e-Business Australia

A short video displaying the Social Network Marketing tools used for BUS469, Summer semester 2011! – created at animoto.com

There are so many tools provided by twitter (some not immediately obvious) that you can take advantage of whilst using Twitter to make money. If you make the special effort to use all of them wisely this can have the effect of jump starting your business and really draw your customers to your sales point.

Lets take a quick look at the best free tools you can use if you cannot afford the POWER TOOLS that the professionals use.

1. TWEET DECK

You run this from your pc and connect to your twitter account with it, where you can pretty much handle all aspects of your twitter. It is possible to manage several Twitter accounts via tweetdeck, and control the whole “follow and unfollow” problems that professional users face.

2. SOCIAL OOMPH

(Formerly Tweet Later) allows for tweet scheduling (useful), offers the option of repeating your tweets as often as you like (known as recurring tweets, but only with the paid option) lets you automatically follow those twitter users that follow you, and also allows you to them private direct messages to say thanks when the do follow you, and also automate the process of no longer following those that have stopped following you. These free features above should be efficient for the vast majority of those just starting out, butt when you require something powerful you can upgrade to their paid service.

3. TWAITTER

(Soon to be called gremln) is available completely for free for anyone that has a twitter account, and you can login using the same username and password as you use to login with twitter. This service is really useful for scheduling both tweets and recurring tweets, and is free as mentioned above so is definitely a tool you just have to try if you do not want to use the services of professional twitter marketing providers!

4. TWITPIC

Twitpic allows you to share your pictures via twitter, which is a wonderful way of making all your new followers feel really welcome when they first follow you. Twitpic is free for anyone that has a twitter account and you can login using the same username and password as you use to login with twitter. Another wonderful feature of TwitPic is the option of sharing your pictures using a mobile device, perfect for the picture sharer on the move!

5. TWOLLO

This tool allows you to find users you want to follow. You simply search for tweets on a subject you like, and Twollo will find them for you and automatically starts following them for you. The only drawback for you if you do not have much money is that this service is not free, however if you are really serious about marketing on twitter you will want to get a paid service and start twitter marketing in earnest with professional strategies.

Indeed, professional twitter users are prepared to spend a little now in the early stages as they know the true power of twitter marketing, and they know that they can quickly recoup the small expenditure required to purchase the best twitter marketing tools. After all, you would not expect twitter marketing strategies to be free, now would you?

What software development tools are available to the public for free? For legality reasons, what kinds of licensing to these software development tools have?

Must Have Twitter Marketing Tools

The recent explosion of social media has created new opportunities for internet marketers. The one everyone is talking about is called Twitter. If you have never been on Twitter, or at least heard of Twitter you must have been living in a cave. The main stream media has been all over it lately. CNN for example has a huge presence on Twitter, with over 1.96 million followers as of the time of this article. Followers, by the way, are people that are interested in what you have to say and have decided to follow your tweets or updates. These tweets can be about anything you choose to write about, from what you are doing now to what you are going to do tomorrow. The can be about any and everything you want to say. You get a 140 characters to express yourself to the world. The quality of these tweets will have a direct impact on the rate at which you obtain and maintain followers. The more informative or entertaining the tweet, the more interesting it will be to your followers and the more likely it becomes that they will retweet the update. Retweet is when one or more of your followers think enough of your update to pass it along to their followers. You can compare retweeting to back-linking. It’s a great way to get your name out to the rest of the Twitter world and increase your followers.

Now to the important part for IM people. Twitter has become one of best places to market on the net. Consider your followers like you would your email list. The larger the follower/email list the more opportunity you are going to have. It’s that simple. I’d like to tell you it’s more complicated. But, it’s not. It’s simple math. Market to more targeted people and get better results. There the secrets out. I feel better already.
Let’s get to the nuts and bolts of building your follower base. The best way to gain targeted followers on twitter is to follow people interested in the niche you are marketing to. For example, if you’re marketing to NASCAR products, you would follow people interested in NASCAR. Simple, right. The problem comes in when they don’t follow you back. The rule is, about 30-50% of the people you follow will follow you back. So if you follow 1000 people, you can reasonably expect 300-500 people to follow you back. What about the people that don’t follow you back? You have to get rid of them by unfollowing them. Then go and follow more people. The basic rinse and repeat, that is fundamental in internet marketing. Two problems arise, first, this is very time consuming and second, twitter considers it spamming when you follow then unfollow and follow again the same people. They are very likely to suspend your account for this. Unless you have a miracle memory, you’ll never remember all the people that you have followed and unfollowed. This where having the right tool makes all the difference. You can automate the entire process with a tool called Hummingbird. It will allow you to follow targeted prospects with a couple clicks of your mouse and unfollow anyone that doesn’t follow you back. It will save you an enormous amount of time. It will handle multiple accounts, so you can market to several niche markets. The program also protects you, in that, it will not follow anyone you have unfollowed in the past. This will help prevent account suspensions. I personally use this program, after extensive research, I might add, and have found it to be the best program of it’s kind on the market. They are currently running a special offer. Use the discount code “RECESSION” and save $30.00. This program is worth many times what they charge. Review it here:Review

Another great time saver is called Tweetlater. This program is a life saver. It comes in two versions, a free and pro version, I strongly recommend the pro version. First let me tell you what both versions will do. First it will automatically send every new follow you get a welcome direct message. In this message you can welcome the new follower and tell them a little about what you do. A nice way to say, market to them. For example if you have ten accounts and average 400 new followers a day, that’s 4000 ads you send out everyday without lifting a finger. That’s a fabulous way to make passive income.

Time savers are money savers. Another way this programs saves you time is that it will automatically unfollow anyone that unfollows you. Both versions will handle multiple accounts and let you schedule future tweets. You can sit down on a Monday and schedule all your tweets for the week. That’s a huge time saver.

The Pro version also allows you to:

* Schedule @replies and DMs

* Schedule recurring tweets — Without them being repetitive!

* Bulk upload & schedule tweets — Save time!

* Run your own Twitter bots — Fully automate accounts!

* Ping.fm integration — Feed Facebook & MySpace!

* Manage DMs of all your Twitter accounts — Integrated console!

* Automatically weed out SPAM — Boost your productivity!

* And much more

The pro version is the way for the serious IM pros to go. I use it and it makes my life much easier. I strongly recommend the Pro version.

You can review both versions here: Review

Look for twitter marketing tips on my blog: twitcashblog

I look forward to your comments. Until then, Good Marketing

You may have heard of an internet sensation called Twitter.  The concept of this site is simple:  update people on what you’re currently doing in one hundred forty characters or less.  You can follow people, people can follow you, you can quote what other people are saying and you can reply to what other people are saying.  Twitter essentially creates a fast paced interactive and massive community with similar interests.  So what?

When you join a club or sport, you typically join because you share an interest in that area.  Likewise, you follow people on Twitter because you share a common interest.  Since there’s no limit as to how many followers you can have, you can be in contact with thousands of people with one simple update.  It gets better though.  Imagine thousands of followers in your target market because having a large number of people following you is meaningless if there is no common interest.  If you have thousands of people following you because they have an interest in network marketing, then you have struck gold.

How do you leverage Twitter to create a massive following in your target market though?  How can you have thousands of followers without eating all the hours of your day?  The key is automation.  I have prepared a list of free Twitter marketing tools to aid you in building a massive following.  The three tools I will be talking about are:

-Twitter Karma
-Tweetree
-Tweet Later

Twitter Karma is a tool that helps you maintain a balance between people you are following and people following you.  Twitter Karma allows you to sort users in different categories primarily users that you are following but they aren’t following back, and users that are following you but you aren’t following them back.  Essentially, you just check all and either click bulk follow or bulk unfollow.  Make sure to wait about ten minutes between each submission.  That’s it.  You have a good ratio for your following/followers.

The next tool is called Tweetree.  The main thing you want to use Tweetree for is for the Retweet (RT) button and managing conversations with other users.  Remember, retweeting is simply quoting another user, and usually requires you to type everything out.   With Tweetree, there is a button when you move your mouse over a tweet and an RT button appears.  Simply click that button and hit send.  Now there is no more typing for retweets.  The second function is managing conversations.  Sometimes other users respond to your tweet, but you don’t check until later.  The time gap can lead to confusion as to what the response was referring to.  Tweetree puts a user’s response indented under your tweet so you can continue a conversation and not worry about forgetting what it was all about.

Lastly, Tweet Later is for auto-pilot use.   The main benefits of using this service is to have an automated welcome message and auto follow/unfollow actions.  To edit these settings follow these steps:
1.    Log in to Tweet Later
2.    Click Accounts
3.    Click List Accounts
4.    Click Edit

From here you can edit all automation methods you want to carry out.  Make sure to check the auto welcome box and type in your welcome message.  A word of advice for typing out your welcome message:  Do not post your affiliate link.  There are many Twitter users posting affiliate links in their welcome messages and it makes interaction very impersonal.  Instead, type a friendly message thanking them for following you and link them to a place of value.  Now when I say place of value I mean a blog, Youtube channel, articles page or Facebook.  All of these are acceptable places to lead new followers to, because it builds a personal connection and not the dreaded sales pitch.

