If you’re not familiar with Co-tweet it’s a free service that recently became SocialEngage,  a paid service starting at $7,000  that will replace the free version of Co-tweet on Feburary 15, 2012.  The public backlash has been horrific for SocialEngage and it’s amazing to see a company specializing in social media management basically commit social media suicide.

Part of my job at CyberMontana is managing social media campaigns. I’ve used several different services in the past few years but Co-tweet has been our team solution for quite some time now.  Unfortunately, Co-tweet recently became  SocialEngage, a paid only service.  I have nothing against paying for a service and in the past I’ve used paid versions of SalesForce, Hootsuite, and several others. SocialEngage has decided to hide basic information like the cost ($7,000 starting) and other details. After seeing the behavior of SocialEngage during this transition, myself and many others, are looking for a Co-tweet replacement.

The requirements our company has

• Scheduling – We want to be able to schedule, tweets, posts, updates, etc across all of our social media networks.
• Team – Our company has several employees and each must at least have access. Also sharing and assigning features are preferred. Assigning tweets was a feature I loved at Co-tweet.
• Reporting – It was tough to find reporting and analytic from a service that were very useful. Tracking click-thoughs on the link level with a service like bit.ly is always an option.
• Accounts – The service must support multiple accounts. Ping.fm is a bonus.

I believe finding a service that works for your business depends largely on how you use social media. No one size fits all option exists.

Hootsuite has a free version that allows users to post to multiple social media networks, schedule posts, and some other useful features.  The pro version costs  $5.99 per month and comes with 1 additional team member, Google analytics-driven reports, and several other features. This works for us because myself and on other person do most of the social media engagement. If you need more than 2 people it will cost you an extra $15. Another additional option I found interesting is the Hootsuite University program, an advanced social media learning program.

SproutSocial looks amazing and has a lot of great features. The actually lowered prices recently which now start at $9 per month. Unfortunately, everything is focused on managing your brand. I find this to be less effective for smaller teams. Engagement and influence type statistics are extremely unreliable on a small scale which is where i think most small business are at.  I was also annoyed with audience demographics and other useless(for me) stats taking up huge parts of the dashboard.

MediaFunnel does everything our company needs in a simpler way. What I mean by that is that the account setup, the stats, and team features are there but just simpler and less feature filled. A free version offers a lot of the features and the standard plan starts at just $1/ per user. A very interesting price scheme they have going there.

Comment spam is when people or bots go to your articles and post links. This is an attempt to raise search engine ranking for the page being linked to. Comment spam is annoying and potentially harmful to your blog. Visitors that see any signs of spam are outta there plus Pagerank may be lost due to the outbound links.

Akismet is a spam blocking plugin that can help you eliminate the headache of comment spam. The Akismet plugin comes with the default WordPress install. First activate Akismet if it isn’t yet, then watch for the highlighted message across the top of the dashboard. The states that you must insert your WordPress API key in order to finish setting up Akismet.  Go to WordPress.com, login, and select Your Profile on the left side. Copy your API key into the correct field and click the Update Options button. You should see a confirmation message and Akismet options should be visible in the left column of the dashboard. Enjoy this video on setting up Akismet.

This advanced Twitter application is focused on increasing your productivity through a variety of time saving features. Schedule tweets to re-occur automatically with the Tweet Spinner “Smart Tweets” feature. Also take note of the “Tweet Script” feature used for creating dynamic tweets that have constantly changing content based on your specifications.

Rotating Twitter profiles, web links, and designs can be useful to keep things fresh and lively around your Twitter profile while exposing your followers to a greater range of information about your business. TweetSpinner allows these Twitter objects to be set ion rotation to chance every hour, day, or whenever you like.

TweetSpinner also has features for managing your friends called “Smart Friends”. One of the best features here is called “Smart Purge” which uses a better way of cleaning your account of people that don’t follow back. Purging all nonfollowers at once can result in suspension but almost has to be done to grow rapidly, this is why the smart purge is so useful. Smart purge will only unfollow 40 people at a time that do not follow you back also leaving the 7.5% you most recently followed.

Other time saving friend management features include follow all of your followers, view friend-to-follower ratio, follow people by keyword, mimic the followings of other users, create a nofollow list, purge your DM messages, configure sophisticated follow filters, see follower and keyword comparison charts, and more.

All of these TweetSpinner tools can be automated through the scheduling options. This give you the ability to set everything up, check stats, make adjustments, and so on. Take a close look at the features and you may began to outline which ones you’ll use and how they could fit with your business. Below is a diagram to show how someone might match features of TweetSpinner with aspects of their business to effectively promote it on Twitter.

