“In every recession of the past 90 years…the businesses who increase their advertising spend are the ones who survive the tough times and thrive afterwards.”

The above quote from the Financial Times may or may not be true but here at WebDesigns.ie we’ve had an increasing number of clients ask us how they can make their brand more visible through social media and Web 2.0. Basically they’re asking how can their website be found on Google using social media tools for as little cost as possible. In recessions of the past increasing advertising spend was not always an option for companies but now with tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc this no longer has to be the case.

The first part of this series focuses on Twitter, what it is (you’d be surprised how many clients come to us with this question) how to use it to increase brand awarness and then finishes up with some tools to help you use Twitter to the best of it’s ability.

What is Twitter? Twitter is a free micro blogging service that allows users to communicate with one another using short text-based messages that can be a maximum of 140 characters in length.  Since Twitter is a distributed communications system, messages can be sent from nearly any device that has internet connectivity. Companies are using Twitter to tap into business prospects, influencers, and customers.

Twitter for Business - Business users of Twitter have taken advantage of the ability to tap into the targeted audience for relationship building, networking opportunities both online and offline, achieving business objectives, and personal gain.

Twitter revolves around personal relationships, and the most successful Twitter users are those who engage in facilitating and building friendships. Some of the most successful business entities are those that actively monitor the conversation, show concern for the well-being of their customers and provide in-depth and quick customer service.

The fact that quick customer service is only a tweet (messages sent via Twitter) away has driven many individuals to use Twitter, because it bypasses slower and more traditional means of contacting support representatives.

Using Twitter - You can sign up for a Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com. Once you have your account setup you can customize your profile, add an avatar, personalize your background with a unique picture and write a brief biography about yourself or your company.

Typically in the beginning you will not know who to follow, but hopefully you’ll know people who are already using the service.

The best way to get people to follow you and your business is to get involved. Look at what other people are saying and then share your thoughts.

How to Achieve Business Goals Using Twitter – Twitter is an excellent tool for businesses to tap into a vast audience of users. When used in conjunction with other social media tools and as part of an organized Search Engine Marketing Campaign Twitter is exceptional at connecting users with the companies they are interested in. Twitter, therefore, can generate sales, act as a customer service tool, promote brand awareness, and even capture new prospects as clients.

If you’re looking to Twitter as a source of income, consider a strategy that allows you to broadcast sales that you can offer your Twitter followers exclusively. You could offer a deal that is not available anywhere else; use Twitter to share a coupon code, dedicated web hosting provider www.dediserve.com use this tactic very effectively. Alternatively create a custom URL for a Twitter-specific deal and promote that deal only on Twitter. At least once a week, post a great deal that people will want to talk about. This is how you leverage word-of-mouth marketing via retweeting (sharing Twitter messages with other followers). To ensure that your customers know about your presence on Twitter, create a page for your website advertising your Twitter account or send an update to your customers via your standard newsletter.

Using Twitter for Customer Service - In social media, regardless of whether you are going to engage or not, conversations about your business will be ongoing. That’s clearly the case with Twitter. If you are part of an established business try a Twitter search on your company and you might be surprised to see the results. You’ll get almost immediate feedback from customers and find out exactly what they think about your service or product offerings. Naturally, you’ll likely want to respond on behalf of your company to some of the not so positive commentary. As such, Twitter has become a grounds overflowing with customer service enquires, and representatives of companies have taken the steering wheel on the situation to alleviate customer concerns.

Using Twitter for Brand Awareness - When you provide value to your followers, you will find that more people become aware of you. Much like traditional business networking, when you’re involved in a community, and you bring more and more people into the community awareness of you and your company goes up even further.

Other Business Uses of Twitter - How can you acquire customers on Twitter? It’s as simple as monitoring the conversation for your competitors or industry terms and then participating in the conversation when it seems right. You may not want to make the first overt sell, as this may turn off the potential candidate, be genuine and offer to help first.

You can use Twitter to establish thought leadership, get instantaneous feedback about pressing matters and build a valuable network to connect with business partners.

The more consistent and relevant your tweets are, the more likely you are to gain support as a leader in your industry.

Tools for Twitter - To make life a little easier on yourself here are some Twitter Tools that will help you to search, monitor and participate in the conversation.

TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com) - This application takes Twitter feeds and breaks them down into several customizable “decks” or panels to allow you to better manage your Twitter conversations.

TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) - Given that you’re limited to 140 characters on Twitter this handy little tool allows you to shorten any URL that is too long to Tweet.

Twist (http://www.twist.flaptor.com) - What do people talk about on Twitter? Twist shows a graphical chart of what people are talking about and when.

Twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com) - Twitscoop shows you what’s hot on Twitter right now.

Beaut.ie

Wowwee

Pressieport

Meteor (I know some people don’t like the TV ad but the site is good!)

Gifts.ie

Buy4Now

Tesco

Komplett

Superquinn

Stripe Generator 2.0

Vecteezy

Ajax Info

Icon Finder

Ajax Rain

Next Bus – simplicity is key with this excellent Dublin Bus Timetable

Steve Troughtton Smith – developer of Lights Out

Redwind Software

Ideal Binary

Glossy social is an icon set which consists of 20 icons for the following services: YouTube, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, RSS, Feedburner, Skype, Last.fm, Gmail, Linkedin, Yahoo, Facebook, Delicious, mySpace, reddit, Friendfeed, WordPress, Vimeo and a generic “Favorite” icon

A Life in Pixels

In this freebie icon set, you will find 16 free social media icons for sites that designers appreciate (such as deviantART, Flickr, Twitter, and more). This free icon set is called A Life in Pixels and is inspired by Minimalist design philosophies.

The set includes 16 32px x 32px PNG files. They are monochromatic and can work with many other colors, which is perfect if you are looking for icons that are subtle and muted so that they do not dominate your design.

Rivet Social

This is a set of 14 riveted brushed steel icons that not only include the basics but DesignBump, DesignMoo, and DesignFloat as well! You’ll find 14 different 64px x 64px icons in this set in .jpg format.

Social Icons Pack +

Very Simple, Clean and usable Icon Set

Circular Social media Icons

I have put a very big emphasis on function in these icons with the right amount of details. There is also an icon template PSD file included!

I was compelled to design these icons when through searching the web I couldn’t find a suitable set of simple, circular social media icons. What kind of age are we living in when you cannot find a good set of simple, sleek, circular social media icons? So here they are.

Simple Grey is a free WordPress template made by WebDesigns.ie compatible with WordPress 2.8 and is compatible with all popular web browsers.

The theme is distinguished by 5 widget-ready areas and a very light design

Theme Demo | Download

This restored Church is certainly Dublin’s most unique establishment. Located in the heart of Dublin’s shopping district, with five distinct settings on four levels. The Church has wowed visitors from all over the globe since it opened.

The PorterHouse

We’re as proud of our bars as we are of our beers… With great atmospheres, beautiful settings, scrumptious food, funky music, gorgeous people (er, well!) and as we keep saying, pretty damn fantastic beer…

The Smith Group

The Smith Pub Group consists of seven unique and distinctive pubs in Dublin. Five are located in the city centre with a sixth in Phibsboro, Dublin 7 while our seventh is located in the heart of Swords Village, north County Dublin.

John Mulligan

We now approach one of Dublin’s most revered imbibing shrines, Mulligans of Poolbeg Street, where the very soul of Dublin pub culture can be found. Generations of Dubliners, ranging from the lowest to the ‘Most High’, have attended liquid services in this old house. Today, the eternal pilgrimage continues in a pub where little of any substance has changed for over a century

Dzinemart

Css Garden

Css Depot

Css Pose

Folty

Folio Stars

Lovely Pages

MabucPlus

Irresistible

Irresistible is a visually-rich personal blog, with a little bit of a multimedia focus. Incorporating some nifty video-options and widgets, Irresistible should meet all of your personal blogging needs. Just add your content to the mix.

Portfolio

Portfolio is a sleek and sexy but somewhat flawed WordPress theme making it easy for photographers or designers to create a site showcasing their latest work.

BlogTheme

BlogTheme does the simple things well and therein lies to power of this personal blog theme: great structure, trendy style and some nifty jQuery effects in the sidebar. So what’s left for you to do? Well, you can start by adding content…

WP-Premium

Wp-Premium is an elegantly designed, 2/3 column, feature packed, widget ready theme that comes with three color-scheme options.

The Morning After

The Morning After is a magazine-style theme for WordPress created by Arun Kale. The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme.