Hey folks, I don’t know if you witnessed this yesterday, but Twitter decided to give people heart attacks yesterday!
I remember I went to look at my profile to find that my followers and followings were both zero! I couldn’t believe it. I thought Twitter might have decided to play Powers That Be and just shut me down but my profile was still active, so it didn’t make sense.
My profile has zero followers and followings lol
So I logged in to my account and I could still see my fellow tweeps. That’s when I knew Twitter was being funny with me. I then went to someone else’s profile and they had the same. So it was all good. I knew that it was just a temporary issue. I checked a few hours later and it was all back to normal. *phew*
So Twitter, why did this happen?
Mashable stated in their blog that “tweet counts are currently malfunctioning for some users“. Twitter never said what was the cause of this so we just got to let it go. It’s all back to normal now as confirmed by their status blog. I do wonder why this happened – just curious really
Thank You Twitter
So I just want to wrap this up by saying thank you for not resetting my followers and following to zero but I’m not happy with the heart attack I nearly had hehe.
Did anyone else encounter this? Leave a comment below and let me know what your thoughts were when you saw this if you did witness this. Also, does anyone know why this happened? I won’t tell Twitter, I promise
I thought I would quickly run through five little Twitter tips you may have overlooked when you set up your profile. These Twitter tips I’m going to share with you may seem unimportant, but trust me, they will help you have a successful Twitter account. Sometimes it’s the tiny things in life that makes a difference. So let’s get started with these Twitter tips.
Twitter Tips: The Five Important Profile Tips
1. Proper User Name Format. Make sure your Twitter user name uses capital letters for the first letter of each word/name. Basically what I mean, your user name should look like this ‘FirasAlkhaffaf’ rather than ‘firasalkhaffaf’ because it’s easier to read and remember.
2. Remove ‘www.’ from your website address in your profile. so it should appear like this “http://FirasAlkhaffaf.com” rather than “http://www.firasalkhaffaf.com” because twitter truncates your address (i.e. in my case it appears like this: http://FirasAlkha… which is fine because users can still see it’s my website.
3. Use a customized background with your details on it. This is important because Twitter only allows you to put on web link in your bio. By customizing your Twitter background, you’re able to put more details.
4. Don’t leave the bio blank. No one wants to follow someone who hasn’t made effort to write anything about themselves. You need to tell people what your bio is so that they know you’re human and therefore be able to relate to you. Don’t leave this one blank.
5. Finally, upload a photo. Put a picture of yourself is the best thing in my opinion because people will know they are real and it will help build trust. It can be a serious/normal photo or a funny photo. I wouldn’t advice using a professional-looking photo unless people know who you are.
Twitter Tips Summary
This is how my profile looks like. You can see how I’ve implemented the above in my profile.
A screen shot of my profile
So there you go, the five tips that you need to keep in mind when you set up your Twitter account. I will be posting some more Twitter tips soon.
Facebook has officially launched Facebook Questions to selected groups of people and will roll out to more users over time. Basically how it works is a user post a query and the answer will from the Facebook community.
For years, questions have been asked to trusted people around us within a community and Facebook Questions is going to bring this feature into their website. It’s similar to Mahalo, Yahoo! Answers, Twitter and Quora, in ways that users can post questions and other users can answer them. This can easily be done by clicking the “Ask Question” button on the homepage. Facebook Questions is also available on your friends’ profiles just like you would post on their walls.
A preview of Facebook Questions (I borrowed this image from Mashable.)
Facebook Questions Features
Can you imagine the online potential of this? According to Mashable several features are going to be included in Questions. One cool feature is going to be able to post photos, for instance of a bird whose species is unknown and then get the answer via the community. Another feature is going to able to have your question answered using polls e.g. which fruit tastes: apple or orange?.
Facebook Questions way of browsing is going to be through Tagging and Topic Exploration. Tagging will let users tag their questions so others can find them and Topic Exploration will let users browse either by specific topic or all topics.
Facebook Questions Topic Exploration (Mashable is so kind for letting me borrow these screenshots)
Another thing that Facebook Questions will have is a following feature, which lets you follow a question for updates and new answers. This will let users expand their knowledge base by getting notifications when new answers are made available.
One major change will be the homepage as a new bar is added at the top where you can choose to update your status, ask a question, add photos, or post a link.
