3 Ways to Reputation Management – Keeping An Ear to the Ground

Yes, it’s true! People talk about their life experiences – good or bad every day.  In the past, they would tell their friends, family and co-workers, but here’s what’s changed.  Now anyone can go online and spread word of that experience… with the world.  With the surge in blogging, article writing and tweeting, people now have a voice and they aren’t afraid to speak up.  If you are a business owner, how well are you tapped into what people are saying about your brand?

If people are saying great things about your business, wouldn’t you want to thank them? Wouldn’t you like to springboard off of that positive feedback to influence others to do business with you? Of course you would.  The other side of the coin however, is this.  Do you think it’s possible to keep 100% of your clients happy 100% of the time?  If you do, please tell me who you are! The reality is, that sometimes clients will go away unhappy and they are going to talk about it, potentially online.  So it’s very important to stay tuned in to the conversation that’s taking place out there.

How do you do that?  Here are a few ways to stay connected to the conversation.

1. Google Alerts

Go ahead and set up a Google account for yourself and install Google Alerts. It’s FREE! Enter the keywords for your brand – your business name, your name, your domain names, your key personnel, etc. Go ahead and enter your competition as well.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to monitor that activity too?  GA will send you an email to tell you when it gets a hit on that search criteria and you can investigate. Yahoo also has its version too. You can find it here.

2. Twitter Search

Set up Twitter Keyword searches to monitor the conversation going on in Twitter. You use the same philosophy as above.  You can do that from whatever console you are using i.e., Hootsuite, Seesmic or Tweetdeck for example.   Don’t forget that tweets get indexed in the search engines too.  Good and bad comments can hang around the search engines for a long time, years in fact.

3. Trackur.com

Consider using an application like Trackur. It has a great Social media monitoring system and comes with a free and a premium version.

There are a myriad of other applications that you can try out as well.   Some are free, others charge a premium.  Depending on the size of your business, you may need something more robust.  Try radian6.com

Good news spreads fast on the net, and bad news spreads even faster.  So what do you do when your brand gets mentioned?  If it’s a great review, as I said above, thank the person/entity that is providing the great feedback. Foster that relationship.   They are acting as a great ambassador of your brand.  But what to do about a bad review?  Don’t ignore it.  Others won’t.  Take this as a great opportunity to engage them in conversation, listen carefully to what is being said and respond appropriately.  By addressing it here, not only are you are showing that you care, but you may be able to change their opinion and you can turn the relationship around.  It’s Public Relations.

As a Social Media Specialist, I encourage all my clients to monitor their brand and make sure they are participating in the conversation – good or bad.  After all, it IS your reputation at stake.

What do you think? Have you engaged people in this environment using these tools? How did they work?  I found an example of this just yesterday where someone included my content in his post and gave me credit for it with a link back to my site.  What did I do?  Thank him of course!

I love getting feedback.  Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

Joanne

While physically located in , Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

‘Cardinal’ Rules of Twitter

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I have new people following me on Twitter all the time.  It is always my choice as to who I will follow back.  It is very important to stay focused on who your target market is and build your relationships in that community.   Having said that, I always check the profiles of anyone who is newly following me.

There are many people out there who have not yet grasped the concept of just how powerful Twitter can be.    The following is an example of a particular profile I reviewed recently.  The entire Twitter stream was made up of the same kind of ‘conversation’.  There was very little interaction.  I will share 5 tweets here  and give you some ideas as to how these tweets might have been done differently.  This individual is in the eco-friendly industry and their profile implied that they were looking for business contacts.  The following tweets are not business related. Here is how they might have showcased their expertise, and shared value-added information to their target audience.  See how you can use these examples and adapt them to your own environment.  Don’t be afraid to standout.  Be colorful.  Be a Cardinal!

Tweets:

1.  Just removed the lint from the dryer, yuck

As an individual in the eco-friendly industry,  while removing lint from the dryer is admittedly not a stimulating chore, it is one that needs doing. So if I were inclined to talk about this, here is a way that this could have been done differently.