If you want to rotate welcome messages, there is a link right above the text box that shows you how to do that.  You may want to rotate people going to your Facebook, blog or articles, so that’s a great way to send traffic everywhere.  

Next you want to check automatically follow people and check automatically unfollow people.  These two options help keep your following and follower ratio in check.

That’s it.  These three free Twitter marketing tools will help you build a massive and target following to leverage your online business.  However, automated software can only do so much.  You need to interact with other users through reply messages and retweets.  Just like any business, developing relationships with people is the only way to rapidly grow your business.  By interacting with other users and applying these tools, your following will grow your Twitter following in no time.

I’m a independent Photographer and I couldn’t find a very good way to market my photography online (other than as stock) But with stock you lose soooo much money. I’m now looking into designing some tools photographers can use to help market their work. Bringing customers to photographers, proofing tools online and etc. Just want to know how much interest there is and see if anyone has some ideas to help. It’s all about Photographers helping photographers. Thanks in advance.

Internet and todayâ??s rapidly changing scenario have brought together an easy, effective yet strategically operated world of ecommerce. Today, if you want to do excel in business, you must have your online presence and here an ecommerce website becomes your mirror to cyber world. With your own web page, your products can have access to thousands of potential customers across the world. To have a powerful, attractive and effective ecommerce website you need four essential components, which carry utmost importance before starting with a website development. Letâ??s get into an introduction of these vital components and see how vigilant you need to be while choosing them.

Web Site Design for ecommerce purpose

Your site will have just few seconds to let your customers retain or hit the back or cross button. Here I simply mean to say; your site should have not only an attractive but easy user interface. It should be a practical, handy and welcoming website. Just have a look at the following points that can help you.

â?¢Attractive Layout

â?¢Clear and Comprehensible Presentation

â?¢Easy Navigation System

â?¢Working Hyperlinks

Over all, your website should be easy to explore and revealing enough to keep your visitors stick to it retaining their interest.

Professional and Reliable Ecommerce Web Hosting

For the convenience of visitors and yourself, you must have a reliable and professional website hosting that guarantees 100% availability of your website leaving no space for server downs. You need to pay here to have your customers with you. Remember, a little saving and a down server will let your customersâ?? interest down when they would find it unavailable because of unplanned maintenance or unreliable web hosting. Additionally, keep your own domain name and not any sub-domain from another site. $10 can get you a new domain name then why to hold back on this minor issue.

Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software

Shopping cart software is an important component of your website that needs to be carefully designed with proper sophistication as it needs to process your customersâ?? purchase and payments. These tips will help you getting a good ecommerce shopping cart software

â?¢Reliable and Handy ecommerce Software

â?¢Customizable user interface

â?¢Asking minimum desired details to buy your products

â?¢Provides trouble-free retrieval of data from your customers while purchasing

â?¢Novel and useful integrated tools and features for usersâ?? and adminsâ?? convenience

Secure Merchant Account

A secure merchant account is the component that requires the services of a trustworthy ecommerce merchant account provider as it processes transfer of customersâ?? money into your own bank account. The most preferred and popular online account provider is Paypal but your bank can also provide you an online merchant account if required. The ecommerce merchant account acts as an indispensable interface between your shopping cart and your bank account. It handles all credit and debit card processing, so it definitely requires an authentic financial institution which your customers can rely upon.

Thus, before getting started with an ecommerce web site design you must perform a thorough analysis of service providers who can provide you the best ecommerce solutions. Perform a careful market analysis and opt for the secure merchant account providers and dedicated web Design Company to get a complete and fully functional ecommerce website that will take your business to new heights.

Just like google annalytic that provides ranking of a website and daily/monthly progress report in terms of traffic/visitors to the site; what are other tools available so that I would be able to track the traffic????

The idea behind using a social networking site as Facebook as a venue for doing business is building a user base in the form of a community who respond to you as a person or to your product. If you just turn your page into one big advertisement, you are not going to get much in the way of a response. You need to educate people about the product without coming across as a hard sell.

You want to create the impression that you are here for socializing, not business. People will come to trust you and be more likely to buy your product or service if you can do this.

Facebook has built in tools which can be used to build your business. These include:

- Social Ads

- Pages

- Beacon

- Insights

- Platform

- Polls

These tools can help you to build awareness of your brand through this social networking site and bring in potential clients. Needless to say, you are going to have to learn to use them effectively. Read on to find out how to harness these tools to build your business using social networking sites.

You can learn how to take further advantage of these features by visiting the facebook website business section.

