Twitter About to Get More Useful for Businesses

If You don't think Twitter is useful for business now, new features may change your mind. Twitter announced that it has begun limited beta testing of a new feature aimed at businesses, called "Contributors." The feature allows businesses to have more control over who is posting for their company Twitter account, and to make that information visible to users.

Would you find such a feature useful? Comment here.

"The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations," explains Twitter's Anamitra Banerji.



Businesses have already been finding different ways to personalize accounts. For example, the WebProNews Twitter account (feel free to follow it) utilizes "@cotags" to sign Tweets. However, this practice requires adding characters to tweets, and sometimes every character counts. If you're trying to optimize your tweets for maximum retweeting (which can in turn drive traffic to your site), you want to leave as much space as possible for followers to add their own information.

Twitter's new "contributors" feature should solve this problem. Businesses who regularly utilize Twitter will be anticipating the roll out of this feature. There's no telling how long this limited beta testing will go on though.



The important thing for businesses to keep in mind is that Twitter is finally getting serious about becoming more useful to them. There are a great many ways that businesses can use Twitter and the company knows this of course. Now, however, they seem to be set to start really catering to businesses. The new "Contributors" feature is apparently only the first of an unspecified number of business features Twitter is currently working on.

"The simple features that Twitter has offered to all users has worked for business users as well," says Banerji. "As Twitter becomes more integral to businesses, they will need more business specific features from Twitter – both on the web and API. We have been working on some of these features and are ready to start a limited beta test of one that's further along in development."

The key words there are "working on some of these features." Twitter is looking to start monetizing its own business, and catering to other businesses is bound to be a step in that direction. Ads and commercial accounts are said to be coming to Twitter soon. The commercial accounts would come with premium features, such as analytics. In fact, Twitter COO Dick Costolo recently said that multiple authors would be a part them as well, and that is exactly what they're testing right now.

We don't know what other features Twitter may have up its sleeve, but it will be very interesting to see what they come up with and how businesses respond. Either way, businesses are going to want to keep a close eye on what Twitter does, because it could have huge implications for key areas of how their businesses communicate online down the road.

What features would you like to see Twitter offer businesses? What would make Twitter more useful to you? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... here.

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Google Ad Planner Gets Several New Enhancements

Google has released several new features for Google Ad Planner. Google says these are aimed at providing a more granular view of where your audience can be found. Features include subdomain data, ad placements, and reach and relevance at a glance.

When Google says reach and relevance at a glance, it is referring to a new interactive graph feature, which lets advertisers see which sites in their plan provide the best reach and relevance.

"In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index," explains Google's Katrina Kurnit. "Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance."

Users can customize the graph in a number of different ways. The feature is discussed in more detail on this page.

 Google has added subdomain data that gives you more detailed views of sites. It can help users refine their media plan by providing more info on specific pages. It lets usres search for subdomains, view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site, view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself, and add subdomains to their media plan.

The Ad Placements feature consists of specific sections of a site where advertising can be purchased. This feature allows advertisers to review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Google says more placement data will be coming soon.

Google says publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share more Google Analytics data points like page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site.

Have You Read This?

> New Google Tool Benefits Both AdWords and AdSense Users

> Google Improves Traffic Estimation with Ad Planner

> Google Launches New Ad Planner

 

Performance tracking through reports

Google AdSense program provides you reports which you can use for tracking the performance of your AdSense Ads. There are certain basic reports which are as such available on all AdSense accounts. These reports will show you the total number of page impressions, ad unit impressions, ad clicks, cost per thousand impressions (effective CPM), click through rate (CTR), and your earnings of course. You can view the reports for the date range of your choice.  However, do not expect the report to be updated every second. Typically, the data is updated by Google AdSense program after every hour.

You can customize these reports for advanced performance tracking. Though simple customization of basic reports is useful too, it’s the ‘channels’ that really help in conducting a detailed performance analysis. Using channels you can get data broken down and presented in a number of different ways e.g. you could compare the performance of one set of pages against another, you could compare the performance of one ad format against another etc. There are various options available with channels and it’s just a matter of exploring them and using them to your benefit.

Besides viewing the reports online, you can even download your reports (in CSV format – comma separated values format). If you don’t want to login to your AdSense account very frequently, you can set up email-able reports which automatically get emailed to you or whoever you designate.

Building opt in list and affiliate marketing – effective internet marketing plan

Building opt in list and affiliate marketing have become synonymous to online success as an effective internet marketing strategy. For many online sites, building opt in list and affiliate marketing have proven quite profitable. Primarily because most online users are not exposed to any unscrupulous internet marketing strategies prevalent on the World Wide Web.

As an effective Internet marketing strategy, users are given the option to signup for information or service provided by a particular site. Building opt in list and affiliate marketing reduces the risk of spamming since the recipient voluntarily chooses to receive emails from a website. Plus, building opt in list and affiliate marketing provides a direct link to the subscriber that will help shape a formidable customer relationship that will keep on going.

The basics of building opt in list and affiliate marketing

Different websites have different ways of building opt in list and affiliate marketing. However there are some tried and tested formulas to help new affiliate marketers develop their own opt in listing for their site. The first and most important factor to determine in building opt in list and affiliate marketing is to establish the site’s target market.

Once the target market is established, building opt in list and affiliate marketing can be customized to meet their demands. This can be done using a variety of methods to convince site visitors to sign up for the site’s newsletter or e-zine. After signing up, the customer will begin to receive a variety of newsletters, e-zines and brochures that the customer had registered for.

Strategies for building opt in list and affiliate marketing

There are a number of strategies that affiliate marketers can use for building opt in list and affiliate marketing. One way of building opt in list and affiliate marketing is by purchasing or leasing a subscribers list from third-parties. This is usually done by affiliate marketers in order to get easy access to many people who have consented to receiving e-mails, newsletters and e-zines on various topics.

Although it is the fastest approach to building opt in list and affiliate marketing, this method does not provide a focused consumer group for building opt in list and affiliate marketing. In addition, it may cost an affiliate marketer more than what they expect to receive in sales. Fortunately, there are other ways for affiliate marketers to get the most out of building opt in list and affiliate marketing.

Enlisting for co-registration services is great for building opt in list and affiliate marketing. This service usually costs about 10 cents to 30 cents per subscriber but it easily translates into an average of three hundred subscribers daily to an affiliate marketer’s opt in list.

Writing articles is also an effective strategy for building opt in list and affiliate marketing. The articles can be published in various newsletters with specific links to the affiliate marketer’s site. This serves as a great introduction to potential subscribers that would encourage them to sign up for an opt in list.

Joint ventures are also a valuable strategy in building opt in list and affiliate marketing. Joint ventures are a hundred percent free and at the same time can add up to hundreds of subscribers to an opt in list daily.

Incentives for building opt in list and affiliate marketing

Building opt in list and affiliate marketing can also be encouraged by offering incentives to potential subscribers. This subtle form of encouragement for building opt in list and affiliate marketing often helps stir the interest of potential subscribers to sign up for the opt in list. There are a number of methods used in affiliate marketing to egg on potential subscribers to sign up.

Offering products and services in exchange for signing up is commonly practiced by many affiliate websites. Products may include special e-books or software that would be of interest to the subscriber. Another way to get subscribers to sign up is to offer them special services that are only available for site members.

Regardless of the incentive used for building opt in list and affiliate marketing, the most important factor to consider is how to keep the interest of the subscriber. Remember, it is just as easy for a subscriber to opt out of the list as it was to opt in to the list.