Don’t throw out your dryer lint. Place it on branches of trees. Birds will use it to feather their nests. With Spring around the corner, this can be a timely tweet.  Even better..consider writing a blog post on 5 ways to use your dryer lint along the reduce, reuse, recycle approach and tweet a link to the blog post. You’d be surprised how many uses there are!

2. Just had my second cup of coffee from ******* .  Am finally waking up.

Take this opportunity to remind readers about not contributing to landfill.

Took my thermos for a second coffee fillup this a.m. to ****. Finally waking up. Glad I’m not adding more cups to landfill. Even better, consider investigating some organic coffee growers and write a blog post on the benefits. Share this information with your readers. Again, Tweet a link to the post.

3. Looking forward to dinner – chicken cordon bleu  YUM!

It’s ok to share some personal tweets from time to time.  Try to focus 80% of your tweets on business related information.  However, this doesn’t mean that when you post something personal, that you can’t add value.  This might have been better..

Looking forward to dinner – chicken cordon bleu. Love this dish. Here’s the recipe. Tell me what you think! Add a link to the recipe. Even better, provide a picture using  a product like Flickr. You can attach the pic to your tweet.

4. Good morning from ******. It’s sunny and beautiful here today. Hope it keeps up.

Again, there is an opportunity here to share some environmental news with your readership. Try this.

Good morning from ****. Weather is beautiful here today. Check this Farmers Almanac prediction for 2010. Provide a link to farmersalmanac.com.  Even better, Encourage people to start thinking about planting their own organic vegetable gardens this year.

5. Time to paint the kids’ bedrooms.  **** wants her room painted pink.

You might consider educating readers that there are low VOC (volatile organic compounds) available today.  VOCs are key to the ozone…so consider a tweet like this..

Time to paint the kids rooms. So glad there are paints with low VOCs now and in such great colors too! Even better, consider writing a blog post on 10 ways to decorate a room using eco-friendly products. Again, tweet about it and provide a link to your blog post or your website if you sell some of these products. Add pictures to your blog post to make it more interesting and include one in your tweet.

These alternatives share industry related information to your target market and showcase your expertise/understanding of the issues in the eco-friendly space.  By adding value, your readers are more likely to return, eager for more content.  In this way, you begin to develop relationships and build intimacy and trust.  Twitter is a great tool to drive traffic to your blog or your website.   But as I have said before, stay away from heavy marketing tactics where you are doing nothing more than selling wares.  The social media space is all about adding value and creating relationships.

Take a look at your industry and see how you can begin to adapt your tweets in this way. Let me know how it’s going. I love getting feedback.  As a Social Media Specialist, I am here to help you grow your business.  Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

Happy Tweeting!

Joanne

While physically located in , Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Don’t Count This Bird Out!

Many businesses struggle with how to use Twitter to grow their business.  In particular, brick and mortars often time struggle to find people in their geographic area to ‘tweet to’.  Understandably, in smaller areas outside major city centres, the population of Twitter users is generally lower, potentially making it more difficult to drive business through your door.  However, with Social Media in general becoming more mainstream, I believe in the not too distant future, this will become less of an issue.

With Twitter usage up dramatically lately,  it would appear that many are beginning to realize its potential to really help drive their business forward.   Check out this interview that Chris Brogan did recently with Restaurateur Joe Sorge who owns AJ Bombers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   See how Twitter has in his words, ‘built his business’.  Then follow @ajbombers on Twitter to see how Joe puts Twitter to work!  For that matter, follow Chris Brogan too – @chrisbrogan.

Then, to help you build your local twitter following, check out these 3 applications:

1. Twellow.com

Twellow is the Twitter Yellow Pages.  As a brick and mortar, you can not only create a great profile for yourself or your business on Twellow, but if you click on the ‘Twellowhood’ tab at the top of the page, you will be able to create targeted searches within a specific geographic area.  Within Twellow, you can even follow people on Twitter and start to grow your network.

