It is that both Bing and Google announced yesterday that they will soon be including Tweets in their search results. And, what’s more, Bing will soon be including Facebook updates.

More normal earthlings may be wondering what the big deal is about all this. The answer is that Twitter and Facebook provide real time data – information that changes by the minute – whereas the search engines currently take a while to index web pages and show them in their search results.

Should you need to, you can access information about current hot topics straight away. However, it may be worth remembering that, just like other sources on the internet, the information being bandied about may not always be the most reliable as it can come from a wide spectrum of commentators.

From the other side of the internet marketing coin, any Tweets you make will be accessible by a much larger audience than before. And, since Twitter pages can be viewed by anybody without having to be logged in, this provides another potential route to your website.

As yet, it’s unclear as to what format these search tools will take; whether they’ll be included in the main search results or whether there’ll be a seperate Twitter search page to access – much like the separate News and Blogs searches that Google currently has. In addition, it remains to be seen how successful Bing’s inclusion of Facebook status updates will be given that most Facebook updates are not public. It could have implications for the way that users behave on Facebook in the future.

And how did we find all this out? Yes – you guessed it – from our fellow Twitterers.

Building up followers and fans and interacting with them takes up a lot of time. So how much time should you spend on it if you’re a SME owner doing all this yourself?

At a recent seminar on social media networking, it was suggested that people should spend an hour a day initially, broken down into chunks of about 20 minutes at least three times a day. In addition, if your business has an international market, it’s wise to try and Tweet at times of the day when the whole world is likely to be online, estimated to be from 7am to 9am and 7pm to 9pm.
Realistically, it’s unlikely that, as a busy SME owner, you have that much time to spare in one day. You could always get an employee to do it for you but you need to ensure that person can reliably project your business interests and integrity. You can of course outsource the social networking to an internet marketing company but, there again, you need to make sure that they understand your business vision and can project you and your business in an appropriate manner.

There are some useful time saving tools online that can help you with Twitter and Facebook posting. Social RSS is a Facebook application that allows you to add favourite RSS feeds to your business page. So you can add a feed from your website or blog so that when it updates, it automatically sends an update to the Facebook page. You can also add a Twitter application to the Facebook page so that any Facebook status updates automatically update your Twitter status too.

Other free Twitter tools include TweetDeck, which we described in an earlier blog post; Monitter, which tells you in real time when somebody is discussing a particular chosen topic; Twellow – a Twitter directory where you can find other Tweeple in your industry, location or with similar interests;and Hootsuite which is similar to TweetDeck but has additional groovy tools for scheduling Tweets, viewing other user info and viewing threaded conversations.

But all this effort could amount to a hill of beans if there’s no return on the investment your time. You need to be able to measure the effect that Twitter may have had on your website traffic, if that is your purpose in using it. Hootsuite has a tracking tool that will keep account of how many links were clicked on and where the users are from. But don’t forget Google Analytics which is a great way of finding out how many visitors to your site were referred there by Twitter.

So now you’re a Tweeting, Facebooking expert, we hope you have fun. Just don’t forget to Mention us in return to tell us how helpful we are! You can find us on Twitter and Facebook.

You need to consider carefully how you’re going to interact with your followers and fans since the idea of social media is that it should be treated a bit like face to face networking in that it shouldn’t necessarily be blasted with blatant advertising.

With Twitter there appear to be more unspoken etiquette rules than there are for a Facebook business page. The basic premise of Twitter is, after all, that it’s social media; you interact socially with other Twitterers and build a level of trust. If you break that trust by posting too many spammy links back to your own website or by being offensive then you run the risk of being ignored or, horror of horrors, being ‘unfollowed’.

If people start to associate your posts with too much ‘marketese’ they will probably stop taking any notice of them. Once you get stuck into trying to build relationships with fellow Twitterers, you’ll see for yourself that you’ll start to screen out the ones who post out the same old marketing spiel. In fact it can become so irritating that you may want to stop their posts from appearing on your home page altogether and eliminate that Twerp (but only from your Twitter followers – not in real life!).

So make sure your posts are interesting or funny and only contain a smattering of back links to your site.

With a Facebook page, the business side of it is inherent so nobody who is a fan can be offended by links back to the website. Again though, people may start to screen out a constant stream of bland looking posts and links so try and make your posts interesting and useful – add value to your fans’ Facebook experience. Once you’ve built up a number of fans, you can start discussion topics on your page to try and engage them some more and keep them coming back.

That’s all well and good but building up followers and fans, not to mention interacting with them, takes time. The next post will examine how much time you should invest in social media networking and offer some top time saving ideas.

As an Internet Marketing tool, Facebook is less flexible than Twitter. It’s not as customisable as Twitter and it’s harder to get followers or, in this case, fans.  A Facebook page is for the sole purpose of marketing your business; a Facebook profile is for your own personal use, ie. a way of getting in back in touch with old friends, sending silly messages and ‘poking’ each other! It’s a good idea to separate your personal stuff from your business stuff on Facebook. That way your business connections don’t have to see how childish you can be and your personal connections won’t feel as though you’re constantly trying to sell them things. However, the search engines won’t rank the business page unless you have a personal profile set up first.

The good thing about having a Facebook business page is that it is viewable by anyone – they don’t have to have a Facebook account in order to view your page – and it can be ranked by the search engines. In which case, just like Twitter, it is again important to include keywords in your page title and any description that you may add. The page title needs very careful thought however as this cannot be changed. You can set up another page with a different or better title but then of course you would have to build up your fan base and information all over again.

The next thing to do is to get some fans. Without fans, the search engines will not rank your page very highly and neither will Facebook in its business page directory. The more fans you have, the more interactions the page is likely to get with fans and this is also valued by the search engines and Facebook. The problem is, you can only invite people to be a fan if they’re already on Facebook and then only if they are already amongst your Facebook friends.

In order to gain more fans of your Facebook page, you need to think of other ways to promote it. A useful Facebook tool is the ability to create a badge for your page which you can include on your website or in your emails. With the ‘become a fan’ wording on it, it can encourage people to do exactly that – see our example (and please feel free to become a fan!).

 Our next blog post will give you some tips on managing Twitter and Facebook pages as well as some information on handy time saving tools to use.

Firstly, think about your objectives: What do you want to achieve with your Facebook/Twitter campaign? Build  relationships? Build a brand? Achieve more sales? Or merely attract more visitors to your website? The answer will be sure to affect the way you use these networking tools and set them up.

Of the two, Twitter is the most customisable; you can change the colours, graphics, select your own url and even change the url whenever you want without losing your followers. If your Twitter mission is to get more visitors to your site, it’s a good idea to try to use some keywords in your Twitter url or full name if you can. However, you are restricted to 15 characters here so you may have to be quite creative.

By the same token, your bio is another opportunity to use keywords that are relevant to your business. At the time of writing, we have three listings on the first page of GoogleAU for ‘Sunshine Coast SEO‘. The third listing is our Suncoast SEO Twitter account. This partly due to our username and the keywords in our bio. However, don’t get too pushy with the keywords as this can have a negative effect on potential followers who will view you as being a bit ’spammy’.

It’s a good idea to customise your Twitter page with the same branding and colour theme as your other marketing tools, such as your website and business cards. However, there is a growing consensus of opinion that suggests it’s better to have a personal photo as your Twitter image rather than a logo. This is because other Twitterers (Tweeples?) prefer to engage with someone they can see, rather than an impersonal corporate entity.

The next thing to do is to get some followers. This is pretty easy as ‘Tweeps’ are always on the lookout for other ‘Tweeps’ to ‘Tweet’ with! However, be careful of who follows you; who you allow to follow you can be a reflection on the integrity of your Twitter account as well as your business. Other people will look at your followers to see if they can follow them too. So, unless you’re in the Adult Industry, you may want to stay vigilant!

The best way of growing your following is to search for others with the same interests and who are in a location that your business can serve. Following or being followed by ‘Tweeps’ with similar interests makes it easier to engage with them. You will find that each time you ‘Tweet’, you will get more followers but if their interest or location is not your territory, you are unlikely to gain any business with them and, more annoyingly, it amounts to a lot of ‘Twam’ (or Tweet spam, apparently)  when you log in.

In the next post, we’ll explore the mysteries of setting up a Facebook page.

Well three hours of questions, answers and networking was certainly enough to wipe the smug, all knowing smile off my face. Why? Because it (a) reminded me that many people do not know the first thing about Twitter, Facebook and (b) made me realise that all this time I’d been doing it wrong. Not completely wrong maybe, but not totally right either. For the benefit of those novice Twits..er…Twitterers who are wondering where to start, let’s start at the beginning.

Firstly, why should you bother with followers, fans and Tweets anyway? Last year’s Understanding Micro Business Survey of 1800 businesses carried out by the Flying Solo group found that 85 per cent of respondents still say word of mouth is the best method of finding new customers. The growing BNI (Business Network International) movement in Australia bases its success on the importance of networking and the value of relationships. With Twitter and Facebook also based on the principle of networking and answering the question, “What are you doing today?” it stands to reason that this is potential gold dust for anyone looking to share news about products and services that they offer. But if that doesn’t persuade you, maybe the news that Dell Computers has managed to accumulate $3 million in sales from one of its Twitter accounts will get you thinking.

So what’s the right way of setting up a Twitter or Facebook page? Tune in for the next blog update that will show you how to set up Twitter.