Archive for the ‘twitter’ Category

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Savvy Social Media Marketing—A Competitive Edge.

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Four to five years ago, the term "social media" was in its nascent stage of development. Who knew that the concept would spread like wildfire and become one of the most important marketing tools for today's business owners? With the rapid expansion of New Media through the Web, social media marketing has now become an integral part of our daily lives—and every smart business owner's marketing plan.

Millions of Internet users get online to look for products, services and information daily. By resorting to social media marketing, you cash in on this opportunity to drive users to your website, building a network of supporters and followers along the way and making your business grow bigger and better. The more traffic your website receives, the greater your the chances of turning visitors into customers.

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These loyal users, through their social networks keep getting more business for your company, thus ensuring quick expansion and more ROI for your business. Traffic generated through social media marketing makes your website rank higher among popular search engines. This increases the online visibility of your business.

Our NYC internet marketing division can create exclusive content for your business on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, creating buzz for your company. Paired with our NYC SEO, through target keywords, we can help your website achieve top rankings on Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Looking for effective social media marketing in New York? Visit www.netmcgroup.com and give your business a competitive edge.

 

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Posted in facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Even the Pope’s on Facebook!

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI, in his message for the 44th World Day of Communications told his priests to become more web and social network savvy. He said "The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts…." The theme of the upcoming May 16th event is "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word".

Doesn't that sound totally like a business conference that you may have attended?

His Holiness goes on to say ""Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word."

Man! Not only that, the Vatican recently launched the "Pope2you" portal, offering a Facebook app, iPhone app, YouTube channel (click here), and Papal videos.

youtube-pope2you

So your boss not quite on the Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogging bandwagon? Ask him or her to read what THE POPE has to say. Listen to the Pope, not just for world peace messages but also for increasing your reach and spreading your message using social networks!

Posted in facebook, Mobile Phones, New Media, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Online Marketing Blog: Financial Analysts CAN leverage Social Networks

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Financial advisors always tell me that social networking sites are not for them. They of course refer to the federal guidelines for financial planners that they have to abide by.

But given that social networks are so popular, is there no easy way for Financial Analysts to leverage them?

I think there is. I think that three simple strategies could allow Financial Analysts to leverage social networks without getting into trouble with the law.

Just throw your name in the hat – the hat in this case the social websites. Once you are online, let people get to know you as  a person without going into what you do and how. Connect with other financial advisors to see what they are doing online. And stay away from dicussing financial stuff online.

Post generic information on the social networks, news items, interesting happenings in your field and even outside your field. Don't make any individual recommendations of any sort and you'll be fine.

Combine your networking with your newsletter and email campaigns. Include your Twitter and FB links on all communication that you send out.

Lastly, be sure to comply with SEC and FINRA regulations. FINRA regulations differentiate between static and interactive content. Social networking content is interactive and therefore no prior approval is needed for them.

Also, FINRA and the SEC require that all tweets be archived or save. To do so, just copy and paste all your tweets in a pdf file every night or week and store these pdf's somewhere. No need to buy new software for this purpose.

Directives from the SEC and FINRA stipulate that all tweets must be archived and be able to be exported, in case regulatory bodies want to rifle through them. To do that, you can manually copy and paste the tweets into a PDF, like Jean Keener of Keener Financial Planning in Keller, Texas does, or like the people who operate the Raymond James' Twitterfeed do.

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Posted in facebook, Linkedin, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Online Marketing Blog: Twitter – Tweets & Promoted Trends

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Twitter is preparing itself and its developers for the rollout of its ad platforms, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, within third-party applications, starting with desktop apps.
 
The microblogging site launched “promoted tweets” in April 2010, which saw the likes of Virgin America, post branded messages which appeared into user’s feeds. It then went onto launch ‘promoted trends’ in June, which allowed brands to enter the trend column.
 
The company has made an update to its application programming interface (API) that gives developers access to two new fields related to Promoted Tweets and Trends. These aren’t ready for prime time though; it will be some time before you actually see Promoted Tweets in TweetDeck, Seesmic or any of the other third-party apps you may be using.
 
“Over the next few months, we will begin beta testing with a handful of desktop applications,” said Twitter Developer Advocate Matt Harris in a post on the Twitter Development Talk Google Group. “During this period, we aim to learn a lot, and we will apply those lessons when we expand distribution of Twitter Promoted Products to the broader ecosystem.”
 
Harris also confirmed something we have known for a while: those developers will get a cut of the revenue it generates through Promoted Content in third-party apps. The company is “still working out the exact value” of the revenue split.
 
Earlier this month, Twitter unveiled Suggestions for You, a tool account holders can use to find other Twitter users with similar interests. The site also added Who to Follow, a section that lists people or organizations a user might be interested in.
 
This is a natural move for Twitter as a significant number of users access the site’s services through third party applications. One such application, TweetDeck recently reported that it had surpassed 15 million downloads for its desktop app and 2.5 million for its iPhone counterpart.
 

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Online Marketing Blog: Do-it Yourself Twitter Backgrounds

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Twitter is undoubtedly a good way to promote your business and to connect with as many people as you can. You’ll find that tweeters with huge numbers of followers use custom twitter templates on their profiles, including their logo and website branding.

You can choose your own custom backgrounds and customize your page to suit your interests and your business. Creating or changing your background image is not a difficult task and there are many different applications you can use free of charge. You don’t even have to download anything to your computer if you don’t wish to.
My Tweet Space offers easy to use templates for exceptional backgrounds for your Twitter page. You have loads of options including different font sizes, styles, graphics and columns. The site offers free backgrounds or if you want a more personalized background you will have to pay a small amount.

Free Twitter Designer is another site where you have the option of selecting one of their themes or you can begin with a blank template. Also check out Twitter Backgrounds Gallery where you have almost 2000 templates to choose from there.
But once you’ve got the backgrounds, you still need someone to tweet for you on a regular frequency AND to execute your complete online marketing campaign. That’s where you can call us – 😀

Contact us to see how we can help you leverage the most popular networks at the most cost-effective rates found in town!
 

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Online Marketing Blog: Twitter Experiencing Growing Problems?

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Twitter's got problems. Interesting article which needs no real summary.

Article credit: Computer World By Juan Carlos Perez

IDG News Service – The recurrent technical problems that have affected Twitter for the past seven weeks have also taken a toll on developers of external applications built for the microblogging service.

Throughout the outages, malfunctions and bugs that began the second week of June and hit their high point during the soccer World Cup, makers of third-party applications have tried to weather the storm while having little or no control over the situation.

The frequent and disruptive technical issues have forced these developers, many of whom generate significant revenue from their Twitter applications, to scramble to appease their angry users, while trying to protect their brands and cope with lost business.

"Twitter API issues in the previous weeks have been terrible for us," said Loic Le Meur, founder and CEO of Seesmic, which makes Twitter client applications for various desktop and mobile platforms.

Users always blame Seesmic first since it's their primary interface to Twitter. It's extremely frustrating because there is nothing else we can do than warning users Twitter has problems. It is very damaging for us since users start to look for alternatives, which fortunately have the same problems, but damage to the brand is done," he said via e-mail.

Twitter, founded in 2006, became notorious back in 2007 and the first half of 2008 for its lengthy outages, but since then it steadily improved the reliability of the service. It had been having a particularly solid 2010 until June rolled around.

"It had been really stable for a long time and then this just came up as a bit of a surprise," said Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, which makes a client application to manage accounts from Twitter and other social media services.

At various points since the problems started in early June, a very apologetic Twitter has blamed the problems on a variety of factors, including massive traffic spikes caused by World Cup games, internal system bugs, server upgrades gone wrong and faulty network configurations.

"It's been a bit disruptive and frustrating because many people don't know if it's us or Twitter, and they'll just assume it's us. Then we have a communication issue we have to address," Holmes said in a telephone interview.

Although the issues have dropped in frequency and intensity in the past two weeks, some developers remain doubtful of Twitter's ability to provide a consistently stable service…….read more at http://www.wisdeo.com/articles/view_post/7326

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Posted in Social Media Marketing, twitter | 1 Comment »

Online Marketing Blog: Social Brandcasting for Business!

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

If I had a dime every time I heard "but I don't see how "Facebook" can help my business", I'd be a rich man! Yes, I know I've said this a guzzilian times but it's true.

Social networking is really nothing more than social brandcasting – meaning casting your brand out there in the social networks, period! So why are businesses not able to see the value of Brandcasting and leveraging the tools available to them to promote themselves?
 
Social Brandcasting benefits are quite simple:

  • You can reach more people through popular sites like Facebook & Twitter than through ANY chamber event you may attend
  • You can continuously promote your services and company events without spending a dime on print materials
  • You can go on a "ra ra" campaign in a non-obtrusive manner and no one will think twice about it online

You can do "horizontal" brandcasting which is to everyone and everywhere across the board, same message, same positioning. Then you can do the "vertical" brandcasting where you position different messages on different platforms.  By balancing quantity (number of followers, fans, connections) and quality (what you say, how you say, the personna you create of yourself or your company online, etc.) you get the biggest bang for your buck.

Capice? If not, call me and I'll be more than happy to discuss this at length cause this is what my company does day in and day out!

 

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Posted in facebook, Internet Marketing, Linkedin, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Social Media Blog: Why Use Twitter for Business

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "but how can Twitter help my business" OR "Twitter? I don't think it'll help me", I'd be a multimillionaire! Ok, so I exaggerate; but for sure I would be hundreds of dollars richer.
 
So why should you use Twitter?

Well, Twitter is free. Twitter is easy. Twitter is flexible. Twitter helps make quick contact and quick connections. But most of all, Twitter is the only tool that allows you to toot your horn as often as you want without the added expense of buying ad space.

A lot of people also say "but we get all our business through referrals". Ok. Well, how do referrals happen? People get to know you at events and lunches and dinners. Once they know you and once they've seen your work (directly or indirectly), they start referring people to you. Twitter then can become a GIANT referral system for you too. People network on Twitter pretty much the same way they do offline. They get to know you, ask questions, read other people's referrals, and check out your capabilities on your website. Once they start seeing you more and more, they find a measure of comfort in your company's legitimacy and capability. Tie the Twitter conversations to offline phone meetings, web conferences, and face to face meetings and now you've really started making the online work for you.

But, Twitter can be time-consuming. And if you don't have the resources, you may want to retain people like us who can cost-effectively manage your Twitter conversations. People are talking everywhere. Your customers and prospects are on Twitter talking about what they need, what frustrates them, what they can benefit from, etc. Not doing anything due to the lack of budget or a lack of resources is no longer optional.

Isn't it time you got on Twitter?

 

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Posted in twitter | 2 Comments »

Social Media Blog: Malware Loves Social Networks!

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Cyber criminal activity is growing and social networking sites are leading the pack in helping spread this activity. No, not intentionally but by virtue of the fact that social networking sites allow ease of sharing content, malware is easy to pass around.

According to a new report released by Blue Coat, a cyber security firm, cyber criminal activity is spreading so rapidly that security solutions providers are unable to keep up and continue to play catch-up.

Blue Coat reported that online storage and software downloading sites were two of the most common sites where malware was hidden. However what was most concerning in Blue Coat's report was that since social networking sites accounted for 25% of top internet activity, that's where most of the cyber attacks are happening. When networking on popular networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, opening links that contain malware is the leading cause for the spread of malware.

We've seen such attacks on Twitter where a user gets a tweet asking him or her to change their password and the minute they do so, their account is hacked into.

Some simple, common sense steps will help you from falling victim to malware and cyber criminal activity:

  • Change your passwords on a regular frequency
  • Make your passwords complicated enough so they cannot be guessed. Trust me, "password" is NOT a good password.
  • Use tools like Tweetdeck for Twitter where you can "preview" links before opening them.
  • Do NOT click on links sent to you via Direct Message (DM) on Twitter from someone you know
  • On Facebook, use caution when accepting friend requests from people even if they are connected to others in your network
  • Think before you post ANYTHING, and I mean anything. Sharing vacation plans online, is a strong no-no.
  • Use caution when providing your information on new sites, you can't know how secure or not secure they may be.

Social networking requires MORE not less caution than before. Before, all we had to worry about was spam in our emails. Now, it's real-time information that's out there for anyone and everyone to see. Prevention is better than cure when networking online; so prevent the "bare-all" behavior and you'll be fine.

 

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Posted in Blogging, facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, twitter | 3 Comments »

Social Media Blog: Twitter Hacker Gets Into President Obama’s Account Too

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Well, even the President of the United States is not safe from hackers. Yep, read today that the Prez’s Twitter account was hacked into by a young Frenchman who was arrested in France for “allegedly” hacking into Twitter accounts of President Barack Obama and others.

And the worst part is that he was able to do so by simply “guessing” the passwords. Uh, Secret Service high-tech geniuses like the ones you see on the popular TV show 24 are obviously not for real. Otherwise you’d think they’d have a Twitter password that’s tough to guess or break.

Apparently the so called hacker was just trying to prove he could.

Just a word of caution to all of you out there who love to use simple passwords like “password”, “name1234”, and other very common passwords. Don’t!
 
Take the time to use a password that is not your name and birth date or name and social security number combination. AND, try to change it often, like once a month at least. It’s just embarrassing that our President’s Social Media managers didn’t follow what is simple, yet age-old advise “make passwords a bit complicated”…..You don’t have to make the same mistake.

 

Posted in twitter | 1 Comment »

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