Getting Started

From a small business perspective I have found Twitter to be easy to setup, automate, and extend the reach of almost any small business. This is especially true when compared to other types of online marketing that can be expensive and with uncertain results. Twitter is neither of these. Multiple accounts can be easily managed by one person targeting individual keywords using 3rd party tools that integrate easily with Twitter. I’ve seen a consistent 4% click-through rate or higher on links posted to Twitter but more importantly the targeted connections you can make on Twitter could the most valueable part of marketing this way.

To start you’ll need to know some basic things about Twitter and the lingo used there.

“Tweet” – These are the messages, posts, updates or whatever you want to call them. Tweets can be up to 140 characters long and can contain links and some symbols.

“Retweet” – When Twitter users re post other Twitter users tweets it’s called a retweet. The tweet will appear exactly the same but have an RT in the front of it. Retweeting can cause a landslide of traffic and is one reason tweets should be targeted and relevant. If people start retweeting your tweets because they’re interesting, they’re basically advertising to all of their followes who could potentially retweet it again and again.

“Follow” – Following someone means you have decided to receive their tweets in your timeline. Accounts with default Twitter settings will recieve a notification email about you following them. This is the primary reason following other people on Twitter helps grow your own group of followers. You can unfollow someone just as easily as you followed them.

“Mention” – Any time another Twitter user types @yourusername it is referred to as a mention. Mentions are beneficial because they appear on the posters timelime exposing more people to you and your Twitter account.

“DM” – When somone follows you twitter will allow you to send them Direct Messages or DMs. DMs are also often automatically sent to new followers with a link or welcome message.

“Block” – Blocking somone will cause to following things to happen. You will not show up in the list of people followed by the user being blocked, your updates will not show up on their timeline, and the blocked user will not be allowed to follow you. Many people blocking one account is one reason user accounts are suspended.

“FollowFriday” – Twitter users appreciate when you mention them on twitter by typing “@theirname” and on friday everyone does it. Who you pick for your follow Friday list is up to you. I generally pick all the people that have mentioned me @effectivews throughout the week or retweet my posts. Follow Friday is like saying “Hey you should follow this guy”.

The hosting term “Bad Neighbor” when used to reference a website that is hosted near your website that negatively impacts your search engines optimization efforts due to spamming and participating in other black hat techniques. Choose your hosting company wisely. Ranking well with a bad neighbors(s) can be nearly impossible regardless of the time or money you spend trying to get there. Linking to sites that are known spammers or practice unethical marketing can also negatively impact your rankings.

Meta Data: A group of data that is used to give information about the current webpage. Meta Data is used mostly by programs and scripts, web page viewers don’t see the meta data. Meta Data is stored by Meta Tags which reside in the head area of an HTML page.

Tip: You can check the Meta Data of any web page by selecting View — Source and looking inside the head tags

BackLink: A hyperlink from another website that leads to your own. The amount quality backlinks a website has is one factor in determining its ranking in search engines. Linking websites pagerank, link keywords and relevance are some of the values determining the quality of a backlink. A backlink from a well respected website with a good pagerank isn’t just for search engines as many users may find their way over through the backlink. Depending on the linking websites traffic volume, building backlinks strictly for the traffic isn’t a bad idea.

I’ve heard a lot of back and forth about the value of Twitter to small and large businesses alike. I have some very strong opinions on social media and what it can/has done for me. I plan to outline the more obvious points regarding Twitter in this post and add reviews and tutorials on Twitter applications which is what allows Twitter power to be unleashed.

The Basics:
Twitter runs off the principle that user1 can follow user2. After following user2, user1 sees all of user2′s updates. User2 also has the opportunity to follow user1 back. Updates, often called “tweets” are limited to 140 characters. Users can also DM(Direct Message) or block other users. Links can be included in tweets and even automatically shortned to fit the 140 character max.

The Magic:
The magic of using Twitter comes from its simplicity, and aggressive following/friend building style. Users can build up a large audience of 1000′s of followers in a short time. How targeted your followers are depends directly on who you follow. So if you have a business that sells dog collars try to follow people that are already following dog clubs or belong to pet-related groups.

The Limits:
Twitter limits the amount of users you can follow daily to 1,000. Once users reach 2,000 followers they can only follow 110% of the followers they have. For example if you have 2,000 followers exactly you’re allowed to be following 2,400 people. Users can also be banned for hitting certain triggers like following too many at once, un-following too aggressively or being blocked by too many users.

Small Business Benefits:
Why can small business benefit from a tool like Twitter? Well first of all setup takes 5 minutes and the Twitter account can be kept up with little or no effort. I say no effort because it’s easy to automated blog posts and other things to be posted automatically on Twitter. I have found Twitter, especially in the early stages, to be more about making connections than direct traffic. Use Twitter to communicate with potential customers:

Here’s a few things that are great or Small Businesses to psot on Twitter.

This gives you something to go by. I recommend developing a schedule choosing a day of the week, month to post specific types of media.

Building links is about being aggressive, putting in some work consistently. It’s important to know a few facts about link building and form a solid plan of attack before spending a lot of your time submitting here or linking there.

Establishing incoming links to your website from well respected, highly ranked sites does a few things for your small business website. One thing it does is bring visitors. All high ranking sites will probably be accompanied by many pre-qualified visitors. Another thing links can do is transfer some of that high ranking respect called pagerank on to your site. This is one way Google determines a sites value and position when potential customers are searching. A pan is needed because like anything some things work and some don’t or don’t hold much value.

The Plan of Attack

Online directories often list websites according to category and geological location. Submit to the top 5 free directories with the best pagerank. If you have the budget consider some paid directories like Yahoo.com, Business.com, and GoGuides.com. Start with Dmoz.org for the free ones and grab a current list of the top pageranked free directories. Submit to as many as you can but atleast the top few. Online directories that are specific to your niche may be even more valuable than highly pageranked sites so watch for directories that focus on your subject.

Social media is booming, don’t get left out. Although time consuming this can be a great way to get the word out about your small business. Services like Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook allow some forms of automation too. For example a WordPress blog plugin that automatically posts to your Twitter. Take advantage of automation and/or spend time on social media sites in between tasks. Twitter takes 2 seconds to update and can be done from a phone, browser, desktop, Linux terminal, and other places. Not to mention it can keep clients, costumers, and co-workers informed about what’s happening with the company.

Writing articles that are relevant to your small business and its field is the surest way that I’ve found to drive traffic. Whether it’s sub 300 word blog posts about the new products features or an in-depth 5 page review about the companies history, you’ve got to get words on the page. Preferably keywords. Simply writing the articles will result in much slower traffic than if you promote your articles. I recommend setting up a plan for submissions too. Pick 5 sites that accept article submissions, tutorials, how to’s, news or anything else you can post on their site. Some sites post the entire article with a author area with a link and the good ones only post half the article and make the customer click to your site to read the rest. The ladder allows you to enjoy a significant traffic spike while the article is featured or displayed on the article submission site(s) and in some cases a steady stream for a long time. Remember that articles that draw comments, inspire, or help someone(tutorial), are the ones that are going to draw the most with traffic.

I recommend staying up with the latest online trends and repeating these practices as much as possible. Consistency is key for article submissions and for getting search engines respect.

Even though I’m a web designer myself and fully capable of completing large projects I often outsource small pieces of a project when the project itself can benefit from another web designers specialty. I’ve found it useful to work with other web professionals on larger projects. After establishing a relationship with a web designer it’s easy to anticipate what type of products they can produce. Whether you’re looking for a specialist or basic web designer, the hard part is finding someone that can be relied on to create what you’re looking for. Lets take a look at a few tips to help find an effective website designer.

How does their site look?
Analyzing the web designers website should be the first thing you do. If a web designer can’t create an effective portfolio or website for himself, how will he ever be able to create a website for your small business?

Have they completed jobs like yours?
Take a look at your future web designers portfolio and try to pin point the elements that you want in your site as it appears in his/her past work. Look for a specialist in the field you’re in not just someone who can do it.

What’s the word on Google?
You can use a few tricks to find out what type of position the web designers own site is in and if they’ve optimized the pages on their website for Google listing.

First check out this ranking check tool where we can find out how any site ranks on the major search engines for any specific keyword or phrase. Make sure your web designer can hit on his own keywords such as “(your city here) website design”.

Second go to Google and type site:example.com. This shows a list of all the pages Google has chosen to index for example.com. Use this method to target the web designers search engine strategy. *Note results may vary for www and non-www searches.

What’s the word on the street?
Give a few of the web designers clients/references a call and see if they’re satisfied. Most successful web designers have an advertising budget and keep references close at hand. If your designer has few references and you’ve never heard of them, it’s probably time to look around.

Places to find web designers
Web designers can be found in online directories, search engines, and in the yellow pages. Looking at these areas, finding a designer or web design company, researching them and then deciding on a company is not a bad way to go. What I’ve found to be a problem is when web designers are recommended by word of mouth, The problem here is that while a designer may be perfect for a Flash job they may not be the person for a site re-design and search engine promotion campaign. So find yourself a specialist and spend 30 minutes researching their work and their business.

We’d love an opportunity to quote your next project. Contact Us Today!