About a month ago, a broadband and web hosting company in South Africa, ran an online competition via Twitter. The idea was for followers to retweet the hashtag of the companies name with a Bit.ly link in order to enter. Entrants were also allowed to retweet this as many times as they like, for as many entries as they wanted.

This left my usual Twitter newsfeed of news, events, thoughts and general status's from my friends around the world, being flushed out by a constant stream of tweets containing "#AfrihostRelaunch http://bit.ly/d8Yeeq"

According to an online trend search, it showed that the particular hashtag used for the competition had been tweeted 103 times per hour. Now, some of you might be thinking that it proves its been successful in brand awareness, or that "no publicity is bad publicity", but in all honesty, as a marketing point of view, this is what is known as "interruption marketing". In all fairness people have argued that these types of competition are not the companies fault, as they can't control the retweets of the entrants, but they are definitely the ones who started it. Their brand is then also associated with every negative comment, regardless. And more importantly than just annoying the followers of the retweeters, there is a huge risk of negative search rankings on Google, with keywords like "spam" creeping in.

With the volume of tweets I was receiving daily on my newsfeed, advertising this competition, had the opposite effect on me. I completely refused to click through to their link at all. Nor did it ever try to market what the company actually offered. All I knew was that some company had some competition, and to win I had to retweet a meaningless link and hashtag. Competitions are meant to be a form of marketing, and they failed totally at this.

Another terrible Twitter competition style I've noticed, are campaigns like "Follow @google now to win". You can't expect to build an online community by tricking people in to follow your tweets. Certainly not a permanent community in any case.

Here are some good solutions, which I have noticed other companies using:
1. Allow one entry only.
2. Add content, a joke or a question to the entry.
3. Encourage entries to interact eg: "RT with your favourite Mr Site template design, to win with @mr_site" - this then can allow you to retweet humorous or witty entries, show your followers that your brand is friendly and sincere. Give them a reason to appreciate you. Or get unfollowed.

As an enthusiastic user of Twitter myself, there is nothing more annoying than following a person or brand who can’t take a few minutes to customise their profile picture, bio or wallpaper... I've compiled a list of some good Twitter tips to keep followers interested, as well as getting you more interesting followers.

The basics:
Don't leave your bio blank or vague, e.g.: "Dreamer, lover, explorer" - it's not mysterious or intriguing. Rather give short sentences of 4 facts, telling your followers who you are and what you do.
Example: "Designer at Mr Site. Loves animals and good coffee. Enjoys nights out"

Upload an actual photo of yourself, or a clear logo of your company. Nothing says "i don't care about doing this, but it's so trendy right now" than leaving your avatar as Twitter's default. The avatar area is small, so keep it as simple as possible. If you're unsure, take a tip from Stephen Fry.

Publish your actual location. No need for a full address, but the name of the city you live in is a good place to start. There seems to be a trend at the moment of people posting latitudes and longitudes, which means nothing to most people. It certainly isn't going to help your business if followers can't decode where you're based.

Choose a relevant username, something that people can remember. The MySpace trend of upper/lower case alternate typing, underscores and numbers has now become the top pet peeve of any online user. Being realistic, no one would take @Mr_Si_Te_UkAy_46 serious.

General etiquette:
Don't use your Twitter account as a corporate mask when talking to followers, address people as you would usually. Use their name, add a question asking their opinion, say "please" and "thank you". It feels good knowing that you're interacting with another human, instead of a bot.

Don't spam your followers with generic copy/pasted multi-tweets like "Visit www.google.com today for all your online search queries!". Followers will keep ignoring it, or simply unfollow you. What's worse than multiple tweets of the same content, is when businesses try promote a product by tagging a few followers into the tweet, with just a single link and no information. That's a sure-fire way to lose respect for your business and lose followers.

Re-tweets your followers if they have something interesting to say, if you like it, share it. People appreciate being recognised for something they have posted, and feel as if they aren't being ignored. It also adds a personal touch to your Twitter, followers know that you read what they are saying and take the time to notice it.

Above all else, take the time to reply to followers who tweet you.

Resources: Memeburn.com, Twittertips.org

Everyone loves social networking. Just the idea of being able to communicate with friends, family and fans around the world is exciting to us all. And with Facebook's business pages you can hardly go wrong with building an online awareness and your own Facebook community.

One of the many online trends-type blogs that I follow posted this simple guide to adding value to your Facebook presence. All 5 of the ideas listed are easy to follow and will without a doubt help you market your business and help you reach more sales.

As long as you can keep it fresh, up to date and remember these hints; add value, listen more, ask questions, be inspiring and competitions - and don't forget the Mr Site Social Bookmarks widget to add to your own Mr Site website, so that your new fans can post direct links from your website to share with their Facebook friends!

You can read the full article here

And if you don't have one already, get started on making your own Facebook business page here

Budding musicians looking for an easy way to share music online should look no further.  Perhaps you're already using it, or have stumbled across it - but SoundCloud offer hosting and sharing of your musical creations absolutely free.  It's quick and easy to set up an account & upload music - and even better - it won't take up any of your Mr Site web hosting space, leaving you more room for other fun things to add to your website.

Sharing your music from SoundCloud is quick and painless, with the added benefit of giving you some basic statistics of how many people have listened to your creations.  Simply copy and paste the embed code into one of your pages in the Mr Site 'Change content' editor and you'll sharing your music in no time.

So what are you waiting for?  Visit SoundCloud now and start sharing your music on your Takeaway Website.