How Twitter Hashtags Can Help eBay Sellers To Sell Something On eBay- By OBVA Social Media Virtual Assistants

Social media is growing up faster than anyone can imagine. Businesses today use various social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to market their business. Same with eBay businesses.  In this post, we will discuss how eBay sellers can use  Twitter Hashtags to sell something on eBay.  Since, hashtags are doing really well, it is a good idea to explore how an eBay power seller can use hashtag to market his listings. Hashtags helps following relevant and real time tweets about any relevant product, service or any other subject. The tweets become more searchable and thus keyword targeting becomes easier.

Ebay sellers using Twitter would know the ‘#’ symbol, which is the hashtag used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. Hashtags are simply a way to tag tweet with subject matter/Keyword to make it easy to be found. Anyone can create a hashtag simply by placing the ‘#’ sign in front of a word. eBay sellers can effectively use hashtags to increase exposure, find relevant conversations to join with or retweet and ultimately, grow twitter accounts and your eBay business. This would eventually result in search engine optimizing of your web store . For example in this image you can see new listing link is also been mentioned along with #eBay new listings, so if you are going to update a new listing you can make use of this style.

Which hashtags to use?

Before starting on the hashtag, it’s best to know what the current popular hashtags are.  To use your hashtags in the most effective way, it’s best to keep up with these trends. You can check out sites like What the Trend, Twubs, Hashtags.org, and Tagalus.  The following search is from What the Trend site and gives the exact details of a seller. If a buyer is searching for you make sure that you are on top of the search by using hashtags.

To focus on data for popular hashtags you can also take notice of the tags being used by your followers and then search those tags on Twitter to see what kind of tweets is associated with your follower’s tags. The key to promoting your store and sell something on eBay through the use of hashtags is to identify the tags that are already popular within your community and use them, putting your message in front of everyone who follows that hashtag. To identify the keywords, do a keyword research.

Observe and start using your hashtags

After identifying these niche hashtags, observe them for a few days to get a feel for the types of messages that are shared to them. If you are a beauty store owner and if questions are being asked regarding some particular beauty products that you sell, answer them with the hashtag threaded in your response to increase your presence and knowledge. Getting in early on a trending topic can boost your exposure dramatically, which makes this effort worth some serious consideration if you’re hoping to significantly increase your Twitter following.

Create your own hashtags if you want to address your target customers. If thinking of offering a new listing in your store or some new auction with a price much cheaper than your competitors,  you can  create your own hashtag .

How to market your listing using hashtag?

Use a URL shortening service to shorten your store link and then you prepare your hashtags so that they will be posted to your Twitter account.  It is better to place your hashtags after your link. The reason for this is that it is not as distracting for Twitter friends and followers to read. To submit your tweets with hashtags, first remember that you want to allow space for your followers and customers to retweet your work. So make sure that you create a hashtag that will be retweeted and you get more customers to your eBay store. Your tweets should not appear as spam. Therefore, do not put too many hashtags in one tweet. Two to three hashtags should be your limit. And from time to time you can also tweet without hashtags also.

If you observe the tweets made by Consign Center and The Snobbery you can observe how effectively they have used #ebay for promoting their business.

Start exploring hastags and using them for promoting your listings on eBay.

You can contact us if you want any assistance in marketing your eBay store and listings. Our Social Media Virtual Assistants will be glad to help you. Also, you can contact us if you would like to talk to our outsourcing manager to know more about outsourcing your eBay store to a expert VA.

5 Hottest eBay Selling Tips To Increase Your Selling This Festive Season

What buyers may look for this holiday season and which store do they expect to buy? As many stores target their customers by introducing more offers and discounts, how you as an eBay seller, are going to stand out of the crowd and increase your turnover? Here are the 5 hottest tips that we follow for our clients stores  to increase the selling.

Follow these tips to increase you selling this holiday season.

Tip 1# Find and Sell Hottest Items That People Are Looking For:

Few items will always have a huge demand in the holiday season.  Find those items and try to sell them in your store with great deals. For e.g., If you are toy shop owner, try to search for the most wished items that people are looking for. A recent research states that Video Barbie dolls are the best selling this year. So do a research and find out the items that people are crazily looking for this holiday season.

Tip 2# Promise To Ship On Time:

Though many sellers sell items with  great deals, it is known to anyone that packages could mess up due to this holiday season. Hence they would always look for a store that ship items within 24-48 hours. This is the second factor that customers would see after choosing which item to buy. So promise your buyers that you would ship items within the specific time. If you can’t manage shipping, you can delegate your routine shipping label printing to experienced Virtual Assistants to take care of your shipping so that you can ship items in 24/7 hours. Include this in your listing as it would entice your customers to choose your store.

