One type of Tweet that usually adds a lot of value is links to websites, blog posts, articles, and so on that other people will find interesting.

Today I’d like to talk about three tools that can really help streamline your time on Twitter in order to get this type of Tweet out to your followers — which, in turn, can also boost your social media marketing efforts.

1. RSS Feed Reader.  You need to set up an RSS Feed Reader in order to get all of your articles, blog posts, news stories, etc. in one place — as opposed to going to each individual site.  An RSS feed reader will really save you a lot of time.  I personally use Newsfire, but there are other ones out there, such as Bloglines and Google Reader.

Once you find an article or blog post that you’d like to share with your Twitter followers, then you’ll need…

2. Bitly.  Twitter only allows you to have 140 characters per Tweet.  Of course, sometimes URLs are really long and can take up a bunch of the space in the Tweet… which is where Bitly can really help you out.  Bitly will shorten your URL so that you can enter a link into Twitter and also add in additional information, such as why people should check out your link, what you thought of it, etc.

3. Hootsuite.  This tool is the key — the one that ties everything together.  There are many great reasons to use Hootsuite (you can post to multiple social networks at the same time with Hootsuite, for example), but I think the best feature is the ability for you to set up your Tweets to be sent out at specific times.  Because of this feature, you can spend an hour or two per week and load up a bunch of Tweets, and set them up to be sent out throughout the week.

Once you find the links (through your RSS feed reader) that you want to send out, shorten the URLs with bitly, and load the Tweets up in your Hootsuite.

Social media can have a huge impact on your business if you create an effective game plan and have the discipline to execute it day in and day out.

It’s important for your spend the time to prepare your strategy first though – because without the right strategy, you might just be wasting your time on social media. If you don’t have the right message or aren’t engaging people properly, you won’t be getting the most out of the time you spend on social media.

Today, I’m going to explain to you a simple five-step process that you can follow to start building your brand and influence through social media:

Step 1: Determine your brand is and what message you want to promote. Chances are that there are many businesses in your niche that are trying to promote themselves on social media platforms.

Therefore, you need to figure out how you’re going to stand out amongst the masses. You need to take the time to establish a brand for your business that allows your potential consumers to easily identify who you are and what value your bring.

What makes your business different than all the other businesses in your industry? What distinct value can you provide to your customers? What do you want your business to be known for? What consistent message do you want to promote to people?

These are the types of questions that you need to answer for yourself as you’re trying to establish a brand for your business.

Step 2: Create a blog for your business; it will serve as your “central hub.” By having a blog for your business, you can provide value to your readers and also promote your brand and message further.

You really want to be known as a business that provides tremendous value to people, so I encourage you to blog on a consistent basis (at least once a week).

If you don’t have time to blog, you can always outsource the writing of the content. (But make sure to edit it so that it’s in your own voice.)

Another reason you want to create a blog for your business is that it will be your “central hub” on the Internet. With this central hub of yours, you will also be able to build your following by providing your visitors with easy access to connect with you through your social networks, RSS feed, and e-mail list.

Step 3: Brand your social network profiles. You want to set up your profiles so that they are congruent with the brand and message that you are promoting for your business.

This means that you need to have consistent branding across all of your social networks. Your Facebook wall should match your Twitter background and YouTube background. You should use the same color scheme, logo, and layout.

Whenever someone visits one of your social media profiles, they should immediately know that it’s one of your profiles.

Step 4: Have memorable interactions with your customers and prospects on your social networks. Once you have your branded social network profiles ready to go, start engaging with people on your social networks.

The key here is to always provide value. You can provide value by giving out discounts for your product or service, creating contests that your followers can participate in, asking questions, answering questions, making funny comments, promoting other people, breaking news in your industry, and so on.

Step 5: Be consistent with your social media engagement. After you get started with promoting your brand and message on your social networks, you want to keep it going.

Don’t jump on Twitter and Tweet out three messages one day and then not say anything for two weeks afterward. People will stop following you.

Also, be consistent with providing good value too. If you’re always trying to sell, it’ll be a turn-off to many people.

Conclusion
By following these five simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to promoting your brand and message through social media. If you have a distinct message and engage with people in a way that is enjoyable to them, you’ll build your following… and subsequently, your business.

Here’s how you should look at the relationship between your blog and your social network profiles: your blog should serve as your “primary home” while your social networks should be your “vacation homes.”

This means that you need to spend most of you time building out and developing your blog – which means you need to be constantly adding value-add content to it as well as ways to capture the information of people who are visiting your site – and supplement your blog activity with engagements on your social networks.

The process should look like this:

Step 1: Create an attractive blog that is prepared to capture leads (e.g. create lead capture forms with an e-mail marketing platform, such as Constant Contact, and make it easy for people to connect with you on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn)

Step 2: Create a “content schedule” of topics that you (or someone else) will write about; publish this content to your blog according to the schedule.

Step 3: Jump on your social networks and drive your friends and followers back to your blog through compelling offers, comments, and questions.

Step 4: If you offer good incentives and intriguing content on your blog, you’ll be able to capture the contact information of the people who visit your site.

Step 5: Market to the leads that you generate through your e-mail marketing and social networks.

Here are five different types of “Tweets” that you can incorporate into your Twitter and overall social media marketing strategy:

1. “What You Are Doing” Tweets. Allow your followers into your world by telling them what you are up to… but here’s how you can add value: tell them why you’re doing it, and/or what your opinion is of what you’re doing.

2. Tweets that Link to “Value-Add” Content. This type of tweet provides you with an opportunity to share interesting news or informational content that you’ve read about.  You’re bringing value with this sort of tweet because you’ll be able to provide your followers with new information that can help them somehow.

3. “Accomplishment” Tweets. Share what you’re working on and what you’ve achieved on through your Tweets as well.  How will anyone know what you’ve accomplished if you don’t tell them?

4. Tweets that ask questions. Engage your followers by asking questions. You can ask questions that can help your business (e.g. “What is the biggest pain point of people who have hired SEO agencies?).  You can mix it up by asking people about non-business related events (e.g. “What did everyone think of the Grammys last night?).  Questions allow you to engage.

5. Inspirational Quotes. Twitter is great for inspirational quotes.  Allow your followers to get to know you better by letting them in on some of the quotes that inspire and motivate you.

Remember, Twitter is a large part of the social media network.  With it, communicating and interacting with people anywhere in the world is as easy as a *click.  But the key to it is to be social. With these five tips, that part just makes it easier.

Built on a solid foundation of industry experience, Highly Relevant has assembled a well-rounded team of all-stars from the business world. In addition to Rex and Alex, Highly Relevant is led by Justin Hong who helps lead the day-to-day operations; Clifton Levine, who manages the company’s finances; and John Ullmen, who serves as an advisor to the team, as well as many Fortune 500 companies including Apple, Nike, Cisco, and NASA.

During the third quarter of 2010, Highly Relevant experienced a 400% growth in revenue alone. In addition to their received press in Entrepreneur Magazine, Rex and Alex have been creating some buzz in the social media community as they were featured speakers at both Social Media Week Los Angeles in September and the PerfectBusiness Summit in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Highly Relevant is fueled by client up-sells and referrals, which is a testament to their track record of actually achieving clients tangible results. It is for these reasons that we are asking you to cast your vote for Highly Relevant as Mashable’s Most Promising New Company.

Place you vote here: http://mashable.com/awards/votes?c=40&v=Highly Relevant

Thanks!

The idea behind the campaign is to encourage students enrolled in accredited Universities to blog about their passions, goals and ambitions. In turn, Lenovo will giveaway a $20K scholarship and various prizes to winners. The only rules for contestants are: keeping the content unique and only posting on the Lenovo blogging platform,

The genius behind this campaign is the idea of keeping bloggers under the Lenovo brand. By creating a blogging platform for potential consumers, Lenovo is able to showcase their product, while praising their most loyal consumers. Through this campaignLenovo not only builds up their brand loyalty, but also enhances the way their brand is received. Giving away scholarships and the tools to learn is an effective way to brand their product (laptops) as the quintessential back to school device. Most of the students, especially those that win, will become brand evangelists and encourage others to invest in Lenovo for all their school needs.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Social Media Week, it’s a multi-platform conference that allows hundreds of thousands of people all around the world to connect and discuss emerging trends in mobile and social media. Social Media Week is hosted in cities, such as Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Milan.

While the schedule for SMWLA is not completely set yet, we’ll keep you updated with the latest news and where we’ll be. The Highly Relevant Team is helping to organize a couple of the events for that week — and I can tell you that there are definitely some “can’t miss” events that you’ll want to attend if you’re in LA that week.

There’s going to be some fantastic speakers, panel events, networking events, and parties going on — and for all my fellow Trojans out there, there’s even going to be SMW events taking place at USC.

In addition, our very own Alex Becker and Rex Freiberger will both be panelists on a couple of the panel events that week.

To get you all pumped up about SMWLA, check out the latest version of Socialnomics’ “Social Media Revolution:

Please drop us a line if you plan on attending any of the events, and we’ll be sure to connect — see you all there!

The most anticipated feature of the iPhone 4 is its front facing camera. This feature allows for what Apple is calling “Face Time.” Face Time allows video chatting over the phone using its front and rear facing cameras. This feature will be limited to Wi-Fi hot spots, at least in its early stages. Although, we can be sure the developers are hard at work, scouring the iPhone 4 SDK for ways to make Face Time work over 3G. Could this be the reason that AT&T recently announced caps on its subscribers monthly data consumption? That point is up for debate, but there is no doubt in my mind. Much has been made about mobile video chatting in the weeks since Gizmodo revealed the new phone to the world.

Apple's Promo Video of iPhone Features

I must admit that at first, I was really excited. It will also be nice to talk to friends and family, face to face from anywhere in the world. In a business sense, this will be a great tool as well. You can tell a lot about what the person is saying and thinking through their facial expressions—good or bad.

That said, it is a cool feature and will certainly change the way that we communicate with each other.
Some of the other features the Apple unveiled were:

• Multitasking
• 720p HD video and editing on the phone
• The front and back is made of aluminosilicate glass held together by a custom alloy band that also acts as a antenna
• 960X640 LCD display that is said to be the highest resolution phone screen ever made.
• Other features.

All told, this past Monday was a great day for Apple and its legion of fans. The iPhone 4 represents another huge step forward for the mobile industry. Apple has once again set the bar. It is now up to everyone else to catch up.

Your move Google.

Update: Watch Video Below!

Below is information on what we learned.  Check back on Monday to see the video of the event in its entirety.

1.     It’s easy, 5-minutes easy, to setup Google Analytics – As John Shiple mentioned…it’s easier than going to your local café and ordering coffee.  Many content management sites such as WordPress and Blogger make it so easy to track the behavior of your visitors by allowing you to copy + paste a tracking code in the headers or footers of your site.  You’ll be collecting analytics data in no time!

2.    Having the Right Goals in Mind – Many people focus their energy towards driving large volumes of traffic to their site, which is great, but what you do with that traffic is even more important.  Is your bounce rate high? Are you experiencing a drop-off on certain pages? Google Analytics tracks all that.  By making your conversion goals more deliberate and spelled out such as “collect an email”, “add an item to shopping cart”, “spend X dollars to buy my product”, and “confirm sale” , you greatly improve your metrics  and are more enabled to make more informed decisions to improve your company’s online marketing campaign and overall bottom line.

3.    Tracking Inbound Traffic – Learning where your traffic came from and how they got there is just as important as what they do once on your site. So make sure you code your links to be human-readable.  Use us for example; we over here at Highly Relevant like to comment often on interesting social media blogs found on Mashable as well as other blogs regarding online reputation management. In this case, of commenting on Mashable we would use the http://www.highlyrelevant.com/social-media-marketing.html as s opposed to http://www.highlyrelevant.com/online-reputation-management.html.

This helps online users on Mashable know we are part of the social media community plus it also helps us determine where most of our traffic is coming from – social media blogs or online reputation management blogs.

4.     Need Help? Don’t fret.  GA help is Everywhere – The panel members provided the following resources:

• Avinash Kaushik – the GURU of Google Analytics has a blog on the subject:  Click Here.
• Google’s Conversion University has a bunch of training guides.  Here’s the link:  http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/
• Google Analytics works within Facebook.  See this link:  http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

5.    Creating Funnels –Funnels are great (and illustrative) tools for building the steps towards your company’s goal.  They also show you how to identify your user drop-off rate at each step.  Essentially, if there’s drop-off for every step you will want to limit and simplify the number of then in order to successfully convert into sales.

A special shout-out to the very informative speakers– You guys were great!

Check them out on twitter to see what other projects they are working or if you have any questions.

Serena (Host): @serena
Erica: @SnowboardWomen
Alex: @aybecker
Andrew:@andrewhahn
John: @FreelanceCTO

Are your tweets not helping your company’s bottom line?

Fortunately,  Alex Becker, Co-Founder & President of Highly Relevant and panel member of Social Media Club Los Angeles, along with a few of his friends want to help you take your online media strategy to new levels.

Join us on Tuesday, February 23^rd from 7-9:30 pm as we jump head-first into one of easiest ways to measure online social media efforts—yup, Google Analytics.

Location: Mahalo (902 Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, CA)

Buy Your Ticket Here!!!

Featured Speakers Include:

John Shiple, CTO of Ultralive

[www.linkedin.com/johnshiple]

Known within the industry as General John Shiple is the founder of Startup Army and one of L.A.’s most sought after CTOs.  He’s been making huge waves in the internet world since its birth.  In 1994, he became a founding member of HotWired’s engineering team – the first commercial magazine website on the internet.  He’s had his hands in many other big projects such as redesigning the front-end of GeoCities (then the 4^th largest site on the web) and introducing pop-up ads to the world (yep, that’s his fault but it was and still is kind of a big deal).

Alex Becker, Co-Founder and President of Highly Relevant

[www.linkedin.com/in/alexybecker]

Alex Becker, actively involved in online marketing since 2004, began as an Affiliate and Product Manager for a pair of multi-million dollar affiliate programs while still a student at University of Indiana – Bloomington.  After graduating in 2006, he made the full-time transition to interactive content and became the SEO manager for Spine-Health.com, a position previously occupied by Ben Parr, the current co-editor of Mashable.

Alex teamed up with Rex Freiberger after working with him at DONE! SEO to form Highly Relevant.  For more information on Alex, please check out his Chicago SEO blog.

Erica Forrette, Event Moderator, Online Marketing / E-commerce Expert

[www.linkedin.com/in/ericaforrette]

Erica online has  online marketing experience dating back to 1999. She has experience on the brand side, vendor side and even the agency side.  She currently oversees the online marketing efforts and analytics for Internships.com.    In the past, Erica has worked as a consultant for lead generation and e-commerce site projects, Senior Manager of Online Acquisitions at PacSun.com, Director of Marketing for Adapt Technologies, and the list goes on.  She’s a much achieved online marketing professional and we are very happy to have her as this event’s moderator.

Additional Speakers TBD, including:

Andrew Hahn of Luxury Link and Familygetaway.com

[www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhahn]