Blog | Jennifer Phillips AprilJennifer Phillips April

Secrets of Social Media Marketing Presentation

Posted on May 4, 2013 by admin

The Secrets of Social Media Marketing is a topic I speak on frequently. Below is a slideshare presentation from a recent seminar.

It includes:

The MOST important thing you need to know about social media — without this, you’re wasting your time.
What Makes Good Content?
How to Leverage Your Time

Secrets of Social Media from JenPhillipsApril

It’s simple really, the secret to effective social media marketing is to use the tools of Facebook, Twitter, etc. to make connections, build relationships and amplify your message.

Make Connections

If you network at in person events like seminars, card exchanges and conferences, add the people you meet to your social media networks. Provided you both use the network, you’ll get to know one another through your posts.

Build Relationships

By commenting, liking, sharing +1′ing the posts of these people, you’ll get to know them better. If you’re on Facebook, you’ll probably see pet, family and vacation photos. When you run into the person at the next event, you’ll be able to have a very different conversation than if you’d not seen them and had to remind one another of who you are.

Amplify Your Message

Use social media channels to spread the word about what you do. Post a link to your blog posts and videos. Share pictures of yourself at events. Start conversations with clients and customers about their problems and possible solutions.

Social Media Marketing

All of this requires some skill and basic marketing strategies such as knowing who your target market is and where they hang out online.

It also requires defining your strategy. So you are more effective in less time.

Think through who your best clients are and find out where they spend time online. Look for them on social media sites and connect where it makes sense. Show up, be helpful and you’ll find your social media marketing efforts will grow and boost your bottom line!

Be sure to sign up for my Social Media Tips newsletter for strategies, tools and how to’s you can implement to explode your social media efforts.

The 5 Components of an Effective Website

Posted on April 20, 2013 by admin

by Jen Phillips April

Effective Websites Bring You $$

There are websites and there are websites that work. The latter rank well in search engines so they’re found both by your prospects and they turn those prospects into customers.

After all, what’s the use of more visitors if they don’t buy from you?

Effective Websites include:

1—Good Design – Design should be clean, easy to use and not get in the way of your message.

Stick to one font. Writing in two or three different types of text is distracting
Skip the Flash. Flash isn’t mobile friendly or SEO friendly. Search engines can’t read Flash, nor can iPads or iPhones.
Keep the most important information “Above the fold”—the first screen people see without scrolling.

2–Usability – How easy is your site to use? Get some unbiased opinions on this. Is it obvious who you are and what you do?

Is your logo in the upper left? Does your logo and tagline express what you do and who you help?
Do you have a solution-oriented headline at the top of the page that highlights your promise in words your customer would use? (Most businesses don’t)
Is it easy to know what to do next?

3—Navigation—Stick to convention here. Navigation should run across the top or down the left side. Save the right for special promotions/offers and your newsletter sign up. If you have a shopping cart, that should be in the upper right.

Effective Websites Have Good Navigation Bars

Keep your navigation on the left or at the top

4—Content—Your content should answer the questions your visitors have in the language they use. Keyword research can help. Use a headline in the words your visitors use to find a solution like you.

Have enough copy on the page to tell your both your human visitors and your search engines visitors what your page is about and how you help. 250-300 words will accomplish this.

Calls to Action – Don’t forget to ask your visitor to DO something – call you, send in a contact form. It may sound silly but ask them and your conversions will increase.

5—SEO essentials – know the language your prospects use and what problems you solve for them. Get this across in your copy and your meta-data. If you’re using WordPress, make sure you use an SEO plug in and fill in the available fields. Make your title and description useful to get the click and incorporate the keywords you’ve identified.

Entire disciplines exist around each of these topics with plenty of accompanying books, websites and courses. However, don’t need to be an expert in each to improve your website’s performance. By understanding the critical elements, your website will outperform much of your competition.

Yes, I offer site reviews. If you’d like to know more, click here.

What are your questions about having an effective website? Love to hear in the comments below.