Tip 3# Include Free Shipping Option:

Free shipping option is another hot tactic followed by many retailers. Some are also offering discounts in shipping or include coupons for expedited shipping. The NRF’s data says, that some 5% of merchants will offer such a deal for orders placed as late as the last day of season. Hence push your sales by offering free shipping for orders and discounts in shipping for multiple orders.

Tip 4# Have Your Customers Spread The Word For You:

As we know, word of mouth is the best form of marketing, why not encourage your customers to talk about your offers and deals on their Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, blogs, etc? For example, you can offer free coupons or gift vouchers to your customers who can tweet your offers. By this way you can promote your store and you can have more customers. This technique have been used by very big companies like Microsoft and Facebook.

Tip 5# Avoid Selling Poor Quality Goods:

Since manufacturers are selling goods directly to their customers there may be shortage of inventory due to peak season. You must be prepared with inventory. Do not sell poor quality fake items. Because, any customer who loves your product will never go to other sellers. In this peak season, any new customer may come to store and purchase items. If they love your items, then there’s a chance that they may turn into long term returning customers. So make use of this by selling the goods directly from manufacturer. For this, you can take an inventory report daily and find out the best selling items and have them in extra stock so that you may not suffer.

With the above said tips I hope that you would be able to increase you sales this holiday season. For every sales do a market research and find out the hot trend and hottest items that sell in market. You can use effective eBay marketing tools to find the best selling items. If you find any difficult in doing it delegate it to professionals. We at OBVA do research for our clients and get them more sales and profit during holiday seasons. You can join our community by liking our Fanpage or following us in Twitter.

One More Solid Reason To Add More Listings This November – By OBVA eBay Experts

Like every year, eBay holiday offers are being rolled out. The offers are innovative, and focused at helping sellers encash more sales during the holidays. It is upto you how much you can make best use of the offers.

Recently, there was an announcement by Todd Lutwak, Vice President of Seller Experience recently  “One day only! On November 29, list up to 1,000 items Auction-style for free. Add Buy It Now for free, too!  This one-day only promotion applies to all sellers. If you have missed out this offer, you missed out something, but remember to stay tuned for more upcoming offers. If you really want to make the most of this holiday season , you have to stay tuned to the latest news and updates so that you can make the most out of this holiday offers. Here are some useful  Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You!

To start with, you should be prepared for more offers to come. How to get started?

Track your listing time:

You can create your listings at your convenience and control the time they start and end. eBay gives sellers the option of listing items for 1,3 or other days as per your choice. Any auction listing will end the same time the day it is supposed to end. When you list your items,  remember to apply the best listing ending time as per visitors traffic.

Optimize your listing endings smartly:

Your BIN listings and auction listings must end during a time when there are more visitors at eBay.  There is a general assumption that auctions that end on Sunday will have more bids. You can read “How to make your ebay auctions more effective” to know more on auction timings. Also, if your auction listings live for longer, you will get more bids. So, more chances of getting a good selling price for your product.

Your listing must be properly optimized for look, feel and SEO:

Start thinking as a potential customer and try and figure out how they are going to be searching for your item or your store. If you want your store or listing to show up when the customers search for it, make it keyword optimized. The right keyword can earn you first page in search and if you want it to be done in a professional way give the task to internet research experts who can give you good results. eBay tool  “eBay Research Labs BayEstimator” can be used here or the perfectly optimized eBay title. Here is a post  by eBay virtual assistants which gives “The Steps To Get High Search Engine Ranking Optimization For Your eBay Listings“.

Distribute the listing well using Social Media:

Recently Facebook introduced Tagging of photos for Fanpage. This means that you can create a listing, add your product image on your fan page and then tag those pictures with your fan page. You can use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin to promote your listings. Here are some of posts that can guide you. ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon.’ And also there are some of the applications that can be used to promote your eBay business such as 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business and 5 Twitter Applications That Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business. If you choose to automate your listings, then “Turbo Lister – Top eBay Marketing Tool “is a good tool to start with. However, it is always wise to have a person look through the listings done automatically, to review any errors, etc.

