Posts Tagged ‘Business’
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
The following is a repost from Chris Brogan’s Blog from almost two years ago. I know, I know, a couple of years on the internet is like ancient history. However, if you haven’t started using twitter or are struggling to see the relevance, this contains some great information and it’s well worth the repost several years later. So without further ado . . .
We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer.
Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. Further, you might have some really great ideas to add. Jump right in!
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
First Steps
- Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
- Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
- Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
- Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
- Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
- Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
- Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
- Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
- Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
- Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.
Ideas About WHAT to Tweet
- Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
- Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
- When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
- Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
- Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
- Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
- When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
- Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
- Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. – Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
- Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.
Some Sanity For You
- You don’t have to read every tweet.
- You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
- Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
- Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
- 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
- If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
- If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
- Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
- If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
- Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.
The Negatives People Will Throw At You
- Twitter takes up time.
- Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
- Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
- There are other ways to do this.
- As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
- Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
- Twitter is just for technonerds.
- Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
- Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
- Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.
Some Positives to Throw Back
- Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
- Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
- Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
- Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
- Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
- Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
- Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
- Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
- Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
- Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)
What else would you add? How are you using Twitter for your business?
Tags: Business, Chris Brogan, marketing strategies, Twitter
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
If you are a business owner or are thinking of starting a web site, this post is for you. As more and more traffic hits the web, it is very important for anyone thinking of starting their own web site to have some basic knowledge about what that requires.
In this post, I hope to help you understand a few basics BEFORE launching that site.
Domains . . . you are the king of your castle
The domain name or domain as they are often referred to is actually the name of your web site, rather it is the name that URLs use to access web sites. Or another way to put it, as Wikipedia so eloquently explains,” domain names are often seen in analogy to real estate in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest ‘quality’ domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimization, and many other criteria.”
So for example, our domain is called www.y-desygn.com . You can have several domains point to one server; you can type in www.y-desygn.com or www.ydesygn.com , both will take you to the same web site.
You can also have sub-domains under your main domain, meaning you can create multiple pages under the domain, such as your blog or your storefront. An example being the sub-domain you are on right now, www.y-desygn.com/ydesygnblog .
If you are creating a web site, it is HIGHLY recommended that YOU OWN your domain or at the very least, have the person buying it on your behalf make you the administrator and enter your email information as the administrative contact in whois.
As web designers, we have seen too many customers who don’t own their domain or are not the administrator of their domain, suffer many a headache when they try to transfer to different hosting or when the company who purchased the domain goes out of business. Unfortunately many companies feel threatened and refuse to let go of the domain when it comes to transferring hosting, leaving the business owner in quite a dilemma.
Now that you know, you won’t be one of them.
Hosting . . . and we’re not talking your typical dinner party
After you have your domain name, you need a place to host your site. Hosting simply means a “space” to store your web site. A hosting company will store the files for your web site on a server that is always on, so that when someone “clicks” on your site it is readily available. There are many different types of hosting accounts such as free, dedicated, virtual dedicated, managed, cloud and so forth that I won’t go into here, but feel free to click on each one as it will take you to pages that will define each of them for you.
It is important to choose the best option for what you are trying to accomplish, if you are just creating a personal page to share with friends and family or a blog, a free account might be the right option. However, if you want to create a storefront and showcase 100’s of products, this definitely wouldn’t be the right option. You would want to go with something like a managed account. I say this because If you have no web experience, it is much less complicated to have someone else manage the security and maintenance of your account than to try to do it yourself.
Typically you “rent or lease” hosting from a 3rd party company that takes care of managing the web site for you. We are happy to help you with your hosting needs, contact us today for a free quote.
Tags: Arizona Web Design Services, Business, domains, Hosting, Web Design, Web Sites, Y Desygn
Posted in Web Site Information | 3 Comments »
