Twitter Etiquette Boot Camp for SEOs (and other social media-handicapped professionals)

Twitter is typically used for one of two purposes:

1) To have fun, connect with friends, local businesses and keep up on topics of personal interest.

OR

2) To promote one's business, product, service or personal brand.

While it's certainly not the case all the time, it seems that most people who join Twitter for reason #2 are joining Twitter for the first time. In other words, they're total n00bs. I know I was. #andhow

It's great that businesses are using the latest social media platforms to market themselves. As an SEO, I always love to see businesses that have active social media strategies; it's great for SEO, brand awareness and it indicates a well-rounded campaign.

But oftentimes, it can be difficult for individuals and businesses coming from an advertising standpoint to really GET how Twitter works. Any monkey with a keyboard can create a Twitter profile and start shooting links out into the void, but leveraging Twitter to increase brand awareness, leads and sales - that takes a skilled, very intentional strategy - a strategy which many business Twitterers fail to develop.

As a result, they end up exploiting the platform to push out message after message, without ever engaging in conversation. SEOs, who tend to see the digital world in terms of link building, are particularly guilty of this; many of the Twitter streams belonging to SEOs that cross my path blatantly push links, with little other strategy.

Most social media experts will tell you there's no wrong way to use Twitter. We've all seen enough spamalicious and borderline spam accounts on Twitter to realize that this isn't really true, so I'd like to amend the rule of Twitter relativity:

There's no wrong way to engage on Twitter.

To explain what I mean, I've drafted a list of Twitter Do's and Twitter Don'ts.

Twitter Don'ts

Don't use Twitter just to build links. SEOs, I'm looking at you. Wipe this thought from your mind. The value of the links you could build in your Twitterstream if you use it only for this purpose are going to be absolutely minimal, because no one will be linking back to your Twitter page. You also run the risk of having your account axed by Twitter as spam. Because that's exactly what it is. Plus, it's just tacky.

Don't use Twitter only to push your blog posts, products or services. There's nothing wrong with the occasional bit of self-promotion on Twitter, but the name of the game is moderation. If you have nothing in your Twitterstream but "Click here to buy my awesome ACME PRODUCT X!" or "New blog post: Insert Unoriginal Title and Topic Here", no one is going to follow you. Except for other Twitterers that are using Twitter to blast out information without taking the time to listen and engage.

Don't sent unsolicited replies or DMs pushing your link, product or service. Seriously. Getting a random DM or tweet from an unknown profile commanding me to try app XYZ pisses me off, just like it does everybody else. The rest of us who are actually conversing on Twitter flag that crap as spam every time. If you insist on cold Tweeting, be polite: follow first, then send a polite DM inviting me to try what your selling, being sure to tell me how/why it's relevant to me. E.g. "I saw your Tweet about ___, and thought this ___ might interest you."

Don't fill your "thank you for following" DM with CAPITAL LETTERS TELLING ME HOW AWESOME YOUR FREE CRAP IS. It's like grabbing a stranger on the subway who smiled at you and shouting at them. People don't like to be shouted at.

They also don't like to be aggressively sold at when they're not expecting it.

When people follow you back, it's likely because they found some kind of value in your Twitterstream and profile and want more of the same. So say "thank you for following", tell them what they can expect from your Tweets, and let the selling happen organically.

Don't automate your tweets. Businesses or companies that put their Twitterstream on autopilot are obviously not engaging with the rest of the Twitter community; they can't even be bothered to customize their tweets into 140 characters. The cut-off sentence and ellipses are a dead giveaway. Facebook users interact differently than Twitter users, and linking the two accounts is only going to make you look lazy.

Twitter Do's

Do listen. Twitter is a place for you to send updates to followers, yes, but it's also a place for you to listen to your customer base or fellow industry professionals. Just think: millions of consumers and industry experts are freely sharing their opinions about products, services and business management every day. Follow topics, hashtags and groups that target your customer base, and use that data to your advantage by listening.

Do have conversations with the Twitterers you're following. Answer a question.

Compliment someone on a job well done, or a great blog post. Ask a question. Put your two cents in on a trending topic - you know, have a conversation. You might try making it your goal to interact with one new person every day. People will value your participation and willingness to engage and will be more likely to see you as an expert or resource of information

(read: brand awareness and industry expertise).

Do follow Friday. Every Friday, Twitterers around the world pat each other on the back for engaging, creating great content and being interesting in general. The best way to get yourself on someone's #FF list is to start creating lists of your own. Choose 3-6 profiles each Friday which you have found valuable and interesting, then Tweet about how wonderful they are using the #FF or #FollowFriday hashtag. This can be a great way to get key industry professionals or influential leads to take a closer look at your business, and it's completely spam-free.

Do Tweet links to sites other than your own. People who are great at what they do are constantly learning from other organizations and professionals. If you want people to view you as an industry expert or resource on Twitter, you need to be pointing to relevant information that other people have written. This could be as simple as retweeting great article links, or tweeting top picks from your RSS reader.

