Business Growth Insights

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. It lets you post up to 140 characters at a time. Some people post their status  every 5 minutes (“Waiting for the bus”, “On the bus”, “Walking home”) and  companies use Twitter to get the word out about new products, blog posts, and other random stuff.

Companies from all over the world have Twitter accounts and thousands of people following them. Some of these companies are Apple, Intel, H&R Block, and Zappos. Barrack Obama has over 8,000 followers!

To leverage the Twitter potential you need to have people following you. That is, people that want to be updated on what you are up to.

Step 1: Importing Contacts
When you sign up for Twitter you will have a chance to import contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, and your own address book. Do it.

Step 2: Complete Your Profile
Make sure all your profile is complete and include a link to your website. Add “http” at the beginning of it to make it clickable. Personalize the colors and the sidebar on your profile page. Use keywords in your profile so others can find you.

Step 3: Understand the Dynamics of Twitter
Twitter is not a marketing tool; it’s a social tool. That means:

• Don’t spam
• Follow other users
• Be active in the community (comment and post frequently)
• Post useful information
• Don’t post every 10 minutes
• Engage in conversations. Retweet (reply to other tweets) often
• Don’t promote yourself. Share cool stuff. To give your company exposure, do it the smart way. Direct your followers to a blog post with useful information and have that post invite users to take action. Don’t try to take people from Twitter to your checkout page directly.

Step 4: Build Your Audience
There are several things that you can do to build your audience:

• Put a link to “Follow Me on Twitter” in your email signature, forums signature, website, and maybe even your business cards
• Invite people to follow you on Twitter at the end of each blog post you create
• Find Twitter users that you really look up to and see who is following them. Follow these people. Once they see you are following them, they will follow you.
• See who is following your friends and follow them. They will follow you too.
• Use Twitter directories to find members who are likely to follow you. My favorites are Just Tweet It and Twellow.
• Use the search feature to find profiles that you want to follow. You can use Twitter’s RSS feed to be notified every time a tweet is made containing a certain keyword.

Step 5: Watch Your Following/Followers Ratio
Try to have a balance between people you follow and people that follow you. If 1,000 people follow you and you only follow 10 folks, you will be seen as selfish and snob. If 10 people follow you and you follow 1,000, you will be seen as a spammer.

Some tips that will help you keep both numbers balanced:

• Grow slow. Instead of adding 500 new friends in one day, add maybe 50 and wait for them to follow you. Then do another 50.
• Use a tool like Friend or Follow to see who is following you that you are not following and who you are following that is not following you. This tool is very useful to balance the number of following/followers.
• Avoid the “follow/no follow” tactic. Some people follow others so they follow them and then they stop following those folks. Avoid this practice if you don’t want to look like a spammer.

Step 6: Post Useful Tweets
Make it worthwhile to follow you. If you’ve found something that your audience might find useful, tweet it. You can use Twitter tools to automatically tweet your blog posts.

Share what you do but avoid “selling”. For example, if you are a web developer you can tweet “we just finished designing the website for ABC Widgets” but avoid something like “Custom Web Design from $899”.

Step 7: Learn from the Experts
Find 10-20 users with over 300 followers and see what they are doing right. Get ideas and implement them.

Do you have any more ideas on how to use Twitter for your small business? Please share them with us by commenting below!

This is the final part of the article based on a portion of the OneCoach Expert Interview with Robert Grant, Facebook Expert and Marketing Mastermind.

Be sure to read the first post in this series if you haven’t already.

Now that we’ve outlined the importance of understanding social media, here are some tips for using it in your business:

Immediately connect with key influencers and piggy back on their networks. Find a way to connect with them, find a way to contribute to them, find out what it is that they need and give it to them. Don’t sell them anything, and don’t send anyone a free report or to your blog. Nobody is interested.

The approach to do things the right way and position yourself as an educator (not a salesman) is important. You should become an educator and only give information that you truly believe in. People will come to you for advice in your niche. Go into communities and share knowledge and wisdom, and connect with people by giving instead of seeing what you can get.

Once you have a following, start monetizing the social media movement. One of the most powerful mediums that has come into play at the moment is Facebook fan pages, which are essentially business pages. Facebook won’t allow you to sell directly off the page, but whenever someone joins your fan page, their entire network sees that they have joined your fan page (an endorsement) — this will help you to grow your network exponentially.

People need to understand one fundamental thing: The first thing we look for is familiarity. We pay attention to what we know (reticular activation system).

If you are brand new to Facebook then:

• Know what will get you banned (spamming, adding 25 or more friends a day, etc.) by viewing the Facebook terms of service.
• Find key influencers in your niche.
• Learn how people are receiving your message.
• Show that you have expertise and passion about a certain area in your business.
• Advertise your fan page on Facebook and other social networks.

Make sure you also understand that:

• It is important to show you are human by using video (people are a 1000 times more likely to trust you).
• If you don’t have video at least try to use interesting pictures.

Give yourself some time to really understand what is going on. Start easy and learn the fundamentals first. You can build on from there once you have a better understanding of social media.

This should get you started off on the right foot. Give people great stuff. Make sure your content is remarkable, and people will remark about it.

Members of the OneCoach Business Coaching program have unlimited access to hundreds of interviews like this one — see OneCoach.com to learn more about building your business fast.

This article is based on a portion of the OneCoach Expert Interview with Robert Grant, Facebook Expert and Marketing Mastermind. OneCoach business coaching clients can access the recording of the interview on our web site.

Social media is now being implemented as a strategic marketing tactic in business and is taking the world by storm. Facebook, for example, is close to 300,000,000 users. It’s now accounting for 70% of the entire Internet population. The average user is logging on 4 times a day. The average visit time is 20 minutes. 8,000,000 people per day are joining Facebook fan pages. It’s the biggest social media platform on the Internet and no matter what industry you are in, members of your target market are using Facebook.

Depending upon your business niche, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other social media sites that you could be using to find your ideal clients. Understanding the trends in this rapidly growing industry will help you understand how to get the best return on your investment of both time and money.

The mistakes people make in social media:

• They only think about themselves. If you want to be successful in social media, money has to be a natural consequence of you contributing. It’s all about connecting with people and building relationships.
• They don’t realize that it’s an open community. Every word you say goes viral. It’s heard by the person you are communicating with, your network, and their entire network. Go out there and contribute first. Don’t be viewed as a taker. Relationships are first and business is second. Get a solid core network.
• They think it’s about building the “Facebook phone book” which means adding anybody. When it comes to the masses, that’s what groups are for. Have a quality network. If you build a quality-based network, then as your relationships build their network, you can start leveraging a massive reach.

This “fad” is not going away…

• You have to educate yourself in social media. It makes a lot of things from the past obsolete. When you are thinking about connecting with prospects, they’re online following other people. Think about your product or services. If your customers are online, then you need to figure out where they are online and how to start the engagement process.
• If you don’t want to pursue social media yourself, then get help doing it or get it done for you. This is the new killer application to use if you want to see your business survive and thrive. When you become the early adopter, which is now, start leveraging your knowledge, strategies, and tactics over the next 30 to 90 days. You will position yourself as the thought and product leader in your niche.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article to see what you can do to utilize social media in your business. It’ll be available on Monday, 4/12, so be sure to check back!

Are you looking ahead and setting goals for 2010? Here are a few quick tips that your business can use to flourish in the New Year:

1. Find out who your ideal client is and make sure you’re marketing to them.

For any business to succeed, knowing your ideal target market is an absolute must have. Who are the ideal people to purchase your products and services? Why do they want to come to you instead of your competition? Which group of people would you love to work with? Take some time to interview some of your top clients to create an “ideal client profile” and adjust your marketing so that it will speak to them and their wants and needs.

2. Find the time to work on your business, not in it.

When was the last time you evaluated your business operations? Are you too busy dealing with customers, answering phones, creating invoices and running your company? Acquire the necessary infrastructure so that you won’t have to rely on yourself to do everything. Get help in the areas where you don’t excel so that you can spend more time on the things you’re good at. The goal is to have your business perform well without you so that you can spend time on the things that will make your business move forward and grow. Create a model that will ensure things get done right from top to bottom.

