Make sure to complete your Twitter profile

Follow Hashtags

Use Twitter real-time search

Engage with people

Be human

Use TweetDeck or any other twitter client

Take it offline (or atleast off-twitter)

Follow the top users in your industry

Tweet regularly

Show some love

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It’s 2011 and everybody is getting on Facebook, even the grocery shop around the corner is connecting with people on Facebook. That is really cool and makes me happy, but the problem is what happens after a brand gets on Facebook? How do you expose yourself to your audience? What do you offer on your Facebook page? How do you communicate with your fans?

It’s very difficult to get someone to “Like” your page, especially when you operate in a very specific or a narrow niche. Don’t you agree? I will now share with you 7 ways I believe will help you lose your fans. Obviously you will need to avoid the below sins unless you really want to lose your fans and piss them off.

Overwhelming your fans with updates

It’s very annoying to your fans when you post around 5 or 6 times a day, especially when those posts are being pushed to their streamlines. Trust me the least thing they will do is to mute your page. It doesn’t only annoy your fans, but nobody will visit your page 6 times a day, that means you are not only losing fans, but also giving less exposure to your updates.

Posting irrelevant content

If I am fan of a flower shop, I really don’t care about a sports event taking place tonight or sometime soon! It’s very simple and straight forward; you have to post updates that are interesting to your fans instead of posting updates that YOU think they are interesting. This is the thing about social media; it’s ALL about your audience.

Inconsistency

It’s very similar to blogging, you have to be consistent. You need to follow a certain frequency when it comes to publishing on your page. You can just update your page whenever you feel like it. You have to keep your fans updated, share with them the latest offers, tips about what you do and how they can benefit from your products and so on. It’s very dangerous to stop posting for a while after you made your fans used to daily posts. This doesn’t mean that you need to be posting on daily basis, some businesses could be posting once a week and doing a great job on Facebook, but again it’s all about being consistent.

Acting as a robot

Sounding robotic and replying to your fans with the same exact phrase all the time will not make them feel happy or satisfied. Personalize your messages as much as you can in a way that makes them feel well recognized by the brand they are following on Facebook and their being loyal toward it. Personalizing your communication messages will really increase the satisfaction of your fans and increase their loyalty.

Ignoring your fans’ questions and inquiries

Seriously?! The fact that you are present on Facebook means that you are responsible to answer all questions received on your page and help your fans out at the exact same level as if they are visiting you personally or calling over. At the contrary, asking on Facebook is much more important since the question is being asked in front of your entire fan base not one-to-one question. Ignoring your fans’ requests, complains, questions or any feedback will defiantly back fire on your brand and will result in losing fans.

Deleting ALL the negative feedback you get

Do you own the perfect brand? Is it possible to have a brand that has 100% customer satisfaction? I can assure you that if you do so, it’s not only you will lose credibility and fans, but all the good feedback you receive will look fake. There should be some negative feedback or complaints from your audience just to balance the ecosystem of your page. Actually sometimes the negative feedback you get will lead you to improve the quality of what you offer and therefore excel in what you do. Instead of deleting the negative feedback you get, try to utilize it.

Over promoting yourself

To “Like” a page on Facebook is exactly the same as submitting your email address to a newsletter and your fans will definitely be annoyed to be reading self promotional posts all the time on your page. Instead of doing so, spend some time researching what your fans would like to read or to be offered and get it done.

I have personally unliked and muted a lot of pages for the reasons above, it’s really annoying. Don’t you guys agree? Haven’t you ever unliked a page on Facebook? What annoys you the most?

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Last night the announcement and launch of Google Buzz buzzed the whole sphere on all levels. But the question is: “Is Google Buzz going to buzz on the long-term or it’s going to be a momentum and that’s it?” I personally have various concerns about Google Buzz specially that it still has not yet been added to my Gmail, which I think is a sin in launching any new product!

Earlier last year Google launched Google Wave, which I personally considered as a one great collaboration tool and I have used it in different projects ever since. When Google first launched Wave, a lot of people shared their wish lists or which could be considered as a list of missing features that should be added to it. Since I didn’t try Google Buzz yet, I have a few concerns regarding it.

Product Roll-Out:

I don’t think that it’s a good idea to have the service available for a certain bunch of people rather than everybody together, specially when you’re launching a whole new product. Availability in phases works well when you release a new feature to a current product/service but not when launching a whole new service. We heard a lot about Google Buzz and it’s not there, very soon; the buzz will disappear and the conversion rate will be WAY less than it could have created if the service was available.

