How to delete a tweet in Twitter

To delete a tweet in Twitter, mouse over the area just below your tweet. When you do, the delete button will appear. Click that.

Keep in mind that you can't undo what people had seen before when you tweeted, but you can keep the tweet from staying there permanently.

How to use social media sites to promote your business

Social media sites can be a great way to promote your business. Or they can be a big waste of time. This all started a couple of years ago when companies started noticing that if they said the right thing on a social media network, such as Facebook, members of that network would often help spread the word. Sometimes like wildfire!

For the most part, those days are gone. There is still going to be the stray "viral video" that will make your company famous overnight, but people are wising up to this. But I'm not saying that you give up on social media sites to help promote your business! This is what I am recommending now to my clients:

• Put your emphasis on blogging. Like all good promotional ideas on the web, this costs nothing. But it actually does something. What you are doing here is "driving traffic" to your site. In this particular instance, I am giving away free samples, because I am a software trainer. Since it's on a blog, hopefully other people will read it, possibly repost it, that sort of thing. But that isn't the most important aspect. The most important aspect is Google Optimization. That is, getting your business listed with a high rating when people search on Google. The idea is to present useful content, attract people who are interested in that content, show them that you are sincere business, build your credibility, and, hopefully, have them visit your site or contact you.

• Tweet your blogs. People on Twitter are always looking for good ideas. If you have written a blog that someone sees on Twitter, and likes, they will repost it. Some people will continue to feed all of your updated blog posts through their Twitter account. And yes, this helps with your Google ranking, also.

On the other side of the coin, there's stuff out there that either is too new or too old to help. You can do a fan page on Facebook, but it wouldn't be my first choice. Facebook was invented to help friends connect, businesses invaded it for a while, and some are still trying to make it commercial, but Facebook people don't like that. Unless your business deals with inane chatter, it isn't a good place to be. And if you think that you can be on every social media site, take a look at the "share/save" button below (be sure to click "show all")!

Don't worry about RSS feeds, or "followers". It turns out that isn't how people like to get their information, delivered fresh to their door all the time. They want to Google, "how can I use social media to promote my business?" and find it.

Why you shouldn't use Tiny URL in your Twitter tweets

If you have been in the habit of using "Tiny URL" in your tweets on Twitter, I am going to recommend that you stop. No, there is nothing at all wrong with Tiny URL. I use it a lot myself, when emailing friends, etc. But on Twitter it just plain looks suspicious.

Tiny URL is, of course, a way to make a long URL shorter, which can be very helpful in a tweet. But consider this: people can be very nervous about clicking a link that gives no clue as to where they are going. Take a look at these two links



Which would you rather click on? In the first link, you can clearly see that you are being directed to blogspot called bradhallart and that you are going to see an article on how to write your first blog post. The second one is, well, questionable. Don't worry, it's the same link! But how do you know?