SiteProNews |
- The Power of a Tiny URL
- 12 Strategies for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns
- 8 Secrets to Fill Your Business in 60 Days
- The Five Steps to Increasing Your Presence on The Social Networks
| Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:12 AM PDT With the world wide web of social media and the constant reminder that this is not a fade but a reality, we are all faced with questions on how do I use these Social Media sites successfully and at what point to get others to help. I was watching the News last night and they were talking about the Lakers big win and how unruly people went out of control and started destroying things in plain view for all the news cameras and security cameras to see. Then they followed up with asking people to go to their twitter account and comment on what they think about these events. As you can see this type of social media is very popular and being used now in ways we never thought possible. When the television starts telling you to use twitter you know we are on to something big here. I am not going to give any real meat here on social networking but wanted to touch on one aspect here which involves the URL which is most commonly used for the micro blogging sites like “spnbabble” and “twitter“. When postings to sites like this since the character limit is 140 then the need to shorten URLs comes into play as some URLs are so long that it can take up the majority of your message. So sites like MyOpenID start appearing all over the web allowing us to use our own tiny URL to help manage this shortening of URLs. What I find interesting here is with all this new technology like the open ID URLs we are missing some opportunities here. The idea of the open ID is to allow you to shorten a URL and make the URL look clean. It also masks the actual URL until you arrive at the site. You should also be aware that these tiny URLs are not exactly SEO friendly so it is important to come up with a few ideas on how you can make use of this technology so that it gives you an advantage in the online market. Here are a few ideas: 1. Use the tiny URLs to direct people to your affiliate pages. Most affiliate sites all use a common string of words in the urls which show a users ID name or number. People are catching on and when presenting your product in a creative way to get people to click on those links they stop as soon as they see the actual URL. Though you may be offering the greatest thing in the world, you are losing potential business because people know this is just another money venture for you. So, use a tiny URL which has a social media appeal to get them to click. 2. Use tiny URLs to link to other resource sites If you have a lot of great sites to link to on your web pages or blog but don’t want to give up too many links for the SE’s then use the tiny URL and save yourself the time of having to block the search engines from counting those links other sites. A one way link is very valuable now and if you are not linking to other sites as a trade off then why give it away? 3. Use tiny URLs to make use of many online marketing tools out there. There a ton of sites popping up where you can use your open ID URL to make use of their services. These services often have ways of automating sites out there like twitter.com and can be a very useful in gaining new followers, etc. An example is tweetlater.com which allows you to create an auto response to all your followers. It is a one time message thanking them for following you and allowing you to link to any site using a tiny url and maybe your one chance to sell an item or get a new subscriber. For more details about this read my latest article on Advance Twitter. If you have not currently signed up for an open ID you should do it fast as your favorite names can be taken very soon here. After you sign up for one make sure to go to SPNBabble and create an account there and connect your open ID and micro blog accounts so you can make use of micro blogging on 1 site but having it appear on several others automatically like Facebook and Twitter. We have also created a wordpress plugin for this to save you even more time of having to bookmark your blogs to micro blog sites. Can you think of more uses for a tiny URL? Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| 12 Strategies for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns Posted: 16 Jun 2009 02:06 AM PDT Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for our clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following these twelve strategies will make your email more effective. So, here’s my list, compiled and crafted from years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of millions of messages we’ve sent out for our clients: 1. One Main Message Per Email: The most effective email messages have one main idea or concept. I spent a summer as an intern at the White House, helping to read and answer the mail. The writing staff taught that the strongest messages were ones that didn’t distract people with extraneous information. Before you start writing a message, write down what you’re trying to communicate. Or at least think about your message before you start writing. The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear and concise. 2. Keep it Short: If you’re like me, the phone rings off the hook, people walk over to your desk to ask you a question, and other people are instant messaging you. And then your cell phone starts ringing. It’s enough to make anyone a bit crazy and give you Attention Deficit Disorder. Our collective attention spans are very short. People simply have too many distractions to wade through a really long email. You might think they need all of the information. But when people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people’s eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message. And thus, the most effective email messages are short. Two or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by supporting material, an attachment or a link to more information on a website. Enough said. I’ll try to keep this section short. 3. Keep it Relevant: I believe that attention is the most important asset of any business or organization. What do I mean by this? If your messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention to what you are trying to say. If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages. It’s easy to get into a mentality where you want to send everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass broadcasts, it’s not that expensive to do. However, once someone feels your messages aren’t that important, they will simply stop reading them. 4. Reply Early & Reply Often: With the huge volume of spam, it’s tough to know if your message got through. Right now, four out of every five emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much junk, it’s easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone’s ever-expanding inbox. So you start to worry when you haven’t heard back from someone that you emailed a couple of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did that person get my message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug them? Am I being too pushy? So when you’re on the other side of the email message, it’s really important to reply early and reply often. What you’re doing is letting them know you (a) received the message and (b) that you care. 5. From Line: The single most important part of an email message is the From line. If the person you’re sending to doesn’t recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening. Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of the plain email address. The From line of your email (friendly display name) should have your full name and organization in it. The culprit is that many people have only their first names listed in the friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages aren’t too racy, but with email programs that automatically fill in an email address when you start to type a first name, it’s easy to email the wrong person something that could be seriously career limiting. 6. Subject Line: After the From line, the subject line is the second most important part of an effective email. If you forget to include a subject line, your message is much more likely to go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened. Email marketing professionals live and die by subject lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is all about, but still entice someone to open the message, read it, and take action. Including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to 60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter Research) 7. Personalize Each Message: Except when being called into the principal’s office, everyone likes being called by their name. In this impersonal world of email messages, people like to know that you know who they are, and that you care about them as a person. Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent without being addressed to someone by name and is out of context. I’m much more willing to help someone who personalizes the message to me, and gives me a non-threatening reason why this needs to really be done by tomorrow. 8. Always include your contact information: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not returned a call promptly because I didn’t have someone’s contact information readily available. In this age of iPhones, Blackberries and cellphones, it’s rare that I have a phone number memorized. So many people rush through their phone number, making it virtually impossible to write down the number without having to go back and listen to their message a couple of extra times. Ideally, you should always give your phone number, say it slowly, and repeat it twice so that someone can write it down and then make sure it’s correct. Effective emails always include a signature line with contact information. You should include your contact information in every new message or every message you reply to. 9. Strong Call to Action: In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the time you want someone to take a specific action when they receive your message. The most effective email messages always have a strong call to action, telling the recipient what you want them to do. Email is a low context medium. It doesn’t transmit behavioral clues like voice inflection that might otherwise indicate what you want a person to do. So it’s important to be direct and ask what you want the other person to do. It sounds basic, but it’s a key to effective email. 10. Paste Links & Get on the Same Page: How many times have you felt that the person receiving your email just isn’t on the same page as you? A lot of times it’s literally true. You might be thinking that they are looking at one page on a website, when in fact they are looking at something completely different. I know I’ve been frustrated by this in the past. Simple pasting a link into an email is the best strategy. Again, it seems simple, but it can mean the difference between confusion and clarity. Sending someone the exact link to the website page you are discussing gets everyone on the same page. 11. Use Folders & Filters: If you’re like me and you receive a lot of email, you can use folders to store messages from different people or clients. In most email programs, you can set up automatic rules (often called filters) that will place all messages from Joe into a specific folder. That way you can review all of the messages Joe sends over to you, reply to the ones that need attention, and not have to spend the time moving the messages from the inbox to another folder when you’re finished. This one strategy has made me amazingly more efficient at dealing with the large volume of email I receive each day (usually about 950 messages per day). 12. Know when email doesn’t work: Pick up the phone instead… Email remains one of the primary ways that businesses communicate internally among their staff, and externally with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. However, make sure you recognize when email is losing its effectiveness. It’s easy to hide behind email when we don’t want to speak to a scary client or team member. I’ve been guilty of that as well when I have a million things going on. But sometimes a three minute conversation can clear up the confusion inherent in five days of back-and-forth email messages. Chuck Matthews - Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following these strategies will make your email more effective. So, here’s my list, compiled and crafted from years of experience and analysis of millions of messages. Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=59693 Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources 12 Strategies for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns |
| 8 Secrets to Fill Your Business in 60 Days Posted: 16 Jun 2009 02:04 AM PDT
1. Success mind set. Don’t gloss over this strategy — it may be the most important of all. If you truly want to succeed in your business and are passionate about what you do, nothing will hold you back. This often means that you have to step out in faith that you’ll succeed, and most importantly, believe in yourself as a success. Sure, you may stumble, or even fall, but you must be willing to pick yourself back up and persevere — even without a safety net hanging under you. 2. Target market. The biggest mistake that business owners make is wanting to sell to everyone. If you’ve tried this, you have no doubt discovered that casting your net around everyone is a very difficult task. Narrowing that group to a more manageable number will actually serve you much better, believe it or not. If you can identify a smaller group of hungry prospects who are willing to pay for the solutions to the problems that keep them awake at night (or those who are willing to pay for more information about a hobby or interest that occupies much of their free time) AND who are reachable in groups (associations, membership sites, magazines, newsletters, discussion forums or lists, social networking groups, etc.), then you have made a key discovery that will catapult your business forward. 3. Client Attraction Device. You’ve heard it said time and time again that “the money is in the list.” This still holds true today, as well. Without a list of interested prospects to whom you can market, you don’t have a business. The quickest way to begin to develop a list is to give something away. Yes, you heard me correctly. If you have content you have already created, dig through that to see if you have something appropriate for your chosen target market. If not, identify a problem of your target market, and create some content that answers one of those problems. Perhaps it’s a checklist, a Top 10 list, an ebook or special report, an audio interview, a pod cast, a video — do whatever is easiest for you. Just ensure that it is in a plug and play format , i.e. don’t make your prospect download some weird software that’s not commonplace to read and view this material. Make sure that your Client Attraction Device has some valuable content in it. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to read a free giveway that only serves to remind me that I have a problem and offers no solution unless I pay for it. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate your expertise by giving “how to” information away. Trust me, if you are truly good at what you do, there’s no way that you can share everything you know on a topic in one short information product. Your Client Attraction Device starts your prospects on the like, know, and trust road that is imperative for them to travel before they will decide to buy something from you. 4. Email marketing system. You must have some way to collect your prospect’s information and a system by which you can stay in contact with them. The best way to do this is by purchasing email marketing services. Do not use a free service for this, nor try to send emails out of your Outlook program. If you want to be a serous online business owner, invest in the most important asset in your business — your email marketing system. 5. Blogsite. A blogsite, which is a web site/blog hybrid, is the quickest way to build an online presence. The two most popular blogging platforms, the fee-based Typepad and open source software Wordpress, can be used to create a blogsite very quickly. If you want either of them customized with a particular look or feel, that may take a bit longer and require a greater investment. However, either will work well to get you started, and both will permit you to enter your email marketing system’s signup code onto a page so that you can immediately begin to collect contact information from prospects who have requested your Client Attraction Device. 6. Stay in touch. Whether you do this by submitting regular blog posts or publishing an email newsletter (or both), you need to reach out and touch your prospects at least weekly (or several times a week if you are blogging). Give them some insights about what’s happening with you personally as well as sharing some aspect of your expertise with them by creating a content-rich article or answering their questions. And, don’t forget to sell — offer some product or service in each email newsletter, or submit regular blog posts that remind your readers about what you are selling. 7. Social networking. Never before have we had the opportunity to connect with others online easily and inexpensively as we do now with social networking. Create profiles on the social networks) used by your target market, do research to add friends/followers in your target market, and use the status updates to be useful to your followers, i.e. by sharing resources, asking questions, and updating them about how you help clients/customers. 8. Drive traffic to your site. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but my favorite starts with writing an article. Once it’s written, I publish it in my ezine, my blog, and to my web site and syndicate it on article directories all over the Web. Then I have the option of making a pod cast with the content; creating a screencast video or “talking head” video from it; writing and submitting a press release; creating a teleclass; create a Q&A radio show interview opportunity; breaking up the points as separate Twitter posts, or Tweets, and tweeting them to my followers; or sharing it on my Squidoo lens or other information-sharing portals. The point here is to work once and profit, profit, profit. Repurpose one article as many ways as you can to drive traffic back to your blogsite and thus get more and more prospects to sign up on your list and ultimately convert them to customers. The advent of the Internet makes it easier than every to create and promote a business online with very little startup capital. And, if done correctly, the strategies will results in you filling your business in 60 days with eager and willing prospects ready to buy what you are offering. Online Business Manager and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources 8 Secrets to Fill Your Business in 60 Days |
| The Five Steps to Increasing Your Presence on The Social Networks Posted: 16 Jun 2009 01:55 AM PDT There is no question that social network marketing is not only here to stay but more than likely a moving force in marketing in general. Sometimes getting started with something new can become a very daunting task so I thought it would be advantageous to write a brief article on making this event a bit more user friendly. In reality, social network marketing has two basic components. One is the personal side and the other a business event. In both cases the process is basically the same. Step 1: Finding Your Home - You need to determine where you want to spend your time. Not all of the social network sites are the same. Some lean to different ages (i.e. MySpace), some to different niches (i.e. Facebook) and others more related to business (i.e. LinkedIn). Now, in reality, most of these sites, including the ones just mentioned, cross over to some degree. If you have the time, join them all. Most people will find one or two networks where they will feel comfortable. Step 2: Creating Your Profile - One the items common to practically all of the social network sites is the need to create a profile. Tell your future friends who you are, what you like and why you are participating in this specific forum. I would suggest that this is not the place for ’spin’. You need to be honest and forthcoming if you are going to create the long lasting relationships so necessary to be successful in social network marketing. Step 3: Relationships - OK. OK, we now have to create relationships. Unfortunately this can sound a bit oversimplified but the actual reason for participating in social networking is to create relationships and interacting on a consistent basis about concepts they have in common. That is the true purpose of being ’social’. This will require effort and time. The internet, being a relatively ‘unsocial’ environment due to the inability to actually ‘touch and feel’, requires additional effort. In most ‘brick and mortar’ relationships you meet someone, you talk, you look each other in the eye and a relationship starts. Unfortunately this just doesn’t happen on the web. You need to be a bit more resourceful. Step 4: Content/Frequency - Relationships on the social network scene are created by content you develop and post on the specific site. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s on Twitter or on Facebook or MySpace. There are certain limitations with each of these websites but for the most part, you need to add content that is real and pertinent to your current and/or potential friends. You not only need to add good content but it needs to be frequently placed in order to a) get noticed and b) maintain relationships. Step 5: Don’t Burn Your Bridges Marketing - OK. You may be reading this article in order to learn how to use social networks for marketing your new or current online or offline business. It is not the intention of this quick article to discuss all of the various ways to help you in that goal. However, there is one real important point to be made here that will make your marketing efforts successful. Be hones. Don’t SPAM or SCAM or you will most certainly burn your bridges behind you. Like in the ‘real’ world, relationships are made and lost easily. It’s usually more difficult to make friends and real easy to lose them. On the web this process is made a bit more complicated and therefore it requires a great deal of attention. Before I end this article I wanted to give you a real world example of what I am talking about with the hope that you can extrapolate it to the world of social networking. The example is the club. When you begin to think of joining a club the first thing you need to determine is what type of club.(i.e. golf, tennis etc.) Let’s assume you are a great golfer and want to find new golfing friends. You join the club and start letting people know who you are. You can join a wide variety of committees. You go to club functions and try to meet club members. You tell them who you are and what you are looking for in the club. Then, you start participating in outings. You join foursomes and play as often as time permits. It is common knowledge that many who join golf clubs intend on using it as a business tool and therefore will ten to find like minded members and will eventually creating business while on the golf course. You’ll be honest and forthcoming or else you will either lose your foursome or even possibly your membership. Conclusion: Does this sound familiar? Well, it should and the very same concepts apply to joining an online social network “club”. Whether you are currently a member of one or more social networks or planning on joining, be sure to think of the five basic steps before jumping in with both feet. You can learn much more about Social Networking and Social Network Marketing at Twitter Right. Cary Ganz is the Creator of The Newbie Phenomenon where you can find over 250 additional products for only 99 cents with unrestricted, unlimited access for thirty (30) days Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources The Five Steps to Increasing Your Presence on The Social Networks |
Recently I was asked in an interview to imagine that I was starting all over again, and as a newbie, how I would fill my business in 60 days. Things have changed tremendously since I began my online business in 1999, mostly for the better. Most of the steps, however remain the same. Best of all, the strategies I recommend to fill your business are the same ones that can be applied to any business, and then applied again and again to other online ventures. Here are 8 secrets to filling the prospect funnel in your business in 60 days:| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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