Continuing my series on company blogs, I’m now going to describe for you the myriad benefits that come from what MTV might call "Pimping Your Blog". These nifty techniques have nothing to do with the words you write, but rather how people see, interact, and (most importantly) broadcast them around the web.
Friendfeed is a feed aggregator that groups together updates from twitter, facebook, digg, youtube, your blog and much more. It can also publish entries from your friendfeed to twitter. This article shows you how to tap into that twitter publishing feature of friendfeed to automate the posting of your blog entries to twitter. Watch my screencast to create a seamless connectioin between your blog and your twitter account.
Hard economic time brings less people and traffic to you making you second guessing your advertising strategies. Don’t have to spend a dime if you don’t want to but how are you still going to drive traffic? How are you going to announce your next big thing without any advertisement?
Regular readers and my colleagues know that I'm quite the Twitter junkie. It's been particularly great to use Twitter to speak in an open conversation with local businesses, get tips and news from design colleagues, get quick texts about upcoming area events, and even to send myself RSS feeds of great local shopping deals within a few minutes of being posted. I don't have a ton of followers, but that's ok - my goals for Twitter are mostly personal/professional communication, and to dialog in an interesting way with people I might not meet otherwise. Are you happy with who's following you?
So let's assume you've read the article I keep posting regarding 50 uses of Twitter for business (heck, why not browse all of our Twitter-related articles), and you've started your Twitter account. But what's this? No one will follow your tweets? What do you do? I have some suggestions about getting those elusive Twitter followers, so read on past the break to learn some simple ways you can encourage followers and gain that Twitter audience you crave!
Still not sold on facebook, twitter, linkedin, and similar web applications? The most common reason I hear from people as to why they won't try social networking is the loss of their privacy. Well, if that's all that's keeping you from connecting with friends, colleagues, and potential customers, I'm here to share some simple things you can do to participate and maintain whatever level of anonymity you choose!
Read on for ideas for guidelines you can set for yourself, and settings relevant to several of the more popular sites to keep your personal information private.
Kregg Knox and I checked out VolumeOne's Chippewa Valley Tweetup last night. It was a good opportunity to meet the people behind the twitter avatars, and link new people into my twitter network! Hi to Daisy (@phdaisy), Wendi (@Bibliomom), John (@johnthemember), Ben (@statetheatreguy) and the V1 staffers (Nick, Mike, and Kate) - it was great to meet you! Somehow I ended up on the front page of VolumeOne's site today, too... see the screencap after the break. (I'm the guy sitting at the corner of the bar on the right)
All in all a good time, and I'd definitely attend a second. Read Mike Paulus's writeup on the V1 blog!
Looks like next Tuesday, June 2 from 6-8pm, there's going to be a "Tweetup" (a meetup of Twitter users for the less web-savvy) held at the Livery (Downtown/Wisconsin St) and hosted by VolumeOne. Check out their site for more information. I'm planning to be there, so DM or @tweet me if you want to meet up!
In the meantime, check out my Twitter feed! (@benstroinski) This weekend I linked Twitter up to my mobile, so I'm more active on the service than ever. As always, feel free to Tweet me your web/design related questions, comments, or just to say hi.
Several weeks ago I posted an article about joining Twitter. If you haven't yet, give it a try! It takes just a few minutes, and can be adapted for a variety of different business purposes. Still not convinced? New Marketing Labs President Chris Brogan has written about 50 ways you can use Twitter as part of your business.
Today's the day. Are you ready to get started with social networking? Let's start up your very own Twitter account! Click past the break to see how easy it is.
