Five Tips For A Successful Twitter Chat

 For those of you that work in social media, you’ll appreciate the recent “54 Warning Signs That You Work in Social Media” list that Jason Keath of Social Fresh put together. I know I did, especially #47 that says “Your significant other asks, “Are you still working, or just tweeting?”

I thought of this list recently as I was trying to describe the concept of a Twitter chat to a family member who witnessed my participation in a series of them in December. Each Thursday night, I was glued to my computer tweeting about cookies and holiday baking, on behalf of a client, to a community on Twitter. While my family members thought the idea of the chat was funny, they hopefully realized that Twitter chats represent an opportunity for brands to use a social network to engage with other people who are passionate about a certain topic area – ultimately giving a brand the opportunity to build relationships and awareness online with their followers, and even better, with potential new fans and customers, in a direct, casual manner.

Typically, chats are structured to provide clear direction and guidance around a certain topic of discussion but are flexible enough to allow one-off related conversations to grow between participants. Chats usually follow a question and answer format with either the brand or partner organization tweeting a question every few minutes while participants respond with their answers.

As your team prepares for or considers if chats are right for the brand, consider the following items:

#1 Get Familiar

Want to consider a chat for a brand but don’t personally know much about them? Jump in. The best way to learn is to join one. Like most things in social media, you can’t effectively bring a brand into the discussion if you aren’t there as an individual first – understanding the mechanics of the platform, learning the lingo and knowing when to weigh in and when to observe.  Find a chat that you are personally interested in and join it  – tweet a little, RT others, use the hashtag, or just sit back and watch – but really get the whole experience before you put forth a recommendation for your brand. If you search “twitter chats” on Google, you can find this Google document that is a good reference for chats on Twitter listed by topic area. A few good ones to start with:

• Girls Night Out – rotating topics on a variety of fun lifestyle themes, held Tuesday nights (#GNO)
• Travelers’ Night In – great travel based chat, held Thursday nights (#TNI)
• Community Manager Chat – for community managers, on Wednesday afternoons (#CMGRchat)
• JournChat – for PR professionals, bloggers and journalists, on Monday evenings (#journchat) 

Example Twitter Chat Stream: #GNO

#2 Is Your Brand Well-Known Enough to Start Its Own Chat? 

Many times we have to make the decision to either host a chat on our own vs. sponsoring an already established chat by another organization. Typically, we’ll consider if the brand has the social footprint to host and cultivate a chat on their own and if based on that footprint (and the footprints of influencers who could possibly participate as moderators) the brand will get the results they want and expect. For companies with smaller or growing followers, we’d probably recommend they partner with a brand/customer/affiliated partner/spokesperson that has a well established social following or sponsors a Twitter chat with an organization that has an already established community around regular Twitter chats – like many of those listed above.

#3 Nail Down the Details – Making Choices

Pick a Time of Day That is Best For Your Chat

Consider when you want to host the chat and what time/day slots make the most sense for your community. Many established chats happen in the evening, so participants can jump in and join the conversation after work hours but many organizations that host Twitter chats for brands also offer a daytime chat option too. Check with your chat partners to see what responses they get during the day vs. night and make a decision based on what would work best for your brand.

Pick a Theme for Your Chat

Create a theme for the chat and a focus you want participants to follow and discuss but don’t choose something so niche that anyone joining for the first time wouldn’t be able to follow because they don’t know the topic. For example, if you are a CPG brand and you want to promote your product around an upcoming holiday, consider a theme around traditions, recipes or cooking/baking that would be a natural fit for your brand to share and offer content to participants.