Helpful tip: When creating your own profile, make sure you click on ‘expanded bio’ and include all relevant info for your business and make sure you maximize your exposure in the categories section. You are allowed 10.  Make good use of them!

2. Nearbytweets.com

Nearbytweets allows you to search by location and by keyword. By keying in these two items, Nearbytweets will produce a stream of tweets from that and surrounding area that include that keyword.  This is great not only for finding new prospects, but as a business owner, this is great for reputation management.  You can really keep your ear to the ground and listen for any tweets that have to do with your brand and respond to them quickly.

Helpful tip:  Nearbytweets will allow you to save your locations and keywords to streamline the process. You will find this under the preferences tab.  Nearbytweets also allows you to click on any individual tweet to get more information or review an individual’s profile. You can then follow that person/organization from there.

3. Chirpcity.com

Chirpcity is another app that will do location searches for you. It will bring up the image, username and individual tweets.  If you  click on their image, you will be taken to their page, where you can then review their profile and follow them if you so wish.

Helpful tip: If there is one particular tweet you are interested in, you can press ‘view tweet’.  This will take you to the individual’s profile page where that one tweet will be displayed and you can reply to or retweet that particular tweet right there. That’s a handy option. Saves you sifting through all their tweets.

There are other applications out there however, many have pitfalls.  Tweepsearch for example,  has a great concept in that it will bring up the person/organizations bio, and show you their followers, friends and updates, but they are sorely out of date.   It says my last recorded update was 4 months ago. Actually it was more like 2 hours ago and my friend/follower information is also incorrect.   So you will want to choose apps that are current and give you the most accurate information.

If you are still struggling with Social Media and wonder how you can make it work for your business, it would be best to seek out the assistance of a Social Media Specialist.    As a Social Media Specialist VA, I offer coaching and consulting, assessment and strategy, profile setup – customization and optimization and some ongoing support and maintenance, particularly for my blogging clients.

How about you? What applications do you use to build your twitter base?  I would love to get your feedback.  Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

While physically located in , Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Putting My $$ Where My Mouth Is

Well, I did it! My static website has now been incorporated into my WordPress site. It took a little doing to make sure all my links stayed intact but I’m here.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I coach my clients to use their blog site as their hub so it was time to put my money where my mouth is.    It’s so much easier for me now to maintain everything pertaining to my business here on my WordPress site than on my blog and my static website.  More importantly, it’s easy to communicate with my prospects and client base right here with the comment section so I am looking forward to lots of interaction!  It is already reinforcing the discipline to be in the moment – present and authentic.   A blog site is an ideal place for you to build intimacy, trust and loyalty with your followers.

You’ll notice that a ‘Services’ page has been added here along with a ‘Need Help?’ page so everything you need to know about me and my services is easily accessible.  I have all my links to my Social Media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter so you can communicate with me where-ever you are most comfortable hanging out online.

I still use my LinkedIn profile as my “About Me” page because I keep it up to date with all the current information and that is where my testimonials are housed.   To me, showcasing  testimonials on LinkedIn rather than a traditional website is more ‘authentic’ because they are generated by the recommender themselves.

It can be a bit of a challenge keeping up to date with this rapidly changing Social Media environment, but I am confident that with this transition, I will be able to keep my readers abreast of what’s happening with my business and be able to share fresh, relevant information all in one place.

I am keen to get some feedback!  How many of you have made this transition?

For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog.  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I want to hear from all of you!

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Santa on Twitter? What a Cool Idea!

Looking back over the last year, I am pleased and amazed at the growth in my business. Social Media has played a huge role in this success and I am grateful to all those clients who have put their faith in me to help them build their business using these incredible tools.

Here are the top 5 things that I have learned this year about Social Media and the role it plays in building your presence online whether you are doing it for yourself or potentially as a Virtual Assistant like me, doing it for your clients..