Do relax and CTFO. Twitter is a place for informal communication, partially because you're restricted to 140 characters and partially because informality is just the general vibe. So loosen that tight business bun a little and try to have some fun. People appreciate an honest, "real" voice - it demonstrates there's a real person on the other end of those Tweets.

When in doubt, locate a group of well-respected Twitterers who are your peers or who work in similar industries and learn their strategies. See what has worked for others. Once you master the basic rules of Twitter etiquette, you can begin creating your own unique ways of promoting your brand, products and services. It's like any other kind of writing: you have to master the rules before you can bend and break them.

How to Choose the Perfect Keywords for Your Website

Recently, an associate of mine passed along a link to a new business website he wanted me to review for SEO. The development, coding and SEO had been contracted to a web development firm in India, and the firm claimed to my associate that the website was 100% search engine optimized.

Which I found very interesting.

To be fair, the site's overall structure and code was clean and very SEO friendly. There was no text hidden in images, URL structures were neat and each page had a defined keyword cloud. H1 and H2 tags were used, and some in-paragraph keyword text was even bolded.

So, why did I feel this site was not properly optimized? One main reason: its keywords were off. Also, its page titles were not properly formatted, but we won't focus on that today.

A recent guest post over at Men with Pens lists common "SEO mistakes that make you look like an amateur", and two out of five of these mistakes are regarding wrong keyword choice. One of the mistakes is "choosing useless keywords" - in other words, keywords that people aren't searching for. The other is "choosing keywords you can't win" - keywords that are simply too competitive for your budget.

Choosing the right keywords for your website is absolutely foundational to your site's success. After all, the keywords you decide to target determine who will find you in search results - and what your visitors will expect from your site. When I talk about your website's success, I'm not talking about traffic volume. You can choose keywords that bring your site plenty of visitors, but ultimately, number visitors aren't what matter most. I'm talking about quality, engagement and conversions. If you're a marketing manager, it's thing your boss is always nagging you about: ROI.

The right keywords will bring your site visitors, yes, but more importantly, they should bring you visitors who are looking to buy the products or services your site is selling. They're not looking for definitions or general information - they're looking for what your site has to offer.

In the web marketing industry, this is called traffic quality.

Let's take a look at a few key factors to keep in mind when choosing keywords.

Overly competitive keywords.

Aka "keywords you can't win" - these are keywords with a monthly search volume that is simply out of your range. When you check for keyword search volume (which you NEED to do for every last keyword), have a target search volume which matches your budget and project scope already in mind. For example, if your website's budget for startup marketing is only $2,000, you don't want to choose keywords with 110,000 monthly searches. It's simply not practical. You don't have the resources to compete for this keyword, but don't worry - you have other options. Try narrowing your keywords to hone in on your site's specialty or niche; find keywords with between 2,000 and 5,000 in monthly search volume, and optimize for those. Once revenue for these niche keywords begins to come in and your site budget expands, you can begin to try for the more competitive terms.

Overly general keywords.

Another reason not to go for terms with the highest volume is that they may not be as specific as they need to be. Think again about traffic quality, and weeding out potential visitors who are only looking for general information, or services your site doesn't offer.

Going back to my associate's website SEO, this was my biggest problem with the keywords. Most of them were very general and, consequently, competitive, and the site simply didn't have the budget to compete for the keywords it was using. Also, its general keywords could be often used to search for information about the service it was marketing, not the services themselves.

Look, for example, at the difference in search volume in the terms below:

"Product design" and "product development" (the terms being used on the site in question) have a very high search volume, close to 300,000 in global searches each. Yet if you google both of these terms, you'll find 1/3 to 1/2 of the first page results are informational. Even if the budget was expanded to effectively market these terms, a large portion of the traffic would be unqualified.

Smaller, more specific terms such as "new product development", "new product design" and "new product development services" would be easier to gain rankings for AND would bring in more qualified traffic.

Keywords with little or no search volume.

On the flip side of the coin, it is possible to optimize your site for keywords that are too specific - or are simply the wrong terminology. Industry professionals have a tendency to use a different terminology than their consumers, and this becomes very evident when it comes to search. Websites which are optimized for the terms industry insiders use to describe the products or services being offered run the risk of getting little or no traffic at all. You may call your sweater a "brushed Montauk cardigan", but I'm probably going to search for a "merino wool cardigan", and unless you've optimized your product page with those descriptors, I'm not going to find your sweater.

Irrelevant keywords.

This concept is obvious enough: your keywords must be 100% relevant to your products, period. A great way to test to make sure the keywords you've chosen represent your products or services is to do a little searching yourself. Search for the terms you want to use, and browse the results. Are your competitors there? Do the results match the contents of your own website? If so, you've found a winner. If the results are unrelated to your product or service, you'll need to refine your terms.

In retrospect, the firm in India my associate contracted may have done the best with what they had to work with based on the terms they were given. This, however, punctuates how important it is for business owners and their SEOs to thoroughly discuss and research keywords before moving forward on a project.

Over at Creative Web Business, we've got a resource section specifically dedicated to helping business owners understand the keyword research process. Just visit us and click through to the resource section.

