Thrifty Thursday - Tweetdeck, the free Twitter client

Tweetdeck, the free Twitter client for social media pros or amateurs... Tweet like a Pro! Are you searching for an amazing and free Twitter client? Look no further than Tweetdeck. This awesome resource is ideal for anyone who manages multiple Twitter accounts (myself I manage 9 accounts using Tweetdeck). Users can control the look and feel of the service (select light or dark themes) and you can also schedule tweets and integrate your favorite link shortening service with it (like bit.ly). Something kind of cool is the mute filter. Is there a topic that is driving you crazy? No worries, simply mute it and you won't see any more bothersome tweets on that topic.

Something new, Tweetdeck now has a really cool way to quickly add columns to your deck. Columns are where you follow everything that's important to you, including your @ mentions (aka. people that nudge you), important hashtags, and follow your favorite accounts. Additional column options include collections, trending topics, likes, your followers, scheduled tweets, direct messages.

Tweetdeck is from Twitter and you can get started easily simply by linking and signing in via Twitter at https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

Why you Should Include Video in Your Marketing Mix

Video is hot, really hot, however, many businesses are reluctant to add video into their marketing mix. The reasons are pretty simple. Most businesses that are avoiding video think that video marketing is too expensive, hard to figure out, takes too much time, and doesn't result in ROI. All of these things are far from the truth! Creating video may seem difficult, however, it’s really not. With some careful planning, a business can generate ideas that produce many hours of video content.

So, why consider video content? Here are 10 reasons:

1. Stats show that video is growing in usage year-over-year and not just for companies with a large ad budget. 
2. Videos are proven to attract and engage your audience
3. People want more video! Guess what the #2 search engine in the World is... yup, it's YouTube! 
4. Memorable videos are engaging and create trust.
5. Video is an extremely powerful medium to assist in making a decision to buy
6. Adding a video front and center on your homepage or landing page is a proven strategy.
7. Video helps reduce your website bounce rate and thus helps build Google page ranking
8. Video also indexes in search - think SEO!
9. Videos are easily repurposed over many of your marketing channels (Youtube, facebook, live feeds, web)
10. Share your best content in video. If you spend hundreds of hours creating a case study, article, or putting on an event, be sure to generate video around that content. If it worked once it will work again in video format! 
11. Bonus Tip - videos have been proven to be more easily shareable. Facebook and LinkedIn have been upgraded with added support for embedding video.

10 Things That You Should Be Including In Your Press Release

For many companies, the PR and marketing department may be a PR machine, constantly creating and distributing interesting news and press to share with the World. In the new age of new media you really don’t have to reinvent the wheel, however, for many companies, penning their PR has become rather robotic, with many of the same practices, styles, and tactics being used to get the word out. With that, I’d like to share a short list of 10 items that anyone creating a press release might/should consider including in their press release:

1. A Catchy, short Title – As hard as it is to believe, I see many PR releases come through with no title or simply with a subject “Press Release”. Use a catchy title with good SEO buzzwords and keep it short, about 120 characters max so it can be easily Tweeted
2. Corporate Twitter Name – no twitter account? You need to have one, plain and simple!
3. Link to Facebook Page – 500,000 million users a day, you’re company needs a FB page, be sure to provide a link to it
4. Keywords – at the end of your press release, provide a list of important keywords applicable to the release. This is great for added SEO
5. Related Image – If you have a photo, screencap, or image that’s related to your news upload it to your website and provide a link to it – don’t simply drop it in the email with your PR as a ZIP file or large file attachment – if you have a video clip even better!
6. Link to the PR release on your corporate website (or on a newswire). Many online editors will appreciate a link to a simple, html format version of your PR
7. Link to a related YouTube Video – Not using video yet? You should be and make sure to use youtube. Again this is valuable for sharing, youtube clips are fast and easy to embed and share, and best of all, a short video can tell the whole story. Keep the video under 3 minutes if possible
8. Use a valid reply to email when you distribute PR via email – Again hard to believe but if I receive your PR and hit reply to your email and this brings up an email address like noreply@company.com I’m likely going to hit the Delete and ignore your news
9. A suggested Tweet – again, at the end of your PR you might wish to provide a short, concise suggested Tweet that a person can quickly copy/paste – people will appreciate it.
10. An intro summary – not actually part of your PR, provide a paragraph that describes and summarizes your announcement. This is often very useful for a blogger or for an editor to use in some other way, perhaps in a facebook post or LinkedIn discussion post