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This presentation has had over 24,000 views on Slideshare and has an incredible amount of information… all packed into snippets of 140 characters or less. You’ll even find a few of the authors from The Marketing Technology Blog in there, too!

The variety and richness of these tips are a real testament to the power of Twitter as a communication medium. Don’t underestimate the power of this medium. Here’s the presentation – 140 Twitter Tips:

If you’re looking for additional information on how Twitter Marketing can help your business, pick up a copy of Twitter Marketing For Dummies. As with the entire Dummies series, the book covers both beginner and advanced techniques for effectively leveraging Twitter as a communication medium.

PS: Kyle didn’t really write this post, Doug did. Kyle’s a busy guy but Doug wanted to make sure that he gets the attention he deserves for a great presentation and a fantastic book.

This post was written by Kyle Lacy

Kyle's company, Brandswag is focused on design, branding and social media marketing. With offices in Indianapolis and Oklahoma City, we help business owners connect with their customers and sustain profitability by presenting consistent images and messages in the world of social media. Kyle Lacy is the author of Twitter Marketing For Dummies

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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Note: This post was authored by Amber, a prolific blogger at PPC Hero and one of our long-time PPC managers, who welcomed her gorgeous son Jacob on April 29th!

Over the course of the past several years, many old PPC tactics have become dated and are no longer considered best practice. There have also been many PPC strategies that have been developed bloggers and so-called PPC advertisers without solid evidence of increased ROI and, to no one’s surprise, may damage your account’s profitability rather than help.

After reading Search Engine Land’s excellent take on 36 persistent SEO myths we were inspired to create a similar list for PPC- check them out, see if you’re falling prey to any, and figure out how to get over them if you are!

1. Being in position #1 will make you most profitable. This is absolutely not true. Sometimes being in position #1 will be profitable, but most of the time you’ll end up spending more cash than what you’re generating. Being in position #1 gives you great visibility and is great for branding purposes. However it also draws in a lot of ‘searchers’ who are not yet ready to buy, but are still researching. Experimenting with ad position will allow you to determine the positions in which you achieve the right balance of cost vs. value.

2. Turn off your account at night, no one is searching or buying then. There are actually several reports that can show you how much traffic you get during all hours of the day or night, as well as click-through rates. Using Analytics, you can also determine your hourly conversion rates. Consider all of the different time zones you’re targeting, and remember that if you do turn your account off before doing the proper research you could be eliminating qualified traffic.

3. Dump as many keywords into your PPC account as possible to get the most traffic. While in theory you may get a ton of traffic from doing a keyword dump, it won’t all be qualified traffic. You really want to only target the most relevant keywords for your PPC account. If you do a dump you’re likely to blow through your budget quickly without generating much return on your investment.

4. Turn on only your best performing ad. Having only one ad text running can be detrimental to growing your PPC account’s performance. Ad text testing is a great strategy to help increase your click-through rates and conversion rates. If you stick with only running one ad, you’ll never be able to truly grow your account.

5. With PPC you can set it and forget it. A lot of small businesses think they can load in their keywords and ads, set a budget and walk away. PPC is not set it and forget it if you want to make the most of the money you’re spending. It takes constant monitoring, testing, bid lowering & increasing, turning off, and turning on in order to get the biggest bang for your buck. It is for this reason that many businesses choose to outsource their accounts to a PPC agency which can dedicate time and expertise to these tasks.

6. You should always run the content network. The content network can be a great source of extra traffic and leads. However you should research content network best practices before just turning on the content network and letting it run, and always make sure you monitor it very carefully. The content network has been known to drive a lot of unqualified traffic at very high costs when left uncontrolled.

7. You should never run on the content network. Again, the content network can be a great source for extra traffic and leads. Always try the content network, tweak settings as necessary, and give it a chance to work for you before you write it off.

8. Bid on only long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are very specific keywords that relate to the product or service you are selling on your site. However, there is minimal traffic associated with long-tail keywords at times and this traffic also revolves around searchers who are now in their buying phase. If you don’t bid on some general keywords, your ad may never appear and you’ll never be in front of your target audience when they’re doing their initial research, which will strip you of important brand recognition opportunities later in the customer’s buying cycle.

9. Quality score is calculated on click-through rates only. Quality score is heavily based on click-through rates, but it is also impacted by landing page quality, among other factors that Google doesn’t want to define too closely

10. Good conversion rates will help improve your Quality Score. No, in fact Google says conversion rates are not calculated into your overall account Quality Score.

11. Opening up a new PPC account will re-start your Quality Scores. Technically, if you open up a new account your Quality Scores will reset. However, if you keep the same account structure, landing pages, ads, keywords, etc., then you’re going to end up with the same Quality Score as you had previously. In order to improve your Quality Score, you need to re-structure your account and organize your Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords to reach the most targeted audience possible.

12. You should only have one keyword per ad group. While some advertisers live and die by this (so I’ve heard), this is not necessarily true and you could be spending a lot of time over-optimizing your account. The best practice here is to have a small list of keywords in your ad groups so that your ads match the keywords as best as possible. With this strategy, the more your keywords match your ads, the more likely your ads are going to be more targeted to the user, and the higher your click-through rates will be.

13. Never put phone numbers in your ad texts. We did a test on this a while back, and honestly it depends on your account and your target audience. If you’re reading in some article that you should ‘never’ or ‘always’ do xyz, then you need to test it for yourself first before making the final decision. We found that putting the phone number in our ads actually increased our click-through rates as well as increased the number of calls/leads we got from the website.

14. Copy your competitor’s ads. It’s okay to look at your competitor’s ads for ideas, but do not copy them. Putting aside the legal issues, your ad will not stand out from your competitor’s ad, and you’ll only confuse your potential customer. Find a way to make your ad different and enticing enough to make the customer want to click on your ad over your competitor’s ad.

15. Test your ads every week no matter how many clicks they have. Wrong! Be sure that when you’re testing ads and deciding on when to pause or leave an ad on that you give yourself a longer date range to look at – also be sure each ad has at least 100 clicks, the more the better before making any final decision. This will allow you to get a true perspective on which ad is performing best over time. If you get too anxious and pause an ad too early, you could be pausing a potentially great performing ad.

16. Your PPC agency is there to drive traffic to your landing page only. No, your PPC agency is there to help you meet your bottom line, period. This includes managing your PPC account, giving recommendations on your website, and optimizing your PPC landing pages, among many other things.

17. PPC is mainly click fraud serving your ads to invalid traffic. Actually, Google, Yahoo and Bing are very good at keeping track of fraudulent traffic. The search engines can actually refund your click money if they determine some of your clicks are invalid.

18. Google Adwords and Analytics reports different traffic numbers, therefore they’re not very accurate. Google Analytics and Google Adwords report on traffic numbers differently – Google Analytics reports on the number of unique visitors to your site from PPC, whereas Adwords reports on the total number of clicks your PPC ads get, therefore some discrepancy in visitor number is to be expected. Lead numbers given by each source should be very similar.

19. Google is the only search engine worth advertising in. This is absolutely a myth! Yahoo and Bing, together with a few other second tier search engines, are well worth advertising in. For certain accounts, sometimes Yahoo and Bing actually work better than Google when it comes to conversions and ROI.

20. Google is more for young, college-aged kids, where Yahoo and Bing are more for older people. These kinds of studies have been going around for a while. And while some people truly believe these search engines have such specific demographics, there is no definitive study – just opinions.

21. The search engines know best. While they certainly aren’t’ trying to defraud you, they won’t catch every instance of nefarious activity that may happen to your PPC account, and remember: their goal is to make money for their company and yours in the process, not JUST for yours. You need to be responsible for your own ROI and watch for any suspicious activity in your PPC accounts.

