Internet Word Magic Blog

Using Twitter to Network with Local Businesses

 

Photo from brian395.

As it goes with the Internet, I was just reading an email and started following
a trail that lead me to the coolest social media tool: Tweethood.

It's a map of the U.S. and Canada that helps you locate people in your
neighborhood who are using Twitter! What a great way to start building
relationships with local businesses in your area.

I live in Southern California. When I zoomed into California, a box popped up
to show me the cities and how many people are Twitter in each city. My
neighborhood happens to be in Irvine, which has over 1,200 people listed. But
wait, it gets better.

When I clicked on Irvine, a list came up with individual profiles for each of
the 1,200 people. Now you can browse through the list and see who would be a
good connection for your business.

This is solid gold. Oh, and did I mention it's free to get registered on
Twellow, so that you can be found in a local search? They make it easy for you
to register because a box comes up to get you registered when you are browsing
through your list of Twitter people in your neighborhood.

Here's what you read when you click on the register box, "Registering will
allow you to update your Twellow profile and categories, add links to your
other social media profiles, and create an extended bio with whatever
information and links you would like to add!

Be still my heart, isn't this the best? Get registered so you can get found and
use this tool to network with local businesses. Happy networking.

Nikon PR Mistake Becomes Viral

 

Photo from FriedToast

Social media has created a new fear for corporate employees: don't screw up or everyone in the world will know about it! Over the weekend, Nikon tried and failed (with the world watching) to create positive PR at the BlogHer conference in Chicago. The ugly details can be read on Katie Allison Granju's blog, momapundit.com.

Remember years ago when you could make a mistake and your boss yelled at you and maybe wrote you up a warning that went into your file? Good times.

Nowadays, thanks to social media, every step you take, every move you make, can come back to haunt you. The idea that employees represent their company has never had such strong meaning as it does today. Whether or not your job is PR, every employee is expected to be the goodwill ambassador of their company when interacting with the public. And, when that interaction goes wrong, it becomes instant news that travels across the Internet via Twitter, blogs and other online communication.

Consumers are becoming more powerful because they now have the ability to instantly interact with companies and let them know when they are unhappy with the company's decisions. This Nikon PR wildfire should stand as a warning to other companies that it is no longer business as usual when it comes to building goodwill with consumers (or the media).

Companies need to look at social media as just not an opportunity to promote its brand, but as a new frontier filled with landmines. They need to step carefully, or things will blow up.

Social Media and Targeted Ad Copy

Social media is definitely the big topic these days. Over the weekend I attended a free 1/2 day workshop on social media and over 200 people showed up! People wanted to not only know how to use the social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but they wanted to know how to create a strategy. Better yet, they wanted to know "what's in it for me?" How can I make money using social media and is it worth the time?

But nobody asked the question that I think most business people are over looking, "How does my website work together with social media?"

Everyone is excited about networking with social media, but where does that get you? Sure, you make contacts, build relationships and share your expertise. But then what?

At some point, you would like people to want to do business with you. After all, isn't that the reason you are doing all this social media networking? Eventually, you'd like them to visit your website or landing page and be converted to a customer.

Now, before anyone jumps all over me for being too direct about things, I do understand that social media should not be focused on sales. (In fact, if you do that, you turn people off.) The advice is also to direct people to your blog, not your website, so that you can continue building that relationship.

However, what I'm talking about is not forgetting that your website is your conversion tool.  Your website is an important part of your social media strategy that is often overlooked. The branding on your website should match your branding in the social media world. The keywords you are using in your postings and your blog should match the keywords you are using on your website.

Learn how to write targeted ad copy on your website for increased sales and lead generation. Then use social media as an opportunity to build your brand and use your website to close the sale.

Here's a great video I found that will give you some tips on writing targeted ad copy:

Preventing Keylogger Malware Attacks

(photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dudemjk/)

Learn from my experience. Don't take your website for granted. Considering I use a PC (which is prone to virus attacks), I pride myself on being very careful when using the Internet. I only use Firefox when browsing and I have antivirus software that automatically updates in real time. I also automatically run a spyware program every morning.

I stupidly thought I was protected. Oops.

Somehow, someway, not only did my main website get compromised, but all my domains were shut down by Google! Malware was detected on my site that was dangerous to visitors. And, thus began a three week battle to find out what the problem was, how it happened and how to get it fixed. (Meanwhile, I was basically out of business.)

Evidently, the hackers had come in through my hosting company and therefore were able to attack all my domains. The conversation back and forth between my hosting company was a frustrating experience of cryptic emails that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn't. Every time I called, I talked to someone different at the hosting company and every time I received an email it was from a different person at the hosting company. Back and forth we went for weeks.

I was finally told the problem was fixed by the hosting company and told I now could ask Google to allow my sites up. So, I hired someone to get me back in the good graces of Google. Unfortunately, I hired the wrong person for the job and after a week of waiting to hear back from Google, contacted another person.

Come to find out, my website (and other domains) still were infected. My hosting company hadn't fixed the problem after all. Surprise, surprise.

But here's the good part of the story. I hired the right person this time. She was an excellent detective and quickly figured out what the problem was and how to fix it. In just a few days all my domains were up and running again. I was back in business.

Who was this brilliant detective? Check her out at Little Fish Studios.

And, what was my learning experience from this? I now realize that if you are using a PC and have what you think is adequate virus/malware protection, you probably don't. One of the most dangerous types of spyware are keyloggers that hide on your computer to record all your keystrokes. So, if you go to a site and enter your password, it is recorded by the spyware. At that point, the hackers can get your private information and use it in any way they want. We think this is how the hackers were able to get into my hosting account.

Simple Low-Tech Solution

An easy low-tech solution to prevent your confidential information from being stolen by keylogger malware is to simply not type in your user name or password on the websites you visit. Rather, put together a spreadsheet of all your user names and passwords, so you can copy and paste them into the websites. This way, you are not allowing any of your confidential information to be given out through key strokes. A simple copy and paste can prevent the keylogger malware problem.

Here's my final thought. No matter what virus protection or spyware you are running on your computer, DO NOT assume you are safe. Everyday new viruses, spyware, and adware are being created. Sometimes your luck just runs out and tag, you are it. So, get multiple antivirus, spyware and adware programs, make sure you have the latest updates on these programs and consider buying a Mac; they don't have these problems! (All you Mac owners are allowed to gloat at this point.)

How to Improve the Customer Online Experience

 

(photo from Abbyworld)

It wasn't too long ago that even big retail stores looked at website marketing as a stand alone program, completely different from their offline marketing. Internet marketing was looked at as a new opportunity, but one that was confusing at best.

Selling products from a physical store is an accepted and understood business practice. For hundreds of years, merchants have gone directly to customers to facilitate a sale.

Integrated Marketing Strategy

All the college business programs are set up to educate students about how to do business offline, but what's been missing is the Internet marketing approach. We are just now seeing business open up to the idea that companies need both an offline and online integrated marketing strategy to do business effectively.

According to Chantal Tode, of DMNews.com, "Companies such as JCPenny, Lowe's and Best Buy are just a few that have integrated their offline and online businesses into one marketing organization over the past nine to 12 months."

The Internet is giving companies more opportunities to be creative and reach out to customers in ways they never could before. Customers may not be physically coming into their stores, but retailers have a huge opportunity online to continue the sales process.

Create a Positive User Experience

Rather than concentrating on making the sale or driving traffic to the website, companies should focus on improving the customer experience on their website. It does no good to gather tremendous traffic if your website does not offer a positive user experience.

Here are three ways to improve the customer experience:

(1) Don't Make Me Think

Website navigation needs to be intuitive and require very little decision making. Moving from one page to another should be simple and hassle-free. The buttons or tabs to move you from one page to another should be clearly marked and visible. Put the most important information as bullets or lists that are easy to scan. Use internal links to logically move the visitor to pages where they can get more information if needed.

(2) Don't Overload the Homepage

The homepage is not a dumping ground for information. It should only contain the bare minimum amount of information that is needed for the customer to make a decision as to whether or not to do business with you. The ideal homepage will liberally use bullets, headings, and internal links to connect to pages that contain more detailed information.

The idea is to get the visitor to move throughout your website to get the information that is interesting to them. Let them make the decision of where they want to go when they arrive at your homepage. Give them logical routes to find the information they seek.

(3) Be the Customer

If you have a shopping cart on your website, take the time to go through the buying process yourself. How easy have you made it for someone to make a purchase?

The industry average for shopping cart abandonment is 70%! In other words, only 30% of the people who start to buy something online will complete the process.

Anything you can do to improve the shopping experience will increase your odds in completing the sale. Simply reassuring them that their purchase is safe and secure by posting security icons, is a good start. Also, let people know what the shipping charges are before they place an order.

Conclusion

More than ever, in this economy, companies need to implement an integrated online marketing and offline marketing campaign to reach their customers. "A lot of multichannel merchants are trying to figure out how to grow their Web sites and take advantage of the one channel that is growing," said Sucharita Mulpuru, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

People may not be visiting stores as often as they used to, but they are still using the Internet to shop. All it takes is some clever marketing to generate demand.