Happy 2011!

The core thing that influences the success of every business is the viability of your customer list. While there is much debate over quality vs. quantity, I will always take that stand that you need BOTH. You want a large list (quantity) that contains your ideal customer (quality). (I’ll be sharing more about this on my free teleclass “5 Simple Keys to Attract Your Ideal Customer: How to Get More Leads, Build Your List and Grow Your Business FAST!”)

As we enter this new year, I asked you to share with me what are your biggest priorities in 2011. I specifically asked you to tell me what you most needed to focus on most when it comes to list building, lead generating and traffic building. This is what you said (listed in order)…

1. Blogging
2. Referrals
3. Keywords
4. On-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
5. Video
6. Joint Ventures
7. Teleseminars
8. Article Marketing
9. Affiliate Marketing
10. Facebook & Twitter [tied]

So what do you think? Do you agree with this list? What would you add or change?

Follow others

Many people are set up to autofollow so when you follow them, they may follow you back. How do you find twitter followers?

Check twitter directories, do a keyword search, search profiles and connect to people who you meet.

Be selective of the people you are following

You can follow anyone you want to, and they may or may not follow you back. That is okay. At first you may notice this and be sensitive to it, but as your followers and following increases, you don’t really notice it. Just follow the people who tweet something of interest to you, and others will be doing the same.

There are restrictions to how many people Twitter will allow you to follow. If you follow more than 2000 people, this is what twitter has to say:

Every user can follow 2000 people total. Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following. When you hit this limit, we’ll tell you by showing an error message in your browser. You’ll need to wait until you have more followers in order to follow more users—basically, you can’t follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you.

There are some tools that are useful in determining who to follow:

• Twubble – Twubble recommends people to follow by spidering the people you’re already following and recommending users that they’re following.
• Who Should i Follow? – Enter you Twitter username into Who Should i Follow? and the service finds users who are similar to those you’re already following.

Tweet consistently

• Mr. Tweet – Your Personal Networking Assistant to Find Great Twitterers & Discuss Great Topics. Personalized based on YOUR friends + tweets. Get relevant tweets using email summaries & lists.
• Twittoria – How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

Market your twitter handle

Twitter is just another way for your customers to find you and connect with you. It’s another communication tool and its free. As other communication tools, such as your email address, you should include it in your communications as yet another way for your customers to engage with you. Here are some suggestions as to where you should list your Twitter handle.

• Email signature: include it in your email signature
• Website: add it to your website
• Blog homepage: add it to your blog
• Blog post: occasionally add it within your blog post
• Email newsletter: add it to the bottom of your email newsletter template.
• Presentations: Include your Twitter account on the last slide of your presentation and when you tell people how to connect with you.
• Business Card: Include it on your business card.
• Article writing: include it in your byline
• Guest blog posting: include your Twitter handle in your byline.
• Retweeting on Twitter: Use “@” symbol when retweeting. When they respond to you in kind, they will be promoting your twitter account to their followers.
• Networking: use the @ symbol to communicate

For more resources on using Twitter, check out the Twitter guidebook from Mashable.

What have you done to get more Twitter followers? Please share your successes and failures in the comments below.

A free way to get found on Twitter and the web is to keyword optimize your twitter profile and your tweets. In this way your Twitter account will show up in Twitter searches and even search engines like Bing and Google when someone conducts a search for your keyword.

Here are some tools your customers may use to search on specific keywords to find your tweets and then you:

• Twitter People Search – twitter’s built in search. You can find people, organizations, or companies you know that already have a Twitter account.
• Tweepz – Tweepz lets you specify parts of a Twitterer’s user information (like name, bio, and location), filter results by follower/following numbers, location, and other terms.
• TweepSearch – TweepSearch let’s you search by username to search friends and followers, or just a keyword to search all bios currently indexed.
• TwitDir – TwitDir let’s you search by name, a screen name or a location. It also has a number of Top 100 Lists that are interesting. You can now add yourself to this directory in case your account isn’t already indexed.
  