To create an effective listing you may need professionals help so delegate it to eBay virtual assistants who are experts in creating it for you. You should  have a team in place for all regular activities so that customers are taken care of in the busy season. A few negative feedbacks may spoil your chances of faring well during holiday season. So, why take a chance? Delegate your routine store tasks to professionals who can work with minimum supervision, so that you can focus on more sales this year end. Happy Holiday Selling to you!

Part II – Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You! Sell All The More Stuff On Amazon This Holiday Season

In my previous post Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You, I discussed on how we can attract more customers to the store during holiday season.  In this post we will discuss on  how to keep your customers happy this busy season with great customer service, how to handle post order problems and also how to keep your seller account secure.

Keep your customers smiling by great customer service

You have a attractive offer for your product listing that makes a potential buyer click on your listing. Good. But then, the buyer  checks your feedback and immediately leaves your store. All your hard work is gone for a toss now. As you know, customer feedback is very important for any business, and all the more important for online stores like Amazon where it is transparent for anyone to see. While we can work on getting the feedbacks removed , it is best to follow the rules to avoid feedback at the first place. Therefore, it is critical for sellers to pay close attention to their ratings everyday.  .  .

Amazon does automatically send buyers a feedback request after 30 days . Still, you can use creative ways to attract more positive feedback. For example, you can add a note with shipped products thanking customers for their purchases and requesting a feedback. This simple trick can boost seller feedback ratings. You can avoid 7 customer mistakes that can get you a negative feedback. Speedy shipping during busy season is very important for buyers as they purchase for gifts and they want the gifts to show up on time. Offering expedited shipping on your orders shows you care about customer satisfaction. Also, late shipping will impact your performance metrics in Amazon. Always try to ship the item as soon as you receive the payment so that you do your best to ensure the product reaches quick. When we print labels for our clients during our day, which is USA night, the products are shipped within 12-24 hours, as we make use of time difference. Most of our feedback says, ‘Fast Shipping’, ‘reached earlier than expected, and so on.’

Take care of your customers all through – post order  customer service

There is a higher probability of lost rate during holiday season due to large amount of volume the shipping companies get. In order to avoid any negative or neutral feedback after shipping the item make sure that you follow certain rules so that you keep your customers happy and make them your long term buyer.

a) Cancellations-

If a buyer has made a mistake with an order and wants to fix it by cancelling then you can cancel the order at your end and refund to the customer and make sure that the order is not shipped again which will cause unnecessary feedback. If the order is already shipped then ask the customer to send back the item and you can inform the customer that you will refund once you receive the item. This will make the buyer think that you are reasonable and are trying to help him and this will make him a happy customer.

b) Product not received-

As I mentioned earlier the lost rate during holiday season is high. And if a customer sends you an email that he has not received it give them full detail of shipment and also try to track the item at your end. If the item is not received by the buyer in the stipulated time then send a replacement or refund depending upon the customer’s choice.

There are cases when the tracking shows delivered but the customer did not receive the item. In those cases try to make communicate to the buyer in a polite way look for the item  and if still not received you can send a replacement to keep him/her as a repeat customer. In case of returning the item make sure to write your own return policy. Read these “5 tips on how to write return policy” to make sure that you write effective and transparent policy. The point is don’t keep the buyer in dark .

c) Item reached damaged –

It helps to have a clearly defined return policy which states under which cases, you will offer full refund, or part refund and which cases won’t be covered for refund. When your customer gets back to you for a return request, try to be reasonable. While answering customer emails, we try to put ourselves in customers’ shoes so that we can offer a best possible solution.

Keeping your seller account secure

During this holiday season there is will be higher volume which can make any account disrupt. Many internet software spammy mails and phishes can disrupt your computer or seller account. You need to avoid these in order to keep your account secure. Start updating your software which you use for security on a regular basis. Since internet hackers can get your password and other security questions keep your malware scanning programs on your computer up to date.

You can also restrict your internet usage to only those sites you know and trust so that any unknown person or kids cannot use your computer. Update whatever software or operating system you are using and also download their security patches.  Be careful in opening email which do not end with “@amazon.com”. And also make sure go directly to the Amazon.com website to make any changes to your seller account. You do not want to be stuck with a fraud and loose money when your goal is to make more money on Amazon.

I hope my previous post and this one would have given you some ideas on how to sell stuff on Amazon in coming holiday season. If you do not have time to manage these tasks, delegate to dedicated professionals who would keep your customers happy and satisfied. I would really appreciate if you comment and grab our RSS feed. You can also like our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter.

