Home »
Home > twitter
When it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting.
When it comes to managing your social media, consider what your business priorities are and what areas you need to focus on daily, weekly or monthly. Planning your social media activity is crucial!
We’ve made life a little easier with our updated downloadable free Social Media Schedule .PDF!
Daily
Daily social media tasks are crucial for maintaining your image and conversing with others. While it is not time effectively to always be on Twitter and Facebook you want to make sure you respond to any communication quickly.
- Twitter – Tweet and respond to tweets and retweets – Tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are great ways to manage Twitter and if there’s a topic you want to keep an eye on you can create a search column using the related hashtag.
- Google+ – respond to mentions and comments on your posts, scan the feed for interesting content to +1.
- Facebook – check your profile, pages and groups and respond as appropriate.
- LinkedIn – respond to private messages and posts/comments in your groups if you have any.
- Blogs – Respond to comments on your own blog posts – this opens up a dialogue between you and your users/followers, maximising opportunities for business relationships and reciprical marketing.
- Bookmarking - Scan what’s popular on bookmarking and recommendation sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg and then add your own bookmarks accordingly.
- Analytics – Google Analytics is the main choice for clear and concise information and it now features real time reporting. This is great as you can monitor your traffic from social media channels during campaigns to find our what elements of your social media strategy are the most successful.
Read more
Posted by Heather Buckley in SEO Training, Social Media Training on October 21st, 2011 | 2 Comments »
We’ve written a lot about Facebook changes and Google+ updates recently so we thought it would be a good time to check back with Twitter.
Every Friday our Twitter feeds are filled up with posts using the hashtag #FF. Everyone should be familiar with Follow Friday by now (but if not read ‘What is #FF or Follow Friday?’) and many (like us) simply turn a blind eye towards most #FF tweets. We decided to conduct a poll to see if Twitter users still use #FF and looked at which tweets are most successful.
First started by Graphicly CEO Micah Baldwin in January 2009, #FF was a way for new Twitter users to find out who to follow based on recommendations. This was around Twitter’s boom period when a huge number of new users were signing up but didn’t know who to follow – #FF solved this issue and soon became a popular way to advise followers on who to follow. Here is the first ever #FF tweet:
However, nearly 3 years have passed since Micah first started the trend and Twitter now has over 200 million users – do people people still care about #FF?
We asked our Twitter followers their thoughts and – based on just over 100 responses – got the following response:
Our results seem to indicate that few people actually value #FFs these days. Of the 57% who don’t post Follow Friday recommendations only 12% follow others and of the 43% who do post recommendations only 12% think they’re actually useful. Despite our results showing that only 24% of respondents found find #FF genuinely useful, Twitter feeds on Fridays are still crammed with #FF posts. So why do people still use them and which are actually useful? Read the rest of "#FF – Do you Follow Friday? Poll Results Write Up"
Read more
Posted by Craig Charley in Social Media Training on October 14th, 2011 | No Comments »
If you would like help with your social media we offer a great social media training course. We have just launched new HTML5 training and Email Marketing Training course. Search Engine Optimisation training course is also popular in Brighton, Sussex.
How often should you tweet?
Simple answer -as often as you’ve got something worth saying, having said that the more often you tweet, the higher the quality of each tweet needs to be. If your tweets are filling up your followers tweet stream they’ll soon get fed up and unfollow you.
Even if you tweet a lot of useful stuff if you also tweet too much useless stuff it will get too time consuming for your followers to pick the meat form the bones, you need to debone your tweets!
What should you tweet about?
It’s not just stuff that others can profit from that you should be tweeting however. It’s good to mix in some personal stuff too — being you injects a human element into your twitter account that others can relate to.
So tweeting in a nutshell:
- Never tweet worthless junk
- Sometimes tweet personal stuff — especially if it’s something others will relate to.
- Make sure a really big proportion of your tweets are very high value and that this proportion is higher the more often you tweet.
- As a rough guide tweet about 15 – 20 times a day unless you’re consistently delivering exceptional value..
If you would like help with your social media we offer a great social media training course. We have just launched new HTML5 training and Email Marketing Training course. Search Engine Optimisation training course is also popular.
Read more
Posted by Heather Buckley in Internet Marketing Training, Social Media Training on August 17th, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Your Social Media Management Schedule
NEW! Don’t miss our free Social Media Schedule download!
Ever feel a bit intimidated by the fast pace of social media and the sheer volume of it all? Our Social Networking Training, Blogging and SEO courses in Brighton, Sussex, are a good starting place if you’re new to blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn WordPress and the like. But once you are up and running it’s still very easy to feel alarmed – but have no fear we have a solution!
It doesn’t matter how many tweets you make a day or how often you write a blog, as long as you plan your activity and break it down into simple stages. For those who struggle with this, consider our Time Management Training. A recent blog post listed the 50 most common social media mistakes and number one is “lack of planning” – planning your social media activity is crucial!
If you find yourself wondering “how do I manage my social media activity most efficiently?” then read on for our example schedule of what you can do throughout the day, once daily, weekly and monthly.
Read more
Posted by Natasha Stone in Social Media Training, Time Management Training on October 18th, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Your Social Networking Policy – A Business Bible for Social Networking
Social networks are changing the way your business communicates, creating new ways to interact with existing or potential customers. These new platforms have created a new framework within which we communicate and build relationships. Therefore using Social Media in the right way is essential if you want to build the strongest and most successful relationships.
Only 29% of companies have a Social Media Policy, but everything your employees say about you online represents you as a company; if you haven’t already you should think about establishing a set of Social Media Guidelines for your business.
In this odd realm where the public and private blur, how do you present your business effectively? Of course if you want to become a Social Media Pro then our Social Media training course could be the choice for you. But if you’re eager to get started, read our straightforward guide to the rules which should always be born in mind…
The Gospel – Social Media Policy Basics
It doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or WordPress, if you engage with Social Media take care to follow these basic principles:
- Don’t stray from what you know, and always offer a personal perspective.
- Never be afraid to enter a debate with others, but do so politely and respectfully .
- Take a moment before you click “post”; don’t delay in responding to others, just remember who you’re representing and to check before you post.
- Post relevant comments, and never spam or go off-topic.
If you need to know how to set up your own blog, consider our Blogging course or WordPress course. Once you’re ready to go, you’ll find social media is easier than you think; just read on for the top ten guidelines.
Read the rest of "Social Media Guidelines"
Read more
Posted by Natasha Stone in Social Media Training on February 16th, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Would you like a good looking Twitter Background for your business? Would you like a Twitter Background that lets you show more information than the mini profile, like the URL of your website, Linkedin and Facebook details, maybe your Flickr account and your email and telephone number?
Well you can!
Download our free Twitter background template PSD file, fill in the blanks and you will have a twitter background just like ours @SBTtraining. Incidentally if you are just starting out using Social Networking for your business you would benefit from attending our Social Networking Training course.
How to create your Free Twitter Background
If you are good with Photoshop you can fiddle with the colours by creating your own styles for the box and line at top. I have made them grey to go with most colour schemes. I think that patterned backgrounds can be quite distracting, so I chose black and white for ours. Desaturating and fading images can also work if your design is looking too garish. You can find ideas for your free Twitter background by looking for free desktop wallpaper.
To improve your Photoshop skills you could try our Photoshop training courses for beginners and advanced Photoshop users.
Download your free twitter background template here.
Download free twitter backgound
- Open and unzip the PSD file called twitterbackground.zip
- Find or create a backgound image and paste it into the layer called “put your backgound image here”
- Find an image, portrait, logo or whatever you like and paste it into the layer called “Put an image or your logo here”
- Fill in your contact details
- Save as jpg around 75% quality
- Log into Twitter
- Click on Settings from the top menu
- Click on Design from the submenu
- Click on Change Background Image ( bottom left of page) and a browse for files dialog box will appear
- Find and select your new twitter backgound jpg
- Save
Once you have created your background don’t forget to mention it in our comments below with a link to your new Twitter page, you may even get a few followers as a result.
Read more
Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training, Social Media Training on February 8th, 2010 | 13 Comments »
If you are using twitter the Twitter Spammers will come and get you. This article will help you find them so that you can block them from your account. Unfortunately this will be an ongoing process as with all anti spam activities.
You’ll soon learn to spot them, if you suspect there is something dodgy about a new follower you’re probably right.
Why do the Twitter Spammers Do it?
Because there are some people who feel it is only polite to follow everyone that follows you. This is clearly not a good idea; clearing out the not so useful people you have inadvertently followed will be yet another ongoing job so liberally following useless or nefarious twitters in the first place is a complete waste of time and energy. Also, you only want to follow people who are going to post messages that will at least occasionally interest you, why would you want to subscribe to a load of old spam? Well some people still do it, so for Twitter Spammers there is a very good chance that they will get at least 10% of say 30 000 people they start following to follow them back, that’s 3 000 followers. If you are one of those followers the spammer’s links show up on your stream and you are contributing to their free advertising campaign. Auto-follow is therefore not the best tool to use.
Read the rest of "10 ways to identify a Twitter Spammer"
Read more
Posted by Heather Buckley in Social Media Training on October 15th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
