Twitter is a useful tool for both personal and business needs. If you are new to Twitter, it may be helpful to learn how to use it to your best advantage. Here are a few do’s and don’ts to get you started.

Twitter was revolutionary when it started. It’s a platform that uses short messages to communicate with others. It could be up-to-the-minute information about you or communication with clients and co-workers on projects and the like. And, you can follow others just like on other social networks.

With Twitter, there are very few established rules. Most of the advice given on how to use Twitter is about etiquette and using the service to connect with other business professionals, clients and the like.

Do’s on Twitter

So, let’s take a look at some of the positive things to do on Twitter.

* Follow others – It is not just about you; it’s also about connecting with people. Get involved in what is going on in your area of expertise. Follow people with similar interests. This gives you a higher visibility and can help establish you in that niche on Twitter. If you see something interesting, retweet it so others can follow too.

* Tweet – It’s just like posting on Facebook. Leave meaningful information for others. You can talk about yourself, but not too much. Intermingle some useful content with your conversational pieces.

* Create a compelling biography – Use your bio to its utmost. You have just a few characters so use keywords that are searchable to describe yourself and help others to search for you and find you.

* Be professional – This includes using proper grammar in your tweets. Abbreviations don’t lend themselves to professionalism.

Don’ts on Twitter

* Don’t tweet every second – You often hear about people who tweet about eating dinner, going to the bathroom and every other thing they do all day. This is not what people want to hear from you. In fact, it is one way to lose your ranking and current audience. It just clogs up the works for those following you.

* Be careful what you say – Once you have entered something on the internet, it will be there forever. Inflammatory tweets reflect negatively on you and can come back to haunt you later.

* Don’t be too negative – People who are always looking on the downside crash the party. Misery loves company, but you will lose yours if you persist.

* Learn to use hashtags properly – Hashtags can help you and others to follow a conversation more easily. But, use them the right way. Don’t put a hashtag on each word in your tweet. And, don’t hashtag a run-on tweet.

Using Twitter doesn’t have to be complicated or hard. Be yourself and use the above advice to make the most of your time there.

Once you’re ranked in the search engines, the game isn’t over. Ranking in the search engines isn’t a one-time endeavor. You need to keep working on your rankings to make sure that you can and do improve your traffic.

If you aren’t regularly working on improving your rankings, your competitors will be able to overtake you. By the time your competitors actually outstrip you in the rankings, they may already be way ahead of you in backlinks and other factors.

To prevent this from happening, you need to proactively maintain your search rankings. Here’s how.

==> Maintain a Steady Backlinking Strategy

Marketers often put huge pushes into getting backlinks when they want to achieve rankings, then completely neglect getting backlinks once the rankings are established.

Instead, once you’ve gotten your rankings, it pays to continue putting a small amount of energy into getting backlinks. You don’t need to get as many as when you’re striving for rankings, but you should still keep your link building efforts active.

For example, instead of shooting for 100 links a month, you might just shoot for 10. Enough to show Google that you’re still active, without tasking too many resources.

==> Keep Adding High Quality Content

Continue to add content to your website. It’s much, much easier for a static website to lose rankings than a website that’s constantly being updated.

When you add new content, you get new visitors. You get new pages to get ranked. You get more backlinks as more and more people find your site and link to it.

Also, Google wants to show people websites that are active. When given the choice between a three-year old website that hasn’t been updated and a website that’s constantly adding new content, Google will choose the latter, all else being equal.

==> Stay on Top of New Ranking Factors

The search engines are constantly updating their algorithms. By and large, it’s not hard to figure out what their latest updates are.

For example, in 2011 social media suddenly started playing a part in rankings. How often you’re tweeted about and your Facebook likes can now actually help your rankings.

Furthermore, Google and Bing came together to create Schema, which allows you to embed data structures into your website that helps search engines figure out what your content is about.

Stay on top of developments in the search world and make sure your website is taking advantage of all the new ranking factors.

