When taking your first steps towards using Twitter as an online marketing tool, it’s important to have good Twitter etiquette. The bottom line is that Twitter is all about interacting with other users and building trust. If you use your account to do nothing but talk about and link to your business, you will be seen as a spammer. But if you engage in conversations and use the service as a real person — the voice of your company — you will build trust and earn respect.

How to Use Twitter: DON’T…

• Don’t just post links to your website. You’ll sound like a robot and people will think you’re a spammer.
• Don’t only talk about your company.
• Don’t tell every detail of your day or give too much information.
• Don’t use foul language or insult competitors or Twitter users who have said something negative about you or to you.
• Don’t post links to anything NSFW (not suitable for work).
• Don’t ignore people who @reply to you.
• Don’t ignore @replies.
• Don’t forget to use search.twitter.com to look for mentions of your company or name
• Don’t use search.twitter.com to look for people talking about your industry and spam them with an @reply.
• Don’t follow many more people than are following you — keep a good ratio. Use friendorfollow.com to find out who isn’t following you back. (If you’re following lots of people and not many are following you, this makes your account look spammy.)
• Don’t use a tool to send new followers an automated Direct Message.
• Don’t follow a bunch of people at once, especially right when you sign up. Build up your profile slowly. It takes time and patience.
• Don’t get political unless it’s a major part of who you are or who your company is. Potential customers or clients could make the decision not to use your services based on any political statements you make.

How to Use Twitter: DO…

• Make sure you have an avatar.
• Use search.twitter.com or Twitterhawk to look for mentions of your company or name.
• Add people who have mentioned your company or name on Twitter, then send them an @reply that says something like “Thanks for the mention!”
• Post links to your new blog posts and other news, but keep it to a minimum.
• Post at least once per day. Space your posts out — don’t just post one after the other.
• Interact with people who are following you. Build up a rapport.
• Keep your posts to under 140 characters — don’t post twice in a row because you have so much to say about one thing.
• Use your Bio to let people know who you are and why you’re here.
• Fill out the homepage URL field in your profile with your website.
• Retweet (RT) links and Tweets you find interesting and relevant to your industry. The user you RT’d will appreciate it — this is the highest form of Twitter flattery.
• Think before you Tweet. If you mess up, many of your followers will have software that automatically downloads posts, and they will still be able to read your deleted post.
• Use Direct Messages when you need to send someone a private message.
• Use tinyurl.com or is.gd to shorten long links.
• Be interesting.
• Most importantly–Have fun with it!

Happy Tweeting!

April Fool’s Days of the past were all about classic pranks, like gluing a quarter to the ground on a busy street corner.

But April Fool’s Day seems to have become less about physical gags and more about Internet gags. It can be  pretty easy to pull off a prank online — especially since so many of us spend about every waking moment in front of a computer. Plus, pulling a prank online means you could get a ton of people at once to fall for your trick. For example, tweeting something like, “CRAZY video of me meeting Kanye West last night!” with a link to this video. Hilarious, I know. Feel free to use that one next year.

So what about company websites that take today to let loose and show everybody their wacky, fun side? Maybe you read about Google’s CADIE today, or maybe you excitedly clicked on the ad for the $99 pink leather Eames lounger in today’s Apartment Therapy email.

There’s also the extremely well-done (and daring!) Whole Foods homepage, which features a prominent ad for Organic Air that costs $6.99 for .02 oz (get it?), along with a bunch of recipes for dishes like Deep-Fried Pork Eclairs, Arugula Compost Surprise and… Toast. Mmmm.

The question is, if you’ve seen something April Foolsy today on a business’ website, how’d you find it? I’m willing to bet one or more of these things happened:

• You saw the link on your Twitter feed
• You saw the link on your Facebook feed
• Someone IMed/G-chatted it to you
• You saw the link on one of your favorite blogs (this one, obviously)
• A co-worker mentioned it during a lighthearted conversation at the watercooler

Next question: Did you tell someone about what you saw? Of course you did. That’s exactly what they wanted you to do. The April Fool’s Day joke was all about social media marketing, and by it getting passed from person to person via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., it was successful.

What’s more is that successful viral marketing like this means lots of inbound links to your website. That’s excellent for search engine optimization.

