Tips to Increase Your Twitter Presence

Calling all Twitter users! Whether you’re new to Twitter and you’re trying to build your follower base or you’re not-so-new to Twitter, if you’re wanting to increase your followers’ engagement, here are 5 simple tips you can use to build your follower foundation. Keep in mind, you can use these tips for your personal Twitter page or your business/brand’s Twitter page. 

1. Personalize Your Page

Take advantage of all the opportunities Twitter provides to personalize your page and have it represent who you are, what you’re interested in, or what you’re looking for. The left side of your Twitter page should be your primary focus. There you can put photos, logos, or contact information. For bigger brands or public figures, validating your account is a good idea. Also, use the “about” section wisely and put together a to-the-point and effective bio. When followers can quickly get a sense of who you are and what you’re about, they’re more likely to follow you. 

2. Ask Interesting Questions and Ask for Help

Create conversation; don’t wait for the conversation to come to you. Your followers are a great resource for feedback and help. If you’re a brand, questions don’t have to necessarily be about your products or services– asking someone’s opinion and making it clear that it’s appreciated goes a long way. Be creative and make it fun! 

3. Re-tweet and Reply (in Moderation)

Re-tweeting (RT) and replying to tweets is an easy and effective way of acknowledging your followers and letting them know you find their tweets valuable and informative. But most of all, this lets them know you appreciate their following. 

However, make sure your re-tweets and replies are balanced. Creating conversation is important, but remember that you don’t want your Twitter feed to turn into a long list of “@reply” posts. If anything, this will decrease your number of followers, because most of them don’t have the patience to look through the conversation to find out what it’s all about. 

4. Post Relevant Updates

By posting relevant and informative information and links, followers will start to consider you as a good source of information and will find it worthwhile to engage with you. 

5. Go Back to the Basics with Follow Friday (#FF)

Putting some time and thought into a #FF post is worthwhile and a great form of engagement. It’s an easy way to give a shout-out to your favorite followers and let them know you acknowledge and like their tweets. It’s also a quick and effective way to make a recommendation to the rest of your followers on who to follow. 

What tips do you use to get the most out of your Twitter account? We’d love for you to share. 

15 Steps to Superior Support

Customer service plays a key role in creating or maintaining a reputable business and brand. These 15 Steps to Superior Support, provided by GoSquared, are great to constantly keep in mind when dealing with customers or clients.

LinkedIn Recommendations: Things You Should Know

LinkedIn is continuing to grow rapidly, which means more people are using the tool for intelligence, recruitment, and networking. A social space like LinkedIn can make specific individuals stand out among others; a specific way individuals can best leverage this social network is by gathering recommendations on their LinkedIn profile. 

Here are some guidelines for LinkedIn recommendations: 

1. Ask For Specific Recommendations

When you ask someone for a recommendation, make sure the request is personal and polite. LinkedIn will autofill the recommendation request text box, but remember to take that out. Replace it with asking the person for a recommentaion for something specific you worked on together. Also, ask the person to include what happened as a result of working together. Specific information showing how your skill or work was used reflects well on you. 

2. Don’t Ask Everyone

Don’t send out a defaulted autofill recommendation to all of your connections, because most of those connections haven’t worked with you close enough. You also want to keep the recommendations business related; you don’t want your best friend or landlord to recommend you in a way that doesn’t relate to business. 

3. Don’t Ignore a Request

If you receive a recommendation request from someone that you don’t really know that well, don’t ignore it. Say something like “Thanks for the recommendation request, but I don’t feel that I can endorse your work, since we don’t really know each other that well.” With a response like this, you have let the person down gently and didn’t just leave them hanging. 

4. Be Careful About How You Recommend

While a lot of recommendations look good, make sure your whole team or all of your co-workers don’t recommend each other. Recommendations like that add little value. 

5. Update Recommendations

It’s not very common, but you might want to delete some recommendations you have made. Go to the “recommendations you have made” link in your profile and withdraw it.  You can also revise a recommendation here. 

6. Say ‘Thank You’

When someone writes you a recommendation, you are given the option to return the favor. Don’t do it unless you feel comfortable recommending the person. Regardless, send the person a note saying thanks for the recommendation they wrote for you. 

