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Google+ Business Pages Features & Overview

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:15:16 +0000

Google+ launched “Pages” for business and brands after originally announcing its Google+ social network in June that only allowed personal profiles.

Google+ even has also removed some of the brands that set up accounts using the personal profile. Some businesses were allowed to stay for testing purposes including the Ford Motor company.

Here are some of the major features of new Google+ “Pages”:

1. Allow Local Businesses to Create a Page – This enables customers to easily connect with the business’s physical location and include a map, address and phone numbers.

2. Google+ Pages includes Circles - The default circles include: Following, Customers, VIP’s and Team Members.

3. Conduct Hangouts – This duplicates the feature as seen in the personal profiles.

4. Share Photos, Videos and Links – This is the same as personal profiles and Facebook.

5. Google+ Allows Multiple “Pages” – Similar to Facebook even though you access your “page” through a personal account you can choose what profile business or personal you want to act as.

6. Total +1 Counts – As distinct from personal profiles an overall Google +1 count will show on a Google profile “page”. This will provide “social proof” of the popularity of a brands website which is a not a function for the personal profile G+ badge.

Google+ “Pages” – An Overlook

The Google+ pages are a very simple start that at first glance looks almost immature (we have become accustomed to what is now a very complex Facebook platform.)

What must be kept in mind is that any social network is a “work in progress” that will continue to develop and grow.

So some of the “missing” essential features that people have become accustomed to on Facebook may appear in time as Google+ pages “grow up:

1. Multiple Admin – This is not currently available but is coming apparently.

2. Custom Vanity URL’s – Just like Facebook when it launched its pages you were given a very big “number” not your name or brand. There is no information on when that might change.

3. Google+ Fans will not be able to Post Directly to a Wall – Currently you cannot post directly to a page but only offer comments on a post.

4. Google+ Pages do not Allow “Games” - I don’t know about you but I am not going to be shedding tears about this feature not being included.

5. You Don’t have to Verify you are a Company or Business – At this stage, you don’t have to validate your company credentials (I am sure this is an initial expediency measure to ensure fast take-up). Google+ will be providing verification badges in the future that will assist in ensuring brand “pages” credibility.

6. Pages Cannot Follow People – You can only follow people after they have first been followed as distinct from Twitter’s rules.

How to get Started with Google+ Pages:

Just like Facebook you do need a personal account to get started.

Step 1: Start at Your Personal Profile – Open up your Google+ personal profile dashboard and start the process. To setup a Google + Company Fan Page you will start by going to https://plus.google.com/pages/create

Step 2: Choosing Your Business Category - Start creating your page by selecting whether you are a local business, product or brand, company, institution or organization and the other options.

Step 3: Adding your Brand Name – This include adding your website URL (website link) as well as your business sub category and who you would like to be able to see your fan page. You can now limit what age group can see your fan page and limit if the content is not appropriate for certain age groups or users.

Step 4: Customizing the “Pages” Profile – This is where you write what your business is about, choose a Tagline for your business and upload the company and brand logo.

Step 5: Optimizing, Sharing and Connecting – You can embed a snippet of code in your website or blog that allows people to link and connect to your Google+ “page”. It also provides you with the URL for your business “page”.

After setting up your Google + Fan Page, you can share the new fan page with all your circles. Make sure after you setup your fan page that you post a couple things on there to not make your brand or local business look like they haven’t done anything. If you are on the cutting edge of technology, you should always be posting about the things that you’re doing on your site. Give yourself like, push it out to all your circles.

No,w you can manage your Google+ business page from Hootsuite. Here’s our eMarketinGuide Google+ FanPage. Don’t forget to follow us if you like it…

Amazing Social Media Growth Statistics 2011

Ankush Kohli — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:52:05 +0000

During weekend, I read this article on jeffbullas and it was brilliant. It’ll tell you why & how social media is the future of Web. Here we go:

There are 2 billion of us who are connected to the internet and have been distracted by social multi-media networking sites that are generating astounding amounts of content with alluring high definition images and videos.

One cannot run away from their charm as they entice you to log in when you are out and about with either with your laptop, iPad or smart phone.

Have a look on stats below at the steep curve of the user growth rate in all age ranges and demographics, and the increasing popularity of social networking into every facet of work, play and life in general. One can’t disagree anymore that social media hasn’t changed forever how we interact and connect online.

One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook ( This number is calculated by dividing the planets’ now 7 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users)
People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site
More than 250 million people use Facebook through their cellphoness
More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook
30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month
300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages
People on Facebook install 20 million “Apps” every day
YouTube has 490 million unique users who visit every month (as of February 2011)
YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month, excluding those videos viewed on phones and embedded in websites
Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years)
Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles
Wikipedia authors total over 91,000 contributors
People upload 3,000 images to Flickr (the photo sharing social media site) every minute
Flickr hosts over 5 billion images
190 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter (May 2011)
Twitter is handling 1.6 billion queries per day
Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users a day
Google+ has more than 25 million users
Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users at 16 days (Twitter took 780 days and Facebook 852 days)

Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

Are We Over with Facebook?

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:05:25 +0000

As soon as a brand name turns out to be famous, we assume it’s there to stay. So for years now, we’ve been Googling to show we are well-informed, Tweeting to remain through what’s occurring around us, and Facebooking for exhibitionism and voyeurism.

Nevertheless, with Facebook bringing new policies, and Google trying to surmount yet another aspect of our lives with Google+, there seems to be a sense of discomfort among netizens. The question rises, ‘How much do these networks know about us, and how will they use that knowledge?‘ is at last becoming significant.

So why should we get worried now? It is a known fact that Google has been privy to the content of supposedly private emails ever since they began to display targeted advertisements on our sidebars.

The adverse effects of Facebook become a topic of debate every time a post has a drastic effect. Earlier, the site was held responsible for ramifications ranging from divorce to denial of medical benefits.

The Facebook debate intensified when it was discovered that Facebook was using cookies to keep track of sites a user visits even after s/he logs out of the network. A huge number of Facebook friends began to post on each other’s walls, cautioning that the network was going to start charging money for its use, except one spammed all of one’s friends with the notice. Others began to sending notes on the dangers of Timeline – such as, that people will be able to see you’ve ‘unfriended’ them. Just in case they didn’t get the hint, now they can rub their faces in it!

It was also assumed that the amount of information and connections one has on Facebook will keep one ‘locked in’ for decades made everyone disgusting at the idea.

Do we recall that Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies didn’t bang on our doors with guns and forced us to sign up. Neither did they make us update their friends with every bit of detail of their lives. Also, they haven’t deprived anybody from the freedom of deleting posts, or even deactivating their accounts.

There appears to be a long-lasting fear that Facebook will expose undisclosed stalkers by allowing stalkees discover the people who are checking out their profiles. Every once in a while, one finds a wall post linking to a page that will allow one to “see who’s viewing [one's] profile!”. Never mind the fact that a user can block people from finding him or her, and filter what people see even if they do find him or her.

Also, users appear annoyed by Facebook’s decision to prioritize updates from people they interact with the most. Why does Facebook get to decide whom we want to see updates from? Thus people would like to be updated on the lives of people they don’t remain in touch with?

As soon as Google made an effort to seize Facebook’s grip on social networking by launching its e Google+, Facebook reacted by replicating its one attractive feature – circles to determine the visibility of each post.

A great deal has been made of Twitter‘s role in coordinating relief efforts after bomb blasts and natural disasters. Many of us are grateful to Orkut, and later Facebook, for enabling us to get in touch with long-lost school friends. Blogs and websites have done for intelligent people what shopping malls and reality shows did for beautiful ones – authors and journalists have got unprecedented publicity through their web forums, and cartoonists, humorists, and even artists have been discovered.

How Do I Get Twitter Followers

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 11 May 2011 06:32:48 +0000

My last post was about “How to Create a Facebook FanPage” and now, it’s time to write about a strategy to attract twitter followers. Get thousands of Twitter followers quickly everyday and increase your Twitter influence. Twitter is an incredible way to get traffic to your site(s), network, stay in contact with your friends and family by creating new friends.

