Twitter is an amazing micro-blogging tool that is very popular with businesses of all sizes, celebrities and even athletic professionals. With 140 characters as tools for communicating, everyone is finding the value of using Twitter to send updates on their status and upcoming events. Twitter allows people to stay connected to the world—real-time. In the past, most of us used newspapers, television and radio to get our information. Much of that information was either past event updates or future event planning. Today you can stay connected, up to the minute, hour by hour or day by day. Businesses, organizations and individuals can benefit greatly from Tweeting!

Leverage Your Business

Find your target audience and potential prospects on Twitter and participate in industry conversation. People might be talking about a variety of issues including positive and negative experiences. Businesses can benefit by being a part of that conversation. Twitter can be your social happy hour where you can engage with your industry peers and audience in a positive and productive way.

Create Brand Awareness

Businesses can engage followers by keeping their brand in the forefront of their minds. Tweet about what’s new, your next big business plan and promote your business plan by generating buzz.

Get Informed

Twitter can help a business gain competitive intelligence. If your competition is on Twitter, you can count on being able to monitor their tweets to see what’s going on with them. Are they launching a new product, opening a new branch, or laying off folks?  By learning about your competition, your business gains an edge through the use of filtered information. Maybe your company should do an early launch to beat out your competitor, relocate an idea for a new office or consider an acquisition of a company who’s on its way out. Twitter is a key place to monitor what your competitor is doing. You can even pick up new marketing tips on how they’re using Twitter and either model your business Tweets the same way or choose a new technique that’s more beneficial to your specific business model.

Manage Your Online Reputation

The information on Twitter is real-time and the news or comments offered breaks fast. By monitoring what’s being said about your business, you can address issues and communicate a response immediately. Twitter is a social environment where transparency and honest are positive business attributes.

Promote Your Blog

Twitter allows businesses, organizations and individuals the ability to promote their blogs. Automatic feeds can be created that will post your blog comments directly to Twitter.

Use Twitter & Be Mobile

Twitter is simple and is limited to the use of 140 characters which makes it easy for Tweets to be mobile. A business can send and receive updates by using SMS. It’s a great communication tool for anyone on the go, making Twitter a powerful mobile marketing tool.

Use Twitter To Learn

Twitter can help a business learn what their target demographic is, what they are saying and looking for. You can learn what the latest interests are and what your target audience wants.

Let Twitter Feed You Back

Twitter allows businesses instant feedback on new products, websites, blogs and marketing efforts. This allows a business to make necessary changes before a formal launch. In this way, Twitter becomes an invaluable, time saving and cost saving tool.

Use Twitter For Promotions

By  using Twitter, a business can announce off or online events, deals and special offers and other consumer advantage programs.

Boost Your SEO

Great web content needs traffic and if your site has something to offer, you can use Twitter to drive traffic to your website. Tweet with a URL, and your website can become a landing pad that encourages conversation on and about your site.

Let Twitter Be Your Question & Answer Guide

If a business is looking for answers to questions, looking for industry statistics or hoping for general feedback, Tweet ‘n Listen. Posing an engaging question on Twitter can generate a response and point your business in the right direction.

Twitter & Human Resources = New Leads

Need or want some extra help for your business or organization? Tweet your job postings through Twitter and you might get some interesting and viable candidates!

Let Twitter Manage your News

Promote your newest press release and company news by Tweeting about it. This can help communicate what your business is doing faster than a traditional press release. It’s also a great way to engage conversation about your business news.

Twitter has become a popular communication tool. By listening and communicating, businesses can use the power of the internet and its lightening fast speed to share information real-time. Toss those postcards the next time you want to send a quick update or message. Instead, log onto Twitter and love being a part of the digital world!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Digg is an excellent website that holds a wealth of information, stories, practice tips, hard to find tutorials and in general, you name it, you’ll probably find it on Digg. For the casual users, there are a ton of categories to choose from and the content on Digg is virtually real-time. For specialized users like website owners and bloggers, Dig has the potential of becoming your new best friend. When stories are submitted to Digg and if they make the front page, it can cause what’s known as the “Digg Effect”. This is when a massive influx of traffic is sent from Digg to your website or blog. Digg can transform an unknown website or blog into a well-established heavily trafficked web location. Carve out your niche marketing efforts and join Digg to expand your market reach.

Digg Is An Information & Gathering Place

• Digg is a user-friendly and user-driven website.
• All the content that’s found on Digg is submitted by Digg users
• Digg users moderated the content that is posted on Digg.
• Because Dig is a community website, it relies on its members to send submission. Many of those submissions are in the form of short articles that are centered around a specific subject. Once a Digg member submits their content, other Digg users read that submitted content.  If the information is interesting and worthy, members will, Digg the stories and content they like the most.  If a submission or story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page of Digg where millions of Digg visitors will see it.
• The key to getting Digged, is to have interesting, informative and relevant content.

How To Submit Content To Dig:

1. Register with Digg – it’s free and fast.
2. Start Digging yourself to get a feel for what it’s like to review other people’s content.

Tip: To start Digging, click on your profile link and scroll to check out submitted content. You can also go to the general Digg index and use the Digg search box. The search box appears at the top of every page for ease in searching. There are also advance searches available too. Make sure to use good key search words to target the most specific related topic your interested in.

How To Find Stories & Content For Digg:

1. Find information you want to share with the Digg community.
2.  Navigate to the Submit A Story URL and follow the process.

Tip: If you want your content to be “Dugg” by others then make sure to write an attention grabbing title and informational description. This will encourage community members to click through.

How To Use Bookmarklets:

Another way to add content to Digg is to use a Bookmarklet.

Tip: Drag one of the Bookmarklet links to your browser toolbar. This is a handy way to add content to Digg while browsing the internet. The Bookmarklets work with both Firefox and Explorer.

Digg Is Popular – Check Out These Statistics:

We checked the Digg statistics at the time of this post and found:

The data for the United States showed estimates of:

• 3.5 million unique visitors for the country.
• 11 million unique visitors worldwide.
• 98 million page views in the country.
• 190 million page views worldwide.
• 25 million total visits recorded in the country.
• 45 million worldwide.

Digg is not gender specific and both male and females were found to be taking advantage of Digging:

• 68% were recorded as male
• 325 were found to be females

The educational background of the average Digg user was reported to be:

• 42% had some college level education
• 34% had a bachelor degree
• 9% had less than a high school diploma
• 8% had a graduate degree
• 7% had less than a high school diploma

The age of members showed to be an estimated:

• 31% were between the ages of 25-34
• 30% were 35-44 years old
• 45-54 year olds made up 16%
• 11% wer 18-24 year olds
• The senior generation of 55-64 year olds came in at 6%
• 2% accounted for 65 year old and over
• 5% of users were between the ages of 0-17

General data for the household income of Digg users were shown to be:

• 30% at $25,000-$49,000
• 23% at $50,000-$74 999
• 20% were between $75,000-$99,999
• 15% made $0-$24,999
• 7% were $100,000-149,999
• 4% earned 150,000 or more.

These impressive statistics show just how powerful Digg can be to reaching a specific target market. It’s easy to see why so many individuals, businesses and hobbyist have added Digg to their social media network. By joining an online community as large as this one, it’s easy to see the marketing benefits. Whether you’re sharing content to raise awareness of a product line or just want to introduce thoughtful ideas, Digg can unlock an incredible audience and another way for you to reach a mass market.

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler