4 Rules To Tweet For Better Marketing

I have been using Twitter for a long time now. Its been 2 years since I created my second twitter account which I am currently active at. After continously getting suspended from twitter at the start, I got some interest in using it to make work for me in a better way now.  I am active with some of real nice followers  which I wish you'd want to follow as well.

And I believe after experimenting tweets all over with my only account, it is time to write this post about tweeting better to reach more readers. Before coming to the point, I just want to give some insights about tweeting.

Actually you'll experience the power of tweeting only when you are active with some decent amount of  followers. Even without the  followers, you can reach out to more people with #hashtags.  Everyone knows that twitter only allows you to express yourself in 140 characters. Its yours to make it work within those 140 characters in an efficient way.

Well, Let's go to the rules that I follow to tweet mostly for better marketing.

Is Timing Important?

  If you ask me, I'd probably say its important as much as who you're following and who you're targeting at. People will see your tweet anytime they visit your profile. But that's not the way it should work is it? People should see your tweets on their stream when they are logged in. Obviously, you can't determine when your followers should log in to see your tweets. Studies show that tweeting between 3-9 pm gets more responses and retweets. You'd possibly use twitter at times whenever you're free. And that includes the times between 1-2 pm (Lunch), 4-5 pm (somewhere near a coffee break), and after 9 pm which is possibly you lay down on your bed tweaking your stream.

I saw an awesome post by Belle Beth Cooper at Buffer which I thought I should share with you guys. You'd probably never wanna miss out your followers engagement with tweets at times. So my point is timing is important factor which you shouldn't miss out if you want  to get more engagement with your targeted followers (retweets, favorites, replies).

Use #hashtags:

  Using hashtags in your tweets has more influence with more than your tweeters. Since the search results of twitter are improved with not only the hashtags, its even possible to use keywords in your tweets as it comes in the search results too. For example, You use the word like #smm (Social Media Marketing) in your related tweet, it gets more exposure and responses and reach people other than your followers too.

If you tweet with a hashtag, anyone who searches for the keyword will have a chance to look at your tweet and who knows might get it clicked.

Use hashtags not more than once in your tweet. It has been considered a spam as per this blog post if you tweet has more than 2 hashtags. There are always people who search on twitter with hashtags and you might get listed in their search results too.

Make use of them in your tweets as it powerful enough for marketing your blog or business and chances are pretty increase in your followers as well.

Frequent Tweeting:

 Frequent Tweeting makes you get used to it. And eventually it'll become a part of you sharing your blog posts or any thoughts that come on the road. Your tweets get more engaged when you tweet frequently. 

Here are some tips for frequent tweeting. 

• Tweet a minimum of 4-5 tweets for starters and if you feel you're upto it, then use any automated tools to manage your tweets. 
• Make sure you decide when to tweet and when's not for all the applications won't always tweet as per your request (which might be a spam).

           There are hundreds of thousands of applications that bake spams with your profile. Stay out of them for the sake of your profile.

• Tweet your common thoughts once in a while and make sure they don't hurt anyone, if it does, you might get blocked on twitter.
• Tweet 2-3 quotes a day to make your profile look lively and to gain more followers too.

Use Action Keywords:

Its a good one for better tweeting and better engagement. Call for Action has more influence with the tweets especially they tend people to read and share (retweet) your tweets. All you have to do is to put some words of action like RT, Fav, #FF, #fb ETC.,

Whenever you tweet something may be your blog posts or any quotes, its okay to ask people to retweet them or favorite them. Ask for what you want and if its good, you'll get it. An Infographic based on a  recent analysis by SocialBakers has pointed out that tweets with call of action, have got more clicks, retweets, and favorites than the ones without it. 

Conclusion:

  Timing is more important which you can't keep up always with your followers and that's where the tools come in to fill your needs. With the right timing and the easy to follow tweets gets more engagement .

Now tell me how do you tweet often for better marketing.

Share the love with your friends.

Image Credit: Flickr

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Test Your Responsive Design on Mobile Devices

Responsive Websites are getting common these days and your day-to-day apps are changing themselves to a better responsive design, which makes me to say that Google + too have changed to be a responsive one.

Responsive design is a strategy to provide a web view that will change according to the devices you use. The design is mainly done with CSS3 Media Queries.

Developers mostly need to check out the design while designing a site whether it supports all devices. And mostly common people would like to check out the responsiveness of the design with respect to any device they use.

While hunting on the internet, I found a tool online that will help designers check the responsiveness, compatibility of a website on the way.
 I wanted to make sure that it is known to all those people who read my blog.

And that is MobileTest.me developed by Vangelis Bibakis. It is a place where you can test your mobile sites or web applications or any blog you'd wanna check for the responsiveness as well as the compatibility to use.

It is an easy one where any one can test with just the url and no need to create any account to use this function.

Just Go To mobiletest.me where you have to type the url at the top and hit enter. You can select the type of device you'd want to check your site by clicking the icon near the input box.

It has nearly most of the latest devices like iphone 5, HTC ONE, Lumia 920, Nexus 7 etc.,

And whats great is that you can test your localhost site too.

I've also found some other tools for testing the responsiveness of a website.

Some of the tools to check responsiveness of your website.

Responsinator, Responsive.is, ami.responsivedesign.is, Dimensionsapp, Responsive tool from Mattkersley, Responsivetest.net etc., are some of other tools that will help you check your website.

If you've reached here, then share these tools with your friends and let them know about it too.

Conclusion:

Now why don't you check your responsive design and let me know about your website.

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4 Simple Tips To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Twitter allows you to follow people and let others follow you too. Twitter is one of the top social networking website for promoting business. One cannot simple get followers as soon as he signs up for it. There are thousands of third party applications that will let you get more followers automatically. But the actual scenario changes once you get spammed using these applications.

In this post, I am going to tell you how to get more followers without using any third party applications but with your total effort in less hours per day.

I am gonna make you stop wonder about what I'm going to say with some minute details in twitter following strategy.

Read down continously to know more details about the secret to make more followers on your twitter profile.

Lets assume you just created your twitter profile now and wanting to get more followers.

All you know about twitter is that you tweet and nobody cares what you tweet exactly. That's not just true completely. You don't have to listen completely to what people talk about in twitter unless you're interested.

Okay..!! Its time I stop going further AWOL from the topic and start telling you the steps that you should follow to get more followers.

Now lets make a list of interests in things in real life that you'd wanna tweet. And then start tweeting some then and there. That doesn't costs you more than 20 minutes a day.

Tweeting Rules:

I am gonna keep it short and simple for you.

1. Tweet 5-10 tweets a day to show you're around.
2. Tweet General quotes as you like.
3. Tweet your topics that interests you.
4. Tweet not more that 2-3 links a day from your own blog. If you just started using twitter, you might not want to create a look of spammy profile with a lot of links. 
5. Tweet anything that you'd want to tweet that make your profile seem lively on the road.

That's it. You're done with the tweeting rules. Now let me tell you the main part of gathering like minded crowd.

Follow Like Minded Ones:

Just to match with the heading of the step, I have to tell you follow to get more followers.

You don't have to worry about the followers if you're some kind of celebrity in your niche.  If you're not, then you'd have to work on it manually.

You can find the follow suggestions at the left side of your twitter. Follow people who are interested in following back. That would open your connections widely. You may notice the followers of your followers will start following you.. Follow the ones that you'd wanna make a connection with.

The next thing you see is people following you everyday. Follow 50-100 people a day for a steady process in your follower's growth.

That's been said, would take not more than 30 minutes to follow and follow back tweepies. Never stop following people because they're the ones you're gonna share your posts and tweets with.

Never Opt for Third Party Apps:

Yes. Never go for third party apps. When I say third party apps, I clearly wanted to mean the apps that say will get you more followers. If you're concentrating mostly to run your profile as business, then you should know that you've to build your followers that interests you and your tweets. I have personally used such third party apps at the start and spammed myself. Make sure you follow people on your own to avoid getting suspended.

There are differences that when you use a tool to manage your tweets and a tool that says will increase your followers list. Managing your twitter account would also need your nerdy work inside to set the things such as auto-follow etc., that would be a time slayer. But when you follow regardlessly with any tool will only get you followers that may lead to your suspension or spamming inside your twitter.

Use Inbuilt Twitter Functionalities:

I am talking about the "Who To Follow Suggestions" at the left side of your twitter. It is an effective one for you to raise your followers list. When you follow people on your niche, twitter tailors the follow suggestions based on your latest following's bio as such if you follow more writers profiles recently, the suggestion will show people who are writers. 

You can also use the search at the top to search for your niche tweeters. Searching for keywords like #bloggers will show you people who have tweeted with #bloggers recently and you can decide to follow (whether to make a connection with them or not).

By selecting the "People" at the left side of the search will give you suggestions  based on your keyword.

You can make use of these functionalities to follow and get followed. I am sure this will not take more than an hour to follow 50 people a day. 

Getting mentioned from your followers with hashtags like #FF, #TGIF, etc., once in a while will also help you gain some followers. 

Conclusion: 

All those above are some simple and small things that you should make use to increase your followers list. What makes more interesting and fun is that how you connect with them once in a while to maintain the relation. Tweet them every once and make your followers hear what you say (tweet).

Now that you've finished reading , share the love with your friends.

Image Credit: Flickr- Shawn Campbell

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How to BackUp Your Tweets With Twitter Archive

Are you a continous tweeter who doesn't care about how much you tweet a day? And all of a sudden your tweets reaches thousands and more and then you start wondering what was your first tweet and find no way to recover what you've tweeted all these days?

Twitter shows your tweets in your stream based on number of tweets and weeks. That means, if you've more tweets in a week it takes time to load all your tweets in your timeline which would make older tweets disappear from your timeline.

Well, believe it or not, most of us would have tried and so did I. I've have my time searching for archiving my tweets via various third party twitter applications. Twitter guys released in their blog that there is an inbuilt Twitter Archive facility to archive all your tweets.

It is also said that the facility is rolling out slowly and is available to only in some users as of Dec 2012 and hope its available to you as well.

Here are the steps to follow to download your twitter archive.

Step 1:

Go to Settings page where you'll find something as "Your Twitter Archive" as in the image below.

If you don't find the "Request Your Archive" button as in the image above, then unfortunately it is not rolled out there yet.

Step 2:

Click on the "Request Your Archive" button and you'll receive an alert message as shown in the image below.

Step 3:

You'll receive an email from twitter along with a link to download your twitter archive within minutes.

When you click the link, it will redirect you to the download page like the image above, where you can download your twitter archive.

Also view the tools that will help you manage your tweets.

Image Credit: SmartPhotoStock

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5 Tips for Making Your Posts Really Speak to Readers

Writing punchy, engaging, and informative content is crucial to keeping your readers interested and coming back for more, but never under estimate the power of imagery to act as a secondary bit of flair when it comes to publishing online. From simple photographs to highly detailed infographics, throwing a bit of visual stimulation in with your words can make the difference between holding onto a fickle web surfer's attention or losing them as a member of your audience forever.
Unfortunately, while most of us are hipped to the fact that illustrations within blog posts are more or less required, far fewer of us do that fact justice. Helping you with that point and a few others, here are five tips for making your posts really speak to readers:

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6 SEO Tips To Improve Your Blog Traffic

Blogging can be fun when your hardwork pays off. Its not those old times that you've to do all the work by yourself and wait for the result. Its the time that you automate everything on the handes of plugins and softwares and then wait for the result. Its all made easy with the technologies and it is what we call as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

If you play smart by knowing what the search engines want and react to it efficiently, you might see your blog gaining more traffic on the way of blogging.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc., and its search algorithms work efficiently based on the blog's performance and its content. Google's search algorithm Penguin 2.0 filters fresh and updated content to the top searches and avoids spammy keywords. A lot has been changed since the rolling out of Penguin update.

Here are some 6 SEO tips to improve your blog traffic.

Fresh and Updated Content:

If you have been searching every other blogs that write about the tips for improving blog traffic, you might be familiar with the sentence 'Content is King'. I found a beautiful infographics about 'Content is King' on visual.ly which explains everything . This is the first tip that every blogger will give for other bloggers. Yes, Offcourse Content is King. Currently considering the update of Google's search algorithm at the end of may this year (2013) , you might have had spam changes with the traffic in your blog rankings and page views. It is mainly because of the freshness of the blog and its frequent updation of the pages.

Penguin Update filters the pages that are currently updated and the latest results are shown.

Keywords Search:

Searching for the most used keywords is very easy when you've Google Webmaster, Adwords Tool. Search for keywords with the most impressions on your niche and try to use it in your posts where it suits. You can use those keywords anywhere in your blog. Also keep in mind that more usage of the same keywords or keywords that doesn't suit the content are considered spammy.

Check for the keywords all by yourself via Google trends and you can find its correlation factor based on the months or years. This is neccessary to know what the readers are looking for. You're to act like one and know what keywords you will google for something that you need in your niche.

About Page and Meta Tags:

 Meta tags are real useful SEO functioned tags. Even though it is not much of a SEO technique, it draws users to click to your link or page. This is where you give your blog description and the search engine lists your blog based on the description information. Without a proper description, it is difficult for search engines to index your blog among millions of blogs.

<head><meta name="description" content="You can write your blog description here"></head>

About Page plays a substitute role for the meta tags and let the search engines index and ranks your blog among million other blogs on your niche.

Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is a very good opportunity to lead your traffic to a new level and self-recognition in the field of blogging (your niche). Moreover, you'll find your connections grow in a mass media of like minded professionals and gather more readers to your blog and more followers to your social media profiles too.

You also need to avoid these mistakes while Guest blogging in other blogs.

Backlinking:

Backlinking is the linking back to your blog from anywhere on the internet. For example, you have a social media profile on Twitter and you add your blog to your twitter account and that makes you a  backlink from twitter to your blog. Backlinking can be achieved in many ways. 

When you guest blog on other blogs, you'll get a backlink to your blog.

Commenting on other blogs will let you add a backlink to your blog as easy as that provided you don't spam!!.

Participating in communities, forums etc., and answering questions with solutions as well as backlinking to your blog.

Social Media Presence:

Self-Promotion is the best word to put in here that explains everything that we share our blog posts via social media profiles. Social Media Presence is very important for the blog traffic. In other words for business, self-promoting can be called with respect as 'Branding'. There's no point in feeling shy or guilty of promoting your blog.

This is what we do best and this is what social medias are for. To improve your blog traffic and to get more recognition for your online business, it is necessary to keep your presence in social media and share with your followers frequently.

To make it work efficient, your blog must need atleast one social media profile in every networks. It creates a name that will automatically let people think of it as a brand. If you don't have any seperate pages on social networks for your blog, better you link your personal profiles to your blog from where you share your posts. This will increase your referral traffic to a whole new level.

 With constant sharing and live on social profiles, you will gather more followers and readers to your blog as well.

Conclusion:

Blogging will be a whole new experience if you start to make it SEO friendly. You'll experience a change in your blog traffic no matter  its referral or direct or organic. Keep in mind that you write for humans and not for search engines and at the same time you're making it SEO friendly too with proper content and strategies.

Now that I have finished this post, please leave your thoughts on this post through comments and share the love.

