1. Stand Out From The Crowd
Your personnel brand is how you can stand out from the crowd and rise above the noise of your competition. Make sure you take the time to create a remarkable personal brand! Remember competition is fierce, you have to make an unforgettable impact.  Define your target audience, give them high quality content jam packed with solutions to their most annoying  problems.

2. Follow People With Similar Interests
Lots of people get hung up on the number of followers they have. BUT this means nothing if the people who follow you are not interested in your business or product. It’s best to build and nurture a following of people who have similar interests because they are more likely to be genuinely interested in your business or product.

3. It’s A Conversation, Not A Continuous Sales Pitch
Twitter is a  Social  Media  site, it’s for conversations. Get involved with others by responding  to other peoples Tweets or start a conversation with others. Mind your manners and resist the urge to jump into twitter and broadcast one continous  sales pitch.

4. Tweet , Tweet, Tweet
Its important to tweet often.  Make sure your tweets are of high quality, interesting, and informative. The idea is to engage other people in conversation not send them to sleep. Mix it up a bit… You can include quotes, links to videos, pictures, jokes , or interesting articles .

5. Dominate Your Niche
It doesn’t matter what your niche is its imperative that you own it .  Position yourself as the expert in your niche by solving problems for others. Comment on blogs within your niche  and  don’t  forget to include your Twitter URL.  This can assist  in connecting you with the kinds of followers you want to attract.

6. Get Retweeted
It’s simple you must be Retweeted to GO VIRAL. But don’t panic!  Getting  Retweeted, is easier than it sounds. Simply add conversational value,  tweet about interesting things, share news or other content that people will want to pass along.  If your stuck for words, we invite you to  check out  one of our previous blog posts ” Twitters Top 9 Most Retweetable Words and Phrases”

7. Ask For A Retweet!
Don’t be shy you’re running a business. Ask for a Retweet, that’s right all you gotta do is ask. Simply add  ”Please Retweet” at the end of your message. Some people prefer to use a shortened version Plz RT since it uses less characters.

We hope you find these rules useful. If you liked this post feel free to share it with your friends or leave a comment.

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1. Know Your Audience
A lot of people are tempted to complete the Bio without thinking about why they joined twitter in the first place. Before you write your Twitter bio we suggest that you think about the Twitterites you want to connect with. As a guide ask yourself these questions.

Do you want people to find you by your career, company, industry, location?
Why are you using Twitter?
Who are the people you want to connect with?  

2. Include Keywords – Not Junk
We suggest that you don’t simply enter a bunch of keywords. A lot of people do this because they think the more keywords the more ways people have of finding them when using search functions.  This can be a costly mistake… If your bio looks like a jumbled collection of keywords then it will be totally uninteresting to people and they won’t want to follow you. Your bio might look something like this.

I am a keen gardener and hiker who also has a passion for the outdoors, internet marketing and affiliate marketing who loves social media

3.  Smile!  - Upload A Photo
If you want new followers putting a photo of yourself here is really important. People like to see who they are following and they will follow someone with a picture rather than someone who has the default avatar provided by twitter.

4.  So What  DO  you do?
Make sure your bio includes what you do. People use Twitter for lots of different reasons, however the networking and business twitterites  follow people based on what they do and their topics of interest. This aspect of your bio is even more important since the launch of Twitter lists, since most people when building lists use the information in peoples bios to build a specific Twitter List.  

 5. Location, Location, Location…
The location info assists people with searching and finding others in their same area. You can even make a twitter list based upon location. There have been some people who have met on twitter only to find out that they lived just around the corner.  FYI… If you are chasing rankings on Twitter your location is important as users are ranked by their locations.

6. Link Love
Include your website url, blog url or a specific landing site. Some people make the mistake of including a shortened url in this field. You know what we mean, tinyurl, bit.ly, ow.ly, etc. DON’T do this!  Twitter doesn’t shorten the links in this field, so don’t use a shortened URL link. Worst case scenario people will think its spam and no one wants to follow a spammer.