Part 5 –Blackthorne Basic– Top eBayMarketing Tool Series Post By eBayVirtual Assistants At OBVA

eBay Virtual Assistants at OBVA are sharing the best of eBay marketing tools like Turbo Lister, Terapeak, eBay listing analytics, Selling Manager based on what we use for our client stores. To be a powerful seller in eBay marketplace, every eBay seller should keep on learning new updates on eBay tools and techniques. One way you can do this by participating in various eBay blogs and forums, like OBVA BLOG , ebay INK blog , and a few others that share fresh news and information on eBay. Another best way is to subscribe to our blog so that you may not miss out any of the new updates on eBay

The eBay marketing tool for today’s post which we have selected is Blackthorne.

What is Blackthorne?

Blackthorne is similar to Turbolister. i.e it is also an offline tool that can be downloaded in the computer. Blackthorne Basic is an effective bulk listing tool that can also be used in post auction management, tracking auction listings, tracking emails and manage feedbacks.   Blackthorne has more functionality over Turbolister since the latter can be used only for bulk listing. Using Blackthorne you can bulk list your items, track and manage the sale of your items, send emails in bulk etc..

Features of Blackthorne:

• Acts as a powerful time saver in creating and managing your listings.
• You can create, edit and list your items in bulk.
• You can send emails in bulk. Similarly you can leave feedback in bulk.
• You can track, manage and schedule your listings.

How to subscribe Blackthorne basic?

Blacthorne comes as a free tool for 30 days and then you will be charged $9.99 per month. You can subscribe to Blackthorne by clicking this link.Your subscription for Blackthorne will be activated then. Additional information is that Blackthorne can be in international sites such as eBay Canada, eBay U.K., and eBay Australia.

Limitations:

Any tool will have some limitation, so has Blackthorne. This is an effective tool for small and medium sized eBay sellers. For high volume sellers, the pro version is much better and more functional.. Therefore, they can go for Blackthorne Pro that has extra additional features than Blackthorne basic, where you need to pay $24.99 per month.  The features Blackthorne Pro are free listing designer templates, print shipping labels and invoices in bulk, creating and managing inventory reports, creating monthly P &L reports etc..

By using this tool you can effectively manage and save your time thereby utilizing your time in focusing on core areas of your business. If you would like to become a successful eBay seller like other top sellers, you can smartly delegate your tasks to eBay virtual assistants. eBay Virtual Assistants at OBVA help our clients in managing eBay stores effectively, by printing shipping labels in bulk(remote shipping), managing inventory, sending invoice to customers, managing monthly P & L reports, managing customer service, feedback, disputes and claims and much more.  We also write effective listing descriptions for products, conduct internet research to find hot selling products and it’s competitive prices and suppliers. If you are tired doing everything on your own, delegate smartly to OBVA professionals. Please contact us today and start selling more. We never work for your competitors.

Facebook Video Calling Launched – Powered By Skype

OBVA Virtual Assistants are excited to share the news of Facebook Video Calling, as announced by Mark Zuckerberg recently. This awesome feature was introduced just a week after Google +1 announced its Hangout feature which encourages to say, “I’m online and want to hangout !” , As most of the internet marketers predicted, Facebook launched its live chat with friends feature immediately after the Google+1 announcement..  This announcement was made by Mr. Zuckerberg live on Facebook Live page. Mashable was amongst the first who shared this news on its “Facebook Launches Skype-Powered Video Chat & More [VIDEO]”

Facebook has come up with this feature in partnership with Skype which will help it building and rolling out the video chat service. Facebook’s video chat service would hook in to Facebook chat and allow in-browser Skype calls to other Facebook users. Sounds easy!

How to get started :

With more than 750 million users excited to try out this new service, possibility of website conjunction is high. Thus, you may need to wait for a while before you actually make your first video calling from your Facebook profile. Just visit http://www.facebook.com/videocalling to get started. You have to do a onetime setup by clicking the set up button. Once you download the pop up file, you can get started right away video chatting.

Facebook respects privacy:

1. The calls are not recorded.

2. Only your Facebook friends can call you. And obviously, you have an option of ignoring calls.

3. Don’t want video calls? Just change the settings on your chat box.

4. Someone has too much free time to disturb you? Simply can block any contact from video calling you.

Why we may use Facebook Video Calling?

1. It lets us make video calls for free.

2. We can talk to our clients on Facebook if they are not logged in on Skype. We can talk to our friends too!

3. An easy way to communicate with people who liked our Fanpage.

4. More personalization

5. We can use this mini Skype application even after closing our Facebook window.

6. It is less hassle than Google Hangout if we want to use for one-on-one chat. Very easy to set up.

Why we would prefer Google Hangout?