Image Credit: Flickr- Mark Fischer

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5 Tools To Create Your Own Infographics

Infographics are very powerful in the blogosphere and in every other business as well. Inspite of Time and writing more content, they are indisputable in reaching more readers and can be understood easily.  As Web Designers and Bloggers, we come across a lot of infographic presentations everyday and only we know how much effort we are putting into for creating such infographics using tools like Photoshop. Photoshop is really a competing tool for designing Charts, images and infographics etc., but in the POV of designers, it consumes a lot of time and energy and budget. To reduce the amount of time spent in creating such infographics and charts, came the infographic creator tools which can save you a lot of time and money. Anyone can design cool infographics with these tools and you don't need to be a designer to furnish your carvings.

 Here are 5 of my favorite tools for creating cools infographics with your data.

Infogr.am:

 

Infogram- Create Interactive Infographics. One of the best Infographic creator tool and easy to use as well. A total of 1,039,728 Infograms (and counting) are created using this tool. Infograms created with this tool are rich in data content and more like charts.   Chart type datas can be created in minutes. It ha a built-in spreadsheet where you will be providing the data or you can also import data from Excel sheet, XLS or CSV formats too. You can create chart type infographics in formats like Bar chart, Pie Chart, Bubble Chart, Tree Chart etc., . The Download feature is available only to pro users who buy subscription for 18$/ month or $/year. You can share the infographics created by you on your social networks and can  embed in your website too.

Get About Me:

 

This is a cool infographic creating tool which gathers data from your social networking profiles and generates your own personalised infographics. Yes, by signing in via Facebook, the tool automatically generates an infographic image based on your social media activity. It is one of the best tool to view your ups and downs of your day to day social media profile activities.

Vizualize.me:

 

Visualize.me is an apt tool to rejenuvate your resume in an infographic format. The tagline- Visualize your Resume in one click says it all. Yes. That's Right!. Just be connecting with your linkedin profile, it creates a professional infographic resume. You can create your infographics resume in minutes. You can share your personalised Resume to your social networking profiles as well as embed to your blog. It is in its beta version and some of the features like Print are coming soon and it will be quite exciting in coming years with the personalized infographic resume.

Piktochart:

 

Piktochart is another free infographic tool that contains more than over 120 themes which you can create visual infographic datas. It is easy to share and easy to use as it guides step by step tutorial even for a perfect newbie. The attractive feature is that download as JPG or PNG formats are available for all the users. The Pro users will get hands on unlimited themes. Free Users can access only 7 themes whereas Pro Users can access more than 100 themes. The cost of Subscription is $29 /month or 169$/year.

Easel.ly:

 

Easel.ly is another free tool to create your infographics. It calls its themes as vheme (Visual Theme) and it is totally free. You can create your infographics within minutes with this tool and is cost-effective too. The best part is it has drag and drop facility that works on the themes where anyone with no designing background can use its features very easily.

Conclusion:

 So far I have seen and tried, the above are the 5 tools for creating infographics. There are many other infographic tools out there but I am sure that you'll love the above ones more than the other tools for your purposes.

Now, leave back a comment with your favorite infographic creation tools. 

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10 Tips to Improve Interaction On Twitter

Source: Wikimedia

Interaction is a very important business acumen.Without a significant amount of Interaction with your social media profile lists, running a business online is much difficult. Engaging with your social profile followers and friends will help a lot to improve your business in terms of growth, name and money. It won't seem bad when it comes to self-promoting your business or product. As and through the growth of your brand or business, you'll need a lot of interaction with the fellow members and followers. Twitter can be helpful for any business to gain more followers worldwide and will grow your business fair enough.

Any business say blogging, products or brand will possibly need a fair amount of engagement with the crowd at the start which is a part of Marketing Strategy. 

     In this post, We are gonna see 10 simple tips to maintain a decent interaction on Twitter. Interaction on Twitter is very important for business. Twitter is said to be an effective micro-blogging platform and it has increased 40% of its crowd since 2012. Marketing brands or any business (SMB's) etc., are running wild on Twitter currently. For a business to run viral on Twitter, the major thing needed is Interaction. Only tweeting 10 tweets per hour will not make the business run sharp. As you know, Nobody cares what you tweet unless it has something they want. So, you are gonna have to make people want what you have. And thats the part of Marketing Strategy. The main component needed for this strategy is Interaction. Letting people know you have what they want will automatically attract the customers. Here are 10 tips to maintain a decent interaction on Twitter for business to reach more people (followers).

1. Continous Tweeting:

Lets start with tweeting. I didn't say tweeting more is a problem. Tweeting more can be a problem if nobody listens to what you tweet. It could be of no use when you tweet continously and everything goes in vain. Gather your crowd and tweet frequently based on your niche.

2. Filter Fellow Tweeps:

You have to filter your followers based on who actually listens to you (tweets). Its simple. People who retweets, favorites, mentions you a while are those who actually listens to your tweets. You will know eventually when you start engaging with your followers.

3. Start Talking:

Yes. You have to take the initative if nobody's willing. Its your business to run and you're gonna have to move your ass first. Start interacting with the fellow crowd and let them know you're concerning them. While Mentioning them, make sure you're referring to them and make them get interested in your tweets. This will automatically increase your business exposure.

4. Use HashTags:

This is actually one of the main strategy for interacting wide. As you know with hashtags, your tweets reaches more people than just your followers.  Mention your tweets with not more than 2 hashtags as because it seems spammy when more hashtags are used within those 140 characters. Mention your crowd tweeps with hashtags like #FF, #TGIF, #RT etc., just to get their attention as well as the attention of the other people on twitter as well.

5.  Retweet, Favorite:

What are these for? Retweet your followers tweets to let them know you're interested in making an interactive session with them. RTs can be done in two different ways. As you know you can click the Retweet button to do it or you can also quote the person's name and tweet him with his original tweet. Its better to RT their tweet by mentioning it as a seperate tweet rather than just Retweeting them.

6. Praise the Retweets:

Tweeting continously will make your twitter account look fresh and lively. Of course, it may bring lot of Retweets and favorites for your tweets.The one thing you could do to make your engagement with the tweeps is praising the Retweets like mentioning the @person and thanking him for the Retweet and let the flow go on.

7. Add to Lists:

 Add your favorite people on Twitter to your lists. Its easy to find who are your favorite ones. Those who retweet, favorite and engage with you the most on twitter are your favorite ones who listens to your tweets. Keep them groomed and stay engaged with them often to let them know you concern for them.

Actually you can use the 4th tip here. ie; tweet them often with #hashtags listed above.

8. DM Only if Needed.:

No matter what you do try to engage with the fellow tweeps, there is always some kinda privacy for each and every one of them. DMs with links are mostly considered spams these days because of the third party applications that we use over to gain followers that will lead to loose followers as well. So, as far as DM is concerned, use it only for secure purposes and avoid spammy links via DMs.

9. Tweet Quotes Often:

Tweeting is fun when you've something interesting is going on which you wanna share with your followers and getting engaged in several 140 character conversations. More often tweeting Quotes will make your account get followed by many people as well as get yourself into interacting with the others. When you open your profile and you see all your promotional tweets for your business and you'll feel drowsy and bored. Tweeting Quotes often will help your account look refreshing and yourself too.

10. An Awesome Twitter Bio:

It should have been on the top on the list if the Post Title is "Tips To Gain More Followers". Your Twitter Bio also takes part in getting yourself more engaged with your followers. You may find it funny though, but it is your Trademark to let the twitterers know who you are and what you do. Twitter Bio ranges according to the business industry which you are into. You should have an attractive bio on your Profile which will make your followers interested in you and start engaging on their own to your tweets.

Conclusion: 

Now that I have finished with the 10 Tips, I am waiting to hear how you could make use of your interaction on Twitter for your business and your experiences in engaging with your twitter tweeps.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

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