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You Can Use Twitter as Your Own Personal Research Shortcut - by Phyllis Zimbler Miller @ZimblerMiller

By Phyllis Zimbler MIller

Most people who would like to use the Internet to promote their brand, book or business are very busy people. It is understandable that these people feel they don’t have time to read book after book or white paper after white paper of information on different aspects of Internet marketing — even though doing so could be very useful.

Therefore, here is a shortcut for learning a little more each day without being overwhelmed:

Do a search on Twitter for specific areas you’d like to learn more about, such as:

SEO (search engine optimization)

Facebook fan pages

LinkedIn

Social media marketing

Then follow people who frequently tweet about these subjects and whose tweets contain links to good blog posts on these topics.

Once each day quickly scan your Twitter stream to find two or three tweets with links to SHORT articles on these topics. Click through on the link and scan the first paragraph of the article. If the article appears that it will add to your store of knowledge, print it out for reading later in the day or evening.

Just like you make time to brush your teeth each night, make time to read the two or three short articles you’ve printed out.

Voila! You can go to sleep having learned something new — and maybe something that you can use to promote your brand, book or business online.

P.S.  If you’re thinking of starting an offline or online business, get Melinda F. Emerson’s new book “Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months or Less! A Month-By-Month Guide to a Business That Works.”  You can read my review of the book at http://budurl.com/smallbizladyguide

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the co-founder of the Internet marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. You can get her free report “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business” at http://www.MillerMosaicPowerof3.com

 

You Can Use Twitter as Your Own Personal Research Shortcut - by Phyllis Zimbler Miller @ZimblerMiller

By Phyllis Zimbler MIller

Most people who would like to use the Internet to promote their brand, book or business are very busy people. It is understandable that these people feel they don’t have time to read book after book or white paper after white paper of information on different aspects of Internet marketing — even though doing so could be very useful.

Therefore, here is a shortcut for learning a little more each day without being overwhelmed:

Do a search on Twitter for specific areas you’d like to learn more about, such as:

SEO (search engine optimization)

Facebook fan pages

LinkedIn

Social media marketing

Then follow people who frequently tweet about these subjects and whose tweets contain links to good blog posts on these topics.

Once each day quickly scan your Twitter stream to find two or three tweets with links to SHORT articles on these topics. Click through on the link and scan the first paragraph of the article. If the article appears that it will add to your store of knowledge, print it out for reading later in the day or evening.

Just like you make time to brush your teeth each night, make time to read the two or three short articles you’ve printed out.

Voila! You can go to sleep having learned something new — and maybe something that you can use to promote your brand, book or business online.

P.S.  If you’re thinking of starting an offline or online business, get Melinda F. Emerson’s new book “Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months or Less! A Month-By-Month Guide to a Business That Works.”  You can read my review of the book at http://budurl.com/smallbizladyguide

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the co-founder of the Internet marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. You can get her free report “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business” at http://www.MillerMosaicPowerof3.com

 

The Art of Conversations on Twitter - By Phyllis Zimbler Miller - @ZimblerMiller

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Twitter is about conversation – really.  When I first joined Twitter I didn’t understand this concept and had a hard time figuring out how a conversation could take place in the midst of what seemed like controlled chaos.

 

But just like learning a new language means that at first you do not understand anything and then eventually you catch on to what is being said, you must be patient in order to learn the language of Twitter.

 

One barrier to having good conversations on Twitter is probably the same inertia that can throw up barriers to whatever we are considering doing:  We haven’t done something that way before. 

 

Facebook and LinkedIn are easier to join in the conversation because they both have several “threaded” functions – functions where you see the first statement and then the following responding statements all clumped together.

 

Yet once you crack the Twitter conversation code, it can be very invigorating to participate in the conversation flow. 

 

Of course, perhaps the most intense conversation experience on Twitter is to take part in a tweetchat – a real-time Twitter conversation on a specific topic.  (It does help to be a fast typist.)

 

If you are relatively new to Twitter and haven’t yet figured out how to take part in the conversation, spend time “watching.”  Then, when you are ready, reply to people whose tweets ask questions that you can answer or reply to people’s statements on which you’d like to expand.

 

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is co-founder of www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com.  Her new FREE report is “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business” – grab your report now from www.millermosaicpowerof3.com

The Continual Learning Curve of Internet Business - by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Starting one’s own business is the dream of many, many people.  And with the Internet leveling the playing field in terms of low-cost access to potential target markets, the dream can seem even more accessible.

 

Yet there’s one important element to be considered before anyone quits his/her job to start running his/her own business:

 

Are you prepared to be on a continual learning curve the rest of your working life?

 

Yes, that’s what it takes in most cases.  In fact, even if you make so much money that you can hire people to do things for you, you still need to be able to understand enough to supervise what others are doing for you.

 

While it would probably be a good idea if every high school student had to take an accounting course (probably more useful than the required economics course), this is unlikely to happen.  Therefore, many people start their own business without any knowledge of good business accounting principles.

 

And whether your business is on the Web or has a physical location, you still need to figure out how much money you have going out and how much money you have coming in – accounting 101.

 

Melinda F. Emerson in her upcoming book “Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months or Less! A Month-By-Month Guide to a Business That Works” (I have a review copy) says:  “As a business owner, you must constantly look for ways to improve yourself… The idea is no matter where you are in business, you can always improve how you do things and learn something that can help your business grow.”

 

Why am I going on and on about this?  Because I’ve been communicating with potential clients who want to grow their business and yet have not taken advantage of the free resources on the Internet to learn as much as possible about what the Internet can offer their business.

 

I feel badly for the people who email me saying that they want to grow their business online but don’t really understand anything about how their website works or how other things work on the Web.

 

While I control myself, I want to write back in all capital letters:  THEN START LEARNING! 

 

You don’t have to become a computer programmer but you sure better learn about the opportunities that your Web site can provide your business.  Because, after all, it’s your business – and you can’t afford to let someone else have all the knowledge about a very important aspect of your business. 

 

To start learning more, do a Google or a Bing search and look for blogs that post Web site information.  Sign up for email notification or an RSS feed to be alerted each time a new post is published.

 

FYI – I use Twitter as my personal information sifter.  I often click on a link to a blog post recommended by someone I follow and trust on Twitter.  This way I get exposed to all kinds of new ideas and information. 

 

Take Melinda Emerson’s words to heart and constantly look for ways to improve yourself by learning more about your business – on and off the Web.

 

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. Her new FREE report is “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business” – grab your report now from www.MillerMosaicPowerof3.com

 

 

Harnessing Twitter, Facebook and your Website to Help Power Your Business - by @ZimblerMiller

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller -

Below is the beginning of my free report on the topic of harnessing Twitter, Facebook and your website to help power your business. In other words, what I call the “power of 3.”

A husband and wife I know have a new business selling a physical product based on the husband’s extensive knowledge. They have a decent website and some distribution for their physical product.

Although they have no advertising funds, they need to increase their business – to get people so interested in the product that these new fans encourage distributors to carry the product.

A mutual friend asked for my advice because of my Internet marketing expertise. I replied that there is a powerful free promotional opportunity available to anyone with the willingness to learn and to consistently follow a simple marketing strategy.

That opportunity, as you have probably guessed, is using the Internet’s free social networking sites (also known as social media sites) to develop a loyal fan following.

Yet I personally know how terrifying it can be to start promoting on the web. Which site to join first? What to do to connect with others? How to get people interested in my business?

And now I’m offering to take you through setting up a business identity on Twitter and Facebook, and then linking this consistent professional identity with your company website.

Why am I giving away this very valuable information for free?

Because I understand how overwhelming getting started can be. And, of course, I am hoping that you will so appreciate my advice that you will become my loyal fans.

Here’s the benefit you will get from reading this short report:

You will have a step-by-step beginning blueprint of what to do to start harnessing the power of 3 – Twitter, Facebook, and your company website – to help your business succeed.

And if you have any doubts as to how powerful social networking can be, read the article “Facebook Directs More Online Users Than Google” – http://cot.ag/bikPeW

(Disclaimer: I can NOT promise that your business will succeed if you follow these steps. I can say that I do believe you will have a better chance of success if you act on these steps than if you do not act.)

Our goal: Create a three-pointed online marketing plan that integrates a company website, Twitter account and Facebook Fan Page into a relationship-building program.

To read the FULL free report, go to http://budurl.com/powerof3 and fill out your name (first name is fine) and email address to get access to the downloadable report.

After reading the report, I hope you’ll become a fan of the “power of 3.”

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant.  If you liked this article, you’ll love her company’s new FREE report “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business” – claim your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/power-of-3/

 

 

How to Find the Most Recent Tweets on a Topic Using Google Search

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

If you are using Google to search for information on a topic, besides finding websites and articles on that topic, you might also like to find the most recent tweets about this topic.

 

The following can only be done if you use the web browser Firefox so do these steps:

 

Step 1: Go to http://www.mozilla.com and click on the “Download Firefox – Free” button. Don’t worry about all your saved bookmarks, passwords, and browsing history you had on Internet Explorer.  When you install Firefox, it asks if you want to import all that – click yes to get this all on Firefox.

 

Step 2: Go to http://budurl.com/gmonkey and click button “Add to Firefox.”  After installing this Greasemonkey addon, Firefox will ask you to restart – do so.

 

Step 3: Go to http://budurl.com/twitterongoogle and click “Install” button.  Firefox will then ask you if you’re sure you want to install this Greasemonkey script.  Click “install” again.

 

Now when you search on Google, you will see the five most recent tweets on this topic.

 

P.S.  You might also like to read my commentary on the new feature Google Buzz.  Read this commentary at http://budurl.com/GgleBz

 

 

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the Twitter marketing expert at Site-Booster.com.  If you liked this article, you’ll love her company’s FREEreport on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – claim your report now fromwww.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

 

 

Are You Coordinating Your Tweets With Your Facebook and LinkedIn Accounts? by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

I’ve been working on a social media inventory for our Miller Mosaic Power Marketing clients.  What’s a social media inventory?  It’s a way to keep track of which social media activities are feeding in automatically to which other social media activities.

 

Let’s assume you have these main social media elements:

 

Twitter

Facebook personal page

Facebook fan page (for your business)

LinkedIn

BlogTalkRadio show

WordPress blog

YouTube channel

 

How to coordinate these accounts so that you are not repeating your efforts endlessly and are not repeating the same information endlessly to your followers?

 

We’ll start from the premise that Twitter will be our major update platform.  Thus we want our tweets to go into Facebook (both pages) and LinkedIn to update those social media accounts. 

 

Now for those of you who want all your tweets to go into these other platforms, you can use an application that automatically sends all tweets to these accounts.  Or you can use a selective Twitter account that allows you to control which tweets go into which other platforms.

 

For example, you’ll see that some of my tweets have #fb or #in at the end of the tweet.  I am using a selective Twitter application that lets me send these tweets into Facebook or LinkedIn only when I use these hashtag designations.  (Note that #li also works for LinkedIn.)

 

In terms of WordPress blog updates, these can go automatically into LinkedIn and Facebook through the WordPress blog applications on those platforms.  If I wanted my WordPress blog to go into Twitter automatically, I could use an application such as Twitterfeed.

 

Facebook offers the ability to automatically bring in your BlogTalkRadio show feed and your YouTube channel feed into Facebook.

 

Disclaimer: The above has a good chance of being accurate today.  Tomorrow the above information may not be accurate because every social media platform is busy adding new applications, tweaking older applications, and in general making it difficult to follow who’s on base.

 

Bottom line:  Make the best choices you can now for how you feed this information into your various platforms, and then revisit these choices every couple of months to see if these choices still work the way you want.

 

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant whose power marketing website is http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com.  If you liked this article, you’ll love her FREE report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – download the report now from http://www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

 

What Material Can you Use as Posts for your Blog? By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller:

Disclaimer:  I am not an attorney.  But I did start out in my professional life as a newspaper journalist, and I am thus particularly attuned to what may be copyright infringement.

 

Recently I noticed on someone’s blog that he had published as a blog post a complete article from a major newspaper.  And, yes, the blog owner had attributed the name of the paper and the author, but this is surely not covered under the definition of fair use.

 

How do you deal with wanting to share copyright-covered information with your blog readers?  There are several ways:

 

If an article has been submitted to an article directory, that means you have the right to use the entire article on your blog as long as you include the author’s resource (bio) box at the end of the article.

 

If a post has been published on someone else’s blog and that blog owner has the copyright, you can ask that person if you can “reprint by permission” the blog post with full attribution.

 

Perhaps the best thing is to say “thanks to person X for getting me thinking of this topic” – insert the link to the article – “and here’s my opinion …”

 

You can refer to points in the article as you discuss the same issues, attributing the ideas to the writer and the article publisher.  You can even quote from the article with attribution.  How much you can quote is a question for a copyright attorney. 

 

Repeat of the disclaimer: I am not an attorney.  What I have offered above are some common-sense considerations when you want to carry material on your blog from other sources.  And there’s another possibility:

 

I sometimes receive emails on military-related topics.  When I feel the emails are of significance, I will ask the email sender for permission to run the email along with attribution.  (For an example, see my Mrs. Lieutenant blog post “Free HeroBracelet for Gold Star Families” athttp://budurl.com/freeherobracelet )

 

And many people who write for the Internet are quite pleased to share their content with a bigger audience.  But you must be careful to honor the creation of those writers and not take advantage, even unintentionally, of their material.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

How to Conduct Brand Monitoring on Twitter

 

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

As we look ahead to 2010, our brand – what we are known for – is something that we should definitely want to protect. 

You’ve probably worked very hard to establish this brand, and you do not want people tarnishing that brand.

Can you prevent people from complaining about your products or services?  No.  But you can make sure that the moment someone does complain publicly on Twitter, for example, you are brand monitoring and you then nip the problem in the bud.

 

Let’s take an imaginary scenario of how brand monitoring on Twitter can protect your company:

 

Jane is a cell phone customer of Company X and she’s been unsuccessfully trying to get her bill straightened out through customer service.  She’s frustrated and she tweets “Company X has lousy customer service – I can’t get anyone to straighten out my billing problem.”

 

Now you are Company X’s person on Twitter.  And you use various search functions to make sure that whenever anyone tweets about Company X you know about the tweet within a reasonable amount of time.

 

When you see this tweet by Jane, you immediately tweet her publicly: “@username Call me at xxxxx and I’ll personally take care of this problem.”

 

Jane calls you, you take care of the problem, and hopefully she then tweets: “Company X just took care of my problem.  That’s good customer service!”

 

Now imagine if you hadn’t been brand monitoring and Jane’s tweet went unanswered.  Then her complaint could snowball.

 

For example, someone could reply to Jane: “@username I also had lousy customer service from Company X.”

 

Jane could then reply: “I wish I could switch to another cell phone company.  I really dislike Company X.”

 

And before you know it a whole lot of people – people who perhaps don’t even have any complaint with your company – have jumped on the complaining bandwagon. 

 

This is the way that a brand can suffer damage.  And it could probably have been prevented if you had caught it early, taken care of the problem immediately, and then you or the now-satisfied customer (or both) could have treated a successful resolution.

 

Brand monitoring can take advantage of positive comments

 

Brand monitoring on Twitter can also track positive comments.  If, for example, someone tweets a compliment for the customer service of Company X, you can retweet that compliment. 

 

You can also help the perception of your brand by tweeting worthwhile information in connection to your brand.  This will enable you to build up goodwill so that, if there is a problem, people will be more likely to forgive you (assuming you took care of the problem immediately).

 

In conclusion, brand monitoring is a very important marketing activity as part of your brand’s participation in the social networking world of Twitter and other social media sites. 

 

© 2009 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the Twitter marketing expert at Site-Booster.com.  If you liked this article, you’ll love her company’s free report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – claim your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

New Year's Resolutions for Internet Business People

 

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

I’ve been getting email marketing messages about business planning for 2010.  Some are filled with hype about how much money I could make in only 30 days.  Others are about identifying my inner or outer goals.

 

While I personally believe that people doing business on the Web should continually re-evaluate their business actions and goals, the new year does present an obvious time to do this.

 

Here are six suggested New Year’s resolutions for Internet business people:

 

·         Be wary of people who offer to sell you a program that will make you $10,000 a month with only an hour of work a day

 

·         Be wary of believing someone who tells you how easy it is for him or her to make money on the Internet and you can do this too.

 

·         Do commit to learning as much as you can about Internet business.  (This does not mean learning enough to do everything yourself.  It does mean being an informed user.)

 

·         Do seek out groups of peers and mentors who can help you advance in your Internet business goals.  (There is no need to reinvent the wheel.)

 

·         Do understand that, for most successful Internet business people, success follows a great deal of hard work and time invested in learning from mistakes as well as triumphs.

 

·         Do keep an open mind about learning new things and do not drop out at the first obstacle you confront.  (Imagine how great you’ll feel after you’ve overcome each obstacle.)

 

Wishing all of you a productive and successful 2010,

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller

 

© 2009 Miller Mosaic, LLC

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant whose company’s website is www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com.  If you liked this post, you’ll love her free report on “Power Marketing’s Top 3 Internet Marketing Tips” – grab your report now at www.millermosaicllc.com/free-report

 

Also check out her new ebook “What You Should Know About the Basics of Internet Business” at http://www.millermosaicllc.com/internet-business-101-ebook/