1. Perfect solution if I want to make a free group chat for upto 10 people. To install the plugin click here.

2. Can watch group youtube/video too. We liked this feature very much.

Are you in a fix which site to use for your video calls? ReadWriteWeb’s “Why Fype When You Can Hangout? Why Google Hangouts Are Better Than Facebook Skype” is an interesting comparative blog post which might help you get a deeper understanding on this.

We  at OBVA use Skype for video calling and conference calls for inter-team and client calls. Facebook video calling may not be useful for professional calls because there are more chances of disturbance from your other contacts during the call. We will try out Google Hangout to check the video/Youtube shared screening feature. This feature can be used for business purpose if you want to give a recorded training to your virtual assistant or share some presentations with your clients. Skype has gained a reputation as a dependable communication tool over the years. It may take some time for the new entrants to take its market share when it comes to video calling.

Part 4 – 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used Effectively For EBay and Amazon Businesses – Shared By OBVA Social Media Virtual Assistants

Social media Virtual Assistants at OBVA have posted blog posts on ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon.’ These posts are a part of the blog post series where the social media assistants at OBVA working for small businesses and eBay/Amazon stores share their experience with everyone. Now we would like to share some of the applications of these social media sites which can be used for eBay and Amazon businesses.

We will start with the Facebook applications. Facebook is home to over 350,000 other applications and they were created by third-party developers across the world. With so many apps Facebook provides a great opportunity to use them for better eBay and Amazon business. Almost every online business has claimed a Facebook fan page. You can integrate your fan page with your website/blog and then integrate your website/blog with your fan page. So, you can use Facebook to get traffic to your website and then direct it to your web store.

Here are 6 effective Facebook applications which can be used for eBay Business and Amazon Business-

1. Facebook Reviews

Facebook Reviews can prove to be very useful for eBay and Amazon stores. Customers can leave a review for the products you sell at your store. These reviews give new customers more confidence on your store as they know more about you from other customer reviews. To make this work, you have to add this application to your fanpage. By encouraging reviews on your fanpage, you encourage people to connect with you for longer time. Be careful to immediately respond to negative reviews .

2. Social RSS

You can use Social RSS to integrate your blog and fanpage. For example, a person selling diapers at eBay can write a review post on his product and his reviews will automatically be published on his Facebook fan page wall using Social RSS. Similarly, if he is running multiple blogs/websites for multiple products, Social RSS can be used to syndicate all the posts automatically at the fan page wall. Isn’t it cool?

3. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an email marketing tool. When you sell for eBay, you get lot of customer email contacts. Add them as a list to your constant contact and then send our mailers to customers when you have an attractive listing on products of their interest. When this tool is added to fanpage, it can do the work of collecting contacts for you. For example, you may launch an offer just for fans and then they have to register to be eligible for it. Constant contact can capture the contacts easily.

4. Promotions

With monthly active users of 377,511 and growing, Promotions is a real gift to any eBay and Amazon business. As a seller you can start a giveaway contest or other promotion to more people to your storefront.  Offer something “free” and you’ll have your fans hooked. Just be ready to be creative on your promotions!

5. Coupons

Want to offer promotional discount coupons? Now you can do that on your fanpage. However, you will have to give a cut to Facebook for this. You can add coupons for your fan page members. They can use these coupons to buy products from your store. Another great feature is you can remind your new customers to leave a review at your reviews tab.

6. Youtube

Youtube can be used to create a relevant, interesting, informative and appealing video presenting your most profitable product listing at your eBay or Amazon store. Your video content should motivate the people to talk, discuss and finally visit your store. You tube can be used as a social media marketing strategy for more traffic.

Add these applications to your Fanpage today. The key to social media success is smart integration between your Fanpage, Website/blog and your online store. Be careful to follow all eBay seller rules. If you think you have too much to do and less time to do all that is required to sell better at your online store, contact us today for a free consultation on how the Professional Virtual Assistants at OBVA can help you reduce costs and increase efficiency.

PS: My next article will be on Use of Digg by eBay and Amazon stores. Subscribe to RSS feeds so that you do not miss out on the content.

I highly appreciate any feedback via comments.

Part 3- 5 Effective Ways To Promote Your eBay and Amazon Business Using Twitter

In our last blog posts, Virtual Assistants from OBVA shared “Part 1 – 7 Powerful Ways eBay Sellers Can Use Facebook” ,“Part 2-5 Ways eBay Sellers Can Use LinkedIn ”, on how eBay and Amazon sellers can use Facebook and LinkedIn profiles for better promoting their listings, marketing and for SEO of their listings to become successful sellers. OBVA online store expert virtual assistants now share how an online store owner can use Twitter for effective marketing of their online store. Twitter is a great and extremely fast way to disseminate any kind of information, be it personal or business. You can use commenting on Twitter effectively for establishing yourself as an expert in your industry.

Here are some proven ways to promote your eBay and Amazon business using Twitter-

1. Follow influential people from your industry on Twitter

You can follow others in eBay or Amazon business, people who are working in these companies, or their thought leaders. “Communicate with them” Following a good‐sized community can be valuable and fun! Mashable has written a blog post on “10 Ways to Find People on Twitter” which shares useful search engines and tools to help you search amazing twitter people to follow in your business. Another useful blog post came from Mashable on “Google Helps You Find People to Follow on Twitter” on how you can use Google to search people to follow on Twitter. Then I also came across an interesting blog post by Social Media Examiner on “5 Ways to Use Twitter to Connect With Local Customers.”  If you are a local business owner, this post will make lot of sense for you. When we do local SEO for or clients, we use a lot of tips from this article.

We searched ‘eBay’ on tweepz and got many profiles who have something to do with eBay. PLUS, we also got valuable information like number of followers, following, updates, etc.

2. Get people to follow you

Following people and receiving their updates is great, but you need people to follow you back and receive your updates too. Make sure that your Twitter username is easy to find. If it is personal name, it helps people to get to know the person behind the company/brand you tweet about. Personal faces are better in Social Media than just logos behind a brand name. It is obvious that your tweets must be resourceful for others so that others get value by following you. And then, finally, you must interact with people on your twitter. When you post your listings, follow the communications happening around it.

3. Use Twitter for marketing

Twitter can be effectively used to drive people to your online store. Have you recently updated an interesting offer on your eBay listing? Share it! Talk about it! Spread the enthusiasm about your great offer. It is important that you monitor what people are saying about your store on Twitter. Use Twitter Search tool , to know what people are saying about your store listings and products, competitors or any other hot words in your industry. You can use Twitter hashtags to sell your products as it would greatly increase traffic to your site. You can store all your positive feedback and testimonials on twitter favorites. Tweet‐ups are a great way to get to know your Twitter community offline. The next time your store offers any new listings or give away product, tweet about it!

4. Use Twitter for customer service

Respond to concerns people tweet about your store or listings. Delegate this responsibility to either one of your employee, or to a social media virtual assistants (available starting $10/hr only). Respond to feedbacks, give feedback and help customers solve their products in real time. If there is any temporary problem with shipping, etc, you can inform people using twitter.Your customers will be appreciative that your store is trying its best to relieve the problem. Personally thank everyone for following your store on twitter rather than sending automated messaged.

5. Use the following applications effectively

Twitter has a whole world of available support applications you can utilize to gain the most of the service for your business. Here’s a few:

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension to view your followers, for @replies, update your status,etc. You can keep track on what people are saying about your listing updates using this tool.

TwitterAnalyzer gives you in-depth analytics of your Twitter experience, like number of tweets per day, popularity, reach, links, and more. This one will help you understand which link updates and offers are popular and which are not. Learn from it!
TweetLater: Use this schedule your listings update or join a conversation or track topics/trends.

Ping.fm: Use this to post your best listings in all social media sites at once.

Twitter for Facebook: Use this to link your Facebook with twitter, if you want to. However, I don’t suggest that. Because, Twitter can digest many many updates in a day, but Facebook cannot.

As you can now understand, Twitter can be used to promote your stores and listings in an effective way. As a store owner in eBay or Amazon you would like to target the customers who will be following you. There is a fair amount of potential to gain new customers to your store , but it depends on how you promote or sell your store on Twitter.  The process can be time consuming most of the times, but you have an option of delegating your work to professionals who can help you save time and still get your social media going. If you have the time, you can do your own social media. If you have any question regarding using twitter for your online business, drop us an email. Join us on twitter today!

The next post will be “5 Effective Ways To Promote Your eBay and Amazon Business using Digg”. Grab our RSS feed so that you do not miss the information you need.

OBVA Social Media Certified Professionals Share 5 Ways Of Using Comments To Increase Your Web Presence

1. Using Facebook Comments:

Many small businesses add Facebook comments to their business blogs. However, many do not know that Facebook comments add ZERO value to the SEO of the site as far as Google is concerned. Why? Because, Facebook comments are served in an iframe and therefore Google spiders won’t be reading these comments. All your comments belong to Facebook, not to your site. Now, this is something you must know, if you do not know this already. Google uses comments to determine how influential an article is and thus losing out on comments may mean a lot for any blogger.  So, one may consider alternate commenting options like Akismet plugin for wordpress.

Facebook as a commenting platform offers a huge tool to create and maintain reputation for any professional or business. You may not want to add Facebook Comments to your blog, but, you can certainly use Facebook Comments to comment on other blogs which you like. When you leave intelligent comments on your industry related blogs, Facebook could know who carries a high reputation on certain type of content.  After seeing the possible implications of Facebook commenting, as a blogger, I will think many times before implementing Facebook commenting as it has minimal SEO value. However, it can certainly add value to readers as the comments become more meaningful for group of readers related on Facebook. Commenting on all relevant Facebook posts may be very time consuming, and here you may think of hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant who can work on your behalf.

2.  Using Disqus Comments:

It is a very impressive system that brings a lot of new capabilities to us bloggers.  For example, the ability to do threaded replies is very good.  This means anyone can engage anyone else directly, rather than replying in general to all.  The threaded replies are indented, making it easy to track sub-discussions.  I would say this is one of my favorite features though many bloggers have switched to Disqus commenting, this doesn’t have a greater impact on indexing on Google. It would just helps in increasing your business reputation as it is strongly connected to a large discussion community. The reason it doesn’t help in Google ranking is, it allows only no-follow comments that would not give any back link to your site which would certainly be a drawback for link building. Another disadvantage is all the comments are stored on Disqus server and not on your wordpress site. Hence if the server goes down or if something happens, we will be unable to retrieve the data from the server. Therefore what would be other option?

3. Commenting On Relevant Industry Blogs:

This is the best way of increasing traffic to your site if you have the time and patience to read the articles and then leave a meaningful comment. If you have a Social Media Virtual Assistant who is intelligent enough to leave comments which will add value to your online reputation, this may be the best tool for you.

How it works?

When you post keyword rich interesting comments to high page ranking blogs that are related to your business/product, it would make your readers possibly click through to your site thereby increasing your site traffic. A few things to keep in mind while using this approach to gain some links and reputation- you may post comments in a site that has less number of comments so that the possibility of you getting noticed and a link is higher. Internet Research will help you find competitor sites and the relevant industry sites where you have to make your presence felt. Secondly, posting comments to only dofollow sites will fetch you links and traffic.  A bad way to do commenting would be to spam others’ blog and websites. Commenting can gain you good reputation if you have something to contribute or some informative/informed statements to make. Else, sooner or later, you will be blocked and ignored.

4. Using Linkedin Comments:

Though LinkedIn comments are less popular than Facebook in terms of volume, Linkedin is more useful for SEO and for building more credibility. Google and Bing can easily index your business information in Linkedin . The extent to which you can leverage your Linkedin profile depends on how much your profile is keyword optimized. As per Schrum in a webinar,  “When optimizing a profile on LinkedIn, the person with the most keywords wins”. Hence make sure that your profile and business details are described in details and the content must have more keyword density. While commenting on Linkedin, make sure your comment makes sense to your professional contacts on this site. Linkedin is a purely business networking site and thus your tone must be very professional here. Read  “Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn ” written by top blogger Guy Kawasaki to know more on the best use of LinkedIn.

5. Using Twitter  Comments:

How Twitter helps increase your traffic?

What Google does is, it would fix a score for each Twitter account. The higher authoritative i.e the trustful information it provides and the age of the account matters to get the high score. Hence a high score twitter can get a better rank in Google search engine. Google also considers retweeting information of the Twitter account of a blog/site that has trusted information. Hence when people retweet your site, it will increase your online reputation. It is wise to add Twitter share feature to your blog/website as the more people share your site and content, the better reputation you get online.

Also, when you comment on other high ranking sites and your comments are retweeted, you certainly get recognition as a active participant in your targeted content category. Want to learn more on how to use twitter for your business effectively? Read this case study of ‘40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them’ b y Mashable. If you feel it is too much of work to make Twitter work for your business, hire a Social Media Virtual Assistant to make it easy for you.

