So we’ve decided to put down the top 20 business benefits we think Twitter can have on a business (in no particular order):

1. Engage and converse with your target audience
2. Create brand awareness
3. Promote of any new offers, services, products etc
4. Keep up to date with industry news and developments
5. Promote your blog content
6. Find prospects – use the search function and look for people mentioning requirements for services/products you supply
7. Customer services – keep customers updates with any issues etc
8. Event management – keep delegates up to date and help them network online
9. Keep up to date with what your competitors are up to
10. Market research
11. Give your company a more personal feel
12. Online reputation management – find out what people are saying about you and react immediately
13. A method of gaining feedback
14. SEO boost/increased online footprint
15. Q&A tool – have a question? Your Twitter network will have the answers
16. HR resource – find new employees quickly and cheaply
17. Internal communication
18. Help find new suppliers and partners
19. Promote images via TwitPic and other Twitter based image viewers
20. Use Twitpolls to help make decisions, undertake research etc

There are so many other great business uses of Twitter – if you can think of anymore add them to the comments below!

Some LinkedIn statistics (as of April 2010):

• More than 65 million registered users
• Covers more than 200 countries and territories worldwide
• On average 36.5M people visit LinkedIn.com every month
• 51% male, 49% female
• Average age – 35-49
• 47% college educated, 27% university and above

So how can you use the tools LinkedIn offer to promote your business, your products and services and any offers or events?

• Members only groups can be created to provide your customers with a exclusive opportunity to network with other customers
• For customers with a particular product or service interest, focused sub-groups can be set-up
• You and your customers can upload photos, videos, create online polls, take part in forums, and receive email updates
• Groups can be used to communicate news and start online discussion and debate
• LinkedIn can also be used to promote events very effectively

Like most free social networking sites, you will get out what you put in. It can be resource intensive in terms of time, but for small businesses on a budget it can be an effective way of promotion.

If you’re interested in using LinkedIn or any other type of social media to promote your business, get in touch. We can help set you up with social media accounts, and can give you training and guidance on making the most of them. Alternatively we can completely manage all your social accounts for you!

Call us on 023 8083 7271 or email us on info@SMEketing.com.

Some Twitter statistics (from April 2010)

• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users
• New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day
• 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month
• Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day
• Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day

So how can you use Twitter to promote your event?

• Depending on the type of event you are holding, choose to either use your main corporate Twitter account, or create a new account – purely focused on just this event (which might be the best choice if you have an event which is reoccuring)
• Create a Twitter hashtag unique to each event and use this in each tweet
• Encourage delegates to update their own Twitter feeds with tweets about the event using this hashtag
  • This hashtag measn that anybody at your event, or interested in your event can instantaneously see what you, your delegates and other interested parties are doing and saying
• Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one delegates
• Use Twitter as a way to inform event participants of the latest event updates/changes
• Include tweets containing links to new information, advice, tools and resources on your website
• Use Twitter to instantly communicate important messages and ‘calls to action’ to their delegate/customer base
• Delegates can subscribe to your Twitter feed or your hashtag search result via mobile or RSS for instant notification

Twitter’s social nature, combined with the ability to create instant updates and announcements makes it a perfect took to keep delegates up to date with the latest event news. Used wisely it can have a real impact on the success of your events.

For help creating and managing a Twitter account, get in touch with us here at SMEketing. Call 023 8083 7271 or email info@SMEketing.com and one of our social media SMEketers will be in touch!

May is here – the sun has been shining throughout April and it has put us here at SMEketing in a wonderful mood. So because we love the sunshine and because we enjoy helping small businesses succeed in social media, we are launching our Facebook/Twitter offer again.

We are offering to create a Twitter and Facebook Business Page for you, for the reduced price of £120 – all in!

What your Twitter account will include:

• A Twitter logo created based on your existing corporate logo
• Bespoke background created (to include contact details and about us summary)
• A Twitter ‘bio’ created with the aim of a) getting people to follow you and b) luring people to your main site
• Follow 100 relevant people based on a criteria you set
• Create up to five Twitter lists for you
• A ‘How To Guide’ informing you how to use Twitter to boost your business effectively

What your Facebook Business Page will contain:

• We will create your page for you
• Add all relevant information – logo, website, email, telephone, about us etc..
• We will populate your wall with up to twenty posts
• We will add up to five events that you may be hosting/attending
• We will add up to five photo albums, populated with your photos/images (limit to 10 photos per album, or 50 photos overall)
• We will provide you with a ‘How To’ guide, explaining how to manage your Facebook Business Page, and what kind of information you should be adding

We will then link your Facebook page to your Twitter account – so any new Facebook updates will automatically be posted on your Twitter account, with a link back to your new Facebook page.

All the above is based on the information you provide us. We have a limit of only ten and this offer is only valid in May 2010.

You can order now – we require payment before any work is undertaken. You can contact us and pay via BACS or alternatively, pay via PayPal now; click on the PayPal logo below:

For more information on Facebook and Twitter, read these posts:

• Why Should Your Business Engage In Social Media Marketing?
• How To Use Facebook Pages For Your Small Business
• How Can Your Small Business Track Twitter ROI?
• Twitter: Small Business Success Stories – Will yours be one of them?

Social Media Revolution

Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore. This video is produced by the author of Socialnomics.

• Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

JESS3 – The State of The Internet

JESS3 designed and animated this for the JESS3 lecture at AIGA Baltimore in Feb 2010

• 1.73 Billion Internet users worldwide
• 90 Trillion Emails Sent in 2009
• 81% of Emails were Spam
• 126 Million Blogs on the Internet
• 27.3 Million Tweets Per Day
• Faceboook serves 6 million pages per minute
• 4 Billion photos hosted by Flickr
• 182 Videos watched on average per month (per user)

We are offering to create a Twitter and Facebook Business Page for you, for the reduced price of £120 – all in!

What your Twitter account will include:

• A Twitter logo created based on your existing corporate logo
• Bespoke background created (to include contact details and about us summary)
• A Twitter ‘bio’ created with the aim of a) getting people to follow you and b) luring people to your main site
• Follow 100 relevant people based on a criteria you set
• Create up to five Twitter lists for you
• A ‘How To Guide’ informing you how to use Twitter to boost your business effectively

What your Facebook Business Page will contain:

• We will create your page for you
• Add all relevant information – logo, website, email, telephone, about us etc..
• We will populate your wall with up to twenty posts
• We will add up to five events that you may be hosting/attending
• We will add up to five photo albums, populated with your photos/images (limit to 10 photos per album, or 50 photos overall)
• We will provide you with a ‘How To’ guide, explaining how to manage your Facebook Business Page, and what kind of information you should be adding

We will then link your Facebook page to your Twitter account – so any new Facebook updates will automatically be posted on your Twitter account, with a link back to your new Facebook page.

All the above is based on the information you provide us. We have a limit of only ten and this offer is only valid in January 2010. If you’ve missed out on this offer, please get in touch anyway and we can arrange to create a Facebook Business page or Twitter account for you at our usual rate.

You can order now – we require payment before any work is undertaken. You can contact us and pay via BACS or alternatively, pay via PayPal now!

For more information on Facebook and Twitter, read these posts:

• Why Should Your Business Engage In Social Media Marketing?
• How To Use Facebook Pages For Your Small Business
• How Can Your Small Business Track Twitter ROI?
• Twitter: Small Business Success Stories – Will yours be one of them?