FormFunction Digital Consultants advise, develop and execute innovative technology strategies and techniques through a variety of online platforms. Assisting businesses to successfully engage with targeted consumers, services include bespoke web development, ecommerce solutions, social network application and mobi-site development.
Leveraging social communication platforms
November 11, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
When one thinks of communication platforms, telephone, e-mail and perhaps Internet messaging programmes such as Skype come to mind. With the influx and proactive take-over of social media together with a variety of social networks, one of these platforms has come to stand out as a new communication platform. Twitter. At first glance it might not seem like much, but this micro-blogging platform has grown exponentially in its three years and has comfortably carved a niche for itself in the *corporate, *political and *social industries. Due to its very nature, it has also relatively easily established itself as a news portal with breaking news stories by citizen journalists and *news portals alike. Some corporate accounts serve as a PR tool that only tweet links to recent press releases and do not really engage fully with their audience. There are however others that have found interesting, inventive ways to engage with their customers on Twitter. Leveraging the platform The release of the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) has made it more accessible for companies to tie-in larger online marketing strategies with this platform. According to statistics by Twitter, their active users have increased 900% in the last year and their APIs receive almost twice as much traffic than the website. Interacting with Twitter over SMS is also getting more popular every day. Under a thousand applications have been launched thus far including Hahlo (a popular iPhone Twitter client), Twirl (a Twitter desktop client), Twitpic (an app that lets users share photos on Twitter) and Digsby (an application that centralises e-mail, IM and social networking accounts into one desktop program) to name a few. The possibilities for leveraging this platform are endless. For companies one example in which to leverage the platform in addition to using it as a PR and engagement tool would be to use it in conjunction to a competition perhaps, tying in website, email and sms functionality. A few other examples of using Twitter for business include most importantly customer service or relationship management. Managing your reputation and engage with your audience. It will certainly make your brand stronger. You can also create applications that will repost blog feeds automatically, collect leads, promote events, manage a poll, schedule post-dated tweets and act as a forum. With a growing user-base and corporate adoption the platform may launch iterations on revenue products within this year, but Twitter will remain free to use by everyone. FormFunction Digital Consultants are well experienced with creating and integrating innovative applications with websites or social elements and have previous experience in the OpenSocial, LinkedIn API, Facebook API as well as Twitter API.
Benefits of using Twitter
October 29, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the followers. That’s why information on Twitter is short, to the point and effective. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. You can access Twitter via Web, Desktop Applications and even SMS. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
I started using tweeter some time ago. Surprisingly after few days of posting some tweets it started getting indexed in Google. While Google continues to dominate the world of “search”, it has a long way to go in offering real-time search capabilities.
Twitter is a powerful communication platform providing social networkers the opportunity to post updates in real-real time. The growth of twitter has been so phenomenal that Google also started paying attention and it is indexing Tweets. Many Twitter pages and individual tweets can be seen on the first page of Google.
Then I started learning more about it. Rather than using it just as a social networking platform, if used properly, it can benifit you in so many ways including by boosting your personal brand and enhancing website traffic.
I want to list down some of the methods by which Twitter can benefit us:
- A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information / news. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. This is very useful for active social news participants as they can subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows them to receive and view content quickly.Twitter can be quite an effective search tool for researching any kind of information. The results can complement other methods or sources of information. Twitter has a wide range of users, who constantly update Twitter with new information on different niches.
- To reinforce Personal Brand and awareness. Twitter is a social media platform which has the primary advantage of developing a social brand that is well-connected and accessible. Due its vast usage, Twitter can be a used for promoting your products and services and establish your brand. If you have established business you can use Twitter to enhance your brand image. On the other hand if you have a smaller business with limited brand awareness then Twitter can be excellent for promoting and establishing your brand among enormous audience.
- Get Feedback. Twitter provides you with an opportunity to join a group of interest by following others who are influential within your niche. Twitter also allows businesses to communicate with customers and receive feedback in a casual and cost effective manner. It can prove useful in understanding and obtaining consumer opinion about new products or services or new ideas. You can also use Twitter to communicate new ideas with people and test public opinion. Bloggers sometimes use Twitter to discuss ideas for new posts.