Twitter a place, you go to entertain yourself and to be entertained by those who follow. You can have all the credit and benefits of more Twitter Followers without having to pay someone else, and without having to give up your login and password to a third party. With quantity of followers throw out, focus instead on quality – attracting and keeping those who find some tiny measure of joy in every-so-often 140 characters of wreckage.

Be ready to follow these twitter tips:

The most easy way to get twitter followers is to simply follow others! Seems simple, yet not many people are doing it. All you do is search Twitter for the “gurus” in your niche, and follow the people that are following them. You will find the bulk of your target market, to follow their followers.
Get great stories from other people and share them with a link & attribution.
Push your followers to retweet your links by briefing it. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.
Follow 1000 Twitter users, how many do you think will follow back – 60%, maybe 40%, or maybe even lesser at 20% you say. Means if you start to follow 1000 new people, at least 200 will follow you back – and if you keep on doing that on a consistent basis you can have thousands of Twitter followers for free!
Your bio should display on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you.
Include a link to Twitter in all email signature, Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, send out to your list. At the end of the email, just say “Follow me on Twitter” with your link, everywhere else you live online
Managed to get on the Twitter suggested users list by hook or crook, you would never have to look for twitter followers ever again. You will gain twitter followers at the rate of thousands per day!
Participate in online events that use #hashtags memes, search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. And jump in on the conversation.
Pictures are heavily retweeted spread around. Use iPhone apps for mobile pic such as Tweetie or Twitterific, which support you in uploading.
Respond to OTHER PEOPLE using the @reply method. Don’t overtweet (more than 20 a day to most people)
There are many popular Twitter lists & top twitter users. Watch what they tweet out there in different niches, try to get on them and become famous. Get your name listed in the Times 50 most popular Twitter celebrities, to get a few thousand audiences at once.
Use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find people talking about the things YOU talk about, and follow them!
Start a contest. say I will give one $200 Amazon gift certificate offered if he reached the #1 most followed spot one would not mind following one more person. And add thousands of followers…brilliant.
Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day and Qwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.

How many followers do you have now? I am sure these Twitter tips will help you gain Twitter followers easily and follow me on Twitter (@ankushkohli) to keep getting such tips.

How to Create Fan Pages on Facebook

Ankush Kohli — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 05:14:43 +0000

Some people create Facebook Fan Page for branding, entertainment, representing their business etc. Brands today have the incredible opportunity of interacting with consumers on the social network & marketing plan in the world of Facebook.

It is the public’s wish and feedback that will decide the brand’s fate in the end. Creating relationships with them that are long lasting, personal and relevant.

Let’s Decide a Group or a Fan Page?

Groups are grand for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause. Unlike a Group, developers who build applications have some of them available for your Page. This means that you can elect to have an RSS feed box to show your latest blog posts on your Page.

You can develop & grow fan page as per your wish with updates to an unlimited number of people, and keep the focus on the organization without revealing the administrator (unless you want to).

Simple Steps to Create a Fan Page:

Login to you facebook account and if you don’ have account create an account on facebook.
Look a little end of your home page at the right and click the “Create a page” link
It will now ask you demographic information. Choose suitable category for your page, it will show you options like product or service, country wide or worldwide?
Fill this out, and type in desired info, contact details & the name of your Facebook Page. Choose wisely, because you can’t change it.
Proceed as prompted!
To activate your page, you will need to “Publish” it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
Next steps will be adding different applications to the page to jazz it up a bit.
To manage it, a link called “Ads and Pages” will always be on the left under application. Follow these same directions to create one of those Facebook social ads. You can use “Share with friends” link also.

Define Your Purpose, here are three questions to consider:

Why Do You Want a Fan Page?
How Will Your Fan Page Differ From Your Website?
What is Your “It” Factor?

