Twitter Marketing 101
Twitter recently hit 200 million users. While the platform gained popularity through the sheer number of celebrities using the social networking site, Twitter offers significant opportunities for businesses… not only for building your online brand but creating engaging conversations with your target market in order to generate leads.
But getting started with Twitter can be daunting, especially with the use of @’s and #’s shaping conversations. So, here are some tips to help you get started with using Twitter for your business…
1. Opening a Twitter Account
Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not have dedicated ‘business’ accounts. Therefore, you simply need to setup a Twitter account. This process is easy, but there are some simple rules that can ensure your account is setup and optimised effectively for you business:
- Twitter asks for your name when signing up. In order to have your business name, instead of your personal name – it is best to put the business name in this location. This will ensure people are able to find you easily on Twitter by searching for your company name.
- Once you have setup your account, make sure to add an image and choose a background that is simple and professional. You can do this by clicking on your business name in the top right-hand corner and selecting ‘Settings’.
- It is also important to add a short bio that shares your business’ main service areas, and also outlines why people would want to follow your business on Twitter. As there is a 160-character limit, you may need to play with the wording to get this right.
- Make sure you include your business website URL so it displays on your Twitter profile allowing your followers to quickly click through to your website if required.
QUICK TIP: If your business name is not available on Twitter, make sure to find an alternative that is not too long, and is as close to your business name as possible. For example: @Web_Profits
The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Online Copy
Quality online copy is crucial to an effective SEO strategy. With the introduction of the Google algorithm ‘Panda’, producing quality articles is more important than ever. In this article we look at the five biggest mistakes web writers make and give tips on how to avoid them.
Online copy calls for a unique writing style. Its audience is the time-poor and any mistake can kill effectiveness in an instant, thereby killing value. The new Google algorithm ‘Panda’ is designed to seek out poor content and penalise the websites that post or link to it. More than ever, effective and informative content is crucial to enhancing your website’s performance. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes to look out for and eliminate in your online copy.
1. Factual mistakes
These destroy online content’s whole reason for being. Great online copy is about giving value to your audience. Misleading them through half-truths or poorly researched copy will not only drive them away, but potentially damage your reputation with Google. Don’t skimp on the research stage. Evidence of research will instil trust in your readers and set you apart from the competition. A great blog is one that offers reliable, interesting information that’s compiled in a user-friendly way.
How Does PageRank Affect SEO Rankings?
The thing about your website’s PageRank is that it has very little to do with your SEO ranking for a target keyword phrase. PageRank is a number that Google generates to indicate the overall value of a website in relation to all other websites on the web.
If Google were ever going to rank all of the websites in its index in a single list, PageRank would be the sort-by column of that list. It’s just a number. A probability. Calculated from the incoming links to a page. You want the PageRank formula? Here it is…
What does that mean? It doesn’t really matter… it’s simply a numerical formula. The sum of the value sent to your website, through links, from any websites on the Internet, regardless of source, anchor text, context or any other data. PageRank doesn’t care what your target keywords are, it’s just saying “this is how likely you are to be found on the web randomly”. But there’s one major thing missing from that: Relevance.
The Science of Performance Website Design
There are myriad of tools available that help improve the performance of your website. Today, the No.1 technique that’s changing the way we think about web design is split-testing.
1. What is split testing?
Split-testing is the process by which we create two different versions of the same web page and, utilising Google’s Website Optimizer tool, we present one version to half of your website visitors and the other version to the other half. We then analyse the performance of each web page by tracking the conversions each version produced, be it a product purchase, a newsletter sign-up or any other measurable action.
We then collate the data, align it with the variations in the design of the two web pages and learn something new about what produces a higher level of performance. Doesn’t sound very designy though does it?
But this is the paradox of web design as an art form. It’s a sym-biotic relationship with the linear world of code and analytics.
This is how it works…
How To Use Google Analytics To Improve Your Online Marketing
Are you overwhelmed every time you open Google Analytics? Does the thought of being confronted with so many graphs and numbers deter you from looking at your Google Analytics account on a regular basis? You’re not alone.
Google has recently released Google Analytics v5; their new version of the Analytics product, offering a more intuitive user interface and promising a completely new user experience. It still contains an enormous volume of powerful information, just presented with a fresh look and feel. Whether you’re sold on the new version of Google Analytics or still traversing the old, the point remains…if you don’t know where to look to find the key data that will inform your business decisions then its usefulness is immediately devalued.
A good strategy when first starting out with Google Analytics is to keep it simple. Think about what you’re trying to measure and the information you need to do this. Here are 6 of the most common questions businesses might ask themselves about their online marketing efforts and the reports available in Google Analytics to help answer them.
1. Who is visiting my site and how did they find their way there?
Google Analytics Navigation (New): Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > All Traffic
Most, if not all, businesses would be interested in the answer to this question; even if the sole purpose of your website is to have an internet presence and nothing more. This report can reveal a lot about where your visitors are coming from. For example, you might realise that:-
- The majority of your traffic is generated organically through Google, reinforcing your marketing spend on SEO and Google rankings; or
- Your PPC campaign is working effectively to drive more visitors to your site; or
- A large proportion of your traffic is being generated directly by visitors typing your site URL into their browser indicating perhaps the success of an offline marketing campaign or an increasing brand awareness of your business online (TIP: You can use the Google URL Builder to track offline advertising performance).
