Twitter Ads Campaigns: A Simple Setup Guide

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Twitter is a great marketing channel for driving traffic and generating leads. In fact, 42% of Twitter users follow brands or companies, which means if you’re not using Twitter for your business yet, you should learn how to integrate Twitter into your social media marketing strategy.

If you do already have a Twitter account set up for your business, you might consider supplementing your organic efforts with some of the paid promotional opportunities that Twitter offers. Using Twitter Ads is an easy way to get your tweets in front of larger audiences than just those who follow you, which is particularly useful if you’re looking to generate more new leads for your database. And you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune on it, either -- Twitter ads can be effective even on a relatively small budget.

So, how do you get started? Let’s go ahead and walk through the four basic steps to setting up your Twitter ad campaigns, and how to decide on the best structure for your campaigns.

4 Steps to Set Up a Twitter Ads Campaign

Step 1: Choose Promoted Tweets vs. Promoted Accounts

The first decision you need to make when setting up your Twitter ads is whether you’d like to promote your tweets, or promote your Twitter account.

What’s the difference? Promoting tweets will allow your tweets to appear in users’ Twitter streams or in Twitter search results, whereas promoting your account will display your username under the “Who to Follow” section in users’ homepages.

How do I choose? If you’re simply looking to grow your follower base and build up your audience, Promoted Accounts is a good choice. However, if your primary goal is lead generation, you’ll definitely want to put your money toward Promoted Tweets. Why? Because promoting tweets instead of your account allows you to craft those tweets to promote your content and links to your landing pages, where these Twitter users can then convert on your offers and become leads. Promoted tweets give you a lot more flexibility in terms of the content you’re choosing to show to your audience, so when in doubt, I’d recommend selecting this option.

Step 2: Select Primary Targeting Criteria

The next step in setting up your campaign will be determining your targeting criteria. It’s important to customize your audience to be a good fit for your company and your message, and that way you’re only paying for clicks from folks who might have some interest in downloading your content or learning more about your product or service. A more targeted audience is more likely to help you generate qualified leads.

What are my options? You can target your campaigns by interests and followers, or by keywords (only if you’re promoting tweets, not accounts). Twitter now also has a Tailored Audiences feature, which gives you the option to target your website visitors or lists pulled from your database. 

What’s the difference? Targeting by interests and followers allows you to create a list of Twitter usernames, and then target users whose interests are similar to the interests of those users’ followers. A great use of this type of targeting is compiling a small list of the top influencers in your industry. For example, to promote HubSpot’s How to Use Twitter for Business ebook, I’ll want to target an audience of users interested in social media. Targeting by interests and followers allows me to say, “show these tweets to people who are like Mike Volpe’s, Social Media Examiner’s, and Social Media Today’s followers,” and then I’ve created a large audience that’s still tailored to the topic of my content.

With this targeting option, you can also add a list of interest categories -- so I could say, for example, “show these tweets to people interested in Marketing, Social Media, or Lead Generation.” Again, this creates a broad audience focused on the topic of the content or products you’re promoting.

Targeting by keywords allows you to reach people that search, tweet about, or engage with specific keywords. You can also choose to have your tweets appear in either users’ timelines or in search results. The benefit of this type of targeting is that it helps you define a more qualified audience, since these people are actively looking for or engaging with those specific keywords that are relevant to your offer.

So if I’m promoting HubSpot’s How to Use Twitter for Business ebook, I might set up a keywords-based campaign with some related keywords, like this:

Twitter also included a feature that recommends additional keywords to include in your campaign (just click on “Expand your reach”) so you can make sure you’re not missing out on any highly-searched relevant terms:

Finally, targeting Tailored Audiences allows you to run retargeting campaigns through Twitter. You'll need to work with one of Twitter's ads partners to build audiences based on pixels on your site or by matching lists from your database. This option is a bit more complicated, so I'd recommend reading up on the details here.

How do I choose? Targeting by interests and followers is best if you’re looking to get in front of new audiences, or if you’re looking to focus more on brand publicity. This option will yield a larger, less qualified audience. Targeting by keywords, on the other hand, is useful if you’re looking for users with potential product interest or purchase intent. This option will give you a smaller but more qualified audience.