Facebook Questions is not for Advertising
This is one thing Facebook has made clear; it’s not for advertising. Although Facebook Page users can answer questions, it won’t be used for advertising purposes, but rather building a quality resource for users. However, this is going to allow Facebook to get a further insight into their users. It will help them to do more targeted marketing and advertising using their Advertising services for instance, as they will be collecting more data about their users. Can you imagine someone asking a question, and an advert pops up on the right hand side with the “answer”? Interesting stuff, huh?
This new Q&A platform is going to be open to the public, so don’t be asking some questions you don’t want the world to see.
Facebook are taking many steps to expand themselves. About a month ago, I posted an article about Facebook bringing search on their website and providing tools for SEO. These moves are very interesting and I can see Facebook becoming more dominant online, ecpecially with a user base of 500 millions.
So what do you think? Let me know what your thoughts are on Facebook Questions by posting your comments below.
Are you sick and tried of people asking you “why use Twitter?” You get questions like “what’s the point?” or “I’m not interested in finding out what others are having for breakfast” or the best one is “Twitter is a waste of time“.
Now let’s not get angry and lose it with these people. It’s not their fault really. They obviously can’t see the true potential of Twitter…or maybe they’ve just been asleep in a cave and missed out on the online social media explosion. I don’t know. But what I do know are five reasons that you can use to defend yourself and why use Twitter! So, lets get started!
So Why Use Twitter
1. It’s Free!
Oh yes, we all love free stuff! It’s free to register an account on Twitter. It’s also free to post updates. All you need is an Internet connection or a mobile phone (cell phone for my American friends! ). To get started, just head over to Twitter.com and signup for a free account. Tell Twitter your name, select a username, a password and provide your email address. That’s it. What’s good about Twitter compared to other Internet marketing ventures is that you don’t need any investment; therefore the risk is none.
2. Easy List Building
What Twitter let’s you do is build a list of contacts to market your website, blog, product or service. Since Twitter has “190 million users Tweeting 65 million time a day” (as of Jun 2010 according to TechCrunch), it will be easy to build a list in your niche market. We all know that a big asset to any business is to build a list of contacts. Use Twitter Search as a starting point to find people in your market.
3. Huge Networking Potential
Before you begin marketing yourself or your business on Twitter, you need to build your list of followers, by following other members. This can be done by searching for users based on their email addresses, names and locations. Use Twitter Search to review tweets by other users to find people who are in the same market as you. This is how networking starts. Many users also post on online message boards looking to exchange Twitter contact details.
4. You Can Twitter About Anything
Twitter is ultimately a social networking site, which means many tweets are social in nature. So you will get people tweeting about their daily activities such as going shopping, heading to the train station and so on, and that’s OK because we’re not robots and it’s good to hear/read these ‘ordinary’ things. Being human can make businesses grow stronger as people like to know that there are others like them on the otherside and not some cold organization that only tries to make money out of them.
Remember you can Twitter about anything so you can use it to promote yourself and/or your business but do remember don’t over do it because people will not like it. If you do want to promote your website, blog, product or service, do it with style and have fun! Be creative.
5. The Potential is Awesome!
You can use Twitter to drive huge amount of traffic to your website or blog, generate interest as well as sales because if your followers find your tweets interesting, they will forward them to their contacts and before you know it your tweets can go viral, without you spending a dime! It doesn’t get better when you get endless good results without needing to spend money.
I also tweeted to my fellow Twitter friends and asked them the question “why use Twitter” and this is what they said:
@edumorph: “What I like about twitter is that it increases serendipity no end! Plus I can keep in touch with ppl easily”
@pinkro: “I like to throw my ideas into the air when I think of them and it is a source of instantly updated information”
@texjoachim: “To keep in touch with friends, to get info about stuff I like.”
@ahmadzul: “i get to read so many thoughts as well as me, posting my own thoughts n feelings”
@CKaldenbach “use of #twitter: I am interested in the conversations , like to help people or connect them, share a little who I am”
Note: Make sure you don’t commit one of the biggest Twitter Mistake users tend to commit.
Why Use Twitter? Now You Know!
So there you go folks, now you know what to say when someone asks you “why use Twitter?”, so either tell them straight or send them here and let me deal with them
I wanted to write this article to express my thoughts about the biggest mistake users commit on Twitter.
First of all, let’s define what Twitter is. According to Wikipedia:
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their friends list.
So, Twitter is a social networking site AND a microblogging service.
seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
The words that stood out were ‘enjoying’ and ‘friendly’. Can you see what I’m trying to get at? A lot of people that use Twitter for their business are doing it totally wrong.
Let me show you an example:
In my opinion, this is not a good example on how to use Twitter.
Do you see what I mean? Who would want to ‘socialize‘ with this individual? All I can see from this page is SPAM SPAM SPAM! Spamming puts a lot of people off. I mean he could promote those free gifts a bit nicer and friendlier, which would attract more clicks. Also, this Twitter user is using FriendFeed which means his feeds are most likely automated using RSS feeds to post content automatically (which I’m not totally against as long as it brings value). But in this case, it’s like he can’t even be “present” while socializing. It’s important to be present when you’re using social networking sites.
Welcome to the Twitter Party
Yes, Twitter is like a party. You don’t go to a party to promote yourself or your business. No one would want to hang out with you. Being at a party is all about socializing and having fun.
“But Firas, how can I promote my business then…?”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t promote your business at all using social networking sites, but you have to do it subtly so it’s not in your face.
This is where a lot of people go wrong when they do Twitter marketing.
Whenever I do my bit of marketing on Twitter, I always remind myself that Twitter is like a party so I don’t over do it.
if you do want to sell something on Twitter, make your tweets witty and funny so people click on them
post things that will make you sound and look human. (e.g. jokes, quotes, videos, articles, random tweets etc.)
Do interact with others. Answer tweets by using @replies.
don’t repeat the same tweets over and over and over…and over again! like you’ll see people tweeting the same thing like: ”download your free report now” repeated a million times.
So just be cool and subtle. At the end of the day you are doing it for your business but do remember that people get bored easily with the same repeated stuff. If you do have a report you want people to download or a website you want them to check out, entice them in a funny or witty way. Do remember that you need to post other things as well like I mentioned above to make you look like a human being with a personality.
Finally, if you feel I’ve missed out on anything please leave a comment below. Perhaps there are other mistakes users are making.
Righto, enough of all this ranting, I’m off to the Twitter Party!
First Facebook went head-to-head against Google Adwords with Facebook Ads, and now they’re striking back against Google Search with their new Open Graph Search Engine. This is huge! As it will combine social media and search marketing; this is SEO on a whole new level.
Before I continue, let me clarify that I don’t think Facebook will be knocking out Google…yet. They have a lot of work to do before they can overtake Google’s advanced search engine. But like always, Facebook never fails to surprise us all.
So let me tell you how this is all going to work!
Webmasters are going to be given two tools by Facebook to index their website for Facebook Search.
The first tool is going to be a “Like” button to install on their pages so that user can click
and the second tool is going to be a set of tags that lets webmasters tell Facebook what their website is all about.
So basically, the Facebook search results will be based on the number of “Likes” the website has received and the information in the tags. So what this means is, instead of “links”, the search engine will be based on “likes”. A Social controlled search engine; this is going to be interesting!
Get Your SEO Skills Ready!
So our eyes witnessed what Facebook accomplished with Ads (and successful indeed, they were). So it’s only right to say that their search engine has massive potential to become one of the big boys, especially having Bing powering it.
Now is the time to get in on this since Facebook is giving us the opportunity to improve our search rankings. They are giving these tools away to start utilizing. Like most of the time, SEO campaigns tend to save cash and provide continuous results without needing to continuously work, so why wait?!
My final thoughts regarding Facebook search engine and Facebook SEO are that you need to act now by taking action to optimise your website for Facebook search engine before everyone else clocks on. I’m going to be posting some tips in the near future regarding as I believe it’s going to be huge.
One mistake a lot of businesses fail to do is getting their customers to engage with them. One key point to grow your business is to listen to your customers wants and needs; responding to their cries! So it becomes a good way of getting feedback. Also, what social media will allow you to do is give you the ability to interact, engage and participate in dialogues with your customers. If you do this well, social media will also become a good source for testimonials
Still Having Doubts About Social Media?
If you’re still doubting the power of social media, let me break down the advantages for you! The first and main thing is cheap communication as there are several methods to reach out to your customers using several social channels, including social networking sites, social groups (e.g. groups that you can find on LinkedIn and Facebook), Micro-blogging (such as Twitter) and so on.
When you take advantage of the different social channels, (and people like you) you will start building a community (which in business terms is called “grow your database”). This will allow you to target your customers or potential customers without much effort. Cool huh?!
Social media will also let you reach out to customers all around the world without needing to spend much money, both geographically and demographically! The reason I mention demography is because on social networking sites, you can actually target people/customers depending on gender, age, location, hobbies/interests and so on.
Can you see the power of social media now?
Another way of how to use social media to grow your business is PR and the best place for PR is online as you are not restricted to the location you’re in. Offline PR is also effective but can be very expensive, however online PR is effective and swift as content on Internet spreads like wildfire.