7. Its Not Carved In Stone
Bios were meant to be dynamic , changed  and tweaked as needed. There is no such thing as a perfect bio. So don’t hesitate to tweak it and then tweak it some more if you have to.

Its important to remember that the Twitter bio may be small, but it’s powerful. An awesome bio has the power to attract Twitter followers like a magnet. We hope this post was useful. If you like it please share it with your friends or leave us a comment.

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I’ll  bet that when you are posting on Facebook  you’re not thinking about the millions of people who are also logged into Facebook. You know what its like you get caught up messaging your friends whilst updating your wall, or skimming through the Friendfeed. BUT you need to remember that amongst the many millions caught up in the Facebook phenomenon some are potential employers, business partners, real friends,work colleagues and more.

If you want to make sure that your Facebook account isn’t going to come back to haunt you, here are 5 Costly Facebook Mistakes  that you should avoid. 

1. Keep it Clean

Your uploaded picture should be neutral if not professional. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the picture is going to be boring, but keep provocative and cartoony pictures tucked away where the world cannot see them. Remember, as an employee or future employee you are carrying the name of whatever company you work for. Provocative pictures never look good, especially when you can run the risk of future clients seeing your profile as well. A rule of thumb is that provocative pictures are for private viewing only.

2. Good Manners Never Hurt Anyone
The wall on Facebook, can be used to openly display any thoughts, articles, or comments you may want to share. As tempting as what it may be don’t make the mistake of putting everything and anything on your wall. Remember common courtesy should considered. So…Don’t make plans with people through wall posts. Save personal plans for personal emails or phone calls. If you’ve been invited to an event and plan to go, send an email or text message straight to the person that invited you instead of announcing your plans and confirmation on your wall. Once again it pays to have good manners you because you never know who may be watching. 

3. To Share Or Not To Share – That Is The Question!
If you choose to make your profile visible to everyone, then it is imperative that you make safe choices. For instance, sharing personal information such as an interest in Sci Fi movies, Eating Pizza and Cats is okay. However, showing personal addresses, names of children or children’s pictures may not be a good idea, because you never know who is viewing your profile or even worse still why they are viewing your profile.

4. Guilty By Association 
Facebook is a Social Site and the theory is that your friends are like minded people who are  a reflection of yourself. So you need to be aware of what pictures your friends are posting particularly if you are one of the star attractions. If  your friends are posting pictures that can be considered ‘too sexy’ then it’s possible that employers will view you as a spitting image of your friends. While it is impossible to prevent all friends from posting pictures of their choice, it is possible to prevent who is allowed to see a person’s list of friends. Take advantage of the privacy settings that Facebook offers.

5. Two Is Twice As Much Fun
If you having difficulty in keeping your profile on Facebook professional at all times then the option of having two profiles is for you. Many people have two profiles keeping one profile strictly for personal friends and the other strictly for professional business networking and coworkers. A great way to use two profiles is to make sure everything on your personal profile is private, while your professional profile can remain public. 

However you use Facebook its important to realise that 20% of companies admit to checking social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in order to verify potential employees, and 24% of employees are hired based on their social networking site. So the next time you apply for a job, remember to check your Facebook account for any ticking bombs, because your future job could depend on it.

We hope this post has been useful. If you liked it share it with your friends or leave a comment. 

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In today’s modern society if you can’t catch a persons interest instantly with a great witty headline you run the risk of  loosing a sale or not gaining a friend or twitter follower.  Copywriters know how words can impact a message and grab a persons attention. To rise above the noise in this busy world you can’t afford to ignore the importance of using a little copy writing in your headlines. Its true that copy writing is a skill and takes time to learn… BUT that being said here are 3 Irresistable Catchy Headline Tips For Social Media properties.

1) Action, Excitement, Fun
Lights, camera,  action… You have to use active verbs in your headlines. Too many people use passive uninteresting verbs in their post titles and miss out on grabbing anyones attention.  People are attracted to exciting, fun titles. Active headlines inspire peoples emotive responses, while boring, passive ones invite the reader to visit someone else’s feed! Most dull and boring headlines can be transformed easily into action packed riveting headlines just by altering a couple of words. So the next time you are writing a headline make it exciting.

2) Keep It Real
Your headline should be a genuine preview of the actual content in the blog post, twitter post or facebook post. You have got to keep it real. Resist the urge to trick the reader into thinking that the content of the post is something it isn’t by using misleading or false headlines. Write authentic headlines that do relate to your copy. The first paragraph of your content should contain interesting sentances with an edge that compliment your catchy headline.  Remember you want your readers to come back and the best way to guarantee their return is to make their first experience enjoyable.  

3) The Three S’s – Short,  Sharp and Simple
Have you heard the expression less is more? Well when it comes to writing catchy headlines you don’t want to dull or tarnish your action packed interesting headline by using  too many words. Remember the  three  S’s – keep it Short,  Sharp and Simple. Look at your headline, take note of the number of words and evaluate what words if any can be replaced with a new singular word. Always take the time to thoroughly review your headlines.

We hope you have found this post useful. If you liked this post share it with your friends or leave a comment

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 1. Twitter Lists are dynamic and much more than a static listings of users. Twitter Lists are categorized  twitter  streams of the latest tweets from the users on a list.

2. Twitter Lists give you the ability to organize the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people.

3. Each Twitter list has a list page where you can get a snapshot of the Twitter list users  tweets which are included in a complete tweet stream for everyone on the list.

4.  Make following people easier. For instance when you find a twitterite who has an awesome list  you will  beable to add the whole list.

5. Twitter Lists  give you the opportunity to follow people using  a Twitter list without following them as an individual. So…you can view their tweets without actually following them.  In this way Twitter Lists that you belong to can include people you’re not following.

6. Searching for twitterites with similar interests will be so much easier using the twitter list features. 

Twitter Lists why would you use  them?
Not sure about why you would use a Twitter List? Don’t  worry here are a few ideas to get you started

•  Create a Group 
  Use Twitter Lists to organize your tweeps into groups based on anything you want. For example, podcasting, cats lovers, golfing enthusiasts. When you view a  list, you easily see all of  the tweets of the  list members.
• Recommend Your Favorite Tweeple 
  Twitter Lists were designed to allow people to recommend other users to follow. Simply create a public list of people you think other Twitter users should follow, then anyone else can visit that list and follow the people on it (or follow the list).
• Follow People You Aren’t Following
  By following a Twitter List, you’re actually following the entire list not each user on the list.  So… you can use Twitter  Lists to follow people without really following them. How does this work?  Well say for instance that there  are users whose tweets you’d like to follow, but you don’t want in your main Twitter stream, you can add them to a list and then check their latest tweets when you want to by viewing your list. 

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MySpace has nearly 130 million users and massive amounts of  it’s site traffic each day is generated by messaging accounts.  In real figures MySpace estimates  that messaging accounts for nearly 20 percent of its site traffic. By entering into the mail category MySpace has the  potential to be the second largest mail provider in the U.S. and the fourth largest globally.

With so much at stake,  MySpace is  approaching the roll out with the utmost care and  plans to roll it out to all global users within the next couple of weeks.  We all know the type of  publicity a bad  product brings to a company and it is for this reason that the MySpace email will initially carry a beta tag.

Of course there will be lots of questions that MySpace users and others will have as they become aware of  the MySpace  email service.  We at Social Traffic  Espionage  thought it would be useful to reveal a couple of the more obvious aspects of the email service.  

 1.Vanity URLS
Dont panic MySpace have got this one covered.  For those MySpace users who have vanity URLs,  and hey nearly 70 percent of the network’s users do… They have reserved addresses with that user name @myspace.com.  However you are not locked in to this arrangement you also have the option of changing  the URL to get a different mail address in a one-time offer. While others can get a vanity URL when they sign up for e-mail.

