This is just a quick hit. Many people have been asking me lately to point them in the right direction for information on to use Twitter for business. This is the best post I think I’ve ever read on the subject. Great information as usual from Chris Brogan.

50 Way to use Twitter for Business

It’s funny to think how much the world can change in five short years. Where there once was nothing, there now is a new form of media and marketing that is essential to the success of practically every business around. Social networking has been alive and well in one form or another since practically the dawn of time. Known originally as “word of mouth”, the internet has taken that word and turned it into a typed, emailed, posted, IM’d and tweeted message. These new social platforms have basically taken the world by storm and completely changed the way that we get the word out about just about everything. For a growing business, this makes becoming savvy about Facebook marketing more than just a novelty, but an actual survival skill.

Facebook was originally started as a sort of exclusive social networking site that was only for the students of Harvard. Created by students, for students, it gave them a place to connect with one another and exchange information and ideas. Before long there were new networks formed and more schools on board. Today, Facebook is open to anyone that is over the age 13 and is estimated to have over 350 million active users around the world. These users are organized roughly by the networks to which they belong, which can be regional, social, political, religious or any other number of things. Companies have networks for their employees, retailers have networks for their consumers, music artists and bands have networks for their fans. Regardless of who your target market is, there is a network for that, and each network connects with endless other networks, making Facebook Marketing a goldmine for getting your company name and image out there.

The beauty of Facebook of an online marketer is that word travels so quickly across it. If Jane becomes a fan of your company today, it will be posted on all of her friends’ news feeds, with a link to your company. Anyone of her friends that clicks on the link, and becomes a fan now has an update on all of their friends’ pages, who then, in turn click on the link and share your company name and info with all of their friends. Unless Jane and her friend are only friends with all of the same people, this can get information to literally thousands of people in less time than it takes to make dinner. Just think, you can be a nobody at lunch, but a super star by supper. Few other types of marketing can offer that. Facebook marketing has an incredibly wide reach.

So how, as a small business can you take advantage of the viral goodness that is Facebook marketing?   How can you translate the social networking giant into more click-thru’s and conversions for your site? Much like any independent person wanting to connect with friends, your first step is to join Facebook. Set up a page for your company. Give information about your company and make sure that you include your company’s homepage. Once your page is set up, you will need to start connecting with others. Search for networks that you think would be interested in what you have to sell or say, and join them. Set up your own page, if you do not already have one, and start finding friends. Once you have a good base of people, become a fan of your own company. This will post information about your company on every one of your friends’ pages.

If you have an e-commerce business, a blog or an informational or lead generation website,  it’s only logical that you’ll need plenty of traffic to be successful.   Strategies abound for driving traffic and finding buyers.  This post is focused specifically on a few key content marketing strategies.

Content is King. Content is King. Content is King.

Writing is a creative process, it takes a little time, but once written it will spread virally to hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites and the benefits are permanent. The links back to your website from creating remarkable content can also be permanent.  Google loves freshly baked content and your search engine optimization (SEO) will improve as well.

Getting Started with 3 Content Marketing Strategies:

1. Article Marketing

Very simple. Write excellent articles on subjects related to your area of expertise.  “How To” articles are always a great way to start.  Oh, and spend almost as much time creating a great Title as writing the article itself.  Your article title should be compelling and make people want to click through to see more.

Article Title tips:

• Answer a question you get asked frequently:  “How to Write an Effective “How To” Article in 5 Easy Steps.”
• Use numbers: “7 Quick Tips for Keeping the Weight off this Holiday Season.”
• Use a little fear: “Don’t Become a Victim of Your Own Ingorance: The 3 Hidden Dangers of Not Getting Your Annual Physical.”

After your article is written it’s time to get it out there for people to see.  Here’s what to do with it:

• Post it on your blog
• Post it on your social media sites (Facebook and LinkedIn)
• Tweet it to your followers
• Submit to article directories like EZineArticles, Self Growth and Article Base.

Make sure when submitting to article directories that you take some time to complete the Resource Box.  The resource box is the section at the end of the article where you can promote yourself a bit, provide a short bio and a link or two back to your website or blog.

Article marketing is an excellent method of building high quality one way links back to your site and building your credibility online.  Writing remarkable content not only stamps you as an expert in your filed but over time can create an enormous amount of traffic to your site with pre-sold visitors.

Next action: Start writing.

2. Blogging for Business

Blogging is another great way to drive traffic to your website.  Often taken for granted or deemed as not that important by those to unfamiliar with online marketing best practices.  The first recommendation I make to a new SEO consulting client is to get a blog integrated into their site if they don’t have one already.  It they do have one, my next recommendation is to start writing in it consistently.  Make the style all your own and don’t stress over getting everything perfect.

A couple of blog tips:

• Blog posts can be one sentence or two pages, it depends on your content and purpose.  Write concisely and build your post around one central theme.  Try to stay on track so you don’t lose your reader half way through the post.
• Blogs are not full length articles or EBooks.  Most blog posts are 300 to 700 words.  They can be longer (the one you’re reading certainly is!)  if the message you’re conveying simply takes more words to get across.  The point is to let the post be done when you’ve finished covering your topic. Don’t set measurements like, “I’m not gonna finish this post until I’ve written at least 800 words.”  When you’re done, you’re done.
• Make your blog easy for your readers to share (look in the upper right hand corner of this post for the “share/save” button) and also easy to subscribe to (now look to the right and you’ll see “Subscribe to RSS Feeds” and also “Find Us On Facebook.”

3. Participating and Getting Involved

Keeping your ear to the ground and being actively involved in the conversation has never been more important.  It turns out, whether you’re participating or not, the conversation about you, your company, product, service and competition is going on anyway.  Want some influence?  Get involved.

Here’s how:

• Start commenting on relevant blogs in your industry and/or where your prospective customers are hanging out.  You can find great blogs by visiting Technorati or Alltop and typing in related keywords to what you’re looking for.  Learn how to Claim your blog on Technorati by reading a previous post.
  • Become familiar with some of the higher authority blogs that allow comments by reading them for a week or two.  You’ll learn who you like and who you don’t pretty quickly.
  • When adding comments, what you don’t want to write is, “great post,” and that’s it.  Even worse is, “great post, now come look at what I’m selling by clicking here.”  What you DO want to do is add to the post; extend the conversation by adding your own thoughts and unique take on the author’s topic.  Even disagreeing or throwing in a little controversy is a great way to go, as long as you’re not being controversial just to get a rise out of everyone and you have a good reason for why you feel the way you do.

• Create Profiles and become active in a few social bookmarking sites.  Namely, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.  Reddit is also great.  Doing this will ensure that your website gets indexed by the search engines almost immediately if it hasn’t been already.  It also builds high quality, one way links back to your site which improves your SEO and can really drive a bunch of traffic as well.  Having unique and interesting content on your site will naturally earn you additional links from other websites and blogs that will want to link back to you.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page, optimize your profile and get involved in the LinkedIn community and start building a following on Twitter.  Each of these are immensely important to your success online but require much more time than we have here to go through in detail.  To start… get started.  Any questions on moving forward after that let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
• Use Twitter Search to type in keywords to find out what’s going on…right now. Again, participate in the conversation, comment, and get involved.  Twitter search is a great tool, take advantage of it.

Right, and you won’t.  There is an enormous difference between quantity vs quality in social media marketing.  The single biggest mistake you can make when you begin a Twitter account is to try to gain as many indiscriminate followers as possible.

Bragging rights do not contribute to your bottom line.

To be successful, first define what success means to you.  What are you trying to achieve?  What are your end goals?

Do you want to sell more products, drive more leads or RFI’s, bring awareness to a cause?  Excellent.  So, who do you want to follow you?

See, that’s the real question and what most people don’t think about.  Time and again, for example, I see people that sell boats with a 1000 followers in the boat selling business. Or, boat manufactures or boat accessory distributors.  Wrong people.  Easy followers to get but wrong audience.  A boat manufacturer is not going to buy any boats from you.

Who you need following you are boat lovers.  People that live on lakes and rivers.  Current boat owners. You get the idea. These people are prospective buyers.  If you find them, and they follow you, you’re half way there.

To get all the way there, you need to not try to sell them anything.  At least not right away.  The key is to offer your followers unique, interesting, quality, insightful, helpful content.

Some tips:

–Give away your expertise… your return will be far greater than what you are giving away.
–Don’t waste your follower’s time.  If you don’t even find your Tweets unique or interesting, why would the people following you?
–Be selective. To use our example, don’t retweet everything you happen to run across on boats.  Be a specialist. Be particular. Think like the reader.
–Remember you are competing with millions of other Tweeters out there. Some people get hundreds of updates a day.  How do your Tweets stand out.?   In a sea of non-stop Twitter updates, why is anyone going to stop on your name, or your update?   Why? Because you’ve earned their respect and attention through providing quality content.  They know you. They know you’re going to give them something good and not waste their time.
–It’s perfectly ok to promote yourself and your products and services.  But, not until you’ve earned the right to do so.  Give, then get.  Rembember Zig Ziglar’s Golden Rule:  Just help enough other people get what they want and you’ll get what you want.  When you do point people back to your products, the best way is through offering specials, sales, clearance, coupons, limited time deals, etc.  Make it special and exceptional.  Make it exciting!  Not just, we sell boats so for the hundredth time here’s a link to my home page, come check it out.  One method works. The other just turns off your followers.

In sum, look for followers for which you fill a need.  Then fill the need.  That’s it, happy tweeting.