Another Twitter Blog! Using it for your business in the right way.

Its becoming more and more apparent that Twitter is being used as another site to 'catch up with gossip'. Thats all very good and well and its great to interact with others on a more personal level at times, but lets not lose focus here and forget the real reasons why businesses should use Twitter. 

Don't get me wrong, i love a good chit chat and its great for building new business relationships, but do you think it can go a little too far sometimes?

I don't know about you but i feel as though businesses are missing out on getting key information out to their audience because they're too busy 'talking' to other accounts about irrelevant subjects. 

Everything in moderation i say! Yes, keep in touch with your followers, interact and engage with your online community, but remember to promote your services and products, after all thats why they followed you in the first place, right? 

Lets look at a few things how Twitter should be used in the right way:

1) Your competition - Keep an eye out on your competitors, what information are they sending out? who are they talking to? what are they doing differently to you and could you improve in any way? Try and find out if customers are having issues with them and use that to your advantage. 

2) Market research - Do a bit of research! Which tweets are your followers more interested in? What devices are they using to view your account? What products are they liking the most? Use this information in your business strategies. 

3) Networking - Connect with other local businesses around your area, build new relationships, good relationships can lead to purchases. 

4) Branding - Get out there with your brand, make yourself known/heard/seen - use informative tweets, interesting visuals, and engaging videos (but not videos which are too long, its a known fact the human concentration span doesn't exceed much past 90 secs)

The right use of hashtags and Twitter handles will increase awareness, and in time the consistency and quality of your tweets will develop familiarity and trust. 

5) Events - keeping up to date with whats going on in your area. Is there anything you could be apart of or get involved in? Jump on the back of the truck! 

6) Promote/Advertise - Use your account to push traffic through to your website. It can be a launch of a new product or service, or perhaps its particular news that you want your customers to see. This will also increase your website visibility and improve the SEO which in time will rank you higher in Google. You can also transfer them to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn etc. 

7) Employees - Use Twitter to find new potential job candidates. But also its a good way to follow your current employees - where have they been? who have they seen? did the 'other person' leave good feedback about your employee?

8) Complaints - Twitter is great for finding out any issues or problems that customers are having with your company. Use this opportunity to regain trust and loyalty. Never ignore comments left whether good or bad, you don't want to look like you don't care!

Hopefully, you've found this blog useful - Its come from changes in activity over the last few weeks, and comments mentioned to me. If I'm seeing it, you may be seeing it to. 

If you need more help with any of you social media accounts you can see what services we offer here: www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

Connect with us:

Twitter @marketinggeeks_
FB www.facebook.com/marketinggeeksdevon
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=199185842&trk=spm_pic

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68WvKKXeQkk&feature=youtu.be

www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

#Hashtag

Confused about Hastags? Not sure what they mean or why you should use them?

Hopefully this blog will make things a little more #clearer - Get it? (yeah very good Kay)

Anyway...

A hashtag is a word or phrase put together to form a 'kind of' label that will trend within the social media world.  

For an example lets choose the word #Fashion 

Anyone who searches for the hashtag #Fashion with the search tool, will see every tweet ever posted with this particular hashtag included - there may be a few so you'll have to scroll down :) See photo below.

So as a business it is imperative to include Hastags to ensure your message gets seen by as many people as possible. You can include specific key words relating to the industry you're in, the areas you cover and products you sell. 

You can also create your own hastags for specific events for instance. 

Say you're planning an open event for a new hair salon which is opening in the next couple of weeks - lets name the salon..... ' 'Fringes' 

To the run up of the launch you could create your own tag #FringesOpenEvent and every time you tweet about the event you include this hastag, and also ask your followers to do the same.This is a good way of monitoring your brand and how well your online presence is doing. You can also get involved in conversations with is great for interacting with potential customers that may want to come along to the launch.

You can overdo the hashtags though, you don't need to fill an entire tweet with them: heres an example of a bad one, well what i think is bad anyway:

New #design of #shoes on our website now, available in all #sizes & #colours. #fashion #buyonline

Example of a good one:

We've launched a new design today see our website www.... #shoes #devon #fashion 

Keep it simple and relevant and you can't go wrong. :)

So hopefully this has give you a little more understanding about Hashtags and how to use them.

For more information and advice you can contact us through www.marketing-geeks.co.uk 

Understanding Google +

Ever sat back and thought 'Whats with all the social media platforms? Ive got Facebook and Twitter, why do i need anything else?'

I've met a few people now that really don't understand how Google + works and why 'as a business' you should have one. 

Google + in a nutshell is an embedded connection with Google itself (the search engine) and is designed to expose businesses and increase brand awareness. 

This social media platform is imperative for helping your website get ranked high on Google and by using key words specific to your industry/business it can boost your visibility dramatically. 

You can pretty much use it in the same way as Facebook, but one of the main great features of Google + is that it has a tool called 'Authorship' so basically if you've written a blog for instance, Authorship will prevent your information from being used elsewhere and sees you as the legal owner/author - So thieves be warned!! 

You can create circles in Google + and bundle businesses/people together so that you can target them specifically with messages about particular topics.

For example if you have a group called 'Networking Businesses' and you want to inform them about an event you're organising then you can send a message directly to them - Simples! 

If you'd like more information on Google + or setting up an account Marketing geeks can assist you.

We specialise in Social Media Management and are based in Torquay but cover Torbay, Exeter and all surrounding areas in Devon.  We also offer Twitter advice, Facebook help and advise on which media platforms would suit your new business for maximum impact. 

www.marketing-geeks.co.uk