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18 million people are using Twitter. If you haven’t felt the urge to start writing in 140 character snippets, OHO Interactive has come up with 12 holiday reasons to get started by Tuesday, December 14. Join up to Twitter – or login – and start following us on Twitter at OHOinteractive. You’ll find out how you can get a chance to win a 12 Days of Twitter daily prize. Visit our website to find out how to get started with Twitter and see the daily prize.

If you’re wondering why you might want to use Twitter for your business or organization, here’s 12 reasons that we see.

1. Get feedback from your customers
2. Have a two-way conversation
3. Understand what people are doing with your products
4. Listen to what people are saying
5. Provide customer service
6. Find your champions
7. Socialize new ideas or products
8. Follow cultural trends
9. Read breaking news
10. Run a single-click advocacy campaign
11. Read out-of-box articles
12. Win gifts from OHO!

I was chatting with a curator and an director of education from a museum recently, and we got into a lively discussion about social media.

I had a moment of clarity – these are the people that should be writing on Facebook and Twitter. The curator has the passion about the subject your audience cares about. Why not give them access? Curators can seed the conversation by seeking out rare artifacts or interesting stories from the collection. This content will drive audience interest and brings the collection of a museum online.

Plus, curators and educators are able to offer the behind the scenes experience that is a powerful perspective to offer via social media. People like to find that they get an insider view of the museum. Besides, museums figured this out a long time ago when it came to membership levels – the more you paid, the more access to the art, artists, and curator you received. This desire to be on the inside can be achieved through social media with ease and impact.

For example, this week the MoMA shared its original rejection letter that it sent to Andy Warhol on its twitter feed. Sharing history and stories builds connection and intimacy with your audience.

Start building this intimate relationship with your audience – tap your curator and education department for great stories about art, artists, and your museum history.

One of the concerns I most often hear from clients about their websites is "how can I make them more effective?" Well to help out we've put together a list of common items that are quick wins and can help improve almost any website.  This blog post is a sneak preview of these top 10 ideas.  Over the new few months we'll be discussing these in more detail in a series of seminars and white papers. 

10 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Website.

1. Write meaningful page headlines.
   It’s great for visitors and search engine optimization.
2. Set-up Google Analytics.
   It’s free (!) and tells you how people found your site and what they did.
3. Take an hour to read your site and update inaccurate information.
   People expect websites to be the most current information source.
4. Delete 10 pages to remove clutter and out-of-date information.
   You’ll feel better knowing your site is accurate.
5. Claim your organization on Yelp, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
   Put up some basic information so people find you on social networks.
6. Cut your word count down to 400 words per page.
   Separating different ideas onto different pages helps people to search and to browse.
7. Write a sub-head for every 2-3 sentences.
   It makes the page easy to skim and scan – people are in a hurry these days.
8. Add maps, videos, and pictures to pages.
   The web is primarily a visual medium.
9. Start online search engine advertising.
   Drive some new traffic to your site at any budget level.
10. Create an XML site map for search engines.
    It’s not as hard as it sounds and it improves search rankings.

If you'd like a printed card of these ideas or  have questions or comments feel free to send me an email.

German car maker Volkswagen has dropped the corporate website URL from its recent set of television ads and promoted a new Facebook URL: www.facebook.com/vw. The Facebook site starts with a product overview page with links to Facebook group pages for each of the individual cars where visitors can become "fans" of the cars.

Jetta Registers over 16,000 Fans

Currently, each car in the VW lineup has between 350 and 16,216 fans (the Jetta is most popular). The group page also features official photos and a video with the most recent television ad. The Jetta group has customer posted images – currently 46 images. How's that for brand affinity?

Marketing Benefits of Facebook

Creating a Facebook destination can offer a company a number of benefits:

1. It provides easier tracking for the ad campaign.
2. Offers an opportunity for consumers to immediately register their interest in using an application they are comfortable with (no additional registration on your "corporate" site)
3. Provides another distribution channel for content: photos and video.
4. Turns consumers into your advertisers: on this site other Jetta owners are troubleshooting a problem posted by a user.

The Risks of Social Media Campaigns

There are some risks with starting a social media campaign – foremost is the need to monitor the posts and have a strategy for responding to negative comments. Before beginning a campaign, you'll need a management and marketing team comfortable with this reality.