1. Search Engine Optimization.   Social Media sites are very heavily indexed by Google. If you want yourself (or if you’re a VA, your clients) on the front page of Google, an investment in the Big Three (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) is a great way to get them there. Before February of this year, I was lucky to have 1 or 2 listings on the first page of Google. Now, if you key in my business name, Virtually Yours, Joanne Burgess,  I basically own the first 3 pages of Google. That’s expensive real estate. If you key in just my name, (and believe me, there are a lot of Joanne Burgesses out there), I still have 5 entries in the top 10 including the first two spots. This never would have happened if not for Social Media!
2. Links are Key. No matter what Social Media sites you are using, you need to have your sites inter-linked. Personally I have almost doubled my Facebook Fan page by having a fan box on my blog site. Making it easy for people to find you and follow you is key.  People don’t have time to search all over the place for you. Time is precious. Make it easy for your prospects and clients to find and connect with you wherever they ‘hang out’!
3. Yes, brick and mortar businesses can make good use of  Social Media tools. I automatically create a local business account listing for my brick and mortar clients.  While this is not considered part of a ‘normal’ social media strategy, I have used the ‘keyword’ component to help drive up their exposure on Google.  Google has recently incorporated Analytics on these profiles.  You can easily see what search strings potential prospects and clients are using to find your client’s business. I then use these findings to help the client build great blog posts and generate great tweets. There are also new apps popping up all the time to help scope out local prospects.
4. Potential to find great resources.  I have met the most amazing people by being involved in Social Media – not  just other VAs (who are amazing), but leaders in the industry  with whom I have shared great ideas and resources.  Social media puts you on a level playing field like never before and grants you incredible access.
5. Consistency is KEY. It’s easy to setup profiles on Social media sites.  It’s something else to commit to the process and stay the course. It’s a struggle many days to find the time to get on the sites and participate in the discussion… but as I tell my clients, a few minutes each day, gets you closer to your goal of being the person people think of when they think of your product or service and more importantly to show that you are an expert in your ‘field’ and an approachable one at that.

In summary, it’s been an amazing year for me. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, my amazing clients, the awesome people I have met and for the potential in 2010.

This will be my last blog post of the year.  I will be spending the next couple of weeks practicing what I preach. I tell my clients that a blog site should be your hub, so I will be migrating my website content over to my blog. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I would like to leave you all with my warmest wishes for continued prosperity in the coming year and for a safe, happy holiday season with your loved ones.

I will be spending the holidays close to home this year.  Tell me how you plan to spend your holidays. I love hearing from my readers!

Kindest Regards,

Joanne

LinkedIn and Twitter Get Cozy

Well it looks like LinkedIn and Twitter are making a similar move (following the Twitter/Facebook alignment earlier this year) and will be working together.

Over the course of the next few days,  you will notice something new on LinkedIn. You will be able to tie in your Twitter account to LinkedIn and when you post a status update, you will be able to send that update to Twitter and vice-versa.  And that’s not all.  Click on this link to get a little more detailed information.  According to Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), the two will work together like peanut butter and chocolate! Yum, I love that combo! Watch this brief video that shows you how this will be done.

Now all we’re missing is the ability to hyperlink from your LinkedIn account to your Facebook account and I’d be happy from an SEO standpoint.

While this is a welcomed union and hopefully one of many ways they find to work together, if I am looking to do a general status update, I still use Ping.fm which updates all my sites – FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all from one place and all at the same time, which for me, generally suits my needs.  And if you look closely at Reid’s Twitter page in the video, you’ll see he’s been using Ping to update his status as well.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I tell my clients that status updates are an important way to stay high in the search rankings of Google. Google likes fresh content!  So I update my status on each of my profiles daily. It takes a little discipline but there is a big payoff in the end.

How do you do your updates? Give me your feedback. I’d love to hear from you. And here on my blog, I offer comment luv. Anytime you submit feedback, you can link back to your own blog which is another great thing for SEO.

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Hackers Suck – Beware!

A few days ago, I received a DM (Direct Message) from a prospect on Twitter. I had had a couple of communications back and forth with this person about Social Media.  Their DM said that I was in a video that they had posted.  Well, curiosity kicked in and I wondered what they possibly could have said about me in this video so I clicked on it only to be taken to another site.  I gave this person the benefit of the doubt and didn’t want to embarrass them by telling them they had given a bad link, so I just let it go.  BIG MISTAKE!  This person’s Twitter account had obviously been hacked and in turn these scoundrels sent out DMs to her followers with their own propaganda, which in turn, I allowed to affect me.

By a stroke of luck, I had been doing some other things online at that time creating links for myself with some Twitter applications and when I was done, I went about doing some cleanup.  In the cleanup process I noticed a link that I didn’t think I had given permission to, so I ‘unapproved’ it which diminished this hacker’s effectiveness but obviously not in enough time for everyone.  Not long after that, I started receiving my own DMs.  It became apparent that I was now proliferating messages to my following, (by DM), to say that I was making many thousands of dollars a day online.

Thankfully, most of the people who sent me the DM said that they realized it must be spam and just alerted me to the fact that I too had been hacked, others said they clicked on the link and it didn’t go anywhere and another wanted to know why, if I was making that kind of money, would I be doing VA work?

Needless to say, this kind of hacking makes me furious. I have spent a lot of time developing serious relationships with  my followers.  Most know that I wouldn’t send out that kind of message and certainly not in a DM- it’s definitely not my style but for others who are just getting to know me better, I wonder how this might have affected a blossoming relationship. How many out there got the message and didn’t tell me?  It’s not cool when this happens to a Social Media Specialist VA, now is it?! But I guess it shows that we can all be vulnerable to this kind of crap!  So I’m human, go figure!

If you suspect that your account has been hacked, here’s what you should do.

1. Go to your Twitter account and be safe – change your password.

2. Go to ‘Settings’ on your Twitter account and on the top bar, click on the tab that says ‘Connections’.  On this page, check the permissions to applications/sites that you have given access to your Twitter account.  If there is something there that you don’t recognize, ‘un-authorize’ it.  This will disable access.

3. If someone tells you that you have been sending out SPAM, check it out. Don’t ignore it.

4. Tell someone if you suspect they have been hacked and if you have done as I did and clicked on the link, there’s a chance your own account has been affected so alert your own following.

I have since told that person that they had been hacked and they thanked me for letting them know. This is a pretty novice user in the Social Media realm.  What a welcome!  I have also sent out a global message to my following to apologize for the disruption and if in fact they did click on the link, to check their own Twitter accounts.  I hate hackers! How about you?

Feel free to let me know what you think about this.  How do we as a Social Media community deal with this?  Here on my site, I offer comment luv!…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Clock’s Ticking and You Haven’t Even Looked At Your Social Media Sites Today?

Prospects and Clients raise the concern about finding the time to commit to Social Media. After all, we are all busy professionals and many times it’s difficult to get done what needs doing in a day.  As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I am here to help clients stay on track.  For some of them, it requires setting up a blog,  publishing and syndicating blog posts and ongoing maintenance.  For others it’s a question of setting up social media profiles and optimizing them correctly.  Some people just need mentoring sessions to give support and suggestions.  In many cases, it’s all of the above.   What I don’t do, is sit there and send tweets for my clients all day long.  It is important for each and every client to jump in and share in the responsibility of promoting their own business.  Why? Because your prospect and client base want to get to know who YOU are both as a person and as a business entity.

Personally, I choose to take the first half hour of my work day to personally work ON my business instead of IN my business.  When it comes to my social media sites, here are my top 5 ways to invest my time each day.

Facebook

Facebook can be maintained in just a few minutes each day.    So every morning, I log on and update the following things:

• Change my status
• Read and comment on other peoples’ status
• Acknowledge birthdays
• Expand my reach by fanning business pages or growing my friend list

In this way, I stay current in the goings on in my friend and fan base and stay top of mind in the news feed.  This also helps to grow my own base.  Of course there are the additional postings for my blog and other links that occur when appropriate.

