I use two applications for Twitter link shrinking for my own use and for clients. If I am using Social Oomph for tweet scheduling I also use a bit.ly account to shrink all my links outside of Social Oomph. If I am using HootSuite, I let HootSuite shrink and track my links. I like both applications.

On bit.ly, make sure you just don’t use it to shrink links, but get the value by setting up your own account first. When I use bit.ly I am able to see the number of link clicks web wide and those that my own tweet generated. In HootSuite I see similar information but in a graphical format. Both allow you to see what links where clicked and give you an idea of the viral and traffic generation nature of Twitter.

Once you or a client see the power of the links back to your website as well as to informational topics you’ll be sold on the fact that the time you invest in Twitter has value. So if you are tweet haphazardly and not tracking links, now’s the time to make a change and start measuring what you do on Twitter.

First here is the link to set up your Google Base account.  When you load your products and you will do this in a very special syntax your products will then have the opportunity to be shown on Google Products pages as well as in the organic results under a listing called Shopping.

Sometimes a pay per click customer will see a competitors item shown with an image in the organic results and think that this is an AdWords vehicle and that if they set up AdWords image ads there images of products will show in the organic results of Google.com, this is not the case. Google Base is unique and another free search vehicle and is not associated with participation in Google AdWords, although Google AdWords text ads may show on the Google Products shopping page but only as text ads.

You can submit your product listing to Google Base as either a tab delimited text spreadsheet or as an XML data feed. I personally like the XML data feed. For more information on the specifics of how to do this and the format, please visit this Google Base information page on data feeds.

Once your feed is created, you will load the feed using FTP to a special location that Google provides. After that it is up to Google if they will show your products, images, pricing and information when it matches a search.

For e-commerce sellers Google Base provides another great way to showcase your products using Google.

This is the situation. On one account a user actually direct messaged us and said did you know you sent me a money making scheme tweet? We never tweet about things like that either personally or for clients. In several of the applications we use for Twitter like TweetDeck and HootSuite this tweet from us never showed. But when I went to www.Twitter.com to the account tweets I uncovered links to videos and other tweets that I know we did not do.

Here’s what you should do if this happens to you to.

1. Change your Twitter password immediately. As I could do this, it told me that an individual had not hacked the Twitter accounts, but rather an application which I had allowed access to was using my Twitter account to sneakily send out their own self serving links and tweet. Hmm, this is very bad.

2. In the Twitter account connections tab, I disabled all connections and shut off the access for all applications. When you do this you break the connection for all applications. Make sure if you use HootSuite, Social Oomph or TweetDeck, make sure to update your account with the new Twitter password or you will not be able to use those applications.

I am not sure but I suspect either TwitterFeed (hate to think this may be true) or more likely Twellow. All accounts were not spammed seriously but even one tweet that we don’t write that promotes something we have not approved is not okay.

The bottom line is be very careful with Twitter. I love the application, the reach, the viral opportunities, but do not allow others to access your Twitter following and sabotage what you are doing for their own sneaky and selfish use. If I find out which application has done this, I will for sure post the information so we can encourage their blacklisting. For more information from Twitter on what to do if you have been hacked visit the Twitter Hacked page on Twitter.com.

When a problem arises, for you as the business owner your best tactic is to listen actively to a complaint and then to find out what it is that the customer feels is fair to resolve the issue. Sometimes to offer a refund is the best approach and sometimes it is best to redo whatever was an issue. Either way a prompt and honest response is needed. There is nothing worse than a customer who has had an issue and then waited and waited for a phone call. Quick assistance can put out a fire rapidly.

Having a signed letter of agreement before you start work is also extremely helpful as this prevents situations where a customer states you said you would do this and you did not. If you spell out what you do in the agreement and both parties sign the agreement the additional request is handled as a change order with an additional charge or a comped charge if you are so inclined.

If you have made a mistake in handling a customer complaint, sometimes there is no way to go back and fix the problem once it has happened, but you can make sure to learn from it. Several times in my career I have said to myself “well, that didn’t go so well. Note to self, don’t do that again!”.  Use these situations as opportunities to learn from a mistake and move forward building new customer focused strategies for the future.

1. Blogging and SEO - Working Hand in Hand

2. Twitter Made Easy with Social Oomph

3. Personal Information on Google - Can You Ever Remove It?

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First let me share with you some statistics from client accounts showing their actual growth over time.

Client One: start=0, 8/13= 187 followers, 9/1=308 follower, 10/241 566 followers

Client Two: start=0, 8/13=89 followers, 9/1=220 followers, 10/21 371 followers

Client Three: start=0, 9/1=64 followers, 9/14=117 followers, 10/21=320 followers

To put this in perspective here is the traffic for a client account we started but did not provide services for in the same time period showing natural growth as a control.

Client A: start=0, 8/13=5 followers, 9/1=11 followers, 10/24=18 followers.

That’s a pretty big difference 303 to 547 followers versus 18 in the same time period.

So how do we do it? Here are my tips:

1. Tweet a minimum of 5 times a day.
2. Tweet 5 days a week.
3. Schedule your tweets to start at 8:00 am and then space them out to about 4:00 pm.
4. Include tips and trivia in your tweets as well as links.
5. Become the authority in your area - share your knowledge.
6. Interact a minimum of twice daily with followers of people you follow through direct messages or @’s
7. Thank people for retweets.
8. Send comments to others about their tweets - I really liked what you said about …
9. Use bit.ly to track your clicks. Once you see that people do click what you link to you will know the value of the time you invest in Twitter.
10. Get professional help if you don’t know what to do. We do provide Twitter services if you need them.
11. Make sure you follow and unfollow anyone who follows or unfollow you using Social Oomph.

First the background:

Bing is to index Twitter tweets and Facebook status updates:

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20091021/exclusive-guess-who-else-is-coming-to-dinner-twitter-microsoft-bing-deal-confirmed-but-so-is-facebook-bing/

Google is to indext Twitter tweets:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html

If you are not already using Twitter this is an excellent reason to start right away. Not only will this new decision by the search engines allow inclusion of the very freshest news and updates in their index via rabid Twitter users who want to tweet just about everything, but tweets with links will be indexed too.

At least the indexing of tweets and links appears to be in the offing at this early stage. Meaning specifically that if you link to your website in tweets, you may now be driving search traffic not just Twitter user traffic, you may build web authority, and may even now use tweets as entry points to your blog or website. Additionally if Google or Bing count the links as inbound links - WOW! Now we just don’t know for sure if the real SEO benefits mentioned will stay in the mix until tweets start to be indexed and we can really evaluate traffic and if the engines filter tweets in some way to prevent organic benefits, but the potential benefits of this announcement to tweeters is huge!

So if you are not involved in Twitter why take a change that one of the biggest new ways to drive search traffic to your site will pass you by? Build your base before there is a huge rush. Establish your account as an authority now and not a newbie that will be lost in the shuffle.

 Twitter is free but if you need professional help we have a nicely developed Twitter service program and a great track record in growing account followings. Check out our Twitter services to see if we would be a good match for your needs.

Here’s the process:

1. Set up Selective Twitter application in Facebook
2. Log into your Facebook account first.
   b. In a new browser screen add this URL: http://apps.facebookcom/selectivetwitter/
   c. You will be asked to enter your Twitter user name and approve access, please do so.
   d. If you would like your Facebook updates to appear on your fan pages, please click the tabs in the application to go to pages and then install the application as well as grant access.
3. Set up an account at www.HootSuite.com Log in to HootSuite and write your Facebook status update. Schedule your micro post using the calendar function and then make sure to end your post with #fb.

That’s it, fast and simple your timed post gets sent to Facebook at the correct time.

Follow-up Note:

This last week the Twitter API was very flaky and I had a lot of trouble getting Selective Twitter to work, so I have found another simpler alternative that you may want to consider instead, it is called Social Tomorrow. With Social Tomorrow, you set up an account and then login to a web interface and type in and then schedule your Facebook Updates. It does not use the Twitter API and so is not subject to traffic overloads as your posts go right to Facebook. For our professional client needs this is actually a better fit for us than Selective Twitter.

In a nutshell a Google Voice number is a portable number that you then decide where the call is forwarded to. You can send a call to your home, number, to your office phone, to your home phone, or directly to voice mail. What is really great about the service is that you can assign which callers go where. With a Google Voice number even if your phone numbers change your Google Voice number doesn’t. You just update your profile with a new phone number for work, home or cell - which ever has changed.

Additionally you can use any of your phones to bridge to Google Voice and then call for free in the US and Canada making any of your phones tied to Google Voice now a toll free phone. You just call into your Google Voice account press 2 and then enter the number your want to phone and Google Voice connects the phone you are calling from to the phone number you want to talk to at no charge. Google Voice even helps you to select a phone number in your local area so calls in to use their free long distance service are really free.

For messages sent to your Google Voice voice mail account, Google Voice will even transcribe a message and send it to your computer if you desire. I have not tested out all the features yet, but it sure sounds like it could be a very interesting new platform for Google. I have no idea how they will monetize it, but certainly that will come. 

If you are currently using Google Voice drop me a note I’d be very interested in know what you think about this new program. If you want to try out Google Voice yourself,  just visit this link to get a Google Voice invitation.

First in both cases the participants who refused to join their friends on Facebook either had a significant other keep tabs on Facebook for them or act as their “secretary” and also both said that they preferred “real face to face or phone to ear” interaction. Both mentioned that they were out of the loop with their friends. One missed important appointments for his band, the other missed auditions that the friends shared with each other on Facebook. Hmm, an interesting case study especially for the age of the individuals involved.

There are some who have decided to not join Facebook and purposely and rabidly declare that it is a waste of time. Usually the age of the individual is a factor on if they consider Facebook important. It is a real rarity to see a college student or for that matter really even and older high school student who is not using Facebook as an alternative to regular email.

Facebook is here to stay. In fact for many young people the email and chat function on Facebook now are their email and instant messaging programs. As for me, I think that Facebook is fun. It is a great way to stay connected with family and friends, and a wonderful way to deepen the interaction with colleagues and clients.

Well one of the first is to let you know if your website is spewing malware. In the spider section if you have a problem that Google has detected, they will now identify the page and the script embedded in your page that is causing the problem. Although this is not typically a problem for most websites, it can be a problem for blogs that have been hacked in some manner.

One of the next features that Google has added to the control panel is to allow you to identify and target the correct canonical address from within the control panel. With just one click you can let Google know if you prefer http:// or http://www in your links.

The HTML suggestions tab helps you to know and correct any duplicate meta title tags, short title tags, long title tags, and even non-informative title tags.

There is real value in verifying your website in the Google Webmaster Control panel, so if you are not set up, sign up for a free account today.

1. Do you take your cell phone everywhere you go including the bathroom?
2. Did you grow your fingernails long and shape them into points so you can type better on your itty bitty phone keyboard?
3. Do you now pay more to Verizon or your cell provider than you spend for food in one month at the grocery store?
4. Do you text under the table during boring meetings?
5. Do you tweet while you are waiting online at a store telling us how slow service is?
6. Do your kids have to text you to get your attention while you are sitting in the same room?
7. Do people call your cell phone first instead of your home phone or office phone?
8. Do you actually answer your business phone after 9:00 PM?
9. Do you carry refuse to turn off your cell phone even when the sign says to do so like at church or the doctor’s office?
10. Do you have an internet and email enabled cell phone?

Score:

If you answered yes 8 to 10 times you need some help. Your family would probably be glad you had surgery to cut the umbilical cord that has grown from you to your phone.

If you answered yes 5 to 7 times there is definitely hope that with professional help you could break your addiction to the Internet in your downtime - if you have any.

If you answered yes 2 to 4 times it sounds like you have a life and should give me a call as I am looking for friends to do things with and it sounds like you may actually have some free time.

If you answered yes 0 to 1 time, you really need to get more connected. You may be out of the loop and friends and colleagues would appreciate being able to “hit you up” more frequently.

Wow, most people want more information on Google not less. Here is my answer in a nutshell, once Google has it in their archive, there is no removing it. If the information resides on other websites you simply cannot remove the information. This is the same for both good and bad news about you. Once something is in the public domain it is available forever and to anyone who looks online this includes dates and employers.

Fortunately for this client all the information was good. She is a celebrity in her own right and just now getting high media exposure and is shocked at how much about her life is available on the Internet to those who know how to search. She even mentioned that information that was in a family obituary popped up identifying her place with family members which was a personal concern to her.

If you are an expert in your field, a celebrity, or high profile person, you will never be able to control the message and reviews or comments that other people post or say about you online. Welcome to the world that Brittany Spears lives in! Even if the information is awful you cannot remove it once it is on the search engines. If the information is bad, you may be able to push it down the search results page with reputation remediation, but remove it entirely - not a chance.

It is important that you be careful of where you allow your name to be used. Who would have thought that an obituary posted online by a newspaper would end up in Google’s index. All of this is an excellent lesson for young people. In this time, where kids post pictures and comments online, not once do they think that this information will be searchable and may pop up under their name in 10 years when they go to apply for a job and the HR staff does a Google search and finds them in a compromising situation.

For this particular client I told her - welcome to the world of celebrity and now’s the time to get a pair of dark sunglasses and Google your own date before you first meet next time.

Wow, how do you recover from a huge faux pas such as that? Who ever dreamed up and approved the title showed an incredible lack of sensitivity as well as an overt sexist attitude. That small flippant comment that made it to the headline of their newsletter will clearly be a black eye that will have their PR staff wringing their hands.

So really, how can you recover from a big boo-boo like that? Well first, I would send out an apology to all readers and then donate a nice chunk of change to the local breast cancer foundation or sponsor a runner in a big way in the next breast cancer walk. I would make sure to have a photo op at each event and feature that prominently in the very next newsletter - making the walk match the talk. Second, I would immediately institute a review of any future publications for appropriate professional wording.

What sounds funny in the office or tossed around in jest can have huge public relation ramifications when it sounds too flippant or simply sets the wrong tone in your print or online message to customers and prospects. Even for small businesses crossing the line from professional to questionable must be carefully watched. Remember your reputation is forever even for a small business!

So, if you have an AdWords program what is the best practice for trying out content without it sapping your entire click budget? Well, this is what I do. First, I do not move into content until the account is mature and is generating conversions. Typically I start an account out slowly. We start with Google.com only, then expand to search partners. Once we have health and a nice conversion history, I set up a separately funded content campaign and use a small very general keyword list for content. I typically spend around $.10 to $.75 per click depending on the product and typically keep the budget at $5 to $20 per day depending on the overall advertising budget.

I roll the content program for two to four weeks and evaluate if content looks like a bet for the customer in regards to generating conversions. I have had good success with this strategy and have really been able to stimulate additional conversions for certain accounts. I have however found that not all products and services are a good match for the content network. From my point of view the key is the budget delimiter and general but on target keyword list.

Try this out on your AdWords account and let me know how this works for you. You may find out that using the content network smartly you can increase your account conversions with a realistic return on investment.