Learn How to Create Your Viral Marketing Business With Little Or No Startup Capital

Viral marketing is a method for promoting a product on the internet, and you can do this with low costs or, even better, no costs.  If you want to succeed, you must be willing to sit in front of your computer and invest a lot of your time and effort!  Let’s look at some of the best ways to do this.

First of all, get your friends and family involved. Explain to them that this is a valid sales technique that is used on places such as Amazon, and you are not spamming or scamming.  Once they understand what you’re doing, you need to write emails about what you’re selling and send them to everyone you know.  Ask them to forward your emails to everyone THEY know!

Create a website!  There are a lot of webhosts who don’t charge if you use their ads.  If you can afford something low-cost, find one that doesn’t charge too much and lets you be in charge of your own content.

If Facebook and Twitter Aren't Social Networks, What is?

From WebProNews 


Twitter Now Says it's Not a Social Network

According to ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez, Twitter VP for business and corporate development Kevin Thau said today that Twitter is not a social network. I seem to recall Facebook saying the same thing a couple years ago. 

You may recall an email that Facebook sent a user when their account was deleted, which said "Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a “social networking site".

 

Wow, that upcoming Facebook movie really is fiction. It's even called The Social Network. 

 

PayPal Talks This Year's Twestival Efforts

If you're an active part of the Twitter community, you're probably well aware that the Twestival event is underway today. In some parts of the world it's already over, but in others it's just beginning. WebProNews talked to Judy Chang of PayPal's non-profit team about the event, and the company's role in it.

If you're unfamiliar with Twestival, this is its second year, and it is a global initiative to raise money for a cause that is selected by the community - last year it was about getting clean water to people that didn't have it, and this year it's about education around the world - the organization to benefit is Concern Worldwide.

The event takes place online as well as off. People arrange parties and events in cities all over the world and see who can raise the most money. "The cities are somewhat competing," says Chang.

Read the full article >>>

Would Your Company Benefit from an Internal Twitter?

It's no secret that Google and Microsoft are in heavy competition in the enterprise application space. This competition may extend into a relatively new sub-category of this space - internal microblogging. Think Twitter, just for within the enterprise.

Now, Google Buzz isn't exactly a Twitter clone, but you probably don't have to look too far to see some similarities. Google said right when Buzz was announced that it would be making its way into the corporate environment eventually. "Within a few months, we also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within your organization," Google Enterprise Product Management Director said at that time.

Microsoft is testing a new product called OfficeTalk, which is much more of a Twitter clone than Buzz (right down to the 140 characters), but would essentially compete with Google's internal version of Buzz in terms of basic functionality.

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NASA Astronaut Sends First Real Tweet From Space

NASA said today astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have received a special software upgrade that allows access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the "ultimate wireless connection."

Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro-TJ, from the space station. Previous tweets from space had to be emailed to the ground where support personnel posted them to the astronaut's Twitter account.

The personal web access, called the Crew Support LAN, uses existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and surf the web.

When the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard touchpad.

8 Reasons You Need to Stop Ignoring Twitter

There have been many articles written about why to use Twitter, and we've certainly published our fair share of them. However, the landscape is constantly changing. New trends, ideas, applications, and features come out, and they further emphasize Twitter's place in said landscape. Following are some reasons why it is becoming increasingly important to marketers.


1. Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are changing the game. We recently looked at several reasons why, but also consider that with the Lists gadget, your tweets may appear all over the web if you can get onto lists. They will appear on sites and blogs, which are more than likely going to be related to the niche you are in anyway if you have the right audience on Twitter.

2. The Openness of Twitter

The openness of Twitter, social media and the web in general, pretty much means that your messages on Twitter won't be limited to your Twitter audience. Facebook and other social networks will bring tweets in. People will share them, screenshot them, link to them on blogs, etc. Twitter is a means of getting your message out to more people, but it's not necessarily only the people on Twitter that will see those messages.



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An equation for getting more traffic from Twitter

The Math of Optimizing Tweets for Increased Retweeting

Back in June, Hubspot shared data, which indicated that about one and a half percent of all tweets were retweets. I'd be surprised if that number hasn't increased in the last few months. More people are adopting Twitter and becoming familiar with the Twitter culture. More tools have come out, which cater to the easy re-tweet. More sites have adopted retweet buttons, such as the one from Tweetmeme. I seriously doubt people are retweeting less. 

We're still waiting on Twitter to incorporate the retweet feature onto Twitter.com. Once that happens, retweeting is almost certainly going to go up significantly. According to the rough sketch Twitter provided a while back, there will be a retweet option by the reply option on all individual tweets.




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Twitter Applications List You'll Ever Need

There are a huge collection of application for Twitter. In this site, there is a long list of those applications. I hope these will surely helpfull to you.

Go to the site >>>

100+ Twitter-Smart Ideas to Maximize Your Twitter Business Strategy

NOTE: There are a lot of wimpy "Twitter Tip Lists" out there; this is NOT one of them. These 100+ Twitter Tips go from insightful Twitter toddler level to explosive Twitter-bomb advanced. Even if you think you're a Twitter social or Twitter business pro, you might want to start from the beginning - this is one hefty shovel full of "Twitter How-to" ready for you to Digg.

NOTE 2: All 100 Twittin' Secrets are complete and have been posted across multiple internet sites, blogs and other innovative locations such as within theiGoogle iTwitter Tab and the MyTwitter Toolbar.

Individuals who follow Dan Hollings on Twitter will be notified as new tips and secrets are revealed and where they are posted.

NOTE 3: Feel free to use, expand upon, comment and share these Twitter tips, secrets & strategies as you wish (all 100 are free), but please credit or link back properly so that everyone may benefit from knowing the original source. I welcome feedback and commenting.

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The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter

BY SHARON SARMIENTO · POSTED ON MARCH 20, 2007 for 901am.com

To be honest, my first impression of Twitter was that it was for folks who had way too much time on their hands who narcissistically wanted to broadcast every random thought that crossed their brains.

While this may be true in some instances, there are also some very smart, professional, forward thinking people whom I respect who are using Twitterintelligently.

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17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners

Twitter is a micro blogging platform which allows you to publish short messages of less than 140 characters through different mediums like IM, cellphones and the web.

It has a social element as well, as it allows users to befriend and monitor each other’s messages or updates. So what you have here is a publishing tool that can be either public and private.

It is similar to an IRC channel although messages are displayed less rapidly. Some have called it a slower version of internet messengers.

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The best Twitter Desktop App I have found so far - DestroyTwitter

Does anyone even go to the Twitter homepageanymore? It seems like more and more users are changing the origin of their tweets as Twitter desktop clients are becoming more mainstream.

There are literally dozens of desktop clients for Twitter, available for download...but which are the best?

For me, TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter are the best ones, from those two I like DestroyTwitter more than the other one.

One of the best things about DestroyTwitter is its minimal use of memory, compared to other AIR-based Twitter apps.

One of the better, if not the best, feature of DestroyTwitter is the "Rules" feature. With rules you can "exclude" certain users as well as certain keywords. Below is a snippet from DestroyTwitter about this feature...

Best Twitter tool I have found so far - Tweepular

There are many Twitter tools in the internet which do various things. There are also many tools which can be used to manage followers. From many of those tools, this is the best tool I found.

Tweepular is used to manage followers, unfollowers, fans, and also it gives our popularity (rank) in the twitter network.

Go to Tweepular >>>

Facebook Moves Further Into Twitter Territory

By Chris Crum - Tue, 06/09/2009 - 06:02 for WebPro News

Lets Users Subscribe to Friends' Updates Via Text Message

Facebook is now offering its users the ability to receive their friends' status updates via text message on their phones. If you click on the "subscribe via SMS" link below your friends' profile pics, you get their latest updates this way.

Sound familiar? That's probably because you can do basically the same thing with Twitter. This is just the latest example of Facebook acknowleging (without coming right out and saying it) that they view Twitter as a major competitor. If this wasn't evident enough upon the last major redesign change, which switched to a Twitter-esque real-time status feed, it's even more clear now.

Facebook is certainly the dominant force in social networking currently, but there was a time when you might've said the same about MySpace. Twitter continues to grow rapidly (despite retention issues). It's not really showing any signs of slowing yet, and Facebook is well aware of this.

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A new Twitter tool

Friend or Follow is pretty self-explanatory, you enter in your Twitter username and it gives you three tabs of information.



Following (who your following, but not following you back), fans (who's following you, but your not following them back) and friends (people who you follow and they follow you back.

Share videos on Twitter

Share videos on Twitter from your computer, your mobile phone, or your webcam.

The easiest way to share videos on Twitter

Upload from your computer

Email video to u@twitvid.io from your mobile phone

Record straight from your webcam to your followers

http://twitvid.io/ >>> 

Login using your Twitter Username and Password

Are You Optimizing Your Social Media Profile?

By Chris Crum - Tue, 05/26/2009 - 12:03

Social Media Often Ranks Well on Google

Questions are frequently asked with regards to how social media and search engine rankings can be used together. In fact, I wrote an article on this subject a while back, in which I asked a few search engine marketing experts their thoughts about where social media fits into the SEO equation.

The general consensus seemed to be that social media is a good channel for people to discover your content and link to it on their blogs and sites. But what about just getting your Twitter page ranked on Google? Some think that social media profiles could take the place of corporate websites. If this is the case, you would certainly want your profile to rank well.

An article from Source Square looks specifically at SEO for the Twitter page. The author of this article details the five steps outlined here:

1. Use search engine-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.

2. Use reader-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.

3. Use keywords in your "more info" URL

4. Flood your one line bio with keywords (while maintaining natural readability)

5. Tweet quality contents, and build lots of links

In a recent interview with WebProNews, Dana Todd of Newsforce, who is a board member of SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), talked about how social media frequently accounts for up to half of the top ten search results on Google for any given query. Perhaps more attention should be paid to the optimization of social media profiles.

