Here’s some tips about Email. I learned a lot from these.

Email campaigns are still one of the biggest lead generators for all of you.  And for good reason.  When someone signs on to your email listing, they are telling you that they want to hear from you.  They trust you enough to give you their email and say “yeah, it’s totally cool for you to send me things”.  That’s remarkable!  Now you can actually send things to people who actually care, unlike social media, where they’re “meh” about you at best.

There are a few areas you need to look at to determine if your email campaigns are effective.

• Bounce Rate

Basically, you want to make sure the emails addresses you are sending your content to actually exist.  If they don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised when your emails stop working.

• Open Rate

So you have this fantastic email list. Are people opening your emails?  That’s important.  If they’re not, you need to think about why they’re not opening it.

• Click Through Rate

If you have a button that brings them to your website (hopefully the sales page), how many people are clicking on it?  Have you give them enough value to click through to your site?

• Conversions

Although this one is harder to track, using tools like Google Analytics will help you.  How many of these emails leads actually end in a sale after they click on the email?  This will give you the ROI of your email efforts.

http://soshable.com/4-statistics-you-need-to-focus-on-for-your-email-marketing-campaign/

Are you a local business? Here’s some tips about social media

So you’re a local business.  And you’re wondering how to use social media to boost your audience and popularity.  How to do that?  How to make sure that your social media is not just an empty shell, that it’s actually doing something for you?

Well, there are a couple of ways. And it boils down to this:  you want social media to tell others that you have customers coming to your business. Having a profile that sits there as a representation of your brand isn’t enough.  You need to actively show your audience that you are present in the community.

Therefore, using Facebook check in and Foursquare will help show people that you are actually present. People are going to your establishment and using your services. That’s important, because it gives immediate proof that your establishment is worth it.  Yelp can also do this for you, as many people passing through will turn to Yelp for information about your establishment.

Additionally, using pictures on your Facebook and Twitter will give your audience additional proof that your establishment is active and lively.  Having an event and posting the pictures and videos gives people something to look at. They will take away more information about how the feel about your business than any amount of text can do.  Mostly because no one will read more than a paragraph about why your business is great.

Blogging and Youtube are also good sources of constant, rich information.  Blogging because it gives people something to read about that is more personal about your business, while Youtube will give you rich video content for those who don’t want to take the time to read everything.

So if you have a local business, use social media as a way to supplement that fact. Don’t try and have them stand on their own.

http://soshable.com/10-social-media-tips-for-local-businesses/

How do you talk to your customers on social media?

As a company, what do you think social media is for?  Another avenue for advertising? And easy way to send out promotions? A place to learn about your customers?  A way to easily, and quickly talk to your customers?

When it comes down to it, you need to look at your social media as a way to talk to your customers quicker than you ever have before.  Twitter users expect a response within 2 hours of a Tweet. Facebook users want it within 24 hours.  When you engage with your customers on social media, you need to follow their rules. Their friends respond pretty quickly to wall posts.  They send their mothers cute pictures.  They tweet their friends back and forth throughout the day. If they liked you on Facebook, or if they followed you on Twitter, they are going to expect for you to talk to them like others talk to them. Welcome to their world.

Social Media is the best customer service platform your customers have ever had. They’re not talking toa  representative, they are talking to the brand. Directly.  Weird. They’ve never done that before.  But now they are, and they expect brands to talk to them like another person would. Because that’s how you’ve built them.  You’ve given your brands’ personalities, likes, dislikes, and values. And now you have to act that role out.

Use your social media as a way to talk to your customers. Make your brand come to life and engage them like they desire, and they will love you.  It will give much better good will, because they are able to trust a person and not a company.  You can take back the local business advantage of knowing the owner, because they will know the brand personally.

 

http://soshable.com/social-media-the-ultimate-experience-in-customer-service/ 

Bing and Pinterest are hooking up in Stacy’s bathroom!

So Bing and Pinterest have partnered up.  This is interesting.

Bing hasn’t had much luck with taking much search share from Google. It’s growing, that much is true. But it’s more a niche search engine then it is a big player yet.  However, this partnership with Pinterest is to try and get more bloggers and picture people.  Basically, when you image search with Bing, there is a “Pin” button now.  So long as you’re signed into Pinterest, you will pin it to a board.

It’s an interesting strategy.  Image search is not something I typically use, but I can see why I’d want to used Bing for my image search.  I’ve only recently started using Pinterest, and I’m not a blogger, so pictures aren’t the biggest deal to me, but they’re certainly fun to look at. If I see a cool picture in my image search, if I ever use Bing, I will definitely pin some of the things I see.

