Twitter is a great tool for business, but if you don’t have meaningful followers and manage them, then you are just blue bird flying by yourself.

FREE Twitter contact management and directory services

The follow tools allow for businesses to easily manage their twitter accounts:

• A powerful tool for seeing which people you follow are following you back is FriendOrFollow. This tool also allows you to see which people are following you, but you have yet to follow them back.
• You may have a lot of followers, but how many of those are active? Twitoria allows you to see which of your followers are active on Twitter over the last week, two weeks, month, two months, however long you would like to see.
• WeFollow is a user-powered Twitter directory. Simply enter the tags or keywords that you want to be known for (such as #socialmedia, #marketing, #entrepreneur) and viola! you’re finished.
• Twellow, also known as the Yellow Pages of Twitter, allows you to search for users by a wide range of many categories. You can also add yourself to this directory group so people can find you easier.
• A directory service that will notify you of new additions to people in your particular industry who is just like you is Just Tweet It.

For more FREE Twitter tips, click here. Also, stay tuned for Twitter marketing tools. Know someone who is clueless when it comes to social media? Maybe you? For under 10 bucks, you can change that. We’ve put together a simple and powerful Ta-Do list for social media.

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.

QR barcodes are an easy and efficient way to market your business. These codes, also known as quick response codes, can be placed on practically anything tangible. QR codes look almost identical to barcodes that are seen on many products used today. The only difference – users scan QR codes with a Smartphone using the camera feature. Once the picture is taken, the user is directed to a business’s website, blog, or social media profile. Placement for QR codes could be used on business cards in place of psychical website addresses. They could also be placed on shirts, in newspapers, magazines, on mugs and even on sides of buses. These codes were invented in Japan and are slowly becoming a marketing trend in Europe and America. Many websites, such as http://www.qrstuff.com/, generate free QR barcodes to help market your business.

COOL idea for a trade show too!
Set up a large display of a QR barcode at your trade booth, it’s eco-friendly and says “your a pretty darn innovative marketer”. As folks walk by the booth, they shoot a picture on smart phone (they automatically have the QR application installed on their phone) the barcode automatically directs them to the website or blog.

What makes your business different from others offering the same services? If you can’t answer that question than what are you doing? New business owners need to clearly and quickly point out what is so special about the way they are doing business. If you don’t know, your customers sure the heck aren’t gonna know — which means they aren’t spending money with you.

We are in the age of going green. Any company worth their salt is considering their impact on the triple bottom line and consumers are demanding more environmentally sustainable practices and products. Check out what FedEx did to get ahead of the curve in sustainability practices.

You small business owners and entrepreneurs might be thinking “I am too small to worry about footprints and sustainability”. Wrong! Think about it. If your small business is running a green practice, no matter how small, that is something you can use to differentiate yourself on your websites, in your blogs, everywhere. Also, isn’t when your practice is small the BEST time to ensure you’re building a green practice? Isn’t it much harder and more expensive when you have grown to be a large operation? That’s what we thought. So here is a free tool from Carbon Trust to help you get it together.

Carbon Trust recently released a free guide to help you determine your carbon footprint. The guide shares how to perform two different kinds of eco-footprinting. The first helps businesses determine the carbon footprint of a particular product’s life cycle. The second helps businesses determine the footprint of the whole organization. The guide gives clear, step-by-step instructions for calculating these footprints. You will need to register (for free) with Carbon Trust, and the end of the guide is devoted to outlining the ways Carbon Trust can help your business.

One of the best and oldest networking tools is a 3.5” x 2” piece of cardstock aka “the business card.” Whether you are just starting out and money is tight or you want to change your business card, businesscardland.com is the place for you.

Business Card Land provides you with templates and print design options. All you have to purchase is business card paper. Once you have the business card paper, follow these steps:

1. Select the design template you like best
2. Decide if you want full bleed or no bleed printing
3. Choose the size of your business card
4. Fill in the information you want to appear on your business card
5. PRINT your free business card

It’s easy and free and you’re sure to see results using one of the oldest yet most efficient networking tools in the book.

To start designing your business card, visit Business Card Land today.

Freebinar is a free webinar service whose goal is “to provide a free, world class webinar service that competes with the best paid services available.” Freebinar allows you to host as many webinars as desired, with no time limit and no installations, downloads or set-up. It is the only free webinar service that allows up to 150 attendees, which truly makes Freebinar Skype on steroids.

To learn more and sign up, visit Freebinar today.

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!

Have you ever designed a great looking brochure that desperately needs a particular picture?  You don’t have to pay a site like iStock photo.

Freedigitalphotos.net is an excellent source for downloading FREE stock photos for corporate or personal use. There is no registration required to download photos; however, there is a small fee for high resolution images. Visitors are encouraged to sign-up and members are given access to lightboxes and can email photos to friends.

One interesting feature about this website is that both amateur and professional photographers are invited to share their pictures through the website. They are given their own portfolio page, so visitors can get to know the person behind the camera. High-resolution versions of their photographs are also available for sale.

Happy downloading!

Free Internet Marketing tools

http://www.hubspot.com

Our friends at hubspot offer lots of free tools. This one is a must have fro any one building a business on the net.

Get Found Online
The Internet has profoundly transformed the way people learn about and shop for products. Ten years ago, companies reached their customers through trade shows, print advertising, and other traditional marketing methods. Today, buyers start their purchasing experience by looking on the Internet, in search engines, the blogosphere and social media sites.  In order to remain competitive, businesses’ websites need to be found online by the people already searching for the products and services that you sell.

The Internet Marketing Kit includes 3 how-to videos and an instructional e-book:
Video: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Learn how to get found in the search engines (1 hour)

Video: Blogging for Business – Learn how to get found in the blogosphere (1 hour)
Video: Social Media Marketing – Learn how to get found by engaging in social media (1 hour)

e-Book: Getting Found Online – Learn how to get found online in the search engines, blogosphere and social media sites (10 pages)

Bonus! Video: Combine SEO, Blogs and Social Media for Marketing Results (1 hour)

Cost: FREE