4 Simple Social Media Giveaway Ideas (that won't have you tearing your hair out)

All the cool kids are doing it. Giving shiny new MacBooks away on Twitter, handing out ergonomic (and surprisingly affordable) furniture on Facebook and summoning armies of brand loyalists with promises of reality hair stardom. Yes, social media giveaways have become a useful tool for building brand awareness, customer loyalty and general "buzz" around products and services for many companies. But we can't all be Ikea or Pantene. Can we?

For starters, I think it's important to point out that there's an enormous difference between a social media giveaway run by a big brand and one that's run by a small business or startup. Brands that are already well known (read: have lots of $$$) have a much bigger megaphone to work with than us little guys, but that doesn't mean social media giveaways won't work for us. It simply means we need to be creative, strategic and very, very intentional.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and blogs offer a plethora of ways for the savvy marketer (or business owner) to generate buzz and customer loyalty around his or her brand. Here are my top 4 picks:

1) Facebook photo tagging contest.

This idea is a complete rip-off of the photo tagging contest Ikea ran last year, but it's a great idea which could be repurposed in a number of ways.

The contest: You post a single photo which lays out several of your products, then ask your Facebook fans to tag themselves on products they want. The first person to tag themselves on a product wins that product.

Who should use this strategy? This campaign works best with consumable products, especially if they're fun and/or aesthetically pleasing. Consumable, tangible services such as spa services could work too, if they were creatively arranged in a single photo. If a spa in my town ran this campaign, I'd tag my name on that leg wax nook like it was gold.

Keys to success: If you don't already have a sizable Facebook fan base (300+), you're likely going to be disappointed. More fans means more exposure, and if you're going to go to the effort, make it worthwhile by investing in some targeted Facebook PPC ads before launch.

2) Give money to charity.

Nothing says "we care" like donating cash to a worthy cause. Social media platforms make it easy to get others involved in your efforts, and a well articulated charity giveaway can pick up momentum quickly. Your customer base will appreciate your generosity and work with you to further your cause - and your brand.

The contest: Do your homework, and choose a charity organization that has an excellent reputation and that preferably relates to your industry. Do you sell motorcycle apparel? Choose an organization that assists injured motorcyclists. Do you provide graphic design services? Choose an organization that promotes art education. Next, decide how you'd like people to participate. Volunteer to donate $1 for every Facebook "Like", $2 for every follower, or $3 for every blog subscriber. Be sure you have a clear strategy for following through.

Who should use this strategy? Any business with a well-established customer base, a solid (if somewhat small) brand and an ambition to be seen as a company that gives back to its community.

Keys to success: Set goals first, then pick your strategy. If you need to build your blog/website's search engine rankings (SERPs), ask participants to comment on your blog. If you want to build a solid following on Twitter or Facebook, put your efforts there. And be sure to publicize. Write blog posts. Tweet about it, and ask for retweets. Post it on Facebook. Write and syndicate a press release about it. Ask local bloggers and/or citizen journals to do a feature. Get the word out!

3) Facebook Survey Sweepstakes

Need feedback or market research on your product or service? Nothing hits the spot like a survey baited with a juicy sweepstakes prize.

The contest: Choose a prize that's relevant to your customer base. If you have healthy social media accounts, consider asking your fan base (albeit tactfully) what kind of prize they might enjoy. It might be as simple as a free product/service, or it might be something else. Next, write your survey questions clearly and succinctly - don't make people work to understand your survey. Use multiple choice whenever possible.

Who should use this strategy? I've found this is particularly effective for small local service businesses, although product companies could also use this as a great opportunity to stir up enthusiasm about a specific product.

Keys to success: Keep it simple, short and sweet. The best way to do this is to choose a streamlined 3rd party application which specializes in Facebook contests. Wildfireapp is my particular favorite.

4) Twitter Hashtag Giveaway

Perhaps the simplest type of giveaway, Twitter hashtag giveaways are an excellent way to boost your followers, and they're very simple to execute.

The contest: Choose a prize people think they can't live without, then choose a unique hashtag to identify your contest. Next, write a blog post about your contest, detailing exactly when this contest will be in effect, what the prize is and how it will be distributed (people will want to be assured it's not a scam). Instruct people to write creative tweets using your designated #contesthashtag, then specify how winners will be chosen - at random? Based on creativity?

Who should use this strategy? Companies that have a clear strategy and purpose for their Twitter account. Followers are not like knickknacks; once you've collected them, you need to interact with them and maintain a clear, strategic relationship. Before deciding to invest $1,000s in your Twitter followers, be sure a) Twitter is going to effective for your business, and b) you know what to do with all those new followers.

Keys to success: Twitterers are inundated by a LOT of information, so your carrot needs to be juicy if you're going to stir up genuine enthusiasm. Try to choose something universal, like a flat screen TV or an iPad. Something that will get people excited. And, as always, promote the contest. Ask industry writers who are active on Twitter to blog and tweet about it.

Remember to set yourself up for success by laying out clear strategies for your social media giveaway. If you need help concocting a strategy, I'd be happy to put on my social media consulting hat and lend a hand.