3. Create a long-term plan.

What is it that you want from your business? Where do you want your business to be next month? In a year? In five years? Set step by step goals that are achievable. For example, figure out how many sales you must have in order to meet your revenue goals. That way you know what to aim for. Find out what is working and what isn’t and make sure you’re spending time daily to reach toward your goals. Find the right people to help you get the proper strategies in place and keep you accountable. This will help you avoid mistakes and prevent having to rebound from any major setbacks later.

4. Build strong social media channels.

Every business should have a strong presence in social media. It’s not going away. For example, a few months ago Facebook was close to 300,000,000 users. It’s now accounting for more than 70% of the entire Internet population. What’s more is that social media will significantly increase in 2010. Your clients are out there. Whether you’re a dog trainer or a business consulting, it’s very important to start engaging with your target market online.

5. Seek help.

We know that running your business can be difficult and growing your business is even harder. You’ve put all your time and energy into your business and you’ve sacrificed time for yourself and with your family. That’s why at OneCoach, we help our clients take the right steps, in the right order to grow their businesses. We’re committed to helping you achieve your business goals and to live the life you’ve always wanted. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, we’re here to help. Click here to learn more about our Business Coaching programs that are specifically designed to help your unique business succeed.

Is this the year that you and your business will grow to extraordinary levels? That’s up to you.

After redesigning over 100 websites I now have a pretty good idea about the most common web design mistakes.

If your site is making some of these mistakes, fix them now! Otherwise, you are leaving money on the table every single day.

1. Bad Layout
Your navigation and layout have to be simple, obvious, and intuitive. If you expect your visitors to figure out how to get to where they want to go, prepare for them to leave. Don’t make them think, make it obvious for them. Forget about “cool” navigation. Make it simple and elegant.

2. Slow Websites
Keep your website light so it loads fast. There is nothing more annoying than those “Loading… 1%” messages. People don’t want to wait. Studies show that if a website takes more than 8 seconds to load, 21% of your visitors will leave and if it takes more than 20 seconds to load, 43% of your visitors will be gone! This is a tragedy. There are ways to achieve excellent designs that are also very light.

3. Bad Colors Choice
Most web designers are not professional graphic designers. They never learned what colors work well together and most importantly, what different colors mean. Make sure your website uses the right colors for your market and it is not hard on your visitors’ eyes.

4. Bad Music Selection
In most cases I am against music at all. I am talking about music that auto-plays (background music). A lot of people will visit your website from work and they don’t want annoying music popping up. Music also makes websites slow to load. If you decide that you want to have music on your website, choose the right one for your audience.

5. Under Construction Pages
What is the purpose of “Coming Soon” pages? This looks really unprofessional. Just don’t have them at all! Who wants to read an “Under Construction” message? If you want to generate curiosity about a section that you will be adding soon, have some teaser copy and possibly a list-building box: “Sign Up to Be Notified When We Release this Feature”.

6. Information is Hard to Find
This happens very often with your phone number and email address. Let’s say you own a restaurant. Most people visit your website to get your phone number and make a reservation. Put your number at the very top and make it huge!

7. Ads on Commercial Websites
If your website is supported by advertising, displaying ads is your business. But if your main stream of income is not advertising, get rid of ads. They look really unprofessional and they make you look needy.

8. Low-Resolution Images
There is nothing that makes me angrier than web designers who use low-resolution images. They look terrible! There are ways to optimize images so they are both light and visually appealing.

9. Splash Screens
Don’t waste your visitors’ time. They are on your website to learn about your company and services, not to see how talented your graphic designer is and the cool animations he can do for you. Don’t force them to take an extra step. They want information. Give it to them.

10. Passive Marketing
Your website is an excellent opportunity to tell prospects why your company is better than the competition, why they should buy from you, and ask them to take action. Be proactive.

Always make sure that your website is properly serving your potential and existing clients!

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