- Use it as HR tool to Recruit People. Want to hire a good web analyst, web designer, or programmer? Send out a tweet asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
- Marketing Opportunities. Twitter can be used in promoting your products and services. It is a cost effective method to increase awareness about your products or services. You can use it to inform customers about any new announcement or special offers. Twitter offers all the advantages of traditional text message marketing and more. It can prove to be a useful tool for conducting market research by better understanding of potential or existing customers.
- Boost your website traffic. Twitter can be used to direct traffic to your websites. If you tweet about your website, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up and re-tweet it. Bloggers often use Twitter to inform their audience of any new posts on their blog by posting links on Twitter. Thus Twitter can be seen as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers.
- Make new friends. Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is a simple way for you connect with like minded people outside of your usual circle. A Twitter association can be developed into a long term acquaintance.
- Spreading Social Network. Twitter is an excellent tool to help bloggers share links to content which is of mutual interest to like minded people. On a personal level Twitter allows one to communicate with friends and family or close network of connections. On an organizational level Twitter allows colleagues who are not co-located to communicate with each other or businesses to communicate with their customers. With Twitter it is also possible to target a specific niche or audience by following others from your industry. It can thus allow a business to build contacts within the industry. Communities have developed around many of Twitter groups or niches. Twitter can be used to establish reliable and long term relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
- Get Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Your followers might vote up the stories if they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites
- Event Updates. Twitter can be used as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes by entrepreneurs. This is a stress-free way to broadcast information. Businesses have also used Twitter effectively to measure the performance of campaigns.
- Promotion. Twitter can be used as a promotional tool to announce offline endeavors or upcoming online events (webinars, virtual tradeshows etc). If you are an e-commerce site, perhaps you have a deal of the day or seasonal offers where you can promote these deals. The fact is you do not want to be too promotional, but Twitter does present the opportunity to promote your products or service and brand to your friends.
- SEO Boost. If you have good content on your website and you want to drive additional traffic to this content on your website, you can use Twitter to do so. A quick tweet with the URL can help drive additional traffic to a preferred landing page on your site to help persuade the conversion on your site.
- Find future Prospects online. Twitter allows you to interact with potential prospects and your target audience. While you do not want to be in direct touch all of the time, Twitter does allow you to engage with your prospects by re-tweeting their posts or responding to something that they may have tweeted about. Discretion and tact is needed in this area.
- Twitter and Mobile. Since Twitter is very simple to use and is limited to 140 characters, mobile use with Twitter is also easy. You can both send and receive updates what you and your friends are doing on the go using a simple SMS. Twitter can be a great mobile communication tool. As we know in business, this can be a pretty powerful thing.
- Offer live exposure. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
In short, Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you can also get into their attention zone via active networking. For businesses, Twitter is another channel which connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. It allows deeply infiltration into the lifestyles of interested participants, which helps to build brand persistence/loyalty. So twitter can be used a tool to achieve simple aim of tracking and directing attention from various groups of your interest and in turn drive business.
Shilpa Singh, Director Himshilp- Internet Marketing Consultants handling SEO, SEM, website designing and website promotional stratagises.
5 Reasons Why Twitter Social Networking is the Next Big Thing
October 26, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
If you haven’t heard of Twitter you should. I know Twitter is popular on the west coast, but haven’t reach mainstream yet.
But the reasons why Twitter will be the next big thing is the same reasons why anything becomes popular.
Here’s the top 5 reasons.
1) It is easy to use. Nothing complicated ever became popular. At least not until it became easy to use.
Twitter is very easy to use. All you basically have to do is, tell it “What You Are Doing?”
2) Texting is very popular. Are you around young people? Young people barely use the phone anymore.
Cell phones are so, 2000….
These days the mobile communication of choice is texting.
The same reasons why texting is popular so will twitter. Twitter is basically the online version of texting.
3) Highly adaptable. Why is RSS so popular? Because of it’s simple context and it’s adaptability.
These days RSS is used for everything. From Podcasts, to newsfeeds… to video feeds, to friend feeds.
To stream flickr pictures, web blogs and everything in between. It is very adaptable.
This is the same reason Twitter will be popular. It could be used for anything. It is very simple, therefore it could be used for multiple purposes.
4) People are nosy… Yes, people always what to know what other people are doing.
There are people who go on AIM (aol instant messenger) just to read people’s “Away Messages”.
That’s right, they go onto a communication platform, not to communicate, but to just read what other people are doing.
Twitter is basically AIM away messages… it’s what people want, stripped of the non-essential stuff.
5) Twitter will connect people. A weird phenomenon on Twitter is, special groups dedicated to a particular purpose forming on Twitter.
People join the group, and follow one another.
These days when one works in lonely cubicles or home offices, it’s nice to connect to other people.
Do you want to start an online money making business?
To download my new free ebook on The Secrets to Success click here:
Quang Van if a full time entrepreneur and publisher of WealthHack.com, a blog about creating wealth online.
brute force twitter
October 25, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Facebook can find you a couple hundred friends you never knew you had. LinkedIn might snag you a couple of career connections here and there. But on Twitter, you can achieve the instant status of claiming tens of thousands, even a million, followers without the pesky task of starting your own religion.
Even before actor Ashton Kutcher earned the bragging rights of beating CNN in the race to reach 1 million Twitter followers, the frenzy to gain more followers on the microblogging site inspired a cadre of Internet marketers and Web developers to sell their methods of exponentially increasing a person’s Twitter following. Part of the craze is about social status, part of it is about business promotion and, according to some Twitter users, much of it is suspect.
For the uninitiated, the term “brute force” might sound incompatible with a communication platform whose mascot is a diminutive sparrow. “In the online sense, it means to force an issue—rapidly firing a method either on a server or a service in an inauthentic way to get a lot out of a service in a short space of time,” says Phil Campbell, a 36-year-old freelance Web developer and consultant based in Derbyshire, England.
The term goes back to the days of the first modern software companies, when hackers tried to discover a software product’s protective serial code by building a program called a key generator, which entered possible combinations at a breakneck pace until it broke though a program’s protective barrier.
“Brute force is the best way to describe my software,” says Peter Drew, CEO of XRT Services, which recently unveiled a product he calls Brute Force Twitter, the same name as Bryda’s product.
Drew sells a line of software products under the Brute Force brand and has used the brand for several years, long before, he says, Bryda began to sell his Brute Force Twitter. “I’m the Brute Force guy and everyone knows it,” Drew says.
“Basically, the idea is about forcing your way to the top,” says Dana Willhoit, 45, CEO of ThePressReleaseSite.com and a social-media consultant who partnered with Drew to create his Brute Force Twitter product.
Unlike Bryda’s product, which relies on manually employing different tactics, Drew’s Brute Force Twitter is a piece of software that automatically identifies and follows Twitter users who have tweeted specific keywords. Drew’s product is connected to a database of Twitter users, ensuring that users do not follow the same person twice and mitigating the risk of being reported to Twitter as a nuisance.
However, not all Twitter users feel that the software is any better or more organic than other techniques available. “It’s like walking into a pub and joining in a conversation about something when you do not know the background of the people or have respect for the flow of the conversation,” Campbell says.
Twitter itself acknowledges the variety of ways its users view its service. “Many are experimenting with how to be more successful with Twitter and even what that means for them,” says Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder and creative director. Nevertheless, Stone draws a line, albeit a hazy one, when it comes to using Twitter for spam purposes. “We look very seriously at those on a case-by-case basis. Accounts that violate our terms of service in this regard are suspended,” Stone says.
Some believe that how you use brute-force methods matters more than the methods themselves. It’s up to users if they want to use Twitter for spam purposes, says Nathan Gilder, a 28-year-old Internet-marketing consultant who uses Drew’s Brute Force Twitter. “And the nice thing about Twitter is that if you don’t want to listen to someone, you can just unfollow them.”
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FOR SALE