Posted in seo copywriter | Tagged Effective website, seo, seo copywriter, website design | Leave a comment

How Can Twitter Help You Find New Clients?

Posted on March 13, 2013 by admin

By Jen Phillips April

Originally syndicated on BlogHer!

Are you using Twitter strategically?

Twitter is fast, serendipitous and often fun. You can make contact with marketers, reporters and fellow creative types. However, Twitter is more than just a tool to find out which roads are closed during a snowstorm. It can open doors to you professionally too.

How can you use it to build your freelance business?

Step 1: Look Professional

Use a professional headshot for your avatar photo. People do business with people, not with logos. Under NO circumstances should you still be using the default Twitter “egg”. If you are, fix it fast!

Step 2: Use Keywords

Use keywords in your Twitter bio so you’re easy to find, tell what you do and seem approachable. Don’t be afraid so include something “humanizing” like a favorite hobby. It helps build connections. Include a link to your website.

Sample Twitter Bio

Step 3: Use Hashtags to Find People to Follow

#Hashtags turn Twitter into a powerhouse of information. Let’s say you’re looking to write for clients involved with healthcare, you can put #healthcare in the search box and see what comes back. You’ll see all the tweets that use #healthcare. Some of these will be people and companies you may want to follow. Learn about them and the types of things they tweet. Cross-reference them on Linked In to learn more about their business.

Step 4: Create Twitter Lists

List makers unite! Twitter lets you make lists of users you’d like to keep tabs on. Just imagine, you can list all the healthcare marketing folks in one list. Another list can organize them by people you know or people you don’t know–yet. You can create lists of users based on topic, geography or any other idea you want.

Plus, you can keep lists private or public. You can even follow the lists others make.

Step 5: Monitor

Using a tool like Hootsuite, you can create a column just for a specific hashtag so you can see the conversations going on every time you log in. This lets you get a feel for what people are talking about and what their “pain points” are. All the better to create content around or use to craft a pitch.

Interact when it seems appropriate.

Step 6: Join the Conversation

Post relevant articles and use the hashtag #healthcare so others monitoring this term will see it. Join Tweetchats—regularly scheduled conversations around a specific topic and get to know the participants. Each tweetchat has a moderator(s). These are usually well-connected people in the industry. Follow them and get to know them.

Example from Hootsuite

Step 7: Focus

Focus on a few participants at a time so you’ll know the kinds of things they tweet. Retweet when appropriate, add to the conversation as you can. They’ll take notice of you.

Be natural and helpful. After you’ve developed a bit of a relationship and you know the types of things they publish, you can reach out and ask directly if they hire freelancers. Or, ask if you can schedule a phone call or Skype chat to get to know more about their business.

Occasionally, it can work quickly. I remember one Tweetchat I participated in and had a prospect reach out to me the next morning as she read the transcript. She went to my website and emailed me.

Others have responded right on Twitter.

Usually, it’s the personal connections you make through social media that make it effective. So, think of Twitter as a valuable piece of your networking and use it strategically.

What successes have you had from Twitter?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged Social Media for Marketing 101, Twitter | 1 Comment

How Facebook Ads Can Get You More “Likes”

Posted on March 4, 2013 by admin

Create an Ad on Facebook

Facebook ads are highly targeted and can be very effective at generating new “likes” and new customers.

Facebook lets you go beyond demographics—age, kids, location and drill down into the psychographics of your target market. You can find LOST fans around Sacramento for example, or cat lovers below the age of 40 who live on the Lower East Side.

Social Proof

You can target friends of people who already like your Page. This gives you social proof. Meaning, if their friends already trust you, “like” you and your prospects see that, they’re more open to you.

And, you don’t have to spend thousands to see results. Basically, you choose your demographics, set your daily budget amount and in some cases, plan your ad. Then you wait til it goes live and you monitor the results to see if you need to make changes.

A participant in my local, in person social media classes sent me this note and said she didn’t mind if I shared it with you. I thought it was pretty powerful.

Here’s what one local yoga studio did.

“I don’t know if you’ll find this useful or not, but I thought I’d let you know my latest experience with FB ads. Previously I ran 3 ads on FB–all for our online video classes. Two ads did ok, and one totally bombed.

This time I ran a very simple ad with the logo photo (just the face of Saraswati) that said “Like Local Yoga Studio for inspiration and useful information about Yoga.”

I ran it for a total of 8 days (this is day 7) and so far I’ve gotten 24 new likes. I’m really happy with the results. The clicks for likes were cheaper than the ones for the other ads and yesterday I actually hit my daily limit of $15….

I targeted the ad to friends of those who had liked Local Yoga Studio. There were 44K of them at the time. Now there are more than 54K friends of “likers” but the ad is still only going to the original 44K because FB doesn’t update this as often. Now that I know this, if I run this kind of ad again, I’ll run it for a shorter time, than re-run the same ad the next day (but going through the whole set-up process) in order to maximize my reach to the new people garnered by the ad’s results.

If I had it to do over again, I would run an ad to increase the number of “likes” before running the ads for the online yoga class subscription. My number of likes had hovered between 150-155 for MONTHS. One ad got me at least 10K’s worth of new social reach, and I wish those people had all seen the ads for the online videos in January!”

She achieved 24 new “likes” on her page for about $1.50 a click. Plus, another 10K people saw her ad. It’s a marketing standard that people need to see something 7-9 times before they start to “see” it and react. So, she could generate many more “likes” when she runs the next campaign.

Compare that to learning the complexities of Adwords or running $600+ traditional ads in local magazines/newspapers and you’ll see the ROI is greater.

When it comes to creating an effective Facebook ad, there are a few things to consider.

1- Define your purpose – Do you want to grow your “likes”? Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter or simply increase the likelihood that more of your audience sees your posts?

2- Determine your budget – you can run as little as a $1.00 or two a day. If you want to increase your likes and engagement, you may decide to spend a $100 over the course of a month and divvy up the money a little at a time.

If you’re running a contest, you’ll want to spend your ad budget during the time of the contest and create ads relevant to the contest.

3- Which type of Facebook ad will you use? Sponsored Stories? Promoted Posts? Marketplace Ads? The reasons to use each differ.

Sponsored Stories show your friends liked something for that social proof. They’re good for increasing “likes” .

Should You Have Multiple Twitter Accounts?

Posted on February 22, 2013 by admin

Do You Need Multiple Twitter Accounts?

Should you separate your business and personal accounts on Twitter? I get asked this multiple Twitter accounts question a lot so that tells me a lot of you are wondering the answer.

In fact, just earlier in the week I got this email.

Question: “It seems most people have a business and personal account for twitter and keep them separate and twitter allows them to stay separate. Is this your recommendation? From what I can tell twitter does not distinguish between “types” of accounts.”

Here’s my response:

Many people have multiple Twitter accounts, one for biz and one for personal use so to speak but they often have trouble keeping up with both. So, it’s worth considering if you’re going to do both–really.

Do you love Twitter and you’re tweeting all the time for personal reasons? Then you may want to keep it that way. If you’re just getting started and you’re not sure what to tweet or the best way to maximize Twitter — then a hybrid account could be good for you — meaning you tweet both biz and personal. Or, you may decide to tweet biz with a personal twist.

If you’re not very Twitter savvy, you may find it demanding to manage multiple Twitter accounts and you’ll end up with few followers and even fewer tweets.

What Are Your Goals?

As a solopreneur it can be tough to manage everything on your plate so think through what you want to achieve with Twitter.

Many small businesses want to use Twitter to build awareness that they exist, build relationships and trust and eventually turn that trust into sales. If those are your goals, you’re better off tweeting either as the business or under a “hybrid” name.

One person who does this “hybrid” well is @ExpressLisaG, she’s the CMO for the clothing store Express and her Twitter bio states, “Follow LisaG across the globe as she rocks the sidewalk. Get your behind the scenes peek into sidewalk runways, top models, on-set style and daily favorites!”

This latter is the direction a lot of brands are going. There’s one “official” twitter name and then multiple people in the company may use a spin on the name.

You’re not there yet you say? You’re a 1-5 person operation? You don’t use Twitter yet? Start with what feels comfortable to you, that can be your name or your business. Get a feel for the tool. Learn how to use it. You don’t have to keep EVERY tweet business related or uber personal. Mix it up. (and skip the uber-personal!)

BTW, you can always change your Twitter username!

What works for you? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

Posted in Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged Social Media, social media training, Twitter, Twitter training | Leave a comment

How to Manage Your Facebook Marketing in 30 Min. a Day

Posted on February 8, 2013 by admin

Get Your Facebook Likes in Just 30 Minutes a Day

Originally syndicated on BlogHer!

Your day is packed with appointments, phone calls, emails and actual work, right? When are you supposed to fit in your social media time? People ask me this question all the time and my answer never varies. How much time do you already spend on marketing? This is part of your marketing.

That doesn’t mean it needs to take you all day. Let’s break it down.

How to Keep Up with Your Facebook Marketing in Just 30 Min. a Day

Successful Facebook Marketing Relies On 3 Things:

1—Interesting content

2—Consistency

3—Engaged audience

The second is the easiest to achieve. If you’re posting haphazardly you need to establish consistency.

Using a content calendar can help for many people. Don’t be put off by the term, it’s really just a fancy way of saying you’re planning out your posts. It can be as simple as this.

Monday	topic
Tuesday	topic

You get the idea. Now, what to post in that “topic” category? Something useful and maybe entertaining.

Do you have an event coming up? What interesting tidbits do you have to share about the upcoming event? If you have a video, you can share that one day. Another day, you can share about the # of people coming to your event with a link to the registration and yet, another day you can share 3 benefits of attending the event (which could be a blog post that you actually link to via post).

See what I’m doing? I’m breaking your event down into multiple posts, each a little different but they get the point across.

Now, about that content.

Let’s get it scheduled. Plan for 30 minutes a day.

Monday – Draft 7-10 ideas of interesting tidbits to share. Here’s a start, what are the top 10 questions people always ask you about your product/service? Skip the price ones, think of the ones where you can share an answer about the problems you solve.

For example, if you’re a web designer, you ensure your clients get a great looking and well-performing website that has the features they want such as newsletter sign up or blog. You’re also the go between who speaks “Geek” to the developers so your clients get what they want without spending a fortune on “do overs” because they don’t know the questions to ask. In essence, you save your client time and money because you DO know the questions to ask of both parties.

What examples can you share about how you “saved the day”? I’ll bet you easily have 5 or 6 that come to mind. Write them down.

Now, what are the 10 questions they should ask you? I have a friend who shoots videos for businesses and people always ask him “how much is a video”. This is the equivalent of asking how much is a car or a meal at a restaurant. The answer is, it depends. Do you want the Lamborghini or the Hyundai? Traveling to exotic locations or including aerial shots or elephants are more costly than a simple “talking head” with some b-roll in your office.

You have to break it down into specifics. You already do this in conversation and proposals, now what can you make a “tip of the day” or a “helpful hint”?

Tuesday—What pictures do you have to illustrate some of your points from Monday? Can you share screenshots for examples? What about pictures of your office or grab some stock photos.

People love pictures and they take up 4X the room in the newsfeed than a simple text update so people are likely to see them.

Now that you’ve got some content ideas and some photos, let’s put it together.

This is for a sample calendar for a fictional travel specialist.

Monday	Happy Monday! think I’ll take mine as a cappuccino at St. Mark’s. Click “like” if you’d like to join me!	Shot of cappuccino with Italian backdrop
Tuesday	Just got this fantastic email from a client! “We LOVED the after hours tour of the Vatican you arranged for us! Thank you so much!” LOVE getting emails like this!
Wed.	Fill in the blank: When I travel I __________	Pic of beautiful location
Thursday	Travel & Leisure say 40% of travelers search out a travel specialist to help them get the most of their trip. Here’s 10 reasons to use a travel expert (link to blog post)

That’s a little sample. Notice they’re not long, I ask questions and I ask people to do something. I don’t include a picture every time and I do include a link back to the website or blog post on occasion. You try it.

