Two Simple Business Uses For Twitter
I’ll admit it, I love twitter. Â I look at my twitter feed many times every day. Â But, I’ll also admit it – it can be hard to find any real value in twitter!
When people find out I’m “into” twitter, some common questions come up:
- Why would anyone care what I had for breakfast? – Assuming that the only thing posted on twitter is useless information
- Is there any real value in twitter?
For me and for my business, the answer is a resounding YES to the second question. Â I believe that there is indeed real value in twitter.
Today, I wanted to share just two very simple uses for twitter that I think you and your business use.
1. Â Use Twitter To Drive Traffic To Your Site
Here is a graph of some of the recent traffic to my blog (as recorded by the FREE stats program: Google Analytics):
Notice the ups and downs on the graph? Â Of course, they are impossible to miss. Â The obvious question, when looking at this graph is “What caused the spikes”?
The answer: TWITTER!
Each of the spikes in traffic represent a day (or some times a couple of days) where I sent out just one tweet about a new blog post I had. Â As a result of the single tweet (and a few kind re-tweet), my traffic for that day made a significant increase.
That’s a GREAT use for twitter!
Of course, any business or person has to be careful about always being self-serving. Â If all you ever do on twitter is send out tweets hoping to lure people back to your own web site, then people will stop listening (following you). Â But, if you tweet other useful information AND you tweet links to your own site, then people will visit. Â If the content is interesting – they will come back!
I would suggest that this use makes it absolutely essential that your business has a blog. Â Your business blog needs to be updated regularly (I’m shooting for once a week on my own – a new goal). Â And, your business blog needs to have interesting content. Â If you have a blog, and if you post regularly, and if you post about interesting content… then sending out regular tweets that link back to your blog WILL increase your traffic (and have some good effect on your Search Engine placement as well).
This alone should make twitter worth looking into.
2. Â Use Twitter to Find People Talking About Your Business In Your Area
Wether or not you are on twitter, others are.  And, they are talking about all kinds of things.  Chances are they are talking about your business.  Wouldn’t  it be nice if there was a simple way to know every time someone within a 50 mile radius (or whatever area you work in) was asking questions about your business?  You could jump in, offer answers, offer resources, even offer a sale! Wouldn’t that be a great tool?
Of course, the tool absolutely does exist and it is called… twitter. Â It’s a simple little feature built into twitter called TWITTER SEARCH. Â Visit search.twitter.com and click on the “ADVANCED SEARCH” link on the right side of the search box.
In the Advanced Search area you can do some amazing things! Â The thing we are focused on right now is search by PLACES.
Let’s make up a company. Â Suppose you own ANTIQUES R US, located in Atlanta, GA. Â And, you would like more people to know about your business. Â So, what do you do? Â Well, one great option is to use the Advanced Twitter Search to look for anyone talking about Antiques within 50 miles of Atlanta, GA. Â Here’s what the Advanced Search might look like:
You can see here that ANTIQUES R US is update to search twitter for the word “Antiques” within a 50 mile radius of Atlanta, GA. Â What would ANTIQUES R US find? Â A lot. Â Below are just two tweets form the last couple of days that may have been interesting to ANTIQUES R US:
Here is some who had the day to herself and visited one of ANTIQUES R US competitors – the Lakewood Antiques Market. Â What if ANTIQUES R US had responded to her and said something like: “Glad you loved Lakewood. Â If you liked them, you might enjoy us as well – mention this tweet for 10% off”. Â Who knows, maybe the person would have showed up
Here’s another:
This person is looking for an Antiques place to visit in the Savannah area. Â What is ANTIQUES R US had responded with a couple of excellent restaurants (close to the store, of course) and a personal invitation to visit the store?
Again, the conversation is already happening. Â I promise – people are really talking about your business. Â The question is whether or not you are going to join the conversation!
Advanced Twitter Search – by location – my second favorite use for  twitter.
Want to know more?  Have your own favorite uses for twitter?  Leave a comment and share your thought.  Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways  Social Media can help your business!
Going Google?
With Microsoft’s SharePoint conference in Las Vegas starting today (Monday, October 19), Google has broadened its Going Google ad campaign.
Not familiar with the campaign? Â It is Google’s ad campaign to push harder into the business world with its enterprise offerings. Â Here’s a short YouTube video Google put out:
If you haven’t been watching Google for a while, then you might have missed what they’ve been doing lately. Â While still owning the majority of search volume online (around 60-65%), Google has begun pushing into other areas as well. Â A few of the key areas that I think any business should consider:
- GMAIL – Google has made some incredible changes to G-mail that can be a HUGE time and cost saver to many businesses. Â Now any domain (yourWebDomain.com) can run it’s own e-mal through Gmail. Â What does this mean? Â It means that you can take advantage of Google’s Anti-Spam features (powered by Postini) – which are some of the absolute best in the business. Â You can also read your e-mail online through the G-Mail interface. Â You can have an assistant send e-mail on the boss’s behalf ( e-mail delegation), and e-mail archiving. Â You get ALL of this without giving up your own domain name. Â This means that you continue to have you e-mail as Joe@YourDomain.com, but the e-mail is routed through the GMail Service. Â The person sending you an e-mail AND the person receiving an e-mail from you all see the Joe@YourDomain.com as the e-mail, but you get all the storage, spam filtering, e-mail archiving / backup, web interface, etc. of Gmail!
