Business and Marketing Benefits of New Re-designed Twitter

Today I came across a great article by Chris Crum analyzing new, re-designed Twitter interface and explaining why new interface may attract new users to Twitter, and what are the benefits of using Twitter for business.

While Twitter has been around for a while, many businesses and individual still did not adopt it for variety of reasons including limited resources, questionable return on investment (ROI) , etc., and while Twitter does not solve all business problems for all industries, it has an immense potential, and if you are not using it because you don’t have enough time, make the time as soon as you can because you might miss the boat.

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Until next time,

Steve E. Driz

Microsoft SharePoint 2010: New features for your business

SharePoint is a business collaboration and content management platform used for document collaboration, creating company wikis, blogs, Web sites, Intranet sites, and more. SharePoint also provides additional features like a company portal and centralized content libraries.

SharePoint integrates with Office 2010 and Office Web Apps to provide the Microsoft Office experience across the web, the desktop, phone and browser.

New and enhanced features of SharePoint 2010 include better collaboration, ability for several people to edit a document in real-time similar to the exisiting feature of Google Apps, new website design tools and last but not least, off-line access and synchronization.

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10 Ways To Generate Business Leads on Twitter

Today, I came across an excellent article on SocialTimes.com delivering what’s in their view are 1o ways to generate business leads on Twitter. If you own small-medium business and are not taking advantage of Twitter’s capabilities, this article should help you with the first steps.

• Tweet regularly and consistently. Visibility is key to growing your network and having people follow you first. If you were to track the growth of your network, you’ll probably notice a correlation to follower increase on those days that you do tweet.
• Build trust. Video might be better for building trust, but you can increasingly build rapport with people in your Twitter network. Rapport builds trust. Keep retweeting and mentioning them. Have casual conversations on Twitter.

For all 10, click here

Until next time,

Steve

Malware Advisory for users of Odnoklassniki.ru

A Russian website Odnoklassniki.ru, a social networking site that connects classmates and friends, seems to be distributing malware in a form of Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.ejl. It appears that another Russian website that supplies ad content – Adriver.ru is responsible for delivering the malware through it’s ad content, such as banners, on Odnoklassniki.ru.

According to Kaspersky.com website, the Trojan was detected at 4:08 a.m. on August 14, 2009, and the update released at 2:39 p.m.on the same day, meaning that as of that time, all users of Kaspersky antivirus were protected considering that they have received either automatic, or performed a manual virus signature update.

According to various online sources, Odnoklassniki.ru support team was notified of the problem on August 23, 2009, however, they have not responded as of 6:50 p.m. EDT.

Odnoklassniki.ru has over 40 million subscribers worldwide. We advise our valued customers and dear readers to refrain from visiting the website, and inform their friends and employees of a possible problem.

Unfortunately, many people use social media sites in a work place jeopardizing corporate network and data security.

The Driz Group 

True business value of Twitter

Friends,

Let’s face it, Twitter is hot. Similar to ICQ that took the online World by storm in the 90s, Twitter is making its rounds growing even more rapidly than any communication technology to ever enter the market. According to various news sources, one of the key issues Twitter is faced with is how to make it a commercial success without alienating its fans. Would it be as easy as setting up a structure whereby businesses will pay Twitter for reaching out to its customer base? This way, Twitter will remain free for all except for commercial entities.

In reality, monetization is the biggest issue majority of social networking and new media site are faced with. After all, we like free services specifically when we use it for pleasure, not business. While some debate that the benefits of Twitter are intangible, lately, there has been proof that by using Twitter you can increase your revenues and grow your business.

For example, according to Clare Baldwin of Reuters, Dell Computers raked in more than $3 million from Twitter followers who clicked through its posts to its Web sites to make purchases. Incredible considering that it does not take too much time or effort to be an active on Twitter.

For someone who believes is human interaction that we call networking, Twitter can be an invaluable tool for expending both personal and professional networks. In order to demonstrate the intangible value of Twitter, over the next several weeks, we will be posting 75 twittideas brought to you by Mr. Luis Viadel. Luis is a good friend whom I met on Twitter, and he is passionate about business strategy, communication and technology in the business.

Stay tuned,

Steve E. Driz