Sell More to your Customers Using Twitter

There are many facets to Internet marketing: pay per clicksearch engine optimizationlink buildingwebsite design, coding, tracking, content analysis, content building, article marketing, and the ever-popular social media marketing. If you have the basics of Internet marketing in order, you should consider diving into the realm of social media marketing, as there is a TON of social media websites to try. We recommend you start with Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn. Use this article to find out more about Twitter today and then stay tuned for more social networking best practices from RezStream.

Here are but a few of the social networking channels available:

 

If you are ready to set up a new Twitter account or even if you have an existing account, RezStream shares some great tools and tips to take your “tweeting” to the next level.

GETTING STARTED WITH TWITTER

  • Step 1: Set up your Twitter page. Make sure to have a customized background that looks and feels like your website. Brand yourself in your Twitter page.
  • Step 2: You need to have followers. You can search in Twitter to find people or businesses to follow and you should add the “follow me on Twitter” to your website and email signatures.
  • Step 3: Start tweeting! Make sure to not only post promotional information, as your followers will also enjoy insightful information that is not solely pitching your business.
  • Step 4: Track the results of traffic to your website.

USEFUL TOOLS FOR TWITTER

  1. http://www.TweetBeep.com – set up free alerts about your brand so you know what is being “tweeted” about your business, if anyone is linking to you and so forth. Similar to Google Alerts, this can help with brand management. You can also set these up about your competitors.
  2. http://Search.Twitter.com – this resource allows you to search your name and URL to see what others are saying about your company.
  3. http://Bit.ly – use this device to shorten your URL and track metrics on how many people click on your links. This helps you to see what topics your audience is interested in.
  4. http://www.TweetDeck.com – download this tool to quickly add posts to your existing Twitter account, FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace. It automatically shortens the domain via Bit.ly. Login to one place and easily update posts to the social media channels that you use.

This is a quick synopsis of how to get up and running in Twitter. For more information about Twitter or to launch your own social media campaign, please contact RezStream, the leader in hotel Internet marketing, at 303.872.0220 or sales@rezstream.com.

All About ExpressionEngine

Rick Ellis first developed ExpressionEngine as a blogging tool under the name “pMachine” in 2001.  An early prototype of pMachine was installed on Nancy Sinatra’s (Frank’s daughter) website.  After some real world testing and success, pMachine was released to the public in 2002.

By the end of 2002, pMachine had been featured in a few books and magazines and was having some success, but at that point, the Web was young and still developing.  Ellis noticed website owners and developers wanted more control and management over their content.  That’s when Rick Ellis developed a more robust tool called ExpressionEngine and the web development community took notice.

The first version of ExpressionEngine was first released to the public in 2004 as a general-purpose content management system written in object-oriented PHP and using MySQL for storing data.

ExpressionEngine’s publishing features are robust, comprehensive, and highly flexible.  Where other content management systems may have limitations in terms of visual design elements and/or display and organization of content, ExpressionEngine fills the needs of these major voids.

Throughout the years, ExpressionEngine has increased its features, flexibility, and popularity among larger businesses in helping build their web presence.  These steps advanced ExpressionEngine to version 1.6.8.  As its usage continued to grow, more features were requested from site owners and developers.  ExpressionEngine developers were now building “application-like” sites and needed even more flexibility and features at their disposal.  Ellis Lab listened to these requests and delivered with ExpressionEngine 2.0.  This version has been completely rebuilt on Ellis Lab’s “CodeIgniter,” an application MVC framework.

New Features of ExpressionEngine 2.0

Built On CodeIgniter
Acclaimed for its speed and flexibility, CodeIgniter has become the application framework of choice for many of the premiere PHP developers in the world.

New Interface
The ExpressionEngine control panel has been redesigned to make your experience and workflow faster, more intuitive, efficient, and better organized for superior control.

File Manager with Image Editor
ExpressionEngine 2.0 features an incredibly powerful and intuitive file and asset manager that can be used from within the publishing interface or on its own.  The new file manager includes the ability to crop, resize, and rotate your images directly in the control panel.

Key Features of ExpressionEngine

Multiple Categories
Each entry can be assigned to multiple categories, and you can create as many unique category groups as you want.

Relationships
You can create relationships between entries in different sections of your site, enabling information to be shared.

Expiring Entries
You can set an expiration date on your entries so they will be automatically removed from your site on that requested date.

Multi-User System
ExpressionEngine is a true multi-user system.  Each user can be granted a wide range of privileges, which allows you to define with precise control what each user is permitted to do.

Security
ExpressionEngine has the most comprehensive suite of security features of any publishing platform on the market.

When will ExpressionEngine 2.0 be ready for prime time?

As of this article, ExpressionEngine 2.0 is in Beta form, which is available to the public; however bugs, errors, and minor fixes still need to be worked out.  In addition, there are very few add-ons, extensions, and modules that may be needed to accomplish feature requests. 

RezStream recommends waiting to upgrade your site until ExpressionEngine 2.2 is released, hopefully in spring/summer 2010.  That doesn’t mean you should wait until then if you are thinking of having a site built.  RezStream can easily accomplish this process using the current version 1.6.8, which can easily be upgraded to 2.2 when it becomes available.  If you have further questions regarding ExpressionEngine, please feel to contact RezStream at 303.872.0220.