Many marketers and bloggers (for Instance) tell about the importance of social media, and one of the most important social media services is Twitter. But social media has a habit to be very time consuming. And as you know, time is money.

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Cashrevelations presents 3 effective and time saving Twitter marketing tools – to help you to become a more effective marketer with the help of social media. Two of them (Ifttt and Commun.it) are still in Beta stage.

3 Innovative Twitter Marketing Tools

Tweriod – Get to know when your Twitter followers are online the most
Tweriod is a free twitter tool that helps you make the most of Twitter by letting you know the best time to tweet. This will allow you to tweet during the times when it is as most effective – very valuable for online marketers.

Ifttt – Put the internet to work for you
Put the internet to work for you by creating tasks that fit this simple structure: if this then that. Think of all the things you could do if you were able to define any task as: when something happens (this) then do something else (that).

Commun.it – Community Management for Twitter that Makes a Difference
Commun.it dramatically improves the way you build relationships and discover leads on Twitter! It helps you to build meaningful, personal relationships through social media while focusing on your highest-value relationships.

The Twitter Tools presented here in this article are not in any particular order – and Cashrevelations is not by any means whatsoever affiliated with any of the authors.

One of the most annoying things I know is to wake up one morning, start up my old PC and discover that my website is down. In fact, except from being transmitted by extreme sudden obesity, I think nothing could irritate more in that moment. And it is not only the irritation – all downtime means a more or less serious loss of revenue and reputation.

Do not underestimate the importance of online reputation. According to Wikipedia, one study found that a good reputation added 7.6% to the price received – imaging what a bad reputation could do considering we have high impact social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. One significant factor in your websites online reputation is downtime.

But there is no need to lose your face – there are website monitoring services you can use for free and they will help you to easily keep an eye on your site 24 hours a day.

Free Website Monitoring Services

The monitoring services presented here are what we consider as effective and useful – but there are of course many more competent monitoring alternatives. We choose these because of user experience (we like easy-to-use things), effectiveness and of the simple fact that they offer free alternatives alongside with premium features – it is a good idea to test before purchase, and these services allow you to do that thoroughly.

In user experience we also count in the sign-up process – an extensive and complicated sign-up process is almost always a reason for us to reject a service. We follow a simple principle – the request of information shall be fair. And many services sign-up forms have more a character of personal profiling or market research than an honest sign-up.

UptimeRobot by Umut Muhaddisoglu and Daniel Rimille monitors your websites every 5 minutes. The robot asks for your websites headers and gets status codes and if there is a downtime problem, you get an alert by e-mail, SMS, Twitter or RSS. This service is free and you can also monitor up to stunning 50 websites. It is represented here because of a combination of function, flexibility and price – a true functional budget alternative.

BasicState checks your website status every 15 minutes and you get problem alerts by e-mail or sms. You can add as many sites as you like – and tailor default, backup and emergency alert schedules to your preferences. There is also a pro version of this service for more demanding users. BasicState is maybe not the most visually appealing service on the market, but offers effective protection from costly and lengthy website downtimes.

100 Pulse monitor service checks your websites for downtime and response time as well. Problem alerts by E-mail, SMS ($10 per 50 SMS) RSS and Twitter – weekly and monthly periodic reports. Up to two websites can be monitored entirely free, and the monitoring frequency is selectable between 15 min – 3 hr. The free alternative feels a bit limited but it covers the basics – for $5 per month you get a more extended and relevant version.

Pingdom by Sam Nurmi lets you monitor only one website for free, but has also a 30 day free trial on paid premium accounts. The problem alerts are sent through E-mail, SMS (20 per month), Twitter and via a handy iPhone app you can download for free. The free account covers the most basic needs (uptime, response time and error analysis) and for many website owners that could be enough. Also available as a WordPress plugin.

Keep Your Visitors Updated

To keep your visitors updated of downtime problems or maintenance (or anything else affecting your site performance) is good manner and might save you from losing visitors or potential customers. It seems to be obvious and unnecessary thing to point out.

But the fact is, even big service providers and major websites are sinners in that case.
A frightening example of that is a major Internet services provider in Sweden which had a more than 10 hours downtime on all services – and they didn’t care to give any type of information to their customers about the downtime problems. And the really frightening thing is; this is not unusual – there is a nauseous sea of examples, and for an ordinary Internet entrepreneur this type of ignorant complacency can be devastating.

There is no need for some fancy and extraordinary apologizes – a simple note is enough. Just learn to inform your visitors when something way above the normal happens on your website. It proves that you are a dedicated actor on Internet – and that benefits you.

The Simple Conclusion

Downtime happens. The President will have downtime. You will have downtime. Everybody will have downtime. Do not panic and have a well defined plan for handling problems like that in a correct way. Remember three things – monitor your website, solve the problem and inform your visitors. As simple as it sounds, that is actually one difference between a somewhat successful website and a poor Internet nobody.

Image: Fercozzz

Maybe you have considered a traffic exchange as a cheap and fast alternative to receive a large amount of traffic to your website. The question is if it is worth the effort to spend hour after hour to surf other members sites to an often unfair ratio – and does a traffic exchange really do anything good for your website?

The concept for traffic exchanges is very simple: I visit your site if you visit my site. And like that, in theory, it sounds good – like something productive to spend time on.

Note: The first ever traffic exchange was ClickThru.com, where webmasters could view each others sites, with the ultimate goal to make a sale or earn a referral.

But there are negative voices about traffic exchanges. One of the problems mentioned with traffic exchanges is if you are for example using Google Adsense, or similar programs, you could get banned and lose your Adsense account.

Other problems mentioned are low quality traffic and high Bounce Rate.

Low quality hits by exchanges seldom lead to some actual result because the typical traffic exchange surfer only surfs for credits. Traffic exchanges increase your sites visit rate, but also your bounce rate – which may negatively influences your ranking.

One problem (not mentioned often enough) of using traffic exchanges is that you might become hooked on surfing and forget to devote time to develop your website.

But On The Other Hand…

You might have a new and exiting website but no visitor except you, so the bounce rate should be excellent – theoretically you have done everything like it should be done.

In that situation all traffic – even if it is low quality provided by a traffic exchange – is of use, because all new ventures need a big amount of exposure.

The same “Traffic Experts” that say 20 seconds visits from traffic exchanges are useless probably on the other hand believe in love at first sight. With that said – there is no academic truth about traffic exchanges, only speculations from people who think it maybe could be so.

And maybe traffic exchanges are a waste of time and 20 sec visits from bored surfers useless. But maybe not. Only one thing is sure, they are never an alternative, only a temporary complement.

Be Aware Of Arrogance And Cryptic Surf Ratios

You need to be aware of a few things before you begin to use a traffic exchange. All the surfing you do in a traffic exchange is for sale, the owner sells traffic and cash in on your work. You do a work for free and if you upgrade your traffic exchange account you will even end up paying for to do someone else’s work.

Nothing wrong with that as long as everybody is informed about that – but with that follows that you don’t need to accept the arrogant behavior some exchanges have towards their users. You do them a favor – not the opposite.

Arrogance in form of not answering support questions, arbitrary suspensions of webpages, demands to change the content, absence of promised bonuses, unfair surf ratios, rude responses and so on, are much more usual that one might think.

Some people have experienced that they have been cheated or treated unfair by traffic exchanges. That is the reason to why you should chose traffic exchange with great care.

Note: Justin Jones wrote in his hub “ClickThru is clearly a dead site – it also had a lot of cheaters while it was active including the anonymous ClickThru Tech”.

Be careful with traffic exchanges which use cryptic surf ratios – terms like dynamic ratio, activity points, bonus levels and other exchange owner generated terms, exist only to convince you to surf to a ratio that is worst than in other traffic exchanges. The rule is simple: do not join traffic exchanges where you don’t understand the credit system.

Be also aware of the false sense of traffic. Most surfers are probably eating, watching TV, while the exchange runs in the background. Their main goal is to earn their credits.