22. There are many special targeting options Google has that Bing and Yahoo do not. Recently, Yahoo and Bing have made big strides to give you the same level of targeting that Google provides, including geo-targeting, demographic targeting, etc. This is likely to increase in the future, so don’t write off possibilities for local targeting and demographic targeting in these other search engines.

23. If you want a good keyword research tool, Google is the only way to go. There are so many good and free keyword research tools out there you can use. I would recommend that you use as many of these free tools as possible when performing your initial keyword research. Google may give you a nice comprehensive list, but expanding your search among multiple tools can give you many more keywords to bid on or add in as negatives.

24. You should never use broad match keywords. Again, this is one of those things that you need to test in order to see what works for you. I use all three match types in my campaigns, initially to see which ones perform the best over time. Then I may only use one or two of the best performing match types. By excluding broad match, you could potentially be excluding additional keywords from showing your ads that could be very profitable. Broad match keywords, with proper bids and cost management, can also be an excellent source of information (via search query reporting) about longer-tail keywords that may work in your account.

25. Don’t worry about adding negative keywords, the search engines don’t really use them anyway, especially on the content network. Negative keywords are a must for every PPC account. All search engines use them as effectively as you enter them, and using search query reports you can determine negative keywords which may be driving substantial unqualified traffic to your ads.

26. You don’t need a PPC firm – you can easily manage your account on your own. Well, I can’t speak for other PPC firms, but for the same reason that you can’t ‘set it and forget it’, if you don’t have time to manage your PPC account at least weekly (at a minimum) you should probably hire someone to manage it for you. With all technology, things are constantly changing. Like previously mentioned, keywords can become inactive due to quality score issues, ads can be declined due to editorial issues, etc. Not to mention that if you’re putting money towards your PPC account, you probably want to maximize your traffic and revenue potential. Having someone manage your account and make the best changes and keep up-to-date with new features can really help grow your traffic and revenue.

27. You don’t need to use pay-per-click if you’re already ranking high in organic listings. Ranking well on the organic side is great, but also having paid ads can really help increase your branding efforts and can also increase traffic and revenue to your site. Obviously, free is better than having to pay to display your ads, but it’s important to get your name in front of your audience searching the web. PPC also allows you to target a broader range of keywords than you may rank well for organically, widening your audience and exposure. The average user needs 7 exposures to a brand/product before it really sinks in, so paid search can help shorten this gap. Having organic listings and paid ads is the best way to go.

28. You should not have to spend a lot on your keywords if there are no other advertisers. The problem with this is that just because there are no other advertisers in your area doesn’t mean they won’t pop up, or just aren’t advertising at that time of your search, or that there aren’t other advertisers showing in areas nearby. Google will charge you based on the competitiveness of showing for a keyword over time as well as on your Quality Scores, not necessarily the level of competition at the moment and in the location you decide to run your ads.

29. The higher you bid on your keywords, the better your Quality Scores will be. No, as previously mentioned, Quality Scores are based on click-through rates, landing page quality, and more. It is not based on how high your ads are placed or how much you’re spending.

30. If it works in Google, it’ll work in Yahoo/Bing/etc. Just false. They’re not the same- the algorithms with which they show ads and determine keyword and ad quality are different, and in Google and Bing vs. Yahoo, the match types work completely differently. You can import your Google structure into Yahoo and Bing in order to save some time setting up accounts, but you better believe you’re going to have to think through how your settings and keywords are going to show in one search engine vs. another.

31. The search engines default account settings are just fine, you don’t need to change them. Whether or not the search engine’s default settings are fine or not depends on your goals for your account. Always check your ad rotation settings, and set to rotate evenly if you’re testing ad texts, distribution settings if you want to run on search or content only, and geotargeting settings if you want to only show ads to a certain audience.

32. You should delete keywords that don’t convert. This is a huge myth, especially when you have assists in Yahoo telling you which keyword someone typed in the search to get your ad that ultimately assisted in the conversion of another keyword. Hopefully, in the future, we will have more visibility in all search engines regarding first click and last click metrics to help make more accurate decisions about keyword performance.

33. You should delete keywords that don’t have any impressions. While this is a common practice among search advertisers, our search engine reps have never told us it will improve our Quality Scores. What IS a good idea is to keep track of keywords that gain impressions, but not clicks, as they are decreasing your click-through rates and quality scores. They need to be improved if possible with better ad group structuring and ad texts, or they need to be removed.

34. Negative keyword match types work just like normal keywords. No, they don’t, and if you think they do you’ll either miss out on a lot of opportunities to eliminate irrelevant traffic in your account or unintentionally exclude a lot of relevant traffic.

35. PPC is the cheapest form of online advertising and brings the biggest ROI. Boy, I wish I could say this is completely true. Although I do believe you can get a great ROI from PPC, it’s not always the cheapest form. Running PPC ads can cost you a pretty penny if you don’t know what you’re doing right off the bat. Having a PPC agency or someone who has PPC experience help you run your account will definitely save you a lot of money in the long run.

36. PPC advertising is a must for all businesses. This is only a myth because I don’t believe PPC works for everyone. I think all businesses should try it, for a period of time, put all they have into it (effort wise) and see if it works for them. I’ve unfortunately had some clients where it just doesn’t work.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Anyone who has been working on a PPC account for a while- whether it be your own or a client’s- probably reaches a point of inspiration deficiency. A new PPC account can be like a new toy (if you’re not as nerdy as us, as I’m assuming you are, and this does not hold true for you I apologize); it’s fun setting it up and seeing what it does and how the world responds. But after a while, you have other new accounts to play with. Or you don’t, and this is the one account you’ll be handling forevermore. Either way, boredom can lead to neglect, and neglect will eventually damage your account’s profitability. So what to do? Get a little creative and find new ways to improve your accounts:

• Use your colleagues! It really doesn’t matter if they do PPC as well (though that helps)- anyone with familiarity with your product or service can give a new perspective, which can be very helpful when your ad texts all start to look the same and you can’t think of one more benefit for your landing pages. If you do work with other internet marketers, you can take this one step further and ask them to review your accounts for anything you may be overlooking, and for new ideas. This works beautifully and I think you should try it. Aside from actually having coworkers review your accounts, if you have access to theirs, you can also get ideas for settings or account structure changes by looking at what works for them and then applying relevant findings to your own clients.

• Remember there’s a world outside of your PPC account. It’s not all keywords and ad texts- don’t overlook landing page testing! Clients, even if wary of website redesigns, often will allocate budget for one-page design projects if you can adequately justify the increase in conversion rates they’re likely to see as a result.

• Think outside the PPC box- luckily, at Hanapin we have both PPC and SEO clients, so we have a bit of an advantage in this area, but if you don’t, you can still look at your website from a non-PPC perspective. Improvements to your site’s structure, updated content or products, and social media integration can all translate into new PPC opportunities. Updated content can give you ideas for new ad texts and landing page messaging. New products translate to keyword targeting opportunities. Understanding who your customer is and what they want from you via social media can help your messaging become more targeted as well. Meeting your visitors’ needs and expectations is paramount to success in all areas of internet marketing, and exploring how you’re doing that outside of PPC can open your eyes to a lot of possibility.

• You can ask search engine reps for help and ideas, particularly if you work at an agency and have dedicated reps for this kind of thing. I’ll just say a) they are extremely helpful, and sometimes have great ideas and b) you should always take their ideas with a grain of salt, because ultimately their first job is to increase their employer’s profit…not yours. If you choose growth avenues wisely, you can find a balance that does both simultaneously: lovely!

One last note: don’t let your desire to try something new win out over your ROI’s best interest…some ideas are more likely to have a substantial impact than others, and you know your account well enough to understand logically what’s most likely to be useful and what is just a pointless waste of time and money. Trust yourself, do your research, and get inspired. Everyone will be better off for it.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

“Niche” obviously means “zigging” when everybody else “zags”.
The most profitable blogs are like the one that Marriott has, where there is an existing business, and the blog serves to create positive feelings towards that business and increase the amount of trade they get.
If you’re trying to make your money with AdSense, you want to blog on a topic where there are a lot of advertisers wanting to reach your audience, or a fewer number of advertisers who are *really* motivated to reach your audience.
At one time, blogging on mesothelioma would have been the ticket. Lawyers will bid high prices for the class-action du jour.

In Google Analytics, there is an order to everything. I learned this the hard way. In the past the PPC Hero team has shared with our readers some bad things that can happen when you combine destination URLs, tracking parameters and 301 redirects. Today I am going to shed more light on this subject and hopefully prevent someone from making the same mistake in the future.

I recently began working with a client that uses fairly complex tracking systems to monitor the profitability of their pay-per-click business. A part of this tracking system required me to setup tracking URLs at the keyword level to monitor both online and pay-per-click call performance. Thanks to autotagging in Google using the gclid parameter, I only had to append the call tracking URL (i.e. ?param=a&param2=b) in AdWords. For Yahoo and MSN, I was required to combine the call tracking URL with the &utm=source parameter. Thus the source of my pay-per-click tracking issue.

As the month continued, our cost-per-sale continued to rise, and we were not seeing pay-per-click sales attributed to Yahoo and MSN. Sales from the pay-per-click campaign were attributed to organic and/or direct, which was really hurting our bottom line. So I needed to resolve this issue, fast!

Resolving URL tagging is relatively simple if you know what to look for. If you have problems with tracking search engine performance with 3^rd party campaigns, it is most likely one of three things (from my experience):

Problem 1: 301 Redirects
Believe it or not, but 301 redirects can often strip your URL tracking, and categorize per-per-click traffic into organic or direct. This includes the gclid tracking code for AdWords and the &utm=source tracking parameter for other search engines. It is easy to find if this is your issue. To test the gclid, enter the destination URL into your browser with the following appended at the end: www.yoursitehere.com/?gclid=test. The gclid should remain at the end of the URL when the page loads. If it disappears, then you are losing your tracking info.

Solution: Update the destination URLs in your pay-per-click accounts so they point directly to the final destination. If you are pointing your pay-per-click ads to a redirected URL, then your tracking may be stripped in the redirect.

Solution: Ask your website developer to configure your server to pass the gclid and all other tracking parameters.

Problem 2: Tracking Parameter Order
Check the order of your tracking parameters. Your &utm URL tagging needs to come before any additional tracking parameters. If they are in the wrong order, then you are not going to properly track performance. In the case of my client, I initially setup the Yahoo and MSN URLs with the call tracking parameter first, and the URL tagging second. Here is an example:

www.mysitehere.com/?param=a&param2=b&utm=source&utm=cpc&utm=content&parameter

Under this structure, the call tracking parameters were effectively stripping the &utm=source in Google Analytics. So similar to the case of 301 redirects, my pay-per-click traffic was counted as organic and direct.

Solution: Reorder your tracking URLs so the &utm=source tracking code comes before any additional tracking parameters. Your URL should follow this structure:

www.mysitehere.com/?utm=source&utm=cpc&utm=content&parameter&param=a&param2=b

Problem 3: URL Structure

If you are still having problems tracking 3^rd party campaigns in Google Analytics, then your issue may lie with the &utm=soruce tracking parameter setup using the Google URL Builder. If you do not properly format this tag, then Google Analytics will not record traffic properly.

Solution: Take a closer look at your &utm=source parameters to confirm everything is correct. Check out How to Troubleshoot When Tracking 3rd Party PPC through Google Analytics for a more detailed review of the problem.

3^rd party URL tagging is a great resource for tracking pay-per-click campaign performance, but you have to do it right to reap the benefits. These are all very common problems with URL tagging and thankfully the solutions are simple to implement. Please learn from my mistake and make sure you setup your URLs correctly. But if you are experiencing tracking problems, use this as a resource to quickly find and resolve the problem.

Have you experienced other issues with URL tagging? Please share your problems and solutions with us!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.