Hello,

Welcome to the July 2009 Edition of "The Web Tamer". This newsletter is for our clients and friends, who are interested in using their web sites to help market, brand and promote their businesses. Our goal with this newsletter is to provide timely and relevant information about how to use the Internet to market and grow your business. This month our newsletter focuses on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service.

As always, we are interested in any feedback you have so please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions. Stay tuned for next months issue when we discuss search engine optimization.

All the Best,

John

John Giaccotto (@JohnGiaccotto)
LionLeaf, LLC
Tame the Web
www.LionLeaf.com

Introduction To Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and receive messages of up to 140 characters. In order to use Twitter you need an account on twitter.com. When you create an account you will choose a unique identifier known as a handle. Handles are preceded with an @ sign so an example would be @JohnGiaccotto. Once you have an account you can search for people that you know and choose to follow them. When you follow another person you are essentially subscribing to receive any broadcast messages that the person posts. When you follow someone they are notified and will often choose to start following you. There are two main types of messages with one type being sent to anyone following you and another type being a direct message to only one other person. These messages that are sent are called tweets.

Many people who begin using Twitter stop using the service shortly after. Therefore, before you sign up for an account, it is important to give some thought to where Twitter can fit into your marketing and branding efforts.

The following are some tips for effectively using Twitter.

1. Expand your network with Twitter: You most likely already have many friends, family and colleagues who are using Twitter. Use the Twitter search feature to find people that you know and to then follow them.
2. As you begin to start reading what those in your Twitter network are doing and you in turn tweet about what you are doing you will find that discussions start to naturally occur. Your network will start naturally expanding as people who are following those who are following you start following you directly.
3. Use Twitter to Provide Relevant Information: It is important to avoid being seen as using Twitter for marketing your business. Instead use Twitter to provide information that others will find valuable. By providing information of value you are able to help brand yourself as being an authority within your domain of expertise.
4. Monitor Your Competition: Use Twitter to stay informed about what your competitors are doing. Find those people who are in your industry and follow them to keep abreast of what is happing from their vantage point.
5. Use Twitter for Search: One of the most powerful features of Twitter is its ability to search for keywords. Twitter allows you to search through tweets and this can be a great way to find experts or solutions.
6. Attend a Tweetup: Connecticut has had several of these already and they can be great ways to network with other people who are using Twitter.

One of the best things about Twitter is that there is an abundance of third party free software that you can use to help you organize what you are sending and receiving. Software such as TweetDeck and PeopleBrowsr are some examples of tools that can help you more efficiently use Twitter.

In The News

TweetDeck for the iPhone Now Available - The popular TweetDeck front end software for Twitter is now available for the iPhone. The software is available in the App Store for the iPhone.

Twitter Plays Role in Iranian Election Aftermath - CNN's Elise Labott recently reported on the CNN web site that the U.S. State department asked Twitter to delay their scheduled maintenance during the recent election aftermath to allow Iranians to use the popular social networking platform to communicate with the outside world.

Resources

TweetDeck

TweetDeck for Iphone

PeopleBrowsr

Twitter Advanced Search Operators

TwitterLocal

The Answer Corner

This is a new area of our newsletter where we are going to answer your questions about the web. If you have a question that you'd like answered in one of our issues please respond to this email or contact us at info@lionleaf.com.

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Tip

One of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign for your web site is monitoring your progress. If you are using Google Analytics to monitor your traffic and you visit your web site often then consider adding an exclusion to prevent Google from counting hits resulting from you visiting your web site. Simply go to Analytics Settings and then to Filter Manager and then click Add Filter. You will then be able to configure a rule for excluding your IP address. This ensures that you aren't skewing the results. For detailed steps on how to do this you can view our blog post.

Announcing BravoCart Drag-N-Drop

We have recently unveiled an e-commerce solution called Bravo Cart that provides a unique interface for shopping online. The Flash version of our Bravo Cart store allows customers to drag and drop products into a basket. We invite you to try out a demo or watch a video of it at YouTube.

About LionLeaf, LLC

LionLeaf, LLC is a web design company based in Southington, Connecticut. We provide complete web services to small and medium sized businesses in the Connecticut area. Our services range from designing web sites to creating complex web applications.