Assuming you have the audience, or are growing the audience (of Fans and Followers), then the key is putting out the right messages. Here are some basic ideas for “stuff to Tweet about“:

1) Blog posts: If you have a consistent blogging strategy then take advantage of that and set up a feed for your blog posts to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This can be done through Feedburner, Social Oomph, Twitter Feed or Hootesuite, to name a few. You can also re-purpose old blog posts and link to them from Twitter and Facebook.

2) Tips: Consider tweeting out a tip of the day to your Followers. Tweet about tips, tools, strategies and advice that you know as an expert in your field, but your Followers may not know. They will begin to see you as more of an authority figure in your industry.

3) Questions: Consider discussing a struggle or challenge that you or your Followers have had, and then pose an open-ended question as to what solutions or conclusions your Followers have discovered about this issue. This is a great way to gather feedback from your target market and really learn more about what they want to know and what they are struggling with.

4) Quotes: Famous quotes can be refreshing and inspiring. It’s never a bad idea to tweet out a famous quote now and again.

5) Mentions or Retweets: If you have a new client or a colleague who does something special for you consider giving them a mention. A thank you goes a long way, especially on Twitter. Retweets are also nice to utilize, as you can not only repeat a tweet that you like, but you can also give credit to the person who originally tweeted it.

As you can see, there are plenty of things to tweet about. Remember, unless you’re a famous athlete or celebrity, no one cares what you ate for lunch or where you went shopping. You cannot monetize the power of Twitter if this is your strategy. You need to take the time to learn about your Followers (and Fans) and use Twitter to establish your credibility, increase your visibility, and build relationships.

If you know of other popular things to tweet about feel free to leave us a comment.

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3. The Importance of the Facebook Fan Page for Your Business

Ideally, you should be spending no more than 15 minutes a day on Facebook (and probably a lot less). When I say “you” I’m referring to your business, so if you want to play around on your personal page after work that’s fine. However, if you want to get the most out of your time on your business’ Fan page then you’ll want to follow these steps:

1) Time yourself: The best way to get in a habit of spending 15 minutes or less on Facebook is to keep track of the time every time you log on.

2) Set up a blog feed: This is an easy way to continuously add quality content to your Fan page (directly from your blog). Simply select ‘edit page’ on your Fan page and then click ‘notes’. Then you’ll want to edit the import settings.

3) Suggest your Friends become Fans: Since you have a personal page associated with your Fan page I would suggest asking these Friends to “like” your business every month or so, depending on how often you Friends’ list grows.

4) Ask your Fans for feedback: At least a couple times a month you should pose questions to your Fans in order to get their feedback. Their responses can help you improve your services, understand your target market better, spark new ideas within product development, and much more.

5) Respond to Fans’ comments: This should take the bulk of your time. The less questions and comments from Fans the less time you should be spending on Facebook. These Fans should be considered potential clients, and for many of them, Facebook and social media is their preferred choice of communication. Do not lose out on a new client by not responding to their questions, concerns or comments on your Fan page.

I know that it can be very tempting to spend countless hours on Facebook, but for your business’ sake, limit it to 15 minutes or less per day, and focus on the Fan interaction. Feel free to add any of your own tips for managing your time on Facebook. We’d love to hear them.

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Users who check in can earn “badges” and even become the “mayor” of a specific location by checking in the most during a 60 day period. The whole idea behind Foursquare is to give businesses additional publicity and marketing. In order to encourage the use of Foursqare, participating businesses can offer benefits and discounts for checking in, badges earned, or for users who’ve achieved “mayor” status. This in turn creates competition among users to check in more often.

Foursquare was introduced in March 2009, but was limited to only metropolitan areas. By January of 2010 Foursquare began accepting check ins from any location worldwide. One of the first large corporations to invest in Foursquare was Starbucks. By becoming a mayor at a given Starbucks location you are entitled to $1 off of a frappuccino. Starbuck’s promotion through Foursquare ended in June, and there are still a lot of question marks about Foursquare.

Here are a few issues with Starbucks use of Foursquare:
• Competition with employees: Most people cannot compete to become mayor at a specific Starbucks location with an employee who works at that very location EVERY DAY!
• Unattractive incentives: It takes a lot of check ins to become mayor. All for a $1 off a frappuccino! Not worth it to many people.
• Irrelevant advertising: Every time you check in you see an advertisement. Fine. I understand that’s how things work Foursquare has to make money somehow). However, not only are Starbucks’ ads not geo-targeted, but they aren’t always based on any information they’ve gathered from users. This is definitely more of a Foursqaure issue than a Starbucks issue. If a user constantly checks in to their favorite restaurant and bar, but they don’t drink coffee, then they shouldn’t see a Starbucks ad every other time they check in.

At this point Foursquare has a several competitors (namely Gowalla and MyTown) , but none are quite as established as Foursqaure. The biggest upside of Foursquare is that they gather information about users’ preferences. This information is becoming more and more appealing to search engine giants Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The potential integration with search engines would display trends among businesses where people are checking in (not unlike the integration of Twitter posts into search engines). Foursquare is sitting pretty right now with $95 million in recently raised capital, and a user base of about 2 million. However, their competitors are still relevant and hoping to build off of the early successes of Foursquare.

If you’d like to learn more about how Foursquare can benefit your local business then contact Turbo Social Media today. Or call us at 1-877-673-7096 x2.

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In the past few months Ning has undergone many changes. For starters, new CEO Jason Rosenthal announced that Ning would no longer offer a free service. Ning had previously been free to use (provided you met bandwidth requirements), relying strictly on advertising money. The company also laid off 69 of the 167 employees. Apparently the dramatic changes have had a positive effect on the company, since they were recognized by Lead411 as one of the “Hottest Silicon Valley Companies” in June 2010.

Currently, Ning competes with MySpace, Facebook and BigTent by appealing to people who want to create their own social networks. The Ning platform is much different than Facebook and MySpace because you create a social network based on a topic, and you have the ability to customize the design, features and member data of your network. Ning is most similar to BigTent because both focus on creating portals (or networks) for groups. However, BigTent focuses more on parenting groups, school groups, alumni groups, and neighborhood groups, while Ning seems to appeal to many different types of ideas, hobbies and groups.

Here are some advantages to Ning:
1) Cost: Free to sign up for a basic account
2) Easy to use: It is very easy to set up a new social network within Ning. Templates can be easily customized to your style, and more advanced users can even modify the CSS of their network.
3) Features: Ning offers a variety of widgets and tools for you to customize your social network. It’s much more than a blog.

Here are some disadvantages of Ning:
1) Cost: As of April 2010, those who host communities now have to pay for premium membership. This used to be free. Also, to control the ads displayed on your social network you need to pay a fee. However, as you can see in the advantages section, Ning is free to join for a basic user.
2) Ownership rights: Ning owns the right and title to all the intellectual property. Technically once you join Ning and build social network on Ning you no longer own the network. In other words, it is not an asset you can sell.
3) Transfer of data (or lack thereof): Ning is a hosted solution, and it is maintained by Ning for free. However, it is extremely difficult to migrate any users or content to other platforms because there is no API bridge, exporting, or migration tools available.

The bottom line:
Ning is geared more toward hobbyists, groups and organizations that are more interested in bringing people together to collaborate about a topic then create demand for a product or service. Ning seems best suited for fans, groupies, music or TV lovers, or organizations to discuss the latest news about an artist, TV show, game, group, or movie. I see some value in Ning for non-profits as well. However, for small businesses and corporations, who are concerned about ROI, Ning may not be worth the time. It would be a better investment for small businesses and corporations to focus on consistently blogging and driving traffic to their website.

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Your Facebook landing page is also known as your “welcome” page. It is the first thing people see when they come to your Fan page (for the first time). Your Facebook Fan page is likely the second most important piece of real estate online for your business, after your website. You need it to reflect that same uniqueness and creativity that your website does. Just like you website should be geared toward generating leads, your Facebook landing page also should be geared toward generating leads, or getting people to “like” your business. Here are some reasons why your business needs to have a custom Facebook landing page:

1) A custom Facebook landing page shows your business’ personality. Facebook has a pretty generic look as it is. A custom landing page is your business’ one opportunity to really give people an idea of what you’re all about. Show some pizzazz and creativity. Create that “wow” factor. Utilize video and a stylish design to brand your business and make you stand out from your competition.

2) A custom Facebook landing page allows you to capture leads. Along with branding, this should be your goal. While a “like” is valuable because it gives you an open platform to get in front of your Fans, and email address from an opt-in is even more valuable, and it should be treated as such. Someone who opts in for your services or offer on your Facebook page is just as valuable as someone who does so on your website. The best part is that you now have two lead generating machines: your website and your custom Fan page.

3) Your custom Fan page allows you to engage with your audience more. If a person goes to your Fan page and the first thing they see is your wall they are much less inclined to engage with you or comment than if the go to your landing page first. The reason is that your landing page can tell them exactly what you want them to do. You’re landing page can list an offer that is more enticing because it is bright and colorful, it can point directly to the “like” button requesting that they become a Fan, or it can use video to excite viewers or encourage them to interact with your business.

Check out this example of how iZigg has created a custom Facebook landing page that accomplished all three objectives above:

A custom Facebook landing page is essential to the branding and marketing of any online business. If you are looking to build your Facebook presence online, whether you have a Fan page up or not, contact Turbo Social Media for more details. We can help your business create custom pages and manage campaigns to strategically grow your Fans. Call today for more information: 877-673-7096.

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At Turbo Social Media, we preach that an informative and well thought out blog is the “core” to any successful social media marketing program. That’s because it becomes a hub for social media traffic, a controlled content environment, and the perfect place to convert social media traffic into leads. A blog will allow you, the expert in your field, to publish articles that provide tips, answers or feedback to questions or concerns people might have about your services. It’s huge for building expertise and establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field. Just make sure your blog allows you to automatically syndicate blog posts to Facebook and Twitter so that all your efforts are connected and integrated.

So after you’ve got your “core” (website/blog) setup, what next? Setting up a Facebook and Twitter page is easy. Once you’ve created a Fan page it is important to recommend people to “like” your business. When you set up your Twitter profile make sure to create an auto responder that links to your Fan page, as well as your website. All of these steps will help with increasing your business’ visibility. By blogging and updating Facebook and Twitter with valuable information on a regular basis you will help to establish your expertise and credibility in your field.

The next important step to making sure your business stands out in the crowd is “branding”. By syndicating your blog posts to your Facebook and Twitter pages you’re putting out a consistent message in all of your networks. This is an important factor in branding your message. Another important thing to know is that both Facebook and Twitter allow you create a unique page with the same page name (for example, Facebook.com/yourbusinessname and Twitter.com/yourbusinessname). Don’t forget that all of these pages are indexed by Google (search engines will find them), all the more reason to make sure everything is consistently branded. But setting up those pages with generic templates is not enough, and may often put you in an unfavorable light if people think you haven’t quite mastered the social media space.

So the last critical step is to create CUSTOM pages on these social networks that match your branding. Both Facebook and Twitter allow you to create custom designs so that you can incorporate your colors, your logo and the same look and feel as your website. This is essential for branding, and it helps to make both your Facebook and Twitter pages look more professional. With Facebook you can even utilize this custom “Welcome” page to have an opt-in box where you can generate leads. You can also incorporate video, as well as links to your website and landing pages in this “Welcome” page. The best part is that creating custom pages for Facebook and Twitter is fairly inexpensive.

If you already have a Facebook and Twitter page, but you’re looking for help customizing both to match the look of your website and company branding, Turbo can help. Contact us today to learn more about our custom Facebook page and custom Twitter page development.

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Now I know what you are thinking, “2Billion tweets a month is a lot, but there is no way that number will continue to rise, it has to be on its way down…” Well what if I told you that Twitter reached its 1 billionth tweet back in the fall of 2008. Nearly 1 year later, it reached 5 billion tweets. In March of 2010, Twitter hit the 10 billion tweet mark, and now, less than 3 months later, they are over the 15 billion tweet mark. The graph would look something like this:

Aside from showing the insane growth of Twitter, these numbers tell us something else: Everyone and their mother is now on Twitter. That means there are that many more people out there to sell your products or services too. It is a great way to keep in touch, syndicate out your Blog Posts, or Network. Twitter is the best way to stay up to date on current issues build your business to a level you are happy with.

To learn more about Social Media Marketing and the Importance of Social Networking, click the red button at the top of the page to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Manager Client Services, Turbo Social Media

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In the newly released report by Michael A. Stelzner, “2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report”, we’ve discovered what marketers really want to know about Social Media Marketing.  In last year’s report, the big question was “Does Social Media Marketing work”.  Well that question has completely disappeared, and now the two big questions are “How do I do it” and “How do I prove it”.

Here are the Top 10 Social Media Marketing Questions that marketing professionals want to know from Michael Stelzner’s “2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report”:

#1: How do I measure social media return on investment? The number-one question marketers most want answered is how to track to social media return on investment.