Create or Choose a #

Choose a hashtag that you can use to track the conversation. If you are partnering with an organization, they may already have a hashtag in place but usually you can have two tags – one to represent the brand and another to represent the topic or partner organization.  When choosing a hashtag, consider the following items:

• Keep them as short as possible – you don’t want your hashtag to take up too many characters of your tweet
• Check to see if they are already being used, either via consumers or other brands – you don’t want a tag that can’t easily be tracked or identified as special to the chat
• Consider your overall program and if it makes sense to use one hashtag for the entire program vs. a specific one for just the chat

#4 Pre-Chat Prep

Create a List

A week or two before the chat gather all the details above and create a cheat sheet document for your team. This can be formatted as a simple outline or table with the following information:

• Chat theme, date, time
• Official hashtags
• List of commonly referenced bit.ly links that you may need to use
• The list of chat questions and expected timing for each question during the chat (usually every 5-10 minutes depending on the chat)
• List of sample answers for each question in case needed
• An FAQ section for your team in case any sensitive questions come up during the chat and they (or you) need direction on how to respond
• Contact information for team members and client participating – even setting up a conference dial-in ahead of time can be helpful for communicating between various parties during the actual event

The important thing to remember is to strike a balance between being as prepared as possible while remaining flexible. The majority of your tweets should be ad-hoc responses, answers and questions to other participants – but it’s OK to help guide your team in the types of responses they can expect the brand to make and/or use during the chat.

Gather a Team with Specific Chat Responsibilities

If possible, and depending on the size of the chat, have more than one person staffing the handle – each with specific responsibilities. One person can own either asking or retweeting the questions and fielding answers while another can tweet more brand focused content and engage more proactively with the community. We’ve had Twitter chats before where 4-5 team members were involved and needed. Make sure you sit down beforehand and make roles/responsibilities very clear so there is no confusion when it’s time to begin.

Use a Twitter Tool

Use an engagement tool like Tweetdeck to help you manage the Twitter chat stream. If you aren’t already using one, set up your tool a few days before and start practicing. Create search columns for the various chat hashtags so you can see all tweets coming through for your chat.

#5 Reporting & Measurement

This is a critical part of social business and Twitter chats are no different. Consider the following metrics beforehand and make sure you set benchmarks ahead of time to measure progress from before/after a chat: 

• # of Twitter chat participants
• # of tweets with your hashtag
• # of mentions and RT’s of your content
• # of impressions from tweets during this time with your hashtag
• Follower growth from day before till day after chat
• List increases as a result of the chat, new relationships formed
• Clicks on links shared during the chat (can use bit.ly to track by creating custom URLs for chat)
• Impact of chat on your overall share of conversation (SOC) and any coverage received as a result of your chat
• New relationships built as a result of the chat with online influencers
• If doing a coupon promotion, clicks and downloads of coupon as a result of chat

Example TweetReach Report

When reporting results of your Twitter chat to the brand, also consider how you will maintain the momentum from the chat, either via continued engagement, targeted outreach or a series of additional chats in following months. Also consider how you can leverage content from the chat in other mediums, including creating conversation word clouds to use in internal market research reports, or interesting fan comments and funny quotes to share on Facebook and Twitter the next day.  

Additional tips to consider:

• Just because chat hours are over doesn’t mean the conversation has to end – assuming you have the resources to staff, keep it going as long as possible
• Consider the back-up plan should Twitter go down…it happens
• Use the chat hashtag before and after the chat to get your followers familiar and engaged on the topic
• Cross-promote the Twitter chat on other social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn if appropriate, encouraging your community to join you there
• Gather feedback – be open to suggestions from your community on topics they’d like to hear next time or what sort of content/answers they are looking for
• Consider adding a giveaway element to the chat – it can be a good tactic for increasing interest and participation, not to mention sharing the brand love with your community, just make sure it doesn’t override the value of the actual discussion happening
• Keep a running list of chat participants (either via Twitter’s list feature or in Excel) so you can track who participated and continue engaging with them after the chat ends
• Visit WCG’s SlideShare channel to review fellow colleague, Meghan Butler’s, deck on even more Twitter chat best practices and tips to promote your chat

And most importantly, be an active participant and resource for your community. Twitter chats are not a marketing platform for you to push out branded messages. They are most successful when brands use them to listen and engage with a community rather than speak at them.