So What Can You Do Now To Get Started With Social Media For Your Business
I would recommend using social networking sites like
Facebook to reach out to customers i.e. B2C business
LinkedIn to reach out to people in other businesses i.e. B2B networking
There are other sites too but the above are the two leading ones.
Another effective way of how to use social media to grow your business is to start blogging. Set up a blog for your business now if you haven’t already done so. Not only will this bring fresh content to your website but it will also get search engines indexing your websites more frequently. The more pages you have in search engines, the greater chance of people finding your website. Also, with blogging, people/customers can start interacting with you as they can leave comments. Starting a dialogue is the starting point of making a sale
There is also Twitter; different people have different opinions on using Twitter for business. I think if you use it correctly, it’s one powerful tool, but if you’re just going to tell people what you had for breakfast or how mowing the lawn is fun, you’re not going to do well. Also, if you’re just going to use Twitter to hard-sell, again, it won’t work. You need find a balance. Twitter is like a party, no one is interested in buying anything when they’re at a party. It’s about mingling and interacting. That’s the power of Twitter.
I’m going to wrap this up by saying social media is the way forward to help you grow your business online, so take advantage of its power before your competitors do.
If you don't have a digital marketing strategy, expect your business to blow up!
War! – the digital world is an ongoing online battle between you and your competitors. “Who is number one in Google? Who is everyone talking about on social networking sites? Who is everyone tweeting about on Twitter? Which Video has the most viewings on YouTube?” … and so on!
Imagine entering a battle with no strategy whatsoever, expecting random chances to help you succeed. No chance! We don’t believe in chance! We believe in a strategy! Any War General will tell you that you need a strategy to conquer your opponent. So that goes for any digital marketer who plans to do well online – They all have digital marketing strategy!
The purpose of this post is to highlight some effective digital marketing strategy tips.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Are you appearing in the search engines for a specific keyword? Do your competitors rank higher than you in the search results? What are they doing, which you aren’t doing? Surely there must be something you’re missing out on? That’s where search engine optimization comes in. Is your website optimized for the keywords your business is operating in? Firstly you need to know what people are searching for, so you need to do your market research. Once you know what they are searching for you need to optimize your pages on your website individually so that when people are searching, they are taken to those pages instantly rather than to the home page. Why you ask? Well, say someone arrives on you homepage and can’t find the page they’re looking for, they are just going to hit the back button and go to the next search result i.e. your competitor! So that’s search engine optimization.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
One thing about search engine optimization is that it can take a long time to move up the ranking in the organic/natural listing and some businesses don’t have the patience. Enter Pay-Per-Click! This method of driving traffic to your site is instant and effective. The only downside is you have to pay per click. The cost per click depends on the keywords you’re using and also the relevancy of those keywords to the page you’re driving the traffic to. Other than that, it’s definitely an effective digital marketing strategy!
Apparently, pay per click can also aid with moving your website up the natural listing (but this is unofficial).
Email Marketing
Building an opt-in list is vital for any business. It’s an effective way to reach out to your customers when you need to i.e. when you have new promotions, new products or services. You can also send out regular newsletters to keep your customers engaged. It’s also a good way if you want your customers to read new articles you post on your blog – it’s a quick way to drive traffic to new pages!
Email marketing is vital and should be part of your digital marketing plan!
Social Media
What are people saying about you or your products? Are you out there joining the conversations? Social Media has a key role in marketing in today’s market as people like to express themselves openly online. It can work for you or against you depending on the quality of your products and/or services. Websites like Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin are example websites where conversations are taken place actively. Twitter is another way where people can express themselves in a microblogging style i.e. limited to only 140 characters. YouTube is another form of social media where users express themselves via web videos, which is now taking off more and more as people are getting faster Internet connection and can handle video streaming.
Social Media is hot right now, and will keep getting hotter, so make sure you jump on the bandwagon right now!
Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is a very effective strategy where all you need to do is set the campaign off and then sit back and see how your campaign spread like wildfire! An example is a funny film or image which you receive via email and you end up passing it on to your whole contact list. Then they pass your email along to their contact list and so on – that’s something you call viral.
In today’s market, where social media is taking over the Internet world, a world where the customer can speak out what they believe in and finally be heard. It’s a world where freedom of speech exists (unless Google decides to blacklist you ‘coz then you’ve had it!) and it’s becoming more and more popular.
