Inc. Magazine has a great piece on using social blogging to grow your business and touch on 8 tips to grow your business:

1. Position Yourself as an Expert
2. Share Experiences and Information
3. Keep it Fresh and Mix it Up
4. Encourage Interaction and Feedback
5. Use Schedulers and Update Apps
6. Make Your Blog the Central Hub
7. Link Back To Your Website
8. Use a Personal Touch

If you use these tips, I promise you, you will start seeing an improvement within your websites traffic and even search engine optimization efforts. If you look at the top experts in your niche, they may already be using these channels to get more exposure to their cause.

Some individuals, and I’ve personally seen this, you may have also, have actually grown larger businesses than actual companies by really being active in social media channels and establishing a presence and making themselves an authority in their niche. That’s the trick…positioning yourself as an expert as Tip #1.

To be successful in social media, you must understand the way people interact THROUGH social media. If you want to start building channels to just link to your own stories, talk about business, you will lose from the get-go. Social media engagement is about personal touch, connecting with your fans/followers and creating a good source that will can use and engage.

Source: MarketingPilgrim.com

The Facebook fan page layout allows those admins of fan pages actually engage in Facebook activity as the name of the Facebook page instead of an individual. So, if you want to leave a comment on someones page, your business name (Facebook fan page name) will appear instead of your own. What does this mean? This means you can drive those users back to your Facebook fan page profile instead of back to your profile.

Hopefully this doesn’t bring about a spam element to how some marketers will engage with this new element.

Hey…wait…do you know why you need Twitter followers? Do you what know you’ll do with those followers? How exactly does Twitter fit in to your overall online marketing strategy? These are all questions you need answers to before really worrying about Twitter and having many followers.

Twitter is a great online marketing tool most companies engaged in having an online marketing strategy use. Go to most any blog or website these days that are established and you’ll see a ‘Follow Me’ Twitter button (as well as Facebook.)

For the purpose of this post and blog, this post pertains to ideas and tips to gain more Twitter followers for small businesses.

We know the power of Twitter by now but the questions is how to get more Twitter followers? Sure, most online businesses, as well as offline, know or heard that Twitter can be a great marketing tool but how how do they use it and how do they actually get anyone to follow them?

Here are some tips AND ideas to increase Twitter followers to your Twitter profile:

1. Have a Twitter button on all your web properties. Make sure to have FOLLOW ME Twitter button on your website, blog, Facebook, etc. Anywhere you can get exposure to advertising your Twitter page.

2. Interact with other Tweeters. Make sure you interact with other people so they can follow you back. Look for related keywords in your niche or industry and in the search box, type it is. See what people are saying and start replying to peoples tweets with your comments, opinions, ideas, etc.

3. Add people to your profile. The more people you follow, the more people will follow you. This may be the easiest strategy but won’t create an overall good organic Twitter profile. I wouldn’t recommend it BUT it is a great way to get started.

4. Promote your Twitter profile with contest. Announce Twitter content on your other properties to push your Twitter profile page.

5. A must that you include and push your Twitter profile in your newsletters if you have one.

6. Pay a person with large amounts of followers to tweet about your business with your @ name so people can click. This can work great if you can somehow get in touch with someone with thousands and thousands of followers.

7. Include your Twitter page in your email and everyones email signature in the company should have the company Twitter account when replying to customers, etc.

8. Contribute. Contribute. Contribute. This goes back to point #2. If you want to gain some ground in any portal, community, etc, you must be active. If you want to succeed in Twitter, you need to be an active user and treat it like you would your own website.

Quick TIP: Check out some Twitter Demograhics.

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US Demographics:

GENDER:
-45% Male
-55% Female

AGE GROUPS:
-13-17 make up 22% of the DEMO
-18-34 make up 42% of the DEMO

RACE:
-75% Cauc
-13% Afr American (big room for growth in this sector- still more than CAUC by average index!)
-5% Asian (big room for growth in this sector)
-6% Hispanic (big room for growth in this sector)
-1% Other

AFFINITY TO INTEREST:

Communities 1.7x
Fashion/Cosmetics 1.7x
Politics & Commentar 1.6x
Instant Messenger 1.6x
Humor 1.6x
Discussion/Chat 1.6x
News/Information 1.6x
Music/Radio 1.6x
Science & Technology 1.6x
Parenting 1.6x
Communities/Teens 1.6x
Teens 1.6x
Baby 1.6x
Science/Nature 1.6x
Games – Online Play 1.6x

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For this post purposes, we’re looking at the average time a user spends on Facebook and the average time a user spends on Twitter. Are you thinking the answer may be obvious? I guess so. If you think about the purpose each of these two social networks serve, they are pretty different, right? So, we would agree that users spend more time on Facebook because it is a much larger network and for the most part, can perform more actions ON the network such as uploading pictures, sharing music, etc.

Last year, Nielsen put out a chart showing the time spent on the top 10 social networking websites (2009) and you can find that report here. Looking at Alexa now, here are the statistics, currently.

TWITTER:
3 month avg min:7.65667 -2%

FACEBOOK:
3 month avg min:32.04833 -1%

While Facebook shows a significant time different spent on its website, nevertheless, it’d be interesting to see where users log in to more frequently.

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Have you seen this widget yet? Basically you can find it right here at the very bottom of the main title of this post. When you click the like button on this post for example, a small facebook pop up window will appear asking you if you’re sure you want to share the story and you go from there. Once you do, it will appear in YOUR profile as saying “John Does likes Steps To Add A Facebook Like Button in WordPress in the PalatnikFactor.com.”

STEPS TO ADD A FACEBOOK LIKE BUTTON IN WORDPRESS

1. Go to your wordpress admin area.

2. Click on APPERANCE–> EDITOR

3. On the right hand side on Theme files under Template, choose ‘Single Post’ (single.php)

4. Paste the following code in to that file anywhere you want the button to appear

5. Click save.

Now your whole wordpress blog, every post, will be Facebook ready for people to hit like and start distributing your content.

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I think case studies are the best examples and a great way to see how different companies are using Twitter. This post was influenced by a post I read which is so great titled, “Twitter: 4 Business Case Studies.”

Let’s look at some examples. The first one is JET BLUE as that is the first example in the post. Jet Blue has joined Twitter really for the same reason that many of the companies today are using Twitter, for better customer service. Twitter provides another channel for companies to connect with consumers and have questions to their problems answered. Jet Blue currently has over 1.6 million followers! As soon as they announce a deal on Twitter, that is instantly going to 1.6 million people…any better ideas on marketing a special?

Esty is another example that actually is a great example because they use Twitter in many ways as the post states the following:

* Alert followers to particularly creative products from Etsy sellers
* Share valuable tips & tricks
* Provide information about upcoming events and promotions on the site.
* Share information from individual Etsy sellers (via “retweets”),
* Monitor and respond to Etsy-related questions and concerns that users express via Twitter
* Garner feedback and ideas instantaneously, effectively creating focus groups from the @Etsy followers.
* Discover users’ favorite Etsy items, design blogs, and projects
* Tool for impromptu surveys and feedback
Etsy currently has over 1.2 million followers and really uses Twitter and its capabilities to the best of its abilities.

WholeFoods Supermarket has a Twitter account! They communicate with all customers the same way e-commerce companies communicate with customers. They respond to many or most of their tweets with people asking questions regarding products or even answer complaints on Twitter.

The question you may be asking yourself and many do who have a company and a concern is about negative comments on Twitter. I think quite the opposite actually. Negative comments will be said whether you’re on Twitter or not. SO, why not be on Twitter to respond to negative comments and hopefully turn that negative into a positive. Twitter can be a great channel to please those customers who have had a negative experience with your company.

Set-up a Twitter account today and little by little grow your followers and can lead to better customer service and sales.

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Why should I create a community?

A community can serve multiple purposes and can be very powerful provided you have a clear objective. Some of the objectives for you to consider include:

* Brand building and promotion. Coke’s community on Facebook has more than 5.7 million members

* Customer feedback. Starbucks’ community has more than 7.5 million members and the community decides the flavor of the brand’s next coffee.

* Lead generation and online sales. Gunpowder restaurant in New Delhi does much of its table booking through its Facebook fan page

* Online reputation management. Dell’s Facebook page for small and medium-sized businesses is a great tool for the company to continuously strengthen its reputation as a brand that is committed to customer service.

Read The Whole Story @ Wall Street Journal —-> How to Build a Great Company Facebook Page

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The one factor that has many small-medium size business owner is measuring if Twitter is a waste of time or really does bring good value to the marketing strategy. As much as I agree that Twitter is very important to an overall marketing campaign, it shouldn’t be the focus of all, specially if you’re limited on resources.

Here are a couple of Twitter tools that can help you out as posted in the article:

1) ReTweetRank: “measures the amount of retweets about you or your post per day, and try and which can be used it to compare your retweet rating against your competitors or peers.”

2) Twinfluence: “allows marketers to track how many of their followers are actually listening to their messages. “It helps to track the rate at which your campaign is growing among other metrics.”

3) TweetEffect: “lets a marketer track how many people are responding and reacting to posts. “This helps you identify what is and what isn’t resonating with your followers,” she says.”

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If you run an e-commerce business and think many of the young demographic isn’t judging your website on certain factors such as a Twitter page, Facebook page, etc, you’re DEAD WRONG. As the new generation comes up already used to these sites and a part of their lives and the web, they look for these elements on websites to engage.

The four essential elements in the social scope you must have are:

1- BLOG

4- ONLINE REVIEWS AND OPINIONS

Read the entire piece and have a great list of resources @ INC —-> Business Owners Social Media ToolKit

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“A survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) found that in-person communication was social media users’ top impetus to start an online search for a specific item. Social media users were even more influenced by face-to-face word-of-mouth than average adults.”

Read The Story at eMarketer —–> Spurring Social Users to Search

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As important as it is to promote landing pages, promote your brand, it is also very important to promote content. Within that content, there is always the possibility of converting the reader into a user, buyer, subscriber and so fourth.

WebProNews has a great example and illustration of this new feature. You can read the story at WebProNews @ —–> Facebook Launches “Promote your Post”

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I have seen just about every small to large business owners have a fan page online, from local pest control companies to very large online retailers pushing product and branding through Facebook fan pages. The trick, or strategy I should say is establishing a base to then let your fans do the work for you. I think and believe the main reason and objective for a Facebook fan page is to have much better engagement with consumers and in a way, become a more transparent company. In this day in age in media, social media plays a huge role. Companies nationwide and even world-wide are putting more and more resources into the web and the social web (Facebook Ads, etc.)

A Facebook page can create lots of credibility not only with your existing customers but with new customers who are really looking and thinking about why they should trust your company and if its safe to do an online transaction (if you’re an e-retailer.) Let’s not forget, YES, e-commerce grows year after year (except 2009 I believe it was stable) but as e-commerce grows, so does online fraud (identity theft online) and users are becoming more and more weary of this issue. It’s very important and something you have to work on daily to make each visitor feel it is safe to purchase from your website. These portals, such as Facebook and Twitter allow for this because they know once you “screw” them, if ever, they can go right to those portals and announce it to the world.

Once your Facebook page has taken off, it can literally be one of your top resources for traffic and sales. The key to your facebook page taking off is LETTING YOUR FANS AND FRIENDS DO THE WORK FOR YOU AND BEING ACTIVE ON A DAILY BASIS promoting sales, specials, news, and whatever you can do to engage the user and keep brand awareness on a daily basis.

For SEO reasons, your Facebook Fan Page can be a big factor in the SERPs as you can rank really well for your company name (besides your website) for reputation management reasons. Make sure you have a vanity URL to go along with your facebook fan page, i.e. facebook.com/companyname. This can play a big role if you’re trying to push a site out of ranking for any particular reason as this one page can rank really well with Facebooks authority with Google.

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The current issue with Buzz that can make it a failure is it doesn’t not integrate with Facebook. While it does have some integration with Twitter (18 mil users), you can tweet from Twitter and it’ll appear in Buzz, but you cant tweet from Buzz to appear in Twitter meaning you still have to use the Twitter portal. NOW, if and it doesn’t YET integrate with Facebook (400 mil users), that is a HUGE problem in having people sign up to yet ANOTHER portal.

As reported in Mashable, Facebook is currently working on a project to launch an email service to go against Googles G-mail. IF, and the question may really be WHEN at this point, Facebook launches an email platform, which currently its called TITAN (in the works,) it can really go up against and beat Google overnight with 400 Facebook users. NOW, will people then change to use Facebook email and leave GMAIL behind? Doubtful. At least at first.

Axon from Mashable says, “I can picture one other success scenario, though: a service that aggregates other services’ features and content, and then offers up its own set of unique perks (like Buzz’s noise-control algorithms) that make the social web experience better. People would feel comfortable switching for the extra perks, because they wouldn’t have to leave their existing connections behind.

The outlook could change if Buzz integrates with Facebook the way it does with Twitter. Unless that happens, though, you’re better off keeping your bets on Facebook in the coming year or two — at least if your standard of success is something greater than niche appeal.”

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As an online marketer and owner of a business, I measure social media success on two metrics depending on what channel we’re using. If you want to talk about Facebook Ads or Myspace Ads, you’re obviously using conversion rate and cost as a measure of ROI although that may not be considered social media marketing, moreso PPC, from a social platform. Now, if we’re talking about investing time and money into Twitter, Digg, that type of social media , traffic is really the best ROI measurement.

So, how are these companies measuring ROI, or are they even doing so?

“According to a survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, less than one in five marketers measured their social media ROI in 2009.” “Marketers believe that measuring true ROI for social media is difficult,” said Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO and author of the Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media.” “There are so many metrics available that it is difficult to choose which ones are the most important. In addition, marketers do not start with clear objectives for using social media.”

There is a widespread tendency for social media marketers to focus on Website traffic as their default measurement tool. In several independent surveys and studies, Website traffic was deemed the most popular way of measuring social media marketing efforts.

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