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November Newsletter Published

We invite you to review our November e-newsletter online today. In this issue we talk about several topics of interest:

1. Blogging and SEO – Working Hand in Hand

2. Twitter Made Easy with Social Oomph

3. Personal Information on Google – Can You Ever Remove It?

If you have not subscribed to our monthly e-newsletter you can subscribe here. We only mail once a month and have chatty interesting articles, reviews, and tips that you may find of interest. We never spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time.

To review past newsletters please visit our archive.

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How Do You Grow a Twitter Following?

You don’t need to buy a white paper or an e-book to understand how to grow your Twitter following, but you can benefit from some of my own tried and tested techniques that I will freely share in this post.

First let me share with you some statistics from client accounts showing their actual growth over time.

Client One: start=0, 8/13= 187 followers, 9/1=308 follower, 10/241 566 followers

Client Two: start=0, 8/13=89 followers, 9/1=220 followers, 10/21 371 followers

Client Three: start=0, 9/1=64 followers, 9/14=117 followers, 10/21=320 followers

To put this in perspective here is the traffic for a client account we started but did not provide services for in the same time period showing natural growth as a control.

Client A: start=0, 8/13=5 followers, 9/1=11 followers, 10/24=18 followers.

That’s a pretty big difference 303 to 547 followers versus 18 in the same time period.

So how do we do it? Here are my tips:

  1. Tweet a minimum of 5 times a day.
  2. Tweet 5 days a week.
  3. Schedule your tweets to start at 8:00 am and then space them out to about 4:00 pm.
  4. Include tips and trivia in your tweets as well as links.
  5. Become the authority in your area – share your knowledge.
  6. Interact a minimum of twice daily with followers of people you follow through direct messages or @’s
  7. Thank people for retweets.
  8. Send comments to others about their tweets – I really liked what you said about …
  9. Use bit.ly to track your clicks. Once you see that people do click what you link to you will know the value of the time you invest in Twitter.
  10. Get professional help if you don’t know what to do. We do provide Twitter services if you need them.
  11. Make sure you follow and unfollow anyone who follows or unfollow you using Social Oomph.
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Twitter Tweets to be Indexed by Bing and Google – Wow!

This is huge news for the world of search engine organic placement and inbound link creation if you did not understand these recent releases from both Bing and from Google.

First the background:

Bing is to index Twitter tweets and Facebook status updates:

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20091021/exclusive-guess-who-else-is-coming-to-dinner-twitter-microsoft-bing-deal-confirmed-but-so-is-facebook-bing/

Google is to indext Twitter tweets:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html

If you are not already using Twitter this is an excellent reason to start right away. Not only will this new decision by the search engines allow inclusion of the very freshest news and updates in their index via rabid Twitter users who want to tweet just about everything, but tweets with links will be indexed too.

At least the indexing of tweets and links appears to be in the offing at this early stage. Meaning specifically that if you link to your website in tweets, you may now be driving search traffic not just Twitter user traffic, you may build web authority, and may even now use tweets as entry points to your blog or website. Additionally if Google or Bing count the links as inbound links – WOW! Now we just don’t know for sure if the real SEO benefits mentioned will stay in the mix until tweets start to be indexed and we can really evaluate traffic and if the engines filter tweets in some way to prevent organic benefits, but the potential benefits of this announcement to tweeters is huge!

So if you are not involved in Twitter why take a change that one of the biggest new ways to drive search traffic to your site will pass you by? Build your base before there is a huge rush. Establish your account as an authority now and not a newbie that will be lost in the shuffle.

 Twitter is free but if you need professional help we have a nicely developed Twitter service program and a great track record in growing account followings. Check out our Twitter services to see if we would be a good match for your needs.

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How to Schedule Facebook Status Updates

Are you looking to schedule Facebook updates to keep your productivity in line and not have to be tied to a computer during the day and yet keep connected? Do you wish you could program your Facebook status updates when you have a really busy day so you don’t miss out on exposure. I’ve found out how to do this and wanted to share this great tip with you.

Here’s the process:

  1. Set up Selective Twitter application in Facebook
  2. Log into your Facebook account first.
    b. In a new browser screen add this URL: http://apps.facebookcom/selectivetwitter/
    c. You will be asked to enter your Twitter user name and approve access, please do so.
    d. If you would like your Facebook updates to appear on your fan pages, please click the tabs in the application to go to pages and then install the application as well as grant access.
  3. Set up an account at www.HootSuite.com Log in to HootSuite and write your Facebook status update. Schedule your micro post using the calendar function and then make sure to end your post with #fb.

That’s it, fast and simple your timed post gets sent to Facebook at the correct time.

Follow-up Note:

This last week the Twitter API was very flaky and I had a lot of trouble getting Selective Twitter to work, so I have found another simpler alternative that you may want to consider instead, it is called Social Tomorrow. With Social Tomorrow, you set up an account and then login to a web interface and type in and then schedule your Facebook Updates. It does not use the Twitter API and so is not subject to traffic overloads as your posts go right to Facebook. For our professional client needs this is actually a better fit for us than Selective Twitter.