2. Spam And Privacy 
The good news is that MySpace have promised users a spam free mail service.  They have given careful consideration to the  issues already faced when it comes to privacy and online safety.  MySpace mail service also has  a feature that allows users to only receive mail from their MySpace friends.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the  MySpace mail service. If you have enjoyed this post share it with your friends  or leave a comment.

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How do you share these great articles?  Facebook makes it easy… Just follow these  simple directions below and you will have your friends waiting on the edge of their seats  for your next article.

1. Click The Facebook Icon
You see  it here,  you see it there  – “The Facebook Icon”.  Most articles online  have a Facebook icon nearby.  Simply click on the icon and you will be automatically directed to sign into your Facebook account.  Once you have signed in just follow the prompts and a link to the article will appear.

2. Use A Note
Included in  the  row of icons under the ‘what’s on your mind?’ text box, there  is a link icon that looks like a note.  If you place the mouse over this icon the word link pops up.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the little link  icon.   Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check  and hit the share button.
    
3)The Direct Approach – Post It On A Friends Page 
Visit your friend’s  Facebook page.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the link  icon ( remember it looks like a little note).  Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check and hit the share button.

One more tip before we go. It’s  Facebook etiquette to write a comment in the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box that accompanies your link.

If you like this post share it with your friends,  or add a comment.

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How does Social Bookmarking work?  The basic idea is that instead of  saving bookmarked website links to your  home computer, you save them instead to an online account. Bookmark links in this online account exist in public pages on the website, so a link to your blog or website on a social bookmarking site counts as a backlink.

There are some great  features associated with Social  Bookmarking. These sites usually have a high pagerank in Google so your  Social Bookmarking  backlinks are high quality links. Social Bookmarking sites are places where  people share their bookmarks. So FREE Traffic can often arrive at your bookmarked website or blog  when people explore other people’s bookmarked links. Yeah for viral Traffic.

There are heaps of Social Bookmarking sites that you can join, StumbleUpon is one of the more popular sites.  Usually you just sign up on these sites, then download and install a Social Bookmarking toolbar in your browser.  As  you explore the  bookmarked websites or blogs  if you come across one that you like or wish to promote you simply click a toolbar icon and it will create a bookmark link for you.

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1. Spam, Spam And More Spam

Ok so you have a blog and guess what,   you just added a post. Most people appreciate you informing them once, informing them twice is sure to get their attention but telling them more than  5 times  a day is just plain annoying and desperate. Keep an eye on your tweets and develop relationships with people instead of  annoying them.

2. Keep It Clean

Don’t swear… Swearing in tweets will get you unfollowed faster than you can hit the update button.

3 .  Tweet About How Many Followers You Have

It doesn’t matter how may Twitter  followers you have, its tacky to tweet about it. OK  we know its exciting to reach milestones but tweeting this information is  a big mistake. It sounds like you are bragging and indirectly sends out a challenge to people to unfollow you.

4.  Links, Links And Nothing But Links

We love clicking on links in Twitter, you can learn about really cool stuff , but we also like to know the topic of  link. It’s important to put some content with your link. You have got 140 characters, which is enough space to add a phrase or couple of words that indicate what the link is about.    

5.  It’s Called  Microblogging  For A Reason -  people!

Twitter is not an article writing social site.  A post on Twitter is  140 characters. It’s a limit, and should be respected. OK their might be an exceptional circumstance when  you need to send a tweet that is made up of two 140 character tweets, but this is the exception not the rule. Clogging up the Twittersphere with tweets that are 2 – 3 times more than the 140 characters  is self indulgent and will result in people choosing to unfollow you.

6.  Extreme Tweeting – It’s Not  A  Sport

Have you ever checked your twitter stream, only to find that one person has filled up an entire screen? Twitter is not a one person show. It’s about everybody contributing and developing relationships. Stop being a Twitter hog, don’t tweet 50 times a day and spread your tweets throughout the day.

7. Constantly Retweeting

You see an awesome quote and want to spread the word, so you retweet  it to your followers. Nothing wrong with that… Retweeting has it’s  place in the Twittersphere. Retweeting becomes a problem however when it’s the bulk of your tweets. Fellow twitterites don’t want to follow a person who is always regurgitating or  echoing other peoples thoughts and ideas. Make sure you mix in the retweets with you own ideas and thoughts otherwise you will have your followers hitting the unfollow button.

If you enjoyed this post, spread it around amongst your friends. If there is anything you would like to add leave us a comment, we would love to hear from you.

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Most people are familiar with the concept and layouts of  Facebook and twitter, LinkedIn however remains a mystery to most people. LinkedIn has a reputation for being a Social Media site for professionals but this reputation is old fashioned, today LinkedIn is  a legitimate business tool use by a wide variety of people and probably best described as  a social network for business opportunities. On LinkedIn, people don’t chat about music or what they did on Saturday night, but instead focus on opportunities and how the network can help you. And that’s a winning formula. Here are just some of the most common and productive uses of LinkedIn.

So, give us your attention please as Social Traffic Espionage  reveals 8 ways to you can use LinkedIn.  

1. Connect With and Find People.
By now you know that Social Media is all about developing relationships. LinkedIn is no different, it’s a great place to look for old friends, old business colleagues, former employers or employees. Simply do a LinkedIn search and you might be surprised who you know. Remember part of the way you develop relationships with people is by helping them. So don’t miss out on this great opportunity. You can use LinkedIn to promote others, link to with others, recommend other LinkedIn members and of course answer their questions.

2. Boost Your Business
What do all business’s want? Customers of course. So if you are a small or large business you want to generate more customers. LinkedIn can put connect you with those people who are interested in your products. It can increase your chances of hitting that big deal that puts your business exactly where you want to be.

3. Research Companies and Business’s
If you are looking for a specific business, wanting to discover business trends, find an expert in your field, or need to contact people for further information then LinkedIn is a great place to start. Using LinkedIn’s advanced search option you can quickly connected with the information you seek. Take the unknown out of a job interview by looking up the person interviewing you. Checking the LinkedIn profile of the person who will be interviewing you will give you some important information about their work experience, interests, education and more.

4. Get Free Publicity
LinkedIn can be used to generate publicity not only for your business but when you launch a new product. At times it can be difficult to contact media or top bloggers. But many of them have a LinkedIn profile, and you can contact them through the profile. You can get FREE targeted Social Media Traffic for your business by sending them a press release or a quick email letting them know about your business or product launch.

5. Find Your Dream Job
OK you have a job, but it’s not really what you want. LinkedIn can help! Join LinkedIn, put yourself out there, search for companies that are looking for people to fill the jobs that you are interested in and contact them. To assist in promoting yourself to potential employers create a LinkedIn profile that serves as a resume, use a vanity url for this and then send people the URL. Your dream job could be just one click away.

6. Check Out Potential Employees References
If you are going through the interview process you want to make sure you have all the information possible at your fingertips. You can find out additional information about an applicant by using LinkedIn to search for others who worked at the same company at the same time. This way you are able to do a thorough background check in seconds.

7. Get Advice.
Questions, questions we all have them. You can find answers to most of your business questions in LinkedIn. Simply ask a question using LinkedIn’s Answers feature and get some great answers. There are some great experts on LinkedIn, willing to answer your queries.

8. Brand Yourself
Your aim in business, should be to develop a brand. It doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is, you need to develop your own personal brand. You want people to know instantly who you are, and what you do when they hear your name? A strong presence on LinkedIn reinforces your brand. Make sure you include a link to your website from your profile.

If you liked this post, share it with your friends. Did we miss something? We would love to hear your comments

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