Unless you are new to social media, you should already know about Twitter and should know that it is an easy way for businesses to get closer to their customers for free. Twitter is a cost effective way to build a community and brand awareness. I highly recommend creating a Twitter account for your business if you have not yet done so. But if you already have, and are interested in improving the use of your Twitter account, here are 5 free tips to follow:

1. Things to consider tweeting about
When you tweet, don’t forget to mention your Facebook and Linkedin accounts. Followers may want to be apart of your other social portals and vice versa. Doing this will easily grow your audience. Tweeting, or giving shout outs, about the your colleagues will more than likely result in your followers following them as well, thus in turn, your business will have more prime tweets towards your target market. It’s a social spiral that you shouldn’t pass up and consider implementing.

2. Twitter directories
Getting your Twitter account listed on directories is an easy way to get your name out to Twitter land. These directories are also a useful way to find followers that you are interested in following. Mashable is one of my favorite directories to use, but there are tons to choose from.

3. Tweet often, but not too often
Try not to tweet about your business more than 10 times a day. Leave time for reaction or people may unfollow you, especially if followers see that you are not retweeting the good stuff from other followers or if you’re acting like a robot and not tweeting towards your audience in a friendly, personable way. Tweeting at certain times of the day, morning and night, will increase your chances of gaining more followers, but it also depends on the hours of whom you are trying to reach.

4. Make conversation
Asking questions on your Twitter timeline is a good way to get feed back. Also, try participating and retweeting tweets from others; they will more than likely retweet the favor.  Direct messaging your followers after they begin following you is common courtesy in Twitter land, although it may be hard to keep track of whom to thank when sending out your direct messages if you gain a lot of followers in one day. Socialoomph is a free tool that automatically sends out DMs to your followers and keeps statistics of how many are sent out in a day.

5. Tweet things that are valuable
Besides tweeting about your business, your followers want to read something interesting, worth their while or something that they’ll learn from. For example, tweeting: “Find out how much your twitter is worth – http://tweetervalue.com/ I’m worth $476, how about you?” allows followers to interact with you, is interesting and fun. Real life relationships are about give and take, you can’t let everything be about yourself or it just won’t work! And in this case, you’ll lose followers.

Need more help on social media? Our Social Media Ta-Do list is packed full of all the steps to get going and social.

Other related articles worth reading.
Social media and sales
140 ways to stand out
How Twitter got me a 6-fig gig

And these new Twitter books have some sweet, tweet, ideas too.

Stay tuned for ways to manage your Twitter account.

If your business is having a hard time getting customers through the door, check out Google Places, Yahoo Listings and, if you are in Florida, WOMbeat. These may be the answers you need to help grow your business.

Previously known as the Local Business Center, Google Places is a way to better connect Internet search users to local businesses and to give them more informed decisions about where to go and what business or product they should be using. Google Place Pages allows people to connect to information from the best sources across the Internet, giving reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners. These Places also allow businesses to share their information such as hours of operation, phone number, links, description, tag line and much more. This provides business owners with effective, yet easy to use, tools.

Yahoo! Local Listings is an online Advertising tool for business owners. It gives owners the ability to provide details about their business to potential and existing customers. Yahoo! Local allows owners to upload any information about their business from their computer and is very easy to manage. When setting up your listing, you won’t have to worry about using specific key words for your business nor will you have to manage bids.

WOMbeat! is a simple way to collect all of your biggest customers in one place online. WOMbeat! uses word of month effectively and efficiently by using customer incentives and metrics. It is an easy way for your customers to recommend you to their friends and allows you to build more customer loyalty. Click here to get started with your free business listing.

Download my PDF outline for step-by-step instructions on how to set up your Google Places and Yahoo Listings.

Need more ways to grow your business? Visit the Oddpodz book store and see our SEO and social media Ta-Do lists. These under $10.00 ebooks provide proven and valuable insight on two hot marketing topics.

http://www.facebooktabsite.com/

Facebook TabSite is a free online mini webpage for your business. Creating this mini webpage in Facebook is simple by using an application tab. You can create this tab within your Facebook page without having to know anything about Facebook Markup Language, also known as FBML. It is an easier option for those who don’t want to spend money on a developer. Facebook TabSite looks more professional then an original fan page and is a wonderful marketing tool for any business serious about expanding their presence. You can easily add content, images and links to your documents like .pdf and .docx so fans can have easy access to forms that are capable of viewing and downloading. With the free personal profile you get two TabSite subpages, 5MB of storage, you will be able to track how many fans view your TabSite and you’ll be able to publish updates to your wall instantly all while combining your blog or other social media pages. The choices are endless.

Today the Miami Herald ran an article on free tools and quoted me on how you can monitor your brand online and in social media. See full article here

Some of these tools are still in beta testing.

BackType

Co-tweet

divr.it

Thoora

I’ve signed up for all them and will post updates after some history with them. Let us know if there are others you use.

Guest blogging is a great way to optimize your blog/website’s SEO. According to SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors, links back to your site on external sites are what boost your SEO. Since guest blogging is about writing a quality article which links back to your website, guest blogging is a great way to create external links. Easy enough!

Guest blogging is win-win relationship between bloggers and blog publishers because the publisher of blog gets fresh and free content for their blog, helping it to grow. In addition to creating external links, guest blogging also helps you the increase readership of your blog, and builds your credibility (the more your name pops up in a Google search on credible websites, the more perceived credibility you will build). And all this also build your brand (if you are choosy where you are blogging….. which you should be because where you post reflects your brand. Everything affects your brand).

BlogSynergy is the Match.com for blog owners looking for guest bloggers and right now it is a FREE service! With BlogSynergy, blog owners can get free content for their blog, allow their readers to contribute to the blog, and get a fresh diversity of perspectives for the content. Bloggers can boost their exposure and get relevant high quality links back to their website, gain some exposure and hopefully some visitors too. By signing up on BlogSynergy you create a profile, include sample blogs, link up your blog, and select the categories and audiences you can write for or are looking for writers for.

To set up your page, visit BlogSynergy today. To get organized and strategized on a SEO plan for your biz check, out our ebook Search Engine Results Ta-Do List.

Online Professional Branding is an informative way of demonstrating one’s expertise via an easily accessible online platform or website. Your Online Professional Brand gives you the opportunity to showcase your expertise to your colleagues, employers and clients. It demonstrates that you think critically, generate proactive solutions and, most of all, have a great deal of passion for your field.

Here are a few places that you can build your online professional brand:
LinkedIn- You can use this service to connect with other professionals, share business news and join groups in your industry.
Slideshare- You can post presentations that showcase your expertise here.
Your website- Build a website with an address that contains your full name.

Learn more about this concept with this ebook:
Professional Online Branding: A New Dynamic To Your Resume

Creating an email campaign for your client list can be monkey business, but not anymore thanks to MailChimp. MailChimp is an email marketing company that offers many services including sophisticated technology to manage your client lists, cutting edge HTML email campaigns and the ability to track the success of your campaigns. The best part of MailChimp is the price…it’s FREE!

Given the convenience, ease of use and the price, MailChimp is the perfect solution for any and all businesses.

So, stop monkeyin’ around with your email campaign and visit MailChimp today to create your account!

Need a cool brand name, these brand name and word tools can help.

1. Free naming tools from www.Wordlab.com
Wordlab is all about creative solutions and brainstorming, the opening of minds and blocked nasal passages. They provide various Wordlab naming tools that may or may not be the end of all your company or product naming woes, but are fun, and for the Oddpodz team, have inspired a flood of good naming ideas.

Drug-O-Matic
The Drug-O-Matic brings the power of the big pharmaceutical companies to you, the little guy. There are currently over 9.3 million potential drug names lurking within this little apothecary’s monster.

Name Builder
Use this handy tool to jump start your naming process. Over 340,000 possible combinations and counting.

Morpheme Machine
For all you cunning linguists out there suffering from acute morpheme addiction. A morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word or word element that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts, and we cram them together in over 151,000 ways in our little machine.

The ACME Namemaker
When you don’t want to stand out from the crowd, here are over 26,000 ways to blend in quite nicely.

Cost: FREE

Logoease – Free Online Logo Maker
http://www.logoease.com

With Logoease, you can design a professional logo for your business or product at no cost. Using the intuitive online interface, you create your own logo from a selection of high quality images and fonts. There are hundreds to choose from. Manipulate the images, colors and layout anyway you like, and the design is uniquely your own. Then you can download and save the file in multiple formats such JPG, TIFF, and PNG for web and print purposes. There isn’t a catch—no ads on the logo or memberships. The logo is yours for free to use where you want.

Cost: FREE

Oddpodz Review: Add a visual to your business card, at the beginning of your presentation, on your blog or homepage—it’s your design. . With the ease of use, you don’t need to be a graphic artist; you can start design your logo in seconds, and there are many logo samples to give you a few ideas and get you started. Logoease claims it’s as easy as blowing bubbles.

(contact page: http://www.logoease.com/ContactUs.aspx)

People with strong personal brands earn bigger bucks, get more opportunities and really enjoy life.

What are you waiting for?
We are all brands. An image, a mental mark planted in the minds of our markets. You can leave your personal brand up to others to create, or you can take charge and consciously take actions so your brand works to achieve your goals.

If you polled your peers, your clients, employers or prospects and asked them what they thought of when they heard your name, What would they say? Is there a pattern of perception about who you are? What you stand for? If not, it’s time to give your personal brand a jumpstart.

Here are 4 FREE (and 1 low cost) personal branding tools to fast track your success.

1) FREE Online Reputation Management and Business Promotion for Professionals
Lookuppage.com
LookupPage is a free online service that provides personal visibility, online reputation management and business promotion for professionals. It is focussed on enhancing presence across all leading search engines using SEO and PPC. LookupPage enables you to manage yourself online, be visible when looking for a job, as well as promote your business and generate valuable new leads. Users benefit from an individual domain around their name (www.yourname.com), sophisticated visitor tracking tools and inclusion in the LookupPage index.

According to studies carried out by Execunet, 83% of candidates are researched online by recruiters and employers with the aim of finding out more about the person’s professional or personal background. Being visible on the web is now more important than ever for anyone who is looking for new opportunities and needs to be visible to potential employers or business partners.

How It Works
Create your personal LookupPage (standard page is FREE)
Your LookupPage gets you prominent positioning on all leading search engines including Google, Yahoo, Live, etc. when people search for your name. (Prominent position is guaranteed for users who upgrade to one of the following packages)

Pro: $15.95 for the first month and $7.95 thereafter or $88 per annum
Basic: $3.99 per month

By upgrading your account you have access to LookupPage analytics dashboard, where you can gain valuable insight by monitoring who is visiting your LookupPage. Learn where your visitors come from (i.e. where they search for you – Google etc), what search term they used to find you and more.

Cost: standard package is FREE.

Oddpodz review:
We all know visibility; especially concerning your online footprint is a key piece in any new business development program. This tool not only helps on search results tied to your name, it’s got some very cool tracking features to see who and where your viewers are coming from. The company is based in England, so their reach is international. I started with the 100% FREE level and it’s definitely got value. Then I upgraded to the Pro level, it’s around $8 bucks a month. I find the added levels of monitoring well worth the investment.

LookUpPage is giving members of the Oddpodz community a 15% discount when they upgrade to the annual pro package. Have a look here www.karen-post.com - I have my own unique named-domain, full of information about me and my business, a sponsored listing in Google, my logo and links with detailed information about my business and partners, my contact details, a daily, weekly or monthly statistical report telling me who has visited my page, and additional search engine optimization to ensure maximum effect for marketing on the internet.

If you want what I have, i.e., the LookupPage Pro, click here and register your details, then log in and go to My Account to upgrade to the Pro package, but don’t forget: you need to enter this promotional code on that page: HXuUek to get your 15% discount.

Read the rest of this entry »