Making Use of Twitter’s Hashtag #
Making Use of Twitter’s Hashtag ‘ # ‘
Hashtag…sounds like something out of the 60’s that a certain group of people may have been overly familiar with. Today, however, the # — hashtag is a very important Twitter trending tool.
When you tweet about something important to your business, using a hashtag in that tweet will take you beyond your followers to the Twitterverse where other Tweeps search for content, connections and trending topics.
For instance, I went up to the search bar in Twitter and put #leadgeneration and a page worth of tweets popped up for me to review where other put in their tweet #leadgeneration. Because I want to follow that hashtag, I saved it as a search. Now all I have to do is go to my saved searches and click on that when I want to see what is trending in lead generation.
There are free apps that will do this too. A simple one that I have saved to my bookmark bar is www.hashtags.org. What I like about Hashtags.org is that they have a trending graph attached to the page so you can see how that topic is trending within a span of time.
Hashtag Tips:
- Don’t go hashtag crazy, tweeps! A couple of hashtags in a tweet will be fine, but tagging every word is just annoying.
- Hashtags make an excellent event tracker. Come up with a unique hashtag for your meeting or event then encourage people to tweet with that tag. At the end of the event you will see how your event trended with the participants. Very cool!
- Twitter has a great tutorial on their site for hashtag use: https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols
So, if you are looking for content ideas, or scouring the web for competitive data or just really interested in a topic within the Twitterverse, hashtags are the way to go. Simple, useful and maybe a great way to connect with thought leaders on the topics that interest you most.
3 Must Haves for a New Media Plan: Engaging prospects and customers with new media
3 Must Haves for a New Media Plan: Engaging prospects and customers with new media
New media may not be so new anymore. It is really a comprehensive approach to creating rich content and strategic use and placement of that content for prospects and customers alike. Where are you and how easy is it for your prospects and customers to find you? The granddaddy of media locations is a website, but a website alone will not engage you with you prospects and customers. In order to choose which media outlets you should actively participate in, you need a strategy that is broader than ‘build it and they will come’.
Just because you build it, they will NOT come! Many companies believe their investment in a flashy website will instantly drive traffic to their website and convert browsers to shoppers but that is most definitely not the case. While an appropriately laid out website is a substantial part of the plan, the ‘design’ of the site isn’t what Google, Yahoo and Bing are crawling. When was the last time you did a website audit to determine the effective nature of your design, content and accessibility of your site? A website is the red door on your community. It is not just a corporate portfolio and online brochure. Web designers often attract their customers by their design skill, but design elements are secondary to the strategy.
Here are 3 Must Haves for a New Media Plan
1. Dynamic SEO
The underlying strategy for your online presence should include ONGOING search engine optimization. Browsers often search for informative terms where as a buyer has already performed the informative search and is moving toward decision focused searches. This customer maturity will adjust keyword phrases and your strategy should provide both levels of research to better accommodate the position your prospects and customers are in. As a customer segment becomes more educated their search terms change and so should your keyword profiles.
2. Dynamic Marketing Content Strategy
In the same way you keyword phrases may change, so will your new media strategy. A foundational marketing plan will have the ability to flux as media opportunities arise. You may not need video at the onset of a project but as you move further through the funnel, it may become necessary to implement a video component. The key to a dynamic marketing strategy is to tie your products, overall business objectives and specialties to a comprehensive content development and production plan.
3. Active Customer Engagement Strategy
With solid SEO and dynamic content you have two pieces of your media plan that tie into an over arching customer engagement strategy that will guide and direct all aspects of your new media involvement.
The content and customer engagement strategy will include placement and participation in the appropriate social media sites, metrics and evaluations for change and adoption of relevant material and finally a comprehensive customer touchpoint strategy. Without the above strategies, your involvement in social media is just noise, and unfortunately that is all most businesses are today.
In our next series of posts we will take a deep dive into each of these factors as they relate to specific verticals. Thanks for reading and as always, your comments are welcomed.
Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Stop Being Lazy: 3 Ways to Rev Up Your Content
Stop Being Lazy: 3 Ways to Rev Up Your Content
I confess. I am guilty. I have been a lazy blogger. I have been lax. I have highlighted a subject and not given it a deep dive in to meaningful content. I have written for my pleasure, not always for the benefit of my audience. How about you? Have you fallen prey to the lazy writing habits of a busy professional? Here are 3 ways to rev up your content (and your business) and write like you mean it.
1. Imagine you have one hour to solve your customer’s biggest problem. Create a list of strategies, tasks, must-do’s. What will it take for you to make this problem go away? What do you need to research? What do you need to read? What is the bottom line issue? Now go find the supportive material to solve the problem. Get your Google on.
2. Write like you are in a writing bootcamp. When I watch shows like the Biggest Loser, I am always impressed with the focus and intensity of the participants and trainers. You are not allowed to slack off because there is someone always looking over your shoulder PUSHING you to keep going. To rev up your writing and create more demanding content, set a timer. Give yourself 30 minutes to complete 3 paragraphs of content. You cannot get up. You cannot look out the window. You cannot get a snack, answer a call, check email or lolly gag on Facebook or Twitter. You must write. [As a side note, that's how I'm writing this post.]
3. Do this EVERYDAY. I just read a very simple, but profound little book by Jeff Olsen titled The Slight Edge. Bottom line, the difference between successful people and those who are not comes down to the fact that successful people do ‘just that much more’ than everyone else and they do it daily. The small, compounded effects of those changes over time lead to life changing breakthroughs. You cannot expect to break the lazy writing habit if you don’t do something different.
We can all rev up our content with a focused concentration on producing valuable, usable, business changing information. Sometimes we just need to hyper focus to break the habit. Sometimes we need to enter a self mandated bootcamp to regain focus. Remember: you only have 1 hour to solve your customer’s biggest problem, so get busy.
