There’s a lot of buzz these days about Twitter. You may be wondering if you or your organization should be active on Twitter and what the benefits are. Here are some tips on best practices for Tweeting successfully.

What Is Twitter? Twitter is a form of online communication that uses posts, or tweets, which are restricted to 140 characters or less.

• Create and Claim Your Twitter Identity – By creating and claiming your name or organization, you can secure your personal brand and help ensure consistent communication and reputation management. It’s a good idea to claim a Twitter moniker for your full name, as well as any products and/or companies that you own or you have plans to create in the future.
• Optimize Your Twitter Page – Make sure your page has a picture, a description of who you or your business is and a link to get more information on you (could be your website or even a LinkedIn account for an individual). People are much more likely to follow you if they know who you are and have a visual image to associate with you.
• Who Should You Follow? You can search for people, organizations or news outlets that interest you and provide information you want to know more about. Once you have identified a Twitter account you want to follow, it’s as simple as pressing the “follow” button and their Tweets will show up in your stream.
• What Should You Tweet About? Some of the best people using Twitter have become known as an expert or resource. This can augment any information you post about your organization and make it more likely for people to follow you or retweet your posts.
• 140 Characters or Less – It can be challenging at first to express yourself in 140 Characters or less, but you’ll soon get comfortable at abbreviating thoughts and using URL shorteners like bit.ly to include shortened links.
• Retweets – Retweets allow you to pass along a Tweet from someone else to your followers. It’s good form to give full credit to someone else’s thoughts – for example RT @searchoptics: Mobile Ad Campaigns & Social Media Relationships in June Search Optics Newsletter.
• Hashtags - A hashtag is simply a pound sign (#) and then a keyword. Hashtags allows you to see what people are talking about and to more easily follow a topic of interest, such as #socialmedia.
• Direct Messages - You can send anybody who’s following you a direct (private) message. You can only send direct messages to them if they’re following you. Once again, you’re limited to 140 Characters or less.
• Links – It’s always a good idea to provide links to your website, Blog or even other social media accounts. If people find your Tweets interesting, you want to make it easy for them to learn more.

For more information on how Search Optics can help with your Social Media plan, call 888.509.9911 or email marketing@searchoptics.com.

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Tracking and understanding website traffic is an important aspect of Internet marketing for automotive dealers. Measuring website traffic gives insights in formulating Internet marketing techniques. It gives valuable inputs on website visitors’ activity. These inputs help automotive dealers incorporate necessary changes in their marketing campaigns. Also, it enables dealers to decide which marketing technique gives optimum returns on investment.

Monitor the Users and Understand the State Of Customer Base
Tracking website traffic helps dealers monitor user movements throughout the website.
• Key information like time period for which the visitor stayed, from where the visitors came like referrals and search engines, bounce rate etc. is useful to understanding visitor demographics.
• Tracking customer activity gives crucial data about their preferences, choices, interests etc and helps to retain the potential customer base.
• Website traffic tracking helps dealers adjust to changing trends and better understand the customer base.

Improve Website Optimization
Tracking website traffic through web analytics tools helps dealers know what appeals to their customers and optimize their websites.
• It is important to understand keywords used by customers to reach the website for effective website optimization.
• Automotive dealers need to know which cars are searched most by customers and which sections customers are most interested in. Based on this, dealers can expand inventory lists and increase lead conversion rates.
• Website navigation can be simplified for better usability of customers.

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According to a comScore, Inc. MobiLens report, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May 2010, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.

During this period, RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 41.7% percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, down slightly from 42.1%. This was followed by Apple down from 25.4% to 24.4% percent share.

Microsoft also dropped from 15.1% to 13.2% percent. Google saw significant growth during the period, up 4.0 percentage points from 9% to 13.0% of smartphone subscribers. Palm rounded out the top five with a decrease from 5.4% to 4.8%.

Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

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Social Media continues to grow in importance as a communications medium. Listed below are some interesting factoids about three well-known social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Facebook
• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) is shared each month.
• Over 150 million people engage with Facebook on websites every month.
• More than 100 million users access Facebook through mobile devices.
• People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active as non-mobile users.
• The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

Statistics from Facebook press office.

Twitter
• Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
• There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.
• Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
• There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
• More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

Statistics from Twitter.

YouTube
• YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
• Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
• Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
• YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the Internet used in 2000.

Statistics from YouTube press centre.

For more information on how Social Media can help your dealership, call 888.509.9911 or email marketing@searchoptics.com.

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