Finally, make commenting a part of your overall Social Media marketing strategy but do not rely on it 100%. The goal is to be wherever your product/industry is discussed and make your presence felt.  People will observe your tweets, Facebook comments, your blog posts, and website and also what others are saying about you. All this adds up to build your online presence in a way that differentiates you from the crowd.  Do you use Commenting as your online reputation tool? Share with us in your comments..

5 Best Reasons Of Hiring Social Media Virtual Assistants For Your Business: Shared By OBVA Virtual Office Assistants:

Social media marketing involves variety of tasks to increase traffic to your site. The process is very time consuming because effective social media involves active regular participation, interaction and also contribution of unique new ideas and content. Social media is effective but it eats up a lot of time of the online entrepreneurs. Also, experts are good at doing Social Media the right way to get you more traffic and customers.

5 reasons why you need to consider hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant for your business are as follows-

Reason 1 – Creating Content To Share On Social Media:

Social Media sites today are hungry for new content. You need something to initiate that conversation or to show off your expertise in your line of business. The content should be good enough that your social media contacts click through to your site to get more of it and even subscribe for regular content. Apart from the need of high quality content, you also need to ensure that the content is keyword rich for effective SEO. Do you have the time to write regular content for your business? Are you an expert writer? Even if you are good at writing, isn’t your time more justified when spent on your core business rather than doing something that someone else can do for you?

A smart leader will delegate to the right people and here is where Social media virtual assistant come into the picture. They are professionals and are experts at creating great content quickly.

Reason 2- Creating And Setting Up Social Networking Profiles:

There are plenty of important social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google plus etc.. that help you create an identity for your business. Making a profile is not as simple as it seems to be. The profile url, description, username, etc. can be made keyword rich to make best use of the links. Like website optimization, you can optimize your social media profile too.

Social Media Virtual Assistants can help you in creating and setting up a keyword rich profile for your business in important networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Myspace etc..and others which are specific to your area of business. For example, if you are interested in venture capital, then The Funded is where your business should be apart from the regular sites like Facebook, twitter etc

Reason 3- Updating And Managing Your Profiles Regularly:

Social Media efforts to increase traffic are not a one day job. Your profiles have to be updated regularly to get more social media presence. Managing your profile with updates of your products, posting blogs, event listing can highly help in promoting your business to the target market. Also these sites are coming up with many new features day by day that you should keep on learning them to participate effectively with your customers. Responding to your readers’ queries can help build a good relationship with your contacts which then lead to word of mouth advertisement. Do you have the time to keep on responding to all the messages on your fan page wall? Most of our clients hired us because they had to end up the distractions from Facebook notifications on their blackberries. We read at a Mashable blog post, average person spents 5.5 hrs per week in social media. Clients hire us on a fixed package or hourly basis, and we take care of their profiles while they focus on their core business areas.

Reason 4- Research:

Research is important to be aware of your competitors and the market. Internet research can be a great tool to equip you with more knowledge of what the market is talking about and who are listening and delivering what is needed in the market. OBVA Social Media Assistants conduct regular internet research to keep track of the latest news and then we come up with news on whats new and fresh to read. This is what attracts more participation on social media.

They help you in finding out your competitors to help you choose the best way to improve your business. They also update you about what your audience is saying about you.

Reason 5- Blog Posting Writing And Distributing:

Writing a nice blog post is an effective way of getting traffic via social media. When you share blog post with keyword rich title, chances are that your updates will show up on google search. Blog post writing and then distributing on social media is a very smart way of showing off your expertise. If your social media contacts like your updates, chances are that they will click through to your website to get more of it.

Conclusion:

Social media is important and online businesses can’t afford to avoid it. Here is some fresh statistics to prove this point –

1.  During the average 20-minute period in 2010, there were: 1,5870,000 wall posts, 2,716,000 photos uploaded and 10,208,000 comments posted. (AllFacebook.com)

2.  More than 250 million people use Facebook Connect every month. (Facebook)

3.  The average American Internet user watches 30 mins of video online per day [40 % increase over 2009] (comScore) Compared to 5 hours of television per day.

4.  22 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months (comScore).

We know that social media is unavoidable for businesses today. Most of online business owners are not able to make a time commitment to social media. OBVA Social Media Virtual Assistants are good at helping small businesses be connected to their customers, prospects and creating and sharing new content. We help you creating and setting up profiles in top most social networking sites, writing keyword rich blogs, managing your store account, responding your customer’s queries, posting blogs in top ranking sites/ directories and other customized outsourcing services. Contact us today for free consultation. We never work for your competitors.