Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I think you all know by now that I am a fan of social media as a business tool, as well as on a personal level. Last week I was trawling through my Twitter feed, as I do multiple times a day, to find interesting content to read or to find a gem of a deal on a new t-shirt or shoes. But what I got (as I always have, but it now seems harder to ignore), is affiliate link after affiliate link with the promise of untold riches from the Internet.

Because of my criteria for following people on Twitter (which I have covered previously), for the most part the information in my feed is online marketing information, and as such the number of links for products that are the “key to unlocking the riches of the internet” are rampant. So for me, it begs the question – is social media just marketing to your competitors? Or perhaps more importantly, how do you avoid marketing to your competitors?  Read more...

A week ago I kicked off a survey on whether people use Twitter for business, pleasure or both, and if for both do they separate their accounts (original post here). After a great response from the wider Twitterverse, the results are in.

Question 1 was “Do you use Twitter for business reasons, personal, or both?”

Use of Twitter for Business, Personal or Both

70% of people who responded use Twitter for both purposes, with another 20% utilising it as a business tool, and the remaining 10% using it without the aim of financial gain. So for those of you planning to use it to promote your business (and assuming this is indicative of the Twitter population), you are competing with up to 90% of the users for a share of voice. Naturally, depending on your niche that number could fluctuate either way, but when the base is as high as 90%, it is safe to assume that marketers and business owners of all kinds realise its value as a tool, and you need to be clear with your messages.  Read more...

It is one of the most reviled practices of the Twitterverse, yet so many people using it for business continue to do it.

Anyone who uses Twitter will know of the seemingly endless stream of direct messages that begins the second you begin following people. Typically, these are not personal messages thanking you for following them, nearly all of them are automated and contain links to sites offering you a free something in return for signing up, most of which revolve around showing you how to pick up 10,000 new followers in 5 minutes.

So what is wrong with this? Well, for one, you didn’t ask for it. The vast majority of people you end up following are usually the result of them following of you, or on the strength of their Twitter bio (as covered in Annoying Twitter Habits Part 1), and as such are not what you would call a “qualified” follow off the bat. So what you end up from here is an inbox full of spam from people who are yet to prove their value to you.  Read more...

I wanted to take a quick break from the post I was writing on email marketing to come back to Twitter for a couple of minutes, and talk about one of the annoying habits it can cultivate in some “marketers”.

With the number of people I follow and those following me growing substantially in the past month, one of the things I have encountered (and I understand is not uncommon particularly when using it as a business tool), is the culture of people who will follow you, and then unfollow you if you don’t reciprocate within a time frame, only to follow you again a few days later in the hope that you will then follow them. It’s the web’s equivalent of the kid at school who is desperate to be your friend.  Read more...

Social media and Social Networking have become such buzz words in the past few years and many businesses have tried to use it to market products and services, with mixed results.

Probably best that we define social networking /social media first. For many just getting into online business, Facebook and MySpace are considered to be the beginning and the end of the social media landscape. While they can both have their place if used correctly, they are also incredibly broad in terms of their audience and application, and therefore not necessarily the way to go for business. Social media however can relate to any aspect of the web that allows people a level of interaction and community.  Read more...