Will this matter for your company?  It might.  Bing isn’t a big player, but Google may start losing their huge lead over everyone else.  And if that happens, knowing how to rank higher in other search engines will be more important.  And if you’re using Bing, then Pinterest will be the social media to be at.

 

http://soshable.com/pinterest-and-bing-hooking-up/#more-9128

Google+ is actually pretty cool

So guys, you know Google+ right?

Hey, don’t leave.  No, no.  It’s not a Facebook killer.  That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that Google’s selfish.

Selfish how?

 

Well, let’s think about this:  Google controls almost all of the internet’s information.  How people find it. What they find, exactly.  Who’s a good source information, and who’s just trying to scam people. They have that power.

People fight for their chance to rank highly on Google. All the time.  People’s careers are focused on that.  So it’s a pretty big deal to know abuot Google.

Now this social media thing comes along, and Google’s not part of it at first. Why? Doesn’t matter. They’re not.  But now they want to be. 

They create this social media platform, and everyone’s a bit interested.  But they find it’s too much trouble to bring over their entire social media life to Google+ when Facebook works just fine.  Damn. Google+ is now that social media site that just never worked.

But this Google. The most powerful internet company. Are they just gunna give up? Nah.

So how to fight back? What’s their biggest asset?

Their search engine. 

So they do this thing where they’ll rank you higher if you’re on their social media site.  Being on Google+ makes you look better to Google’s algorithm.  Because they can trust you more.

Google’s being selfish. They want in on social media, so they’re going to push to make it happen.  And they’re using their most powerful asset to get the job done.

So rethink if you should be on Google+, and how Google will reward you for being there.

 

http://soshable.com/why-you-should-be-using-google-now/

So Morgan Freeman upsets Redditors a bit.

So Reddit is a pretty cool place. For those of you who do not know about it, you can find a subreddit for about anything, and all conversations in that subreddit will be about the topic. Like dogs? Like comics? Like glowing bananas with sunglasses? Yeah, there are subreddits for all of those things.

However, one of the most popular subreddits is called “I Am A”. The basic rules of the subreddit are as follows:
1. The subreddit must start with “I Am A”, and end with either “Ask Me Anything” or “Ask Me Almost Anything”. For example: “I Am A Firefighter, Ask Me Anything” or “I am a mathematician, ask me anything”
2. Each “ask me anything” (abbreviated as ‘ama’) must provide proof in the main post
3. Each “ask me anything” must be uncommon, in the sense that it must either “play a central role in your life” or be “a truly unique or interesting event”

Some of the top Ask Me Anything’s have been:

Barack Obama – http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/

Bill Gates – http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/

Neil deGrasse Tyson – http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/

Bill Nye the Science Guy – http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x9pq0/iam_bill_nye_the_science_guy_ama/

I was mauled by a bear fought, fought it off, and drove 4 miles down a mountain with my face hanging off – http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1byn1l/i_was_mauled_by_a_bear_fought_it_off_and_drove_4/

Now, many of these AMA’s have been fantastic, and as you can tell, some of the top ones were done by famous people. Many celebrities have started doing AMAs, including actors. So it was a fantastic surprise to hear that Morgan Freeman was doing an AMA.

However, it turned out to be a failure.

The Morgan Freeman AMA was filled with one word answers, odd responses (such as telling his fans that his least favorite part of his career were his fans because they were annoying), and a rather curt tone throughout the whole AMA. Additionally, while it is normally required to have proof before starting the AMA, there was no proof this go around until hours after everything started. When proof finally was posted, it was an obviously photo shopped picture of a sleeping Morgan Freeman, shown below:

Morgan Freeman “Proof”

With all of these aspects combined, it made everyone feel as if the account wasn’t being used by Morgan Freeman, and that a PR person was the one in control.

Redditors absolutely hated that. AMAs have traditionally been a learning experience. A great way for users to learn about an experience that they otherwise would not have been able to. This time, it felt like a cheap stunt to get everyone to watch Morgan Freeman’s new movie. It was publicity. It wasn’t good content.

This is something that seems to happen for many marketing people. They do not understand how to approach certain communities effectively, and try to use the same tactics all over the place. That’s wrong. When engaging communities, especially online communities that have the ability to respond quickly and harshly, you need to cater to their wants. Many online communities, Reddit in particular, are very protective of their communities, and when they feel a company is trying to change that community they will react very strongly which is what happened with the Morgan Freeman AMA.

So to all of the marketers out there. Learn your communities before you engage them. Talk to those in charge of those communities and learn what is appropriate and what is not. Websites should be looked at more as a foreign country you are entering as opposed to the newspaper medium or radio medium.

Have you noticed those pink equal signs on Facebook?

