Sponsored Tweeting

The Twitter Boom has truly been amazing to watch, and everyone is using it now. From sport stats on ESPN to Cooking Recipes to Live news coverage. It hasn’t taken long for people  and marketers to find a way to make money off of this.

It’s called “Sponsored Tweeting” where a company connects business marketers with twitterers with a large following. The business that tweets through this program can either pay per a click on the link or an over all flat fee based on how many impressions it was. The nice part about these program is that the person tweeting has the choice to send the tweet or not. It’s up to the tweeters discretion.

Their are several companies that do this, but the company that I think explains the opportunity best is the company Magpie.

How much can I make?

So when it comes down to it how much money can I make? Well at Magpie they have a great tool that checks your twitter account and will give you a ballpark quote of how much you could be making in a month. The more followers you have the better! It’s especially powerful when you can tell a company that you have  a certain demographic follows you that they can market to. This is why Bob Villa can charge almost $3000 for a tweet because he has over  1.1 million niche followers.

How Can I Get Into This?

Their are several different Tweet For Hire companies that will pay you to send tweets. Here are the top companies that I’ve found.

Ad.ly

Magpie

Magp

Sponsored Tweets

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Pick a theme

The first thing you need to do with any blog in wordpress is to select a theme. Your theme determines the layout and the look of your blog. Most are free and can get very complex and optimized. The theme I chose is called Swift, I picked it because its a SEO optimized, Adsense ready, server friendly wordpress theme.

Great Plug-ins

Analytics

Analytics is an outstanding tool that every website should contain! It generates detailed statistics about the visitors coming to your site. This  allows you to understand your visitors and then deliver to them what they want.

The great thing about the Swift theme is that it will add your analytics code for you. You’ll find it in your Swift theme options which are under “Appearance” then “Swift Theme Options”.  Then click on “General Settings”  and the box for you to put your code in will be a the bottom.

Zemanta

This has been my latest and greatest find in Wordpress plugins! Zemanta takes whatever your blogging about and finds associated pictures, links, tags, articles, and more to make our blog more exciting and connected to be found by others. To see what I mean just try out the demo.

Apture

Apture is a great plugin because it allows your site to be more interactive and “sticky”. Sticky meaning that people can click on links to other blogs, Wikipedia, or even videos without leaving your site.  This is great for

Addthis

AddThis is a plugin that adds a box at the end of everyone of your pages that allows the users to share or bookmark it. Anything to make it easier for the user to share and spread your content will increase the likelihood that they will do it.

Akismet

Akismet is a spam blocker that filters out possible spammers so they won’t fill your blog with junk. Giving you more time to write awesome articles! It doesn’t automatically delete the comments, but allows you to go through see for yourself if they are or not.

All in One SEO Pack

In order to get your website found you need to have some SEO work done. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means that the search engines go through and decide which web sites are most useful to the user. If your site isn’t ver relevant it won’t be shown. Now you don’t have the time to go in and try to optimize every page to get at the top of the search engines, but the All In One SEO Pack does a great job of doing simple SEO basics to optimize your site and to get found

SEO Friendly Images

Along with having your pages be SEO ready another small but good help is to have it done for your images as well. Thats why the SEO friendly image plug in is a great help to SEO as well

Conclusion

By using all of these tools and plugins I’ve been able to create this blog post much more interesting, interactive, and optimized in a fraction of the time then it would have if i didn’t have these tools. They are a great help to me and I hope they help you as well. I appreciate any feedback or comments. Also if there are any amazing plug-ins that i’ve missed, I’d love to hear about them and I can add them in my next blog.

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1. Friending your manager on Facebook and then complaining about your job.

2. Putting your personal brand in front of your company’s brand.

3. Complaining that your company blocks social networking sites.

4. Attracting the wrong attention to your company’s brand because of your own.

5. Announcing your new job on Twitter when you’re still employed.

6. Thinking you’re superior to older workers because you’re tech literate.

7. Wearing rags to work because it’s part of your brand.
8. Posting inappropriate photos on Facebook, forgetting that your profile is public.

9. Spending more time on yourself than being productive during work hours.
10. Calling in sick, when you’re not, so that you can focus on your brand.

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My demographic for the Social Media survey was college students 18 – 25 years old and the results from were a real eye opener to me. From  the survey I learned that the best ways to reach my target market is through Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace. Here is the break down

-   98% have a Facebook and visit it 15 times a week.

-   50% have a YouTube account and watch 12 videos a week.

-   48%have a MySpace but only visit it 2 times a week.

This shows me that if I have a really focus on making my presence on these three social network that I can be seen by my target market almost 30 times a week.  This is very doable if I use Facebook Fan pages, groups, and also a Youtube account.

What Not To Do

I also learned from this survey what not to do. For example 50% of people didn’t know what a RSS feed is and of the remaining 50% only 20% subscribe to one.  RSS feeds can be effective but my target market isn’t using them, so I should again put most of my time and focus on getting a better Facebook and YouTube following.

I also learned that if I were to start contacting my people by email that I should do it between 12 – 7pm. My data results show that 67% of those surveyed check their email between 12 – 7pm with an additional 15% after 7pm. So if I want to be at the top of my target markets inbox when they open it I should send them later in the afternoon.

Lastly I learned that as for right now people are not really using Twitter or Podcasts.

-    87% of those surveyed didn’t have a Twitter account, and had no idea what the purpose of twitter was

-    80% of those surveyed didn’t use podcasts

These are two great ways to really get a strong social media presence but wouldn’t be very effective for this market.

Possibilities for Skewed Results

The results of the survey has been very helpful in showing me on where and how I need to focus my attention for getting a hold of this market through social media, but I can see several  ways that the results could have been misleading

-    People put multiple answers for one question.

-    The layout of the quiz was if you didn’t have an account then you don’t use that site, so many people left the YouTube question blank even though I know these people use YouTube frequently.

-     People didn’t know how to classify a smart phone.

-    Of course the person inputting the data could of mis-added or misplaced some numbers that threw off the whole chart.

Tweet Deck

TweetDeck is a great way to follow all your updates on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace in just one place. The great thing about this program and any program that accesses twitter is that you can search for keywords and get live feeds on what people are saying about that topic. If you have a brand name like Pepsi, Nike, or Taco Bell seeing how people use your name on twitter can be very helpful.

If you are trying to keep up with trends like Solar Power, The World Series, or the latest celebrity death. You can do this very simply by opening up a search column with the trending keywords. If you do this whenever you open tweetdeck it will show you the latest of what people are saying on the subject.

Yahoo Pipes

Similar to TweetDeck, Yahoo Pipes puts the searching power into your hands. It is a lot more complicated but allows you to put in the sites that you are interested in and then put them through a series of filters to get you exactly what you are looking for.

By using these two programs you will be able to get a better grasp on what is being said about you and how you can handle it.

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To Find Your Online Niche

In this growing world of online searching its becoming even more and more important to identify your market online, and how to market to them.

Google lends a big hand in offering tools to help you find your niche for free. Here is a few simple steps to find your niched.

First go to the Google Keyword Tool

• Type in keywords people possibly would type to find you, allow for them to use synonyms

• Make sure you show all the defaults to start and decide which ones are most important.

This should give you a great list of possible keywords, along with how often it is searched and the average cost it would be if someone were to click on that ad.

Then check and see the trends of these keywords you can use Google Insight. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.

Take the keywords that best apply to you and Google search them to see who pops up and what they are doing to try and get conversions. Are they looking to get people to register for a e-letter, buy a product, or apply for a quote.

After you have found a few competitors sites. Go back to the google keyword tool and click on website content. Place in the URL of your competitor and have it search.  This tool searches to see what the main content and keywords on these competitors sites are. Do this as well with your own site to see what Google thinks of your site and what your trying to say.

With these tools you should be able to see where there’s potential for you to secure your voice in a niche. This is not a perfect or absolute solution, but its a good place for anyone to start, especially beginners.

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As i’ve been in college and been struggling to find a job in this down economy i’ve found that there are so many opportunities to network while in still in college.

Network On Campus

While on attending college get to know everyone around you! Everyone around you has connections to family, golf buddies, band members, etc who have jobs and connections in the field you want. Getting to know your peers and

professors and expressing your passions and dreams will greatly help you in finding that dream job.

Talk To:

- Students

- Professors

Go To:

- Organizations on campus, get involved

- Job Fairs

Network Online

Linkedin – Post resumes and connect with other business professionals

Twitter –  Listen and interact with professionals and experts

Facebook –  Reconnect with friends, create groups, discussions, and

Blog           –  Create your own blog, speak your mind, and become a presence online that people respect and listen too.

Each of these social networks have communities and groups for every industry that you can join and get to know people within that industry.

Tips For Everywhere

These are a few of the things that I have done to help me get to know more people and find jobs

* Take someone to lunch 1x a week. Be it a colleague, old professor, or local business owner, get to know people.

* Always offer your help and contacts to good people! Offer to connect up teachers w/ assistants, connections w/ quality employees etc. This shows that you know how to spot good people. It also re-enforces ur connection with both parties. So don’t refer ur lazy cousin charlie to assist your business teacher.

Get to know and express your personal goals to those around you. We need to help