These are a few smart ways to maintain your online search rankings. Remember: if you don’t actively maintain your rankings, sooner or later your rankings will drop. It’s much easier to proactively protect your rankings than it is to try and chase them back once they’re gone.

SEO Made Simple (Second Edition): Strategies For Dominating The World’s Largest Search Engine
Where to buy: www.amazon.com

“SEO Made Simple” (Second Edition) is a very informative book on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to get to the top of Google rankings. If you are new to SEO and want to learn important steps in getting your website ranked highly with the biggest search engine, then this is the book for you. Read up on easy-to-implement, actionable techniques anybody can use quickly and effectively. Learn how to build links, generate lots of traffic through big search engines such as Bing, Yahoo or Google, and increase your profits.

It’s a competitive world out there and to stay on top or get to the top you will need all the tricks and tips to get your website listed highly. Chapters include: On-Page Optimization (Meta tags, keywords, URLs etc), Off-Page Optimization, Social Media, Link Building and lots more.

Overall, particularly if you are new to SEO, this updated version of SEO Made Simple will give you a wealth of information on how to achieve high rankings through SEO, which is, we all know, what drives your business forward. It’s definitively a very good resource to read and implement.

SEO Made Simple (Second Edition): Strategies For Dominating The World’s Largest Search Engine
From Amazon:
Today’s leading SEO Book, SEO Made Simple: Search Engine Optimization Strategies for Dominating the World’s Leading Search Engine, 2nd Edition, is a tell-all search engine optimization guide for anyone trying to reach the highly coveted #1 ranking on Google for their website or blog. Updated and expanded with the latest information on search engine optimization (SEO) and including more than 20 new pages of proven search engine optimization techniques. SEO Made Simple is today’s top-selling search engine optimization guide. Learn from leading Webmaster, Michael H. Fleischner, the specific SEO techniques that deliver top rankings in less than 30 days. Whether you’re a search engine optimization expert or new to website rankings, the techniques revealed in SEO Made Simple will give you everything you need to dominate Google and other leading search engines. Generate tons of traffic to your website absolutely FREE with top search engine placement on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. SEO Made Simple has helped more individuals than another other search engine optimization guide ever printed to achieve top rankings for even the most competitive keywords. This guide has been updated with the latest SEO advice on social media, Google Places, and even a step-by-step link building process that has already produced top results for some of the most sought after keywords. If you are looking for a guide that provides the information you need to achieve top rankings, without all of the useless fluff, this is it. SEO Made Simple is the only resource on search engine optimization that you’ll ever need. Learn the techniques that have a direct and significant impact on your website’s ranking. This book is ranked #1 for a reason. Read our reviews and see for yourself why SEO Made Simple is your most important resource for acquiring top search engine rankings.

Building a successful brand can solidify your business in your niche. It establishes you and your business as a name that can be trusted. Here are some tips to help you build brand success.

What Is a brand?

When you see the swoosh logo, what does it make you think of? And how about Coca-Cola? You know the tagline, don’t you? And if we say “You’re in good hands with -” you can probably finish the sentence.

All of these show how a particular brand has influenced not only society but also our idea of what these certain products should be. For instance, when it comes to photocopying, people use the term “Xeroxed.” Actually, Xerox is a brand name that has become synonymous with the act of photocopying. How is that for brand success?

Building Your Brand

Who’s to say that you won’t become as big as Xerox one day? For any business, you start in the same place – building your brand.

Here are some tips to get the ball rolling.

* Be real with your customers – Anyone can create a “smoke and mirrors” advertising campaign. You can promise the world and some will believe you. But, when you don’t deliver, your credibility is shot. One way to be real is to put a face on your business. Add your photo. Speak plainly and in simple terms with your customers.

* Make good on your promises – The problem with many companies is poor customer service. If you promise to send a confirmation email after purchase or an answer to an information request, then do so in the time promised.

* Sell your product – Inspire customers to buy by giving them a reason to use your product or service. Describe how their life will benefit from having your product in it. Help the customer make an emotional connection to your product.

* Promote your product in as many places as possible – When new products come out, do a press release. Promote it on your social networking site, your blog and your website. Create YouTube videos and also podcasts about your products to increase the talk. Don’t forget offline promotion as well.

* Be consistent with your brand – Whatever you decide that your brand will stand for, be true to that. Use people and ideas that are in line with your brand to help identify it for your audience.

* Target your customers – Now that you know your brand, you have to connect with the people who “need” what you offer. Use keywords to draw your customers to you. Create a list of potentials and then stay in contact with them.

What does your product stand for? Take some time and create your brand. Then, provide quality products that connect with your customers so they almost sell themselves.

Resources for further study:

Branding Your Business: Promote Your Business, Attract Customers and Build Your Brand Through the Power of Emotion
Price: $15.43
James Hammond, Paperback – Revised, Series: Business Success Series, English-language edition, Pub by Kogan Page, Ltd

Branding By Blogging: Build Your Brand Identity And Online Presence To The Maximum Using This Ultimate Business Branding Strategy And The Power Of Blogs!
Price: $3.99
Blogging is one part of an advertising campaign. It is a powerful marketing tool that can give you free exposure – publicity that your business needs to develop a strong web presence and establish your brand identity.A blog is easy to maintain and flexible. Unlike a website, which is stagnant and fixed, a blog can be anything you want it to be. Depending on your creativity and mood, you can fix your blog up to target your needs. A blog is very friendly, too. It has the ability to reach out, connect, and link up to other active blogs far and wide into the blogosphere. Combined with other advertising efforts, a blog has the capability to broadcast your product and business and be a powerful money-making tool. This book will disclose full information about blogging and its significance to your business as an advertising tool. It contains detailed guidelines on setting up a blog, the benefits you can expect to derive from it, planning for relevant content, maintaining a blog, and promoting a blog through tried and tested marketing techniques. Create your blog now with the help of this blogging manual and see it build your brand identity and online presence to the maximum!

The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Target Your Audience! Get Out Your Message! Build Your Brand!
Price: $11.15
Dan S. Kennedy, Paperback, Edition: 4, English-language edition, Pub by Adams Media Corporation

Content creation is essential to online marketing success. But it’s not always easy. Download this free ebook, courtesy of hubspot.com

Download this free resource today: “100 Inbound Marketing Content Ideas”

Regardless of the type of blogging software or service you use, chances are your blog currently has an RSS feed. RSS (which stands for “Really Simple Syndication”) is a core blogging technology that lets your blog “broadcast” whenever you post something new. These broadcast messages are picked up by “RSS readers” (such as the popular Google Reader or one of the RSS readers that are available for iPhones and iPads), which many people use to keep track of new posts on all of the blogs they follow.

While the basic RSS technology certainly does its job, there are other ways to leverage RSS and greatly improve your blog. FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google in 2007, is one of the best ways to upgrade the default RSS technology – FeedBurner provides the standard RSS feeds to your blog’s followers, but it can also do much more.

Perhaps the most powerful feature of FeedBurner is that you can identify and analyze a lot of new data about your blog. For example, FeedBurner lets you see how many subscribers there are to your RSS feed (or feeds, if you offer more than one).

FeedBurner can also help you visualize where these users and subscribers are. This can be particularly useful if your business has a “bricks and mortar” presence – if you don’t have a lot of subscribers that are close to your store location, you can make a priority of trying to get more local people to follow your blog. To complement this, you might also try to provide new promotions that would appeal to followers who aren’t located close to your store.

FeedBurner also tracks the popular items in your feed, so that you can see which blog posts get clicked on the most. This can help you optimize your blog going forward because you’ll have greater insight into which blog headlines are the most appealing to your followers.

Another FeedBurner feature – and the one that gets many people excited – is the ability to monetize your RSS feed directly. FeedBurner allows Google AdSense integration with your RSS feed. This means that you can have the opportunity to earn additional income through Google’s AdSense program, without having to place additional ads directly on your blog. This can also be a great way to “test the waters” with various advertising techniques on your blog, without committing to any big changes in your blog set-up or appearance.

