On Tuesday 2 March 2010, I delivered a breakfast presentation entitled ‘How to use social media and Web 2.0 in your small business’ to members of the Eastside Business Enterprise Centre in Adelaide.
Here are my slides from that presentation:
Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
Assorted Links and Stuff V
Monday, June 15th, 2009- Need a good feedback tool? Try Kampyle
- Prezi – the zooming presentation editor
- Qik – share live video from your mobile phone
- Twitter to introduce new tools for business
- Inside the new Google Search
- Eyetrack – where do people look when they view your home page
- 25 places to find awesome stock photos – free and cheap
- How do I get more people to view my YouTube videos?
- 99designs – run a crowdsourcing design competition online
- 10 Wordpress Plugins guaranteed to save you time
- 10 free digital tools for start-ups
Are you Tweeting?!
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009You’ve no doubt heard of Twitter!
For the benefit of any newbies, Twitter.com has been around for a couple of years now and is a micro-blogging tool. It allows you to post short answers of no more than 140 characters to the question “What are you doing?”. The idea is that you “follow” those who you want to keep in touch with and they in turn “follow” you so you end up with a followers/or friends list of people who can see your regular posts or tweets.
But what the heck for? You might ask ….
Well it is true that many people use it purely for personal purposes so their tweets may be something like “walking the dog” or “time for lunch” so many see twitter as a trivial waste of time.
So are there business uses for Twitter?
Yes, when used with a business goal in mind, twitter can help you build your network and reputation and promote your business.
Here are some examples:
774 ABC Melbourne radio use twitter mainly to give traffic updates which is great for commuters accessing twitter on their mobile phones. They also give updates of news headlines and upcoming programs. See: http://twitter.com/774melbourne
AMC Australasia use twitter to post job vacancies. See: http://twitter.com/amctopjobs
If you want to build your reputation in a particular topic area you could micro-blog about the topic in the same way you would on a blog but much shorter posts! You can also “retweet” which is pass other people’s relevant posts on to your followers.
Some Australian business tweeters :
Cascade Brewery – http://twitter.com/cascadebrewery
Tourism Queensland – http://twitter.com/Queensland
ABC TV – http://twitter.com/ABCTV_australia
SmartCompany – http://twitter.com/SmartCompany
KevinRuddPM – http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM
Imax Melbourne – http://twitter.com/imaxmelbourne
STA Travel – http://twitter.com/statravelAU
JetStar – http://twitter.com/JetstarAirways
EMI Music – http://twitter.com/EMIMusicAU
Netregistry – https://twitter.com/Netregistry
iiNet – http://twitter.com/iiNet
Penguin Books – http://twitter.com/PenguinBooksAus
Dick Smiths – http://twitter.com/DickSmith
Digital Photography School – http://twitter.com/digitalps
Media Hunter – http://twitter.com/mediahunter
Organic Babe – http://twitter.com/organicbabe
Here are a couple of recent related articles if you’d like to do further reading:
Join the Twitterati, Sydney Morning Herald
Australian brands using Twitter listed by industry, Fanbloddytastic
Twittering chefs, Sydney Morning Herald
Australia’s Top 100 Influential Twitterers, Social Networking News Daily
I only jumped on the twitter band wagon very recently, see: http://twitter.com/melissanorfolk
Are you tweeting? See you in twitterville!
Twitter: friend or foe?
Monday, March 30th, 2009My colleague Geoff Jennings posted this video on his blog last week and I thought it was appropriate for the Netpreneur audience. It reminds us about some of the underlying weaknesses of Twitter (and other social networking websites). Whilst Twitter might be the latest and greatest thing on the web, there are also negative elements of this social networking tool which suggest that it could be a short-term fad – specifically that it is addictive, that it creates ‘artificial’ interactions between people, and that it can be a huge waste of time if not employed wisely! Indeed, micro-blogging will never remove the need for good old fashioned face-to-face, human contact. That’s not to say that Twitter won’t be useful as a means of communication in your business….give it a try.
Action List: Secure your name on social networking sites
Monday, February 23rd, 2009It’s a good practice to secure your ‘name’ on the plethora of social networking sites on the web, if only to deny others from securing the name first.
The other day I tried to secure the username ‘boomerangbooks’ on MySpace, only to find that it has been taken already by a small bricks and mortar bookstore by the same name in Texas, USA. Doh! Not that I was intending to use the MySpace account anyway….but it did teach me a lesson and gave me an idea for a post!
At the very least, I recommend that you get out there and secure your name on the most popular services quicksmart - namely Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. If you have the time, then you might consider doing same for those listed on the Wikipedia list of social networking sites. And here’s another list of niche social networking sites for you to sign up to as well.
Ultimately, it may be worthwhile signing up to these sites for the SEO value alone: because many of them allow you to specify your website or blog URL on a profile page, which in turn is indexed by the search engines.
It won’t be physically possible to maintain an updated profile on every site, but Ping.fm is a good tool for ’syndicating’ your updates and blog posts to all of your social networking accounts at once.
A prediction: the growing popularity of Twitter and the ability to register multiple names/any name that you wish on that site will result in major stinks in the coming months….in the meantime, make sure you snap up the account names that will be useful for your business.
Video: Twitter in Plain English
Monday, February 9th, 2009For those of you who don’t ‘get’ Twitter, this might help:
Assorted Links and Stuff 2
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009A collection of great links and tools that I have come across over the past few weeks:
- 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
- Starting your own Blog? 29 Tips, Tutorials and Resources for New Bloggers
- Twitterholic.com – the Twitter users with the most followers
- Australia’s Top 50 Twitter Influencers
- Where should I place (Google) Ads on my Pages?
- OpenX – open source advertisement serving software
- Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad) from Seth Godin
- Getting ‘fast’ traffic to your Blog
Action List: Carry business cards
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Although you might be an internet entrepreneur who lives much of his/her life online, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever interact with people in the ‘real world’ (and I encourage you to get out there and speak to ‘real people’). When you do, it’s important that you have a good quality business card to hand over.
Business cards are relatively inexpensive and you won’t need thousands of them – in fact, I have about 7-8 boxes of old business cards from previous jobs in a storage box at home that I never got round to giving out…I’m sure you do too. It seems that a minimum print run is never below 500!
It’s important that your card is well designed, is in keeping with the online nature of your business (ie. not staid and boring, as many business cards are), and mirrors the graphical elements that make up your website. Remember that branding needs to be uniform throughout your collateral – business cards, website, email signatures, advertisements, flyers, etc.
What ever you do – don’t opt for a templated business card – get one custom designed (try elance for inexpensive designers). Templated business cards look tacky and unprofessional.
The card should contain all of the necessary contact details and your website URL. If it’s appropriate to your business, consider including your Instant Messaging ID (eg. Skype, ICQ or MSN Messenger), as well as the standard telephone, fax, email and postal details. You might even consider adding your IDs for other networking sites, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, if you do business via these channels.
For printing, I recommend using a local printer. There are services online that provide printed business cards – like Vistaprint – but it’s not possible to gauge the quality of the print job beforehand – again, business cards printed on poor quality card look unprofessional. If you deal with a local printer you can request proofs of the work before having the entire print run done. That said, Vistaprint and others are good for small print runs of promotional material (eg Christmas cards).
When receiving business cards from others, always make notes about the individual on the back of the card, so that you don’t forget who they are – particularly if you are attending a networking event and you are meeting lots of different people. If appropriate, send a follow up email several days after meeting the person. This can often be a great source of business leads. Store all contact details in Microsoft Outlook or an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and try to link to the person on LinkedIn.
I use a combination of LinkedIn, Outlook and Interspire’s Email Marketer, instead of maintaining a physical card file of every business card I’ve ever collected.
Nice Twitter counter
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009For those of you who use Twitter, I thought that this little Twitter Counter might look nice on your website…
You can get your own counter, in various colours, here:
http://twittercounter.com/?inc=buttons&username=bluetrain
Here’s the article that features the Twitter Counter – there are some other great tips here too:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/