Traffic Exchanges – The Basics

Wikipedia: A traffic exchange website receives website submissions from webmasters that join the exchange. The person who submitted the website then has to browse other member sites to earn credits, which enable their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system.

Exchanges enforce a certain surf ratio, which illustrates the amount of websites the surfer must view in order to receive one hit to their own website. Most traffic programs also impose a time limit when members are browsing, ranging from 10 sec to 60 sec.

Note: Autosurfs are traffic exchanges that automatically rotate advertised websites in one’s web browser. A large amount of controversy is concentrated over whether they are inherently structured as Ponzi schemes. 12DailyPro was one of the largest in 2005.

Many exchanges offer the ability to upgrade membership level for a better surf ratio.

Traffic exchanges are generally used by small business owners or marketers who either want free advertising or use exchanges for low-budget advertisement campaigns.

Choose Correct Traffic Exchange

Which one is correct or not depends on what you need and feel comfortable with. But in general you need an exchange with a huge member base and it is good if the exchange has some community functions where you can socialize and promote in more than one level – like for example Traffic Era and EasyHits4U.

There are ways to find out if a traffic exchange is worth any consideration. When you visit a traffic exchange look after this:

• Member base – how many members is in the exchange
• Daily statistics – members online, pages surfed etc.
• Surf ratios – you should find and understand them easy
• Faq and support – should be easy to find
• Contact – is the contact information easily accessible
• Terms of service – are they easily understood and are they fair
• Anti Cheating Protection – should be clearly defined

If you find all those things you can begin to evaluate if this is a traffic exchange that fits your needs. Keep in mind that (not always, but almost) if something looks suspicious and poorly designed, then it is just that – a traffic exchange with poor quality.

Using Traffic Exchanges Effectively

If you find a traffic exchange you are comfortable with and decide to use it to increase the number of visitors to your site, there are advises that might be useful and you can read some of them below.

The key of using traffic exchanges is understanding that the person will only be viewing your site for 10–20 seconds. Rather than sending the person to your website, you should be sending them to a specific advertisement designed for traffic exchanges.

Or even better, target the page to the specific exchange you use.

The page you link to on your web site must load very fast. If not, the visitor may have moved on to the next site before your page has finished loading. The page should not under any circumstances take more than 2 sec to load. You can test your page HERE.

The most effective are squeeze pages and splash pages, which have a simple headline, description, and opt-in form or a link to a page where they can get more information.

Make sure that all links on your splash page open in a new window, and clearly inform the other traffic exchange users of that.

A Short Summary

Traffic exchanges are never an alternative if you want to build long term traffic to your site. There is no substitute for content that attracts visitors and search engines.

But like a temporary complement they can work great. We have used traffic exchanges from time to time with a good result – its all about what expectations you have.

Choose traffic exchange wisely and don’t continue to use them if they don’t live up to your expectations or what they self promise. There are plenty of traffic exchanges out on Internet you can use instead.

Be aware of what you are doing and do not accept to be treated in an unappropriated manner. Remember, you are doing the Traffic Exchange a favor by choosing them from the huge amount of other traffic exchanges.

More about Traffic Exchanges:

• What Traffic Exchange Owners Don’t Want YOU To Know
• Are Traffic Exchanges A Waste Of Time?
• A note on traffic exchange programs
• Getting the most out of Manual Traffic Exchanges
• Should you buy traffic from a free Traffic Exchange?
• Jon Olson’s Hit Exchange News
• Traffic Exchange Exposed Directory

Why? Because advertisers and other possible investors in your website will probably use Alexa rank like one of the parameters to determinate your websites value.

Alexa ranks sites based on information from users of Alexa Toolbar.

Wikipedia; Alexa Internet Inc is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon – Alexa Internet was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat.

It’s unknown how many people actually use the Toolbar. According to Alexa, by 2005 there had been over 10 million downloads of the toolbar. But the company does not provide info on how many of them are actually used.

New Statistics And Design

On March 2009 Alexa.com got a complete redesign and new metrics including: Pageviews per User, Bounce Rate, and Time on Site. In the following weeks they added new features including Demographics, Clickstream and Search Traffic stats.

In theory, the Alexa website with the redesign and new statistics could be a very good tool for site owners and other internet professionals – if the accuracy of ranking would be better, more fair, and not so easily manipulated by ranking professionals.

Accuracy Of Ranking

If Alexa’s user base is a fair statistical sample of the Internet user population, Alexa’s ranking should be quite accurate. In reality, not much is known about the sample and possible sampling biases. A known source of bias is the self-selecting Alexa traffic tracking software installation, but the significance of this bias on rankings is not reported.

You could question how representative the users of the Alexa toolbar are for the rest of the Internet users, because only webmasters and marketers might have some interest in the statistics provided by Alexa rankings and also more likely to download the toolbar.

Quantcast: The site attracts a more male crowd.The typical visitor watches PBS Online and reads Techcrunch.

It’s possible that a site with only 20 visitors a day might have an Alexa Ranking of
150,000, and a site with 5000 visitors a day with a Ranking of 500,000, only because the first site has some content that attracts webmasters with the Alexa toolbar installed.

On April 16, 2008 users reported dramatic shifts in their Alexa rankings. Alexa confirmed this with an announcement that they had released the “New Alexa Ranking System” claiming that they now take into account data sources “beyond Alexa Toolbar users”.

Regarded As Spyware

The Alexa toolbar is regarded by some vendors as spyware.

McAfee classifies it as Adware, a “Potentially Unwanted Program.” McAfee SiteAdvisor rates Alexa.com as yellow, with the warning, “In our tests, we found downloads on this site that some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs”.

Symantec classifies the toolbar as Trackware and Microsoft considers the Alexa Toolbar (for Internet Explorer 7) as malware and as such cannot be installed on Windows Vista.

Computer users have reported unexpected and negative impacts on their systems after installing the Alexa toolbar.

Short Info: The company’s name was chosen in homage to the Library of Alexandria, the largest repository of knowledge in the ancient world.

5 Ways To Improve Your Alexa Rank

Because advertisers and investors still use Alexa Rank like one of the tools to measure your site, you might be interested in some easy methods to improve your rank.

1. Install Alexa Toolbar and use your own website as startpage.

2. Encourage your friends and users to install the Alexa toolbar and use your website as startpage. You could make a simple startpage like this for your users.

3. List your website in directories, search engines, also the minor ones.

4. Join forums where you can meet other webmasters. Many webmasters have the Alexa toolbar installed. Put your link at the bottom of your post in a non-intrusive way.

5. Write about Alexa. Webmasters are interested about ways to increase their Alexa rank and they are already likely to have the toolbar installed.

A general advise would be to find visitors with the Alexa Toolbar installed – since the toolbar is mostly used by webmasters, you simply need to have content that attracts
as many webmasters as possible.

Short Info: Alexa includes archiving of webpages as they are crawled. This database served as the basis for the creation of the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine.

A Short Summary

Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat had good intentions when creating Alexa, but the structural problems, some of them mentioned above, make it to a less reliable if you need a tool that measures the value or traffic of your site.

Some problems with Alexa are:

• Alexa does not get much direct traffic
• Limited reach with the toolbar
• Alexa is biased toward webmaster and tech audience
• A small change in visitors can represent a huge change in Alexa ranking

Some advantages with Alexa are:

• A high grade of accessibility
• Alexa is a strong trademark amongst advertisers
• Alexa is a completely free service for your website
• A good Alexa rank gives easily higher prices on your advertising spots

Since advertisers probably use Alexa ranking you still need to keep an eye on it, but there is no need for panic if your rank is not in the top. There is other tools too.

If you have good Alexa Rank; great for you!
After all, the true value of Alexa Rank is like confidence booster.

Related:

• Alexa Internet by Wikipedia
• Alexa – Web Discovery Machine
• About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
• AboutUs article on Alexa Internet
• Alexa Ranking – Does it matter?
• 20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank