Social media is a really big deal. The population of the United States is estimated to be 304,059,724 (Census Bureau, Population Division, 2009). Facebook, for example, has more than 300,000,000 active users (Facebook, 2009). Fifty percent of those active users log on in a day. LinkedIn has over 50,000,000 members, spanning over 200 countries. Every Fortune 500 company has executives that are members of LinkedIn (LinkedIn Corporation). You can use these online hangouts for branding and lead generation. They are the ideal way to quickly promote your business for free, my favorite price. What are you waiting for?
By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber both Generation X and Baby Boomers. Ninety-six percent have joined a social network making social media the simple choice to target that demographic (The Millennials, 2007).
The average age of a MySpace user is 26. MySpace is an excellent place to craft a completely developed company profile and an immense outreach system for B2B.
Twitter’s average user is 31. Think of Twitter as a broadcast medium so you will need about 1000 followers to reap the full benefit. Tweets are text posts that contain 140 characters or less sent to your Twitter followers. Use Twitter to push tweets out to other platforms like Facebook. Personalize Twitter background for branding. A good tool for monitoring what people are saying about your brand on Twitter and track stats is at www.HootSuite.com.
The average age of a Facebook user is 33, however the fastest growing group of users are females age 55 to 65. I’m telling you this just to let you know Facebook is a good medium to reach a wide variety of demographics. Facebook will create a button for you to install on your company site that lets visitors click on it and see your content on Facebook. You can also create a Fan Box Widget that will allow users to view your Facebook page stream. You can link your Facebook page to Twitter. You’ll need at least 100 friends on Facebook to use this medium effectively for your business.
The average age of a LinkedIn user is 39. LinkedIn is great for sending updates to business associates. LinkedIn is a more traditional platform for business networking. Try to put your keywords in your profile and repeat it in your content. To best utilize LinkedIn for your business, you’ll need to accumulate 500 or more connections.
If you need help contact me or check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
E-Mail Marketing
On an average day, fifty-eight percent of all adult Internet users in the United States send or read email (Pew Research Center, 2009). A Direct Marketing Association study found email marketing return on investment outshined other marketing channels with a incredible $43.62 for every dollar spent (Magill, 2009). Now that is a major bang for your buck!
For companies whose main intention is lead generation, email produces the highest response rate, 4.09 percent (Direct Marketing Association, 2007).
The first thing you are going to need to start your email campaign is a mailing list. You can build your own list from existing customers and prospects. Ask their permission before you put them on the list. Keep the opt-in process short, and then validate the email address with a small welcome message. Make sure you keep your email list up to date. Give recipients a preference center where they can update their email addresses, opt-out, note change in interests, changes in format preference, and frequency. Put a link to your preference center on the bottom of every email you send out, even on you traditional emails. Give confirmation that subscription changes are received. Delete bounce-backs from your email list as soon as you get them. Correct misspelled names and invalid email addresses. Whatever you do, honor unsubscribe requests.
Some companies send out “Email Blasts.” The name sounds intrusive and it is. Blasting an email on a one-to-all basis may be cheap and easy, but for many, the email will not be relevant and will lead to attrition. It is better to target and segment your subscribers. This will give you a much higher conversion rate than sending out email blasts.
Less than fifty percent of marketers create email suitably. One fifth of all email campaigns are indistinguishable or unsuccessful due to blocked images (Email Experience Council, 2009). HTML emails are more successful than regular text emails, if they are constructed properly. However, mobile phones are often used by businesses to receive email. When sending email B2B, text messages can be more successful. To cover both bases, send a multipart MIME email. Like I said before, your preference center should let subscribers choose format options. Even if a majority of your subscribers choose HTML, don’t get overly reliant on images, since 50% of the time recipients block them. Display text as text, not images. Make sure to use image tags describing the images accurately and keep the images small. All image and hyperlinks should be absolute links (the complete URL) rather than relative links. CSS does not work in emails. Keep the width of your email at 600 pixels so it’s easy to read. Your call-to-action needs to be in the first 300 pixels of the email. Ensure that the call-to-action has a relevant landing page. Send a test to a trusted group before you send it out. The more eyeballs to proof and test usability, the better.
If you don’t know what a call-to-action, absolute link, relative link or CSS is, you’ll do better to hire a service like Constant Contact, Listrak and Mail Chimp. If you have less than 500 subscribers, Mail Chimp is free, my favorite price (MailChimp).
Finally, don’t go crazy sending email. There is too much of a good thing. Sending an email once a week is enough. Sending once every couple of weeks or once a month is better. On the other hand, you can send emails out too infrequently creating the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” scenario. Emails sent out on Monday or Friday are less likely to be read. Stick with the middle of the week.
If you need help contact me or check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.
For companies whose main intention is lead generation, email produces the highest response rate, 4.09 percent (Direct Marketing Association, 2007).
The first thing you are going to need to start your email campaign is a mailing list. You can build your own list from existing customers and prospects. Ask their permission before you put them on the list. Keep the opt-in process short, and then validate the email address with a small welcome message. Make sure you keep your email list up to date. Give recipients a preference center where they can update their email addresses, opt-out, note change in interests, changes in format preference, and frequency. Put a link to your preference center on the bottom of every email you send out, even on you traditional emails. Give confirmation that subscription changes are received. Delete bounce-backs from your email list as soon as you get them. Correct misspelled names and invalid email addresses. Whatever you do, honor unsubscribe requests.
Some companies send out “Email Blasts.” The name sounds intrusive and it is. Blasting an email on a one-to-all basis may be cheap and easy, but for many, the email will not be relevant and will lead to attrition. It is better to target and segment your subscribers. This will give you a much higher conversion rate than sending out email blasts.
Less than fifty percent of marketers create email suitably. One fifth of all email campaigns are indistinguishable or unsuccessful due to blocked images (Email Experience Council, 2009). HTML emails are more successful than regular text emails, if they are constructed properly. However, mobile phones are often used by businesses to receive email. When sending email B2B, text messages can be more successful. To cover both bases, send a multipart MIME email. Like I said before, your preference center should let subscribers choose format options. Even if a majority of your subscribers choose HTML, don’t get overly reliant on images, since 50% of the time recipients block them. Display text as text, not images. Make sure to use image tags describing the images accurately and keep the images small. All image and hyperlinks should be absolute links (the complete URL) rather than relative links. CSS does not work in emails. Keep the width of your email at 600 pixels so it’s easy to read. Your call-to-action needs to be in the first 300 pixels of the email. Ensure that the call-to-action has a relevant landing page. Send a test to a trusted group before you send it out. The more eyeballs to proof and test usability, the better.
If you don’t know what a call-to-action, absolute link, relative link or CSS is, you’ll do better to hire a service like Constant Contact, Listrak and Mail Chimp. If you have less than 500 subscribers, Mail Chimp is free, my favorite price (MailChimp).
Finally, don’t go crazy sending email. There is too much of a good thing. Sending an email once a week is enough. Sending once every couple of weeks or once a month is better. On the other hand, you can send emails out too infrequently creating the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” scenario. Emails sent out on Monday or Friday are less likely to be read. Stick with the middle of the week.
If you need help contact me or check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
According to a recent study done by Global Insight for the Direct Marketing Association, Internet search advertising returns $21.85 for every dollar spent. Optimizing is different for different search engines. In September of 2009 over seventy percent of searchers used Google in contrast to 16.73% Yahoo, 9.28% Bing, and 2.50% Ask.
Logically one should optimize to reach the majority of searchers with Google. Each page should focus on one or two keywords. Use the keywords in headlines and the first paragraph. The keywords should logically and easily flow through the rest of the copy on the page. If your competitor’s site is getting top ranking, see what keywords they are using by signing up for a free trail of Keyword Spy at http://www.keywordspy.com/.
Search engines look at a site the title tag, description tag, keywords repetition, image tags, text content, and a site map. Each page should have a unique title tag containing no more than 60 characters that describes the content on the page. The description tag is seen in search engines to describe your site. It should be less than 145 characters and can be used to distinguish your site from others, while enticing searchers to click on your site link.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to keywords. Back in the olden days you could hide keywords by making them the same color as the background or making them one pixel high so visitors won’t see it, but Google can. Don’t try it now. Google is on to it and tricks like that will get you blackballed. Rather than spamming keywords, put keywords in your image tags. It’s not only good for search results, but good practice for the sake of usability. Just remember to keep it relevant to the image description.
You can generate an XML site map that will help Google and other search engines crawl your web site by going to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. The more links you have to your site the more Google feels that you are credible and places your site high in results. It’s another reason to keep content relevant, and updated.
Now you need some external links to your site. Here quality is more important than quantity. You can acquire incoming links by offering press releases and articles for publishing to business media sites. Ask associate companies to link to your site. Put links to your site in your blogs and social media profiles. If you need more help, check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.
Logically one should optimize to reach the majority of searchers with Google. Each page should focus on one or two keywords. Use the keywords in headlines and the first paragraph. The keywords should logically and easily flow through the rest of the copy on the page. If your competitor’s site is getting top ranking, see what keywords they are using by signing up for a free trail of Keyword Spy at http://www.keywordspy.com/.
Search engines look at a site the title tag, description tag, keywords repetition, image tags, text content, and a site map. Each page should have a unique title tag containing no more than 60 characters that describes the content on the page. The description tag is seen in search engines to describe your site. It should be less than 145 characters and can be used to distinguish your site from others, while enticing searchers to click on your site link.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to keywords. Back in the olden days you could hide keywords by making them the same color as the background or making them one pixel high so visitors won’t see it, but Google can. Don’t try it now. Google is on to it and tricks like that will get you blackballed. Rather than spamming keywords, put keywords in your image tags. It’s not only good for search results, but good practice for the sake of usability. Just remember to keep it relevant to the image description.
You can generate an XML site map that will help Google and other search engines crawl your web site by going to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. The more links you have to your site the more Google feels that you are credible and places your site high in results. It’s another reason to keep content relevant, and updated.
Now you need some external links to your site. Here quality is more important than quantity. You can acquire incoming links by offering press releases and articles for publishing to business media sites. Ask associate companies to link to your site. Put links to your site in your blogs and social media profiles. If you need more help, check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.
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