Tag: twitter

Threads, Twitter, or neither? What are the differences and what are the benefits of engaging on social media for your business
News about the Twitter rival, Threads, exploded last week as 100 million people signed up so far just as Twitters traffic plummeted from recent changes.

Twitter announces that the number of tweets that users could view would go from infinite to a set amount depending on the type of account you have. Considering the main purpose of most social media platforms is to keep users engaged and scrolling – this has tanked their web traffic and further worsened the opinion users have them as a whole.

On the other end, Threads (a Meta product) which is directly integrated with Instagram, have smartly made the sign up as easy as possible. If you search for “Threads” in Instagram you will be prompted to download the application and it will be connected to your Instagram account, from there you can import all of your settings and even accounts you follow from Instagram. This includes business accounts as well.

As far as using Threads is concerned, it’s very similar to Twitter in format, with users being limited to an image and a small paragraph. There is cross platform integration in the form of Threads posts being advertised in Instagram and vice versa.

Now, whether it’s worthwhile to engage on Threads in your business really depends on the type of business you have. For those whose businesses thrive on exposure (like restaurants and other food venues, consumer driven products etc). It’s definitely worthwhile to maintain a presence on any booming social media app.

For Business to Business (B2B) types of commerce it may be less worthwhile to devote a lot of time to apps like Threads or Twitter, but it’s still a good idea to claim your business name on them and post occasionally as this activity can still contribute to your web traffic and online presence.

However, you don’t need to sign up for every social media app that comes along as there have been a number of Twitter rip offs for example that did not survive past launch or even if they still exist have abysmal traffic. Even for Twitter itself unless things turn around it the traffic you might get from there will probably not be worth the effort it takes to add original content to the platform.

For social media apps that are still thriving here are 5 content ideas you can start out with to grow your online presence:

We also wanted to list out the five main benefits to maintaining a social media presence for your business, since after all you want to see an ROI for the effort put into making that content. Benefits include:
1. Engaging with your customers 1-on-1. Social media can get your message through to your customers at a much higher rate than other avenues of advertising (such as email).
2. Promote your message. You can use it to promote your company message, how you do business, specific product launches and more.
3. You can maintain your reputation on your terms. Nowadays customers will look to your company pages to learn more about your business and how it aligns with their own values before making a purchase. They may also check these pages to see other customers’ reviews before buying.
4. It also acts as lead generation. Just like your website, your company social media pages are an online billboard for your business.
5. It helps humanize your brand. People want to buy from people, not faceless corporations. If you work on posting original content that includes behind the scenes elements of your business such as company social events or just you or your employee’s day to day, your business as a whole will feel more relatable.
Another good way to maintain your reputation online is to have clear and consistent communication with your customers, and to protect the data you collect from them in the course of doing business. On that front, Valley Techlogic can help.

We are a technology service provider that provides technical support and assistance to businesses in the Central Valley. If you would like to learn more, schedule a consultation with us today.

Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.
This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.
July 14, 2023
The Massive Internet Outage and The Human Error Behind It
A number of major websites were down yesterday morning, including Google, Amazon, Reddit and Twitch. The outage lasted for an hour and even broke services such as Twitter’s emoji.

The outage occurred through Fastly which is a cloud computing provider and highlights how interconnected (and sensitive) the world wide web really is.

The error occurred with something called the Content Delivery Network (CDN) which is a geographically distributed network of proxy services and data centers. They came about when performance bottlenecks in the 90’s were causing slowdowns, especially as use exploded.

By distributing the load it allowed for the faster connectivity and increased bandwidth we enjoy today, along with better reliability. CDN nodes are deployed at multiple locations, and while the entire internet won’t go down if one is affected, as yesterday proves it can still cause significant issues.

So, what caused yesterday’s issue in the first place?

Believe it or not the thing that brought down all those major players was actually a customer error. A dormant bug in Fastly’s code reared it’s head on Tuesday when a customer changed updated their settings.

This setting change (which was a valid configuration) triggered a specific circumstance which activated the bug and caused Fastly servers to begin reporting errors throughout 85% of their network.

Fastly claims they detected the error within one minute which allowed them to contain the incident within an hour. They say they should have anticipated this error could occur in their messaging on the incident. Fastly maintains one of the largest CDN’s on the internet.

While it was a relatively short outage, the cost to the websites that were down is still staggering, Early estimates indicated Amazon alone could have lost $32 million in sales.

This outage indicates how truly disruptive technology related downtime is. Even for small business’s the costs can be extreme. Look at our chart below to see just how much downtime costs can add up.

We know these numbers seem extreme, but if you tally up potential sales lost and the cost of just running your business during an outage – it really can add up fast.

If you’d like to learn more about what downtime really costs you, as well as how to prevent it, we have a free report on this topic you can find here.

We help the business’s we support prevent unnecessarily downtime every day. If you’re finding yourself navigating this and other technical problems – we can help. Visit our plan page to see if Valley Techlogic could be a good fit for your business.

Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.
This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.
June 10, 2021
Top 10 Tips for Managing Your Social Media Presence
As a technology service provider, we don’t think it’s much of a leap to weigh in on the topic of social media, there are many technical aspects that come with managing your business’s presence on all the various social media platforms. You may be asking yourself if it’s worth the effort or which ones would be the best fit for your business – or even how to go about setting them up in the first place.

We have to be honest that we’re somewhat “green” to this space ourselves, having only dived into it within the last year in earnest. However, I think this gives us a unique perspective as we’re not claiming to be experts. We use and have grown within the social media space this year and these are our tips for getting started.
1. Claim Your Business. Whether you plan to move forward with a platform or not, we recommend claiming your business identity on as many of the networks as you can, by doing this you can ensure your business name is not taken by someone else later on.
2. Start And/Or Finish Filling Out Google My Business. While not a social media account per se, Google My Business is a crucial advertising tool that allows visitors to reach not only your website but also all of your social media accounts through a Google search. It is important to maintain this account with valid information.
3. Fully Fill Out Your Profile Pages. As with Google My Business, it’s important to fully establish the profile before jumping into posting content. The more information about your business you can provide the better.
4. Decide Which Platforms to Focus Your Efforts. Not every platform is a good fit for every business, you need to go to where your customers are. We recommend LinkedIn and Facebook as good places to start but depending on your business sector platforms such as Instagram or Twitter may net you a good response as well. Even TikTok may be worth the effort for your business depending on your overall audience.
5. Post Regularly. You should set a schedule and stick to it when it comes to sharing content on social media, these platforms reward regular activity by focusing more eyes (and potential customers) at business’s who utilize their platforms consistently.
6. Share Things About Your Business. Customers like to get an “inside look” into the inner workings of the business’s they’re thinking about engaging with, especially in the business-to-business sector. Share things like company events and photos to engage with your audience on a personal level.
7. Share Custom Content. Another idea for content is to share things you make or blogs you post. Both Google and the social media platforms reward custom made content.
8. Invite People You Know to Like Your Page. When first starting out it’s a good idea to invite customers and colleagues to like your social media pages, this allows them to receive the updates you post and helps you begin building an audience.
9. Consider Paid Activity. We don’t suggest trying this off the bat but once your page is somewhat established, you might consider paid ads through these platforms to drive the content you’re creating and sharing to an even wider audience.
10. Engage With Your Audience. Our final tip is just to remind you to always engage with your audience, responding to comments not only lets you form a connection with potential clients but it also shows that your business is proactive and responsive.
We also found this article on Facebook statistics really helpful when it comes to evaluating Facebook in particular. Facebook falls just behind YouTube and Google on having the most web traffic, but that’s still hundreds of millions of users.

One bonus tip, many of us don’t consider YouTube to be a social media application, but it really is. Not only can you connect with your audience on a personal level through video, it’s also connected to Google as they own it. Building up a business YouTube account can also lead to more traffic from Google.

We hope these tips help with getting started in social media, while outside our normal scope if your business would like advice on this topic or on any of regular service topics feel free to reach out.

Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.
This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.
April 30, 2021