Note: I’d recommend trying both types of targeting. Set up an A/B test where you have a campaign of each type with the same tweets, and see which performs better for you.. If you're looking to do more advanced retargeting, try Tailored Audiences.

Step 3: Choose From Additional Targeting Options

What are my options? Beyond targeting certain interests and keywords, you can also choose to target your audience by location, device, and gender.

How do I choose? You’ll want to target by location if you run a local business, or if you sell primarily to specific regions (whether that’s your city or North America).

You can also select which devices you’d like your promoted tweets to be displayed on -- any combination of desktop and the various mobile devices. This is a great targeting option if your product or service caters more specifically to people on the go, or if your website visitors are most likely to convert on your offer when they’re in the office.

Finally, if your product or service caters primarily to either males or females, you should take advantage of the gender targeting option.

Step 4: Create Your Tweets

This is the fun part! Once you’ve determined the structure of your campaigns and your target audience, go ahead and create the tweets you’d like to promote. You can either select from existing tweets in your account, or create new ones.

When crafting a new tweet, click on the eye icon to select delivery type -- standard (which will promote it immediately to your followers just like an organic tweet), or promoted-only (which will only promote it through your Twitter Ads campaign).

And there you have it! Simply assign your campaign a daily budget and a maximum spend limit, and set it live. Be sure to keep an eye on your campaigns as they run, and continue to optimize them for better results.

by Sarah Goliger

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-set-up-twitter-ads-campaigns

How to Get Online Training

One major reason why people don't succeed in establishing an online business is because they don't invest in their knowledge. Yet getting the right training can be tricky. I have reproduced below an extract from Why Online Businesses Fail. 

You can get the whole free report -===>just click here. 

You wouldn’t expect to set up as an accountant or lawyer and open your doors to the public without training, would you? Yet nevertheless people do exactly that on the internet. Acting blind in business is a sure way to fail. You need to invest in knowledge and continue to invest.

The good news is that there is no shortage of training courses out there. That is also the bad news. You need to pick carefully a course which is reasonably priced, be sure that the course leader practises what he preaches and runs a successful business. Ideally this will be a monthly subscription that you can cancel at any time if you make a mistake.

Ideally he / they will provide a combination of:

·        Webinars

·        Skype conferences one to one

·        Training videos on all of the required skill sets

·        DVDs on specific areas eg web building.

·        Technical Helpdesk.

One focusing on web building using WordPress and another on social media might give you the broad range of skills that you need initially.

You might find you use 2 or 3 tutors, as I did. You will also probably need to full in technical gaps by Googling questions – there is always an answer so just keep asking the question in a different way until you find it.

In essence I would say that the basic software tools which will see you through most challenges are:

·        MS Office (Word. Excel and PowerPoint)

·        WordPress and a couple of Plug ins such as Optimiser and SalesPagePlugIn

·        Photoshop Elements

·        Camtasia [not at the beginning]

·        Ashampoo (DVD burning) [optional]

The key strategies to adopt:

1.    Work out exactly what you need to get to the next stage, source it and then focus on that course.

2.    Make it practical – don’t just watch the video or read the pdf – actually DO IT. If it is teaching you how to build a website using WordPress then mirror it with your own site. If it suggests a plugin that needs paying for, pay for it and download and use it. You will get far more out of the course even if it takes you longer to complete.

3.    Avoid ‘white noise’ if you have signed on to other gurus they will be busy flogging you their training. Don’t be tempted whilst you are doing another course but simply make a note of that course to potentially follow up if it’s still necessary. Meanwhile continue to achieve your current objective acquiring the knowledge you felt was vital to move on with your business.

4.    Keep assessing vital gaps in knowledge to consider what knowledge is needed most next rather than clicking the very next email promotion that hits your inbox. You then ensure your purchases are properly thought out and controlled.

F

FTo see the whole of this free report ===>click here

by Andy Snowdon

author: Why Online Businesses Fail
   

Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich

I’m not one for long tracts of business psychology. I’ve seen a couple of surveys that state that people who spend long periods of time reading Business Self Help and other psychology books very rarely ever succeed in business.

BUT I finally read “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill recently. Mainly because a couple of my mentors strongly suggested it.  The book wasn’t the most riveting read if I’m honest but I was pleasantly impressed with the sound perception that poured out of it.

www.quotesgram.com


It essentially comprises the thoughts of 500 men of great wealth who all built their fortunes from nothing. Hill assimilated these thoughts to discover the common denominators involved. These became known as the 13 steps to achieving wealth.

Today I will share those critical messages with you.

Step 1 - Desire

This is the heart beat! Desire underpins every action and plan. This is not about mere wishing but having almost an ache to achieve or attain. It is well defined and commits to a plan. So the key is to take your wants and turn them into desires. When you don’t you have the self-help syndrome I described above. Desire is the fuel to achieve and prosper. 

It is then translated into an action plan. The action plan is then ‘lived’ to reinforce the desire.

The 6 key steps to promote and harness Desire:

1.       Fix a definite amount of money you want

2.       Determine what you give in return

3.       Establish a definite date for this

4.       Create a definite plan – begin at once whether ready or not

5.       Create a clear statement as to flow of monies to achieve a financial forecast

6.       Read aloud twice a day – see the outcome as being NOW i.e. present tense.

Step 2 - Faith

This was the #2 step – the creation of a level of self-confidence which could be religious but not necessarily the case.  The success of great people is down to their mastery of their failures, which requires a huge degree of faith. Strength and wisdom is developed in individuals through temporary defeat.

That mastery of defeat is achieved by disciplining the mind to meet this head on by meeting it mentally before the occasion arrives.

Hill developed a self-confidence formula in five steps to be committed to memory:

1.       Demand of yourself persistent continuous work to achieve attainment

2.       Concentrate thoughts for 30 minutes daily to who you intend to become

3.       Devote 10 mins daily to demand self confidence

4.       Write your chief aim down and never stop trying to achieve this

5.       Succeed by leadership and elimination of all draining emotions – envy, jealousy, selfishness and cynicism.

Step 3  - Auto – Suggestion

This is a more difficult concept to grasp. We tend to be more readily accepting of the terms of (positive) affirmations or visualisations. It’s the same thing! You see riches in your thoughts and those affirmations drive you on to your goals.

“If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.” (Hill). If you desire to have money, see yourself in possession of that money.

It becomes therefore a technique in order to allow desire and faith to be made more concrete in their role. Hill suggests repeating the strategy or mission statement aloud morning and evening, while visualizing the goal in mind. Use the steps above in a formulaic manner to programme your sub-conscious mind.

Hill doesn’t stop there though. Fully recognising that nothing is achieved without hard work, so he emphasised that you include the work involved as part of that vision.

Auto-suggestion is effectively the continuous repeating and affirmation in blocks of time on a daily basis to re-programme your mind to achieve the desired outcome.

To access the power of auto suggestion, go into some quiet spot, perhaps in bed at night. Close your eyes and repeat aloud so you may hear your own words a careful reaffirmation of whatever your goal happens to be.

Step 4 - Specialised Knowledge

Undoubtedly an easier principle for a modern would-be entrepreneur to grasp. That requirement is more acute now than at any time previously and certainly more so than when Hill wrote the book in the 1930s. The concept of establishing a niche and exploiting that niche by being seen as an expert in that area is probably one we are all comfortable with now.

To fulfil this step, it becomes essential then that the entrepreneur must attain and develop that specialised knowledge required. This step must not be missed. ‘Winging it’ has no place in the Hill Commandments!

Establish the knowledge you need and then analyse and consider how that knowledge can be attained. If you’re seeking to establish an online business you will be acutely aware of how much technical knowledge is required, even before the3 product itself is considered.

The message is simple – continue to evolve and develop the skills to develop and grow your business. This will be intense at first but will require constant evolution and maintaining and developing new skill sets.

Step 5 -  Imagination

Arguably this under-pins auto suggestion.  Whereas Desire is the catalyst for achievement, Imagination is necessary to give it physical form.

