The Basics of Using Twitter for App Marketing

Sure, Twitter is a great way to promote anything, really, but aimlessly tweeting about your new app just isn't going to be as effective as you may think. Instead of tweeting at whomever you think you may be listening, follow these simple rules and you will find your message reaching the masses with relative ease.
Create a Twitter Account for the App You're Launching
Create a Twitter account for the app. After you create it, take a few minutes to use the search feature to find people who fit the app's target audience description. For instance, if you create a recipe app, search for "foodies", "food", and "cook." Twitter will pull several lists of people it thinks you should follow. Once you start following people, many of them will follow you back, so you can start building a community and engaging with your potential customers.
Properly Monitor and Engage Your Account to Foster a Sense of Community
Don't just set it and forget it. Regularly check your Twitter account, being sure to follow your new followers back, and introduce yourself to them. Have conversation. Answer questions. Ask questions. Link your website to your Twitter account, and make sure to include your website URL on your Twitter profile. If you are involved in any other social media websites for the purpose of promoting your app, make sure your website visitors see all the various places they can find you online.
Post Questions and Comments About Your App
If you are working on a fix, or a new feature for your app, Twitter is a good way to let a lot of people know at the same time. This is also a good way to handle some customer service issues, which can improve your credibility and the overall image of your brand. Occasionally ask followers to "retweet" your major announcements to their followers to help get the word out about the app and keep people talking about it.
Tweet Other Relevant Information to Your Followers
If the only thing you do is talk about yourself and promote your product, you will lose credibility with your followers, and they will stop paying attention to you. When no one is paying attention to you, your marketing efforts are wasted. When you release a press release, or any other information about your app through other online mediums, be sure to let your followers know. This will help to keep them interested and engaged in your brand.
Drive Traffic
Twitter can drive traffic to your website where people can learn more about the app, or directly to the app store where they can purchase the app and leave a review. This is part of your strategy is best saved for when your following has grown considerably.
Don't let the fact that you're limited to 140 characters stop you from being able to communicate your message to potential customers. Twitter will not bring instant or overnight success, but with the right marketing strategy in place Twitter can be a major source of your app sales.
Lucinda Watrous is a freelance SEO article writer and WordPress website designer. She is also a die hard foodie, married to an aspiring culinary extraordinaire. Visit her website at: http://lucindauncensored.com.

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How to Promote Your Blog in 5 Easy Steps

If you have a blog and are eager for the rest of the world to discover it, then a road map on just how to promote your blog is probably just the thing you are looking for. And not just any road map, a detailed, descriptive road map, so you know exactly what to do, right?! Here is an easy-to-follow plan just for you...
Actually, focusing more on the subject of how to promote your blog effectively is an even better plan. Because effectiveness is key when you are searching for the best ways for promoting your blogging efforts.
You work hard on your blog, so you want to implement promotion strategies that give you the most bang for your buck, right?
But exactly what to do and how to promote your blog can be an overwhelming task. Believe me, I know - I've tried nearly all of them.
I've paid hundreds of dollars on all sorts of bookmarking, directory submissions, not to mention social networking and extensive "Googling."
But what I've discovered is that there are a handful of tried-and-true, tested methods that can bring loads of visitors to your blog. And you don't have to pay money to promote your blog - these are all FREE!
You can learn how to promote your blog very quickly and easily with these 5 simple steps.
Don't worry if they seem long - they are really very easy and will bring you more readers than you ever imagined -
Step 1 - When looking at how to promote your blog, the first step is to pinpoint what your goals are for your promotion efforts.
Picture a business - businesses don't just purchase ad space or hire sales people without a clearly defined plan in place. They have a goal in mind and everything they do relates to that goal.
The same goes for your blog. Jot down a few goals you want to accomplish with your promotion efforts - do you want to hit the 100, 500 or 1,000 visitors/day mark or get 500 new subscribers to your newsletter or sell $x amount of dollars in your amazon store? Why are you promoting your blog? This is a crucial step - one that can't be ignored. Having a goal guides you in deciding where to send all of your blog visitors.
You wouldn't want to send readers to your blog without having it structured to receive those visitors. Imagine getting loads of new readers, new potential customers to your blog, only they are leaving within minutes of arriving (check this percentage on how to use Google Analytics) or they are being sent to a page that is not relevant to what they were expecting. All of your promotion strategies just flew out the window! Setting up goals and clearly defining what the customer should do next is critical in any promotion strategy. Key question here - Why are you promoting your blog?
Step 2 - After you've come up with a concrete goal, then it's time to put the wheels into motion. I will use the well-known example of dog training to help explain this step. Dog training is a very broad niche - imagine your niche is more specialized - dog training a lab.
Your blog, Dog Training a Lab, is all set up and you have been posting quality content for a few weeks. You want to promote your blog with the goal of selling items from your amazon links. That is your ultimate goal - to sell items that you will refer your readers to, through Amazon links from your posts.
Since we've defined a goal, we can move on to putting a plan into action.
And as with any marketing or promotion efforts, the question to ask is how do I get in front of the people interested in what I have to offer? Where are all these people hanging out? Where do people who want to talk about dog training gather...
Well, they gather on Forums -
People who want to know about dog training are on community forums discussing dog training with others.
I Googled dog training forums and several websites came up, then I Googled dog training a lab forums and a few forums came up that are geared just for labs!
Brilliant!
Go where the people are - there are people interested in dog training a lab on community forums. Go there and participate. Contribute and you will get visitors coming to your blog to purchase your latest and greatest dog leash or some other item you are blogging about.
Step 3 - Next it's time to get on Twitter and start tweeting, notice I said start tweeting. Just being on Twitter doesn't do anything for your business, you have to actually say something.
If tweeting is just too far out of your comfort zone, try tweeting someone else's posts or reTweet what someone else has said to start with. You still gain popularity because your name is on the tweet. Keep using it and you will gain followers. Take a big leap of faith and tweet something - spread the word on a new dog training video you just saw. You will start tweeting, which will send people over to your blog, which will make you sales in no time.
Step 4 - Set up Facebook for your business. Tell your friends about a sale on dog toys or mention a new blog post you just posted. The point is to be as exposed as possible so visitors can find you anywhere and everywhere. Generating friends on Facebook will be covered in another post, but for now put a button on your blog to encourage others to find you on Facebook.
At the bottom of your posts in your blog, put a social connect button with a Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and Google+ button so readers can simple click a button to post to Twitter or any of the others - again, this makes it easy for visitors to share a great post with others and it will generate more traffic to your blog. If you use WordPress, there is a plug-in for this, Blogger will have an option on their set-up as well.
Step 5 - Comments make the world go round. You may have heard this from me before, but comments really are like gold. Find other blogs in your niche or a little outside of it. Let's look at the dog training a lab example. I would hop over to other dog training a lab blogs and read their posts and make an intelligent comment. Then I would scale up and hop over to some general dog training blogs and read their posts and comment there. See where this is heading?
Treat the comments you receive with care - they do so much more than take up space on your post page. Comments show interaction - visitors like to see and read comments. Comments build your rapport with the search engines. They provide links coming in to your website; they build links out of your website. Comments mean you have an interactive, attentive blog and that is what means the difference between a successful blog and an unsuccessful blog.
Five easy steps on how to promote your blog, right?
In fact, these steps are very easy to implement - take one evening and set these accounts up and you will be surprised at what a difference it makes.
Discovering how to promote your blog is made even simpler in my newest book, Profitable Blogging Made Easy. Grab your copy today!
Christy Brady blogs at Insightful Mommy. Grab your copy of my book, Profitable Blogging Made Easy today.

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How To Start A New Online Information Business

Online entrepreneurs have a lot of questions when they want to start an online business. I will try to answer those questions for you, so you will avoid frustration and confusion most entrepreneurs face when they start their businesses.
You have to make some important decisions. Decide what business model you will use. Is it gonna be a blog, affiliate marketing, information products, software, web services or consulting maybe. Choose only one model that works the best for you. You will achieve that by testing your market.
If you are an absolute beginner, I recommend you start an affiliate marketing business. You promote someone else`s product and it is cheap to start. You will learn marketing and creating content. You will discover what types of products people like in your market and which products are best sellers. You won`t have to deal with a product creation, costumer support or refunds.
When you get results in your affiliate marketing business, then you can move into creating your own product for that market. You tested the market, you know what your audience like, now is the time to build a long-term online business. Invest your affiliate marketing profits into your own new brand. With the knowledge that you get from affiliate marketing it is easier for you to create a product, because you understand the competition and what type of promotion methods work for you.
Every online business is unique so you want to be in a big market. Competition is good. If you have a problem with researching your market, I suggest you stick to the three big markets or three mega niches, as internet marketers are calling them.
Those are:
  1. Health and fitness niche.
  2. Money and business niche.
  3. Relationships and dating.
You can find a lot of sub niches in these three mega niches. You can get very specific and it is based on what your costumers want.
How do you know what your costumers want? You will get that answer by testing. If you don`t test your product first, you will lose money.
The biggest mistake you can make is to do everything yourself. You will get burned out and overwhelmed. It is very important that you outsource certain tasks. Write down your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes in your business. Outsource dislikes and weaknesses so you will have more time for new money making ideas. Time is the most important resource you have.
One last thing. Don't be afraid to fail. It's good to fail fast, because then you will learn what went wrong. You will improve and get better at what you do. All successful entrepreneurs had failed at some point of their life.
FREE Online business blueprint shows you a simple, easy, proven way to double your profits with your online business For more cool information visit my blog: http://www.onlinemarketingboss.com
 
 

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