These articles written by me are meant for absolute beginners in web development and if you are an expert, you may benefit as well if you read on. In this article I will explain about how to set up a web server in your desktop to create and test a website locally.
The open source web services software bundles are LAMP, WAMP, SAMP, MAMP and XAMPP. Sorry if I have missed out some. I will write about XAMPP in detail because it can be used universally across all operating systems.
In the other software packages keeping AMP(Apache, MySql and PHP) the same L stands for Linux which is for Linux Operating System, WAMP stands for Windows Operating System, S stands for Sun Solaris OPerating System and M stands for Macintosh Operating System.
XAMPP is an abbreviation. It denotes an assembly of services which help you build dynamic web pages and run them on a server.
X-Universal or Cross Platform i.e. it runs across all operating systems.
A-Apache is a Linux based web server
M-MySql is a database technology
P-PHP is an extensible language which supports dynamic web development
P-Perl is a high level language
XAMPP is an Open Source software bundle with a GPL(General Public License) developed and distributed by the Apache Friends.
Now how do you install XAMPP and get started with it?
1. Go to the apache friends website and download it. This is the link as on today but someday it may change so its always better to search for the keyword download XAMPP in Google before to go to the link in case you dont find it here - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
2. Now go ahead and download the .exe(executable) file of XAMPP by selecting the operating system in which you are working with. The current version of XAMPP for Windows, Mac and Linux is 1.7.3. XAMPP is always updated by a group of active and experienced developers and therefore to be abreast with the latest technology download the latest stable version. Do not download a beta version if you are not an experienced developer to ensure hassle free development.
3. On downloading the executable file just double click to install it just like you do for any other software. Follow the simple instructions on screen to complete the installation. At the end of the installation a window will open up in command prompt(CMD) if you are in windows. There will be certain options which you need to select. Let the default options be selected and just press the return/ enter key for a few times to end the installation process.
4. At the end of the installation process you will find around 7 options and x for exit. Choose X to exit or 1 to open the control panel. If you have chosen all the default options a shortcut to the control panel would also be installed in your desktop. You can also find the control panel inside the XAMPP folder in the directory/ drive in which you have installed XAMPP.
5. Once the Control Panel is opened Click on Port-Check button to check whether the ports which are necessary for Apache, MySql and other services are free or not. The ports 80, 81 and 443 are required for Apache to work properly whereas the port 3306 is required for MySql to work properly. If any of these ports are occupied by another program you gotto do the trouble shooting.
6. The common culprits which interfere with XAMPP are other web servers like IIS(Internet Information Services) Server etc or some applications like Skype. In case any other web server is interfering please go to the control panel of the particular web server and stop all the services. If Skype is interfering Select Tools Menu - Click on Options Sub Menu - Select
Advanced Tab and Connections Tab thereon. In the connection tab you will find a checkbox saying Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections. Uncheck this checkbox and log out of skype. Now if you check the ports again you will see they are free and you are ready to go ahead with your real time development.
7. Start the services Apache and MySql by clicking on the start buttons and you will see the text running when they start. This denotes that the services are up an running. Now you can start off your development in the htdocs folder which is inside your XAMPP directory.
In my future blogs you will also learn how to build a real website/ web application in your XAMPP folder which you can later launch in a live web server.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Speed up your System. Performance Matters!!
Speed and performance matters a lot, specifically when you are into software development using IDEs and also using other big software(in simple words). The most important factors influencing the speed of your system are:-
1. Random Access Memory - This is the most important factor which determines the speed of your applications or software. In very simple words RAM is the temporary memory of a computer which is utilized by an application in runtime. An application while running has to save some data in the memory temporarily which it has to access more frequently. Higher the RAM, the faster will be the speed of the application. When multiple applications run together the RAM is put into test and a RAM with higher space in it sails you easily through this test of speed. At times when your computer might hang, one of the reasons behind it may be the exhausting of the RAM by the different applications you open at the same time. A system with a higher configuration of RAM hangs less frequently.
2. Processor - The fundamental operation of most CPUs, regardless of the physical form they take, is to execute a sequence of stored instructions called a program. The program is represented by a series of numbers that are kept in some kind of computer memory. There are four steps that nearly all CPUs use in their operation: fetch, decode, execute, and writeback. The operating system is a GUI which interacts with the processor. The processor fetches the instruction sent by the operating system, decodes it, executes and tells the operating system what to do. The operating system decodes the user's instruction into machine level language which the processor understands and thus works the computer. The performance or speed of a processor depends on the clock rate and the Instructions Per Clock (IPC), which together are the factors for the Instructions Per Second (IPS) that the CPU can perform. Lets not get into these technicalities and understand that a multi core processor will perform much better than a single core processor. For example a dual core processor should ideally perform almost twice as better as a single core processor. Processor is hardware device and its speed depends predominantly on the ability of the chips to understand and execute the instructions. The speed of a processor is calculated in Hertz. The common unit to measure speed is Ghz or Giga Hertz because processors are now becoming faster and faster. It is common to have a 2.0 to 3.0 Ghz processor. The higher the speed of your processor the better is the speed of your computer.
3. Hard Disk - The hard disk also plays an important role in determining the speed of your computer. The hard disk is where your operating system, all your programs and applications and also your data is being stored. The speed also depends a lot on how your maintain your hard disk. You should leave some space in your hard disk for temporary files to be created in case certain applications need it to speed up your operations. You should also clean up your disk regularly, defragment your hard disk once in a while and also check for disk errors and correct them to improve the access to the data in your hard disk and thus improving the performance to a great extent. If you have too many applications running at start up, your computer will take a long time to start up. Have minimal and important applications running in the backend. End all programs which are not vital for the system to run to improve the spped.
4. ReadyBoost - Programs like ready boost which work only on Windows 7 or Vista speed up your computer to certain extent. A new concept in adding memory to a system, it allows you to use non-volatile flash memory—like a USB flash drive or a memory card—to improve performance without having to add additional memory. Do not go for any software which claims to improve your processor speed as you never know it may be a spyware. Purchase programs which are legitimate and proven. I generally do not go for any free or paid programs unless they are released by a credible corporation or organization. Like anything you find in the Microsoft, Sun or Linux site is the safest to be used. Use your deligence before you install any program into your system.
1. Random Access Memory - This is the most important factor which determines the speed of your applications or software. In very simple words RAM is the temporary memory of a computer which is utilized by an application in runtime. An application while running has to save some data in the memory temporarily which it has to access more frequently. Higher the RAM, the faster will be the speed of the application. When multiple applications run together the RAM is put into test and a RAM with higher space in it sails you easily through this test of speed. At times when your computer might hang, one of the reasons behind it may be the exhausting of the RAM by the different applications you open at the same time. A system with a higher configuration of RAM hangs less frequently.
2. Processor - The fundamental operation of most CPUs, regardless of the physical form they take, is to execute a sequence of stored instructions called a program. The program is represented by a series of numbers that are kept in some kind of computer memory. There are four steps that nearly all CPUs use in their operation: fetch, decode, execute, and writeback. The operating system is a GUI which interacts with the processor. The processor fetches the instruction sent by the operating system, decodes it, executes and tells the operating system what to do. The operating system decodes the user's instruction into machine level language which the processor understands and thus works the computer. The performance or speed of a processor depends on the clock rate and the Instructions Per Clock (IPC), which together are the factors for the Instructions Per Second (IPS) that the CPU can perform. Lets not get into these technicalities and understand that a multi core processor will perform much better than a single core processor. For example a dual core processor should ideally perform almost twice as better as a single core processor. Processor is hardware device and its speed depends predominantly on the ability of the chips to understand and execute the instructions. The speed of a processor is calculated in Hertz. The common unit to measure speed is Ghz or Giga Hertz because processors are now becoming faster and faster. It is common to have a 2.0 to 3.0 Ghz processor. The higher the speed of your processor the better is the speed of your computer.
3. Hard Disk - The hard disk also plays an important role in determining the speed of your computer. The hard disk is where your operating system, all your programs and applications and also your data is being stored. The speed also depends a lot on how your maintain your hard disk. You should leave some space in your hard disk for temporary files to be created in case certain applications need it to speed up your operations. You should also clean up your disk regularly, defragment your hard disk once in a while and also check for disk errors and correct them to improve the access to the data in your hard disk and thus improving the performance to a great extent. If you have too many applications running at start up, your computer will take a long time to start up. Have minimal and important applications running in the backend. End all programs which are not vital for the system to run to improve the spped.
4. ReadyBoost - Programs like ready boost which work only on Windows 7 or Vista speed up your computer to certain extent. A new concept in adding memory to a system, it allows you to use non-volatile flash memory—like a USB flash drive or a memory card—to improve performance without having to add additional memory. Do not go for any software which claims to improve your processor speed as you never know it may be a spyware. Purchase programs which are legitimate and proven. I generally do not go for any free or paid programs unless they are released by a credible corporation or organization. Like anything you find in the Microsoft, Sun or Linux site is the safest to be used. Use your deligence before you install any program into your system.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Wanna Watch FIFA World Cup 2010 in my Website?
Wish I could fulfill your dream!
If you have landed in my website to view a live or highlighted match of the FIFA World Cup 2010 then you have landed in the wrong place. I mean my website is not the wrong place but internet itself is the wrong place. There is no place in the internet as of now which broadcasts World Cup matches live. So better go and switch on your TV if you are a Football Fan.
You may get several tweets, e-mails, messages etc inviting you to watch world cup matches live. Please do not go to these websites as all of them are frauds. They will invite you to the website and to watch live matches whereas there are most chances that you end up with something like this:-
1. A website asking for a subscription to watch the matches. I am sure that you wont even be able to watch the match online even after subscribing for amounts ranging from $20 to $200. So beware before you pay. Most of the times you cannot recover your money back once you pay it.
2. A website full of advertisements, which does this type of stunts to get traffic.
3. A website with embedded clips of the match with advertisements with some advertisements in it.
4. A website which asks your personal information to view matches. This is one way for spammers to build huge lists and then monitize them. Therefore do not give your contact details for watching a match.
5. Some website like me which wants to inform people about the fraudsters who are trying to fool the innocent internet surfers.
Do not be innocent and wake up! Suspect before every action you take. Any unknown click may even bring virus/ malware or spyware into your system which even the best antivirus in the world cannot delete or quarantine.
I will keep you updated. Thanks for reading.
If you have landed in my website to view a live or highlighted match of the FIFA World Cup 2010 then you have landed in the wrong place. I mean my website is not the wrong place but internet itself is the wrong place. There is no place in the internet as of now which broadcasts World Cup matches live. So better go and switch on your TV if you are a Football Fan.
You may get several tweets, e-mails, messages etc inviting you to watch world cup matches live. Please do not go to these websites as all of them are frauds. They will invite you to the website and to watch live matches whereas there are most chances that you end up with something like this:-
1. A website asking for a subscription to watch the matches. I am sure that you wont even be able to watch the match online even after subscribing for amounts ranging from $20 to $200. So beware before you pay. Most of the times you cannot recover your money back once you pay it.
2. A website full of advertisements, which does this type of stunts to get traffic.
3. A website with embedded clips of the match with advertisements with some advertisements in it.
4. A website which asks your personal information to view matches. This is one way for spammers to build huge lists and then monitize them. Therefore do not give your contact details for watching a match.
5. Some website like me which wants to inform people about the fraudsters who are trying to fool the innocent internet surfers.
Do not be innocent and wake up! Suspect before every action you take. Any unknown click may even bring virus/ malware or spyware into your system which even the best antivirus in the world cannot delete or quarantine.
I will keep you updated. Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
How to write the best killer Tweets?
Writing a killer tweet within a real estate of 140 characters is no less than copyrighting an advertisement for a newsletter. The only difference is that the newsletter is read only once, on a particular day while the tweet remains in the web almost for ever if not deleted otherwise. Another major difference is that you do not pay for your tweet and you can do it again and again and also delete your tweet at any time. So with this great amount of flexibility and this great tool in your hand, you have a chance to reach many people without even paying. But how your tweet pays off depends hugely on its content.
These 140 characters if used properly can become a killer marketing copy and create a havoc in the form of traffic to your website. To write a short sweet and really effective tweet we need to keep a few small things in mind. I will explain some of these things which will make your tweet an effective marketing message.
1. Decide what you want to communicate:- Just find out what you want to communicate to your followers and be sure about the marketing message you want to convey to your followers. Write down in brief the essense of your marketing message somewhere. For example the message you want to spread across is that you are giving a 20% discount on all your products to any of your followers who re-tweets and also shares the link of your site in his/her blog.
2. Write the tweet in around 80-100 characters and leave the remaining for the URL. Say for the above example I would write the Tweet in this way:- Hot Limited Period Offer - 20% Discount on products to all followers who tweet. To avail click here.
3 Use a URL shortening service to shorten the url size and use the twitter real estate to the fullest. Some of the examples of URL shortening service is http://bit.ly/ etc.
If you start writing tweets do not get too excited and tweet more than what is required. No one is a full time twitter and does not want too many tweets on their phone or account. If you are an individual, you should stick to one or two tweets a day to a maximum of 5 at different intervals. If you are an organization the maximum number of tweets you should not exceed in a day is 10. And remember these 10 tweets should not be all the same, or people will stop following you. If you want to tweet more, make sure you have the topics and things to tweet on. These limitations do not apply on organizations which are expected to send more frequent information to their followers like news broadcasters, sports broadcasters, etc.
So go ahead and write your first tweet which really makes an impact on your followers and makes them to take an action which you want them to.
These 140 characters if used properly can become a killer marketing copy and create a havoc in the form of traffic to your website. To write a short sweet and really effective tweet we need to keep a few small things in mind. I will explain some of these things which will make your tweet an effective marketing message.
1. Decide what you want to communicate:- Just find out what you want to communicate to your followers and be sure about the marketing message you want to convey to your followers. Write down in brief the essense of your marketing message somewhere. For example the message you want to spread across is that you are giving a 20% discount on all your products to any of your followers who re-tweets and also shares the link of your site in his/her blog.
2. Write the tweet in around 80-100 characters and leave the remaining for the URL. Say for the above example I would write the Tweet in this way:- Hot Limited Period Offer - 20% Discount on products to all followers who tweet. To avail click here.
3 Use a URL shortening service to shorten the url size and use the twitter real estate to the fullest. Some of the examples of URL shortening service is http://bit.ly/ etc.
If you start writing tweets do not get too excited and tweet more than what is required. No one is a full time twitter and does not want too many tweets on their phone or account. If you are an individual, you should stick to one or two tweets a day to a maximum of 5 at different intervals. If you are an organization the maximum number of tweets you should not exceed in a day is 10. And remember these 10 tweets should not be all the same, or people will stop following you. If you want to tweet more, make sure you have the topics and things to tweet on. These limitations do not apply on organizations which are expected to send more frequent information to their followers like news broadcasters, sports broadcasters, etc.
So go ahead and write your first tweet which really makes an impact on your followers and makes them to take an action which you want them to.
Monday, June 14, 2010
How to create a great background in Twitter?
It is not required but recommended to have a custom background in your Twitter profile which helps you in the following ways:-
1. It gives you a little bit of real estate to market yourself, your logo, photos, products etc.
2. You makes your followers feel at your home when they come to your profile. It makes you different from all others.
3. In the mind of the users, a custom background creates a credibility for you, if done properly. A good custom background is sure to increase your followers by at least 10%.
In this post I will show you in a step by step way about how to create a beautiful customized background in Twitter.
First you need to think of what you like to have as your background or rather what background would suit you the most. Do not copy other backgrounds because that does not make you unique but rather a copycat. Try to be original and think something creative. Suppose you are a doctor, you may like an operation theatre to be your background or may be a human anatomy. Say you are an electronic engineer, you may like a background with a lot of chipsets and circuits. If you are a software engineer, you may like to have lot of codes in the background. Now this is not the only line to think. If you like bikes or cars, you may put your favorite bike or car in the background. You may even put your photo in background or even a collage of your photos. You may put your best scenery or your best flowers in the background. Literally you may put anything which you like, anything related to you, anything which represents you or anything which you think others will like to see as your twitter background.
Once you are done deciding what you want to put in your background, just create your piece of art in Photoshop. Use your camera to get your original pics to use. If this is not possible search google images for the right one and try not to take any copyrighted images. Do understand that even if you take a copyrighted image, if you change the image to such an extend that it is not at all identical with the original image, this does not amount to a copyright violation.
Once you get the right image you gotto start your editing in photoshop keeping in mind the limitations of Twitter backgrounds. The following are the important factors you need to keep in mind while designing a background for twitter:-
1. The background image is not stretched or shrinked when the screen resolution changes, it gets cropped and a part of the image is not visible.
2. Twitter background is aligned to the left. So the real estate available towards the left is visible in most of the resolutions.
3. Twitter background may look perfect in a particular resolution and really wild in some other resolution. Therefore you need to refer to what percentage of users use which screen resolution. Below are the ways to find this out:-
1. Use your Google Analytics account to find out what most of your users are using. Always try that your background looks proper in at least 70-80% of your user's systems.
2. If you do not use Google Analytics or any such Analytical tool, you may find this data from other reliable sources and surveys. But I can assure you that this data will vary across surveys because people use the data from their own web analytics. Below is a chart of Screen Resolutions from a reliable source:-
Screen Resolutions
1 1024x768 24.44%
2 1280x800 18.94%
3 1280x1024 10.32%
4 1440x900 8.13%
5 1366x768 5.98%
6 1680x1050 5.14%
7 800x600 4.12%
8 1024x1024 2.47%
9 1152x864 2.18%
10 1920x1080 2.06%
The above chart shoes that almost 70% of the users are using the screen resolutions of the first 5 resolutions. So try to make sure that your background is visible properly in these 5 resolutions. If you ensure this, you will find that another 10-20% automatically falls in place.
So always try to optimize your twitter background for 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1366x768.
I am telling you that it is really difficult and almost impossible to make your background look almost the same in different resolutions. But atleast try to achieve the goal of making the main parts of your background visible.
If your background is a repitive one then you are relieved from all this tough job. But if you have specific/ particular images/ text in your background you will need to put some time into it.
Now you might be wondering after reading all this that how do I know whether my background is working or not without uploading!!! There are ways but I would suggest you to upload it into twitter directly using the following steps:-
Log in to your twitter account and go to the settings Tab. Go to the designs sub tab and select a design if you like. But your intention is to be different and therefore I would not recommend you to do so. Just scroll down below and click on change background image. Click the browse button and upload the file which you have designed keeping the above guidelines in mind. The file should be in jpg, png or GIF and smaller than 800KB.
Check whether it is comeing properly in your resolution or not. If it is, you are lucky. Go to your desktop, right click and change your resolution(method depends on operating systems). Check your twitter background with each of the above widely used reolutions and make the necessary changes. Once your background is working with almost all of the widely used resolutions, you are a successful Twitter Background Designer.
In my next posts I will post a live demo of creating a twitter background.
1. It gives you a little bit of real estate to market yourself, your logo, photos, products etc.
2. You makes your followers feel at your home when they come to your profile. It makes you different from all others.
3. In the mind of the users, a custom background creates a credibility for you, if done properly. A good custom background is sure to increase your followers by at least 10%.
In this post I will show you in a step by step way about how to create a beautiful customized background in Twitter.
First you need to think of what you like to have as your background or rather what background would suit you the most. Do not copy other backgrounds because that does not make you unique but rather a copycat. Try to be original and think something creative. Suppose you are a doctor, you may like an operation theatre to be your background or may be a human anatomy. Say you are an electronic engineer, you may like a background with a lot of chipsets and circuits. If you are a software engineer, you may like to have lot of codes in the background. Now this is not the only line to think. If you like bikes or cars, you may put your favorite bike or car in the background. You may even put your photo in background or even a collage of your photos. You may put your best scenery or your best flowers in the background. Literally you may put anything which you like, anything related to you, anything which represents you or anything which you think others will like to see as your twitter background.
Once you are done deciding what you want to put in your background, just create your piece of art in Photoshop. Use your camera to get your original pics to use. If this is not possible search google images for the right one and try not to take any copyrighted images. Do understand that even if you take a copyrighted image, if you change the image to such an extend that it is not at all identical with the original image, this does not amount to a copyright violation.
Once you get the right image you gotto start your editing in photoshop keeping in mind the limitations of Twitter backgrounds. The following are the important factors you need to keep in mind while designing a background for twitter:-
1. The background image is not stretched or shrinked when the screen resolution changes, it gets cropped and a part of the image is not visible.
2. Twitter background is aligned to the left. So the real estate available towards the left is visible in most of the resolutions.
3. Twitter background may look perfect in a particular resolution and really wild in some other resolution. Therefore you need to refer to what percentage of users use which screen resolution. Below are the ways to find this out:-
1. Use your Google Analytics account to find out what most of your users are using. Always try that your background looks proper in at least 70-80% of your user's systems.
2. If you do not use Google Analytics or any such Analytical tool, you may find this data from other reliable sources and surveys. But I can assure you that this data will vary across surveys because people use the data from their own web analytics. Below is a chart of Screen Resolutions from a reliable source:-
Screen Resolutions
1 1024x768 24.44%
2 1280x800 18.94%
3 1280x1024 10.32%
4 1440x900 8.13%
5 1366x768 5.98%
6 1680x1050 5.14%
7 800x600 4.12%
8 1024x1024 2.47%
9 1152x864 2.18%
10 1920x1080 2.06%
The above chart shoes that almost 70% of the users are using the screen resolutions of the first 5 resolutions. So try to make sure that your background is visible properly in these 5 resolutions. If you ensure this, you will find that another 10-20% automatically falls in place.
So always try to optimize your twitter background for 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1366x768.
I am telling you that it is really difficult and almost impossible to make your background look almost the same in different resolutions. But atleast try to achieve the goal of making the main parts of your background visible.
If your background is a repitive one then you are relieved from all this tough job. But if you have specific/ particular images/ text in your background you will need to put some time into it.
Now you might be wondering after reading all this that how do I know whether my background is working or not without uploading!!! There are ways but I would suggest you to upload it into twitter directly using the following steps:-
Log in to your twitter account and go to the settings Tab. Go to the designs sub tab and select a design if you like. But your intention is to be different and therefore I would not recommend you to do so. Just scroll down below and click on change background image. Click the browse button and upload the file which you have designed keeping the above guidelines in mind. The file should be in jpg, png or GIF and smaller than 800KB.
Check whether it is comeing properly in your resolution or not. If it is, you are lucky. Go to your desktop, right click and change your resolution(method depends on operating systems). Check your twitter background with each of the above widely used reolutions and make the necessary changes. Once your background is working with almost all of the widely used resolutions, you are a successful Twitter Background Designer.
In my next posts I will post a live demo of creating a twitter background.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Twitter for organizations.
Twitter has of late evolved as an indespensible tool and a serious part of the internet marketing strategy of any organization or company seeking an online presence. There are several ways various companies are using Twitter to achieve their goals and to keep in touch with their clients or customers.
Many companies has used Twitter in the best possible way. Dell, Pepsi and CoffeeGrounds are some of my favorite cases.
Dell Outlet is one of the division of Dell which rolls out refurbished and custom made products which need to be sold quickly. They found Twitter to be the quickest way to spread the word. Not only could they roll out information about the products, the coupons and the special offers, they started getting reply from their customers. Their customers gave feedback and complaints about their products which helped them improve their service. Nelson, of Dell in an interview with Twitter says that they have booked more than $3 million of sales only with the help of Twitter.
Another Classic Example is of Pepsi who used Twitter to collect feedback from their consumers. They found this consumer feedback very useful and used the data gathered from Twitter to build on their campaigns. Pepsi uses Twitter as one of their customer service tools and also resolves the complaints. Whenever a customer gets offensive they continue the conversation in DM or through E-mail. Twitter has helped Pepsi to create a strong brand loyalty in the form of their huge group of Followers in Twitter.
Coffee Grounds is a coffee shop which is not as big as Dell or Pepsi, but has used Twitter as well as they have done. J.R. cohen the General Manager of Twitter built a list of Followers, but he never thought that his followers will soon start ordering online through direct messeging(DM). He used to send a personal invite to his followers to his coffee shop and then personally met them. This is how twiter helped J.R. get realtime customers and orders.
These are just a few examples of how Twitter can be used by different companies for different purposes.
It does not matter whether you are a decision maker or not of your company, if your company/ organization does not still have a twitter account just go ahead and open one. And then think on how to use it to get in touch with your target group and consumers. Think of ways on how to exploit twitter. And if this clicks you are sure to get a double hike next appraisals.
The first step you need to take before opening the account is just search the name of your company in Twitter without logging in and find out what people are talking about you. Make a report of the important matters that you find from those tweets of people. Start following some of those people who talk frequently about you and appreciate them for it. If they have complaints resolve them.
Now once you are active on Twitter you need to find out ways to bring in more people to follow you in Twitter. The first thing you need to do is put an eminent link in your website saying Follow us on Twitter. Give special offers/ small goodies to customers who start following you in Twitter which will encourage more people to join. Go ahead and give some great offers in Twitter so that they get retweeted. Every time a person re tweets your tweets it gets spread to more people and increases the chances of more people following you.
The next step after you start putting the link of your Twitter account all across your websites, blogs, e-mail signatures, posts, stationery, T-shirts, business cards, product packaging etc and start getting a lot of followers on Twitter, you need to take one step ahead and start integrating the Twitter API in your website. I will write more about Twitter API integration, Background Design and advanced reporting for Twitter business users.
Keep tweeting frequently and dont let the buzz about you go away. But be sure that you do not spam and send in useless or unusual tweets which may annoy your followers. Tweeting a few times a day would be for very active members such as a news channel or a weather forecast company. Other tweeting a few times a week or once in a couple of days is good enough. But if you become too idle and do not tweet even once in a week that may take you out of the minds of your followers.
All you need to do is to create killer tweets by utilizing the real estate of those 140 characters which Twitter has given you. Even though it is less lets be happy and try our best. In my future posts I will also write on how to write killer tweets.
Many companies has used Twitter in the best possible way. Dell, Pepsi and CoffeeGrounds are some of my favorite cases.
Dell Outlet is one of the division of Dell which rolls out refurbished and custom made products which need to be sold quickly. They found Twitter to be the quickest way to spread the word. Not only could they roll out information about the products, the coupons and the special offers, they started getting reply from their customers. Their customers gave feedback and complaints about their products which helped them improve their service. Nelson, of Dell in an interview with Twitter says that they have booked more than $3 million of sales only with the help of Twitter.
Another Classic Example is of Pepsi who used Twitter to collect feedback from their consumers. They found this consumer feedback very useful and used the data gathered from Twitter to build on their campaigns. Pepsi uses Twitter as one of their customer service tools and also resolves the complaints. Whenever a customer gets offensive they continue the conversation in DM or through E-mail. Twitter has helped Pepsi to create a strong brand loyalty in the form of their huge group of Followers in Twitter.
Coffee Grounds is a coffee shop which is not as big as Dell or Pepsi, but has used Twitter as well as they have done. J.R. cohen the General Manager of Twitter built a list of Followers, but he never thought that his followers will soon start ordering online through direct messeging(DM). He used to send a personal invite to his followers to his coffee shop and then personally met them. This is how twiter helped J.R. get realtime customers and orders.
These are just a few examples of how Twitter can be used by different companies for different purposes.
It does not matter whether you are a decision maker or not of your company, if your company/ organization does not still have a twitter account just go ahead and open one. And then think on how to use it to get in touch with your target group and consumers. Think of ways on how to exploit twitter. And if this clicks you are sure to get a double hike next appraisals.
The first step you need to take before opening the account is just search the name of your company in Twitter without logging in and find out what people are talking about you. Make a report of the important matters that you find from those tweets of people. Start following some of those people who talk frequently about you and appreciate them for it. If they have complaints resolve them.
Now once you are active on Twitter you need to find out ways to bring in more people to follow you in Twitter. The first thing you need to do is put an eminent link in your website saying Follow us on Twitter. Give special offers/ small goodies to customers who start following you in Twitter which will encourage more people to join. Go ahead and give some great offers in Twitter so that they get retweeted. Every time a person re tweets your tweets it gets spread to more people and increases the chances of more people following you.
The next step after you start putting the link of your Twitter account all across your websites, blogs, e-mail signatures, posts, stationery, T-shirts, business cards, product packaging etc and start getting a lot of followers on Twitter, you need to take one step ahead and start integrating the Twitter API in your website. I will write more about Twitter API integration, Background Design and advanced reporting for Twitter business users.
Keep tweeting frequently and dont let the buzz about you go away. But be sure that you do not spam and send in useless or unusual tweets which may annoy your followers. Tweeting a few times a day would be for very active members such as a news channel or a weather forecast company. Other tweeting a few times a week or once in a couple of days is good enough. But if you become too idle and do not tweet even once in a week that may take you out of the minds of your followers.
All you need to do is to create killer tweets by utilizing the real estate of those 140 characters which Twitter has given you. Even though it is less lets be happy and try our best. In my future posts I will also write on how to write killer tweets.
How to use Twitter in the best way?
Twitter is a very popular concept in in US and many people tweet regularly. Almost 90% of US population is available online and almost 70% of the online population uses either facebook or twitter or both. This data is not authenticated and is based on a sample survey carried out on over 100 people in the States by some of my Internet Marketing peers. One more interesting fact is that almost 60% of the people who are on Twitter in the US have connected Twitter to their phones. So they get updates from their friends even when they are in the disco, restroom, watching a baseball match or dating in a cafe.
UK is fast catching up US when it comes to social networking. Lot of other countries are also using twitter a lot. But Indians are far behind in Tweeting. Almost 9% of India's population has access to internet which will soon increase to a whopping 15-20%. In that case India will be the biggest market in the Internet Arena and many Online Ventures will soon come up concentrating solely on the Indian Markets.
Ok, all that was just a background and now lets start off with our first post about tweeting. Many of us do not tweet because we do not know how to and why to? Twitter was invented for friends to keep in touch with friends. Dont worry if you do not have hundreds of followers, it is quite natural as nobody else other than your friends and people who know you would be interested in your tweets if you do not tweet on something which is very meaningful to them. If you a celebrity, you are a lucky one, you should go ahead and create a verified twitter account and your fans will start following you almost immediately. In my later posts I will talk about verified account in details. An individual who is not a celebrity or an organization need not have a verified account.
A group of friends may use twitter productively to post updates to all the friends about a particular thing. If 5 friends are working on a project, they may post tweets on the latest updates about the project so that all the others are updated about it.
But then, some use twitter to say that I am yawning, I am sleeping, I am eating etc. which do not make any sense to anyone. Tweeting needs to be done on important events, updates and interesting things that we think others will be interested at. Say I came across a very good website, I may want to share it with my friends, Twitter is a great way to do it. Maybe I got promoted in my job and I want to inform this to my friends, I send a tweet. Or I have uploaded new photos on Flicker, I can send a tweet along with the link. This is how general people can be in touch and utilize Twitter in the best way.
In case you want to be updated round the clock about your group you can also use Twitter on Mobile which is now only available on Airtel Mobiles. Stay tuned on my next posts on how to add your phone to your twitter account and also about how corporates/NGOs and Businesses can use Twitter in the Best Possible way. I will also write an article on the best twitters and how they became the best.
UK is fast catching up US when it comes to social networking. Lot of other countries are also using twitter a lot. But Indians are far behind in Tweeting. Almost 9% of India's population has access to internet which will soon increase to a whopping 15-20%. In that case India will be the biggest market in the Internet Arena and many Online Ventures will soon come up concentrating solely on the Indian Markets.
Ok, all that was just a background and now lets start off with our first post about tweeting. Many of us do not tweet because we do not know how to and why to? Twitter was invented for friends to keep in touch with friends. Dont worry if you do not have hundreds of followers, it is quite natural as nobody else other than your friends and people who know you would be interested in your tweets if you do not tweet on something which is very meaningful to them. If you a celebrity, you are a lucky one, you should go ahead and create a verified twitter account and your fans will start following you almost immediately. In my later posts I will talk about verified account in details. An individual who is not a celebrity or an organization need not have a verified account.
A group of friends may use twitter productively to post updates to all the friends about a particular thing. If 5 friends are working on a project, they may post tweets on the latest updates about the project so that all the others are updated about it.
But then, some use twitter to say that I am yawning, I am sleeping, I am eating etc. which do not make any sense to anyone. Tweeting needs to be done on important events, updates and interesting things that we think others will be interested at. Say I came across a very good website, I may want to share it with my friends, Twitter is a great way to do it. Maybe I got promoted in my job and I want to inform this to my friends, I send a tweet. Or I have uploaded new photos on Flicker, I can send a tweet along with the link. This is how general people can be in touch and utilize Twitter in the best way.
In case you want to be updated round the clock about your group you can also use Twitter on Mobile which is now only available on Airtel Mobiles. Stay tuned on my next posts on how to add your phone to your twitter account and also about how corporates/NGOs and Businesses can use Twitter in the Best Possible way. I will also write an article on the best twitters and how they became the best.
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