Ideas for Business

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below.   Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

You’ve considered video marketing, but you’re not quite sure how to approach it. Is it about marketing or is it about video production? It’s not as stupid a question as you might think. Many online marketers – even small businesses – are using video to their advantage. They are engaged in video marketing, but they aren’t [...]

After noticing that Google were serving related forum sitelinks I came across this example of extended snippets under these sitelinks today:

Extended snippets beneath related forum sitelinks

This looks like it’s related to extended snippets which Google introduced back in March this year (see post on Extended Snippets). The search query consisted of 6 words, and the main results displayed extended snippets. Quite interesting, and I’m sure click-through rates are quite useful when you get these sitelinks (and the extended screen real estate).

Want to read more?

1. Extended Snippets in Google’s SERPs – Even More Clicks for Top 3?
2. More Sitelink Variations from Google, #3 with Internal Related Forum Threads
3. Google Testing Breadcrumb Navigation Within SERP Results

I’ve written before about pre-writing your posts on weekends, which works well for many professional bloggers. But the fact is that whether you blog for business or personal reasons, pre-writing and scheduling your blog posts is always a good idea.

Scheduling your blog posts is different from simply writing post drafts. The latter requires you to login and publish the posts on a certain date- which is fine if you want to make last-minute changes to your posts- but scheduling means your blog software will publish your post automatically, on whatever date you set it to. If you’d like to get started doing this, here are some quick ways to schedule your blog posts:

On Blogger

If you write for a Blogger-powered blog, it couldn’t be simpler:

• In the New Post window in the Posting tab, write your post as usual, but don’t click the “Publish Post” button just yet.
• Click on “Post Options” at the bottom of your post, and in the right side you’ll be able to put in what date and/or time you want the post published.
• Then click “Publish Post”.

On Wordpress

It’s easy to schedule your posts on a Wordpress-powered blog. Simply:

• Write your post as usual, but don’t click Publish yet.
• In the “Publish” window in the upper right hand area of your dashboard, click on the “Edit” link next to “Publish immediately”.
• From there, you can choose what date and/or time your post will be published.
• Click the “OK” button, then hit “Publish”.

On Typepad

If your blog is powered by Typepad, note that you must be a Plus, Pro, Premium or Business class user to use this feature. Here’s how to schedule your posts in Typepad:

• Write a post as usual in the “Compose a New Post” page, then look for the area titled “Posting Status” .
• The dropdown beneath that will let you choose between Draft, Publish On… or Publish Now. Select Publish On…
• Enter the time and select the date you want your post published. Click “Set Time”, then save the post.

Do you schedule your blog posts?

Many online businesses have figured out that networking off line can be just as effective, or more so, than networking online. The advantage to networking off line is you get to meet people face to face and develop relationships in person. By that, you can establish trust a lot more easily. This is the perfect [...]