Here are some popular ways of celebrity promotion on Internet.

Own a Facebook page

There’s no other social networking site as powerful, as popular as Facebook. To reach out to the fans and keep them updated with the latest work a celebrity can own a page. It’s a great way to increase the fan and follower base. Just by putting a ‘like’ button the celebrity can achieve millions of followers. A celebrity can post his or her latest pictures, events to attend, achievements, recent offerings and work and all on his page, for the followers to cherish a piece of the celebrity’s life. A celebrity can also treat his fans and followers with regular status updates, reply to comments and frequent updates. It’s a great way to keep up the popularity high. One can do every bit of Facebooking from a mobile phone.

Twitter is magical

Twitter is one more platform to build up a huge base of followers. Twitter also offers high credibility by authenticating a celebrity with verified member status. Twitter is a great tool to let the world know what the celebrity is doing every moment, where he or she is heading to, what he is eating, whom he is meeting, what’s his plan for the day, whom is he dating and partying with. Such updates keep fans hooked onto Twitter, staying in touch with every bit of the celebrity. Twitter also allows celebrities to post personal pictures and upload posts immediately, even from mobile phone.

Blogging

Personal blog is one more personalized way of a celebrity to reach out to its fans and followers. Regular blog posts are a must to keep up the interest of its visitors. It’s like reflection of a celebrity where he or she can freely express his thoughts, ideas, goals, dreams – anything under the sun. Blogs are highly interactive as readers not only read actively, but also drop comments and come back regularly.

This is the month where Twitter has witnessed a negative growth of 9.4% on its September number which was 28.3 million. If we see year-on-year growth of other two social networking giants LinkedIn and MySpace than we will see a similar decline in the number of unique visitors. MySpace has recorded a negative growth of 20.5%, and it has fallen from 73 million unique visitors to 58 million, and LinkedIn has recorded a 4.7% negative growth, taking its tally from 14.6 million unique visitors to 13.8 million uniques.

Why I think Facebook is killing others?

We all have a finite 24 hours in a day, which we distribute (unevenly) on the works we do, and we have only so much time for social sites or Internet surfing. Seeing the average time spent by users on Facebook, which is in excess of 40 minutes a day, I think, people hardly get time left for other social networks.

Not only that, our habit of unevenly spreading time, also leaves us wanting for more time, which for many could mean cutting back on time spent on the Internet. And as people are more or less addicted to Facebook, time spent on other social sites drops down, which in the long term means, pulling out of these websites.

How they can survive?

For social networks like LinkedIn and twitter, which are not direct competitors of Facebook, developing a Facebook application could be a way, or may be not.

Here are tips about how to promote books online.

Use social networking sites

Social networking websites are the best choice for promoting a book. Especially when your target audience is youth, modern, educated Internet savvy bunch of people – social networking sites are ideal. Twitter and Facebook are great platforms. Publicize the book release date on Twitter and Facebook. Publish details of the event in advance including venue, time and send the invitation to all friends in your list or tag them. Who doesn’t wish to buy a book autographed by the author? Enrich your personal page with detail. Publish your day to day thoughts, photographs, achievements, goals, events, experiences. It brings author close to the readers as they come to know the author closely. It will make them even more interested to know you, respect you, admire, and follow you. Also write the thoughts that inspired you. You should include all big news channels, publishers, newspapers, journals, critics in your friend and follower list. Post book inaugural and book cover page photographs. It will hike interest among your prospective readers.

Start blogging

Start blogging. Publish small extracts from your book in your blog. Promote your blog link through social networking sites. While reader reads your blog post, put a link which will land the reader in your website, from where they can directly buy your book. Stir interest, curiosity and leave the rest to be discovered in the book.

Give online purchase offers

Put some attractive offers for online buyers like first 50 online buyers, buying from your website will be entitled to 20% discount. Publicize the same everywhere on social networking sites.

Get into email marketing

Send attractive mailers to prospective buyers, entitling them special discount. Mailers can be sent to those who subscribed for mails and newsletters on your website. Email marketing can be used not only to sell your book, but also to share news about your achievements, critic’s appraisal, launch date of the book etc.

But, which social media is the marketers’ favorite when it comes to distributing marketing dollars?