People are now searching for other people’s opinion before deciding to purchase something, or before doing business with an organsation, or even to find good holidays (i.e. which country/place is hot this year). Social Media is taking over and I personally think it will keep increasing.
A few years back someone got annoyed with Dell for having poor customer service, and wasn’t getting any results so he decided to set up Dell Hell and became popular because his voice was heard and others could relate as they must have had similar experiences. A community was born! Dell eventually responded to this individual’s cry and sorted out the issue. However, Dell Hell still lives – that’s the effect of Social Media.
A few years ago, the Internet was “controlled” to a certain extent as it wasn’t as easy as it is to set up a website but these days you can join a social networking site and speak your mind and get lots of followers. Time changes. People evolve. The customer was king, but has that’s changed to “the customer is king kong” because they can fight back, if they’re not happy.
So keep your customers happy. Make sure your customer service is top notch otherwise your customers will “king kong slap you” and it can affect your business greatly. Imagine, someone googling about your business because they are interested in investing in your company. So they go to Google, type in your business name and hit search. They wait eagerly for the page to load up with anticipation. As the next page finishes loading up, they look at the search results and find a link that says “Don’t do business with such and such”. This person who is searching will obviously click the link because it’s human nature to be curious especially if someone is prompting a warning. So this individual reads the article and decides that they no longer want to do business with this company. This company is now losing sales….
The above is just one scenario of how social media can have an effect on business. Imagine if the above was applied in a positive manner.
Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth because if your product or service is hot, then people will ‘sell’ it to others since it’s benefiting them. By speaking out, others listen and the reason why people listen is because they can relate to each other. Also, once someone starts a conversation, others join in whether it’s positive or negative because people can relate. The feeling of belonging, is something humans long for, hence the existence of communities because people need each other. That’s why people use search engines to see what others have to say.
I will end this by saying that your priority is, keep your customers happy and respond to their needs because the Customer is King Kong!
I was given the privilege by MMC Learning to check out their Professional Diploma in Marketing qualification course and I have to admit that I’ve never seen anything like it!
They have a library of over 400 professional e-learning tutorials with integrated videos. I felt like a spoiled kid when I logged in to their Learning Environment and saw all the e-learning tutorials – sort of like a Marketing Geek’s dream come true!
It was like being in a lecture room without needing to be there. I was able to just pause the lecturer, take a break (by going away to make a cup of tea) and come back to resume the lecture. It was brilliant, because I had full control of my learning. I even had the ability to repeat the same slide over and over again (yeah I’m one of those people that have to listen to something more than once to finally get what is being said – you can’t do that in a real life lecture).
At one point I closed down the tutorial because I had to go away to do something, but when I returned I relaunched the same tutorial to continue with my learning and guess what…it prompted me with a message asking me if I wanted to continue. How cool is that??!
I was able to navigate through the tutorials easily either by clicking the next button or by selecting which slide I wanted to access in the menu on the left hand side (you can’t do that in a real life lecture ). Every tutorial has a built in glossary which was easy to open and close whenever I got stuck with any marketing jargon.
Professional Diploma in Marketing – Brief Course Overview
Each module is introduced with learning outcomes, which tells you what you will achieve in each module. Also included are additional resources to aid your learning AND further reading to increase your marketing knowledge.
The Professional Diploma in Marketing consists of four modules:
Unit 1: The Marketing Planning Process
Unit 2: Delivering Customer Value Through Marketing
Unit 3: Managing Marketing
Unit 4: Project Management in Marketing
I managed to take some screen shots of the Professional Diploma in Marketing qualification course…for your eyes only!
This is an example of a Professional Diploma in Marketing tutorial
A screen shot of the marketing glossary which is integrated in the tutorials
Here's a screen shot of another Professional Diploma in Marketing tutorial which is delivered by another lecturer
When you do decide to study the Professional Diploma in Marketing with MMC Learning, this is what you will get in your course package:
A detailed Welcome pack and a course guide
Set of four recommended reading books, one for each of the units
Access to over 400 high quality online tutorials and videos
Support from an allocated course manager as the daily point of contact for any advice and guidance
Support from an experienced tutor to help you through all your assessments
I managed to find a few FREE tutorials on MMC Learning’s website and you can access them here: Marketing Diploma Demo. Do check them out and if you are interested. Get in touch with them.
Professional Diploma in Marketing Video
I’m going to leave you with their Marketing Diploma video:
I thought I would quickly run through five little Twitter tips you may have overlooked when you set up your profile. These Twitter tips I’m going to share with you may seem unimportant, but trust me, they will help you have a successful 
). To get started, just head over to 
