Twitter Backgrounds: The key to positioning yourself in social media

March 9, 2011 By David Perdew Leave a Comment

Twitter Backgrounds: The key to positioning yourself in social media

This week, we’re devoting this space to a five-part series on marketing with Twitter. This is part 1 of 5 parts. At the end of the series we’ll have a free report thoroughly covering this topic for you (if you’re a premium member). Don’t miss that. It’s one of the many benefits of premium membership.

Twitter backgrounds for branding yourself or your company

Twitter backgrounds brand either you or your company

More and more home business people are now marketing their services on Twitter. As with any respected business you want to have a professional online presence. Many social networks allow for the modification of their default theme, and with that, Twitter is no exception. You can control your Twitter backgrounds.

But you want to take it to the next level. You want your Twitter background to stand out and have it’s own look. Making use of a focused Twitter background image that reflects your personal or business core values will create a substantial and indelible statement about you or your business.

So, how can you design your Twitter backgrounds?

First, you must be very clear about the image you wish to convey.

Think about this a lot. Ask your questions? Write down the answers. For example:

Do you want to be serious or whimsical?
Does this Twitter background reflect your personally or your business?
What’s the goal of your Twitter account? Are you prospecting for customers? Addressing support issues? Spouting off opinions? Giving good content? Connecting with family and friends?
What’s your style? Do you like clean design with muted colors? Or are you bold with bright vibrant look-at-me graphic style?
How long will you be using this Twitter account? Are we branding you with your company or is this a quick hit that will disappear in a short while?

Include your business name, perhaps a logo, anchor text link to your business website or possibly other social network URLs. Specific information you can include is a short bio, contact information or a picture of yourself. Next you want to consider your graphic look , and color for the sidebar. All of these pieces will display to the left hand side of the Twitter post area.

Get professional Twitter backgrounds…

For a more professional and snazzy look (for those who want to use Twitter as a strategic branding tool), don’t include a title on the image.

You can use creative software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to build your background. You need to build a large image that will cover the computer screen without tiling. Create a background image 1280×1024 pixels. Using anything smaller will create a disjointed image in which your visitors see a confusing background experience.

For your sidebar, you can stack your images or photos, business info, and website; this bar begins on the upper left-hand side of your image. It can also include your name, job title, blog URL, specialty, social network URL, and more essential information.

Save your image as a jpeg or if you wish to have a faster loading image, save it as a gif. Save it and login to your Twitter account. On the upper right, click on ‘Settings’. From there you will want to click on the ‘Design’ tab. Find the link ‘change background image’. By clicking on ‘browse’, search for the image that you’ve created earlier. Leave the tile check-box unchecked. Lastly, click on ‘save changes’. As quick as that, you will have a custom Twitter background image.

Why a unique Twitter background image?

Your background on Twitter positions you in the marketplace. If you plan to use Twitter for online marketing, make the background more professional and reflects who you are. There are many picture editing programs that you can use aside from Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro so choose the program that matches your skillset and will assist you in creating the background you want.

If you would rather have someone else create the image for you, there are many resources on the web to help you accomplish your goal.

Twitter Gallery – Fun and interesting background designs, not able to modify, free and ready to use

Free Twitter Designer – Personalize your Twitter background that have the same look and feel as those done by professional graphic designers – free and easy to use

Twitter Backgrounds.com – They create a professional background for you for $99

Do you have other tools or services that you recommend? Or have you used these? Or do you have a Twitter background that represents your company or personality that you’d like to show off?

Post it in the comment section below. Show us yours and we’ll show you ours

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Filed Under: Business and Marketing, Featured Post, Graphics Tagged With: branding your business, design twitter backgrounds, graphics, twitter backgrounds

Making Money With Twitter: The essential Who, What, Why of Twitter profits

March 7, 2011 By David Perdew Leave a Comment

Making Money With Twitter: The essential Who, What, Why of Twitter profits

This week, we’re devoting this space to a five-part series on marketing with Twitter. This is part 2 of 5 parts. At the end of the series we’ll have a free report thoroughly covering this topic for you (if you’re a premium member). Don’t miss that. It’s one of the many benefits of premium membership.

Keeping your audience’s focus on Twitter when your tweets are among

thousands in a short time frame is a strategic move for many marketers who are making money with Twitter.

Isn’t it maddening when you read tweets regurgitating the last thousand mundane thought processes that someone has?

One key to making money with Twitter is to set your Twitter messages apart

Doing that helps build a foundation on which to present your marketing efforts?

Consider what you are posting so that your tweets are lost in the abyss of internet trash.

Ponder the Who, What, Why of your communication. When you remember the who’s, the what’s, and the why’s of your communications and you answer these questions intelligently, you will keep your audience with you.

