If you printed Twitter:
• The paper would weigh 3.5 MILLION pounds- the equivalent of 82 school busses loaded with 84 kids
If you printed Twitter:
• 7 Billion tweets are composed of approximately 104,860,000,000 words which is the equivalent of approximately 133,000 copies of the King James version of the Bible.

If you printed Twitter:
• And spent every workday doing nothing but reading tweets, it would take 2912 years to finish.

If you printed Twitter:
• All the pages of your printing, laid end to end, would stretch 60, 763 miles; equivalent to 2.5 times around the globe.

If you printed Twitter:
• It would cost you $24,500,000 using an average ink jet printer with only black ink. To add the Twitter blue, that total jumps up to $55,606,250.

If you printed Twitter:
• Keeping up with only 26 Million Tweets a day would require 30 Inkjet printers working around the clock to print over 1,300,000 pages daily.

Are you sitting down?
The facts and figures you just read are from 2010. It is now 2011 and those numbers are increasing exponentially EVERY DAY! How big is Twitter? Try it and see.

Image via Wikipedia

Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the most popular avenues used by businesses to build their client base and bring awareness to their services and offerings. Twitter is not a trend, it’s a tool- A powerful tool to quickly connect and bring your marketing potential to the next level.

Here are some figures from just one year ago:

• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users.
• New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day.
• 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month.
• 75% of Twitter traffic comes from outside Twitter.com (i.e. via third party applications.)
• Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API.
• Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day.
• Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day.
• Of Twitter’s active users, 37 percent use their phone to tweet.
• Over half of all tweets (60 percent) come from third party applications.
• Twitter itself has grown: in the past year alone, it has grown from 25 to 175 employees.
As of September, 2011, here are some new figures:

• The microblogging service has a total of 200 million registered users
• Some 55 million users log on to Twitter from their phone or tablet every month
• Twitter.com now sees 400 million visitors a month, up from 250 million at the beginning of the year
• Twitter now hosts roughly a billion tweets every five days
• 230 million tweets every day
• The latest new record number of tweets per second is 8,900- set when Hurricane Irene hit New York and Beyonce announced her pregnancy.

That last stat shows the reach and diversity of the power of twitter. Imagine what it could be doing for your business.

Related articles

• Top 9 Twitter Apps For Higher Efficiency (kylelacy.com)
• 5 Twitter Tips to Give Your Content More Exposure (hubspot.com)
• 6 Ways to Capitalize on Twitter’s Promoted Tweets (hubspot.com)

For every business or product there is a different approach to making the most of the exposure needed to succeed. Even bringing the features of an individual to the spotlight takes a certain finesse. Navigating through all the different choices and options can quickly become an overwhelming task.

Being able to work with so many interesting people in my career has led me to embark on a new milestone within my profession. I have decided to apply my several years of fine tuning and studying the inner workings of marketing techniques for individuals, large corporations and everything in between, and participate in speaking engagements to help you or your group or organization learn how to navigate through the ever changing maze of developments and techniques in the marketing realm.

It’s a new adventure for me and I look forward to all of the many interesting people I will get to meet and interact with in my travels. The opportunity to unleash the powerful force behind the right kind of marketing to fit your needs is just a phone call away.

This is incredibly common, and now many businesses who want to use the superior Facebook Page have gone through the frustrating process of suggesting that your friends on the personal Profile “like” your Page. The conversion rate for this process is generally quite low – you’re never going to get even half of your friends to like your Page. Using a personal profile as a brand is actually a violation of Facebook’s terms of service (TOS), and by doing so, you run the risk of Facebook pulling out the big stick and revoking your access. So what do you do?

Now, you can take the business profile and use the Profile Migration tool to set up an official Brand page. Brand pages are better suited for local marketing because they allow anyone to “like” you (no approving friends), all of your current friends will be switched over to fans, there’s no maximum on how popular you can get, and they offer small businesses more robust media and promotion offerings. The fact is, Brand pages are simply the better option. By not using them and sticking to a personal profile, you limit your brand’s ability to really reach out and engage customers.

However, there are some unexpected results that inhibit the functionality of this application.

• It will create a new Page from your personal profile. You do NOT get the option to move your friends over to a pre-existing Fan page.
• The name of your profile will likely be the name of the new Fan page. Changing the name of your profile is also problematic, because Facebook doesn’t allow you to use anything but a “real person” name. And since you can only change the name of a Fan page with less than 100 friends, that’s going to be a major issue for many.

The process is relatively new and some minor hiccups are being worked out, but you can be assured we are staying on top off the progress and will be ready and available for you to make a smooth transition and have all the offerings and benefits the brand page has to offer.

Using a personal profile as a brand is actually a violation of Facebook’s terms of service (TOS), and by doing so, you run the risk of Facebook pulling out the big stick and revoking your access. Wow, sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? I mean, really, you’re just trying to make a buck…

Not to worry, there’s a better way to expand your exposure and reach on the big boy of social networks without fear of the big stick coming out.

As a small business owner you want to get yourself set up with an official Brand page. Brand pages are better suited for local marketing because they allow anyone to “like” you (no approving friends), there’s no maximum on how popular you can get, and they offer SMBs more robust media and promotion offerings. The fact is, Brand pages are simply the better option. By not using them and sticking to a personal profile, you limit your brand’s ability to really reach out and engage customers.

With the recently introduced Profile Migration tool, Facebook is making it even easier to have much more functionality and better promote your business to customers. Here is an easy to follow Youtube video that takes you through the process: Profile Migration Tool

Personal Profiles with your Business name are not the Facebook way to go anymore, so make the switch today!

The issue is that I take profuse notes in a Word doc when I’m meeting with clients. Since I can type about 9.6x faster and 187% more legibly than I can write by hand.  I typically write out task items and notes like this:

Task #1

• This is important to do
• This should also be done

Task #2

• This is uber-important
• Don’t forget to do this, or client will kill you

When I’m done taking all my notes, I add those to Basecamp for the rest of the team, and so we have a nice backup that can also be searched later by our staff or the client.

The Problem is that Word formatting doesn’t allow a simple copy/paste into Basecamp.  And while I’m pretty savvy at writing in Textile, I’m not as fast and therefore don’t do it when I’m working in Word.

The Solution that I found several months ago was a Macro for Word that would convert a .docx into a format that is ready for MediaWiki.  That’s not exactly what I needed, because it’s close – but it’s not Textile. I was still having to manually edit my notes and that was a pain.

The New Solution is that I’ve hacked the original file from InfoPro.com to meet my needs exactly, and the result is a perform conversion from Word to Textile that I can copy and paste without any editing! Thanks to those guys for giving me the start to work with, because I would never have taken the time to do this if I had to start from scratch!

Installation

1. Download our Word2Textile macro (<-right-click and Save As)
2. Start Word
3. Bring up the Visual Basic Editor (Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor)
4. From the VBE, import the macro library (File->Import File…) and select the file you downloaded

Usage

1. Open a word document to convert
2. Run the Word2Textile macro by bringing up the Macros dialog (Tools->Macro->Macros), selecting Word2Textile and clicking Run.
3. The macro converts the document to Textile markup and places a copy of the content on the system clipboard.
4. Open up the Basecamp message or writeboard you will use, and be sure you are in Textile/HTML mode. It should look like this:
5. Paste your content (which is automatically copied to your clipboard by the Macro) and Voila!

If this little technique saves you as much time as it saves me, then you’re welcome.

Facebook, has finally provided something that businesses have been requesting for some time: a migration tool to convert a personal Profile into a Facebook Page.

Why would you want to do that? Profiles are for meant individual people, they aren’t suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands, and public figures with better communication, more opportunities for expression, and improved relevancy.

Gone are the days of using a personal profile that was setup with a business name and “friending” as many people as possible. The most prevalent issue with this strategy (aside from violating Facebook’s Terms of Service), is that a personal profile has a 5,000 friend limit.

The migration tool allows you to convert that personal profile into a Page, and carry all of your friends over there with you. This is far superior to creating a new Page for your business and “Suggesting to Friends” using Facebook’s admin tool, which typically has a very low conversion rate.

Be aware though, not all content will make the transition. From Facebook Developer Blog “Be aware that when you convert your profile to a Page, your profile pictures will be transferred, and all of your friends will be automatically added as people who like your Page. No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning your migration.”

It’s a smart move to utilize this exciting feature and bring the full power behind the Facebook network to your business. We can help you make the transition and get the most out of your online marketing.

The team at Valeo Marketing is on the cutting edge of the latest developments within the Social Media and Search Engine market. By staying up to date and informed on the most current trends and applications, Valeo Marketing can transform your online marketing efforts into a formidable online presence.

With attention to detail and customer service beyond what you expect, the team at Valeo Marketing applies proven techniques utilizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) procedures. Understanding the importance of using the right Key words, providing the most relevant information and knowing the best way to receive optimal exposure on the web, the team can help your business navigate through the channels to bring you visibility and business growth online call 800.647.4552 or contact us.

If you aren’t satisfied with the results your online efforts are bringing, or especially if you currently don’t have any online efforts, it’s time to contact the Team at Valeo Marketing. Let their expertise, knowledge and professionalism help your business realize its full potential.

Image via CrunchBase

According to the Chinese calendar, we’re in the year of the rabbit.  I guess that makes sense, because things sure are hopping right along in the mobile world.

A Nielsen Company report from October 2010 shows that 29.7 percent of mobile subscribers in the United States have a Smartphone.  The two most popular at the time of the report were the iPhone and the Blackberry.  Twenty-two percent of users were running the Android Operating System.  What does this mean?  Not much unless you’re looking into the joining the wave of marketers using Smartphones to sell their wares!

How are people using their Smartphones and what difference does it make in marketing?

Take a look at this poll posted in The New York Times back in September:

A survey of 4000 people determined that most people wouldn’t even THINK about leaving home without their mobile phone.  And what are they doing with their phones?  The majority of them are playing games, checking the weather, and surfing the internet.  More and more are performing daily work tasks, but the majority is still using it socially.  How are they doing this?  They are using applications (or “apps”).  An application downloaded by the user is where your marketing strategy comes in to play.  Sixty-one percent of Smartphone users buy and play games regularly.  People load the game, they see an advertisement, and they are likely to click on it.  Sometimes users click on an advertisement accidentally.  That’s ok. It still puts your business in front of them and that is the ultimate goal.

Think about it using your own usage as an example.  As time passes web surfers (a.k.a. potential consumers), have learned to tune out the advertisements they see on webpages, as they have the commercials on TV.  We’re too used to seeing them.  Insert a new method of advertising here … via games and other apps that are being downloading and used daily on Smartphones.  This method of advertising is still fresh and new!  People are seeing it.

With Smartphones, a whole new set of opportunities has opened up for the marketer.  User location data is more readily available, which means more targetability.  All advertising is “opt-in” because the user has made the first point of contact by downloading the app.  And most users are on their phones every day so it’s more in their face and personal.  It’s a great opportunity!

So get out there!  Get to work on that marketing plan, updating it to include mobile phone application advertising!

Interesting fact:  In a poll taken by the Nielsen Company in September 2010, it was determined that when thinking of getting a new phone, women will likely choose the iPhone, which uses the iOS, whereas men will prefer the Android system.

The Problem
I meet with clients and take copious meeting notes. Since we use Basecamp for everything in our agency, we archive all meeting notes into Basecamp so that they are backed up and can be referenced by all teams.  The issue is that I take my meeting notes in Word, since it’s easiest for me to quickly and easily produce an outline.  Getting that data turned into the same info for Basecamp was always a pain because it required a lot of manual reformatting, which equals an enormous waste of time.

The Solution
I figured that there had to be an easy way to convert Word formatting into Textile formatting. Instead of using bullet points in Word, you use asterisks (*) to create bullet points with Textile.  Easy enough, but when I get on a roll and really need to quickly get thoughts down- I find that I’m much better at hitting the Tab key to create sub-points and quickly get down an outline.

After a little poking around, I found exactly what I needed to convert a Word document with standard bullet point formatting into a Textile formatted doc that I can just copy/paste into Basecamp. And Poof! It was just this simple: you install a Visual Basic macro into Word that does it all for you with a few clicks.

Update 6/10/11:  After playing using this a few times, I realized that I need to hack this file so that it is more geared for Textile, and less for WikiMedia.  I’ve updated the link below so that the download is of my file, which will work much better for Basecamp users.

Installation

1. Download Valeo’s Word2Textile macro (<-right-click and Save As)
2. Start Word
3. Bring up the Visual Basic Editor (Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor or Alt+F11).
4. From the VBE, import the macro library (File->Import File…) and select the file you downloaded.

Usage

1. Open a word document to convert
2. Run the Word2MediaWiki macro by bringing up the Macros dialog (Tools->Macro->Macros… or Alt+F8), selecting Word2MediaWiki and clicking Run.
3. The macro converts the document to MediaWiki markup and places a copy of the content on the system clipboard.
4. Switch to a MediaWiki editor and paste the result.

That just saved me about 2.37 minutes of reformatting my meeting notes.  I project that will save me… (computer beepy noises) …  more time than that down the road.  Yeah – you’re welcome.

A big thanks to http://www.infpro.com for providing the great VB script and instructions for it’s use!