Thanks to Barry Anderson of it-shortlist for this link. It is a blog article showing good ways to get more people to link to your blog and improve your SEO as a result. I'd add another simple one - make sure you have your blog url in your email sign off. I have had surprising success from that!
Interesting announcements recently in the world of real time search? What is that i hear you say? Well, if you are a Twitterer, then you will know that you can search for terms used in anyone's Tweets. So for example, if you search for "Nick Baggott", it won't just find me, it will also find anyone that has mentioned me in one of their recent tweets (their status updates).
For a while, this has been one of Twitter's killer app's. But now Facebook have developed a similar app that will allow you to search your friends' status updates for any comments that they hyave made about whatever it is you are searching for. So, if you were to search for "Manchester United" it would find any updates from your friends about the boys in red (good or bad).
There are definately some long term privacy issues around this if you can search anyone's status updates, but assuming you can only search your friends, then this could be a popular and neat tool for users. How it can be used for marketers is more of a challenge - certainly useful for research / checking what your fans are saying about you, even if nothing else as yet. Here is a simple article to bring you up to speed with the news....
Google has just launched a wonderful new site containing all of the latest stats on internet usage, media consumption, economic trends etc. A wonderful resource for marketers. It is called Google Internet Stats - very original!
Check it out - it really is a gold mine
I will be away on vacation from July 30th to August 16th, so sorry - no posts during that time - have a great summer!
My previous post mentioned tools from "The Twitter Book". Here are some business marketing tips from the book. The main points 1-20 are from the book - the annotations are my interpretations...
1. Listen first - if you do nothing else at least use some of the tools mentioned in my previous post to track what people are saying about you
2. Have clear goals - is it for acquisition, loyalty, revenue generation, thought leadership...?
3. Integrate with other channels - make sure messages are consistent with your blogs, social media etc, consider the role of Twitter in your mix
4. Start slow, then build - dip your toe in the water, does it work for you?
5. Figure out who is your twitterer - who is passionate, knowledgeable, patient...?
6. Reveal the person behind the curtain - don't hide, who is writing it? Show who you are in the profile section
7. Manage multiple staff twitterers - if more than one of you is tweeting, then co-ordiante and think about the role of each of you, also link to each other to get more followers following each of you
8. Coordinate multiple accounts - at least know what your colleagues are saying and don't contradict, promote their offers if relevant
9. Make your brand findable - call your account by your company/brand name - put your personal name in the profile
10. Be converstaional - ask questions, invite replies, ask for suggestions...
11. Retweet your customers - if they have something valuable to say, then credit them and share it
12. Offer solid customer support - give advice & tips on common or current issues
13. Post mostly NOT about your company - talk, don't sell, be a thought leader
14. Link to your own sites - if you have some valuable insights / research / white papers on your web site or blog, then link to them
15. Make money on Twitter - copy Dell - promote offers and deals, maybe set up a separate twitter account for these commercial offers, keep the thought leadership separate
16. Communicate problems and resolutions fast - retweeting means word travels fast, see how quickly photos of the plane in the Hudson river were around Twitter
17. Post personal updates - even if it is a corporate account, post some personal opinions / news, but not your vacation photos! It is not Facebook
18. Engage journalists and PR people - follow your industry opinion formers and hope they follow you, also follow HARO
19. Follow people who follow you - it is good manners!
20. Use Twist to monitor topic frequency - see my previous blog post for more and a link on this one
Just read a great little book - "The Twitter Book" by Tim O'Reilly & Sarah Milstein. It is practical, simple and pragmatic. It also has lots of useful tips and suggests loads of free tools.
Here are some highlights, I have been updating my Twitter feed with Twitter related stuff, so you can check that out too. My twitter name is njbaggott.
First tool is Twhirl - I am now using this to manage my Twitter account - makes the business of sending personal messages, retweeting etc much easier
Twist does the same job as google Insights for search only on Twitter, just put in a name, word or phrase and Twist will tell you how many times people are using them on Twitter. Great for looking at trends. The example on the link abovew shows how the word "Flintoff" has been used more and more as the Ashes cricket takes centre stage in UK sport.
Tweetstats looks at any Twittterer and provides some useful stats on post frequency, content etc. The example is showing a Tweet Cloud for Will Carling's Twitter feed.
There are some great tips for using Twitter for business in the book too and i'll probably post those later if i get the time....
Thanks to Dave Chaffey for reminding me...
Here is the Google Agency Toolkit page that lists all of the tools that they offer for free. Insights for search is the most well known and useful, but a good range here to try...
Microsoft has launched a beta version of Bing. It is their new search engine - designed to take on Google.
It is early days, I did a quick search, looking up Nick Baggott and found the results to be much more out of date than Google. Whereas all of the Google page are recent sites or articles about me - my blog, my web site, twitter feed, facebook page, IT Toolbox, Microsoft Partner network etc (all current and live), Bing was headed up by by Chemistry blog and chemistry's web site - I left Chemistry 2 years ago now. So, on that small test, it is not as accurate as google.
However, I do like the "related searches" column, which helps you find what you need quicker. When searching for "Reading" it had a related search for "Reading FC", then when you click on that, the related searches were "Reading FC tickets", "Hob Nob - the RFC fan site" etc. This could be useful.
What Bing needs is users and it is chicken and egg. Until you get users, you don't get a good consumer experience and vice versa...
By the way, Bing is the sound your mind makes when it solves a problem i.e. aha, bing! I have found it - apparently!
