eCommerce and

One of my favorite subjects to write on, as well as a constant addiction for me is Twitter. The service allows you to connect to people you normally would not have access to, while at the same time helping you to establish yourself as a market leader in different niches, and in turn building up your social media ego. However, there is a difference between those that use the service and those that make the service work for them, and in that difference you can really help yourself standout.

Twitter is essentially a service where thousands of voices are all trying to be heard, and in that confusion it becomes a screaming match were brands, people and celebrities are all trying to make their voice stand out to the masses. The average Twitter user’s stream has hundreds of companies and people that tweet every other minute and it becomes hard for one user to really stand out. Because of this I always advise people on the three tips below, thus helping establish a lasting presence on Twitter.

Know Your Audience
This is essential to engagement on Twitter. If someone followed you because you are funny and you start to tweet about scientific research then there is a good chance they will not follow you for much longer. At the same time if you share interesting business articles and then start posting pictures of your friends planking, you will lose followers as well. Twitter, more than most other services, really pigeon holes people into certain areas of expertise. When the average user follows someone new, they normally add them to a Twitter list. These lists help to organize their twitter lives and if a user goes against their lists by tweeting weird things or tweeting too often, the list can easily be modified. So make sure that as you are developing your presence you really get to know your audience and use them to feel out what they will interact with. Obviously this does not apply for most celebrity Twitter users as they often Tweet about whatever they like and people will still follow them. So the first step is to know your audience.

Be Ready to Connect
For brands and or people, Twitter is a platform that gives anyone with a keyboard the ability to contact whoever they feel like contacting. I can sit down right now and tweet President Obama, doesn’t mean he will respond or even read it, but I can tweet him. All this means is that if you are a brand then anyone who has or is going to buy one of your products has immediate public access to your brand. They can tweet how much they hate your service or they can tweet that they had the best experience ever buying from your company; but regardless of what they tweet they have a public forum for it. As a business you must respond to these questions and comments in a friendly and timely manner. Other customers are watching and a good response can mean the difference between a sale or an exit. If you are not ready to connect then you do not need to be on Twitter.

Make A Difference
In the millions of tweets that get sent every day, 90% are not making a difference. While they don't all have to be amazing, your tweet on your new hair color, the traffic on the way to work or what you are having for lunch can be interesting, but if this is all you are tweeting about you need another outlet. Create content, find interesting articles, and really work to develop yourself in a niche that you love. Even if that niche is as small as how to cook organic vegetables using only a stainless steel wok, if that is something you are good at and have expertise in it, you can become a leader in that niche and help others understand more about that process. In doing so you will add to the conversation and help to develop yourself on twitter to get your message heard.

These are a few of the tips that I use for interaction on Twitter. What about you? Do you have any tips that I left off?

With the recent algorithm shifts and all of the new personalization options available to searchers, it is becoming more important to expand your traffic sources to websites other than simply search engines. Believe it or not there are many great social media websites out there that have the potential to send a lot of gret traffic to your website. Here are my nine favorite social media sites for traffic.

Twitter – For a business it is easy to create a Twitter account and grab some followers, but often hard to get customers to care about what you are tweeting. The average Twitter user has a huge list of people that they follow and a single tweet can often be lost in the stream. Establishing a good system of followers, as well as gathering some of the deal bots to follow you, can help you gain momentum and connect to people that care about what you are sending. Companies like Dell have used this as a customer service outlet as well, which is a great way to connect with the customer and get them to interact with you. Make sure that if you are getting these types of interactions you have the staff necessary to provide the customer with a good experience. If you can capitalize on it, the traffic possibilities from Twitter are virtually endless.

Facebook – The most popular site on the Internet is not just for the user, it also has a lot to offer brands as well. With the constant updates to their fan pages and the great free apps and analytics, it is easy to see why many brands flock to this site as their first social media outlet before anything else. Developing a following can be hard for small brands, but if you work hard to get your links out there and offer incentives, contests or promotions you can quickly develop a decent following who will gladly share your site with others if you give them the incentive. Facebook has the possibility to provide a good amount of traffic to your website, so make sure you capitalize on it by providing interesting information for the customer and not bombarding them to the point where they hide or unfriend your business. Also adding the Facebook like and share buttons to your site can help your customers share deals with their friends even if they are not connected to your Facebook fan page.

Quora – Quora is a great site with a lot of buzz right now. Taking the question and answer approach they have been able to get a lot of big movers and shakers behind the site and in turn created a lot of great content for the user. If you get on Quora and start providing really good answers to questions that have yet to be answered, you can easily develop some decent traffic back to your website while also establishing yourself as a leader in that niche. You can read the full review we did on Quora here.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is on the tip of everyone's tongue right now with their recent IPO, but the site can help to develop your brand engagement and provide traffic, as well as employees if you spend the time to develop it. You can answer the questions in their question and answer section, encourage your employees to add themselves to your company and even advertise to potential employees and customers. LinkedIn also allows your company to provide a public face to potential employees as well as everyone else, allowing them to get a glimpse of what life at your company is like.

YouTube – The second most popular search engine can provide a lot of great traffic if you are decently creative and have the equipment to create and post a video (even most smart phones can post a YouTube video now). Businesses can even run promoted video campaigns that will bring their videos to the top of the SERPs and will add an overlay to the video when the user watches it that is a clickable link to your website. YouTube gets over 100 million views per day, and more then 50% of videos have been rated or commented on. That statistic alone should be enough to get your business to support YouTube. Those high interaction statistics are not found on many other sites on the internet.

Flickr – If your company has product photographs they can easily be uploaded to Flickr and provide some traffic. Obviously, as a photo community if your photographs aren’t well done or exciting then there is a small possibility of people really caring; however, if you are a decent photographer you can develop some cool pictures and in turn grab some traffic from frequent Flickr crawlers such as Google Images. Flickr is also a great place to showcase a new product that people may not have heard of before, as it can easily get the product picture in front of some eyes.

StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a great website for people who are bored and are looking for something new. Submitting your site there can help provide a lot of traffic, if the page is exciting. If you submit your homepage or your about us page don’t expect the traffic to flow in. However, if you have created a new infographic or have a funny or interesting blog post, submitting it to stumble upon can have some great traffic results. Creating a piece of link bait? Make sure StumbleUpon is the first place you promote it.

Amplify – Not as much for business as it is for your personal brand, Amplify is like Twitter without the message restrictions. You can follow people and post links and information for your followers to see and click on. It has the same type of feel that Twitter does but with the potential to share larger amounts of information. It has a good community and has the potential to bring some good traffic to your site in the future.

Google +1 – Though not officially release yet, Google’s foray into the social media realm again has the potential to mix things up. They are adding a plus one button to all of their results, paid and organic, as well as wherever the user wants to add it on their own site. In doing this they can gather more information on what users like and in turn use that to effect organic search results. The traffic possibilities of increasing your search results in Google simply from having a couple more +1’s is enough to get any marketer on the band wagon.

What about you, what social media sites do you see bringing the most traffic to your site? Make sure you leave them in the comments.

Shop our wide selection of exceptional products from brands that are still under the radar. Consider World Imports Lighting, Belle Foret Sinks, Elizabethan Classics bathtubs, and Pegasus Faucets for style and functionality that will make you wonder how you lived without them.

With all the buzz that Twitter is continuing to gain, I thought it was the perfect time to talk about great ways to attract more Twitter followers. Twitter is becoming increasingly important from the online and social media marketing standpoint, every day companies are finding new ways to leverage it and are reaping the benifits. It is not simply enough to create a Twitter account, for the most benefits you need to have a good amount of active followers that will engage with you. Below are some of the top tips I use when building Twitter followers.

Follow People
Bar none, this is the fastest way to gain Twitter followers. Unless you are a huge company, gone are the days where a business can simply create an account and have thousands of followers without following anyone back.  Figure out who are some of the big players in your niche and follow them, at the same time follow some of their followers as well. Many of these people will see that you are interested in the same thing and more then likely follow you back.

Have a Profile Picture
A profile picture is a huge trust factor on Twitter. Bonus points if you profile picture is of a real person and not simply a logo. If you are a large company a logo will be fine, but if you are a small company you may want to consider putting the social media manager’s photo as the twitter icon, allowing you to connect easier with people as a real human being.

Retweet
Retweeting is a way to not only gain followers, but to keep them. This is not simple follow Friday retweeting, but actually taking interesting posts that your friends have tweeted and sending them out to your followers. Doing this engages with the person that got retweeted, and often makes them want to retweet you back in the future. Make sure not to just tweet everything that comes your way, but selective retweeting will help you gain and keep new followers.

Get Listed
When Twitter announced their lists feature it added a lot of new possibilities to how to easily get followed. If you are listed on a list that people follow often such as the Mashable lists, then whenever the list gets a follow you do as well. Hit up users with lists that are popular and see about getting included in those lists.

Have an Interesting Bio
If a user is searching for new people to follow and they find 100 social media managers all boasting their personal achievements, then see one who writes something that is catchy and makes them laugh, chances are they will follow that user. An interesting bio helps you stand out from pack and makes you much more interesting to the casual user who is unsure of who you are.

Link as Much as Possible
Whether it is your company website, the next time you do public speaking, or simply telling your friends, any opportunity to link or tell someone about your Twitter account should be taken. Doing this will get your account in front of as many new faces as possible, and will help you to gather followers that were already interested in your brand to begin with.

These are just a few of the tips I recommend when gathering fans for a Twitter account. For my other blog for additional tips on making twitter work for your business.

What about you, do you have any other tips you recommend when working with Twitter? Leave them in the comments, and make sure to follow PlumberSurplus, OutdoorPros and GordianProject on Twitter!

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon Kitchen faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

We have written on the topic of Twitter before, but as one of the most popular social media platforms, I felt a good Twitter for businesses guide was needed. Twitter is one of those sites where you can easily gain a thousand followers and yet see no interaction with any of your tweets and no visitors to your site. This can be quickly disheartening for businesses as they think more followers should equal more visits and integration on Twitter but that is not always the case. In contrast according to the Twitter statistics released last year, Twitter users tweet an average of 55 million tweets a day, meaning your companies tweets can easily get lost in the mix. This post is designed to help you better take advantage of the users you have.

Incentives Work

The below infographic shows the results of a study eMarketers did on “Why we Follow Companies on Twitter.”

Just simply looking at the results should help you to better understand individuals motivations for following your company, as well as spur ideas on how to better interact with them. For large businesses obviously getting updates is a big reason people follow, but for smaller to medium businesses I don’t feel like these are as relevant as tweets pertaining to receiving discounts, getting updates on sales, and samples and coupons. Therefore, if you are a smaller business you should at least consider that the reason someone decided to follow you may have a lot to do with them hoping you will tweet a discount. A discount that they can use to purchase something they want and / or retweet to their followers to provide a benefit to their Twitter stream. If your business is not doing this then you are missing out on potential engagement. 

But is it simply enough to tweet a coupon and watch the sales role in? If it was everyone would be doing it. You first have to engage with the followers to make sure that your tweets are not simply lost in the endless stream.

Giveaways

Giveaways are a direct line to a Twitter users heart. In today's society we all are striving to receive the biggest benefit with the least amount of work, and Twitter has provided this. A simple giveaway of a hot item can garner thousands of tweets, if a tweet is all it takes for an entry. Not only does this provide an instant boast to your Twitter account, but it provides an interaction between the company and the users. This interaction makes the users more interested in what your next tweets will be as there is a possibility there is something in it for them. Setting up a quarterly give away is a great way to gain new followers and retain the ones you have.

Customer Service

Unlike any other service, Twitter gives us the possibility for interaction that is normally outside of your reach. I could tweet President Obama my thoughts on foreign policy right now, there is a 99.9% chance he wont read it, but there is more of a possibility of me getting through to him on Twitter then there is by calling up the White House. This level of interaction is something that is both good and bad for the modern business. Where before the customer had to follow your preferred methods of contact, they can now simply craft a 140 character message and send it to you instantly. While this is scary for many business owners it is an exciting new way to interact with the customer and keep them visiting your site. If you prove to be a good source on Twitter and prove that you respond to your customers in a timely manner you can easily establish engagement and show other potential customers that you care and will answer their questions however you can.

These are just a few of the tips I use on Twitter to help promote a business. What are some others you have seen?  Make sure to leave them in the comments.

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities, select from a wide variety of shower doors and coordinate it all with a matching bathroom faucet. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

With Twitter’s meteoric rise to popularity and its proven success as a marketing channel, many businesses are rushing towards it with arms open, hoping to embrace (and convert) the 105,779,710 existing users and the more than 300,000 active users per day.

But, though the service is evolving, we have to remember that human dynamics (largely) has not. Twitter is a real time conversation mechanism. The same principles that apply to actual, verbal conversation – the perceptions of trust, values, integrity, insight, responsiveness, which fuel our engagement - absolutely apply to this service.

So now, with tightening budgets and unprecedented buzz, a cash-strapped marketer might be inclined to adopt Twitter as a viable marketing channel.

But, if you weren’t an early adopter, maybe it’s time to pause before leaning into the social media giant as new, reliable marketing stream. There are already blog posts explaining “How to use twitter to grow your business” so I’ll leave the “HOW” to them. However, before you “join the conversation.”, pause to consider the WHY.

Whether you’re convinced that Twitter is congruent with your business model or, you’re of the “it’s free, why not?” school of marketing. I humbly submit two suggestions.

1)      Please ADD something to the conversation.

Keep in mind that Twitter, unlike many social networks is actually grounded in conversation. Each Tweet is a pithy, 140 character remark or reply made in real time, by real people. Whereas a blog post (or even Facebook status update) usually requires some level of pre-meditation, a Tweet is often a quick thought fired off (sometimes too) hastily by a person, to another person (or an assembly of followers.) A calculated advertisement is likely to fall on unmotivated eyes if you’re only trying to coax a “follower” to follow you back to your website and make a purchase.

2)      Please add something NEW to the conversation.

If you’re still vacillating on whether or not to market your product through Twitter, consider yourself a late-adopter. Active Twitter users are savvy, we follow selectively and, unlike Facebook or Myspace (yes, I said it), there is delineation between “Followers” and “Following” – meaning, there is more social currency in having an abundance of followers, than there is in following the population of a small country. Consider the hyperbolic, but appropriate example of perpetual comedian/Late Night host, Conan O’Brien – who has over a million followers, but follows only one person, Sarah Killen – who he seemingly picked at random. Companies like Southwest Airlines do well by incorporating personality and customer service into their tweets.

So, if you’re anything like me, you spend as much time as possible avoiding advertising, and Twitter is a great way to selectively reduce the amount of advertising in your life. Don’t go ruining that for us.

The bottom line to would-be Tweetvertisers: We control this conversation, what have you got to say?

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now, while I must disclose I am the resident advocate for the adaptation of all things social media at the Gordian Project, arguing against the effectiveness of social media becomes difficult when horrible tragedies like the earthquake in Chile are brought to light via social networking. Like Haiti before it, although not as wide spread since the economic conditions of Haiti do not allow for as much social media from its residents, social media is helping us put a face and image on the catastrophic 8.8 magnitude earthquake that happened over the weekend.

Within hours of the earthquake hitting Chile, Mashable was able to compile an entire article of Chilean earthquake pictures as tweeted by the people there. These pictures are both amazing and heart breaking at the same time, but it allows us, the followers in the United States and throughout the rest of the world, to see what is happening and connect with them. People tweeted pictures of their bedrooms with the ceilings caved in on their beds, pictures of their neighborhood in shambles and pictures of entire bridges collapsed. Through this kind of social movement, we are able to share with one another as a global community and bring an even deeper sense of recognition to events taking place around the world.

Further displays of the power of social media have been seen among individuals. One woman was actually able to connect with local officials and find her family members (who were without a phone) through the help of Twitter. Below you can find the comment she left on the above referenced Mashable article.
 
“…my sister-in-law was in Santiago and we couldn’t find her. No text, no phones, nothing. We were able to make contact with locals using twitter search to follow hashtags and several people contacted us asking for details. One of the locals looked for, and FOUND my brothers wife, 2 hours after first contact. I am so thankful for social media, grateful to the power of networking and beyond ecstatic my sister-in-law was safe and her home intact.”
 
Imagine the relief felt by those worried about their loved ones that have their prayers answered through simple and immediate interaction with twitter followers that are willing to help in a crisis.

Lastly, Ustream decided to run live video of local news broadcast on both the earthquake in Chile and the Hawaii tsunami warnings. They have stated that over 4.35 million of these streams (like this one) have been viewed.

I have no doubt that aid organizations are already working on the best ways to get in and help the people rebuild their lives; however, it is simply amazing to see this kind of interaction and support from people in the social media community. It also goes a long way to be able to put a face and a video to the crisis instead of plain newspaper text. I am sure it will help people to be more willing to donate and support relief groups helping Chile in their time of need.
 
Have you seen any other great ways that social media has been helping the Earthquake in Chile?

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

While I may be late to the party and still not very engaged, to say the least I am very interested in a new feature Twitter recently rolled out called Local Trends.

It's described on their blog:
"As Twitter evolves, and more people share what’s happening in their own world, we want to provide another way for people to discover topics that may be relevant to them. Last week we began to slowly roll out a new feature called Local Trends to expose what people are talking about on the state and city level, and today we've fully launched so everyone can use it."

So now not only can you see what is trending in all of the twitter-verse but users can see what is trending locally, if they have set their location. While I don't frequent "the Twitter" very often this for me is a very compelling feature. 

On top of that we had several interesting conversations around the office about how this type of data might be used for businesses, especially eCommerce. There are some very interesting implications in regards to local trending data which could be used in different marketing and social channels. As we were talking several interesting examples came up in regards to marketing products to different locals based upon weather, popularity, celebrities, local markets, local business, etc. If you know a particular topic is “hot” and there are products which could be marketed to play off of that you could go to town on geo targeted SEM campaigns, social messaging and advertising to people in that area or other local advertising channels. The opportunities seem endless and the data invaluable.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

Recently Twitter.com implemented some password standards for their new users. If you view their source on the sign up page you can find a password list of around 370 banned passwords. Try searching for "twttr.BANNED_PASSWORDS" to see it. It consists of things like simple combinations of numbers, first names, team names and food.  Here are some examples of banned passwords on Twitter:

1234567
abc123
apples
batman
corvette
freddy
iloveyou
lakers
startrek
thx1138
yellow

While this is a step to helping users create stronger passwords it doesn't do much to educate them.  Twitter provides prompts such as “6 characters or more (be tricky!)” for instructions on creating a password.  If the password is part of the banned passwords they get a “Too obvious” warning that doesn't really look like a warning.  Oh and while "cheese" doesn't work as an acceptable password "cheesy" is approved as a welcomed Twitter password.

A better approach would be to show the user some aspects of a strong password.  For instance, a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters and not using a dictionary word. I do not feel those are covered by “be tricky.”  Google does a good job of providing information on what they consider a good password as a link in their account creation.

It really comes down to user education.  Having strong password requirements might hinder the user experience initially, but will ultimately help the user experience in the long run as it's a step against their account being compromised.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

• We knew it was coming, but how is inflation showing itself?


• When building a website matrix to compare products usability is just as important as content otherwise the matrix itself is of little use to the consumer.  Get Elastic compared 17 designs in an effort to help retailers improve upon their comparison tools and features.


• The Pitfalls Of Budget-Constrained Bidding.


• Do you have your bases covered in your marketing team?  Have you built a team that compliments one another?


• Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone broke Twitter’s debut of Local Trend functionality.  While many Twitter users are not able to utilize the feature yet, there is a lot of excitement surrounding the new feature.  Lisa’s screenshot can be seen below:

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Yesterday was an exciting day for Google and its leaders alike.  Google announced real time search.  A much awaited feature many users have been expecting since Google and Bing made deals with Twitter earlier in the year.  The new feature hasn’t been released to everyone at this time but can be seen via YouTube and in the screenshot below.

Google Trends was also updated with a new Hot Topics area which is based on real time data.

Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO who once described Twitter as a “poor man’s email system” was busy attempting to join Twitter himself.  I say attempt because the profile setup didn’t go as smoothly as one would think...

“He first logged on with the handle "eschmidt0", prompting a cyber-diss from high-profile New York tech executive Anil Dash:

As Ryan, the author of the post at Gawker goes on to note, “It looks like Schmidt also received some help from the Poor Man's Email Service's Rich Man's Identity Authenticator, because he's now got a ‘Verified Account.’ Throwing his (semi-)celebrity weight around at Twitter Inc.? Schmidt's starting to get the swing of things.”

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.