In order to get started, you first need to sign up for the FeedBurner service. Log into your Google account (or create a new one if necessary) at http://feedburner.google.com. Once you provide your blog’s default RSS feed address, FeedBurner will create a new feed address for use in connection with the FeedBurner service.

Next, download the appropriate plug-in for your blog service. Nearly all blogging platforms are supported, including WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. Links to these services can be found as soon as you create your FeedBurner account.

The best way to move forward it to start exploring the various features available through your FeedBurner dashboard, one by one. In virtually no time you’ll have made some great improvements to your blog!

There’s still a lot of money to be made online. One great business model is to create an online niche store. A niche is a specialized topic or product. For example, smart phones might be a niche. Blackberry smart phones would be an even more specialized niche. Repurposed Blackberry Smart Phones is even more specific.

Niches work well because you don’t have the same amount of competition. And you know that people who come to your website are interested in your specific product. There’s a higher rate of conversion. This translates into more sales for you.

If you have an idea for a niche store, here are a few tips to make it a reality.

#1 Plan it!

You want to have a solid plan before you launch a store. Go into business without a plan and you may end up with a mess. Your plan doesn’t have to be formal. Instead, write it for yourself and anyone who will be working with you. Include:

* Vision and mission
* Your goals
* Your available time/schedule
* Your business model. For example, will you be a reseller? Are you going to join a direct sales company?
* Are you going to outsource work or hire employees?
* Who is your market and how will you reach them?
* Who is your competition and how will you beat them?
* How are you going to test and track your products, systems and strategies?
* How will you receive payment and fulfill orders?

#2 Your Storefront

This decision is important because it can be difficult to change your mind later on. How are you going to sell your products? Will you create an eBay store? Sell on Amazon? Or will you create your own storefront and host the site yourself? WordPress makes it easy – if you find the right theme that integrates with available shopping carts.  (We recommend elegant themes, specifically the estore or boutique themes, which areabsolutely gorgeous and offers easy integration with ecommerce and shopping cart plugins.

Review your options and make a decision that supports your current and long-term business goals.

#3 Choose a Good Store Name

Your store name, and URL or website address are important. You want people to be able to find your products and storefront quickly. For example, if you’re going to sell repurposed blackberry phones you might want to make sure those keywords are in your storefront and URL – Www.repurposedBlackberries.com for example.

Building a niche storefront can be a fun and fulfilling way to make money. Research your idea and find a niche that has good demand and little competition. Decide how you want to set up your business and storefront and start making money online!

Here are more resources to help you get started:

How to Start a Home-Based Online Retail Business (Home-Based Business Series)
Price: $18.95
All the information you need to get online and selling, from creating a winning website to writing a business plan, software choices, security issues, taking credit cards, taxes and record keeping, marketing your business, legal matters, and how to grow your business.

Start Your Own Retail Business And More: Brick-and-Mortar Stores, Online, Mail Order, and Kiosks
Price: $15.56
In every community large and small, you’re likely to see a variety of stores: clothing boutiques, gift shops, bookstores, specialty food shops, hardware stores. Their inventory may be totally different, but the steps involved in running them are much the same. Whether you want your own storefront, a kiosk in a mall, an e-commerce store or anything in between, this essential guide covers everything you need to know. Learn how to discover your niche, establish inventory, set pricing, create policies, reach customers, and more! Plus, gain priceless tips, tricks, and insight from successful retailers sharing hard-won advice and cautionary notes. Learn how to: Choose from popular retail niches specialty items, clothing store, gift shop, kiosk, and more Discover the right sales avenue for your products Select merchandise that flies off the shelves Set prices to maximize profits Boost brand recognition using social media, public relations and other marketing strategies Efficiently manage inventory and supplies for easy order fulfillment Hire a staff that will help you succeed And more Retailing is a trillion-dollar industry-grab your share today! Entrepreneur Press is a leading small to midsized business trade publisher, provides aspiring, emerging, and growing entrepreneurs with actionable solutions to every business challenge-ultimately, leading them from business idea to business success.

Build Your Own Online Store In Yahoo: Start Your Own e Commerce Business and Build Your Online Store Using The Resources Of One Of The Most Powerful Search Engines In The Internet
Price: $15.95
Yahoo has come up with a very successful solution to helping out business-minded people all over the world. It is well-known now as the Yahoo store, ever since more and more people worldwide have become successful business owners by simply using this ingenious service. The Yahoo store is a very clever and resourceful channel to start selling your products or services online particularly if you are very adamant in starting your own business but do not have the cash outlay to put up a retail store, not counting too, the global market reach that one of the major search engines of the internet can provide you with. The Yahoo store has very flexible merchant plans you can choose from to fit your budget and a wide-range of resources you can utilize to get your business started. The building process is easy: prepare your store content information, choose your store design that is best suited to your business needs, layout your content, set up your payment methods, your shipping service offers and, there you have it, you’re ready to start selling. Yahoo doesn’t stop there, though. They help you out further with growing your business by providing you with the latest web tools and current advice on internet marketing such as online promotion, advertising, customer relations and measuring success.

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition: Learn how to design, build, and profit from a sophisticated online business.
Price: $30.67
The book can be read from front to back, but each chapter is self contained so the reader can skip chapters to read those that they are interested in. Each chapter will move from basic to advanced where applicable and also relate what the administrator (reader) is doing to how this affects what the client sees on the site. So, for example, the customization chapter will start off with a discussion on the concept of design and how to relate this to your business. Once the reader has a clear idea of what they need to do, we look at some really simple changes such as modifying the site’s language, before moving to some advanced modifications which may involve some PHP programming. At the same time the discussion will demonstrate how the changes made affect the site. Throughout the book, much consideration is given to the “right” way to doing things. Readers will have the great advantage that they begin, from the very start, doing things properly. This will save them a lot of time and effort in the years to come as they build on and modify their site. Utilizing best practices and sound methodologies is a great asset for beginners and experienced users alike. At all times, the coverage given in this book pays homage to the fact that, ultimately, the reader has a business goal in mind. To this end, the material never gets bogged down in technical issues or long discourses, but rather focuses on what is practically important for the online business and then moves on. To complement this, there are plenty of suggestions and hints as to how and where to look for further information. This book is written for anyone who: Already uses OSCommerce. Would like to use OSCommerce. Would like to make a website for their business. Is charged with administering, running and maintaining an OSCommerce site. Is interested in learning how an eCommerce application is created and maintained.

OpenCart 1. 4 Beginner’s Guide: Build and manage professional online shopping stores easily using OpenCart
Price: $39.99
Murat Yilmaz, Paperback, English-language edition, Pub by Packt Publishing

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Blogging is a necessity for website owners. It is a free marketing tool that many don’t take advantage of. Using it can help you to achieve higher search engine rankings for your website.

Think of it as the difference between formal and informal meetings with clients. On your website, you are providing essential information about the business – what you can do for those who need your services. You give them what they need in a well-written format. They can find your store with products for sale, membership options and opt-in pages for newsletters and mailing lists.

With a blog, you can let your hair down. A blog allows you to post information for your readers and customers. Then, they can provide feedback to you in the form of comments on your posts. You can discover vital suggestions from customers that can enhance your business. Blogs have appeal to many and they are also followed by people who like what you have to say but who have not even visited your website – yet.

So, use that blog to its fullest potential. Here are some ways to achieve better rankings for your business website.

* Write optimized posts – More than likely, you are changing your content on your blog more often than you are on your website. While you are refreshing the website content, you don’t need to do so as often to keep interest. However, readers of blogs are more voracious and need fresh news more regularly. By sprinkling the keywords you are trying to promote throughout your entries, spiders can crawl and rank your entries high on search result pages.

* Include links to your website – Each post is ranked and given a URL. This is a new opportunity to mention a link (outright or with anchor text) that leads back to your website. For those who only follow your blog, they can now find you in another capacity on your website. This increases your traffic.

* Use an RSS feed – People can follow your blog easier and still use links in posts to find your website. Increasing blog subscribers also increases website traffic.

