one knows exactly how search engines rank their listings.

Submit Your Web site to Popular Search Engines
 Search engines automatically search the Web for new and updated sites. But, as no one knows the schedule, what can you do? Submit your Web site address to each search engine yourself. Most search engines offer both a free service (which isn’t guaranteed to be accepted), and a paid service (you pay for your site to be listed higher in the rankings, or ad placement). Submit to more than one search engine, but don’t crazy — there are only three search engines worth spending time on — Google, Yahoo and MSN. Together they make up 97% of the market. While submitting your site to search engines rarely comes with a guaranteed result, it certainly can’t hurt your chances for being seen.

In conclusion, there is no magic key to getting your site ranked the highest in your market or industry. But, by following the simple and easy suggestions above, you can certainly increase your chances. Use accurate meta elements, and have excellent and well-written copy. Submit your site to popular search engine directories. And, if all else appears to fail, hire a trusted SEO. We’ll continue with Part 2 of the feature next month.

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What Makes a Good Restaurant Web site?

Posted by Jason Shindler in business tips on May 19, 2009

The Web Marketing Association gives an award every year for the top Restaurant Web site. The entries are due next week, and we figured it might be a good time to review the winners:

Year Winner Site Name
2008 Design Lab Four
2007 Avatar New York LLC Mr. Broadway Kosher Restaurant
2006 E-Site Marketing Montage Studio
2005 Apollo Interactive, Inc. Johnny Rockets
2004 NetSuccess Mercy Wine Bar
2003 Brann Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion

Who would you nominate for this year’s awards? What makes a good Restaurant Web site?

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Your Web site has a Reputation

Posted by Jason Shindler in business tips on May 18, 2009

A business contact of ours called in a few days ago with a problem — she got a complaint that her shopping cart was flagged as one that had a poor reputation, and that a potential customer was skittish about making a purchase.

As a Web site development firm, to be honest — we don’t get a lot of questions about this — but we should. Your Web site’s online Reputation is very important. Your rating with any of several services could make or break a purchase. First, let’s delve into why there are companies that track your reputation.

Back in the old days of the Internet, people would send email to other people and make purchases on Web sites. Sometimes, things wouldn’t go well — businesses would send unsolicited email to people, and there were allegations of fraud, identity theft or other bad things. Enter companies that track reputations — once several people complain about a site, the reputation tracking company tells others not to go there. Sounds great? It is.

Sometimes, a malicious user or a misunderstanding can lead to a complaint that isn’t proper. For example, a user could be upset with your product and let one of these companies that your products are unreliable. Or someone else can send out spam using your Web server and you could be tagged as an offender.

Next, we need to list out the major online reputation companies:

Stop Badware – This site is the least restrictive of the sites we reviewed. It just tracks to see if sites do really bad things — and if they do — it puts them on a list. That list is used by Google, so it will be important to make sure your site is not on this list.

SiteAdvisor – This is a service from McAfee (the anti-virus company). They test to see if your site serves malicious code, sends out spam, or does any number of other bad things. They also check to see if you link to other sites that are bad. They use a red-yellow-green system for tracking sites.

Web Of Trust – This one is similar to Site Advisor, though not used by as many people. This was the site our contact had called about.

Each of these sites allow you to evaluate your own site, and they give tips for improving your rankings. Most of the stuff is common sense, don’t spam — don’t serve malicious code. If you get on one of these lists, work with the vendor to get off the list — that way you’ll avoid spooking your Web site visitors.

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More Ways to Make Money Using Twitter

Posted by Jason Shindler in business tips on May 12, 2009

We often use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to get real world examples to use as part of our blog postings. Our request for help with our previous Twitter posting generated more than 50 responses, which is a far cry from the 3-4 we normally get. Here are a few more real world experiences we received:

Penny C. Sansevieri,  Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

I’ve had *great* success with Twitter – here are a few things that have come from tweeting:

  1. A half a dozen speaking gig requests
  2. A dozen new client requests (in one month)
  3. Blog interviews, media interviews, guest blogging requests

I was very focused in on what my followers needed and providing them information that was helpful, relevant, and newsworthy. I would like to our blog and other blogs, as well as drop tidbits of information on breaking news, etc. I don’t believe in using this as a sales tool first, but a way to connect to my “Twitter tribe” and keep them informed. The sales always happen when you build credibility and trust. I am happy to share some of my posts with you if you’d like. My following on Twitter is super active, very engaged, and very grateful for the information I provide.

Sharina Richardson, Online Marketing Coordinator for Regal Lager

My Twitter success story is related to online reputation management  and monitoring by  utilizing a reporting system – Tweet Later. With this application you are allowed to input keywords that you would like to monitor across Twitter. In this particular example I monitored one of our brand names, “Diaper Dékor.”

I received a report one day that showed an old tweet expressing anger for our redesign of our diaper pails. The consumer was under the impression that her old diaper pail refills did not fit the new redesign. I clarified this misconception, and informed her, that it did in fact fit the new diaper pail.

So by doing this, we were able to clarify a misconception she had, and for those following our Twitter account they were able to see this answer as well , which is a common question asked among our consumers for Diaper Dékor.

Steve Schwartz, Professional LSAT Tutor in NYC

I use Twitter to send out an LSAT explanation every weekday. Please see my detailed explanation on my blog here. You can see myTwitter page here. The answers are multiple choice (A/B/C/D/E) and appear at the end of each tweet. Because of copyright, I can’t post the text of the actual questions or answer choices. These are my explanations for each question, which I’ve written in text-speak to fit the 140-character limit.
LSAT Tweet has helped me get new LSAT students as well as new LSAT Blog readers. Many of my twitter readers publicly thank @LSATtweet, which leads to even more followers.

We have one more article coming with some real world tips on how to make Twitter work for you.

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How to Make Money Using Twitter

Posted by Jason Shindler in business tips on May 6, 2009

We’ve been bombarded with questions about Twitter in the past few months. Due to its rising media attention and popularity, everyone feels they need a Twitter account for enhancing their business.

Yet for every Twitter success story, there are many people who have spent hours learning it and have nothing to show for it. We solicited input from active Twitter user and have some success stories to share. Here are the first few responses that were worth sharing. We’ll be adding a few more posts with success stories in the coming weeks, as well as some guidelines on what business owners can learn from all of this.

Jay Drayer – Careflash:

“Our Tweets are exclusively related to health and wellness related content (the focus of CareFlash) and encompass out-of-the-mainstream topics.  Each Tweet is linked to our CandyStriper blog and follows a Guy Kawasaki quote… “Create world class content and Google will find you.”  Each post links-up pertinent 3-D animations related to the topic of that particular post… making these very rich Tweets.  As we get new followers, we thank them and reply with a link to a lighthearted video that has proven very effective at driving viral follower growth and loyalty.  I’ve picked well over 7,000 loyal fans on Twitter (while driving my business model), most notably on just over 200 Tweets.”

Suzanne Collier  - Mercy House:

“In 2009, Mercy House (www.mercyhouse.net), non profit 501(c)3 organization that offers Continuum of Care to provide homeless prevention, emergency services, transitional housing and permanent housing with supportive services to homeless men, women and children living in Orange County, Calif. and the City of Ontario, Calif., began a fundraising program that includes a monthly Twitter TweetUp, held the first Monday of every month at Proof Bar (@proofbar or www.proofbar.com) in Santa Ana, Calif.

Followers of Mercy House and Proof Bar on Twitter will “Tweet” information on the TweetUp starting about two weeks prior to each TweetUp, invites are also sent out via Facebook. Cara Good and her team at WunderMarx|PR (@remarx), a public relations firm based in Tustin, Calif. help to execute this program by creating the Facebook invites, and “tweeting” the news of the TweetUps to Twitter followers. The hashtag for the TweetUp is #mhtweetup.

Thus far, four TweetUps for Mercy House have been held at Proof Bar. The first one, which took place in February, drew 30 guests and raised $600 for Mercy House. Attendance has grown to 45-60  guests per TweetUp with $600 to $800 raised. The next “Tweet-up” is scheduled for Monday, June 1 from 5pm to 8pm.”

Patrick Allmond – Focus Consulting:

“BatteryFuel (http://batteryfuel.com) is an online store (no retail locations) that sells new batteries and chargers for a large variety of laptops, cameras, cell phones and other home/portable electronics. Working with Focus Consulting,  BatteryFuel has been able to leverage social media tools to provide live customer support. BatteryFuel continuously monitors real-time conversations via Twitter about dissatisfaction with the market it deals in – especially competitor products. They offer information (gratis) on how people can get better use of the products. It is also not uncommon for customers to be happy enough with BatteryFuel’s advice to ask for assistance making a purchase from their site. As a result the portion of the BatteryFuel revenue that comes from Social Media interactions is growing each month.”

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