 Hill divided imagination into two distinct types:

1.       Synthetic imagination uses old concepts, ideas or plans and formulates into new combinations. Hill believed that nothing new is created that way although it could be argued that almost all innovation is derived from previous ideas (e.g. Apple’s basic iPod concept was taken from a Rank Xerox concept; Darwin drew heavily from theories at the time for his seminal work Origin of the Species)

2.       Creative imagination -  universal world mind that all humans can tap into. Essentially the combination of hunches and inspiration.

 The lessons here are less prescriptive but can be deduced as being:

1.       Find ways in which your creative mind can flourish – perhaps by taking yourself away from the issue.

2.       Keep a notebook to jot down all ideas however bizarre at the time

3.       Constantly challenge the status quo – is there a better way of doing it

4.       Seek out fertile minds from the same niche – look at the collective wisdom and look at the mavericks. Learn from both.

Step 6 - Organised Planning

This starts as above with Desire but becomes more integral to later success. It comprises the concept of leadership. That means becoming a leader! Note however that even Hill concedes that great leaders were once great followers. The trick is deciding when to take that more senior step. That means embracing the qualities of assuming responsibility, administering justice, courage, self-control, decisiveness, sympathy and understanding, mastery of detail, exceeding expectations as a habit and a willingness to cooperate and to assume responsibility.

Step 7 - Decision

Aligned closely with leadership. The qualities require reaching decisions promptly and standing behind those decisions. It is knowing what you want and ensuring you get it.

A more typical attribute found in most people is Indecision. Hill states this is a habit which usually begins in youth. “The habit takes on permanency as the youth goes through graded school, high school, and even through college, without definiteness of purpose.”

Do not allow yourself to be easily dissuaded by uninformed opinion. Opinions are described as ‘the cheapest commodities on earth.’

Step 8 - Persistence

Ah! Now here is the one which for me stands above all others. Strongly aligned with Faith, it is the act of refusal to give up. You learnt to walk, talk and even ride a bike in this manner – so what is different.

Hill refers to Edison and that quite famous account of being asked why when he had failed over a 1000 times to create the electric light bulb he didn’t simply give up. Edison’s response was that he succeeded in finding over 1000 ways in which it didn’t work!

If you’re running a business you will have continual setbacks and it so important to persist to find ways in which the strategy will eventually come good.

Hill prescribed a plan of action to reinforce persistence including alliances with like-minded people and shutting out negative and discouraging influences. That advice still holds good today. – advice that is still popular today.

 Step 9 - Mastermind

The concept incorporates the “coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.”

It is done with a desirted outcome of lifting the momentum to beyond the scope of the individuals concerned – almost creating an additional person. Essentially the 1 + 1 = 3 concept.

Hill - “no two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”

It is the leverage that other minds provide – the concept of mentoring and brainstorming are all integral to this.

 Step 10 - Sex Transmutation

A somewhat more controversial subject but essentially stating that the sex drive is associated with vitality and creativity.

“Destroy the sex glands, whether in man or beast, and you have removed the major source of action. For proof of this, observe what happens to any animal after it has been castrated. A bull becomes as docile as a cow after it has been altered sexually.”

 Hill argues that successful men are often highly sexed. It is also why men are rarely truly successful until they are at least in their forties, when they are less preoccupied with women and more capable of using their sexual energy for other creative endeavours.

Sex transmutation is concerned with harnessing that sexual energy and driving it to more useful endeavours and projects, rather than denying that energy in the first place.

Step 11 -  The Subconscious

The goal of Auto-suggestion – to not allow positive and negative emotions to exist together as they will be an unhappy mix. The entrepreneur must therefore programme his mind to only allow positive emotions to exist.

Hill describes the seven desirable emotions as: desire, faith, love, sex, enthusiasm, romance, and hope.

The seven undesirable emotions are listed as: fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition, and anger.

It is common sense that the latter seven are self-destructive but all of us allow those emotions to creep up. We need to be aware at all times that they are so destructive and will stop us from achieving the desired outcome by becoming all-consuming.

