Tweet Schedule

Tweet about your contest on the first day of your contest, during the mid-point of the contest, and on the last day of the contest. The first tweet brings the existence of the contest to your

Twitter followers. The second tweet lets them know it is still ongoing and advertises it to those unaware of it. The third and final tweet is for the people that were on the fence of entering your contest and also to bring it to the attention of those that were unaware of its existence up to that point.

When to Tweet the Contest

When Twitter is most heavily trafficked during the day is a good time to tweet about your contest. Common sense told me that time was mid-day and some others feel the same way. From Gary McCaffrey

I have charted them below showing how many visitors came  [to my site] at what hour of the day.

As you can see, the spike is between 12 noon and 2 p.m. From WebsiteDesignNewcastle,

The busiest time on Twitter is GMT 1900-2100 (7pm to 9pm). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this is lunchtime in the USA and in most Pacific time zones.

The quietest time on Twitter is GMT 0700-0900 (7am to 9am). That’s the midnight shift in the USA.

Hashtags

Get your tweet exactly in front of of the people that we will take action on them and click through to your contest, giveaway, and sweepstakes. Use Hashtags. I spoke about them in this post: How to Advertise your Movie Review aggressively on Twitter. The Hashtags that will make your tweet show up in the right Tweet searches are: Prize, Win, Free, Competition, Contest, Giveaway, DVD, Blu-ray, Movie, Film, and Sweepstakes. This modus operandi requires you to manually tweet your contests, most automated service will not add Hashtags, they will only tweet the title of the post and a redirect URL. If a service orb plugin does allow the use of Hastags, it will add those Hashtags to all your tweeted posts.

In the beginning

I usually begin my contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes tweet with WIN, in all caps. This signifies that there is something to be gained – a prize – by clicking through the link provided. It’s incentive advertising within your tweet.

In Conclusion

Use every social medium you can to promote your contest, giveaway and sweepstakes, especially Twitter. Billboard your contest instantly on Twitter during high traffic times and maximize the eyes on your contest tweets with the appropriate Hashtags.

Why a YouTube Channel?

Why not? Giving you step-by-step advice in a written format is one thing. Showing you in a video is a far better instructive tool.

Take Part

If you have a profile on YouTube, subscribe to us so that you never miss any of our video updates or if you want to be buddies, friend us. What would you like to see on our YouTube Channel? Do you own a movie website and have your own YouTube Channel? Are you signed up to YouTube? Let us know below.

Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously. Making an update on Ping.fm pushes the update to a number of different social websites at once. This allows individuals using multiple social networks to update their status only once, without having to update it in all their social media individually. Ping.fm groups services into three categories – status updates, blogs, and micro-blogs – and updates can be sent to each group separately.

I haven’t used the service myself but some swear by it, especially people managing large or multiple social networks for clients.

Ping.fm supports one of the most comprehensive lists of social media of any platform [42 at press time]…We want to make sure that we don’t have unclear, ambiguous messaging across social media. With Ping.fm, we can more directly access the people who will respond to ur messages through the various networks it supports.

So if you are busy churning out content – like you should be – and have a vast social network, give Ping.fm a go round. It might make your life easier.

]]> http://promovieblogger.com/broadcast-website-updates-to-all-your-social-networks-simultaneously/feed/ 0 http://promovieblogger.com/social-networking-join-twitter-and-place-a-twitter-icon-on-your-website/ http://promovieblogger.com/social-networking-join-twitter-and-place-a-twitter-icon-on-your-website/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 04:12:00 +0000 ProMovieBlogger http://promovieblogger.com/?p=1905 This might seem elementary but every movie website owner should have a Twitter account for their website so fans of the site can follow its up-to-the-second activities. You should also post a Twitter icon or logo on your website so that your audience knows you are on Twitter and include your Twitter address by some means e.g. a hotlink. How will people know you are on Twitter much less your URL there unless you tell them? I went onto this particular movie website yesterday (I really want to call him out, I really do) that had a Facebook Fan Box on it but no Twitter icon anywhere. I looked on the site’s About and Contact pages, looked on their Facebook Fan Page for a Twitter Application (they have those btw),  manually searched on Twitter, nothing. Upon recollection, I realized that this site never had a Twitter icon of any kind and the site has been operational for years. In this day and age, why would you dare sleep on and neglect the power of Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

Twitter allows you to market yourself freely across the globe. It allows you to research, gain quick insight into new trends, see what’s hot. Twitter allows you to advertise your products and services (e.g. the ad place you have available for purchase on your movie website) to people, groups and organization that would otherwise be out of your reach but I digress.

If you have not already, join Twitter here, use the name of your movie website as the URL for your Twitter account, and when the account is setup, place a Twitter icon, badge or image prominently on your website and make it easily visible. We spoke of Twitter icon positioning previously in this post: How to Set Up a Movie Website Sidebar: For Content.  Get creative if you like and use a graphic that draws the eye, provokes a smile, a laugh or curiosity. Twitter also offers ready made Twitter icons and badges here.

Its up to you, the point is, let it be known you are on Twitter on your movie website homepage. Also test the link and make sure that it is working and linking to your account once it is installed and visible.

If you can not figure out how to get icon to appear on your website page, try using this:

<a href=”The Twitter URL you are linking to” target=”_blank”><img src=”The image or icon you wish to display, loaded on the back-end of your website or from somewhere else”></a>

Place this into the HTML of your page where you want it to appear and/or if you are using WordPress and want it on your side bar, place it in the text widget and press Save when you are done.

Join Twitter today and advertise the fact that you are Twiiter to your movie audience. Chances are they are on Twitter as well and they may become your followers if your site and content are compelling enough. Hay, that reminds me, follow ProMovieBlogger on Twitter.

Movie Review Directory Advantage

By posting your movie review early and getting them listed on highly ranked movie review directories like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Movie Review Query Engine, Movie Review Intelligence, etc. you are more likely to get traffic to your movie review. If your RSS Feed is accepted into a service like MovieBlips, your movie reviews and content will be picked up, be displayed on their website, and be made searchable on it.

Sidebar Advertising

Consider creating a sidebar section on your movie website for Recently Reviewed Movies. This gives you the opportunity to advertise your movie reviews in text link form (or simply linking to them quickly). Everytime one of those links is clicked, that is an endorsement for that anchor text and your ranking in SERPs may go up. In addition, you get a page view for that click and if you get enough, the page rank for that review will creep up. This Afterschool Film Review (6th one down in the pic highlighted in purple) has no comments but enough people have viewed it so that it already has a Page Rank of 3.

Plugins

WordPress Related Post, LinkedWithIn (and its YAARP template) are Plugins that use the tags in your movie reviews (or any post) to find other posts with the same tags and display them underneath your post, in this case, underneath your movie review post. If Movie Review, Film Review or both are some of the tags you use for your movie reviews, other movie reviews with those tags will be displayed. I would suggest you also use the genre of the movie in question, the stars of the film and the director. Those tags will be helpful in you do a Film Awards post of some kind plus those people will work in other films are well. With those tags in place the posts will correlate with one another.

Ping

By using various ping services, search engines are instantly alerted that your website has been updated with new movie reviews. These two posts will help you with pinging effectively: The Importance of the Ping and XML-RPC-based Push Mechanisms and WordPress Ping List: April 2010.

A Newsletter

Start a e-Newsletter that your movie audience can subscribe to and get delivered by email to their inbox with hyperlinks within it to movie reviews on your website. Aweber can help you with this along with free newsletter templates.

Go Social

Twitter and Facebook your movie review links. Post them on your updates on MySpace. Digg your movie reviews. Stumble them. Get the word out! Initiate the message going viral. Allow others to do so with social networking buttons at the top or bottom or even on the side of your movie reviews. The Digg Digg WordPress Plugin should be of some assistance in these regards.

Drop’em

Drop links to your movie reviews on other related websites and forums. Some will click the link to come to your website to read your take on the movie in question. Do not do it frequently or you may get blacklisted, banned, and/or have your comments deleted. Because of the frequency of this advertising method, certain movie websites have grown extremely watchful and restrictive, i.e. The Movie Blog, about not letting you drop links or use Comment “Name” Website Advertising. Drop sparingly and if given the opportunity, reciprocate.

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