Article Source  http://blog.wcgworld.com/2012/01/five-tips-for-a-successful-twitter-chat

10 STRATEGIES ON HOW TO INCREASE ADSENSE REVENUE

AdSense is increasingly growing as a method of making quick money over the internet. As a blogger, you have probably dabbled with Google AdSense, generated some of the ad units and placed them on your blog or website to make profits from this strategy. Google AdSense may seem so simple to use but like any cash-generating program, you can make a tremendous improvement and earn highly. Ideally, it is the simplest optimizations and polishing of ads that that will earn you more clicks and ultimately more money. Consider the following 10 strategies on how to increase AdSense revenue: 

 1. Use ads where they are more likely to be seen Do you know when or where your ads are more likely to be seen and eventually earn more clicks? The secret is placing them adjacent to something that the user is more likely to click on. A user’s eyes mostly follows the mouse and if they spot an attractive ad close to what they are about to open, it increases their likelihood of clicking on your ad. Whether it is a share button or a social link button, find out what your users like and place your ads next to such. 

 2. Generate a good list of highly paying keywords and use them wisely Keywords are still essential when working online because they will be used from time to time to find content over the internet. Generate a good list by using the savviest tools available or by simply observing and accurately speculating what users are likely to look for. Once you have such keywords, never use them the spam way. Spread them naturally and reasonably as though you are a skilled writer trying to share meaningful content relating to that particular subject. For an article that has 500 words, using the keywords at least 4 or 5 times will be reasonable. Be careful to spread them evenly such that your writing looks natural. 

 3. Reconcile the colors to match with your design Visual appeal is an important factor if you desire to make more money online. To attract more visitors and solicit them to click on your ads, therefore, the adverts must blend with the entire content to appear as though it was designed by some expert. However, you have to be careful not to make the advertisement awfully similar to the content because you would have violated Google AdSense policies. On the other hand, however, they don’t have to sound like advertisements by looking so odd. To strike a reasonable balance, make strategic plans such as matching the color of your ad text with that of your content (which is usually black). 

 4. Make you website dynamic If you offer quality and genuine content, there are users who will visit your website from time to time. With this trust comes a negative virtue if you don’t shake up your website from time to time. Users will be so familiar with where and how you place your ads and with time they will start avoiding them. To avoid this, shake your website often and change the position of your ads. As you test different locations and watch your ad ratings, pause to look at you tests and implement the strategies that earned the highest rating. 

 5. Use ad analytics If you only use ad reporting tools to know how much money you are owed, perhaps it is time you made more use of this goldmine. There are tonnes of information in ad tools that will significantly hike your revenue. For instance, the tools can help you determine the effect of changing ad sizes on your website. Similarly, you can study the effect it will have on your rating if you change the website content and layout. 

 6. Aim at being a resource and not a destination While using ads is the only viable strategy at the moment, you should understand that every single ad has a fair share in driving people away from your website. If you desire to build a blog with regular readers, therefore, placing an ad after every paragraph is not a reasonable idea. Placing ads between your texts will obviously earn more clicks compared to ads that are placed independently on one of the corners but you will obviously lose some of your visitors. As such, it is important to understand that you will earn more money with AdSense if you receive more visitors from search engines. If you offer your visitors the exact content that they are looking for, this increases your trust and will ultimately give you a higher rating. Be smart and avoid placing every valuable resource on your site. Instead, create the kind of resource that will compel users to move ahead in order to find more information on the topic that they love. With time, this gives you an opportunity to sneak in the ads without losing the regular visitors. 

 7. Promote your pages with a lot of vigor If you desire to receive increased organic traffic from search engines, creating highly compelling content is just a fraction of what you need to do. It also includes creating backlinks and promoting the pages like someone who means it. Besides leveraging on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, guest posting is another strategy you can use to promote your pages. If there are any meaningful online forums, participate too and you will significantly popularize your pages to increase the amount that you make from AdSense. 