LinkedIn

I try and grow my network each week.  I visit the People You May Know area and request connections.  I also update my status and ensure that my blog is feeding properly into the application and that any events that I might be hosting are up to date.  I also take the time to scan over the discussion threads that have been posted to the groups that I am mainly interested in to see if I can add value to any of the discussions. This all helps to keep me in the news feed.

Twitter

I update Twitter several times a day.  I use Tweetdeck as my dashboard and it stays open on my desktop. I use it as a water cooler. I pop in, check for and Re-tweet interesting links, answer questions people have asked and update my followers on what I am up to.   And it’s not a huge investment of time.  The important thing is to stay focused and Twitter has given me many great new business contacts.

Helpful tip: For all of these sites, ping.fm is my friend. I log on each day to update my status and ping.fm will post that updated status to all three sites with the click of one button. This is a huge time saver. You’ll want to check it out too.

Blogs

I try and read a few other blogs each day.   I also try and comment where I can to add value and to increase traffic back to my own blog.  I also blog once a week. Should I blog more? Probably. The recommendation is 2 to 3 times a week. I can only seem to find the time to blog once.  That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you try and stay consistent with the timing. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best time to post a new blog.  So try and find a good day for you and stick with it!

Stats and Google

Each day, I spend a couple of minutes looking at my stats and at Google to see what impact my social media sites are having on my business. I like to know where the traffic is coming from and find out what is  resonating best with my followers. I also check Google to see where I sit in the rankings.   Being found is a major component of growing your business and it’s important to know how SEO works.  The social media sites are very heavily indexed in Google, so investing in the right sites is key.

Overall, this might sound like a lot of time, but in reality, it doesn’t take long when you stay focused and get into a routine. A few minutes of your time each day should bring you many rewards in the Social Media realm.  Could you spend more time? Absolutely! I could spend all day chatting and getting lost in the myriad of games and distractions on many of these sites.  But if you understand what it is that you are trying to achieve with the use of these social media tools and keep them top of mind, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time.  It doesn’t hurt to find a Social Media Specialist VA to help you establish a strategy, get properly set up and provide some ongoing support.  That’s what we’re here for!

If you are new to Social Media and you’d like to get an overview of these applications, I’m running an information evening, Tuesday, October 27th at 6:30 pm at the East Gwillimbury Civic Centre for those of you who are in the north Toronto area. Please feel free to contact me directly (any social media site will do!) to register for this event.

So…What do you do each day to stay on track?  Share some of your tactics! I love getting feedback, and you get a bonus!  I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Twitter Users – For Heaven’s Sake, Get Creative!

WOW! All I have been reading about today, seems to be people complaining about the stance that SocialOomph has taken with regards to repetitive tweets.  It appears that Twitter is cracking down on applications allowing tweeters to publish the same tweet over and over again.  After having read what the creators of SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) have said, it boils down to the fact that they are complying with Twitter’s policy of  NO SPAM!

Folks, this is a good thing.  I know I am tired of people repeating the same tweet over and over again. All it does is make people tune you out and worse, stop following you.  They have not said that you cannot send out DMs acknowledging a new follow and they haven’t said that you cannot pre-’record’ a distinct tweet to be published at a later date.  All they have said is that they won’t tolerate the same tweet being sent out over and over again.

As a Social Media Virtual Assistant, I counsel my clients to use Twitter the same as other Social Media sites and that is as a form of relationship building. This means conversation. Would you have a conversation with someone just repeating the same 140 characters over and over again? No!  The whole purpose of Twitter is to build that relationship by sharing useful, interesting information – industry related info, links to interesting articles, blogsites, helpful tips, hot discussions in the news and yes, even the occasional tweet about your family!  Surely you can find enough things to talk about without repeating the same thing over and over.

Personally, I am happy that they have taken this stance. The faster they can remove SPAM from my Twitter feed the better.  It will make it much easier for me to pinpoint the important, interesting tweets that I want to spend my time focusing on.  I don’t use SocialOomph that much myself. I also advise my clients to spend as much time as they reasonably can, being present and transparent on Twitter in real time.  Nothing is more frustrating that responding to a great tweet, only to find out it was ‘pre-recorded’ and the sender isn’t there to participate in a discussion.

Does this mean that you should never use applications like SocialOomph?  Absolutely not. Everyone knows that it’s impossible for you to be at your computer 24/7, but if you only send out tweets in this fashion, it’s like having a conversation with someone where you pre-recorded your side of the conversation.  Doesn’t leave much room for dialogue, does it?

How about you? Are you upset with this change? How do you use Social Oomph? Leave me your reply below.

As a bonus, I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Your Social Media Specialist Knows Best

TWITTER is the little rock star of the Social Media world. Who would have thought that 140 characters could be so powerful? Millions are using Twitter as a means of driving traffic to their own sites, to others’ sites and for communicating with the masses in real time. Yet for many, Twitter still seems a mystery.  As a Social Media Specialist VA, I coach clients on Social Media usage.  Here are my top 5 No-Nos when it comes to Twitter!

1.   Not Filling in your profile completely.

A completed profile is a must.  This includes your bio and a picture.  I advise against pictures of your favorite pet, cartoon character or using a logo unless you are an association.  People generally want to see who you are and what you are about before they will follow you in a meaningful way.  As a VA, I research potential prospects for my clients and I won’t follow you on behalf of my client unless I have some background on you.

Helpful Tip: Be selective in your keywords when composing your bio.  These are important for search engine optimization.

2. Blocking your updates.

Do not block your updates. The whole purpose of getting involved in Twitter is so that people can see what you have to say!

Helpful Tip: If you are new to Twitter, before you start following anyone,  post about 15 tweets with relevant information so when potential followers visit your site, there will be an archive and people can see what you are about.

3. No personalized Twitter background.

Borrriiiing! Showcase your personality and your business! Spend a few dollars and have someone create a personalized Twitter-back for you if you don’t have the skills to do one yourself.  Some Social Media Specialist VAs like myself can create one for you.  While people don’t always visit your site to communicate with you on a regular basis, they will generally visit it once or twice to get some background on you.

Helpful Tip: Make sure your background ties in with your brand for consistency.

4. Not tweeting enough.

Some people think it’s ok to tweet once a week. Wrong!  You need to be tweeting 3-4 times a day.  What to tweet about?  Tweet important industry related information, news-worthy items, links to articles etc. and only occasionally to your own sites. Avoid shameless self-promotion. Social Media is about relationship building. I can’t stress this enough.  Social Media is an ideal place to become known as a thought leader, problem solver or go-to person in your industry. As far as tweeting what you had for dinner?  Unless you are a caterer,  chef or a food critic, these tweets are best left out of your stream.

Helpful Tip:  If you can’t be at your computer every day at the pertinent time to send out your tweet, there are tools to help you.  Your VA can work with you to ensure your message is getting out there.  You will need to schedule some time each day to review any direct messages or responses to your tweets to build those relationships. Communicating in your authentic voice is very important.  In my opinion, you should not delegate this to your VA.

5. Ignoring the ‘ Re-tweet’

Re-tweeting is a very important part of Twitter.   A compliment goes a long way in the social media world. By re-tweeting someone else’s tweet, you are endorsing the person and their message.

Helpful Tip: When you send out a tweet,  try to leave about 12 characters free (so tweet about 128 chars).  When a message gets re-tweeted, the original author of the tweet gets published again (more publicity for you!)  thus adding the additional characters.  You can’t exceed the 140 character limit and people will not take the time to rework/reword your tweets if they are too long.

Finally there is the debate in the social media world about quality over quantity. Personally I believe quality will win out.   It’s difficult to build quality relationships with 5000 followers!  Seek to find really good prospects and then work at building relationships with them.  If you are unsure how to do this research, your VA can help.

Those are my top 5.  What would you add to the list?

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….