Twylah-a new way to tweet

What the heck is Twylah you say?  I was asking myself the same question when I came across this new social media.

Since not too many people know, let's start from the beginning!

What is Twylah?

The company's page states it like this: 

Twylah helps you significantly leverage your Twitter efforts.  Currently, individuals and brands are spending a lot of time on Twitter, and not necessarily seeing direct returns on their investment.  Twylah is a tool that captures the value of your Twitter efforts and allows you to realize true returns.  We do this by creating engaging, navigable websites of your tweets, which we call “Twitter Brand Pages.”

I find this description confusing and incomplete, so I wrote up my own description:

Twylah is a new social media platform that helps keep company tweets organized, relevant, and more searchable on search engines. The personalized pages make it easy for followers to retweet tweets from current to months old, follow the company's other social media sites, and easily search for tweets by topic.  It also allows the company to easily see what tweets are trending, what topics they tweet about most, and gives good statistics about what is being clicked on and when.

To get an idea of what these pages look like, check out one of my company's pages here.  

I believe the greatest benefit to having a Twylah page is that the page helps keep all of your tweets relevant all the time.  Users can easily click on a topic and quickly look through all of your tweets, back through forever.  The site also makes it easy to share all your tweets via other social media sites.  This means that old tweets still have the power to generate more traffic and likes on your facebook, pinterest, and google +.  Another huge benefit is when users get redirected to your Twylah page, they will not be distracted by other people's tweets and may 
(hopefully!) get lost in the endless tweets from the past!  And a final benefit is that a user does not need to sign up for Twylah to view your page and posts; huge for generating traffic and letting people browse your page with no sign up hassle.  

There are still concerns with this platform, however.  My first concern is this social media site has been around since 2011 and I'm just hearing about it now.  I think this fault falls on the laps of the creators as they do not have a Twitter page for their business, nor do they make it easy to find them on other social media.  Their facebook page only has 400 likes.  So, how long will this be around? Hard to say, only time will tell.   And the other main concern is that people have to click on it; meaning that they have to click on the link from your twitter in order to view your Twylah page unless they have one of their own.  I do not personally have a page, but will look into this and report back from my findings from a user standpoint and not a business standpoint.  

I had to read several blogs to get more information and would like to share them here in case you would like additional blogs to look at: 

http://windmillnetworking.com/2011/09/09/twitter-seo-think-twylah/ 
http://scobleizer.com/2011/05/25/twylah-lets-media-brands-and-celebrities-monetize-their-twitter-stream/

Thanks to all the other bloggers for your help!

Until next week!!

~Melissa

The Importance of Google-ing your Business

Have you ever thought of the importance of looking into what people say about your business online?  Not just on social media where you can see it, but on blogs, customer review sites, and even in the media; your business is being mentioned whether you like it or not!

I just started a new job at a large company in Lansing, Michigan.  Part of my daily tasks are to google the business and see what comes up.  Never thought to do that?  You'd be surprised what comes up!  Besides the simple knowledge of knowing what is on the internet, it is important to correct information or inform your customers of the correct information.  Let's say it's as simple as having the wrong operating on hours up on a website that advertises local businesses.  This is a very simple but quite important correction to make!  But incorrect information can be so much worse than that; articles like this state that a customer that had a bad experience is twice as likely to talk about it than someone that had a good experience; whether their facts are right or not.

When doing research about your company on the web, these websites are key:
1. Google.com and google.com/news
2. Bing.com
3. Your local newspaper's website
4. Wikipedia
5. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and all other social media sites

Although you cannot remove or change all information about your company, good or bad, it is important to address the issues that you can. You want to ensure that you handle it in the best and most well thought out way you can.  There are some important things to remember as you respond to customers on the web:

1. Always be friendly!  Whether you are responding to a good or bad comment, you want to treat the customer well because once it is online, it is out there for all to see.  The old mantra that "the customer is always right" will apply 99% of the time and can backfire easily if not handled correctly.

2.  Always follow up if you say you are going to follow up.  If you respond to a tweet or facebook post with "I have to check with the manager, but will get back to you", it is important to follow up!  The concern that they were addressing will only be amplified if you do not follow through with your word.  

3.  Remember that traffic and mentions are good! So try to avoid deleting things other people have written (unless you have to of course) and instead redirect them to your website, social media sites, or give them the correct information.  

It is a good thing for people to be mentioning your business online, it's just important to keep tabs on who says what and that the information is as accurate as possible!  Hopefully these simple tips have shown you where to look and what to do with what you find, please let me know if you have any additional suggestions about google-ing your business.  Also feel free to share stories about what you have found and how you handled it!

Thanks everyone, until next time!

~Melissa

"The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail" ~ John Battelle