Reasons and Risks with Changing Your Twitter Username

Twitter Name Necklace

Is your Twitter name representing you or your business?

Changing your Twitter name is a risky proposition. A lot of people come to know you by that handle. It is part of your online identity. But a change can be necessary if your business demands it. It is not uncommon to lose followers when you change your name, because when you tweet people won’t necessarily recognize your new handle.

Reasons to Change:

  • Too Casual – the handle you are using does not convey a professional demeanor
  • Too Niche – Your business has expanded beyond the niche you started with and you need something that encompass that and does not limit you.
  • Inappropriate – This can overlap with too casual. It is not uncommon for people to use their personal Twitter for their business. Sometimes this means that your handle is not just too casual but it actually inappropriate to be representing you professionally.
  • Not Branded – Often times when we create our Twitter names our branding is not forefront in our mind, or our branding changes over time.

Once you decide to change your name make sure you pick your name carefully.

Tips for a Good Name:

  • Keep it Professional – make sure your name is a good representation of how you want to present yourself online
  • Keep it Simple – If your name is too complicated it will be hard for people to remember. You want to make sure you name is easily remembered.
  • Keep it Short – You are limited to 140 characters on Twitter. You want to make sure that you name is not so long that it becomes prohibitive to retweeting and mentions.
  • Keep it Goal Oriented – If you are trying to corner the market on a niche, then having a niche name is inline with your overall goals. But if you want to expand beyond that then maybe being less specific would be beneficial. Make sure you name works to support your business goals.

Tips to Manage a Change:

  • Let People Know – Make sure you tell people about your new Twitter name. Tell them in your email, on Facebook (yes, really), and of course on Twitter. On Twitter make sure to tell them more than once.
  • Don’t Change your Avatar – Changing your Twitter name is a huge online identity change. To make it easier, do not change your avatar as well. A lot of people will still recognize you because of your avatar and that can help them adjust to the new handle.
  • Understand the risk – You will very likely lose followers. Do not take it personally. It is because they don’t realize it is you. Some will come back and some won’t. But if your name is more inline with the needs of your business, the change will ultimately be positive and you will gain back those followers in spades.
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Facebook Releases New Timeline Profile

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Facebook Timeline Profile
The Facebook timeline profile is coming out! The new profile is being released right now and will be available for all profiles within the next few weeks.

I have had the new profile since it was released to developers in September. At first I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But since using it, I have come to really like the new design. It is much more graphically oriented and fells more comprehensive, like it is giving you a more robust snapshot of the person.

The new profile is simply beautiful. It is a chronicling of your life, even before your started on Facebook. The timeline features photos and life events starting at birth. You can add information, photos, videos and posts into any time period. Have a prom photo from 20 years ago, add it in to the year 1976.

The beautiful layout, featuring photos and comments from your friends, has a deep emotional resonance. You are able to go throw the years and see your pictures. The things your friends wrote on your wall. The posts you shared and were shared with you. You not only get a glimpse of your history on Facebook, but a glimpse of your life history. It is like watching an old home movie on an old reel-to-reel.

Reminiscing has always been a social activity. Facebook has found a way to harness that.

For people using their profile to promote their business this will give additional opportunity for branding. You can have a banner photo at the top and still have your head shot for the profile pic.  It will give a way to create a more graphically beautiful display for your business.

Read more about the new Facebook Timeline. To get yours you just have to wait. When it is available to you there will be a notice at the top of your old profile.

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Google+ on Hootsuite? Yes, if you have the money!

Google+ Pages on HootsuiteIf you weren’t sure if you should get started with Google+, here is another reason to give it a good thought. Hootsuite has announced that they will be supporting Google+ through their platform. This means that Google+ Pages will be able to be monitored much like you monitor your Twitter accounts. However, this is only available to their Enterprise level clients. So the average Josephina will not be able to use this function yet.

The integration will likely be a big cross over point for Google+. This will allow people to increase their engagement and use Google+ more like they use Twitter. They will be able to have columns with their different circles, and will be able to interact with the posts, much like you interact with peoples tweets.

For adult entertainment you can easily categorize people in your circles by fans, pornstars, fetishes, adult sites…or however you want. But it will make interacting with other industry people much easier than it is on Facebook. Of course that is not hard to do, it is almost impossible to do it on Facebook.

This will accomplish 2 things.

1. Circles: It will encourage people to put people and pages into appropriate and topic relevant circles, as opposed to lumping them all into the “friends” circle. The increase in functionality will make browsing the content of the circles much easier to manage. Plus you will have the benefit of having the different columns to show all your circles posts simultaneously, but still categorized in easy to swallow bites.

2. Engagement: It will encourage engagement. The reason why Twitter has the highest level of engagement is because of how the information is presented. The platform is conducive to a high level of conversation. By applying the twitter platform to Google+ Pages, they are encouraging a higher level of engagement with people’s posts. This could actually be a breakthrough for Google+ Pages. Facebook pages have always been limited in the level of potential engagement, but this opens things up for the new social network.

The Hootsuite integration is a big development for Google+ Pages in the social network popularity race. Unfortunately it is only available to the “Enterprise” level clients. Those are the people paying $1500/month to use the platform. Yes, you read that right. Basically if you are a big brand or manage a large number of social media accounts, you are this level user. Maybe we will hear how playboy likes it because right now, not many other people will be using it.

The reason it is being reserved for these high level users is because it is in the beta testing period. They are running it through their power users to vet the new integration for any functionality issues. Hopefully in the near future they will open it up to the rest of us. In the mean time, we can get use to Google+ Pages and get ready for it to be more user friendly on Hootsuite!

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Shop for Porn! Harnessing Social Media for Black Friday

Sexy shopping bagBlack Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. But does that mean that people are only shopping for their kids or parents? No. People are shopping for everything and that includes porn!

Though these tactics are mainly used in mainstream business, they are still highly relevant. On Black Friday people want to shop and you need to know how to harness that.

Here are two ways you can use social media to drive some extra sales over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Facebook

  1. Custom Landing Page
    Create a custom landing page that shows some great graphics and text to feature your Black Friday special. This is a lot easier than it sounds. You can use easy to use landing page design programs, like Lujure to do a simple drag and drop to create your page. You can also add trackable links using Google Analytics, which you can automatically add to the page, or by using link shortners like Bit.ly to track clicks back to your site.Here are what some other major retailers are doing with their landing pagesto help give you some ideas.Just like with anything adult on Facebook you have to be careful. They don’t like anything too provocative, but that does not mean you can’t have some fun. Take a look the Victorias Secret landing page. Sexy and still pushing the sale.
  2. Promote on Facebook
    If you did create a custom landing page then promote your sale by using the link to the tab. That way you can direct people to your new beautiful page to promote you sale. You can also link back to your website or anything else that will give information about your upcoming event.
  3. Facebook Ad
    Thought Facebook ads have a low click through rate they are incredibly easy to target and for even specific promotions they are perfect. If you have a physical location you can easily geo-target your ads, making sure the ads will only appear to people in your geographic location. If you are solely online, you can also target via age, gender, education and interest. Again, if you have a custom landing page, make sure that new people will automatically go there by setting it as your default place to land for new users (you can do that by going into edit info on your page, manage permissions, and then chose where you want new users to land).

Twitter

  1. Marketing Tweets
    Set up tweets that talk about your sale. Make sure to use hashtags to target your specific niche.
  2. Twitter Promo
    Even if you already have a sale event going on, you can still add a little extra to help your Twitter peeps. The tweeps love to know they are special. Give them their own promo code to use to get an extra bonus when they shop with you.
  3. Retweet Promo
    Retweets are a great tool in viral marketing. You can ask people to tweet your link out and let them know that they will receive a special discount by tweeting the link. There are a couple ways you can do that. You can either specifically ask for retweets and then DM anyone who RTs you a promo code or you can create a special trackable link to your website that will give people a special discount. The second way is easier and will need less involvement from you. Plus it is more conducive to the viral marketing process. People can promote your link, go to the page and get the promo. Plus by using a trackable link, or a specially designed page for your “twitter promo” you can track exactly how many people came to the page and get a gauge for your promo ROI.
  4. DMs
    We all hate those auto DMs that welcome people to their twitter. But DMs can be useful. If you are doing a big sale you can send DMs to your followers and let them know about the sale. If there is a a promo code, give them that as a special “twitter” gift. Though many people ignore DMs that are obviously ads, if you write it in a personable fashion you are likely to get a few bites.

Everyone is talking about everything, you just need to make sure you are harnessing the conversation to give your business a boost.

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Will Google be more uptight than Facebook?

Now that Google+ Pages has been launched, more people are joining the land rush to get their page. Understandably, a lot of people in adult entertainment are feeling a little reluctant to join up.  Well that might not be for a bad reason, though there are some questions that remain.

So porn, and any adult content, on Google+ is right out. It absolutely forbidden.  In their policy, under their User Content and Conduct Policy, it states:

10. Sexually Explicit Material

Do not distribute content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Do not drive traffic to commercial pornography sites.

Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content. For example, do not use a photo that is a close-up of a person’s buttocks or cleavage.

So even PG13 content might be pushing the limits. And yes, they are making it just as easy to report TOS abuse as Facebook does.

However, adult is not the only place they are cracking the whip. They are not allowing promotions, contests, sweepstakes or coupons on the site. This means that businesses might really have to use Google+ just to be social!

The biggest danger is if you do get your page deleted you risk getting everything deleted. Yes, even your gmail. So if you do decide to get a page, I recommend having it associated with a gmail account that is not your primary.

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Google+ Pages launched…still not for porn

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Today Google+ announced that they have officially launched their business Pages. This is almost exactly like Pages on Facebook except it is on Google+.  Some key differences are in SEO. These pages will be immediately indexed on Google. Meaning you will get an immediate search engine boost for you page, and therefore your website, if you have a page. You will also be able to do a search specifically for pages by adding a + sign before the company name. So 7 Veils would be + 7 Veils to search for my page (which does not exists yet).

Though some big questions about the functionality of the pages still exist, we do know that profiles will be able to add pages to profiles.  Of course if the networking is anything like Facebook, it means you will need to have a profile in order to start spreading the word about your page.

Of course, just like Facebook, the pages are not adult friendly. The big question is will they be active evangelists against porn pages. That is yet to be seen.

You might be tempted to run out and start your own page right now, and definitely give this a try. But the registration is not yet open for everyone, and that has nothing to do with porn. They are doing roll outs, but we don’t know how long it is going to take them to roll them out to everyone.

Because of the huge SEO boost, I would recommend putting up a page on Google+. Maybe it gets deleted, maybe not. You will get a nice SEO boost, at least for a while. Work your options while they are still options!

 

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How do I promote you You YOU?

Be unique! Be original! Do that and you will sky rocket to success!

Like so many conference that was a theme in Blogworld after the first day. What a lot of people were wondering but not necessarily vocalizing was how can I do that for a client?

One problem with seminars and industry conferences is that a lot of it help you launch yourself into so called stardom. But what about the people who aren’t peddling their own brand or product. What about the consultants and the community managers? What is the new role for community managers.

The opening keynote touted the benefits of Google Plus. Claiming that the people are there, that people are finding huge value and it is the next frontier. Well, maybe but I am not totally sold. If you are a community manager you still cannot offer it as a brand option for your clients. You still cannot use Google Plus as a business. Not to mention that the audience is mainly tech forward early adaptors. And of course you cannot use it if you are an adult star. But is that your audience?  As a community manager, I have to go to where my clients audience is spending their social media time. And they are not on Google Plus. The pornsters are on twitter, and reluctantly on Facebook.

Sometimes I question if so many of our social media superheros are primarily teachers but not necessarily on the ground floor doing the work. We always address what you can do to boost your brand, but what about the conversation that discusses what you can do to boost your clients brand.

If we are not supposed to sell or market, and our clients are not devoted (or product able) to give away content, then how do you drive the numbers?

They say that a marketer touts the value of your brand but the CEO wants to see the ROI, as a manager how do you capture and harness that value?

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Customer Service Goes Viral

Everyone wants to know how to get more clicks from their Facebook and Twiiter. How to get more followers. How to get more fans. How to get more more more! But many people are missing one of the biggest values of social marketing and that is the ability to get more personal.

If you go back to the small town store, the local banker or postman, the corner store, what made them so special was that they knew you. They cared about you. You could go to your banker and talk to him about your financial troubles and he actually wanted to help you find a solution. If something you bought wasn’t working right, you could go to the store you bought it from and they cared about your satisfaction. They cared to not only fix the problem but fix the relationship.

Justin Timberlake brought sexy back and social media is bringing personal business back.

Customer services is the hardest to quantify element of ROI in social marketing. Everyone knows it is valuable but what value does it truly have. Well, to be blunt, HUGE! If a tweet that reaches 100 people is worth $0.10 and a tweet that reaches 1000 is worth $1.00 then what about a tweet that reaches 10,000? or 100,000? Hip Hop star 50 Cent has 5 million followers and one tweet from him would cost you $11,000. But what is the value of that tweet? Is it the click? Is it the reputation? Is it the virality? It is all of it!

If you help one person through social media, they will not question if you are a real person behind the account. They will feel like your twitter or fan page is actually listening to them. If you reach out to them, they will feel heard and therefore appreciated.

Social media gives you the opportunity to really reach out to your customers. On Twitter you can scan for your company or product and when you see a customer service issue, you can reach out.

Why this benefits?

Now not only does the customer feel heard. But they did not have to the be the one to make the first move. You are so invested in them that you are listening for problem and listening for ways you can help.

Viral Customer Service

When you get an issues resolved through a channel like Twitter you increase the chance of engaging your viral marketing.

1. I have an issue and tweet about it.

2. The care team sees my tweet and helps resolve the issue

3. One of my followers sees my tweet and reports the same issue.

4. The care team is able to resolve both of our issues, and introduce themselves to yet another customer online who was otherwise being silent about the issue

5. I tweet positively about my experience with the company

6. The other person also tweets positively

You have now reached thousands of people with a a positive message about your company from the mouths of your customer.

 

That personal relationships have no dollar figure. You are saving money by resolving the issue quickly and with little man power. You are increasing your loyalty, reputation and customer satisfaction. You are increase your brand value by showing that you are a company that takes care of its clients.

Social media is the next level in customer satisfaction.

 

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Buying Twitter followers is like a bad boob job

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blue gloved hands covering breasts that are oulined in dotted lines for breast implantsYou created a Twitter account.  You learned to tweet. You started following people, and some started to follow you back.  But you see other tweeps who have thousands of followers, compared to your hundred.  The green-eyed monster rears its big green head and you want that many too.  So what do you do?  Believe it or not, many people go out and actually buy their followers.

Buying followers is not the answer.

There are many services out there that will let you buy followers.  I say to people, a little tongue-in-cheek, that for $100 I could have 10,000 followers tomorrow.  Ok, it would be a bit more than $100 and it might take a week, but I could still get them.  The problem with buying Twitter followers is that it is like a bad boob job. It looks good on the outside, but when you take your shirt off it looks awful. What I mean with my awful metaphor is this: looking like you have 10,000 fans overnight is great, on the surface. Instant popularity. The reality is that it is hollow (warning, here comes another bad metaphor); it is a one night stand with no orgasm.  Not only is it meaningless, there is no satisfaction.

  • Bought followers do not read your tweets.
  • They do not retweet you.
  • Bought followers do not know who you are.
  • They are not necessarily even people!
  • Bought followers will never be clients or customers.
  • And they will not click your links.

Bought followers may make your numbers look good but in all probability they will  not benefit your long-term goals. If you want real engagement, click-throughs, retweets, people who help grow your network, read your tweets and do business with you, you have to do it organically. It is slower, but the payoff is much bigger.

This said, I will admit here that not all the follower buying sites out there are useless, some of the better ones offer to connect you with targeted followers and users, which is not the same as buying randomly in bulk.  Ultimately Twitter is about engagement. Sure, you can purchase as many followers as you can afford, but if you are not participating in the discussion you will not receive any authentic benefits.

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