In a study conducted by King Fish Media, Hubspot and Junta 42, it was found that LinkedIn is at the top of the chart, followed by Twitter and Facebook.

87% of the survey participant said they include LinkedIn in their social media strategy, and 12% said they are planning to add it to the equation. 84% marketers consider twitter when framing a marketing budget, while another 16% said they will add soon. As long as Facebook is concerned, only 78% use it, while 22% said they are planning to use this social media marketing tool.

Almost all the big social media websites featured in the list, but what was missing noticeably was MySpace. Well, it was not missing entirely, but seeing the success it once enjoyed, the current status is akin to disappearing for MySpace. A mere 9% people said they use MySpace, and same percentage of people said they will use it in future (See image for the complete survey data).

The country to come at second position was Brazil with 20.5% twitter users, and number three was taken by Venezuela (19%). The rising penetration of twitter in Venezuela is attributed to the joining of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In just couple of month of his joining, twitter user base in Venezuela grew by 4.8%.

India, Malaysia, and New Zealand made up the bottom of the list with 8.0%, 7.7%, and 7.5% twitter users, respectively. See image for detail.

Since last couple of posts in the series on building rapport with prospective employers, I have been talking about twitter etiquette, which I will continue in this post as well. A sound knowledge of particulars of etiquettes related to twitter is necessary to make it big in here.

Check your language for appropriateness

Seeing the informal nature of twitter, it is easy for us to give in to the temptation of using informal language (read slang), wrong spelling, and misplaced grammar when tweeting. You should avoid doing this. It can spell doom for your twitter job-search dream.

Advice when asked

Many a time, people sends out a tweet to anyone and everyone asking for advice on certain topic. Seize this opportunity and make big of it. Participate in the conversation and hang in there until the discussion is devoid of all its juices.

Use shortening services

Use URL shortening service when posting a link in your tweets. Shortening services like Bit.ly, Tiny URL, etc., will not only help you keep your URL short, but it will also help you track the clicks. You should also use these services to post pictures and videos on twitter. It will also help you keep your tweets clutter free.

With these tips, our discussion on twitter job-search etiquette comes to an end. You will get desired result, if you apply the tips I have shared so far. Each one of them is very valuable.

Avoid being too casual

Although twitter started its life as an informal way to say what you are doing, it has become a means of professional communication as well. Like e- mails, tweets are also being taken seriously by the corporate. Hence, you should not be too casual. Talking informally may be okay, but not talking casually. You need to show you are committed to the work assigned to you, and you take every bit of communication seriously.

Avoid being too personal

No one cares what you had for lunch, nor do they care how good or bad is your sex life. Twitter is a personal medium of communication, but it is not that personal to be witness of your bathroom adventures. Keep such sojourns out of your tweets, unless it has something that has never happened to anyone in this world — at least, not in your knowledge.

Profanity must be avoided

No matter how pissed you are with the situation, no one expect you to break down, nor you are expected to talk like a complete jerk. Maintain poise, avoid talking profane, and do not do any act that goes against your professionalism.

Being profane is easy, and that is the reason why so many people are doing so. What is difficult is to control one’s emotion, and one need a steely determination to keep mum when one feels like blasting on the social web.

These etiquettes are not necessary, if you do not care what others think of you, but if your everything depends upon what others are thinking then you must watch your action.

Use direct message or DM, as it is known on twitter

Do not start sending confidential or sensitive information on the twitter’s public timeline using @ symbol. This is akin to taking someone’s bedroom talk to nearest pub. No one is going to like it, and you by doing so are risking your reputation. Instead, send sensitive or personal information in a direct message. Send your résumé link, interview request, etc., in DM only.

Hit Reply

Many a time job seekers do not pay much attention to DMs sent to them, or to the messages sent to them using @ symbol. Always, always, always respond to all direct and indirect messages sent to you. This will paint a picture of a guy who is helpful, friendly, and prompt. These are the traits of an employee that anyone will like to hire.

Count your words before you write

Twitter allows you only 140 characters that also include spaces and special characters, so be wise in the word selection. 140 characters are all you have, and it is on you to decide how you will make each character add to the value your tweet will deliver. Do not use unnecessary superlatives, adjectives, and adverts. I will rather suggest you to stay away from every word that has nothing to add to the discussion.

Go and check your tweets, and DMs to see if your tweets and DMs meet the standard set above or not. Fix them, if they don’t, and continue using twitter the way you do, if you do not find any problem.

Engage yourself

Increase the frequency of your tweets to remain in the eyes of fellow tweeters — out of sight, out of mind phenomenon works more here. Tweet often and tweet regularly, but do not ever cross the thin red line crossing which raises the red flag.

Spread your net

Keep on finding people to tweet to. Do not just tweet to people in your follower’s, find people to add to your list, but, do not start mass following. By doing so, you will be call in spammers who do not listen on twitters. All they know is clutter the twitter time line.

Join the conversation

Tweeting your content is good, but joining the conversation is even better. Read what others are saying, join the conversation, comment on the discussion, be part of it, spread the word, send DM (direct message), and get known. This will help you form a lasting relationship with fellow tweeters. People like you most when you talk about the stuffs they care — in this case, the stuffs they share.

Spread the news

Talking about yourself on and on may make you sound braggart, and talking about what others have to say make you sound influential. See what others are talking about and be the first to tweet about it. This will bring you on the forefront of your industry, and the leaders cannot help but look at you, and recognize you.

Get personal with @

Use @ followed by twitter’s account name to share stuffs with people you want to network with on twitter. This will get their attention. Send out only meaningful tweets using @, and do it sparingly. Overdoing will raise the barrier.

As you can see, finding a job on twitter is not like finding a job on job-search portals. It is about engagement here. You have to engage people first and then ask for a job. This may look like too much work, but it is not. And on top of it, it is highly rewarding. By engaging your prospects in talk, you have crossed half the distance, as talking to them let them know about you. If they like what they see, they will hire you.

Use twitter search to find the right people

This is as important as conducing a Google search. Twitter search will not only help you find people to network with, but it will also help you search for jobs. Just type in the keyword or hash tag to find the right person to network with. Do not add just anyone because you can. You will not want to get 1000s of useless tweets every single day.

Do not follow everyone back

This is a classic mistake. Most of the newbie do exactly that and end up becoming frustrated of twitter because of the low quality tweets in the timeline. You should follow people back, but only those whose tweets you want to receive. Do not follow everyone. You start doing that and you will start getting more invites. Spammers love this, so do not be the love interest of a spammer.

Follow your friends’ connections

Check out whom your friends are sending DM (direct message) to. These people could be the potential target of your networking effort. Keep a close watch on whom your friends are talking to, and follow those whom you deem suitable.

Promote Yourself

Promoting yourself is an important part of networking. Tell people who you are, and what you stand for. They will not know this if you do not tell them. Tweet links to your work, and add call to action in the tweet. This way you will be seeding your expertise in the community, which definitely will fetch desired result.

Networking takes time and effort, but the return is always good, so do not hesitate in putting time into it. I want you to start working on above suggestions now. You will see the difference.

First tweet then follow

What most people do after joining twitter is they start following as many people as they can and as soon as they can. This is a very bad strategy to increase your twitter follower count. A good one is to start with posting informative and entertaining tweets followed by following people in the fields of your interest. This way you will get more active followers who will give you more opportunity.

No spamming please

Do not start tweeting in bulk as people with “spammer” tag does. Act with moderation and tweet only what is really, really important. If you want people to hire you for a job then do not post stuffs that will take away from your image.

Talking of quality content, I will recommend you to record a video of you talking about what you do, what is your qualification, and how much work experience you have, etc., and tweet this video cover letter once or twice a day.

Do not act desperate

This will not do any good. Tweeting too much may force people to ignore you, if not unfollow you. There is no need to post your résumé five times a day. Tweet your résumé or video cover letter maximum twice a day. That is enough.

You should not deviate from this tweeting practice for even a single day. Have patience, result will come.

This is what twitter has done to the giant, and it will also help you a great deal in searching for a job. In this part, I will tell you how you can brand yourself on twitter, and how it will help you.

Customize your profile

The best thing about twitter is it allows you to create a custom profile for your twitter account. You can choose whatever background you want for your twitter profile. Twitter background provides you a wonderful opportunity to brand yourself. Your profile page should speak volume about you.

Theme-based design

Do not choose just any background. This will not do any good. Always remember a good design begins with ideation. With finding a theme for the design. When I say theme I meant what is that one thing that you want to convey to the viewers of your twitter profile. Begin with writing down the points you want to convey until it boils down to one or two core points that you must convey. This will be the essence of your twitter profile.

Now think of a design theme of the blog based on the core you have found.

Designing background

Start designing a background based on the theme you have found. To find the dimension of the background, you can search Google. I do not suggest reinventing the wheel. Just conduct a Google search and you will find a twitter background template.

This is it for now. Go ahead and customize your twitter profile to impress your prospects.

Write a powerful bullet bio

In twitter profile, you do not get a lot of space to talk about yourself; nevertheless opportunity is there to capitalize on the little space you get. You should write a powerful, sharp-edged bio. Every word should be telling. The space is limited, so use only what will make the employer click on the accompanying link. Write a powerful bullet bio.

Add a web address

Do not add URL of the website where you talked about your cool kitten. No employer will like to know about her. What you can do is add the URL of your cool kitten website in your website under fun and hobby section, if you desperately want to show that to your employer. But, reserve the web address space on twitter for your professional website — the one that will inform your client about your professional skills and expertise.

Add location

Using this is slightly tricky. You can only add name of your city, if you are living in a big metro, but generally use name of your county along with the city name. This will tell your employer about your whereabouts. It will help them make their minds.

We will talk about twitter profile customization in one more post then we will move further. These are practical tips, and will only benefit you if you work upon them. Reading only will do no good to you.

Once you are done customizing your twitter profile, send me your twitter URL, so that we all can see your work. Meanwhile, you can use the comment box below to leave your suggestion and feedback on this post.

If you have not believed this so far then start believing in it, as nothing is truer then the above statement is. And it will become more evident when you will read the best-kept secret twitter tips for job search in this series.

Twitter, as we all know by now, is a 140-word marketing nuclear bomb. It is also referred as virtual water cooler where people talk about things that matters to them. Twitter is not just a micro-blogging tool, but it is a search engine in its own right that has the strength to overpower Google. Twitter can be used in many ways, but we will focus on using it as a job search tool. All the tips in this and subsequent posts are geared towards that only.

For a novice, twitter may look useless, but so did search engines in their initial days.

Easy-to-remember username

Username is your twitter name, and this is the first thing that a person finds about anyone on twitter. This is akin to the first part of your e-mail ID — everything before @, and you will not want your username to spoil the party. Hence, do not use your nickname or any other silly things in there. While saying that I did not mean to say that your nickname is silly, all I meant was that your username should look classy. Cheesy stuffs do not cut it. Your twitter name should also be easy to remember.

Real name for real people

Use your real first and last names in the designated space. Do not use any cool-but-idiotic-sounding words in place of the first and the last name. It will hurt your image, and create hindrance in getting a job. A person without real name does not sound like a person, at least not on the Internet.

Real picture

I know how badly you wanted to look like Brad Pitt, but the fact is you are not him then why to use his picture as your profile picture? Believe me it will not impress your employer, and most of all they will come to know it is not Brad Pitt who is applying for the job. Take my suggestion and pull that picture down, and instead use your own picture, preferably in business attire.

In the twitter profile, nothing but close-up of your own picture should be there.

Start fixing your profile now and when you are done send me your twitter URL. That’s all for today, will meet tomorrow with some more tips.

In January 2009, 11.8 million mobile users used their cell phone to access Facebook.com, which increased to become 25.1 million by January 2010. In the same period, Twitter user base grew from 1.05 million to 4.7 million mobile users.

The growth rates of these two social networking sites have exploded, but MySpace’s shrunk. The user base of MySpace fell short by 7% of its previous years mark. (See image).

In a poll conducted in December 2009 by Adweek Media and Harris interactive it was found that only people above 55 (64 percent) reads the news paper almost daily, whereas, only 23 percent young people (aged between 18 and 34) reads the news paper daily either online or in print. 17% youth in the same bracket said they never read the newspaper. See the image below for the complete result of the online poll conducted between December 14 and 16, 2009. It has a sample size of 2,136 U.S. adults.

The research will be a major blow to already declining newspaper industry as the major spenders do not read newspaper. The industry should gear up to move into related category before the revenue source dries out, or it should find a way to reinvent itself, if the industry wants to survive the digital blow.

One of the best tactics to do that, is the use of sites like tweetlater.com, which allows you to set up tweets at any future date, time, etc that you choose.  Sites like these are a great tool to keep your tweets regular.  So if you know you’re going to be busy later, or if you have a great idea now, you can always save them to use at a different time.  Keeping your tweets coming regularly, and keeping them all stellar, is the best way to keep interest.

Other tools like Twazzup lets you track hashtags, allowing you to see what’s going on in relation to your tweets.  This is extremely useful so that you can see who is re-tweeting your hashtags, and what context they’re being reused.  This can help you formulate strategies by sticking to campaigns that tend to be more successful than others.

Don’t forget to make use of tools that asses the market you’re trying to reach as well.  Services like the Forrester Profile Calculator help you find where and how potential customers are looking for information.  Making use of these can really help you grow your page, because you’ll know just how to target that demographic that’s most important to your page.

Finding them is easy enough, but remember that you have to keep writing interesting and engaging tweets to keep them there.  Holding attention in the long run is much more difficult that gaining attention at first.

Now internet advertising consists of making a social networking presence.  You need to have a blog, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter account, to really make your company known.  So first things first, set up a company blog.  This will be a resource to write about the goings on with your corporation, and provide insightful social commentary on culturally relevant news.  So you want a decent writer who can write regular, engaging content.

Now you need Myspace and Facebook accounts.  Both are essentially the same, just with minor differences.  Keep the page professional, and a resource to sell products and ideas as well as provide news.  Myspace has been in decline, so that doesn’t have to be as big of a priority.  But at the moment Facebook has been holding strong, and could end up being a great interface with your customers.  Listen to them, and communicate with them.  This way you can learn what selling tactics will work, and what your customers expect from you.

Finally, the Twitter account.  This will probably be the most important, because here is where the most people are going to turn for news and information regarding your company.  Linking a blog with your Twitter and Facebook accounts will create a wealth of resources to contact your customer base, and do your own free research into what they expect.  You grow name recognition, and also get a great customer data tool, all rolled into a few easy to use websites.

Building an audience isn’t so much about what you write yourself, but how you communicate.  Your Twitter account, if you’re using it to sell an idea, business, or product, needs to become a community forum.  Your tweets are only useful if you can guarantee people are reading them.  The way to do that is to build followers, and the best way to build followers is getting them involved.

Make use of Twitter’s search function.  See what people are saying involving your concepts or business, and reply to them through your page.  Ask questions, or comment on tweets that they’ve made regarding you.  Start a running dialog, so that they’ll gain more interest and also mention you on their page, which will also build interest with a new audience.

Consider how useful the ability to re-tweet really is.  By re-tweeting you draw attention to a comment someone else made, and put your own spin on the material.  This will be noticed by the original tweeter, and your audience.  Both can work to build the traffic on your page, and the more meaningful views you’ll garner.

Finally, everyone likes pictures, especially search engines.  The more pictures you use, the more people will be drawn to your page.  I’m not talking about pictures of anything.  But try to upload meaningful and visually insightful pictures that relate to your Twitter page as often as possible.  These will get more comments, and more chances for re-tweets.  Both of which are necessary to build your page.

So obviously the first step is to create a professional Twitter page.  Whether for your business, or personal business ventures, make sure that you update often.  The quickest way to be forgotten is to tweet only once every few days.  You have to keep your Twitter page active, usually with multiple tweets per day, so that there is always more content for an interested party to keep tabs on.

Use Twitter search to narrow down people, or other businesses that might be interested in finding your Twitter page.  Try and contact them, either through mention on your Twitter account or via personal message to let them know about you.  This way you can gain more and more followers.  Your efforts won’t be very successful if you don’t have very many followers accessing your tweets.

Remember to take care of your followers as you gain them as well.  Respond to them, mention them, etc.  Make them involved, as they will become interested, and also mention you in their tweets, and that’s free advertising.  Keeping your followers interested is key to building the Twitter page, and increasing your effectiveness.

Finally use Twitter’s search function to see how many mentions you are getting on other pages throughout the site.  This is a good way to keep up on how successful your efforts have been.  Also you’ll be able to keep track of what you should change to accommodate the greater interest.  Twitter feedback is valuable, so take full advantage of the ability to see accurate feedback so quickly.