A Twitter Traffic Strategy For Local Businesses

Auto-Pilot Viral Marketing For Offline Businesses

Twitter is big. With some hundreds of thousands of new people joining Twitter each day, it is one of the largest and fastest growing social information sharing sites presently.

Twitter has created an avalanche of opportunity to generate traffic to your website.

If you have been on twitter for any length of time you are probably like me where you see oodles of twitter apps (applications) that either promise to get you tons of followers or helps you manage your twitter account.

Many of these applications are time consuming and require you to take a repetitive action. I forget and the result is no more traffic for my site. In short, they did not work for me. I want traffic from the Caribbean, especially Trinidad and Tobago and that has always been a challenge. That has changed.

I recently came across a Twitter app that made a lot more sense. It did not require that I memorize when I needed to visit a site to get followers and generate traffic.

Traffic Rush is helping me access and attract targeted regional and local traffic on auto pilot. In my opinion, it's the fastest and most efficient way to get a flood of laser targeted visitors to any site.

I have been able to spread my marketing message virally in a very short time.

All I did was sign up for a free account, enter a user name, choose the category online business marketing and pasted a code for a widget on to my blog. That’s it.

Stop overworking yourself to get target traffic. The price is right on this one, just observe the results.

Click on the Link and Create Your FREE Account NOW!!

Business Tweeting Tip

Sticky Tweets

 

Strip away the fancy clothes and attitudes and we are all just social animals. Instinctively, we follow others. Twitter has successfully tapped into this innate human instinct. Twitter is a phenomenum that will take a lot more than a short note to explain but the question we will like to answer here is...


How do you make a tweet stick so people can find it anytime?


First we must realize that Twitter is not a place to advertise. As a business, you should ignore the question: What are you doing? Replace it with: What do I want my followers to do, see and hear?


The idea behind Twitter is to initiate a relationship but that is impossible when people start building thousands of relationships. The tweet then becomes their only form of communication. Sharing with a community is the only reason Twitter is effective.


In Twittersphere, the life span of a tweet can be a millisecond, depending on number of followers. Tweets of 140 characters literally flies by in a blink. If you follow someone with thousands Of followers you tweets will probably never be seen by that person. To extend the life of a tweet, you need what is known as a #Hashtag which carry the same value as keywords to a website.


This is the only way to make your tweets stay accessible on twitter. It is the way to get your tweets found later. This is not a user generated tactic that is accepted by twitter. You can therefore create any hash tag you desire and attempt to create a trend for it. 


Twitter did not provide an easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags.org .  A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category.  Hashtags have
the 'hash' or 'pound' symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag.  

Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet: some people just add a # before a word they're using, like #trinidad. Take a look at @trinitweets uses the hashtag to post tweets. Hashtags are the equivalent of keywords to your website.

 

Start using hashtags in your tweets, in front of key words. It helps to do a little research first, to find out if the subject you're tweeting already has an established hashtag.

 

Finally, track other tweets on the subjects you're interested in (ie: those containing the appropriate hashtags) by browsing/searching at Hashtags.org, TwitterGroups, TweetChat, TweetGrid, Twitterfall, etc. You can set it up with RSS
feeds as well.

Hope this tip helps.

Be well

 

Does Twitter Make Sense To You?

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?


In today’s electronic age, create a mouse trap and expect a thousand ways to improve or monetize it.

Twitter is like the Pipe Piper playing a tune of sweet, melodious music while millions follow; it’s a free mouse trap. Thousands have started spin off businesses based on Twitter existence.

Yes, the Piper’s music is attracting what appears to be little mindless creatures each, with one primary goal; to be followed. Most promise to follow back, anyone that follows them. A select few are followed by the thousands; they follow only a few or none at all.

To the uninitiated all the following seems senseless. Twitter can easily be discounted by the neophyte internet user as a waste of time because it’s simple and easy to use. The skeptic’s obvious question is; Why follow little pictures with short bios and constant chatter responding to “what are you doing right now?” Who really cares what anyone is doing? Hmmm Do you?

And while here. How many people can any one person really follow? If you are familiar with Twitter you have seen the numbers, 23,000, 50,000 almost unrealistic. Now how does that work? Believe it or not there is a method to all the madness.

The reality is that Twitter is a marketer’s dream.

Twitter is a social media network, basically a network where anyone can enter a user name and password, access the network , meet and choose who to follow, i.e. get access to their tweets. It is a micro blog much like this blog but with a 140 character limit.

Some tweeters take the Twitter leading question literally. Their tweets are all about when they go to the bathroom, eat a sandwich, brush their teeth or leave for work. In other words too much information that has led to quite a few examples of tweets getting people in trouble.

The more professional tweeters tend to stick within their niche or area of specialty. Although there is a growing controversy about whether one should only follow people with like interest to learn and share from like minded tweets or just follow anyone because the world is really made up of everyone.

Please note that it's not advisable to follow people indiscriminately, even Twitter will eventually limit your ability to follow in relations to how many people are following you back. Twitter has set a 10% follow ratio, ideally the number of people you follow should be on par with the number following you.

If for example you are using Twitter to market. By just following marketers and getting ideas from them if you ever wanted to market on Twitter; who will you market to?



By now you are probably starting to realize that having a large following does give you more reach as a business person, entrepreneurs of even a large corporation. Your markets are the millions of tweeters who are responding to the question; ” What are you doing right now?”

It is totally amazing to see the number of immediate visitors to websites within a matter of minutes when a well crafted tweet is posted. This is even better than any pay per click program; it’s instant and free.

The trick with Twitter is that the more followers you have and people you have following the higher the possibility that your tweets will meet with eyeballs that you follow or is following you. There is a guarantee that not every eyeball will click, but the chances are higher.

Keeping in mind that not all the followers are sitting at their computer with the live twitter stream flowing; the tweet window is very small. The more followers you have the more exposure your idea or link will get and potentially more visitors will mean more income for you and your business.




There are a number of free services to build your following on Twitter but I have found that is free, simple and effective his here.

Follow me on Twitter here

Let's Get Personal. How Do You Use It?

Are You Computer and Internet Literate?

To speed your success, twice a day form a clear mental picture for two minutes of the one thing you want; and tell yourself it's already yours. Imagine it is.


Know what I just realized? The Internet has changed people, where before it was the other way around. Most people are unaware that computer literacy comes in degrees of understanding.

Not because you can booth up, use MS Word, PowerPoint or Excel means that you are computer literate. Today a computer can be a useless machine without an Internet connection. My family is a perfect example of the stages of computer and Internet literacy.

I offer my 80 year old Mum as a statistic. Her curiosity about the computer finally bubbled over and she asked to use my laptop for a bit. Of course I obliged, turned it on and left her to explore, told her to do whatever she wanted.

Forty five minutes later I saw her intently staring at the screen. A little concerned, I peered at the screen myself. You would not imagine what had her so engrossed?

Pictures. On the screen, a strikingly beautiful picture of a white waterfall gushing over a lush green background. Excitedly she blurted out “there are so many beautiful flowers, sceneries”.

My thought was “wow, imagine spending so much time looking at those pictures, I remembered the pictures I spent my time looking at; phew!! Never flowers”. I was witnessing the first stage of computer literacy.

My brother is the next example of a more advance stage of computer/internet literacy. He’s a school counselor with the Ministry of Education, ex school teacher, his internet literacy skills is, as he says, “Based on choice”.

He accesses the internet, reads the local daily news, research topics of interest and that’s it. He refuses to respond to email messages, (has an address but rarely checks) swears that he will never get on Facebook although mysteriously he has a profile there that I’m almost sure he did not post. He is at a stage where he can certainly argue that he is Internet literate.

I hope you are getting, from what I’m relating, that computer and Internet literacy…(for want of a better term internet literacy; meaning knowledge of and maneuverability on the Internet) are two totally different kettles of fish.

My sister, a career high school teacher still doing it, prides herself on her ability to transform any doting weak student into a rising academic star. She is on a completely different stage of computer literacy and at another level of Internet literacy.

She owns a PC and a laptop and has been using the computer for quite a number of years. A few weeks ago she called me with frustration evident in her tone. She asked “How do I cut and paste on this thing”?

Now this stage of computer literacy is what many people experience. She uses the internet on a daily basis, emails, Facebook, Yahoo IM and Skype. She did tell me that she had trouble getting to my blog so I sent her the link. She lost some points on maneuverability with me.



Now I left the best for last. As many of you may know I’m a entrepreneur, one who for a long time held down various marketing and sales positions. At one point in my life I worked 7 days a week for over 13 years on as a commissioned sales representative. I loved it, at the time. I always lived by the credo that my destiny must always be in my hands. That’s another story for another time.

I'm one of the people I wrote about in my last post. Ones who loved the job but could not wait to leave it behind. One day I did, I jumped off the cliff with a firm handshake, swearing never to look back.

I never did, not in a way that I longed to be back, I'll never forget it because I acquired a lot of very useful skills and had some fun memories of those times. That was eight years ago and since then I have relied on my experience and resourcefulness to maintain a decent standard of living.

My experience on the Internet dates back quite a few years. I used the Internet to generate leads for big ticket items, automobiles, houses. It was only one way to make contact with prospects to offer them our products. In fact I have not stopped doing that.

Although I have made some money directly online it never was anything significant. A couple of years ago, after I returned to Trinidad I began to consume information on Internet Marketing. I didn’t know it at the time but that’s when I became a part of the social media network.

Initially, I had a Facebook account with 4 friends. I remember that Facebook kept reminding me that I have to get over 20 friends before I would get on their search engines. In 2008 I started paying attention to my Facebook account. And at the beginning of this year I began to focus on Twitter.

Things have changed dramatically in the last 12 months. I have been more active online building a presence, meeting lots of new people all over the world and becoming quite attached to some.

I have met quite a few great people. Least great online because I never met them face to face. I now have established Caribbean related groups in Linkedin Caribbean Basin Intelligence, Plaxo Caribbean Basin Intelligence and Facebook Guerilla Marketing. I revved up my connections so that now, over the three networks, I have about 5000 global connections.



With so many, I know I may never communicate with a lot of them again but I do know that if I had a question to ask about a country, if I wanted a unique recipe from another country or even if I wanted to know something about the region, the people or anything else, I have someone I could ask; at my finger tips. Ok, so why am I telling you all this?

Well what I’m getting at is why it is important that you pay attention and learn everything you can about social media. The people who understand social media today are the thought leaders of tomorrow. Social media has enormous potential for education, addressing social issues, causes, international issues, global business and e-commerce.

On the social media field you can decide to be a spectator or a player. Your choice.

Enough for today. The next post will explain how you can get involved in this revolution.

Social Media: Use It To Market Or Be Marketed To

The Games Have Begun, Are You A Player or Spectator?

"One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests."~ John Stuart Mill

Whether you know it or not, you are an integral part of the electronic social media revolution. As an entrepreneur, small business or even a large corporation your most compelling question now should be: How do I coordinate the use of social media like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to maximize my business exposure and reap the obvious benefits?

Thought leaders are using social media platforms for essential business functions like public relations, customer service, brand loyalty, collaborating, networking and believe it or not customer acquisition. For example, one of the hottest trends on twitter today is “I wish”.

Modified to create a hash tag, “#iwish” (in tweetspeak means; I wish for this, that or anything in the world) it has no other meaning on Twitter. There are tweets all over the twittersphere drawing eyeballs to Stevie Wonder’s original hit titled under “I Wish” and to the corporate gaming giant, Nukoda, makers of the new “I wish” gaming device.



Makes you go hmmm, wonder if people like JayZ and famous illusionist Darren Brown are using these high tech devices, they certainly know all about them. The point here is that social media is driving traffic to business and people who prior to being involved lived in their own stratosphere of what’s important to their world. Now they can actually participate in global universal consciousness. Entrepreneurs and businesses can, if they know how, tap into specific keywords to drive social traffic to their sites and blogs.

