Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 16, 2010
We’ve already put together a list of tips and resources for Twitter beginners, and Part 2 is focused on those who are familiar with Twitter and don’t want to waste time trawling through hundreds of applications which all do the same thing. All resources mentioned were free at time of posting.
Time-saving Twitter tools
- Twitter Tools for Wordpress – This handy plugin automatically creates tweets from your blog posts, so your Twitter followers can grab a link to your new entry straight away. Optional bit.ly URL shortening is included, and you can also post your Tweets as blog entries. If you don’t have a blog yet, you can take advantage of our one click WordPress install and web hosting to get set up in less than a minute.
- Twitoria – This website allows you to unfollow people who haven’t tweeted in the past week, fortnight, month, two months, six months or year. A great easy-use tool which will keep your follower base fresh.
- Hashtags – Just enter a search term to get a list of tweets, trends and people tweeting about that topic recently using a hashtag. Hashtags also displays a popularity graph. This is a useful tool to find out how popular a word or term is so you can get in on a conversation or monitor a trend.
- Friendorfollow – displays your relationships with your followers, i.e. people who follow you but you don’t follow and vice versa, and reciprocal following. You can also look up the stats for other tweeters simply by entering their username and export data.
- OneForty is a directory of Twitter applications along with ratings and comments. Currently approaching 3,000 tools, it’s a good solution for checking up on apps you’ve heard about and finding the right software for you e.g. the right mobile phone application.
Twhirl is a good choice for those requiring a simple, unobtrusive client whilst HootSuite offers a lot of features ideal for business users. It’s also important to keep an eye on the development plans for each application so you’re aware of what features are intended for the near future. Just because you’ve found a suitable client doesn’t mean you have to stick with it – it’s an area which is increasingly growing and increasingly competitive – but consider the impact on any stats or analytics you may be tracking to avoid confusion or loss of information.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 07, 2010
Twitter in itself can be very overwhelming, and that’s without worrying what tools and resources you need to manage your account properly. So we’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of our favourites.
Twitter for Beginners
We’ve divided our list into two parts; this one for fledgling tweeters and one for fully-fledged users (keep an eagle eye out for more advanced tools in Part 2, coming soon), but it’s worth checking them both to make sure there’s nothing you miss.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Jul 07, 2010
With more and more social media sites popping up everywhere, the craze to have the next Facebook or Twitter continues to be relentless. Wikipedia lists ‘some notable, well-known’ active social media sites – ‘some’ being 190 – and even has a separate page for defunct websites, showing that this competitive trend shows no mercy.
So with almost two hundred ‘notable’ options out there, how do you know which to use for your site and how? Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious choices, but it’s essential to take time to create a strategy and see what works best for your particular needs.
Take time to find the sites relevant to you
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Investigate what’s out there, and make two lists of potentials – one for pages that require very little maintenance (e.g. a StumbleUpon link), and one for sites that require frequent updates and monitoring (e.g. Facebook).
Posted by:
in Your Business on May 27, 2010
In this article I will point out a new way of marketing your business website by using a blog. Why should you care about blogging, that’s just something web designers or egotistical teenagers do to look cool in class. If Microsoft believes that business blogging is important then who are we to ignore it?.
Non Compete culture
Companies worldwide, and from my own personal experience especially in the UK, are very scared of giving away the smallest hint of what they actually do for their clients. Their perspective is often that any information they make available could be valuable to their competitors; they could get an edge over them if they knew their prices.
The Less Customers Know, The More We Can Charge
UK companies have a tendency to hide their prices and instead give an awkward quotation form for their services, even though they may supply competitive prices and a reliable service. If you picked up the phone they can probably give you a quote straight away.
Be Personable
There is an attitude that the less the client knows the more we can charge and to a great extent this is true. But these companies are missing a new wave of marketing, one that is transforming companies images and actually making business approachable and personal, even Microsoft, the brand tarnished with the evil corporation badge for so many years, has seen the error of its ways and is using blogging to become more personable.
Blog Marketing Gains Trust
The blog marketing scheme works by creating something that is mostly lost on online trading; trust. That website could be run by anyone with a few services to throw your way, you cannot actually judge what the company staff are actually like and there’s no way you can truly estimate the level of integrity the company has and how specialized they actually are.
These are all trust issues affecting paying customers choices every time they look at your website.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Apr 13, 2010
Directory submission
Directories are not an effective method to build quality incoming links but they will build volume and are a good way to get the ball rolling. Most will have a low Page Rank and pass very little link juice on, but when added all together, it could be enough to get you up to PR1. Rather than try to submit to each one manually it is quicker and just as effective to use a bulk submission service. A quick search for “directory submission” will bring you back a list of potential suppliers. If you know of directories that deal specifically with your niche, make sure you manually submit your site to these as well to build relevant incoming links.
Twitter
Make it easy for your visitors to retweet your website/ articles with a retweet button. Also set up your own account to push news items, blog articles, and special offers to engage with your site’s users on a one to one level. Twitter exclusive offers or resources are a good way to build your follower base quickly.
Social bookmarking
Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Reddit, Sphinn, Design Bump… there are dozens and dozens of social bookmarking sites, some broad others targeting specific niches, and they have the potential to be major traffic drivers for your website. Submit your site yourself and provide visitors with the ability to submit directly from your website as well.
Posted by: Che Cooper
in Your Business on Feb 13, 2010
Despite this I can happily build a website that looks pretty good and has working (and secure) scripts. Below is a list of resources for you to take advantage of if you need an element for your website but creating it yourself is beyond your skill set.
Edit content with minimal knowledge of HTML
If you are a I.T Studio Hosting web hosting customer you can install Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress (yes its officially for blogs but it is being used more and more as a CMS), Joomla, Drupal or Mambo with just one click. Once these are set up you need never edit an HTML file again (although you can if you still want to!).To get started log in to your web hosting control panel.
Have an attractive looking website without HTML/ CSS or Illustrator
I can hold a paint brush but that doesn’t mean I can paint and just because you know how to use the software that doesn’t mean you can design a beautiful website. To get yourself started or even to use it as it is “out of the box” here are some great websites to download readymade designs. Some are free, others require payment.