75 B2B Facebook Marketing Tips from Social Media B2B

One of the blogs we follow and really enjoy, Social Media B2B, recently compiled a list of the top 75 Facebook tips for B2B marketers. We’ve blogged before about the importance of compelling content within the social media space and really engaging/interacting with your audience. We’ve also posted about the need to align your SEO efforts, driving traffic back to one spot (your Facebook page, your website, your blog). With those two things in mind, take a look at the list below for great ideas on how to get great results from your business Facebook page.

Liking the Page

1. Ask your staff, customers, vendors, and partners — who already know you and like you — to “Like” your Facebook page first. (source)

Facebook Content

2. Share lots of photos, and ask your fans to share photos. Facebook’s Photos remain the most viral feature of its platform. (source)

3. Write for the newsfeed, not for your wall. (source)

4. Don’t worry about writing too little. (source)

5. Be strategic and pay attention to signal vs. noise. (source)

6. Write posts that encourage sharing across the network. (source)

7. Boost your comments by asking questions, but stay away from simple Yes/No answers. (source)

8. Mix it up a little between videos, photos, questions and information (source)

9. Use the 80-20 rule to determine how much other people’s content to post versus your own. (source)

10. Use @ tagging strategically. (source)

11. Target by location or language. (source)

12. Tailor your content to mobile users. (source)

13. Diversify your team’s voices. (source)

14. Open the door to user content — but not the floodgates. (source)

15. Keep posts 80 characters long or shorter. (source)

16. Don’t Be Afraid to Show You’re Human. (source)

17. Have a Unique Voice. (source)

18. Diversify Your Content. (source)

19. Post original and relevant content. (source)

20. Post industry articles and blog posts fresh from your newsreader. (source)

21. Share exclusive, behind the scenes information. (source)

22. Write simply and plainly. (source)

23. Think mainstream for content. (source)

Analyze and Optimize Content

24. Use Edgerank to find your best & worst days. (source)

25. Monitor which posts attract the most Likes and comments (eyeball), and use Insights – Facebook’s own analytics tool – for data. (source)

26. Track the Performance of Your Posts. (source)

Calls to Action

27. Treat your Facebook “Like” button or link to your Facebook Page like any call to action – make it easy to spot. (source)

28. Encourage others to share your calls to action, so they show up in their newsfeed. (source)

Tabs and Landing Pages

29. Make creative use of Tabs. (source)

30. Choose a “landing tab” wisely. (source)

31. Have calls to action on your landing tab. (source)

32. The landing page should be relevant to the ad driving visitors there. (source)

33. Offer incentives. (source)

34. Keep it up to date. (source)

35. Provide interesting content. (source)

How and When to Post

36. Watch Your Post Frequency and Timing. (source)

37. There is a short window of opportunity to gain traction with an update. (source)

38. Be careful with automated posting services like NetworkedBlogs or syncing updates through your Twitter feed. (source)

39. Establish a regular schedule for your brand’s Facebook updates. (source)

40. Post towards the end of the week (source)

41. Weekends are more Facebook sharing friendly. (source)

Audience

42. Know your audience well, and when you make a mistake, quickly own up, do right by your audience and fix the problem. (source)

43. Don’t forget to send an update to fans. (source)

44. Allow your fans to tag photos on your Page. (source)

45. Put Your Fans in Charge Every Now and Then. (source)

Interaction off the Facebook Page

46. Integrate Facebook outside of your Fan Page, on your website, in as many places as you can. Create more compelling opportunities for people to buy your product based on their friends’ Likes. (source)

47. Find synergy with other organizations and entities, and then work together to promote each other’s Facebook pages so that everyone benefits. (source)

Optimize Your Facebook Page for Search

48. Link to your Facebook page from your website home page, using your brand in the anchor or alt‐text. (source)

49. Use your brand name in your posts. (source)

50. Get links to your Facebook Page by driving social engagement and “likes.” (source)

51. Use Facebook Shares and Likes to improve rankings of any page on your website. (source)

52. Interlink your directory pages with parallel Facebook pages. (source)

53. Integrate your website broadly with Facebook Social Plugins and Facebook Connect. (source)

Facebook Advertising

54. Restrict ads to people that don’t Like your Page. (source)

55. Invest in sponsored stories – they work. (source)

Resources

56. Find the resources to respond to your fans questions and inquiries. (source)

57. Accept you won’t work a 9-5. (source)

Miscellaneous

58. Assess the business value of your Page. (source)

59. Hold real-world events. (source)

60. Make use of “Add to My Page’s Favorites.” (source)

61. If you have a physical location, use Place Pages and Deals to drive traffic through your doors. (source)

62. Respond to comments. (source)

63. Polls delivered directly to users’ news feeds are not only effective in their reach but also in their ability to drive engagement. (source)

Facebook Mistakes

64. Broadcasting Content. (source)

65. Not Investing Adequate Time. (source)

66. Being Boring or Predictable. (source)

67. Failing to Learn About Facebook Mechanics and Tools. (source)

68. Violating Facebook’s Terms. (source)

69. Assuming People Go To Your Fan Page Versus Seeing Your Posts In Their News Feed. (source)

70. Expecting Welcome Tabs To Get You Lots Of Fans. (source)

71. Overestimating Apps and Tabs. (source)

72. No Budget For Ads To Acquire Fans. (source)

73. Posting In A Self Centered Way, Not Trying To Get Likes And Comments. (source)

74. Not Optimizing For Impressions And Feedback Rate. (source)

75. Over-Selling and Hard-Selling Without Conversing Or Arousing Desire First. (source)

Get LinkedIn for business

I’m getting more and more questions from clients about the value of LinkedIn, so perfect timing for this Mashable post that hit my inbox this morning. I, personally, am not as active in LinkedIn as I am in Facebook on a daily basis, but I absolutely see its value. I’ve connected with several business professionals in my industry and the groups I subscribe to provide a fantastic networking space online. And, unfounded or not, I do believe people take me and my business more seriously in the LinkedIn space. Here’s what Mashable reports:

LinkedIn recently passed 100 million users, meaning its population is bigger than most countries. But what kind of country would LinkedInLand be? An old, rich, well-educated one.

According to the infographic below, created by Online MBA, 68% of LinkedIn users are 35 or older, 74% have a college degree or better and 39% make more than $100,000 a year. As those stats illustrate, although LinkedIn may not have the buzz of Facebook or Twitter right now, it has an enviable demographic base. The company also is profitable, fast-growing and expanding into new lines of business like news aggregation. As LinkedIn prepares to go public this year, here’s an overview of the phenomenon that Reid Hoffman created 8 years ago.

A few good blogs

We are always searching for exciting blogs…most of the time we stumble upon them, but sometimes we get lucky!

“100 Awesome Blogs for Your Business Education” was compiled by Online College Reviews. This list is broken down into categories: General Business, Management and Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Finances and Economics, Human Resources, Marketing, Green Business, E-Commerce, Technology, Business School and MBA.

Whatever your place is in the business world, this list has something for you. We pulled our favorites to share with you…

5. All Business: This busy site is worth browsing- search under the ‘Bloggers’ tab for blogs to check out, including the ‘Small Business Blog.’

54. Seth Godin: The popular Godin fills his blog with valuable insights on marketing, social media, technology and more.

56. Duct Tape Marketing: A great resource from small business expert John Jantsch includes links to practical products, workshops, articles and coaching services.

62. The Marketing Blog: Read this blog for continued insight into the marketing world from expert Michael Fleischner.

63. Marketing Profs: This ‘one-stop shop for marketing know-how’ is packed with useful information along with live events, virtual seminars and a stage for community interaction. Originally founded and written by marketing professors, current contributors come from varied walks of life. (and we love their cute bird logo!)

87. Scobleizer: Former Microsoft employee and ‘technical evangelist’ Robert Scoble writes this blog about the latest developments in social media, online business and the Web.

88. ReadWriteWeb: Founded in 2003, this high-traffic site keeps readers in the know of Web technology news, social media trends, reviews and analysis.

With so many blogs in existence, we would love to learn about other gems, so please let us know what your favorite blogs are!