Wednesday – Now, that you’ve created a week’s worth of posts, schedule them using a tool like Hootsuite or Facebook’s scheduling tool. Try out different times of day. Schedule some in the morning, some in the afternoon and some at night depending on your audience.

If you’re looking to reach stay at home moms, between 9-11 a.m. and p.m. can be good times. In the morning they’ve dropped the little ones at pre-school and at night, they’re unwinding before bedtime.

Thursday – Have you “liked” other Pages? Find some and like them now. They can be friend’s business pages and people who could be possible alliances. When you start looking at social media marketing as a way to connect with people and build on your in person marketing efforts it really takes off.

So, “like” those other Pages, comment on and “like” their posts. Join Groups on Facebook. Many towns have an active local business group page, if you’re a member of the Chamber or other networking groups connect with them. Lots of referrals can come your way if you show up.

Friday — Spend a half hour brainstorming and creating interesting posts for the next week or month. Expand that content calendar and look at what’s coming up in your business. Are you launching a new service or product? Do you have an event coming up? What are your alliances doing? Can you show your staff working?

Do you want to put up a silly cat picture and say “TGIF”? That’s ok. Show your human side. Facebook is a place where people come to relax. Make your content useful and entertaining when appropriate. Of all, remember to make it about your visitor and not about you.

This will help you build your engagement and your audience.

If you haven’t already? Figure out how to post to your Facebook Page via your smartphone. This makes it far easier to post on the fly.

When it comes down to it, you need a plan. So, take the time to plan your strategy. Review your content on your website, any ebooks or presentations you’ve created and figure out what you can break into Facebook posts. You can knock this out in an hour or two or you may need to break it into those 30 minute segments. The point is to get it done.

What’s worked for you? Love to hear your comments below.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged Facebook marketing, Social Media, social media marketing training | Leave a comment

21 Days to a Rockin’ Social Media Presence

Posted on January 3, 2013 by admin

As syndicated on BlogHer!

Most business people tell me they’re overwhelmed by social media. Where should you be? How do you work it into your already crammed schedule? What’s the ROI?

This article aims to help you establish or improve your online presence in bite-size chunks — 10-30 minutes a day over a period of 21 days. Popular research says it takes 21 days to establish a new habit so by baby stepping your way into social media marketing, you’ll establish a framework to connect with your customers and create raving fans!

In keeping with the baby steps approach, I’ll focus on Linked In and Facebook in this post since they are two of the giants most familiar.

Day 1: Linked In – Upload your photograph. People do business with people. That means using a professional looking picture of yourself where you appear approachable.

Use a keyword in your headline instead of owner at your business. Unless your business is a Fortune 1000 company, chances are prospects are looking for you by your name or by type of work you do. For example, my headline reads SEO copywriter and social media consultant rather than the name of my business. (10 min tops)

Day 2: Set up Google Alerts for articles/video/blog posts on your industry. If you’re a florist you can put “florist”, “bridal bouquet” and any other terms that seem relevant. These alerts will send you links around your terms daily, weekly or “as they happen”—your choice. It’ll take you 5 minutes a day to scan and see what’s relevant to your audience and share with them via social media. (5 -10 minutes)

Day 3: Finish building out your Linked In Profile (Linked In tells you what you need to be 100% complete, that’s your goal). (0-30 minutes depending on how robust your profile is)

Day 4: Join a Linked In group in your industry and see what people are saying. (10-15 min)

Day 5: Join a Linked In group where you think your prospects may be and review their questions. (10 min)

Day 6: Write down the 10 questions you most often get asked by prospective clients or customers. Write down your answers. Pretend you’re talking directly to them, what do you say? (15-20 min)

Day 7: Review your Linked In Groups, is it relevant to share any of the Q and A you wrote down yesterday? If so, share it. (5 min)

Day 8: Today, we’ll add everyone’s favorite…Facebook. If you haven’t set up your business page yet, do that.

If you have, review your image at the top. Are you happy with it? Are you ready to change it for another?

You’ll need a horizontal image for the top. This is called the “cover” and it should be 815 x 315 pixels.

The profile image is the small square and that should be 160 X 160 pixels. Choose something that represents you and your business. You can use a photograph of your staff, a beautiful location if that’s relevant, or you can have something custom designed. (20-30 min)

Day 9: Brainstorm content and put it all in one place so it’s easy to find. Plan 1-2 posts a day.

You can create a calendar using a simple table in Word. What photos do you have of your product/service/activities that you can share? Any videos? Are there relevant pages on your website you can point readers towards? You already have your Frequently Asked Questions you brainstormed earlier in the week so, those can be 10 posts.

You’ll want to also include photos and videos. Mix it up.

Plan out a week’s worth of posts. (30 min)

Here are Some Social Media Posting Ideas

One of my clients is a limousine company, we share posts about theatre, sports and other activities going on around the city. We also share silly pet photos sometimes. If our posts were always “rent our limo”, we’d have a tough time building an audience. Instead, we’re looking to build a community.

What can you share?

Day 10: Post one of the Q and A’s you wrote down earlier in the week. (5 min) Review your Linked In Groups, do you have anything to share there? (5-10 min)

Day 11: Post a photograph on your Facebook Page. Ask people to “like” it. For example, if you run a Ski resort, you could post a picture of a skier deep in the snow, with the instructions to “Click “like” if you’d like to be here.” Asking people to do something increases the likelihood they’ll do it. (5 min if you already have the picture.)

Day 12: Invite People to Like Your Page. You can use the friends list on your admin page and/or send out an email to your list inviting them to your Facebook Page. (5-20 min)

Day 13: What’s your competition doing on Facebook and Linked In? Review their Pages. What’s getting a lot of comments or “likes”? How can you use these types of popular posts for your own Page?

Make a post to your Linked In Status Update sharing an interesting article you read. (20 min)

Day 14: What types of Groups exist on Facebook where your prospects spend time? Using the search bar at the top of the Facebook page, type in different terms and see what comes up. Some will be Business Pages and some will be Groups. Groups can be terrific sources for information and even referrals. If you see one or two of interest, request to become a member.

Groups can be location specific, industry specific or organization specific, like the Chamber of Commerce. Choose 1-2 to participate in.(20 min)

Day 15: Work on your calendar for next week. Which of your Facebook posts got people “liking” and talking? Create more of those. If none of them did, you may need more people on your page and/or more interesting posts. Vary your posts between links/text only and photos/videos. (20 min)

Day 16: Review your Linked In Groups – Are the ones you joined earlier valuable? Do you want to try others? Linked In will allow you to join up to 50 groups. Of course, for you to get value from them, you need to participate a few times a week so be realistic about how many you want to join. (10 min)

Day 17: Take some to think about what you really want to accomplish with your Facebook Page. Do you want people to come back to your website? Do you want them to sign up for your email list? What do you want to accomplish?

If you want them to come back to your website, share an update with a text link back to a specific web page 2-3 times a week. For example, if you have a regular a blog, post the title and a teaser to the blog post with a link to the full post on your Facebook and Linked In Pages. (10 min)

Day 18: Join or start a Linked In conversation in one of your groups. If you have something useful to share maybe about the success you’ve had with something another group member is struggling with, you can share how you made it work for you.(10-15 min)

Day 19: Try out a new kind of post on Facebook. Maybe a “Caption this” photo or a “Where is this?” These work really well because they’re designed for interaction. For example, a skiing/snowboarding ecommerce site regularly features “Caption this” photos of crazy ski tricks or people skiing through a blur of snow. How can you use this idea? (10 min)

Day 20: By now, you should be getting a feel for how Facebook and Linked In work. Going forward, where do you want to spend the most time? Where do you think your clients/customers are most likely to be? If you sell B2B types of products/services, you may want to focus more time on Linked In. If you’re B2C , then spend more time on your Facebook Page.

Review your competition again, where are they spending most of their time and getting the most interaction? Look at your industry associations. Weigh that against your own experience. Talk to your clients/customers if possible and ask them where they spend more time. (20-30 min)

Day 21: Update your calendar. Join Facebook Groups, “like” other Pages – don’t just post stuff about your business. That’s like standing in the corner and shouting “look at me,” over and over. It doesn’t work. Be valuable, be human and be likeable. (20-30 min)

Social media doesn’t have to take over your life. Go ahead, take a 10-30 minutes a day and lay the foundation for social media success!

Posted in Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged Social Media, social media marketing training, social media plan | Leave a comment

How to Tweet Like a Pro (or Twitter Etiquette Part 2)

Posted on December 31, 2012 by admin

Twitter may look disjointed and hard to follow, yet the benefits include spontaneous conversations with business leaders, reporters and other “hard to pin” down types.

Once you learn the way it works, you can harness the power of Twitter for yourself and grow your business.

How to Tweet Like a Pro:

1–Be succinct. Twitter gives you 140 characters which can go fast. It’s acceptable to use abbreviations such as “ltr” for later. If you’re not comfortable with abbreviations, then don’t use them. You just won’t have as much space.

Saying “this is my first tweet” is ok. You might even be welcomed.

2—Be conversational. Twitter is like a global water cooler. You can jump into conversations on any manner of topics from wine to your hometown. More on that in a minute.

3—Follow people—You control what you see in your tweet stream. You can choose to follow big media outlets like The New York Times and get news from them and you can choose to follow business leaders like Barbara Cochran of Shark Tank and other members of your community.

The quality of people you follow will dictate if your tweet stream is full of interesting news and conversations or a bunch of whiners. (Sorry, but true).

I recommend a healthy mix of well-known types and local folks.

4—Use a #hashtag to find people and conversations that interest you. By now you’ve probably heard on the news or elsewhere, “use hashtag x”.

A hashtag is the pound or number sign on your keyboard. That’s it, nothing more, #.

The power comes when you use this sign in conjunction with a word. For example, #philadelphia. If you put this into the search box, then you’ll see tweets only associated with #philadelphia. Likewise, with Doylestown near where I live.

If you take this tactic with your local area and use the Twitter search function with #plusyourtown, you’ll see people and organizations you recognize. For example, the United Way Bucks County is very active on Twitter. So, are many reporters.

Twitter's search feature lets you find people, businesses and conversations.

I follow locals and businesses I’m interested in working with as a writer. I also follow lots of marketers since marketing is my business. Really, I follow most anyone who tweets regularly and looks interesting.

How a Farmer Uses Twitter

Last summer, my cotton farming dad wanted me to help him get set up on Twitter. Since he’s not sure how to reply to email I had no idea why Twitter was even on his radar. When I asked why, he admitted he wanted to follow the Gamecocks better.

My dad is an alum of the University of South Carolina and he’s passionate about the school’s sports. With Twitter, and using the hashtags, #Carolina and #Gamecocks, he could get a play-by-play, real-time accounts of the game from people in the stands plus the media. It makes for a richer, more nuanced experience.

Following events via Twitter is powerful. As the aftermath of Sandy unfolded across the Northeast, Twitter was a reliable real-time resource for news, road closures, getting supplies to those in need and much more.

If you’d like to learn more about using Twitter to build your business, you won’t want to miss this live class on Jan. 23rd. Click here to learn how you can tweet like a pro while building your business.

Posted in Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged bucks county social media, Social Media for Marketing 101, social media marketing training, Twitter training | Leave a comment

Jennifer Phillips April

The 5 Components of an Effective Website

Social Media Secrets

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