#2: What are the social media marketing best practices? The next biggest question on people’s minds…”What works?”  What is the most effective way to drive business without “spamming”?  How do I make a message go viral?

#3: How do I best manage my time with social media? Many marketers recognize the enormous amount of time social media can consume. How much daily time do successful marketers spend on social media marketing?

#4: How do I reach my target markets with social media? It’s no surprise that marketers want to know how to narrow their social media efforts to an audience that matches their desired demographics.

#5: How do I generate traffic and leads using social media? Marketers want to understand how to drive traffic with social media and converting social media activities into sales leads. How do I obtain qualified subscribers to our blog, newsletter and/or Twitter feed?   How do I convert my social media contacts into customers or clients?

#6: How do I implement social media tactics? Many marketers are seeking step-by-step social media guidance and tactical advice.

#7: What are the latest social media trends? It seems marketers are looking for a crystal ball regarding the future of social media.  How do I stay current with all the changes?  What’s the next “big thing” in social media marketing?

#8: How do I get started? How to get started is still a major question in the minds of many marketers.  What are the steps to building a strong social media platform for my business?

#9: How do I integrate my social media activities? How do I make sure my social media activities are tied to my overall marketing goals?  Do they work together?  How do I develop a cohesive marketing strategy that includes social media?

#10: How do I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each platform? Given the choices available, marketers are looking for guidance before investing in specific social media networks.

So where are the answers? Those are a little harder to find.  But our Turbo team has the answers, and we’ll start addressing all of these questions in our blog and upcoming video series.

ALSO, we’re about to announce an exciting new program called the “3 Month Turbo LAUNCH and LEARN”. In this program, we spend the first month getting you correctly setup across all of the Social Media platforms, in the second month we help build your social media subscribers and networks with targeted prospects, and in the last month, we train you how to do run your program all by yourself!

For more information on this program, call our team at 877-673-7096 x2.

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Does this sound familiar? Well, if a similar situation has happened to you then you’re not alone. This isn’t the first time Yelp has been accused of such shady business practices. I have spoken to several business owners who have been propositioned by Yelp for their monthly advertising for roughly $300 a month. Upon declining the advertising offer these business owners mysteriously saw their “good” reviews disappear and their “not so good” reviews remain.

Yelp has vehemently denied all accusations. In fact, on their official blog they spell out various myths about Yelp to dispel any notion that there is extortion, or unethical business practices, going on. Now Yelp will have to defend itself in court, rather than their blog.

The fact is, Yelp has no clear cut policy on removing reviews. Many people see reviews disappear occasionally. Often times it is because the review is inappropriate, but Yelp claims that they can remove a review if the person who made the post is not “an active Yelp user”. The problem is that Yelp will not disclose the formula for “an active Yelp user”. They claim it is proprietary and confidential. This formula remains a mysterious algorithm.

At the very least Yelp is losing the trust of many of those who relied on them for reviews, especially small business owners. Given that Yelp devalues new or first-time reviewers, they are likely losing trust among these users as well. At most, Yelp is guilty of running an “extortion scheme”. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the case, but we’ve seen this happen before among other large internet juggernauts…they need to be kept in check!

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As we have discussed before, Social Networking is an extremely important and integral part of Social Media Marketing. However, in order to get the most out of it, you want to be sure you are using every part of these Social Networking sites to their fullest. If you have been doing everything we tell you to do (as you should be… let’s face it, I am amazing…), then your business is probably flourishing. However, we have not yet reached the pinnacle, as there is always more we can do.

One of the best ways to really grow your business, is the use and joining of different groups on LinkedIn. First of all, the groups are indexed by Google, meaning if you create a group, or join a group, the title of the group can be found in Google Search results. Secondly, the groups are a great place to interact and meet new and exciting individuals. There are discussions, and emails and a lot of networking that happens in these groups, and that is a great way to grow your network, which we all know is a great way to in turn, grow your business.

Just like all Social Networking sites, the best way to get results is to take full advantage of all options they offer. If you have a business, then a Facebook Fan page is important to you. If you have a  Twitter account, a Twitter Management tool such as Hootsuite is important. And if you have a LinkedIn account, then joining groups is the way to go!

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more Social Media Marketing and the Importance of LinkedIn Groups, check out the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here or give us a call at 877-673-7096

Article by Zack Zucker, Director of Operations, Turbo Social Media

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