SOCIAL ADS

Social ads have a lot of promise for building your business since they can go directly to the news feeds of your Facebook friends. Anyone who is on your friends list will be able to get the word about your business right on their profile page.

This is also a very easy way of target marketing. You can control exactly who sees your ads – and target marketing is the way to get sales.

FACEBOOK PAGES

You can make a Face book page for a business, just as you would for yourself. This allows people to interact with and even become friends with your business. It is a great way to make a lot of people aware of your product and your brand who would not otherwise.

You know when someone becomes friends with your business on Facebook that you have a potential client; at the very least, they have shown some interest. People can interact with your business as they would with any of their other social networking site friends – they can leave comments and generally enhance the experience of a visit to your page.

You can use this social networking site to your best advantage by adding features that will appeal to your target market and fit in with the brand image you are aiming to create. Quizzes, games, a Facebook group and so on.

FACEBOOK BEACON

Like social ads, Facebook Beacon gives you the ability to build your business by promoting yourself via your Facebook friends news feeds. You can set Beacon to notify all of your Facebook friends whenever you have a new product available, or any other sort of news or information you would like to disseminate amongst your Facebook friends. All you need to do is to add a little code to your Facebook page (this can be done by copy and paste, so no need to panic).

This encourages more interaction with your page, the website of your business and your company in general. This also helps get the word out about your businesses product or service.

Do not fret that you will be mercilessly spamming your Facebook friends and invading their privacy – they can opt out of these updates at any time they choose. You of course have the same ability for Facebook Beacon updates from others.

FACEBOOK INSIGHTS

If you are using facebook as a method of promoting your business you will of course want to know just who is checking out your Facebook page, clicking on your ads and joining your friends list. Facebook Insights is a tool which can give you a lot more detail on these sorts of statistics, which can help you to evaluate the efficacy of your campaign.

Armed with this information you can make the call as to whether viral marketing is working in your favor. Word of mouth is one of the best means of advertising and Facebook can facilitate it on a large scale. Facebook Insights lets you figure out what parts of your campaign are working and which are not as well as giving you valuable demographic information which will help you refine your campaign further.

FACEBOOK PLATFORM

Facebook Platform is an exciting tool for business indeed. Programmers can use this tool to build programs which will work with Facebook and add to the usefulness and fun of your Facebook page. If people like what you have on your page, they will spread the word and this build your client base.

You can add all manner of different applications to your site using this platform. Many opt for games, quizzes and other interactive features. You can have a look at the Applications page on the Facebook site to get an idea what sort of things others are using the platform for. These kinds of features can really help you build your brand image; take advantage of them.

FACEBOOK POLLS

Facebook polls can be a great way to gather demographic information from people using the site. Since you can make the poll interactive and fun to use, you’ll have no trouble gathering data. Best of all, you can target your polling.

You can make sure your polls are targeted just where you want them to be since you already have access to some data such as marital status and age of your Facebook friends. This helps you keep your polling relevant.

Do not forget about these valuable tools – they can really help out your business.

Anyone who is willing to put in just a little bit of effort can make their own applications for Facebook. You just need to learn Facebook Markup Language – there are plenty of tutorials online which can help you learn the ropes of this quickly.

Remember to have a look through what is already out there in terms of Facebook applications before you develop your own. If everyone is already using a very similar application, not too many of your fellow facebook users will be enticed by it. Do something a little different if you want to grab the attentionof people.

CREATING APPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

With just a little bit of programming know how, anybody can make and distribute their own applications. You’ll be doing this to build your business and it can make a big difference. Applications can really draw in people and keep them on your site. Games are especially popular and can build your brand while keeping users engaged and entertained.

You would be unwise to neglect the use of these applications available to you through Facebook. They can help get the word out about your business – and that is why you made a Facebook page for your business in the first place, no?

You will also be building a sense of community amongst all of these potential customers which will help you get sales.

Here are a few tips for getting the best results from your applications:

1) Make it relevant

In marketing, relevancy is everything. If your potential customers can not get into it, or if it is unclear how the application ties into your product or service, rethink your application.

2) Privacy policy

Even if they are on facebook to socialize, people still want their privacy to be respected. This is why there are friend lists and groups, to which one must be invited. Privacy is a natural human desire and Facebook facilitates this while still allowing for socialization. Remember to respect the privacy of users and retain that trust you have worked so hard to build with them.

3) Free distribution

Once your application is finished and ready to go, you will distribute it. You can do this by listing it on the site along with all of the other Facebook applications and then invite others to install it. If your facebook friends like your application, they will spread the word.