10 Tips On How To Use Twitter For Your Online Business

Apart from Facebook, there are very few other social media networks that are as popular or more popular than Twitter, and with its 500 million users, it is of extreme importance to your online business. Twitter is a lot more than just witty tweets, it is a very powerful tool that you can use in boosting your business if you make use of the following tips:

1. Building your brand on Twitter. When learning on how to start an online business, one of the things that you need to bear in mind about Twitter is that it is a very efficient tool for building your own brand. Open an account and put your brand logo or image as your profile and build up a strong followership in no time with superb tweets.
2. Marketing campaigns. By making a very good use of a social media platform like Twitter for your online business, you can monitor the success or otherwise of the marketing strategies that you are using. Using Twitter analytics is the best way to do this.
3. Making instant announcements about your online businesses. One thing with is that once you make a tweet, it is instantly seen in real time by all your followers. It is not like some other forms of conventional advertising in which you have to wait before announcements or notices of your online business are published.
4. Organizing contests: As stated earlier on, Twitter goes way beyond just tweeting. You can also organize Twitter contests about your online business. In doing so, you get positive reviews and third parties assist in spreading the message.
5. Answering customers' questions. Do not just use the hashtags for nothing. Make use of your corporate Twitter account to attend to your customers.
6. Networking. While on Twitter, you can leverage it to your benefit by networking with others in your online business, especially those who have recorded great successes.
7. In order to achieve all of the above, you need to ensure that your tweets are catchy, relevant and beneficial. Do not make tweets that are totally irrelevant or even clearly unrelated to the service or product you are offering.
8. Also, to get the kind of results you want for your business by making use of Twitter, follow all the rules of conduct that have been stipulated by Twitter. Do not post beyond the daily limit or engage in activities that can get your account closed.
9. Building your identity. One very good thing that comes with Twitter is that if you follow all the steps that have been outlined above carefully, you end up building a very good identity for yourself and your products.
10. Follow the right people. No one will take you serious if all the people you are following are nothing but misfits, gangsters and others who connote nothing but negativity in the society. Remember that a business is all about integrity. Follow people who are responsible role models in the society. That will be a plus for your online business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7745029

Twitter Amplify Promotes Brands Across Multiple Screens

Hot on the heels of the micro-blogging site’s most recent marketing tool, the lead generation card, Twitter has introduced another new feature to help brands advertise online: Twitter Amplify. Twitter Amplify takes advantage of the multi-screen viewing activity of many Twitter users by showing commercials before sporting clips posted in real-time during tournaments, games and events.

Real-time multi-screen promotional content has featured simultaneously on Twitter and television channels for some time, ever since it was revealed that, as Glenn Brown affirms in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog, the “vast majority of the online public conversation around TV currently happens on Twitter – 95 per cent”. In fact, a number of studies have shed light on the correlation between television viewing figures and Twitter conversation, including one conducted by Nielsen earlier this year.

Brands have quickly realised that by coordinating their advertising across both television and social media channels, they make customer and fan engagement far more likely. Brands have identified that the least intrusive way to advertise across multiple screens is by promoting popular content:

ESPN and Ford Fusion led the way, bringing football fans Instant Replays in Tweets during every college football bowl game. During March Madness, Turner Sports, the NCAA, AT&T and Coke Zero followed suit, offering fans Real-Time Highlights of hoops action throughout the tournament. And now, during the home stretch through the 2013 Finals, the NBA is pushing the best Rapid Replays from TV, through a Tweet, to your mobile phone thanks to Sony Pictures, Sprint and Taco Bell. 

Sports fans often turn to Twitter to catch what they might have missed, or talk with other tweeters about what they are watching. Twitter Amplify helps brands become part of the experience, and perhaps even part of the conversation. The commercials are only ever a few seconds long, similar in length to a Vine in fact, but there is extra promotional content – banners, calls to action excetera – bordering the main video clip to ensure that the promotion’s message gets through.

Twitter has been testing Twitter Amplify with a number of its partners for a month or so, but primarily with sports broadcasters. Now, Twitter has partnered up with other broadcasting companies in an attempt to increase the scope of Twitter Amplify, such as BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel.

Twitter believes that the new partnerships will improve what is already a great feature:

We think these types of two-screen sponsorships are a win-win-win. Users receive spectacular, timely content that rounds out their TV experience or reminds them to tune in. Powered by Promoted Tweets, broadcasters reach new audiences and open up new business lines. Brand advertisers get, for the first time, an integrated cross-platform tool for reaching the social conversation wherever it happens. 

There is a full list of Amplify partners in the announcement post. If you want to partner up with Twitter and get a piece of the Amplify action, contact the company at amp@twitter.com.

Will Twitter Amplify make you engage with branded content more?

Google+ Unveils Redesign for Mobile Web

Less than a week after Google+ unveiled a redesign for desktop, the social network is also getting overhauled on the mobile web.

In a post on its official G+ page Tuesday, the service said that posts now appear as "cards" in the stream, making them easier to read, +1 and re-share.

What's more, Profiles and Pages now include cover photos and larger "tap targets," the blog post revealed.



Changes to the mobile version of Google+ are similar to those made for the desktop. At its Google I/O conference for developers, the search giant rolled out an image-centric design that resembles Pinterest's and Facebook's layouts. Google introduced 41 new features, including a multi-column layout, larger photos and automatic addition of related hashtags to the stream.

There are now 190 million active users in the Google+ stream.

What do you think of Google+'s updates for the mobile web? Tell us in the comments, below.

Images courtesy of Google+; homepage image via iStockphoto, maxphotography