Another way to get found using Twiter is to optimize the keywords used in your tweets to attract more followers. So when someone searches on a keyword your tweets show up. This may also improve the likelihood that your tweets show up in Google or Bing. This should be part of your overall keyword strategy.

Here is a tool that recommends followers based on keywords used in your tweets:

• Twitterel – How TwitteRel Works: Insert a keyword (or more), Find twitter users who tweeped this word then Follow these twitters. Twitterel helps you find twitterers who have related interests to you.

Once you sign up for a Twitter account, the question usually is “Now What?” Well, you need to follow people and get Twitter followers. One way to get Twitter followers is to submit yourself to Twitter directories. You can also use these to find interesting people to follow. Here is a list of popular Twitter directories you can use to find and get more Twitter followers.

• WeFollow- Find Twitter celebrities, actors, TV personalities, or new Twitter friends in your area. WeFollow is a directory of Twitter users organized by interests
• Twellow - A search directory of people by area of expertise, profession or other attribute listed in personal profiles on Twitter.
• Just Tweet It – Just Tweet It is a user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of people who sign up in a specific category.
• TweetFind – TweetFind answers the question How to Increase Your Twitter Followers.
• Geofollow Twitter Directories – Geofollow Twitter Directory & Search. There are many Twitter Directories, but we follow the top users.
• TwitR - TwitR is a Twitter user directory, free for anyone to join as long as they have a Twitter account.
• My Twitter Directory - Twitter users directory & groups organized by genre. Search, find, connect and network with users. Find twitter followers,business, app & people easily.
• Loaded Web – Local Twitter Directory. Add yourself to the Local Twitter Directory (about the local Twitter directory).

Which Twitter directories do you like best?

Do you automate the marketing of your blog posts? Here’s what I’ve done.

My blog posts are relevant to small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to market their business better. As such, I have them automatically posted to places that small business owners can find them such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more. I have spent some time automating this process so I can focus on the creation of content and not the marketing of it. Here are the methods and tools I used to automate the updates of my blog posts.

Twitter

I have two twitter accounts; the first, @expertmktgcoach, I tweet each post once, and the second, @debzimmer, I use to repeat the tweets throughout the day.

I use Hootsuite to import the RSS feed from my blog to twitter. This sends out one tweet per account. With Hootsuite, I can also schedule tweets on that second account so that the tweet reoccurs throughout the day.

LinkedIn

My blog headline posts to my LinkedIn status using Hootsuite. Hootsuite also sends the status to Ping.fm which updates numerous other sites that I visit less often.

My blog is then imported into my LinkedIn Profile using the LinkedIn WordPress Application.

Facebook

I use Facebook Notes to import my RSS feed into my Facebook Page. This creates a duplicate copy of my blog on Facebook. I can also use Hootsuite to import the headlines into my wall on my personal Facebook profile or public page.

Social Bookmarking

Using the WordPress Plugin tool for OnlyWire, my posts are automatically bookmarked to numerous bookmarking sites with which I have accounts. It creates bookmarks at more bookmarking sites than I can reach through Ping.fm. Ping.fm reaches other social media sites that OnlyWire doesn’t, such as Plaxo.

RSS Reader

I use Feedburner for those who want to get my blog posts in an RSS reader format.

Kindle

If you are a Kindle user, you can read my blog by subscribing through the Amazon Kindle Store.

SEO

Each post I write is search engine optimized. I use a number of tools including WordPress plugins to assist me with search engine optimization.

Email

There’s one more automation tool I’m considering but haven’t yet implemented. I see that AWebber is now integrated with Feedburner and can send the RSS feeds in email to your subscriber base. I think that sounds way cool. I just wish the tools I currently use offered that service.

That’s all I’ve got on blog marketing automation. Do you have any tools or systems you use that you particularly like?

How do you measure the success of your social media campaigns?

Social media marketing actually encompasses a broad range of tactics, goals and strategies. Let’s look at the metrics as a function of what social media can do for you…

1) Establish a Presence

Do you have a presence everywhere your customers hang out on the web? How do you measure this quantitatively? Make a list and check it off.

2) Build Awareness and Drive Traffic.

This is directly measurable through your website analytics. Look at the source of the new traffic.

3) Capture Names and Build Lists

Well it just so happens that you can measure this directly from social media. Your basic metric is the quantity of new connections, followers, fans & subscribers (email and RSS).

4) Build Relationships and Trust

Ok, this is where social media can really shine. And, it is the most difficult to measure. Some suggestions for metrics are the number of interactions with your customers. How active are they in communicating with you? How many comments on your blog post? How many referrals to your site? How many retweets? Are you adding value? The number of inbound links to your site and any improvement in your search engine rankings (as compared to your competition) will also show the quality of the relationships you are building.

5) Conversion to Sale

When you make a special sales offer, you can use your web analytics to track conversions. But often conversions come through time with the increased relationship. It is often not one outlet that led to the sale but a series of exposures over time. Still, you can use web site analytics to trace the source of the sale. You can use surveys (how did you hear about us?). The metric is the increase in sales and revenues. Look at the dollar value of the new customers and its source (from analytics).

6) Upsell or Re-sell

How well are you getting additional sales from your existing clients? Measure this based on where the existing customer came from when they clicked through to make a purchase.

To get to ROI, you’ll need to know your sales income (by referring source) and your expenses (time/money spent on social media, opportunity loss, outsourcing costs, etc.). Again, social media is about building relationships, so the ROI should be increasing over time as you build those relationships. That’s another metric to look at. Look at results as a function of time, not just individual campaign. You should see an improvement over time of the cost of sale.

What is Micro-blogging? Micro-blogging is a type of blogging but all posts are very short (usually less than 160 characters).

How do I Microblog?

As a business owner you can use microblogging to build relationships with potential customers and get referrals. Here are some tips…

• Connect with people you know from the present or the past.
• Connect with people who have shown an interest in your field. Find them through groups, directories or searches on their mircoblog posting topics.
• Tweet it: tweet about your product, service, information, tips, etc.
• Include keywords in your message
• Ask people to take action – click on link.

Resources: Microblogging

Here are several sites that provide a micro-blogging platform:

• Twitter – Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.
• Plaxo – We securely host address books for more than 40 million people. And now, we’re bringing those address books to life with “Pulse,” a new way to enrich your connection with the people in your life. Pulse is meant to be a better way for you to stay in touch with the people you actually know and care about — your family, your real-world friends, and the people you know from business. Pulse makes it easy for you to see what they’re creating and sharing online — their blogs, the photos they’re uploading, their restaurant reviews, and so much more.
• LinkedIn – LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.
• Facebook – Leading Social networking site. Status feeds are microblogs.
• Plurk – Plurk is an easy way to chronicle and share the things you do, the way you feel, and all the other things in between that make up your life, with the people close to you..
• Jaiku – Create your own microblog and connect with your friends. Post from the Web, by SMS, or from desktop clients. Add comments, use icons. A Google company.
• Identi.ca – Identi.ca is a microblogging service. Users post short (140 character) notices which are broadcast to their friends and fans using the Web, RSS, or instant messages.

Tools:

• SocialOomph – Easily manage multiple twitter accounts on one single page. Schedule tweets and send DM’s to all of your followers.
• TweetDeck – TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organized and up to date.
• HootSuite – HootSuite is the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. HootSuite lets you manage your entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface.
• Ping.fm – Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!
• Wefollow – A directory of twitter users.

Are there other tools and platforms that you love? what are they and why do you recommend them?

Note: To get more marketing lists such as this, go to the sidebar and download our Free Report: “187 FREE Ways to Explode Your Business!”