Because I have, and they’ve done quite well in promoting awareness through Facebook and other social media platforms. For those who do not know, this is the little icon that has been floating around Facebook:

Equality

It’s done wonders for the campaign, which I did not know about until 20 of my friends had changed their profile picture to it to show support.  Regardless of if you agree with the movement, as a social media marketer, it’s rather obvious that we can learn a thing or two from this campaign.  It has also spun out interesting alternative pictures, showing further how a campaign such as this can be taken and used by a variety of people.

“Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That” Equality:

“Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That” Equality

Baby Equality:

Baby Equality

Bert and Ernie Equality:

Bert and Ernie Equality

Holding Hands Equality:

Holding Hands Equality

Mario and Luigi Equality:

Mario and Luigi Equality

The movements Facebook page also has shows the variety of the campaign:

Human Rights Campaign Equality Page

When I see companies’ creating social media campaigns, they tend create content and have people share it. Maybe that isn’t the way to do it.  This Human Rights campaign has me wondering allowing organic content creation to dominate your campaigns.  This is different then user generated content that is made to win a contest, for instance. The Human Rights campaign did not ask their audience to create the coolest logo to win something, it just happened. It is a great example of how organic use of user generated content can help a movement in unpredictable ways.

Conversion, Conversation, and Content

There are a few types of content that you are able to have on your webpage that will help with your SEO.  There is regular content that does not change. ‘About Us’ pages, and ‘Portfolio’ pages are content pages.  They give information to the viewer that probably will not change more than a few times in a decade, and so you are not able to keep these sections updated.  They will be indexed and left the same for years to come. 

There are also conversion pages.  These are pages specifically targeted towards SEO and keywords for that specific type of product.  These would include landing pages such as a webpage for a specific model of Toyota car targeted to a specific city, or a sandwich shop page targeted towards a specific group of people.  These pages have on goal in mind: generate sales and leads.  They are created simply for people who are looking to buy a product and service, and they typically do not sway from that goal.  In this way, people will not share this type of page if they do not already have a car to share it.  They are coming to this page because they want to purchase this product.  They’re probably not going to share it with his mom or best friend.

That is where conversation pages come in.  These are pages that have little to do with any specific products on the site.  They are simply conversation starters that have something to do with your industry.  The conversation pages are supposed to bring interest and traffic to your site.  They will most likely not generate any direct sales for the company.  But that’s not their point.  There point is to get people talking.

Keep in mind the basic idea of Google, past all the tricks that seem to be going around now:  to get your link out to multiple pages organically in order to boost up your PageRank.  Conversation pages are made to be shared.  They are made to be interesting, and are not an ad disguised as an interesting page. 

By having conversation pages, you are creating a better link building system that does not annoy Google and make them possibly deindex your site or drop your PageRank.  It becomes difficult to maintain a good repot with Google sometimes, but having honest content that people actually find interesting tends to be a good idea.

So when creating a website:  it’s great to have conversion pages. In fact, it’s necessary to have conversion pages. But everyone does it.  So by having conversation pages, you might boost yourself up just a little bit past your competition. And in the competitive area that is Google that is very important.

Source:  http://soshable.com/finding-the-right-mix-of-conversion-and-conversation-content/

FTC says you need to tell people when you pay others to say you’re awesome.

It is now illegal to post advertisements on Twitter without clearly stating that it is an Ad and having a reasonable expectation for the product.  The FTC ruled that this was the case in their newest release of the .com disclosure guidelines, which have not been updated since 2000.  In general, they have not changed much, and many of the guidelines for traditional advertisements will also apply to online advertisements.

When it comes to celebrities on Twitter, many tweets are confusing.  Many of the celebrities will post tweets about products, but will not make any effort to tell their followers if these messages are paid endorsements or real reviews.  The FTC’s new guidelines put an end to ambiguous tweets such as those.

However,  since the FTC knows that tweets are only 140 characters long, they did not try to force long disclaimers on users trying to promote a product.  They simply asked for two things:  1.For the user to put the word “Ad:” in front of their tweet, and 2. For the user to put a “typical use” disclaimer at the end of the message.

This is enough to allow a follower to know that the message as a paid advertisement, and unlike the ambiguous “#spon” tag, everyone understand the phrase “ad”.  And additionally, they are able to see the average effects and what to expect when using a new product, and they won’t have unrealistic expectations of products, such as losing 30lbs in 5 weeks from a weight loss pill.

So, in short, you can no longer pay celebrities to talk about your product and fool everyone into believing it’s the second coming of Jesus.  Sorry guys.  Sometimes it’s just not your day.

Source:  http://soshable.com/new-twitter-advertising-rules-some-tweets-illegal/#more-8872