Many internet savvy entrepreneurs and businesses are just becoming aware of a new concept called “Social Traffic”. The term made popular by a ebook with the same name written by Simon U Ford a genius who understands social media. This is adding a new dimension on the internet. Learning to use the internet was like primary school, it is time to move up to high school and start building a foundation that will establish your online or offline business with the free social media tools available. Things are changing and we need to recognize that change.



Finally the world now has a universal social consciousness barometer that measures what’s important to the majority of people on the internet in real time, as it is being articulated.

Like I said before, whether you know it or not, you are an integral part of an intellectual consciousness revolution. You can continue to be a spoke in the wheel or a part of the hub, use social media to easily and quickly propel your online or offline business into notoriety.

Find out more about social media here for more on Using Social Media

3 Myths That Keep Millions Of Businesses Offline

“Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity”

Well, duh, it’s expensive. It’s generally accepted in the business world that developing a website requires a significant investment. Add that to the fact that most traditional business people cannot see how a web presence could improve their business profits or operations and you will understand why millions of business people around the world think websites are useless.

This is not phenomenon that occurs solely with developing countries. Even in more developed countries like the United States. Canada and Europe there are still literally thousands, if not millions, of business people who resist taking their businesses online. As internet users grow in numbers these businesses are surely being left behind. For example, take a look at population trends for internet usage of the top 20 countries in the world.




The differences in countries vary and can be accounted for primarily by population and the ease of access to the internet. Online, people are experiencing the evolution and development of social media Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0, while millions of offline businesses in every country operate exclusively offline.

The emergence of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube have made it possible for some offline businesses to access prospects globally and locally. In most cases, the encounters are accidental because for the most part the meeting was not as a result of a coordinated strategy.

Most are not aware of the possibility of formulating a social media strategy. Thus, the reason for the emergence of sites and individuals who provide instructions on how to capitalize on the various social media platforms. One such site that is about to be launched is Social Traffic where you can learn how to use social media to build businesses both off line and online. See Social Traffic.


For more click here.

Have you heard of Web 3.0?

The other day I was chatting with a friend of mine when I realized something. There are a lot of people who don’t have the slightest clue as to what is meant by Web 2.0. Does that amaze you?

I found myself explaining it to my friend suddenly realizing that this was the umpteenth time that I was explaining this to someone. Now these are not dummies but people with facebook accounts who are on the web for a significant portion of the day. So I decided to document what I have been sharing with them. its really just the way I understand it. I would usually start my explanation like this...

Can you remember how when you first started using the internet that the only way you communicated with your friends and family was by email? They would usually say yes. Then I would say something to the affect that email was a very big improvement over snail mail. Unfortunately, in both cases even thought email was almost instant the sender still had to wait for a response. Fortunately, unlike snail mail the response to an email was much faster. Well we can call using traditional email Web 1.0, you were using the web but had to wait for a response.

Well now with social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, Pluse, Twitter and over 20 other sites you can now congregate online with your friends and family. You can still send email but now you can also chat, post pictures, videos comments and play with the various applications and gadgets on the site. This expansion of the capability of the internet is what is referred to as Web 2.0 but there is more.

Now there is what can be consider Web 3.0 and this has further revolutionized the web by modifying some of the old features and making it them more dynamic. For example, did you know that developers have come up with a site with totally different internet tools like{

o Email: You can now get emails with the following features: self destruct,
recallable, trackable and can include

o Video Email you can now send video emails to anyone using the tools on the
site.

o Make Money, You get a $50 referral free when you invite your friends. Plus
other ways to make money on the site.

o Instant Messenger: You can use instant messaging like Yahoo IM and Gtalk
to instantly chat with your friends online.

o Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are also being
included.

You would think that something like this will cost you hundreds of dollars to use. Just having the ability to send video email along could include a substantial monthly fee. But the site offers everything for free, zero, nadas nothing. Of course there is an upgrade option but you can do that whenever you feel like it. Well there is a cost to getting all the tools. You must become a member of the site. Trust me, go there and you will not be disappointed.

Go here to sign up for PeopleString a brand new innovation. Visit PeopleString find the new registration link and sign up today.

Thanks for reading.

Be well