 8. Use multiple ad networks If you entrust your entire ad inventory to one ad network, it means they will pay whatever amount they wish for a particular inventory. To avoid this, work with several ad networks and choose those with varying industries, geographic locations, strengths and campaigns. But how will you allocate inventories to all these ad networks? Other than weighing which ad network you prefer on the basis of the amount that they pay, the most reasonable strategy is to auction your inventories and surrender to one who pays highest. This way, you get to make more money with several options at hand in case one turns unreliable. 

 9. Play honest and remain real A number of people may settle on a cheap trick of asking their friends and relatives to click on their ads. However, Google is smart and will soon realize this trick. Once you lose your AdSense account, be sure that you will never have it back. Rather than settling for such a simple fraud, therefore, remain simple and real. Work your way up the ladder by posting regularly and engaging with your audience to earn the trust that will genuinely double your income. 

10. Try out different ad sizes Available information indicates that a wider ad is likely to earn more clicks than a taller one. Wider ads are easy to read because the visitor will not be forced to skip lines and will therefore lead to more clicks. However, you need to experiment regularly with various ad sizes to determine the most appropriate for your site. This where analytical tools come in handy. Even so, don’t waste too much time testing ads and ad sizes until you forget that you are supposed to offer quality content. 

In summary, AdSense is not so hard a puzzle that you cannot solve. On the contrary, it is a good resource to play around with and earn more money. Don’t be afraid to mix things up until you get a blend of designs and strategies that will assure you of the biggest earnings.

Article Source Social Media How To

Twitter Analytics Provided Free by Twitter

Twitter now provides good analytics for free as part of its platform.

But what about all the tool providers that focus on providing Twitter analytics? What is going to happen to them?

Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook continue to build out their platforms, and their audiences want good analytics.  Facebook provides Facebook Insights and, now, Twitter has analytics that are available to everyone for free.

There is still room for Twitter analytics tool providers, but anyone providing just basic analytics for free, or for a fee, doesn’t have a hope against Twitter, so some tool providers are likely to close up as a result of this.

Let’s take a look at the analytics Twitter is providing.

Monitor Tweet Activity

When you login, you will see a dashboard screen, and this displays a visual of your performance.

Part of the dashboard

The terms you need to be familiar with for this are:

• Impressions –   The number of times your tweet was displayed to users on Twitter.
• Engagements – The number of times a user clicked on a tweet, clicked on a hashtag or a link, favorited a tweet etc.
• Engagement rate – Engagement divided by impresssions.

What can you do with this information?

a)  If you’re not getting impressions then your chances of engagement are lower.  I have over 18,000 Twitter followers and, as you can see, the number of impressions per tweet in the chart is around 6%.

On Twitter, only a small percentage of your Twitter followers will be online when you are tweeting, so you need to pick out relevant times to tweet and you need to post important tweets multiple times.  You don’t just post the same tweet, instead you can change the wording, pick out something different in your article, etc. but sending tweets multiple times is important.

b) You can export the data above and, in the export, it shows you the impressions based on the time of day.  For example, if you’re sending your tweets during the night and most of your audience is in bed, your impressions may be very low.  Monitor the times you get the most impressions and adjust the times you post based on this.

c) Analyze which posts get the highest engagement and see if this correlates to higher impressions, or if it’s related to the content you post.

Click on each tweet to see more detailed information related to it.

This is broken down by hour.

You can see that the majority of impressions happen within the first two hours.

View details of a specific tweet

On the dashboard, you can also see other graphs that show charts specific to engagements, link clicks, retweets, favorites and replies.

Analyze Your Followers

The follower analytics provides information on:

Follower growth chart – A simple chart that shows your growth.  I’m sure they will expand this at some stage to show predicted growth based on current trends.

Interests of followers –  This is a breakdown of your followers and the categories they belong to.

A breakdown by percentage of Twitter follower interests

Location of followers – A breakdown of where your Twitter followers are from.

Gender – Breakdown of male/female.

Other profiles they follow – This shows you the most popular profiles that your Twitter followers also follow.  This is useful because it should be a target to gain more followers.  Follow more people from relevant profiles.

What to do with this information?

a) When you look at the top interests of your followers, does this match with the type of people you want to attract?  If not, you need to start reaching out to more relevant people and engaging with them.  Use tools such as SocialBro to identify relevant people to follow.  Start joining in with Twitter chats on topics relevant to your area of speciality, and this will help you get better known in this area.

b) The accounts that your followers also follow will be a good place to build new followers.  If a lot of your followers follow particular accounts, you should follow relevant people from those accounts to increase your own following.

Review Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are becoming increasingly important on Twitter.

When someone is sharing content from your site, you can automatically attach additional information related to the content you share and this is interpreted by Twitter.

For example, you can tell Twitter about an image in a post, and Twitter will display this on Twitter.com.

Here is an example of a Twitter Card containing a large image.  With this image, you are much more likely to get more engagement on your tweet.

Read this detailed guide on Twitter Cards for more information.

Great image displayed within twitter.com

Twitter Card Analytics shows information related to your tweets that contained Twitter Cards.

An example of how tweets with Twitter Cards are performing

Here is a list of key influencers sharing out tweets containing Twitter Cards:

The top influencers sharing out content

What to do with this information?

a) Set up Twitter Cards if you haven’t already!

b) Build relationships with the key influencers sharing out your content.

c) Identify which Twitter Cards are working best.

Summary

Twitter third-party tools that provide basic Twitter analytics are in trouble.  Twitter have provided a very viable alternative and are likely to keep adding on useful functionality.

Try out their Twitter Analytics and see for yourself!

What are your thoughts?  Are these analytics useful?

Article Source http://www.razorsocial.com/twitter-analytics/

Have I Shared Too Much? This Is Funny

Hashtags Across Platforms

Hashtags are one of the greatest tools social media has to offer, but also one of the most challenging to use correctly. Similar to most social media platforms, balance is key both in quantity and quality.

Marketers are fans of repetition, but using the same self-promotional hashtag in every single tweet might not be the very best strategy. At the same time, connecting with like-minded individuals, potential employees, and promoting your brand to the best of your ability often includes a strategy using hashtags and catchy phrases that could potentially go viral.

Early adopters are more likely to be familiar with how to use hashtags well than those just beginning to use social media as a tool. Even after spending a few months or years on Twitter, people still aren’t quite sure what hashtags are for or why they see them everywhere. And with the advent of Facebook hashtags and Instagram hashtags and yes, even Pinterest hashtags, there are plenty of places to be confused by them! 

Ready for a bold statement? Twitter is kind of like life—it all comes down to relationships with other human beings. The goal of social media is to build relationships in some capacity, and hopefully those relationships lead to something even more valuable in the future. The essence of hashtags is giants like Twitter and Facebook trying to help users create relationships and engage in conversation with people you know (and those you don’t). As long as your brand understands that hashtags are about more than feeding clicks or hoping for retweets, you’re using them well. They are the key to having more permanent experiences and listening to what the world is saying with the click of a button, which is actually an incredibly lovely concept.

So here’s how to use these challenging, rewarding little friends. First of all, Twitter recommendsno more than two hashtagged words or phrases per tweet. This might not seem like many, but it’s very true to Twitter’s central strategy– choose your words wisely, because you don’t have many. Additionally, don’t feel compelled to add a hashtag to every single tweet you write. If you tweet something only vaguely related to interior design, it truly does nobody any good to add the hashtag just in case.

And finally, check hashtags that you frequently use to find out what others are saying and how your brand can be a part of that. Hopefully as you use hashtags, related businesses and people will discover you and you’ll discover others as well. Twitter is the new word of mouth—the only difference being that the words are lined up nicely in your newsfeed.

To learn more, read our recent post about the #icebucketchallenge and how charities are benefiting from the use of hashtags. And look for future posts on hashtags in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram– that’s right, it’s one big, complex conversational world! 

Maggie has a love-hate relationship with hashtags. She’s a writer at Social Media Contractors.
Aticle Source http://www.socialmediacontractors.com/hashtags-across-platforms/

Strategy Breakdown: Developing Your Platform Strategies

The strategy development process is by far, the most important element of the social media planning process. In fact, it may be the most important element of your social media presence in general. Without a strategy–and without regularly checking in to make sure you're staying on strategy–your social media presence will often end up as a decentralized, off-message, resource-sucking mess.

But it's not just as easy as developing an overarching strategy and calling it good. You need to take that general strategy you just developed and turn it into real, actionable guidelines. That means adapting it to each platform you hope to be on, and figuring out how your messages will best translate on all of them.

That can be a chore, but it's certainly not impossible–not when you take the right steps, at least.

Have a look below for some tips on developing your platform strategies, as well as some examples to help you get started:

Facebook

Facebook is great for images, emotion-driven content, videos, and other content that may be a little less serious than the rest of what you curate. The great thing about Facebook is that more than any other platform, you can use analytics to see very clearly who's viewing your page and interacting with you. Use this to your advantage in crafting your content, and even individual posts. Our best practices show that posting no more than twice a day is best, spread out at different times throughout the day. Blogs are good here, as are images from curated articles. Don't count on organic reach being super high, but do at least practice posting regularly and making sure you stay involved.

Example: Segment: People who want to work at SMC; potential clients vetting our SM presence. Purpose: Recruiting. Content: Videos and vlogs, photos, stories from around the office, and content that's on-message but doesn't necessarily fit our Twitter stream.

Twitter

Twitter is far and away my favorite platform, and it's also the dominant publishing source for most of our clients. On Twitter, you can post frequently and with a wide variety of content, making it an ideal stream for your efforts relating to thought leadership and brand awareness. Off-the-record, professionals tend to be more sophisticated here than they do on Facebook (Twitter is more rational in our experience), but don't fall into the trap of posting content that's only for folks in your industry. Remember: you are trying to market your business to clients, not to fans in your space.

Most, if not all, of your primary messages from your strategy will appear here, and this may very well be your most developed target market. If you're going to spend time in one place besides your blog, do it here. Count on posting anywhere from six to twenty times a day. The sweet spot is right in between.

Example: Segment: Decision influencers in marketing departments. Purpose: Thought leadership and brand awareness. Content: Psychology of marketing, sophisticated marketing content, data from our own observations, blogs, stories of culture change, branding successes, etc.

Google+

Our professional opinion? Don't spend too much time developing a strategy for Google+. For most companies, replicating (yes, cross-posting, even though we don't usually recommend it) Facebook is a good strategy. Be sure to post your blogs with Google authorship. Otherwise, this is a back door to SEO, and not much more. The big exception would be tech companies, though even their presences are often underutilized. A good thing to have, but not a great platform to spend too much time on.

Example: Segment: The gods of SEO. Purpose: Paying homage to Google gods. Content: Blogs and duplicates from Facebook.

LinkedIn

Ah, LinkedIn–the professional network that's trying to be a publisher. Count on using this primarily as a recruiting tool, but don't count out its utility as a platform for showing off to potential clients who bias towards the professional side. We like to publish long-form content and job openings on Twitter. (You can use it as a publishing platform, too.) Remember, however, that LinkedIn users have a low tolerance for bullshit. If you post too often or spam conversations, you'll quickly find yourself in a race towards the bottom.

Example: Segment: People who want to work at SMC; decision influencers in marketing departments. Purpose: Recruiting, thought leadership, and brand awareness. Content: Recruiting-related posts, job openings, and long-form content that fits our overall marketing strategy.

YouTube

YouTube is a bit of a crapshoot for most businesses. If you have unique content–webinars, vlogs, event recaps, etc.–to show, then give it a shot and try updating it once a month or so. But don't just transcribe text to video and expect it to do well–videos are most effective in short, easily digestible bursts. Remember, too, not to half ass your presence. If you can't do it well, stay off. But again, if you do have the capacity for it, YouTube can be a great value add when executed correctly.

Example: Segment: Same as Facebook. Purpose: Recruiting and brand awareness. Content: Vlogs, videos of events, short content summaries, sales videos, and webinars.

Instagram

Instagram should probably not be your primary platform (unless you're a cupcake shop, maybe), but it should be used as a supplement to your broader story. Remember, pictures are very impactful, and you'd be wise to use them. Demographics are somewhere between Facebook and Twitter. Use Instagram to show your lighter side and contribute visually interesting content to the rest of the text to which you've grown so attached.

Example: Segment: People who want to work at SMC; potential clients vetting our SM presence (though not as much of a concern as elsewhere). Purpose: Recruiting, brand awareness as it relates to culture. Content: Photos that show we have personality while also showing we're professional. Everything from company outings to service events.

Blog

Count on your blog being the source whence all your thought leadership comes. Your social media pages are an opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of your industry and your clients; your blog is your opportunity to really show your stuff and contribute your own facts and opinions to the broader picture you're painting. Ideally, you'll have a mix of content here that adds value across the board. This is the one place where all of your messaging and target audience should roll into one. Don't leave anyone out. If you can swing five posts a week, do it. Otherwise, two or three should do.

Example: Segment: Decision influencers in marketing departments. Purpose: Thought leadership and brand awareness. Content: Case studies, data and observations, article commentary, news, stories about culture change, stories of branding successes, etc.

All Others

The platforms you see above are more than enough to get started, but it never hurts to at least be aware of other platforms out there. If you're a restaurant, you'll probably want to check out Yelp. Eventbrite and company are good to be on for larger companies that put on a lot of conferences. And don't discount that up-and-coming platform, either. Stay aware of the space to make sure you're not missing anything big.

Example: None for now. Address as needed.

While your overarching strategy should inform your strategy on each social media platform, it shouldn't necessarily be the same across the board. Twitter is different than Facebook is different than the blog, and you'd be missing out if you weren't catering to the unique audiences of each. 

Developing your platform strategies and making sure all of your platforms tell different sides of the same story will make your social media presence richer, and it will also help ensure that you take full advantage of the unique opportunities presented on each platform. If you post the same things the same ways regardless of platform, your story will tire quickly and you'll lose the attention of those you're trying to get in front of.

Does each platform have to be 100% unique? No–absolutely not. But a little bit of distinction will go a long ways towards making sure you hit your targets and, above all, stay interesting and fresh in the minds of your target audience.

John's favorite platform is Twitter, by a long shot. He's Managing Editor at Social Media Contractors.
Article Source http://www.socialmediacontractors.com/category/smc-blog/how-to/

The 7 Elements Of An Optimized Twitter Profile [INFOGRAPHIC]

Twitter has revolutionised marketing for brands of all shapes and sizes across almost every industry around the globe – used intelligently, this deceptively simplistic microblogging platform can raise awareness of products and services, drive website footfall and generate leads.

For best results, businesses should ensure that their Twitter profile is optimized and that they are following best practices to maximise return on investment (ROI). This would include:

1. Using your company logo as your Twitter avatar

2. Using your company name as your Twitter username

3. Trying to tweet 5-20 times per day (every day!)

4. Always being sure to tag/mention relevant users in tweets

5. Using shortened links with tracking (i.e., bit.ly)

6. Using high quality images

7. Making sure that all responses are timely and relevant

Check the visual below for more detail, which comes courtesy of Hubspot.

Article Source http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/optimized-twitter-profile-tips_b60098?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter