Everyone’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare these days, using it for pleasure as well as business. Marketing on Twitter is considered so NON-Tech that one of my potential clients called me back to say he had hired a High School student to do his Twitter
Marketing, I said OK, good luck with that….of course 3 weeks later he called back saying he was re-considering using a professional
service to do his marketing…. Hmmm, wonder what made him change his mind?
It only takes a few minute on any Social Media site to see why a High School student would NOT be the best candidate for Social
Media Marketing, there are 200 Million Tweets per day on Twitter (stats) and the United States has ~153 Million people on Facebook
and a Global Audience of 706,590,220 (stats)…. that’s a tremendous amount of streaming data and posts, in order to stand out, you
will need some knowledge on how to segment and target your audience. (i.e. How to Engage).
There are quite a few agencies out there that are willing to help but first let’s go over the basics of Social Media:
Twitter – 140 characters to get your message across, with url link address included in the count. What can you say in 140 characters,
how do I find people, what’s the relevance of re-tweeting and are links safe to click on?
* A lot can be conveyed in a short amount of characters, example…. July 21, 2011 article about Atlantis and NASA,
“Even Without Space Shuttles, US Spaceflight Lives On, Astronauts Say” 68 characters – and you got the message, right….
after adding the link http://www.space.com/12384-space-shuttle-retirement-nasa-astronauts-reflections.html
it adds another 85 characters so we have went over our 140 count by 13… CRAP… but wait, that is what tiny URL’s are for, Twitter
does it automatically for url’s but it may not shorten it enough…. therefore HootSuite, Social Oomph, and TweetDeck…etc are
great options… It will turn a 85 character URL into http://ow.ly/5K43t into 18 characters (HootSuite). So our entire message
about NASA is 87 characters {Even Without Space Shuttles, US Spaceflight Lives On, Astronauts Say http://ow.ly/5K43t}
* How do I find people on Twitter? There are several ways, you can find a friend by their email address or by their Twitter name
(example @data_nerd)… or if you are just browsing a certain interest, you can use a hashtag (#) in conjunction with a search term…
example #SocialMedia brings up all the conversations about SocialMedia (notice I didn’t leave a space between the word or else
twitter would have looked up Social and not Media).
*What’s the relevance of Re-Tweeting? That is 2 fold – 1st – Klout or a measurement of your influence (Klout) as well as PeerIndex
scores are increased when you engage with others (re-tweet), the higher your score the better chance someone will be listening when you post/tweet. 2nd – It shows respect and admiration for other people and gives them confidence in your ability to give others credit.
We all know the type that takes credit for everyone’s post, even Mashable’s Post and after you get to know them you will see that they are probably not worth you following them anyway. Posting, followers and following (what does all this mean??)
For the beginners I amincluding a wonderful link by John Jantsch called “Twitter for Business“.
*Use your own judgement in finding people to follow and be careful about GURUS, I never like anyone calling themselves that
because there is almost more to learn but you make your own call on that one. Another interesting article you should read is
“Is This Pond Stocked? Big Fish, Little Fish, and Social Media” by Renee DeCoskey.
*Are links safe for me to click on? Usually but “Be Careful”, some people on Twitter do NOT have “your” best interest at heart, so
see how else is following them, check their Klout or PeerIndex scores or just watch their post for a day… Warning if someone has
5,200 followers and ZERO TWEETS, they are data mining for email addresses (avoid and or block these people)… How to Tweet Safely
*Facebook Business Page… A fully completed profile page speaks wonders to building your credibility and boosting your chance of
someone making a purchase from your business.
How to Grow Your Facebook Page Community
By Alyssa Gregory
*What about Foursquare? It’s FREE and any Business can join – Wikipedia says it best so click on the hyper-link (bold – underlined)
Foursquare also read How to Use Foursquare for Small and Local Business by Jessica McLaughlin
Well, I guess that’s enough for now… this should get anyone that’s new to Social Media started and it didn’t cost you a
dime, enjoy!
@Data_Nerd (Twitter)