Las Vegas Photo and Video is passionate about photography and video.  So much that they are all full time employees of the company.  It is not just a hobby for them, but a full time career.  For 14 years they have partnered with corporations and associations to produce amazing event photography and videography.  Hiring Las Vegas Photo and Video is a great investment for your marketing goals.  They will capture all of the best moments digitally for you to enjoy for marketing and prompting your event for future years.  As a team they have over 100 years of photography experience.  Their event photography experience has proven to be so top notch that their clients often ask them to travel to their next event.

We are happy to add Vegas Photo and Video to our growing list of clients!

Bodyheat Tanning opened it’s doors in 1997.  The primary reason for opening was that they couldn’t find a tanning salon with consistency in performance. Other salon’s beds were small and they didn’t feel like the value was there to make Customers return.

They now offer a wide range of tanning services to Las Vegas Customers in their 13 locations.

The website includes the custom Jenny CMS (Content Management System) which enables the client to easily make changes to the website without having to wait.  It also has some pretty cool Flash animation elements.

Jennifer Web Design Las Vegas is proud to have Bodyheat Tanning as a client, and encourage you to check out their redesigned website.

Using Twitter is a great way to manage existing clients and source new clients. However, managing an aggressive Twitter campaign for your business is not an easy task.

The Twitter home page is designed to be simple.  It’s like a bike with training wheels.  Most “power-user” Tweeple don’t even go to the Twitter home page to manage their exiting Twitter accounts.  Using the Twitter homepage to manage an aggressive twitter campaign can be painful.   Fortunately there are a few tools that can help you to monitor and manage your Twitter account.

Tools to View and Send Tweets

TwitterFox – (Free) Is a great tool for people that use the Firefox Browser.

TweetDeck – (Free) A Desktop clients that allows you to View Multiple columns, and adds in you Facebook account too.

Seesmic – (Free) Similar to TweetDeck

Twitterific – (Free and Not Free) For the Mac Geeks.

Tweetlater - (Free and Not Free) Let’s you schedule Tweets.

Tools to Follow Trends

Twitterfall – A great way to insert yourself in a relevant conversation and find potential new followers organically.

#Hashtags – Works great for people that use the Hashtag, but may be losing some relevance in the age of better Twitter search functionality.

Search Twitter – Works.

Tools to Manage Followers

Twellow – Sort of like the Yellow Pages for Twitter…  great feature is the Twellowhood.  Helps you to find regional followers.

My Tweeple – Manage all your people in one place.  Interfaces with Twitter, the ratios are very interesting to use when making a follow choice.

Quitter – Tells you when people stop following you

Friend or Follow – Lets you see who is sharing your Twitter love, and helps you to quickly identify who is following you.

Of course this is just the beginning.  Jennifer Web Design in Las Vegas offers free initial consultation on how you can use Twitter to promote your business.  Contact Us to schedule an appointment today.

Of course…  this is just a starter list.  There are plenty of other tools as well.  What are your favorite tools?

I was once a Twitter evangelical nerd.  I sat on the mountaintop and preached that if anyone was well positioned to “kill” Google it would be Twitter.  It made perfect sense to me.

To recap:

• Twitter can provide an instantaneous index of the current landscape of the Internet…  Google cannot.
• Twitter can provide user generated filtering of Bull poopy where content that is cream of the crop will float to the top.
• Twitter can contain the verbose and force them to stick to a few good points.

I still believe in Twitter, but just like anything else in this world, once it gets popular and gets under the microscope the imperfections get amplified.  The retweet is a gigantic Zit on the Supermodel nose, and there is no Clearasil in sight.

For those of you that don’t know what a “retweet” is;  a retweet is when one person copies a tweet from someone in their Twitter network and shares it with the people in their own network.  For those of you that don’t know what a “Twitter” is; I would really like to understand how you get your cave wired for cable.

In theory the retweet is the definition of “word of mouth” advertising.  The more people share something with others the more relevant or important it becomes.  It makes sense.  However, there is a missing element in 90% of the retweets that I get from people.  Most people don’t add WHY they are retweeting.  A retweet without context is a sandwich without bread.  Non-contextual retweets fall into the “White Noise” category of information.

It’s gotten so bad lately that I have been “de-friending” the habitual retweeters.  In fact, there have been a few folks that only retweet.  In my opinion, a genetically engineered Gerbil could be trained to only retweet.

I understand that Social Media gurus teach this a way to “get the word out”.  I appreciate the sentiment of the idea, and agree that it might be successful in the short term, but in the long run it is absolutely the worst thing to happen to Twitter.

Why is it so bad?

White Noise retweet posts without context will become the “boy who cried wolf” of the internet, and eventually people will just start tuning them out.  This will kill the potential power of the search tool Twitter has at their fingertips.  It will be ruined by the tribes that can assemble enough people to retweet inane posts, and influence the search capabilities.  It is no longer user-generated content, and now becomes user-manipulated content.

How it can be fixed?

Add context for your retweets.  Tell people why you think they are important.  Without context to our retweets, we are nothing more than social media capable genetically engineered gerbils.

1. Upload your author photo. Profiles without photos look unprofessional and seem ordinary. Since you want to stand out and draw people in, get a professional photo done. If you are in the Las Vegas area we recommend you call Connie Palen with PhotoWorks – she is an amazing photographer, we use her for all of our client photo shoots. She is currently offering a portrait sitting for under $100.00. If you don’t have your professional photos at this time, give her a call at 702- 221-1653 and tell her Jennifer Web Design as always, recommends her services.

2. Upload your 140 character author bio. Don’t wait on this one.

3. Spend a little time each day, even if just 15 minutes, becoming involved in the Twitter conversation. Try to provide your own thoughts, unique ideas, and certainly find interesting ways to present things about your business.

If you are still confused, or want more personal assistance on setting up your Twitter account, and further understanding how to use Twitter in your business, and for your business, contact us. We can assist.

Keep your eyes out for more postings on how to further attract Twitter followers and why that is important.

CNN, Fox, Katie Couric, Anderson Coper, Kevin Smith, Shaq, and Starbucks all use it to communicate with people.  More and more businesses are using it to communicate and “touch” their customers, and adopting it as a valuable marketing tool.  It still is a relatively recent tool, but is catching steam, and it is catching a lot of steam.  It is a great way to build brand loyalty, and communicate in a concise format with your customers.

The most amazing thing about Twitter is that it has a very viable chance to be the “Google Killer”.  TheTtwitter user generated content that can be searched can provide more instantaneous results on contemporary topics that Google.  It will be an interesting race to watch.