Facebook:

All the reviews I read mentioned that Google Buzz is not integrated with Facebook, which is the biggest social network on the Internet with more than 400 million users. I really don’t know what Google is trying to do, are they thinking to replace it!?!? No, they will not! It’s too late to replace it now, why don’t you think of complementing it and enable your users to manage it in addition to the variety of options you are providing!

Name:

Seriously? Couldn’t you guys find a better name?! Yahoo already used it ages ago, didn’t you hear about Yahoo! Buzz? This is not the point, I really don’t like the name and I don’t think it’s catchy and fits for a social network! Compare it to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Orkut, Flickr. Buzz is a very formal naming, couldn’t you find any lamer name for your product?

I am sure that I will have much more concerns once I try it out, but till then I should be fair enough and mention a few features that I think are cool to have and utilize in Google Buzz.

1. It’s integrated with your Gmail, no need for a new tab on the browser with different login details, you can use it on the go while reading your emails and replying to them.
2. Links are shown as Thumbnails as if they were linking to any multimedia content such as photos or videos.
3. When it comes to sharing content with your followers/friends you can choose it to become either public or private sharing, this feature is really cool and gives you more control over what you are sharing.
4. You will also be notified on all comments and updates that occur on the buzz you create over email, and those notifications are updated LIVE!

Back to the title of this article, is Google Buzz going to buzz or not? I can’t really judge right now, but I think it will buzz specially for businesses, I think it will be a very beneficial social marketing tool for them. Do you think it’s going to buzz or not? Did you try it yet? Let me know.

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Social media and blogging in specific is becoming a must for everyone. Yeah, everyone should blog and use social media even if not for making money or any other professional use.

An article that created a big buzz yesterday was that The Pope Benedict XVI had a message for priests of the Catholic Church: they must proclaim the gospel by not only having a website, but by blogging and utilizing new web communication tools. Everybody is expecting 2010 to be the year of social media and blogging on ALL levels!

If you don’t own a blog, why don’t you start blogging right now? Don’t you like to have a place where you can share your ideas and thoughts with the whole world!? Everyone does! Blogging also could either be FREE or could cost you a little amount of money if you are looking into getting your own domain name! Time is ticking, one day you will be wishing you would’ve started a blog a couple of years back.

If you are worried about the topic you are going to write about, think deep inside yourself; isn’t there any area that you are knowledgeable about? Or don’t your friends always come and ask you about a certain topic? If not, then start a personal blog where you can share your personal opinions, thoughts and daily experiences.

A blog is the abbreviation of Web Log, it’s the new version of the old known note books which we used to call “Diaries”, remember them!? It will be very nice to have all your thoughts and experiences logged into one place and have them shared with your readers and someday along the line get back to them and enjoy reading them!

Below is part of the Pope’s message to the Priests:

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich “menu of options” might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different “voices” provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.” Via mashable

If you decided to start a blog for yourself, check out my Healthy Blogging 101 series where I share some good tips on how to choose the topic of your blog and how to build an affordable blog and much more.

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This is a guest post by James from TheInfoPreneur.

You write new content for your site, because you want people to read it. You promote it as much as you can, but there is only so much one person can do and unless you are about to employ a whole team to spread your content and products for you, you need to let your readers do it for you;

Buttons

Everyone wants their latest post to go viral and be the new must see web page and the very best way to do this is to have buttons. Digg, Tweetmeme, Sexy Bookmarks all of the plugins and extremely easy to put into your site and make it astonishingly easy for your readers to spread your work. Think about it, one reader with say 50,000 followers on Twitter, Re-Tweets your article via your Tweetmeme button and that’s traffic, It only takes the right person to push the digg button for it to be seen by an incredible audience.

Don’t go over board on the button front though. I have seen sites with two Re-Tweet buttons at the top and bottom of every post, it’s over kill, I prefer one at the top and one at the bottom with more options at the very bottom of the post, for me and the readers of my site, it works. Every site is different though so have a play around and see what works for you.

CommentLuv

I love sites that have commentLuv enabled. CommentLuv is a plugin that allows your readers to automatically leave a link to their latest article at the bottom of their comment. But how does this spread my content? Well, directly it won’t, but the best thing about it is, it increases the amount of comments you will get, at least it has on my site. By having more people visit your site and contribute to the post you will inherently gain more social spreads via your buttons.

Guest Post

Allow people to guest post for you. Having others write for you, whatever market you are in, is a fantastic way to increase traffic. Think about it, not only are you promoting your site, but your guest poster is to increase their onlinepresence. It doubles your work rate and is a fantastic way of getting new readers because of the new writing style your guest brings.

So there you have it, let your readers spread the love.

TheInfoPreneur was set up by James Richmond 3 months ago, Since then he has published nearly 180 post and now has an Alexa Ranking of 73,000. He replies to everything and is committed to his site and his readers. Unbeleivable motivated, this guy needs to be watched. For someone who has no qualifications at all, TheInfoPreneur is a rare breed of website.

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Yesterday I was asked a question by my friend Jamie: “Does your blog have a unique selling point? Why should ppl subscribe to yours and not others?” and afterwards a very important point crossed my mind and I raised it immediately and I thought to share it with you guys.

My answer was that I never promote my blog over other blogs, all blogs within the sphere complete each other instead of competing like any other industry! That is the cool thing about social media, that you can never force a reader to read your blog, or buy your product, or for example promote yourself over other bloggers as if you are better than them or your blog is better, it’s not the case at all! Readers are attracted by the quality of your content and the way you write, they either like it or they just bounce off your blog!

Blogging, unlike other industries, requires focusing on quality more than promotion, since readers will find your blog if its content meets their requirements and satisfies their needs.

Back to the core of the article, I don’t think any blogger would ever think of promoting their blog over other bloggers, in the contrary, we consider ourselves as colleagues and friends. Our blogs complete each other rather than compete, each of us has his own loyal readers where at sometimes we might share some loyal readers and we might be each others’ readers!

Let’s take SteitBlog for example; the following bloggers (just to count a few) are good friends of mine and all of us blog around almost the same thing; Blogging and Making Money Online, and we read each others blogs.

1- MikeCJ

2- Daniel Sargent

3- Derek Jensen

4- Robert Bravery

At the same time, I do follow and look up to some other A-List bloggers (to list a few) whom I consider as friends/mentors:

1- Darren Rowse

2- Daniel Scocco

3- David Risley

4- Chris Brogan

So do you think in blogging there is competition between different blogs under the same niche? Do you have colleagues or competitors in the niche you blog about?

For now I just want to cut the article short and see what you guys think about this issue, and we might work on follow-up articles if we find out that there are different points of views!

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Earlier yesterday Google launched it’s long-awaited feature, which is the Real-Time Search. Real Time search is currently available to limited users, but will go globally for the public within the coming days. I personally use Twitter’s search for tracking the newest trend of a certain topic, since Twitter is the biggest real-time community on the web and originally is the one who started the real time revolution.

What Google is doing is that they are adding this feature to the Internet. Now with Google’s Real Time Search you can get LIVE updates from different communities including; Facebook, Identica, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, and Twitter. Other than having the updates of these communities in real-time, Google will also include results from different websites on the Internet also in real-time.

Who can benefit from Google’s Real-Time Search?

1- Brand Managers:

Now, it will be EXTREMELY easy to know what people are saying about your brand in Real-Time and you can in return respond directly. This will improve your presence online and will give you the advantage of direct response to all inquiries, complaints or even compliments.

2- Second Level News Portals:

I mean with second level news portals, all portals that are not part of a news agency and that depend on a third party to get its content. By searching a specific keyword, they will easily get all updates and most recent news about this keyword.

3- Everybody Else:

Everybody will benefit from Google’s Real Time Search for the accuracy and the quality of the results it’s providing for its users. Who doesn’t want to have the newest and latest news of a certain topic in real time?

Personally, I am excited to track and manage what people say about SteitBlog and other products. I usually track the feedback through different services and apps, but now it all can be done through Google.

Google also announced that they have applied this new feature to their Android and iPhone applications, but it seems the update is yet to be officially released since I have tried to use Google’s application on an iPhone and still it’s operating as usual.

Are you excited about Google’s real-time search? How do you think you can benefit from it?

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First of all I would like to mention that this post is inspired by Daniel Scocco’s previous initiative, since he has been doing this activity for quite a long time now. I have participated in some of his initiatives and I thought it would be cool to do so for SteitBlog’s readers.

Having your goals set publicly or even privately, will really help you focus more and dedicate extra time and effort to achieve these goals. With this group writing project we will share our own goals with each other hence help ourselves achieve them.

Do you want to participate?

To take part in this group project you should write an article on your blog mentioning your goals in details and then comment on this post with a URL to your goals article. You have 2 weeks to submit your entries (December 21st is the deadline). The week following that, I will be publishing an article containing a brief about each of your goals and linking back to the original article for the readers to read in details.

Sample Internet Goals

1. To reach 5,000 daily page views.
2. To reach 3,000 followers on Twitter.
3. To have more than 2,000 fans on Facebook’s FanPage.
4. To exceed 4,000 RSS subscribers.
5. To generate revenue of minimum USD 2,000/month starting from August.
6. To Launch 3 e-books 1 of them is premium and paid for.
7. To publish more than 30 articles per month on my blog starting from July.

Don’t you have any goals that you want to achieve in 2010? What are they? Share them with us as mentioned above!

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It has been more than a week since I have last posted, and what happened was not scheduled or planned for. I apologize at the first level for not publishing any article for this period of time. I have been working on different things for you guys which kept me a bit busy in addition of being very sick.

As you can see, SteitBlog’s Slogan is: “Internet, Technology and more…” I have chosen this slogan when I firsts planned to launch SteitBlog and wanted to talk about all these topics. Within the first couple of weeks I found out that I am focusing on Blogging and Making Money Online (MMO) topics and therefore I came to a conclusion that SteitBlog needs a more appropriate slogan. As a result, I am now announcing SteitBlog’s first contest to choose the best slogan and I will be giving away 3 2-months subscription (worth of USD 39.90 each) to TwitFever.com by Daniel Scocco. TwitFever.com is an exclusive set of tools to help you gain more Twitter followers.

How to participate:

1- Subscribe to the newsletter using the form below.

2- You will receive a confirmation e-mail just to verify your subscription.

3- After confirming your subscription, you will receive a Welcome newsletter.

4- Reply to this newsletter with your suggested slogan.

5- Tweet this message: Just participated in the new slogan contest by @steitiyeh and @danielscocco to win a FREE Subscription to TwitFever http://bit.ly/7LNxew

Notes:

1- If you have already subscribed to my newsletter, start from step 4, no need to go through steps 1, 2 and 3 again.

2- The 3 giveaways will be given as follow: 2 of them will be given away randomly every week  (one on the 10th and another on the 17th), and the 3rd one will be given away for the best slogan on the 24th.

3- You can send as many suggestions as you want.

4- I will be contacting the winners by e-mail or Twitter once they are announced as winners, and they should be replying back within 24 hours in order to be eligible to win the prize, otherwise new names will be chosen.

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Twitter in comparison to other social networks has seen major growth in a very small period of time since its launch back in 2006. With its user base increasing by the second, it is soon becoming the number one choice for socializing. For those of you who don’t know, Twitter now positions itself in 3rd place after Facebook and MySpace. It started off with all its users being individuals but it wasn’t long till companies started joining, as they found it to be a beneficial way of engaging with customers. A lot of companies from all over the world are on Twitter for different purposes including customer care, marketing, sales, R&D and so much more. But I think that the only purpose the customer will be the initiator of a conversation while being on Twitter, is for that extra Customer Care channel.

Having spent 2 years of my life, while studying, as a Customer Care Rep in a Telecommunication Company gave me the experience of “customer care” per say from how to deal with angry customers to satisfy customers, and thats just to mention a few.

What makes Twitter a different channel than any regular one, is that it is a DIRECT channel and a public one as well. Whenever a customer complains about an issue, everybody on Twitter will see it, and it’s no good at all if it took you time to reply or if your reply didn’t make any sense. Any customer on Twitter doesn’t need to wait in the queue to meet with an agent, the customer can submit his complaint at anytime on any day on Twitter. I have experienced a problem earlier with Aramex and honestly speaking I wasn’t satisfied with their service. I tweeted my case just for sharing purposes, and I was shocked when Fadi Ghandour, Aramex’s Founder and CEO, replied back to my tweet with the best reply I ever received in anything related to customer care and best part is that my problem was resolved and I now consider myself a satisfied customer.

In order to add Twitter to your current customer care channels, you should be 100% sure of your QoS. You should have the intention of helping your customers and satisfying their needs through being TRANSPARENT and HONEST. Your Twitter account should also be taken seriously with a qualified employees to manage it and serve your customers in the best manner possible. I highly recommend CoTweet for managing your brand online since it supports multiple users login and multiple accounts as well, it also enables you to monitor certain keywords and trends and one cool feature is, that CoTweet provides the sharing of any specific tweet for any of the other users to follow up on it when they on duty. You also should give Social Mention a try, what it does is it gives great analysis for your brand all over the sphere.

Another task that every company should be doing when joining Twitter (preferably before joining Twitter) is to have a blog or a dynamic website that contains all materials needed for customer care, promotions, prices, knowledge base, FAQs, and so on. This blog or website will highly support the company’s presence on Twitter. One last thing to remember is, that the customer is ALWAYS right and you are there to serve him/her.

So before taking this critical decision, you should take care of all issues mentioned above and make it worth the time and effort.

Dell has reported a revenue of over more than 4 million USD generated directly and in-directly from Twitter. The opportunity is there, hear to what your customers have to say whether through Twitter or any other social media, it could work for you as a promotional and advertising channel not only as a feedback and customer care channel.

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