BusinessBlogAngel

Smart Twittering, Twhirl and an invitation to Twitterers

Last month, I promised an new article on Twitter... I've still not got around to it, but I've just opened up the latest issue of the SubHub Insider: Publish for Profit newsletter and found a great article on that very topic. This isn't the first time I've borrowed an article from SubHub.com - and I'm sure it won't be the last... well, they produce great content and I've checked and they dont mind provided I link back to them. So here it is:

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Twitter - The Smart Way
by Mark Ramskill, SubHub.com

Twitter - http://twitter.com - is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post regular updates (otherwise known as 'tweets'), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.  Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

The aim of this article is to give you more of an idea about how to use Twitter (and by association other micro-blogging services, such as Pownce or Jaiku) for following and engaging with the world's top bloggers and top websites.  I call this 'Smart Twittering'.

ShareThis - social bookmarking to promote your blog

I haven't really being saying much about social bookmarking here at Business Blog Angel, have I?

It's the classic small biz 'issue' of spending so much time working 'in' your business that you can't find the time to work 'on' your business, and rightly or wrongly, maintaining this blog always takes second place to client work.  BUT, if you are a business blogger and you are not yet using the wealth of free social media tools to promote your content, then you are missing out on a lot of the power of blogging for business. I'm talking now about social bookmarking, social networking, blog directories & communities and micro-blogging.

Liz Strauss' 25 Words of Work/Life Wisdom Writing Project

There is no doubt that Twitter is a seriously powerful weapon in your social media marketing arsenal. Over the last couple of days, I've seen some great examples of how people are using Twitter to not only network, promote their business activities and attract traffic, but also drive more sales.  In the last hour, as a direct response to a couple of Tweets that caught my eye, I've bought a product I didn't know I needed(!) and been inspired by Robert Hruzek to take up Liz Strauss' 25 Words of Work/Life Wisdom Writing Project challenge.   

I'll write again about Twitter, but in the meantime, here's my attempt at those 25 words:

Oh The Shame...

"Do as I say, not as I do";
these words float shamefully around my brain
as I fail
to Twitter, Stumble, blog and podcast
consistently.

Given that I'd not posted for ages - and this is my second today - I'm inspired to do another...

Beginners Guide to Getting Massive Traffic from StumbleUpon

This article provides a quick guide to getting your site picked up by StumbleUpon, giving you the potential for attracting thousands of extra visitors.
(I've been meaning to write an article like this for ages, but Miles G at SubHub has done it so well, I may not bother now!)

read more | digg story

Note: This post was blogged using Digg's 'blog this' function.

Business blog benefits - can social media work for ALL businesses?

Most business owners and managers I speak to are quick to recognise the benefits and huge potential that a 'social media marketing' and 'business blogging' strategy can offer.  But occasionally, I'll meet someone who whilst 'getting' the theory, simply cannot imagine what on earth they'd write about. Certainly, some businesses might have an easier time of it than others, but I truly believe that there's a solution for everyone.  Proof, it it were needed, might be this business blog from UK wide skip hire business TopSkips.com which I discovered yesterday.   

The Skip Hire Blog is maintained by TopSkips' MD Mark Attwood and is a great business blog example. The content is fun, relevant and useful. The tone is, as it should be, light and conversational.  The varied use of media - audio, video and text - all adds to the visitor experience.  But perhaps most importantly, Mark clearly understands the power of key words.  Many of us struggle to identify the best keywords for our business - not so here; Mark is wisely keeping it simple with just the one term - 'skip hire' - which he then uses in the post title, in the post body and in the tags - lovely. 

What else could Mark be doing to drive traffic and Google ranking?

Time to get social: networks real and virtual

Photo by alexdecarvalho

The festive period is upon us already, which seemed like the perfect excuse to get a little social, learn a little about the power of networks, oh and share a little link love too.  Well it is nearly Christmas :-)

One of the things I get to do as part of the Blog Angel Team is dot around the blogosphere looking for good resources to bring back here, and to follow what Claire's blogging clients are up to.  (It's a pretty long list now - just take a look at the length of that client blog roll!)

There's been a distinctly social theme to some of the posts that have been pinging my feed reader over the last few weeks, and without further ado here's a serving of some links to the best of what you've been writing on networking, social media, and making them work for you.

Revealed: the challenges with social media sites the experts don't tell you

So, after my video tutorial and post last week Claire was persuaded to give StumbleUpon another go.  She'd bought my argument that it was a good way to connect with readers, to share information on other sites you enjoy, and to learn more about people who are stumbling your stuff. 

But how would she get on when she signed back into the site and attempted to start stumbling?

Well she was thoughtful enough to capture the experience on video as she went along, so we can follow, live, what turned out to be her Stumble Struggles...

A thumbs up to StumbleUpon

I keep on reminding Claire that she should get into Stumbleupon as another extension of her social media networking strategy... and she keeps on telling me that she will once I explain to her how it all works.  There's nothing like a challenge to get my creative juices flowing, so I decided to combine an illustration of three approaches to stumbling with my first attempt at creating a video tutorial to show as well as tell you how it works. (Note from Claire: Yeah, in fact, I did sign up for an account a while back, prompted by 2 fab clients - Emma Bird and Claire Chapman - who both 'friended' me or something, but even after joining, I found the whole thing a bit confusing.  Having said that, seeing that traffic to this blog usually triples if a post is Stumbled is sufficient motivation to learn more! So, back to Joanna...)

Now when I first stumbled across StumbleUpon it was as a way of finding new sites.  I think it must have been in a quiet period when I was looking for new material and discovered that you could jump to new sites in the blink of an eye just by hitting the "Stumble!" button over and over again.  And yes some of the sites were relevant and interesting (you set it up by indicating what kind of material you're looking for) - but after a while you find yourself hitting the refresh button over and over with hardly a glance at the sites you're reading, and start to wonder if it isn't time to switch off your PC set and do something more interesting instead.

But that's only one dimension of stumbling.  There are loads of other ways that you can use it to make connections, to learn from your readers, to extend your blogging network and develop your online brand.

Online identity management: joining the Blog Angel Team

I had to smile when I saw that Claire was going to be offering help with online identity management – because I figure I could do with some of that myself just now as I establish my new identity as part of the Blog Angel Team.

Once Claire and I had agreed the fundamentals of the way we’d work together, with me doing some blogging here to help keep things up to date plus some surfing and researching to find out what you’re up to and the kind of things that it would be useful to share – well that immediately threw up some questions about how to establish my new identity – and some practicalities that I’m still working out how to crack.

Microblogging (eg. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku) - small, but is it perfectly formed?

Ok so I promised a few days ago to blog about the various social media thingies (that's a technical word!) I've been playing with and here's the first... microblogging!

As it sounds, microblogging is blogging on a small scale. Sort of. Small as in you don't need to type entire essays or articles - just one or two lines and maybe a link depending on which microblogging service you are using which lends itself to blogging from your mobile or pda. MySpace and Facebook both have 'status updates' built in and MySpace has the blog thing going on too, but surely the best known standalone service is Twitter. Others are Jaiku and Dodgeball for mobile - neither of which I have used - and the 'newest-comer' Pownce - on which more coming up in a moment. But first...

Have you tried Twitter yet? How do/did you find it? It's certainly an interesting idea. I signed up back in May, but I didn't really 'get it' and lost interest fairly early on. I just couldn't see how or who it could benefit, beyond people with JOBs who aren't closely monitored and the unemployed.  Well...