Step 12 – The Power of the Brain

Hill draws upon infinite intelligence to see that a brain is a collective pool of data which each individual brain can tap into. It acts like a radio as both a transmitter and receiver of signals –which rely on emotions to act as a pathfinder.

If I’m honest this is the one which I found most difficult and vague. It is a case however of seeking to harness this power through the affirmations of the previous Steps.

This I think Hill’s shortest chapter. As a strategy he discusses harnessing the power of the brain through the mastermind concept by using 3 people to discuss a round-the table problem and effectively ‘brainstorming’ it.

Step 13 - The Sixth Sense

Described by Hill as “the medium of contact between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence” and” the point at which the mind of man contacts the Universal Mind.”

It is a principle which cannot be practised or disproved. It is the portion of the subconscious mind that becomes the Creative Imagination.

The harnessing of this is inter-dependent on harnessing the other 12. Sixth sense where it works warns the user of impending danger. How do you put this in a business context?  Hill describes the imaginary Council that he consults by using sleep to solve the main issues of the day. Although remaining imaginary it allows the creative mind to take unusual directions.

Quite how practical that really is I will leave you to decide!

by Andy Snowdon
Online Oracle
ajs.onlineoracle@gmail.com

Be Careful When Your Affiliates Practice Link Cloaking

If you run an affiliate program you may have noticed that some of your affiliates use a practice known as “link cloaking.” Link cloaking is a method used to make a long affiliate URL link into a shorter and prettier one—often to the detriment of a brand.

image: www.mistythicket.com

One of the most common forms of link cloaking occurs when an affiliate doesn’t use its own URL at all, but rather just appropriates a brand’s URL without any disclosure. Look at these two links:

“http://affiliatename.hop.affiliateprogram.com”
“http://affiliateprogram.com/?clickid=abc1234567”

Neither tells the consumer anything about where their click is ultimately directed. So a link cloaker might change the link to something like these:

“http://affiliate.com/merchant.php”
“http://tinyurl.com/n1abc”

The first URL clearly identifies the merchant, whereas the second is simply a shorter URL seen more frequently as more and more people use link shortening services.

Affiliates practice link cloaking for a number of reasons:

• It’s a consumer-friendly practice. A URL that contains the merchant’s name makes it more comfortable for consumers to click on the link.
• To hide the affiliate’s identity. Cloaked links can hide unsavory search marketing tactics and keywords from you, the merchant.
• To protect against commission hijacking. Some affiliates worry that spyware running on a consumer’s machine will replace their affiliate ID with the ID of another affiliate, thus hijacking their commissions.
• To boost quality score. Google doesn’t seem to like affiliates very much which is very apparent in the low quality scores of many affiliate ads. Think about a landing page with nothing but ads and affiliate links that take the consumer from an AdWords listing to a landing page and then immediately through an affiliate link. Cloaking the affiliate link is a method used to beef up the quality score in this scenario.
• Tracking: It is easier for the affiliate to track clicks and visitors when using its own URL.

Cloaking creates compliance roadblocks

When affiliates cloak their URLs a problem can arise for merchants who are trying to keep tabs on where and how their affiliates are advertising. Cloaking makes it harder to determine the source of the traffic, and to view the affiliate’s ID in the URL string.

There are a couple of things you can do to gain better insight when cloaking is deployed.First, you can provide your own cloaking software to your affiliates, allowing you to easily identify a cloaked URL and match it to the actual affiliate URL stored in your database.

Another method is to request that your engineering team grab the affiliate ID when the consumer is passed to your website from an affiliate ad, and include the affiliate ID in the landing page URL. Then you can track these links through your analytics package.

If you notice that your affiliates are cloaking their URLs, it’s best to reach out and to find out why. Then work with your affiliates to help solve their problems while at the same time being able to readily track and monitor what they are doing. If you don’t have a policy in place regarding link cloaking, you may consider appending your affiliate policy with explicit rules about what is and is not acceptable.

by Lori Weiman 

http://searchengineland.com/be-careful-when-your-affiliates-practice-link-cloaking-40758

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