Maybe we won’t see as many classic pranks on future April Fool’s Days, but let me drop a pretty intense analogy on you here: By pulling off a well-done joke on a company website like Google.com or WholeFoodsMarket.com, isn’t that just the modern-day version of gluing a quarter to the ground on a busy street corner? People who first notice that quarter will pause to look closer, some bending down to try to grab it, which causes passersby to look and see what all the fuss is about. No matter what, everyone walks away knowing that there is a quarter glued to the ground.

(Whoa.)

By now, you’ve likely heard at least something about Twitter, the social networking website where users can “tweet” 140 characters at a time. People use Twitter for all kinds of stuff — keeping in touch with friends, finding out what’s going on at a particular place, joining conversations and, most important to this blog post, marketing.

How does a website where people seem to just be writing about everyday personal things — “What a beautiful day!” “Just saw a superlative movie!” “I’m eating food at a restaurant!” — have the potential to be a marketing platform? you may wonder.

Look closely at Twitter. Spend some time looking around at what people are saying, or, even better, type in a keyword at search.twitter.com. When you do that, you’ll start to notice something: Twitter has a ton of potential when it comes to marketing your business.

And businesses are no stranger to using Twitter as a marketing platform. Just look at Skittles — for one day a couple of weeks ago, going to Skittles.com brought up a search for “#skittles” on search.twitter.com, so any time a Twitter user mentioned Skittles, it’d show up in the search feed. Needless to say, a few jokers took the opportunity to write inappropriate remarks about the brand, but for the most part the chatter was positive. Skittles got exactly what they wanted: for people to talk about Skittles! And, hey, that’s exactly what we’re doing right now, so it clearly worked.

Countless other companies are already on Twitter, as they’ve quickly realized its social media marketing potential. Companies like Whole Foods, General Motors, Comcast and JetBlue use Twitter to actually interact with their customers, and they even provide customer service through it. That’s a brilliant way to use Twitter, since it seems customers truly appreciate when a human from a business actually takes the time to speak to them. A personal reply online seems so little and basic, but imagine how well this kind of customer service resonates with people.

It’s incredibly easy to make Twitter one-way and just send out self-promotional tweets, a mistake that countless businesses are making right now. Doing it that way is not only lazy, it’s a missed opportunity. Making it two-way (where you are actively replying to other users and engaging in conversation) is exactly how Twitter is meant to be used. Interaction is essential if you’re going to effectively use Twitter as a marketing platform.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Is a Necessity, Not a Luxury

Search marketing and search engine optimization for small business may sound like another fancy-pants way of fleecing you of scarce marketing dollars, especially if your small business is encountering tight budgets and increased competition in this harsh economic climate. In fact, we at Get Page One are 100% certain that some of the “search engine optimization for small business” pitches you see are 100% scams.

However, we also believe that quality search engine optimization (SEO) can make a huge difference to medium-sized and small businesses with customers who use the internet to find products and services. I.e., nearly everybody.

And the co-founder of our humble SEO company, Brian Rutledge, will be talking about search engine optimization for small business at the SEM for SMB conference in Austin, TX. More on that later!

What Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Can Do

We run into a lot of medium-sized and small business owners who don’t see the need for search engine optimization. “We don’t sell anything on the web,” they say. “We don’t get business from our website.” “We don’t sell technology.” “Our customers don’t use the web much.” “Our customers know how to find us.” “Our web designer is already doing SEO.” “We saw an ad for guaranteed search engine optimization that costs $50 a month.” “We don’t have a website.” And of course, our favorite: “We don’t have the budget.”

This blog isn’t a sales blog. I’m not writing this to sell you our services; I blog to share SEO knowledge and to chat about funny things in this digital life of ours. But still, I feel I have to address all of these common excuses. My disclaimer: it’s okay if you don’t choose us for your small business’ search engine optimization provider. We’re cool with that. But we like people to understand what search engine optimization is all about. We’re little internet marketing evangelists. The more people understand SEO, the easier our job becomes.

“We don’t sell anything on the web.”

The majority of our clients don’t sell anything on their websites. But they do sell products or services. And people find products and services on the web.

“We don’t get business from our website. Our customers know how to find us.”

This is a popular one. Some businesses do build a website solely as a service to their existing customers, like a digital sign that points people to an address or phone number. Of course, this begs the question: Do you want business from your website? Can your website do more than just shunt people to a phone number? Do you know how many customers are currently visiting your website or how many are non-repeat visitors? (Yes, this information is easy to see and free to track.) Are your competitors getting business from their websites? Do you want more business?