* Submit your RSS feed to relevant directories – This can also help to increase your search engine rankings of your blog, which is good news for your website. One that comes to mind is FeedBurner, but there are many others you can also use.

Blogs are free and quick to set up. You can start with a site that has its own templates and then further customize them for your needs. Without spending a cent, you have created another channel to divert traffic to your website though one-way links.

Increase your rankings fast with a blog.

More resources on Blogging and SEO:

Marketing Is A Contact Sport: Make Contact Through Blogs, Seo (Search Engine Optimization), Search And Social Marketing
Price: $9.95
Blogs & Social Marketing are key In tough Economic times like now, It’s even more important to save money with Do-it-your-self SEO, use blogging and Social networking for Internet Marketing. Blogs are at the heart of Internet Marketing, and they can help you promote your business. You will learn the secrets of Blogs, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Search Marketing, and Social Marketing to grow you business. The book brings in strategies to help win friends and influence people, a key trait in the world of Social and Business networking. It shows new paradigm of Internet marketing, and easy to use SEO, how to write blogs, and join social networks to promote your business. There are many topics on Blogs and how to write compelling content to increase your internet marketing effectiveness, so that the Search Engines find your blogs through the method of SEO. This book could quite possibly be the best investment you make in marketing your business, especially Internet Marketing.

WordPress for Business Bloggers: Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO
Price: $34.0
This practical guide will show you how to make your business blog different from the crowd and attractive to your target audience by implementing the features of WordPress. This book is for current users of the WordPress platform who want to get the most out of WordPress to manage business/professional blogs; it is not an introduction to WordPress and does not cover basics such as installation or creating posts and pages, configuring blog settings, etc. Readers are expected to have a WordPress blog or to be in the advanced stages of planning one. The book is aimed at managers of business/professional blogs, which broadly fall into four categories: Professional Expert Blogs? owned by individuals who blog in their area of expertise to increase their personal exposure and standing. Corporate Blogs? owned by companies that blog to reach customers and encourage closer relationships, sales, and referrals. Online News Sources / Magazines? blogs that provide content on particular topics, funded by ads. Campaign Blogs? not-for-profit blogs run by charities or “causes”, designed to promote ideas or encourage certain behaviors. Non-business bloggers will also find the book useful if they want to take their WordPress skills beyond the basics.

RSS feeds can be extremely powerful for internet marketers. In fact, many marketers find that their RSS feeds are as powerful, or more so, than their email marketing list. And with new technologies you can actually segment your RSS to different audiences.

For example, you can offer an RSS feed for blog posts. This is the most commonly used technology. You can also offer an RSS feed for new products, for news, for special promotions, and for newly published content.

With all of this potential it makes sense to want to increase your RSS conversion. Here are a few tips and ideas to help you do that.

#1 Include a link and promotional message in your email correspondence. This includes your email list too. You can make it part of your email signature – much like many people now include social networking links in their email signature, you can also include an RSS link.

#2 Make sure there is a subscribe button prominently placed on every single web page. You might even consider calling out the button with a motivational call to action. For example, “Stay ahead of your peers and in the loop by subscribing to our content.”

#3 Use social networking. Make sure you have a call to action leading social networking friends and followers to subscribe to your blog or website content. And include the link in some of the content you publish on your Facebook fan page, LinkedIn communications or Twitter posts.

#4 Include information marketing. Provide a link to your RSS feed in your information products. It doesn’t matter if you’re giving them away or selling them – always invite people to subscribe and stay in the loop.

#5 Make use of your content. When you publish content online, whether it is via an article directory, YouTube or some other format, consider including a call to action, and a link, inviting your audience to subscribe. In fact, with video content you can overlay your call to action and link. You can also personally invite watchers to follow you.

RSS is a great way to connect with your audience on a consistent basis. You can use the technology to offer value, sell your products or services or to promote your business. You can use it exactly like you would your email list, or you can create a new goal and purpose for your subscribers. Regardless of your ultimate goal, test and track your tactics to gain optimal results and lasting success.