Social Media Services

Developing corporate strategies for forward thinking businesses.

Marketing Is Changing

Social media is changing the way people find out about new products and services. Social Media Services helps very small to large corporations learn how to interact with their clients in the coming marketing shift .

Twitter Tip 3: Engage Others

The most important aspect of using social media for business purposes is to engage other individuals and in a way that they want to be engaged. Working to get business from social media channels involves a new form of marketing that is less advertising and more education.

Advertising has long inundated us with so many ad impressions in a day (by some accounts over 800). People are sick of ads that are not entertaining or give them some information.

On Twitter providing links to valuable resources, helping others with issues, etc makes you a valuable resource, and top of mind when they need to make a referral or purchase. @Replying people with information they might be interested and monitoring conversations is an important aspect of being engaging on twitter. A good goal is that 50% or more of your twitter messages should include an @reply to someone else.

Tags: engage, tip, Twitter

23 Sep 09 | Twitter | Read on | Comments (0)

Twitter Tip 2 – Who Should I Follow?

When people begin using Twitter, they often wonder with whom they should become friends. Chances are they don’t know too many people on Twitter right now. This is much diffferent than services like Facebook or MySpace where they might know 20, 50, 100 people immediately. But Twitter is definitely more of a free-for-all.

On Facebook, etiquette allows you to not be friends with someone if you do not know them. Facebook is a multilateral friending system. This means that both parties must agree they want to be friends on facebook before either can see the other’s profile. It’s perfectly acceptable to deny a friend request.

On Twitter, it’s a unilateral process: someone can be a follower of someone else without that person accepting. (Although if the person doesn’t want a certain follower they can block them.) Therefore the etiquette is quite different. It’s perfectly acceptable to follow someone you don’t know, but maybe you are interested in their messages.

In fact when you first start out on Twitter, my recommendation is to follow as many people as you can comfortably. (We’ll discuss in a future post how to correctly manage 1000s of followers.) Use http://search.twitter.com to find people talking about topics you are interested in. I also enjoy using TweetGrid to follow multiple topics at the same time. You can then easily identify these individuals interested in your topics. Follow them, follow the people they follow. Just start following people, if there is something you don’t like or something you find annoying, simply unfollow those people.

If you have friends that are on Twitter, follow their friends. Get as many following you as you can early on. It will help you build a large following quickly.

Tags: followers, friends, search, tweetgrid, Twitter

14 Jan 09 | Twitter | Read on | Comments (0)

Twitter Tip 1 – What Type of Messages Should You Post?

You Are What You Tweet

When people begin to use Twitter, it’s difficult to figure out what sort of messages to include. There are some people that advocate an all busienss approach. There are some that suggest a 50 / 50 ratio between business and other items. We recommend a 80/20 approach, in which 80% of all your messages should be interesting info and non business related.

The most important thing is to be yourself.

The makeup of your message content should be what your personality is. If you’re interested in real estate, share some real estate articles, if it’s beekeeping share some bee photos, if you have a silly side post silly messages. Whatever you are is what your Twitter account should be.

This is why Tweeting about business just doesn’t work. Because people don’t like to connect and build relationships with people who are all businesses. They want someone interesting. If you went to a party and all you did was talk about yourself, few people would want to talk to you. A favorite comedian of mine, Brian Regan, calls this being a “Me Monster.”

Don’t Be A Me Monster

Interact with other people, click on their links, see what they are about and build deep meaningful connections with each of the people in your followers list.

Tags: 80/20, messages, Twitter

10 Jan 09 | Twitter | Read on | Comments (0)

The Power Of Twitter

Twitter is a free online service that allows users to send messages about what they are doing at that moment, links on the Internet they found interesting, pictures, videos, etc. The user base is growing each day, and at present time over 3 million messages are sent on the service each day. The power is in the sharing of information and data.

Businesses Can Tap Into This

I believe that Twitter is the most powerful free tool for online business marketing. The key is to share information, and become a trusted resource for knwoledge of any capacity. That resource can be for entertainment or information. Once the relationships are created, then selling can begin. But it’s important to build the relationships first. This important fact is what seperates those successful Twitter marketers from those that fail.

Stay tuned for a multi part series on using Twitter effectively in marketing.

Tags: relationships, Twitter

10 Jan 09 | Twitter | Read on | Comments (0)

Social Media Services, a division of Alterity Marketing and PR, is a full service online marketing company. The company is primed to help companies from as small as one person to as large as 1000s learn the ins and outs of utilizing social media in marketing. We can assist with blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. We also help create and implement marketing budgets that usually result in a reduction of expenditures.