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You might be embarrassed to admit it (or maybe up until now you’ve been proud to declare it), but: you’ve never used Twitter. Beyond the anecdotes and major gaffes that make it into the mainstream news, you haven’t read anyone’s carefully composed 280-character message to the universe—sorry, Twitterverse. You don’t have a handle, and you’re not entirely sure why (or how) so many people are so hooked on the short-form, self-labeled “information network.”

But now you’ve started a business, or a new job, and you need to get up to speed fast. We’re here to help. Because if you have a business or are trying to succeed in most any business field, you should know how to use this valuable communication tool. May we present a brief Twitter primer for late adopters.

How to Get Started

1. Create an account. (You can do this online or from your mobile device.) One of the first things you’ll need to do is choose a “handle,” or user name. Don’t choose anything too obscure—your goal is to establish a cohesive, consistent “personality” to represent your brand, and keeping the basics straightforward will build trust and attract more followers. Plus, using your real information makes your business easy to locate should someone search for it. Upload a profile picture, either your logo or an image representative of your service.

2. Start forming your community. Twitter was designed to facilitate conversations. The people you follow are the ones whose posts, or “tweets,” you’re reading, and the people who follow you are the ones who will see your messages. Choose from among the suggested Twitter accounts or use the search bar to discover people, news sources or businesses you know and, perhaps more important, those you don’t. Look for shared interests, locations or contacts; check out followers of users you follow; experts in an area that’s relevant to your business or in an area that you’d like to learn more about.

Finding Your Voice

Decide in advance what your business goals are for using Twitter (e.g., to build a following, like a food truck, or to generate sales leads) and let that inform the “voice” you will present to the world; then each and every tweet, comment, picture—everything you post should be consistent with that voice and align with those goals.

As a new user, it’s a good idea to start out by retweeting (reposting something from another user, labeled “RT”) or reacting to messages from accounts you find interesting. This will make your posts more visible to other users and lets them know what topics are important to your business; once people get a sense of your voice, they will engage with and hopefully follow your brand.

For more nuts and bolts, Twitter has a solid broad-strokes guide to getting started, and Mashable offers a wide variety of resources for new users.

Use the #hashtag thoughtfully. The hashtag is a word or phrase immediately preceded by the hash (#) symbol that’s used to identify messages by topic; this “tagging” method turns those words into a searchable link. As Twitter has evolved, so has the hashtag, expanding beyond a functional tool into its own form of microconversation. You can use them to discover trending topics or people who share interests with your business, or to add an element of playfulness, irony, context or wittiness to your tweets. But don’t clutter your posts with a zillion hashtags; two or three per tweet is plenty.

The Rules of Engagement

1. Follow and be followed. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, follow everyone who mentions your company. Some users operate by following anyone who follows them; others follow users who “favorite” one of their tweets; and still others follow a person or business because they’re simply a fan or customer. The first approach can result in having an uninterested, unresponsive community receiving your messages. Read users’ bios and consider the context in which they’re talking about your brand or industry before you follow them.

2. Remember to listen to others. Just like in real life, no one likes the guy at the party who talks incessantly about himself. People use Twitter to interact; if you are only ever broadcasting content, and not engaging with your followers, they will eventually stop listening. You can judge how successful a listener your account is by how many people are following you; if you’re not gaining followers, it might be because you’re not taking the time to understand how your customers behave.

3. And mention others. As you begin posting your own content, whether original or retweets, you can begin to spark dialogue or interest among readers by mentioning other users by name (@username). Note: If you do the mention at the beginning of your post, that’s called a reply and will be seen only by that user.

4. Go visual. Pictures are just as effective on Twitter as anywhere else. It’s a great way to share your business’s latest endeavor without mincing words to stay under the character limit.

Best Practices for Business

• Be authentic and credible. Aim to build a reputation as a trusted source of information for your brand and industry.
• Take the time to observe your potential customers and their behavior. Research to see if any conversations are happening around your brand, as well as your competitors. Use the results to devise a communication strategy.
• Engage your followers. Ask questions and let your business’s personality or viewpoint shine through in conversations.
• Be wary of using Twitter as a forum for blatant product or brand promotion. This one-way approach works for only a small number of business categories. Remember: In general, people use Twitter to communicate, not shop.
• Focus your efforts: It’s better to have a well-defined, narrow realm of subject matter for your tweets—which should be directly relevant to your business and its customers—than to try to cover too many topics with so-so posts.
• Reserve live-tweeting for live events. Make enlightening observations or share very interesting quotes from featured speakers, guests or attendees; don’t merely report the action as it unfolds.

Of course, after everything, you might be thinking, Who has time for all this?! And you’d be right: Managing a Twitter account for a business takes a lot of time and thought. With some practice, it gets easier, but you always need a strategy and fresh ideas. If you’d like some professional help with managing your business’s account, please drop us a line. Then you’ll be freed up to focus on managing your personal account…right?

It’s 10 a.m. Do you know how your social media marketing is going? You’ve scheduled your posts for the next day, responded to comments and are filtering through your feeds. Social media marketing consumes more and more of our time, so how do you prioritize?

In many cases, a company’s presence on Facebook and Twitter is of the utmost importance. It connects a brand or message with users in the digital realm. The value of using Facebook or Twitter, though, relies solely on how well you take advantage of each platform.

Let’s break it down:

• Facebook allows you to access a social network. You get information about your Facebook audience and followers—see demographics. With Facebook, you can see what they like, who they are and what they’re passionate about. You see user habits—when they’re online and what they’re doing. Connections are made. Communication is shared. Facebook is great for learning more about your fans and measuring actions.
• Twitter is about sharing information. This stream-of-consciousness platform shares breaking and real-time news. See how well your campaigns worked. View your followers’ level of engagement with your posts. Overall, Twitter allows you to see the effectiveness of your work.

Engagement Over Activity

Facebook and Twitter should be used for measuring engagement — any social media marketing campaign worth the time focuses on engaging people and not just churning out posts. Analytics tools give business owners a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not working…on social media.

Here’s the bad news—Facebook and Twitter, while still boasting millions of active users and businesses, are moving targets, much like SEO or any online marketing. Evolving algorithms dictate how easy (or hard) it is to get in front of your customers. As these social media platforms change to a pay-to-play structure, it’s easier to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts, but it’s more challenging to boost your organic, unpaid reach.

The good news? This ain’t no fairytale, but there’s a sweet ending. Great content will outlast and outlive any social media platform, algorithm update or revolutionary change. Period. Yes, content must adhere to the latest standards of the platform. That means keeping posts fresh, relevant, interesting and rich with images or links. That means conducting honest interactions instead of leaving your account on autopilot. Where there’s interesting information, clear messaging and engaging content, users will listen.

Editing is the art and craft of fine-tuning a piece of writing. An editor relies on tone, style, grammar, sentence structure and overall flow to deliver a clear message. For example, they whittle a 2,000-word behemoth article into a concise 450-word article. A good editor makes any writer shine.

On the other hand, a bad editor, or lack thereof, can lead readers astray.

Instead of being guided to a particular conclusion or idea, readers are left wondering, “What is really going on here?”

At least that was the case when Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and executive vice president Stephen Elop posted public memos announcing the company’s new direction…and layoffs. The latest memo from Mr. Elop, which followed a more-than 3,000-word novella from Nadella, came in at a stifling 1,100-plus words. But he only describes the layoffs in one paragraph. 40 words. Two sentences.

Without getting into too many details, it’s clear that these Microsoft execs could have benefitted from the expertise of an editor. How could an international heavy hitter deliver news that they were trimming 14% of their workforce in a tiny, hidden section of a sprawling, near-rambling message?

Editors see it all the time. Good ones, and strong content specialists, know when enough is enough. A writer shouldn’t be faulted for his or her wordiness. However, editing adds clarity and simplicity to a piece. It also increases the likelihood of the article or memo being read. In the age of GIFs and YouTube, it’s hard for most average readers to scroll “below the fold” of a website to keep reading, let alone embark on a 10,000-word article.

As you prepare your next email, company (or worldwide) manifesto, blog or letter, consider the impact of your writing. Does it achieve the intended goals? Does it communicate the message succinctly with an appropriate tone? Are the sentences and structure clear? Could it be shorter? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re already thinking like an editor.

Save yourself or your company from the next PR disaster. Let your words pack a swift knockout punch instead of a Rocky-esque 15-round match.

As a content marketer and writer, creating original, unique (and occasionally fun) content lies at the heart of my mission. Just as no two clients are alike, no two clients’ websites, e-newsletters or blogs are alike, either. So let’s turn back time to revisit English 101…surprisingly, it overlaps quite a bit with content marketing 101. Especially when it comes to plagiarizing.

No Shades Of Gray

Plagiarizing is copying or reusing another publication or person’s text, content or writing as your own. With the rise of the internet, users increasingly copy + paste text and claim it as theirs with zero citation, attribution or recognition of the original content creator. This is a content cardinal sin. Similar structure, themes or concepts, as well as “rewritten” paragraphs, can be considered plagiarism, too.

Now, whereas in school plagiarism resulted in a flunking grade, a call home to your parents, or even suspension in the internet world, copied text could, at best, result in a major drop in SEO (while the worst could leave you stuck in a messy lawsuit). Whether content is copied from another page on your site (internally) or from another page on another site (externally), these redundancies can heavily affect your rankings. (Moz’s Rand Fishkin goes more into those subtleties about unique content here, and we think it’s worth the read.)

All SEO and English-class references aside, copied content = boring content = less click-throughs = less engagement = potentially fewer online customers. Fortunately, we have a fix for that.

How To Avoid Plagiarizing

Let’s be real here. A huge percentage of the internet today consists of crappy, duplicate content. Facebook’s viral posts of cute puppy videos, freakishly large animals that wash up on West Coast beaches or 25 Smells You Remember from the 90s (yes, really) aren’t making us any smarter—or realistically selling us anything.

Here are three ways to avoid plagiarism and promote great content at the same time:

1. Attribute where necessary & cite your sources.
2. Take TIME to do your research and gather the sources you want to use. Don’t try to write a new article while you have a similar article in front of you.
3. Create something original with a fresh take in your own (or your company’s) voice. Your customers—and the internet world—will thank you.

If you’re looking to spruce up your website with great content, look no further. At The Found Gen, we specialize in creating top-notch content that’s sure to woo your audience.

 

 

It seems like everyone today has got an opinion about how you should use social media to find success online. And like most topics where opinions are shared readily, most of these points will lead you astray.

The fact of the matter is social media is a lively, vivacious entity where you are allowed to connect, build relationships and engage with your audience while simultaneously establishing your brand’s overall tone, personality and message.

The key is, don’t get weighed down by the onslaught of ridiculous advice that many charlatans are trying to spew in attempts to label themselves as “social media experts.” No one is an expert in social media—we’re all learning, playing, engaging. Social media, like most marketing and tech-based tools and tactics today, is ever-changing—and the one guaranteed true piece of advice for any brand is to stay true to yourself.

In the meantime, I’ve broken down the top 10 most ludicrous myths about social media. These are stories we’ve heard and things that you should be weary of when launching your own social strategy:

