Social Marketing – 3 Twitter Tools to Increase Your Effectiveness

Here are 3 power Twitter Tools to help with your Social Media Marketing plan.

The first tool is Twaitter http://www.twaitter.com

Twaitter (soon changing their name to Gremln) allows you to schedule the same Tweets on a reoccurring basis. While there are many other tools out there that do the same thing this is the first one that is a free application.

The next tool is Tweetchat. http://tweetchat.com

Tweetchat allows you to follow the conversation around a specific hashtag in real time. Let say you find a hashtag that people in your target market are tweeting, then you can go to Tweetchat and follow the conversation in real time and click on each of the different people and decide if you want to follow the.

Finally there is Blastfollow http://www.blastfollow.com/

Blastfollow allows you to follow everyone who is tweeting  a certain hashtag in one click. For example lets say you realize that everyone who tweets #AESauthor is potentially in your target market. Then you can follow all of them with one click using this tool.

I invite you to check out these 3 Twitter Tools and let me know by commenting below which ones you find useful for your business.

Engage by Brian Solis Here is the Trailer to one of the most important books of 2010

Here is the Trailer for the book “Engage” by Brian Solis

Watch this video trailer for the book by Brian Solis about the importance of the Social Media phenomenon. This is one of the best books of the year. Brian makes a case for  how impotent Social Media actually is. For the first time in history people (in the free world) actually hold the power. This is huge!

The only danger is we may not recognize it or use it correctly. We truly could change the world now  if we are not too selfish. That is the danger.

Social Marketing – The 5 Critical Preliminary Steps For a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

You would need to be living under a rock not to notice the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube icons everywhere. It seems like the whole world is jumping on the Social Media bandwagon and this is wonderful news if you are an entrepreneur! Social Media Marketing is the perfect platform for businesses that would like to market their products and services online.

Social Media Marketing is based on building connections and relationships with people who you resonate with. Then it can be used to market your products and services in a conversational way like we used to in times past when everyone gathered together on the front poach on Sunday afternoon to talk about their week.

The technical term is Word Of Mouth Marketing. Word of Mouth Marketing is the old fashion kind of marketing that has worked since the beginning of time. Studies show that this kind of marketing is 3 times more effective than other forms of marketing because people are jaded by traditional marketing. They believe less than 17% of the marketing messages they see but 78% of recommendations they get from their peers.

But STOP, before you get excited and just jump in and join all the social networks willy-nilly it is important that you do some research first. Each site will ask you to create a profile and you want to make sure that what you write will speak to the people in your target market. You want to attract those people who need and want your products and services.

Here are the 5 steps I take with all my clients to make sure we create profiles on the Social Media sites that do their job correctly.

Step 1 Decide – You need to decide who your Target Market is. This is one of the most important steps for any successful marketing plan but many entrepreneurs avoid it. Most marketing experts say it is impossible to market successfully to everyone. The sooner you narrow your focus and pick your specific target market the sooner you will see results.

Step 2 Discover – Discover the pain that keeps the people in your Target Market awake at night. What problems do they need solutions to? This step will help you decide what products and services you need to provide. This could also stop you from creating a product or service that your target market does not care about which could save you tons of time.

Step 3 Determine – What products and services do you offer that will be good solutions for the pain in your Target Markets? If you don’t have a product or service that will address this problem maybe you should consider creating one.

Step 4 Develop – Now it is time to create your Social Media Marketing Plan. Be as specific as possible. List the 3-4 social networks you will join, how much time you plan to spend joining the conversation and what kind of content you plan to submit. You also need to decide how you will measure your success.

Social Media is a long term marketing strategy so be prepared to stick to your plan for at least 3 months and then measure your results. Then you can decide if you will continue on your currant path or change directions.

Step 5 Do – The final step is to do your keyword research. Keywords are the glue that holds the Internet together so it is very important to have a clear picture of the exact words you need to use in your profiles and content sour sites y will be indexed by Google. Once you have your list of suitable words keep them by your computer and refer to them whenever you are writing anything for the Internet.

Lots of business owners skip this step because keyword research can be boring and it is somewhat of an art to do correctly. But if you take the time to do this step (or better yet hire an expert to do it for you) you will be rewarded with your site listings on the first page of Google!

I invite you to connect with me on my social networks by clicking on the Social Media icons over on the right of this page. A great place to learn more about Social Media Marketing is my Facebook Fanpage . You can also access it by clicking on the Fanpage box on the right. Here I post links and tips that will help you improve your Social Media Marketing Plan.  Also I welcome your comments so please feel free to write one below.

Create a Conscious Business – Align Expand Succeed – Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success

I am honored to be one of 40 authors of the anthology book, Align Expand Succeed – Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success

Join 5 authors on August 31st for the Teleseminar “Creating and Building a Conscious Business”

To Kathleen Gage, Lauren McMullen, Michelle Cochran, Sue Papadolis and Sue Ann Gleason go to
http://consciousbusinesstips.com

Social Marketing – How to Get Your Local Business Listing to the Top of Google Places

Social Media Marketing has become one of the most important ways to market your online business over the last year but what many people do not realize is how useful it can be for advertizing your local business as well.

Last weekend my husband was awakened in the middle of the night with a severe tooth ache. He was up all night and by the time I got up at 7:00am he was almost in tears. My heart sank because I know how difficult it is to find a dentist that will see patients on the weekend (most are even closed on Friday) but I knew we could not wait till monday morning for this problem.

So, I went to my computer and typed “emergency dentist near nashville tn” into the Google search engine and was thrilled when the map for “Google Places” came up!

Google places is a relatively new way Google provides results for local searches and it is amazing! There is a map and the directions and even reviews for the search results. Check out this video to see what happened when I did my search for “emergency dentist near nashville tn”.

The end result was we got into see a dentist that day, my husband’s problem was taken care of quickly and that business now has a satisfied customer and raving fan for life. As we were driving home I started to think about how to use this information for my local clients.

Over the next few days I will be going through how to optimize your local business listings in Google Places so you show up as the number one listing for your keyword. Then we will go into how you can use Social Media to get the news out about your listing.

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