Cost: $5 per user per year
Savings: Â This could be a huge savings. Â Companies can stop paying thousands of dollars for expensive spam filters / appliances. Â Also (as you will see below), this cost could be even bigger in that you could COMPLETELY DITCH an Exchange server! Â This could save thousands more every year! - Google Calendar – Google calendar is a powerful, shareable calendaring system. Â And, the best feature is that it can integrate seamlessly with MS Outlook and Apple iCal! Â Â In addition to this, it completely supports multiple users – meaning you can see when other in your organization are busy and schedule meetings with them. Â You can also share your calendar, allowing others to simply view it, edit it, etc. Â Again, this gives everyone all the functions of a typical MS Exchange server at a cost that will save thousands every single year.
Cost: $5 per user per year (this is the same $5 user per year as the above, not in addition)
Savings: Again this could be huge. Â Getting rid of an Exchange server will save any organization thousands of dollars a year. - Google Docs – Â Google has been putting out three very powerful web based programs – Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and PowerPoint programs. Â These programs aren’t as advanced as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Â But, most users don’t use the advanced features in these programs. Â And, again, the cost savings is HUGE! Â All three programs also allow for complete sharing of docs. Â This means you NEVER again have to e-mail a doc to a co-worker. Â You simply share it with him or her and you both edit it together. Â You can see changes made by Co-Worker X and roll back, etc. Â It makes collaboration a snap!
Cost: FREE (although when used with the $5 per user per year, it is a bit simpler to collaborate)
Savings: Well, let’s see with the average cost of MS Office from Amazon running around $325, the cost savings is $325 multiplied by the number of workers who choose to use Google Docs. Â Again, The answer here is THOUSANDS more, potentially! - Google Analytics – Do you have a website? Â Do you know how many visits you get? Â How long people stay on your site? Â Which pages are visited the most? Â All of this data is available for FREE from Google. Â Simply add a few lines of code to the bottom of your website and you can get all the data about your site you could want and MUCH more!
Cost: FREE
Savings: None, unless you are paying for an analytics page now or using some stupid looking hit counter (then you don’t save money, you just save the hassle of having a stupid hit counter on your home page)
These are just four of my favorite Google products right now. There’s a ton more that we could talk about. Â Things like: Google Voice, Google Wave, Google Checkout, Google Wave, etc. Â All of these are available for free and could save companies a ton of money and a lot of time.
Interested? Â Got Questions? Â Leave me a comment or contact us. Â We’d love to talk more with you about how we can help save you money!
My Simple SEO Steps
I’ve been working on my own Google Rankings now for quite a while. Â Some of the key terms that I have been using include: Fort Wayne Web Design, Fort Wayne Website Design, and Fort Wayne SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Â My results have been pretty good.
If you search for the term “Fort Wayne Web Deisgn” I appear in the top 5 on Google, and I appear number 1 on yahoo and bing!
So, I thought I would take the time and just share a few simple steps (my top ten list) that I’ve been trying to utilize for SEO:
- Setup Canonicalization and enforce WWW on all pages – this can sound really confusing, but basically it means making sure that regardless of whether I type in WWW.YOURSITE.COM or just YOURSITE.COM – my browser will ALWAYS end up saying the same thing – i.e. the WWW. is always added.The reason for this is simple – you don’t want Google to see two different options for your site – one with WWW and one without WWW. Â You want all the Google Juice going to the same site – no matter how people link to it.
- Submit to the three major search engines:Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Bing: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
Yahoo (becoming BING): http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit - Submit to DMOZ – the Open Directory ProjectThe DMOZ (www.dmoz.org ) is an open-source / volunteer directory. Â It has real humans who are compiling a list of web site into categories. Â Visit the site – look at the categories and start to DRILL DOWN by clicking on categories until you find one you think your site should fit into. Â Then, look for the SUBMIT URL link on the top of the page. Â Click it and fill in the information.The approval process can often take months (or longer).
- Update TITLES on all pages – pretty much everyone agrees that the <title>YOUR TITLE HERE</title> tag is the most important on-page factor for determining Google ranking. Â Your Title should be around 65-75 characters long and include your keywords. Â Titles should also vary from page to page – to accurately reflect the content of the page – and to also continue to reflect your keywords.
- Update meta Keywords and meta descriptions. Â Now, Google freely admits that meta keyword tag has absolutely no effect on Google ranking. Â However, I still think it is important to get the meta keyword tag correct. Â Of course, the same is said about meta description tag. Â Generally this is used for the description that Google shows in a Search Result Page.
- Create relevant H1 and H2 tags – your keywords should be at the top (first 1,500 characters) of the page inside of H1 tags. Â Google looks at anything inside of H1 tags as more important – after all (goes there reasoning) anything we make a header must be more important, right?
- Use ALT and TITLE tags on Images. Â Make sure EVERY image has an appropriate ALT and TITLE tag added. Â While Google can’t see what your image is – you can tell GOogle (via the ALT tag) and thereby win some valuable ranking.
- Ensure that your HTML and CSS both validate:CSS Validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
HTML Validator: http://validator.w3.org/. Â If you site doesn’t validate, you’ll need a little bit of technical know how to fix problems. Â And, some times it really isn’t a big deal, but it is always good to keep things “valid” - Create and Submit XML sitemaps to all major search engines. Â Sitemaps are simple XML files that tell the search engines which pages exist and which pages should be crawled. Â Creating and submitting a sitemap helps to ensure that Google, Bing, Yahoo, et al will actually find your pages. Â The best way to learn about sitemaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
- Create and use a Robots.txt file to help search engines index your content. Â Using a robots.txt file is a bit more complicated than a sitemap. Â And, typically a Robots.txt file is used to EXCLUDE areas of your site – like an admin site, etc. Â But, you can do a TON with a good robots file – including blocking pages for a while and than unblocking them to gain google points. Â Again, want to learn more, try Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard
So, there is my top ten list of Search Engine Optimization. Â There’s a lot more to do. Â And, all of these are what we like to call On Page Factors – meaning things you do to your own web page. Â This didn’t even start to touch off page factors – like incoming links (another HUGELY popular topic).
Take a look at my list and let me know where I’m wrong or what I left off my list. Â I’d love to hear about your top ten…
Why I hate Internet Explorer
So, as a web developer, I have to make sure the a web site works in all browsers. Â Generally this includes the following:
- Safari for Mac
- Firefox for Mac
- Internet Explorer for PC
- Firefox for PC
- Safari for PC
- Google Chrome for PC
Of course, I could include a few other browsers (Opera for Mac, Google Chrome for Mac – which is still in developer release). Â But this covers the major part of what I’m looking at. Â And, again, of course, this doesn’t start to address mobile browsers.
But, the basic job of any decent web designer should be to ensure that a web site looks decent and functions properly in ALL major browsers.
To the uninitiated, this may sound like a fairly simple task. Â After all, all browsers are basically the same right?
Well the answer is a resounding NO! All browsers are not equal. Â Well, to put it a different way, I could say this: Â All browsers are almost equal – except for one. Â The truth is that most browsers display things and function in basically the same way with one notable exception – Internet Explorer. Â Simply put, Internet Explorer (the big blue E from Microsoft), is the worst browser EVER.
Just recently I was working on some “tweaks” to a site and wanted to see how they looked in Internet Explorer, version 8. Â And, of course, they looked awful and didn’t work correctly. Â So, I went back to the code to see what was missing. Â The answer? Â NOTHING. Â The code was completely correct, however, Internet Explorer had, once again, invented it’s own rules to display things.
This frustration led me to go to one of the online tests for web browser’s standard compliance. Â You see, there is an internationally recognized group of people who come up with how things on the internet should be displayed and what the code is to make something look like “X”. Â So this international group puts out “STANDARDS”. Â A good browser then would be a browser that adheres to the standards, right?
Well, some of the newest standards available can be checked in a test called ACID3. For anyone so inclined, you can find the test at: Â http://acid3.acidtests.org.
I thought it might be fun to run each of the six browsers listed below through the ACID3 test and see what we get. Â So, here’s the results:
Safari for Mac
Safari for Mac Acid3 Test Results
Firefox for Mac
Firefox for Mac Acid3 Test Results
Firefox for PC
Firefox for PC Acid3 Test Results
Safari for PC
Safari for PC Acid3 Test Results
Google Chrome for PC
Google Chrome Acid3 Test Results
Internet Explorer (8) for PC
Internet Explorer 8 for PC Acid3 Test Results
Now, I know that the numbers aren’t the only things that matter. Â I know that ACID3 is about more than just the javascript tests. Â It also has a display element and render element, etc.
But, I don’t think we really need to go any further than the numbers. Â If we take Internet Explorer out of the mix, the lowest score is a 93. Â Still a very impressive score – especially considering that ACID3 test some very new HTML specifications – ones that really aren’t being used widely yet.
However, Internet Explorer got a miserable 20 out of 100.  What  a failure.  And, what is sad about this is that Internet Explorer still is the most popular browser (click the graph below):
Web Browser Comparison Graph
While I continue to test against Internet Explorer, my only hope is that soon, very soon everyone will realize what a bad, bad, bad browser Internet Explorer really is (we haven’t even talked about security…) and switch. Â But, I’m probably living in a dream world, right?