WHO?
WHAT?
WHY?

Consider this question: What are we selling to whom and why should they buy it? Is Twitter the medium that helps sell that product?

For online entrepreneurs who are really making money with Twitter, effective posting with valuable content is key

Even the best intentioned social media effort will fall flat if the “who, what and why” is not considered. Only those who practice the following guideline are really making money with Twitter as on online entrepreneur. Don’t be fooled by those who treat Twitter as spam. This must apply in even the unassuming of tweets.

Here are a few guidelines to mull over:

Who do you think this tweet will benefit?
What is it that you hope to gain or hope your market will get from this tweet?
Why will it benefit your efforts toward making money with Twitter, or your customers, current and potential?
While tweeting your lunch meeting with your followers may seem appropriate, which of the following will lock in a more profitable relationship with your audience?

“I am just getting back from lunch at my favorite restaurant. I had a lovely Asian chicken salad and a glass of Chardonnay. I enjoyed myself.”

“Enjoyed a lovely business lunch w @username today. We spoke of joint ventures and how my company X and their company Y can work together.”

The first one may get you a reply or two from those who are happy you enjoyed a nice lunch, the second will demonstrate that you are an aggressive action taker, that you take your business seriously and are looking to create viable affiliate relationships with others.

Even the gurus are trying to figure out how often to tweet. But the true question is not how often as much as how much valuable information your tweets create. You can tweet every 5 minutes for hours on end if you feel like it. However, if all you are posting about is drivel without any true insight into who you are, what your company is about and what you have to offer, it does little more than keep your name in front of your followers.

Give the market a reason to wait for your messages. Remember that you are using Twitter as ways to drive profitable traffic for your business. Waving gently at passersby outside of your brick and mortar isn’t going to get them in the door any quicker than it will within the social networks. Offering your audience something with substance is the only consistent way of making money with Twitter, will get them in the front door and hopefully have them return frequently.

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Filed Under: Business and Marketing, Featured Post Tagged With: making money with Twitter, social media marketing, Twitter influence

Brandwatch: Twitter Tool for Social Media Monitoring

February 20, 2011 By Jo Adair Leave a Comment

Brandwatch blows businesses away with Social Media Monitoring power

When operating an Internet-based business, your reputation is everything. Nobody knows or cares if you’re a nice guy; they just know what they see on the web. It is so important to monitor and protect your brand and its stature. Brandwatch is an effective Twitter tool that analyzes data across the social media, and presents its results in highly customizable ways.

Benefits:
” Discover negative coverage in social media monitoring and offset a bad impression.
” Discover more effective ways to promote your product.
” Monitor the reputation of your competition.
” Engage in market research to better understand your customer and his needs.
” Get the results in the format that best suits your needs.

There are four stages to building an effective social media monitoring strategy: gathering, filtering, analyzing and presenting data. This is how Brandwatch handles each stage.

Gathering Data: The Brandwatch crawler operates in near-real time, gathering data in response to your search from social networks, blogs and micro-blogs, news services, video sites, forums, and more. This provides a broad data base to work from. You can set the date ranges you need.

Filtering Data: Brandwatch uses intelligent filters to clean out irrelevant and outdated posts, as well as advertising and spam. Add your own filters to further refine the process.

Analyzing Data: Brandwatch runs the remaining data through a 5 point analysis process. This includes query matching and recurring phrase identification. One of the more ingenious processes analyzes the sentiment of the post.

Presenting Data: Clients can use the online dashboard to create custom reports, known as workspaces. Choose from many components to tailor reports exactly to your preferences. In addition to workspaces, you can download reports in excel workbook or CSV format.

Where does Twitter fit it? One of the components for customizing reports is to filter results by site, in this case Twitter. This will give you a real-time snapshot of public opinion on your search subject.

In order to create an effective marketing strategy, you need to determine the public perception of your brand. If you have had bad publicity lately, you really need a way to track public opinion as you rebuild your reputation. Brandwatch is a Twitter tool that accomplishes these goals.

What tools do you use in your social media monitoring campaign? Is Brandwatch one of them? Let us know your experience, good and bad, by adding a comment.

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Filed Under: Business and Marketing, Featured Post, Tool Reviews Tagged With: Brandwatch, social media monitoring, Twitter tool

Buzzom: A Twitter Tool for Marketing Management

February 13, 2011 By Jo Adair Leave a Comment

Buzzom offers a number of analytical tools for business

Buzzom is a powerful Twitter tool for marketing management using social media. It provides tools to create and monitor an effective social media marketing campaign and promote your product across a broad range of social media sites.

What is a Social Media Marketing Campaign?

This involves not only creating profiles in relevant social sites like Twitter and Facebook, but also engaging the online community with blogs and forum comments.

Create and Monitor Campaigns

Coming up with a marketing management strategy is a step by step process. Buzzom offers a product it calls Simplify360, which breaks it down into four phases:

1. Requirement Phase – What do you need to accomplish and when? Simplify360 will aid you in identifying your goals.

2. Research Phase – What is the marketability of your product and what is the competition in your niche? Simplify360 designs ways to research the feasibility of marketing your product.

3. Implementation Phase – Market your product using social media, interact with followers, and promote your product. Simplify360 offers innovative strategies involving social media sites, blogs, and forums.

4. Monitoring Phase – Track activity and create reports. This is one of Simplify360′s greatest advantages. It will collate and analyze data and offer an insightful, real-time interpretation of your marketing campaigns strengths, including where you can improve your productivity.

Benefits of Buzzom

Plug-ins available. Buzzom offers a way to interact quickly and effortlessly using your browser bar. There are plug-ins available for both Chrome and Firefox.

Schedule posts to social media. Simply enter your URL and choose when you want a post to appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter badge for blog. Buzzom provides a page to design your own custom badge for your blog.

Content, comment, consider. These are three important actions when putting together a social media marketing campaign. Buzzom offers the tools to excel in business.

Do you use Buzzom? Let us know what you think of it, or tell us about the Twitter tool you use to manage your online marketing campaigns.

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Filed Under: Business and Marketing, Featured Post, Tool Reviews Tagged With: Buzzom, marketing management, social media marketing campaign, Twitter tool

Find Affiliate Profits with TweetOMatic Profiteer

November 19, 2010 By Marc Zeale Leave a Comment

By now you know that Twitter is a viable tool for online sales, if you know how to manage profiles and tweak the right software to your advantage. But can the average person really make a decent income with Twitter? With so much conflicting information online, it’s hard to believe even the most reasonable claims anymore.

Browse Google search results for internet marketing and you’ll find more information than you could possibly want. It’s out there, but a lot of it is expensive and doesn’t deliver when it comes time to put the software to the test. We know lots of people who’ve spent large sums of money on programs that never panned out for one reason or another.

Now, granted, making money online isn’t impossible, but it does take a certain amount of effort. Don’t let anybody fool you – there is no overnight success with online marketing. The best you can do is choose wisely when seeking that special product that brings in a reasonable rate of return.

So, think about some of the most reliable sites you’ve heard of that get lots of traffic and have been proven performers on the Internet. How about Clickbank, arguably the biggest online marketplace available, a site that has registered over 100,000 affiliate marketers, offering thousands of products in every niche imaginable? A site, incidentally, that costs you nothing to join.

Then there’s Twitter, another free service that’s quickly approaching 100 million messages or “tweets” per day now. Within all those conversations, there are lots of people with specific interests who are looking for good advice and good products to help them become more productive.

But, there’s a learning curve, right? How do you make an impact on sites you know nothing about? Where do you start?

If you’re smart, you start with TweetOMatic Profiteer, a system that does most of the work for you by automating tasks that get you traffic and followers in droves. These are the potential customers willing to buy ready-made products that already have a measure of success on Clickbank.

TweetOMatic Profiteer

Selling affiliate products is nothing new. Someone else does the work of creating them, and it is not unusual to earn 75% commission on the products you sell. The beauty of this program? If you can put together a tweet on Twitter and attach an affiliate link to the message, that’s about as hard as it gets. Imagine reaching a target audience of 100,000 people (for free) and earning a commission on each sale.

You don’t need a website, you don’t have to pay monthly fees to get customers, and you don’t even need to know much about affiliate marketing.

The additional benefits of this program include:

• 6o-day, No Questions Asked, Money Back Guarantee – If the product doesn’t work out like you planned, simply notify customer service and they will refund your investment.

• Dedicated Customer Support – These guys don’t just walk away after you’ve made the choice to purchase the program. If you’ve got questions, they’ve got answers.

• Extensive Guidebooks to TweetOMatic and Twitter – These guides take you through the initial steps to set up all your accounts, find targeted followers, and set up the hoplinks for affiliate products.

TweetOMatic Campaign screen

Don’t get us wrong, this is not going to make you rich. The interface is very basic, but if you follow the steps in setting up the program correctly, it will bring in results and much-needed passive income in the coming weeks.

TweetOMatic Profiteer is a no-nonsense program that taps into the best affiliate products on Clickbank and bridges the gap between the product and its customers using Twitter. This low-cost tool is worth checking out as an entry into the world of affiliate marketing.

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Filed Under: Business and Marketing, Tool Reviews Tagged With: Clickbank, internet marketing, online sales, selling affiliate products, TweetOMatic Profiteer