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Spammers May Have Another Trick in Twitter

By Chris Crum - Wed, 05/13/2009 - 01:48

A Cautionary Tale for Twitterers

There have been plenty of complaints about Twitter spam, but what about spam as a result of our own tweeting? We have come to expect our Twitter streams to contain plenty of marketing messages (and perhaps the occasional worm), but some users may be unknowingly contributing to the spam that they find in their email inboxes.

I was having a talk with Twellow's lead developer Matthew Daines, and he pointed out that a simple query on Twitter Search can return large numbers of email addresses that spammers could potentially exploit. Results for such a query might look something like this:

"You can sit and just watch the email addresses steadily trickle in," he noted. "I wouldn't doubt it if spammers are harvesting these."

Read More >>>

Twitter moving beyond tweets

Thursday, May 07, 2009 for WebPro News

Twitter to Search the Web in Real Time

Earlier this year, Twitter began integrating Twitter Search (formerly Summize) into its home page. Just about a week ago, it became available there for everybody.

But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is what lies ahead for Twitter search. From the sound of it, it's about to get taken a lot more seriously. According to CNET, Twitter's new VP of Operations Santosh Jayaram says that Twitter Search, which currently searches only the text of Twitter posts, will soon crawl links included in tweets, and index content from those pages. What do you think about that? Tell WPN readers.

---

1) Add Yourself to the Twitter.
2) Gain new followers.
3) Join 3.5 million people.

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"Twitter Search will also get a reputation ranking system soon, Jayaram told me," reports CNET's Rafe Needleman. "When you do a search on a 'trending' topic (a topic that is so big it gets its own link in the Twitter.com sidebar), Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet and rank search results in part based on that."

Twitter search has been quite useful as it is. I've written about this in the past. For businesses, it has been a great tool for finding potential leads, and managing your online reputation, just to name a couple.

For the general public, it's provided insight into what people are talking about right now, it's often broken news stories, and it's provided a way for people to connect with others who may have something in common with them (although Twellow is more specifically designed for this).

But with changes coming to Twitter Search, it's going to be a whole new ball game. We're talking about Google territory. Twitter is adding algorithmic ranking, perhaps similar to Google's Pagerank. It sounds like Twitter will be bringing an altogether new ranking concept to Internet search by using the number of links in tweets as a value statement on the web page.

This is taking real-time search for web pages to a new level. And let's also not forget that Jayaram used to be the VP of Search Quality at Google.

What Twitter is doing could compete with Google News search, Google Blog Search, Google video search, and in terms of recent content even Google's main search engine.

Is it going to come out and immediately dethrone Google? That's probably not going to happen. For one Twitter users still have a hard time convincing people why they should be using Twitter at all. Everyone already uses Google, and even if another search engine were delivering better results, people would still be using Google. That seems to be the problem Microsoft is having (it is their claim that people found their results as good or better than Google).

"Strategically, a more advanced search engine could give Twitter more appeal as a takeover target - Steve Ballmer, for example, is making noise about how Microsoft has to get more disruptive in search," says Buckpost at Twitterrati. "Better search could also jump-start Twitter's business by providing more relevance and targeting for advertisers."

Interesting point. We are still waiting on that revenue machine Twitter's going to unload on us.

Either way, Twitter is clearly branching out beyond the simple social network/public IM/microblogging/etc. platform it has become known as. It has been in the search conversation for some time (even as a possible test for Google), but now you might start finding it there for greater reasons. 

What Is Twitter About in One Word?

By Chris Crum - Fri, 05/01/2009 - 16:20 Read on for the answer…

The "what is Twitter about?" article is not a new concept. It's been discussed frequently pretty much since Twitter was launched. Yet people still have a hard time grasping the concept. In fact, Twitter has had a hard time with user retention most likely because so many people try it based on all of the hype, and then don't return because they don't "get it." What is Twitter about to you in one word? Tell us.

The truth is, it often takes a while using the service to "get it." The more you use it, the more you start to realize the benefits that are there. I (with a little help from Mike and Tiffany) asked a whole bunch of people what Twitter is "about" to them in one word. A handful of them responded, and here are some of the answers I got:

- Updates
- Egos
- Networking/Networks
- Relationships
- Represent
- Connection
- Possibilities
- Instant
- Marketing
- Speed
- Noise
- Inane
- Communication
- Contrived
- Aggrandizement
- Useful
- Spammy
- Conversation
- Open
- Freedom
- Useless
- Awareness
- Chat

Going into this thing, the word I was clinging to in my mind was microblogging. It has always been described with this word, but what does that mean? Small blogging. To me, Twitter is not a whole lot different than a collection of blogs, only all of the entries are really short (140 characters or less).

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