Some small businesses actually don’t want more business. My mechanic routinely turns people away. He’s happy with his current volume of customers. Good for him. If he came to us looking for search engine optimization for small business, we’d tell him we couldn’t help him.

“We don’t sell technology.”

Do you sell a product or service that people don’t search for on the web? Are you sure?

There are still some things that people don’t shop for on the web. People usually don’t look for a grocery store or a gas station on the web. They assign more value to proximity, and aren’t concerned about differentiators.

Not that search engine optimization for small business can’t help such entities. Gas stations and grocery stores usually belong to chains that have elaborate websites with a variety of customer loyalty and marketing projects going at all times. If they don’t, they might benefit from a strong web presence that emphasizes what separates them from the big boys. And that web presence probably needs search engine optimization for small business.

“Our customers don’t use the web much.”

Usually this comes from small businesses whose customers aren’t young or well-heeled. Do you know what the web usage statistics are for the elderly and the less affluent? Do you really know your demographics? Do you know the web traffic statistics for your website? Do you want more affluent customers in the 18-45 demographic?

“Our web designer is already doing SEO.”

We love in-house web designers. Many of them are experts at what they do, and partner with us smoothly in the implementation of good search engine optimization for small business.

But keep in mind that your web designer probably already has a full plate keeping the site running and up to date. She probably does some graphic design and IT work for you, too, right? (You know she does.) And with all these different priorities, do you think search engine optimization for small business is at the top of her daily to-do list?

And if your web designer happens to be untrained in search engine optimization, do you think she’ll say, “Hey, boss, I’m not sure what kind of file hierarchy to use for SEO” or spend hours restructuring the current site for better searchability? Would she seek out additional training when you’re already running her ragged? Probably not.

Good SEO needs constant maintenance and refinement, especially since it requires dogged, meticulous reverse-engineering to figure out the best techniques. You see, the search engines don’t tell us what search engine optimization processes work the best. We have to figure it out ourselves through grueling trial and error. But with experience and determination, it’s possible. To us, search engine optimization for small business isn’t a hobby; it’s a calling.

“We don’t have a website.”

Do you want a website? Do your customers ask about your website? Do your competitors have websites?

At Get Page One, we’ve developed a high-powered content management system (CMS) with our own SEO and useability enhancements. Because we’ve already built the software system, we can perform strategic website development at a fraction of the cost of boutique web design firms. For our bigger clients, we sometimes build their entire website at no cost because it makes it easier for us to do our job of search engine optimization.

“We don’t have the budget.”

People think SEO is expensive because it’s new and has its own weird acronym. Not true.

We’re pretty proud of the value proposition we offer to search engine optimization for small business clients. Simply put, we’re not high-priced consultants, and our SEO work can pay for itself in new business several times over.

In fact, we proposed to one client that we’d give them free SEO services in exchange for a percentage of the new profits they were getting from their increased web traffic. They turned us down politely. They knew they were earning too much from the new business we were bringing in.

“We saw an ad for guaranteed search engine optimization that costs $50 a month.”

This one makes us grieve. SEO scams like this give all a bad name to all search engine optimization for small business. They prey on people who don’t fully understand what good SEO involves. At best, they’ll take your money doing superficial things that don’t actually affect your search engine ranking. At worst, they’ll sell you unnecessary services and pull dirty tricks that will get your website banned from Google, Yahoo and MSN.

SEM for SMB Conference! Get Page One Co-Founder to Speak on Search Engine Optimization for Small Business

Our co-founder, Brian Rutledge, a leader in the use of search-engine-approved “white hat” SEO techniques, will be speaking at the SEM for SMB conference, July 16-17, 2008, which was organized specifically to help guide small business owners through the confusing maze of SEO, SEM, and PPC. It’ll take place at the downtown Austin Hilton.

“Search engine marketing for small businesses” is more than just a buzzphrase,” Brian says. “If your small business has a website, then you should be aware of SEO basics. If you are willing to learn some fundamentals of search marketing, the entry costs are very low in comparison with the potential gains. In today’s competitive markets, if you’re not doing SEO, you’re losing money.” Rutledge will also address some of the shady SEO practices that small businesses need to watch out for.

So if you’ll be in Austin this summer, check out this presentation on search engine optimization for small business. It should be a great networking event and Brian’s a lively and informative speaker.