Pittsburgh SEO – SEM – SEA | Internet Marketing and Website Design | Blackball Online

New Twitter Terms of Service Released

Effective: September 10th, 2009

Everybody that uses Twitter should be aware that new terms of service were released. We at Blackball Online recommend that you read these terms. They lay out the rights, basic terms of service, privacy policy and much, much more. Pay special attention to the links on the right. New API rules have been set forth. Twitter actually has a rudimentary set of rules now. Make no mistake Twitter is on the move. Arm yourself with the knowledge they provide to glean what you can about where they are heading.

Twitter has been in negotiations to sell advertisements or the service as a whole for some time now as reported all over the net. This is no secret. These new terms are far reaching as compared to the old terms and it leads us to believe that the lawyers have gotten involved.

We believe that this is the first step to pave the way for the business to be taken over. Twitter is sure to be bought soon. In our opinion the need to monetize Twitter is more than the inventors can handle. It has become a smash hit and sure to be the prize of a larger more established company. Does Google ring a bell?

Read the complete Twitter Terms of Service - http://twitter.com/tos.

Pittsburgh Social Media Optimization by Blackball Online

Pittsburgh, PA - Social Media Optimization is now the hot new topic and favorite of the search engines. (Google, Bing, Yahoo) It used to be you could put up a website and get some traffic. Generate some leads and all was well. Then you needed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to rank because of the increased competition. Now it’s very important to use Social Media Optimization in addition to drive traffic to your website/blog.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a “set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites” according to Wikipedia. Google, Bing, Yahoo have picked up on these emerging trends and been ranking these mediums for some time now. These search engines index sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn including your profiles.

As the search engines evolve into what engineers believe is a more intuitive system, Social Media Optimization has taken center stage. This is by no means a substitute for a well designed site with SEO. It is an extension of the Internet Marketing strategy and the next logical step.

Blogs have been the design of choice for some time now. They offer the ability to add content at will with very little technical expertise. But, let’s face it, these are very competitive times. The more you put into your business, the more you get out. SEO coupled with SMO now rules the roost. A thorough grasp of how search engines view your site is necessary for your hard work to pay off as well as it should.

If you have a new / existing business with limited resources and this sounds like a tall order, it is. But taken in logical steps it can be more than manageable. Blackball Online works with small businesses to maximize their resources and achieve the best results possible given the assets available for their Pittsburgh Social Media Optimization campaigns.

Start slow and think this through. Formulate a strategy and stick to it. The Internet will be there. It is important to do the proper analysis of your business first to speed the way for your Social Media campaigns later. A good start is to leverage Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They are all valuable sites and mediums to start with.

For a free Pittsburgh Social Media Optimization by Blackball Online consultation email us at info@blackballonline.com or just call (412)377-7280.

Twitter Help Resources - The Twitter Help Files

Pittsburgh, PA - As our previous posts on Twitter mention at the Blackball Online Newsblog, the Twitter community has been very kind to us. We would like to return the favor by providing some Twitter resources that may be overlooked.

When we started our Twitter experience, like most, we didn’t read the instructions. (i.e. the Help Files) Help files are a very valuable resource. The same holds true for Twitter. No-one could have predicted all the scenarios or uses for Twitter that have been encountered to date with such a diverse user group.

We thought we would share some very valuable Twitter Help File links to common problems and save you some time:

The Twitter Main Help Page - http://help.twitter.com/portal

Twitter has developed this area with resources to aid in Getting Started, Finding People, Official Twitter Text Commands, and Frequently Asked Questions.

The sidebar of the main help page is a wealth of information. It contains this:

Help Resources

Getting Started (25)

Find answers to common questions!

Using Twitter with your phone (10)

Tweet by text: find help using your phone with Twitter!

Trouble Shooting (17)

Having problems? Check out some of our most common issues and what to do about them

Known Issues (22)

Find updates about open bugs and currently known issues. Click the 'subscribe' link to receive email updates when a new topic is posted by Twitter Support.

Impersonation, Trademark, and Terms of Service policies (13)

Find out how to report common Terms of Service or Rules violations, such as impersonation, copyright, trademark, user name squatting and more.

Some roadblocks we have faced and where we went to solve them:

Follow Limits - http://help.twitter.com/forums/10713/entries/14959

Contacting Twitter

More information about Twitter
*@spam: follow our spam profile and report Twitter spam via direct message
*Status Blog: check Twitter's current system status.
*Twitter Blog: what's new with Twitter
*Developer Blog: a technical blog from the Twitter engineering team
*Developer Group: if you're a developer, join our mailing list

A pleasant experience is what we all want from Twitter; we hope we have armed you with some suggestions to help your Twitter experience in the event you experience any roadblocks along the way. Using Help files when they are available is always good practice. Technical Support personnel are always very busy so if you can solve the problem yourself your time can be better spent Tweeting. If you cannot solve the problem or find the solution yourself, you’ll be armed with the information to assist the technicians in fixing your problem and get faster results.

Other helpful Twitter Resources:

This post is fabulous      à http://wiredpen.com/resources/twitter-resources/

Another Great Post       à http://online-social-networking.com/tons-of-great-twitter-resources

This post compiled by Pittsburgh SEO by Blackball Online. Happy Tweeting.

Twitter Grader and Blackball Online Social Media

Twitter Grader by Hubspot

Pittsburgh, PA – Our efforts and posts are aimed at educating the small business owner as to the viability and effectiveness of Twitter and other Social Media platforms to increase their web presence and gain sales and brand recognition. If you have been following our Blog posts at the Blackball Online Newsblog about our experience with Twitter, you have a head start. If you haven’t been following us as of yet, no problem, the links to the Twitter posts are listed below.

Twitter tools are everywhere now. There are thousands of plugins, applications, URL shorteners, auto posting tools, the list goes on and on. A very effective analysis of Twitter accounts is provided by the Twittergrader tool shown above, written by Hubspot, an industry leader in all things digital. These folks know their tools and they are extremely pleasant as well.

We have already spoken of the value of Twitter to business. We wanted to show visually how effective our Social Media campaigns can be, and how we can put together a similar campaign for you. The screenshot is a graphic representation of this fact. For those of you with text-only browsers, Blackball Online (@blackballonline) scored 99.95 out of 100 on Twittergrader. Check it out here: http://twitter.grader.com/blackballonline. The ranking factors which go into this tool have been made transparent by Hubspot at http://grader.com/blog/how-does-twitter-grader-calculate-twitter-rankings/; And we think that is just a measure of how good the tools and the company are.

Contact Blackball Online or call at (412)377-7280 for a free consultation about your business on the Internet and how we can help you to get started or go to that next level.

Links to Blackball Online Newsblog Twitter posts:

Introduction to Twitter – How we got involved

Twitter Tools to help you get started

More Twitter Tools to increase your effectiveness

Cracking the Twitter 2000 Follow Limit

Pittsburgh SEO Your Twitter Tweets

Pittsburgh SEO Your Twitter Tweets

Pittsburgh, PA - SEO is our passion. Because of this we make every effort to maximize your site and business to its fullest. The same goes for Twitter Tweets. The following is our analysis of the most effective way to Tweet on Twitter based on our experience to date.

Our use of Twitter is to contribute and be involved in the community, raise awareness of how our services and Website / Blog can potentially help small businesses, garner and learn from your feedback and pass on things that we’ve learned (and are still learning) through trail-and-error. Fundamentally, we use Twitter to meet and share experience with all sorts of business folks out on Twitter. We also use Twitter to spread the word, or advertise for our clients.

The anatomy of a Twitter Tweet is simple. You get 140 characters to state your case. You can add links using the hxxp://longurl format or you can use a url shortener (an algorithm that makes your url very short, thus using fewer characters). We prefer Bit.ly.

Getting down to it, normal marketing rules need not apply. Pushy Tweets or advertising don’t work on Twitter. Good quality information in as few characters as possible is the ideal Tweet formula (using effective keywords of course). Remember this is a micro blogging platform. Blog posts in miniature.

In addition to these points we must add the fact that should someone want to ReTweet or RT(send your message out again giving you credit) your Tweets should be limited to 100 or so characters. The task sounds daunting but it isn’t.

Eliminate all fluff. Promote a topic or have a call to action immediately followed by your shortened url. That’s it. Some sample Tweets we use to promote Blackball Online – Pittsburgh SEO include:

#Pittsburgh #SEO #SEM #SEA http://www.blackballonline.com

Internet Marketing for Small Business; Take Your Best Shot - http://bit.ly/GUpcd

#Twitter and the 2000 Follow Limit rule http://bit.ly/v8S99

Choose an SEO that does the research? http://bit.ly/3H3zJu

CMS Tools friend or foe? http://bit.ly/zIoyF

Some of these links are blog posts on the Blackball Online Newsblog , and we did leave the full URL for Blackball Online on the first Tweet. Other information about these Tweets – the # or hashtag as it is called, designates a topic or locale. When we use #Pittsburgh anyone who belongs to the #Pittsburgh group will get our Tweet, even if they are not following us.

We have also written some posts designed for new and experienced Twitterers. The links are here:

New to #Twitter? Get started with these Twitter tools. http://bit.ly/42iIq

Not so new to #twitter - Our 2nd installment of #Twitter Tools. http://bit.ly/5QNeW

Below are some very good posts on the same or similar topics and are worth the read;

http://mashable.com/2009/06/25/twitter-seo-tips/

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/15/twitter-seo/