10 Big Social Media Myths:

1. The More Followers, The Merrier: This is probably the most common thing we hear day-in, day-out. Businesses are constantly in search of garnering thousands of new followers, instantly. Brands typically go to the point of buying followers from fake accounts to give the impression that they’re popular on a given social platform. This is absurd. While we’re all big fans of the “fake it til you make it” mantra—this takes it just a step too far. One hundred loyal fans, who interact with your brand regularly and who buy your product, are 100x more valuable than a list of a thousand subscribers who either don’t know you exist or worse, don’t exist themselves.
2. Social Media Is Your Own Personal Broadcast Channel: As much as any given person may be the biggest fan of your brand—they do not want to hear all about you, all the time. Just like in any relationship—social media is a give and take. It’s something we say to all our clients—with social media you have to earn the right to bring the conversation back to you. You cannot start off just talking about you, your product, your service. People tune it out. Rather, start a dialogue with your audience about them. Get to know them, their interests and then find a way, once you’ve established a connection, to bring it back to your goals.
3. Social Media Can Replace Your Website: While Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+ are great platforms to showcase your brand and your services—these are just platforms. They’re compliments to your overall online identity. A website is your first and last line of defense online. When a potential customer searches for you—they immediately check for your site. After that, they go to your Facebook or Twitter profiles—which should inevitably send them back to your site. Social media provides a fun foray into the mind of your brand—but your site will always serve as the main place for converting a lead to a client.
4. You Can’t Track Success or ROI: Fiddlesticks. There are plenty of cool assessment and analysis tools out there today. Good content marketing experts will provide you with monthly, bimonthly or quarterly assessments—where you can track where users are coming from, demographics, psychographics, and even identify actions taken on your site (purchases, article devouring, listening to a podcast or watching a slide-show). From there you should be able to leverage all your known data and apply it to create a more streamlined and targeted approach to your marketing.
5. Blogging Is a Waste of Time: No matter what anyone tells you—blogging is never a waste of time. It’s the most essential part to any social & online strategy. We’ve talked about it before—keeping a regular blog schedule helps raise your rankings on Google, establishes you as a thought leader, and generates a loyal following of readers. If time is really an issue, you can hire a content marketing team (ahem, cough, cough—like us), to handle all the writing, management and strategizing behind your blog.
6. You Have to Be Everywhere! The only person who has to be everywhere at once is Santa Claus. And even that’s only one night a year. Beyond that, no one has to be everywhere and certainly not at once. Certain platforms are better suited for certain businesses. Some platforms shouldn’t even be considered for certain brands, as it’s a drain of energy and resources. It’s best to create a social strategy that focuses on your brand’s strengths and target audience. It’s better to be strongly situated and active on 2 platforms, than spread out across 6 or more where you rarely, if ever, post or interact.
7. There’s No Point to Google+: Oh, silly you. Did you fall for that line? It’s okay, that’s a pretty common occurrence. Google+ (now Google My Business) is either being heralded or slammed—it seems like it just depends on the day. In fact, Google+ is a great platform for multiple reasons, the main being it’s relationship to SEO rankings. Posts from Google+ are being indexed in the SERPs, and authors’ profile pages show up next to results, improving click-through rates on any given search. But again, like I mentioned in #6 above, this isn’t a site to just set-up and leave. Make sure that if you pursue G+, that you understand your audience, community and how to leverage the SEO benefits.
8. Respond Immediately, Or Else: Despite popular belief, social media will survive—and people will be able to handle it—if you don’t respond to a tweet or Facebook post instantaneously. Like email, the invention of smart phones has destroyed us a bit on what we deem an acceptable lead-time with response rates. But social media, in essence, is managed by real people. We all have a myriad of things going on at any given moment. The world will continue to revolve, and your brand will survive, if you wait an hour or ten. Promise.
9. The More Hashtags, The Merrier: Oh dear lord. When was the last time you searched for something solely by looking up the hashtag? #justinbiebergotarrested. Well, this may come as a shock, but social platforms are getting better at search. You can find a subject matter without the cute little pound sign. And hashtagging up a tweet just distracts people from your message. Granted, who doesn’t love a good hashtag? Just, use them wisely. #no #sense #going #overboard.
10. Social Media Gives People a Space to Bash My Brand: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if someone wants to say something negative about your brand, they already have a venue. And it’s a big one: the internet. Not having an active Facebook, Twitter, or Yelp page doesn’t protect you from angst-ridden wrath. In fact, social profiles have proven to be more beneficial in helping brands get through a negative moment. Skype grew their following by being aware of issues, talking directly with customers during a service blackout and more. Surprisingly enough, you can build more credibility for your brand by using social media than by avoiding it all together.

So there you have it. Ten myths that you can now set free as you embark on your social strategy for the year. The bigger message is: jump on in, the water’s great!