The latest in Twitter buzz is the expansion of character limit. If you haven’t been following there is quite a bit of chatter regarding a possible character count increase, even as large as up to 10,000!

Twitter is expected to change the character limit and their target date is somewhere around April 1st. So for a little while now rumors on the web have indicated that Twitter is expanding their limit from 140 characters to 10,000. To put it lightly, people were losing their minds, burning the Internet streets. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey didn’t substantiate the rumors but did add in a recent interview, “(Twitter character limit) has become a beautiful constraint, but what if it had more utility and power.”

While increasing the character count would mean more searchable text and expandable tweets, the 140-character limit was simple. It was creative and fun and it let people quickly read a message and get on with their day. Now we’re not talking about changing it from 140 to 180. We’re not even talking about 140 to 1,000. We’re talking about changing it to 10,000 characters, paragraphs of copy, stories even. Will your message get lost amongst other novels?

On the flip side, the fun part is that now companies will have to be even MORE creative and even MORE informative than they were before. Twitter is a fun application and as we see nowadays is the quickest way to learn about breaking news. What started out as a quick, creative platform for people to easily access and understand might now be turned into long form updates.

Only time will tell… in the meantime, get Tweeting regardless, here are some tips go get going:

Follow relatable/local companies
Depending on your business, you are going to want to be in-the-know in your area. For example, if you are a small, local business, you may want to follow local government and educational accounts. City Hall, Mayors, Downtown, Local Police/Fire Department, High Schools, local Universities are all good accounts to stay informed in your area. If you are larger, then follow associations and vendors.

Make sure you follow your advertisers/investors/media
If you have investors or advertisers or anyone helping you, follow them. Retweet them and have a conversation with them, show them you care.

Keep Tweeting, no matter what
Being new to Twitter, you are going to want to tweet a lot. You can never tweet too much really. Tweet about your company, about your industry, different links on why to pick your place of business, articles you find interesting and relatable.

Build your profile
Give your profile some pizazz. Get a background image, a profile picture and add some color. Nothing turns people away faster than having a default “twitter egg” photo and no background picture… boring.

Talk about what’s “Trending”
Topics or phrases are always trending on Twitter. You’ll notice in certain areas that some phrases that begin with a hashtag are popular in your area, meaning a lot of people are talking about that. For example, if #WinterNYC was trending, you would want to draft a tweet that included that phrase, so it will turn up in more searches.

There are a lot of things you can do for your business on Twitter with just 140-characters, so stop reading and get started!

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A lot of companies do this with their marketing efforts; they follow a fad or listen to a sales pitch and don’t really analyze their audience needs first. I am not saying that making a gut decision is a bad thing, many gut decisions prove very fruitful, but I would say make sure you are informed enough to know why you are doing something. Take for example social media campaigns, don’t just create a Facebook page for your business-to-business product when your audience may be better targeted on LinkedIn. Along the same lines, don’t start four different social pages and then never update them. Have a plan, don’t overkill the planning on testing new ideas though, sometimes you just have to go out and try something new.

Of course you should maintain a level of everyday marketing, that is researched with a concerted effort, managed and tracked, whether that is an email marketing or an online advertising campaign; but perhaps adding in a blogger strategy makes sense too or trying to utilize something like Periscope that is a live-streaming app that makes it easy for you to broadcast message through your smartphone.

You can keep traveling down a road and every now and then veer off to see a new sight. Or like Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

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As a Mom now I know that one thing is for sure, my Mom was the Mom of all Moms growing up and still is, she worked out of the home, cooked, cleaned, cared for me and my siblings; she was the original multi-tasker before us businesswomen of today were called Mompreneurs and balancing extraordinaires, my Mom just did it with no fancy title. She didn’t plan to “lean-in” or “climb the ladder” she just did it.

Today, Moms are juggling even more, and some have found unique ways to use their Mom-expertise to have very fruitful careers. One such way is in the Mom Blogger arena, or as I learned at a conference I attended, bloggers who happen to be Moms, not Mom Bloggers, I stand corrected. So these bloggers sit on the Board of huge companies, are tapped into for their input on what Moms want and need. Some have exclusive relationships with big packaged goods companies, receive products to review on a regular basis or even go around the country to review travel destinations.

Many of these Moms started blogging as a way to keep connected to the outside world after they left the workforce to care for their children. And what happened next was companies took notice of their influence and turned them into part of their marketing strategy.

At 8fold we have had the privilege of working with some of these bloggers and have been able to provide value to our clients through their smart, witty and resourceful ways at working with brands to help leverage their audience to help market ours.

Click on the two recent case studies shown below that prove the power of these bloggers…oh and just for the record, they can still cook a mean chicken soup too!

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We are asked all the time how to spend marketing dollars for all size and type  companies. Whether we are working with a small business just opening their doors, a new pharma venture, an international franchise company or a cancer research non-profit, the answer always starts with the right strategic conversation.

To those that personally plan out their day, their month, their year, strategic direction for a business makes obvious sense. For those that compete in sports, you don’t play a game of anything, chess or soccer, tennis or sailing, without a strategy to navigate effectively with the goal to beat your own last effort or your competitor. So, why not do the same for your company’s brand building efforts?

If we’ve convinced you that strategy is the right place to start, then why are so many businesses doing and not planning? From our experience it’s rarely about money and mainly about time. Many businesses don’t want to wait to develop the right positioning, customer profile, competitive analysis and so they just do, and do a lot of random things that aren’t measurable and they keep doing those things over and over again.

And yes sometimes these random things work if someone is driven enough to find out where their leads are coming from, or from plain luck, but most of the time they execute without a plan and come calling us when they reach a plateau. They call and ask things like, “I think I need a new social media graphic or maybe a new logo, can you quickly mock up a print ad for me?” The answer is always, “No, no and no.”

Stop doing and start thinking and the right time to build a strategy is always NOW.

We have a path we follow to help brands get and stay on track, check it out.

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1. We didn’t change our focus from strategic marketers to “social media engagement specialist heroes” – while the trends don’t lie, we know that some things never change and every client needs a strategic partner, one who will guide them and of course execute and kick creative butt, but it all starts with brand strategy, not tactical outlets.
2. We aren’t bandwagon jumpers – while there is a place for new media strategies, we’ve been around the block and began our careers in traditional marketing, so we know not to leave one stone unturned and to consider everything, not just a new fad.
3. Having an external resource like 8fold is key to your success – we are learning new things everyday about both traditional, digital, mobile, social, crowd funding because it’s our job to do this while your team may not have the time to do so.
4. If you are the CEO, you shouldn’t be driving marketing decisions – you should have an experienced team that understands operations, sales AND how marketing fits into the puzzle, not just designers making pretty pictures to work with your team and make recommendations that are easy for you to say yes to.
5. Hiring a marketing firm like us doesn’t have to break the bank – while it makes most sense to have someone on board long-term to help plan, execute and measure results, some companies may just need strategic guidance and planning and keep execution internal.
6. Having a third-party like 8fold talk to your existing customers – this will definitely uncover findings that you haven’t already heard and takes the “anecdotal” to impartiality and statistically significant.
7. We are working daily with diverse clients – our background doesn’t just include one industry, but many and cross-pollinated ideas are nice surprises, who wants to work with an agency that just focuses on one industry all day and is single minded.
8. We aren’t going to insist you change your logo, colors, name – we focus on what the brand needs to get to the next level and who are we to tell a fifty year old company they need a logo update if it’s not critical for growth.
9. We don’t have a bookcase full of awards – because we don’t enter many contests, we are busy doing other things, but of course if you want awards, we will get you some!
10. We’ve been doing marketing for over 20 years – our parents still don’t understand what we do, so we need constant justification and we are always looking for new friends!

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Pictured below is an infographic detailing our work and results. Simply click the graphic to launch the PDF.

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It is important that your site accurately represent the quality of your brand. The design and functionality must mesh like the engine of a finely tuned Ferrari. And now more than ever your site needs to be mobile ready. Google recently released emails notifying companies, in not so many words, that their pages will not be indexed by Google if they were not mobile compliant (see below). With over 50% of searches being done on mobile devices, Google is changing their algorithms to better serve users the most accurate and user-friendly content.  We’ve all been to sites that aren’t optimized. The dragging to enlarge the page is like finding a parking spot at the mall on Black Friday.

8fold can help update your website and have you mobile compliant so you don’t see any loss of search ranking, and we’ll have you looking great to. Give us a call so we can talk about your site today.

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