Answer these questions it will help you figure out what you bring to the table that’s different from your competitors and uniqueness build on that within your Fan Page strategy.

Once you’re clear on why you want to create a Fan Page, you’re ready to create a plan of action. The Fan Page is part of your business strategy and you should approach it just as you would any other business endeavor. Here are Some Tips:

Open Page – For the Social Media Examiner Fan Page, although we jump in and engage with our fans at all times throughout the day, we’ve designed time chunks for specific content. Facebook has created Facebook pages for commercial companies to be able to carry on conversations with their consumers. Upload a logo or photo with a web address at the bottom. It won’t be clickable, but fans can see where to go if they want to visit your website.
Use FBML to create a landing page – A landing page is just good direct marketing. FBML is Facebook’s version of HTML, which you can use with an application called Static FBML. The idea is that instead of sending people to your wall, as most people do, you send them to a landing page with whatever message you want to provide. This lets you render basic HTML in a box or tab on your page. You won’t find it in your default applications, or you can search in the application directory.
Content Strategy – When you’re initially building your Facebook page, fill it up with interesting and relevant content buy adding dynamic content. Make sure to regularly upload good content to your so that fans will want to see your page on when they open up their Facebook in the morning. Make sure that before you start inviting people to your page, you’ll have good & high quality of content to show them.
Target your audience – Those brands that have understood this point and are reaching out to their target audience within Facebook . Finding the relevant audience within Facebook and let them know that you’re there, that will take an interest in your brand and in your campaigns.
Conversation awake – Always make sure to be attentive, patient and reply as promptly as possible. Get your fans involved in your discussions, ask for their feedback, and show them you care about what they have to say.
Link your page from sources – Put an icon or link in your newsletter, on your website or blog, in your email footer, everywhere. Email and blog it does an email blast driving subscribers to your fan page. This will increase your exposure.
Create a Welcome tab – Welcome new fans to your home on Facebook. Welcoming to all the new comers and a good opportunity to let them know what they can find on your page. Through a Facebook page that says “Howdy”.
Utilize Facebook’s Insights – How many interactions did you have with fans this week? How many people commented on your posts? Where are your fans located? Are they mostly female or male? The answers to these questions will of course enable you to make better use of your page plan of future activities.

You will see the value of planning out your strategy ahead of time. Building a good, solid Facebook page may look easy and it is the best Facebook pages. Let us know your comments & thoughts.

Upcoming Digital Advertising Trends in 2011

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:36:28 +0000

As at the end of every year, we and everyone predict about upcoming trends in the next year so we (Online Marketers) do the same thing.

In the latest Mashable post, I’ve seen the “Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011“. I’m somewhat agree to the upcoming predictions, i.e.:

Local Search Marketing (Specially the Google, Yahoo & Bing Places)
Facebook & Twitter
Celebrities Presence on the Social Web
Mobile Application
& Facebook Like Button.

But what about the videos? We all know the power of videos and they’re the great source of converting these ads into leads / revenues, aren’t they? Anyways, who knows the future. And may be, Google’s upcoming service [Google +1 (Plus One)] will be one of top trend in 2011?

Few Web Updates / Insights – Part 2

Ankush Kohli — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Chrome Surpasses Firefox To Become Second Most Popular Web Browser.
“iPhone” topped Yahoo‘s U.S. top searches list for 2011, edging out Casey Anthony, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry. Previously, it happened in 2002, when PlayStation 2 took the number one spot.
Google+ is rolling out a feature that allows its users to make free conference calls within Hangouts.
According to ComScore, YouTube passed 20 billion Video Views in October 2011.
77% of job seekers are using mobile to look for work in US.
Facebook launched a seamless messaging system. Mark Zuckerberg talked about conversation history and social inbox lists to aid filtering. This new system integrates other messaging systems, sms, facebook, chat in one. An iPhone App is available now.
In addition, you can now get an @facebook.com e-mail address if you want it. Mark Zuckerberg said: “This is not an e-mail killer,”. This will be rolled out over the next couple of months via invite system. For more detail: Facebook Blog.
Yahoo Contributor Network: Yahoo is inviting people to contribute to many of its most popular sites with the launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network, a new platform for people to publish their creative content on Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Contributor Network is an evolution of the Associated Content platform and will bring contributions from more than 400,000 writers, photographers, and videographers to the Internet’s largest media destinations, including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, and even the Yahoo! homepage, among many others.

“The launch of the Yahoo! Contributor Network is a great example of how Yahoo! is executing against its content strategy. In less than six months since the acquisition of Associated Content, we’ve completely retooled the platform in order to bring the people’s voice to Yahoo!,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!.
Ask.com is dismissing search engine and concentrating on question and answer service.
The Internet search engine that media mogul Barry Diller acquired for $1.85 billion to compete with Google Inc., is cutting 130 engineering jobs and conceding much of its search business to competitors. Ask.com, a unit of Diller™ IAC/InterActiveCorp, is dismissing engineers based in Edison, New Jersey, and in Hangzhou, China, and ceasing work on its algorithmic search technology, according to Ask.com President Doug Leeds.

The search unit will consolidate its engineering operations at its headquarters in Oakland, California, and focus its resources on developing its online question-and-answer service. Twenty of the engineers currently working in New Jersey will be asked to relocate to Oakland, the company said. BLeeds said that Google has become too powerful a competitor to justify Ask.com continued pursuit of those search users. More details: Bloomberg
Google entered into fashion based e-commerce Industry with the launch of www.boutiques.com.
Google wrote in their blog: “Today, we’re excited to share with you our first step towards realizing this goal. It’s called Boutiques.com: a personalized shopping experience that lets you find and discover fashion goods, by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers—celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers. Boutiques uses computer vision and machine learning technology to visually analyze your taste and match it to items you would like.” See here: Google Blog
Google Hotpot: Hotpot is an online, friends-based recommendation engine that takes scores you give places using Google Maps and uses that information to improve your own place search results and those of your friends.

Will post a detailed write-up on Google Hotpot as it’ll be an upcoming trend for search so be ready for it.

Few Web Insights – eMarketinGuide.com

Ankush Kohli — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:30:09 +0000

Outlook Social Connect - Microsoft has struck deals with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace that will bring your disparate networks of friends and colleagues to Outlook. It’ll give you power to bring status updates and user photos to your e-mail.
Search any specific folder in Gmail: As you search spam, you can also search any particular folder in your Gmail. For e.g. if you want to search only in drafts then use “in:Drafts (keyword)”. It’ll only give the search results from drafts folder.
Gmail adoption is growing faster internationally than in the U.S., Reinstein said on 14th March’10 in SXSW Interactive. He said, Gmail holds the top spot in email usage in India at the moment.
New Gmail Etacts plugin - This Etacts plug-in automatically adds detailed contact information to the sidebar of messages. You not only get links to any social networks that contact is a part of, and some of the information contained therein (such as their occupation and location), but you also get a detailed summary of your mailing history with them, complete with nice little graphs and charts as well. All this information is also available in compose mode as well, so you know exactly who you’re sending it to. Screen-shots & installation.
Linkedin Company Buzz Application: Under “More…” link, choose “Application Directory” & select “Company Buzz” tool that allow you to discover relevant trends and comments about your company from Twitter. The tool lets you customize/modify the topics to watch and displays charts to track activity.
Twitter introduced @anywhere, a tool to better connect third party sites to related Tweets. See here: http://twitter.com/anywhere
WordPress 2.9+ comes with recycle bin feature: Any post which gets deleted intentionally or accidentally by the users can be retrieved and restored from the trash area. The posts remain in the recycle bin for a default period of 30 days and get removed permanently there after. With WordPress 2.9 the users can also edit the wp-config.php file and have the option to control the trash bin.
Wikipedia.org is the No. 1 website in the race of organic traffic with 15,421,396 keywords however Google.com is receiving traffic only from 3,993,082. Source: semrush.
Track Facebook Fan Pages with Google Analytics. See here: webdigi
Useful Firefox Shortcuts, help you to increase productivity -
- Ctrl + 1 = select leftmost tab
- Ctrl + 2-8 = select open taba in their order from left to right
- Ctrl + 9 = Choose rightmost tab
- Ctrl + T = Opens new tab
- Ctrl + Tab = Select next tab in active window
- Ctrl + Shift + Tab = Select previous tab in active window
- Ctrl + Shift + T = Undo close tab
- Ctrl + F4/W = To close active window

How to Plan Social Media Marketing Strategy

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:39:39 +0000

Few of my friends, who were looking for job change, got many calls for interview. Most of time, interviewer’s main query was regarding “Social Media”. Below mentioned are the major questions they’ve asked for:

How to create social media marketing campaign?
What’s the plan & strategy behind social media?
What are the activities you’re going to do?
What the goals are?
How much time you’ll spend and time to display the results?
How you’ll measure the results and what will be the expected results?
And what are the risks behind Social Media?

So I thought to write my next post about “Designing Social Media Marketing Plan”. Here’s the post content, start with “Why” word:

Why Social Media:

The most effective way of getting users attention OR To reach online people.
People tend to take part in online conversations and are happy to communicate with brands.
The information found on the Social Web can be genuinely interesting and quite informative when applied to a business.

Social Media Marketing Plan Steps:

Start with the Goals
Do research to Design the Strategy
Take a Call on “Actual path”
Put into Practice
Result Measurements
Risks
KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

1. Start with the Goals:

Increase brand awareness
Build authority
Learn more about your target audience
Gain inbound links
Educate and inform customers
Improve customer service
Monitor brand reputation
Reach new channels of customers.
Customers Testimonials
Direct connection between customer & the company
Generate leads & drive sales.

2. Create a Strategy Based on Research:

Determining if your target audience is online
Examining the successes and failures of other social media campaigns
Creating realistic timelines
How to measure the results

3. Actual path:

Building Relationships
Creating a Schedule
Staying the Course
Measuring the Results
Making the Right Tweaks

Now, it’s time implement all the plans. In simple terms, you need to adapt below mentioned practical steps:

4. Put into Practices: Mix of content you intend to create, and build work flow around it.

a) Methods:

Write/Read a blog
Share a Photo, Video
Bookmark a WebPage
Post a Question OR Start a Poll
Give replies to asked questions OR participate into other’s Poll
Add a Comment
Write a review
Subscribe to a Website
Being everyone, not only in your own domain

b) Community:Most social media strategies have to address community and how you will embrace the people you seek to gather around your business.

c) Neighbors:Reach out to others in your community, comment, and share.

d) Attention:Build awareness and encourage relationships with the media you’re making.

e) Pay attention and participate in the networks whose audience matters to you in the context of your business objectives. Don’t waste time in the networks that fail either test.

5. Measurement:

Reader comments
RSS Subscribers
Twitter Followers
Facebook Fans
Click Throughs
Diggs
Stumbles
Podcast Subscribers
Search Results
Links
Impressions
And last but not the least Analytics.

6. Risks:

You might lose control.
People talk about you in a bad way.

7. KPI: To know the “performance metrics” in a simple way, I’ve named them as KPI and terms are:

Traffic
Links
& Branding.

I’m expecting huge comments like my other posts about this social plan, please feel free to post your queries, feedback & suggestions.

Read Twitter Marketing Plan, Strategy & Tips.

Protect your business with social media monitoring services from a trusted agency.

Google & Facebook Shorten URL Service

Ankush Kohli — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:07:49 +0000

It’s Shorten URL’s season. First Facebook and then Google launched their own URL shorten service. Facebook shorten URL is fb.me and Google is Goo.gl.

Facebook’s fb.me service will allow you to shorten any link on the site – even if you just want to trim down the path to a specific profile page (http://fb.me/ankush.kohli). No mention of whether or not they plan on providing an API for third-party developers to integrate the service.

Google announce this news through Official blog post says their service is not a standalone offering – at least for now. As this is not new so they’re giving rights to use this service only through Google Toolbar or Feedburner. You can’t use it to shorten links directly.

You can also setup your own URL Redirection service with Google Short Links. Check out the Labnol post for setting up your service.

Expecting huge comments. Questions… Query… Feedback..

Top Twitter Tips and Tricks

Ankush Kohli — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:37:43 +0000

There are lot of twitter tips already in the market. You can find various tricks in eBooks, blogs & websites so why you’re here because I bet that you’ll never found all these “Working” twitter tips at one place. Here I’m giving you the proper guidance on how to start your twitter account, how to increase followers quickly, the best way to tweet, promotion of your twitter account and a sound list of twitter tools that will save your time.

Promote Your Twitter Account:

Fill out your bio. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.
Treat your twitter profile as you would treat any other website. Send as much traffic as possible to your twitter profile.
Use a “tweet this” button above/below all your articles which you think can go viral in twitter world.
Add your name to twitter directories like: tweeps.pbwiki.com, justtweetit.com etc.
Add twitter apps in your Facebook account that can send your tweets automatically to your Facebook profile.
Link your twitter profile with your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blog etc.
Use your twitter profile as email signature, forum signature and everywhere else you live online.
Add yourself into more & more Twitter Lists.
Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Broadcast your twitter account everywhere like in seminar, webinar, business card etc.
Customized your twitter background. Use pic which is relevant to your nature/business.
Set “auto welcome message” when someone start following you.
Use your twitter profile URL while commenting on other blogs.
Apply your real photo or your blog logo/banner on your twitter profile.
Ask other twitter members to recommend you to their followers and you can recommend them to your followers.
If you have good followers say 500+, you can display it on your blog as a widget/badge.
Try to be more active on weekdays because on weekends, people enjoy their weekends & don’t care much.
Participate in certain groups. Groups can be created using hashtags. And sometimes if the group message is a hot topic, then your tweets will be listed in “hot trending topics” in search or other famous twitter services. Ex:- #followfriday
Bring your topic into top 10 Trending Topics.

Tips About Tweets & Posts:

Be active on twitter through different types of posts.
Tweet valuable things. Don’t just try to get traffic to your blog by tweeting only about your articles. Mix your tweets with friendly content.
Tweet about your passion in life and use #hash tag them.
Every tweet should be independent. It shouldn’t depend on previous or any other tweet.
Try to show the main things within first 32 characters as only they’re visible firstly until & unless s/he is your favorite friend or must following u. Persons, who are online through devices can’t able to see more than 32 characters at first.
Post your Digg story into twitter as new status http://twiggit.org
Keep space between 2 links within your tweet. For e.g. during replying to some post if 2 links occur and they’re more closer than there are less chances of clicking these.
Save your time by configure your blog RSS feed into http://friendfeed.com. Friendfeed submit new posts automatically to your twitter account.
When you tweet something worth Re-tweeting, then use less than 140 Characters. Because, if your twitter ID has 5 characters, then a re-tweet will add a @ “a symbol” and “RT:” thus making a total of 140+1+3+5=149 characters. So use 125 or 130 characters.
Tweeting link of some good pictures and breaking news get viral most of the times. You can also tweet about a new job or event.
Asking questions – By asking questions, you can easily start the conversation with any stranger. May be they’ll follow u.

Twitter Tools:

Friend or Follow – Friend or Follow helping you figure out who your friends, follows, and fans are on Twitter.
Qwitter – Once you’ve done your initial cleaning, Qwitter is a nice app that will update you via email whenever someone stops following you. It will even let you know what you tweeted that caused them to stop following you, which could be useful (if you lose five followers every time you tweet about your cat, for example, that might be a hint to stop talking so much about your cat if you want to retain followers).
GroupTweet – Create private groups to communicate with your group members alone by sending the tweet as a direct message to the group tweet account. That will convert the DM back to tweet and publishes only for the group users. Private communication is established through this way.
Tweetmeme – Displays popular topics on Twitter and those people talking about that topic.
TweetBeep – Just like Google Alerts, this service will send you an alert whenever your set keyword is mentioned on Twitter or when somebody link to your site.
TwitterCounter – With this plugin, you can display the number of followers you have on Twitter.
Socialoomph – You can send auto direct messages, follow those who follow you, unfollow those who stop following you. You can manage multiple accounts and you know everything the biggest thing is it’s free.
Mrtweet – Find folks who are highly relevant. Add value to awesome people – recommend them. Be found by people who are naturally relevant to you.
Ping.fm – This service will update all of your social networks at once.
Twitterless – Get notified when someone stops following you with Twitterless.
TwitResponse – TwitResponse makes it easy for you to schedule the delivery of your tweets ahead of time.
MyCleenr – Sort your friends by their last tweets, and you can get rid of the inactive and useless accounts you’re following.
Tweetwasters – Find out how much time you and other users waste on Twitter.
2tweet – Tweet photos and videos by email
FutureTweets – Schedule your Tweets.
TwitPic – Share photos on Twitter – Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account
TweetWheel – Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other! – Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other.
TwitBacks – Free Twitter Backgrounds – Create your own Twitter background with your branding – Free
TwitterFone – Send Messages to Twitter with Voice – Send messages to Twitter using voice!
Twollow – Auto Follow On Twitter –
Who Should I Follow – Twitter Friend Recommendations | Who Should i Follow? – WhoShouldiFollow recommends people to follow on Twitter.

How to Increase Your Followers:

Search & invite people which have same profile like you.
Search and invite people which have huge followers.
Ping your twitter account through ping.fm.
Find your mutual friends, followers, followings etc from various twitter tools.
Unfollow those who stop following you.
If you have a website or a blog, display the follow me button at the top or any other highly visible space.
Invite all friends of your Gmail, Yahoo mail etc as they are the most potential followers you can ever get.
Follow others users. If you do not follow others and keep expecting lot of people to start following you, this will not work.
Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.

Bulk Follow Tools:

Twellow – Find Twitter users in a specific industry using this service.
Twitseeker – An alternate search engine for finding twitter.com users. Many of the favorite but not mine. Also, this tool is currently blocked by Twitter as per the violation of terms. It find users basis on the search terms and users tweets/profiles and you can follow all those searched users in bulk.
Buzzom – This is one of my favorite tool for bulk followers. What it does:
- Search other twitter members on the basis of your profile.
- Select & deselect users.
- Bulk follow & unfollow users.
- It also shows the number of followers & followings of other users.
Buzzom was the perfect tool for bulk followers but since 1 Jan’2010 they’ve changed the site layout & remove the bulk follow service. May be, they’ve added this features in paid one. In the free service, they’ve both features but you can’t use both features simultaneously.
Tweepi – (“Select All” feature is disabled on 28th january as per “Twitter TOS”) I’ve searched a new tool for getting huge followers. It’s a good tool to attract huge followers within minutes . Now the procedure to use:
- Find a twitterer, who’s having similar profile like you
- Login into tweepi with your account.
- Now you can follow other twitterer friends within minute.
Refollow (Now My Favorite) – Free, superb tool for bulk follow & unfollow feature & lots of other creative features like:
- Find twitterers, whom you’re following but they’re not following you.
- Find twitterers, who are following you but you’re not following.
- Find friends whom you didn’t follow previously.
- Have or don’t have pictures on their profile.
- When they last tweet.
- Number of days since they last tweet
- See number of followers.
- See number of friends.
- Locked & Unlocked twitterers.
- Can set the filters like search for any term or exclude any term.
- & many others features.

Other Twitter Hacks:

If you’re listed on any unwanted list. Obviously you don’t want to stay there so how to remove yourself from that list. Block that user (which is the owner of the list) and then unblock him/her. You will not show up on their list anymore.
@myflightinfo: Use @myflightinfo to stay updated on your flight’s status.

These are the tips as of today however will post more in my next write-up. Warm welcome for your query or suggestion. Till then enjoy Reading…

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