Monthly Archives: February 2014

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3 Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers in this Week’s Social Media Discussion

Nurture customers with social media strategies source - http://blog.proresource.com/how-to-nurture-leads-online-using-social-media/Social Media can be used a variety of ways, but today we will discuss social media strategies to nurture your current customers, to build relationships, and to generate repeat purchases.

As Digital Marketing Managers and Social Media Marketers, delivering on revenue goals is crucial. Nurturing current customers via social media for repeat purchases will help you accomplish this task.

The idea here is to keep your brand and expertise in the forefront of your customers’ minds, so when they need you, they remember to come back to you.

When communicating with your customers, you need to be genuine. If you are not genuine, your customers will see through you, and you will not be successful in building relationships to help meet your revenue goals.

Now, that you realize the importance of being genuine when nurturing your customers, let’s move on.

3 Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers

  1. Reaffirm your customer purchases after the decision is made – There is time between when the decision is made to make the purchase and the action taken to make the actual purchase. During this time, use social media to reaffirm their choice to purchase your product by featuring customers who discussed their satisfaction after purchasing from your brand.
  2. Create lead nurturing campaigns for your new customers – Just like you have created social media tactics for potential customers, you want to deploy social media tactics for your newer customers to think of you for future purchases. Invite your new customers to follow you on social media networks, welcome them to your social media communities, post helpful information on how they can reap the benefits from their purchases, and create opportunities for cross sell and up sell products.
  3. Listen to your customers social media conversations for new needs, and requirements, or potential jumps to your competitors – By following your customers in social media, you can keep tabs on your customers satisfaction with their purchases. You want to listen for cues on the timing for repeat purchases, cross sell, or up sell opportunities. You can also listen to your customers to discover ideas for more relevant content for your social media and content marketing efforts.

Call to Action to Deploy Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers

  • Be active on the same social media networks where your customers are active.
  • Look at your current lead nurturing efforts for new business and see if anything can be used to nurture new customers.
  • Create social media posts to welcome new customers to your social media community.
  • Without giving your customers a sales pitch, prepare social media content giving your customers an idea about repeat purchases, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities.
  • Listen to your customers on social media to identify cues for potential repeat purchases.
  • Where it is genuine and makes sense, like, favorite, or retweet your customers social media posts
  • Listen for potential content ideas.
  • Come back for next week’s social media discussion about social media content ideas.
  • The next Digital Marketer’s blog post will explore the different types of content for your content marketing efforts.

Source for today’s Blog Post

Social Media Events

Social Media Network News and Resources

all social media site news

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Pinterest

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How To Improve your Email Marketing Deliverability from the Digital Marketer’s Weekly Email Marketing Topic

Get your email marketing messages delivered to your email subscribers inbox Source:http://www.inwise.com/features/send/high-deliverability.aspxSince only 82% of emails from our email marketing efforts reach the inboxes of our email subscribers, Digital Marketing Manager and Email Marketing Managers need to explore how to improve delivery of email marketing messages to email subscribers’ inboxes to obtain revenue goals. (Source: Return Path’s Email Intelligence Report Q3 2012)

Return Path’s report also indicates that 70% of the emails in SPAM folders are actually legitimate emails.

Given these statistics, let’s talk about how you can deploy email marketing deliverability best practices to boost your email marketing performance and prevent your email messages getting blocked or sent to SPAM folders.

Before diving into the details about best practices for email marketing deliverability below, I want to give you some background information to help you formulate a better email marketing deliverability strategy for your brand.

Definition of Email Marketing Deliverability

The percentage of your email messages delivered to your email subscribers’ inbox.

Email Marketing Deliverability Fundamentals

email marketing deliverability fundamentals source - http://blog.campaigner.com/2013/10/the-3-keys-to-great-email.html

  • Algorithmic Filters – If an incoming email contains similarities to an email already marked as junk, the incoming email will be marked as junk. These similarities include email sender, links, or content. Also, if an incoming email contains an URL that is blacklisted by an ISP’s (Internet Service Provider), the email will be marked as junk.
  • Spamtraps – An email address was set up but never receives email.  These email addresses are created by Spamtrappers and set up to catch spammers. Deploying secure opt-in technique prevents you from collecting spamtrap emails.
  • Blacklists – Reports IP and URL addresses that send unsolicited commercial email. ISPs use these reports to block emails sent from these IP and URL addresses.
  • Bounce Handling – Understand ISPs and your ESPs bounce codes to help you manage your email marketing efforts effectively.  Bounce codes are values assigned to email addresses that are not delivered, and different types of bounces are handled differently. Work with your ESP to better understand your bounces.
  • Authentication Protocols – Use protocols to help email receivers separate legitimate and non-legitimate messages. According to Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing, the most common email authentication protocols are DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), SPF (Sender Protection Framework), and SenderID.
  • Email Receiver and ISP Relations – Choose an ESP to help you manage your relationship with ISPs on your behalf and let them handle email messages that get marked as non-legitimate.

Now, let’s talk about best practices you can deploy to prevent getting labeled as a spammer.

10 Best Practices for Email Marketing Deliverability

Tips to precent SPAM complaints Source - https://econsultancy.com/blog/62852-five-tips-for-reducing-email-spam-complaints

  1. Include Unsubscribe Links in Email Messages – To comply with Anti-Spam regulation, you need to include an Unsubscribe link in all email marketing messages.
  2. Fulfill Your Promises – When you collect email addresses, you make a promise to provide them with timely, targeted, and relevant content that will meet their needs or solve their problems.
  3. Consistent From Email Addresses – By using the same from email address when you send email marketing messages, your email subscribers will recognize your emails and mark them as SPAM.
  4. Consistent Subject Line Wording and Tone – When the wording and tone of your email subject lines are consistent, your email subscribers will recognize your email messages and not mistake it for SPAM.
  5. Honor Your Email Subscribers Requests – Let your email subscribers manage their email subscriptions. If they only want to receive product informational emails, don’t send them promotional emails.
  6. Use Ethical Methods to Build Your Email Subscriber Lists – Verify all new email addresses through a double opt-in email address collection methodology, or you can send Welcome Emails to evaluate the validity of your email addresses.
  7. Regularly Remove Inactive Email Addresses – Review my 4 Ways to Reactivate Inactive Email Subscribers to Increase Deliverability blog post to learn about removing inactive email addresses.
  8. Choose a Reputable Email Service Provider (ESP) – Pick an ESP that have tools to handle email bounce codes, feedback loops, connection optimization, manage complaints, authenticate the quality of your IP addresses, and help you manage your relationship with ISPs.
  9. Manage Your Complaint Rate – If your ESP warns you about a lot of complaints take them seriously. According to Marketo’s Blog 7 Best Practices for Email Deliverability, set up an email address — abuse@your-domain.com — that your ESP can use to contact you with any complaints. Register that email address with www.abuse.net, an anti-spam advocacy group, to show that you take email abuse seriously.
  10. Be Proactive about Monitoring your Reputation – Work with your ESP to create relationships with ISPs to maintain a positive reputation and change whatever it takes to improve your reputation to get your email messages delivered to your email subscribers inboxes.  Both Return Path and SenderBase offer reputation monitoring services.

Call to Action to Improve your Email Marketing Deliverability

  • Develop your Email Marketing Deliverability Best Practices to increase your delivery rates and boost your email marketing results
  • Work with your ESP to deploy your Email Marketing Deliverability Best Practices
  • Visit Next Weeks Email Marketing Discussion: Always being Relevant with Your Email Subscribers
  • Visit the next Digital Marketer’s blog about Social Media including the latest news and updates from social media networks

Sources

Additional Email Marketing News and Resources

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SEO Weekly Topic: How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking

Use Social Media to Increase Your SEO Source: http://www.smartonlinepros.com/using-social-media-seo-campaign/
As Google tightens it’s reins on search and link building efforts, Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Manager are looking for alternative SEO tactics to increase it’s search ranking, you can let your Social Media do the SEO work for you.

Earlier today, Social Media Examiner published 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking by Patricia Redsicker.  This article has a lot of great tips on how to use Social Media to assist your SEO efforts that I cancelled my original idea for the Digital Marker’s SEO Weekly Discussion to share this article with you.

As you gear up your social media efforts to help your SEO strategies, just remember to participate in social media networks where your target audience is located. Don’t waste your time with social media networks where your target audience does not participate.

Having a hard time convincing your boss to try social media?

Discuss Stephanie Frasco‘s 6 Reasons Social Media Is Critical To Your SEO at Social Media Today

  • Link building was always about social proofing
  • Social media allows you to crowd source your link building
  • Being social is the fastest way to multiply your presence online
  • Social signals is a real think
  • Social links bring real traffic to your website
  • Google hates link building

Now, that you have convinced your boss to pursue social media to promote your brand, you can focus executing your social media efforts to boost your SEO with some best practices.

Patricia Redsicker Shares 5 Social Media Best Practices to Increase Your Search Ranking

  1. Publish High-Quality Content – As always content is key to drive your SEO and Social Media success. After producing content that meets your target audiences needs, you can post your content in a multiple areas of the web including your website, your social media networks, your newsletters, and your blog.
  2. Make Social Sharing Easy – Produce content that your target audience wants to share.  For example, I saw the 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking article, and I immediately wanted to share it with you.  As you produce content, you will have alter the content based on platform where the content is posted. Quick example, if you write a blog post, you can’t post the entire blog post on Twitter, but you can type the title of your blog post with a link to your blog.  With this example, you have basically the same content shared on two different platforms with the additional benefits of SEO finding the content.
  3. Boost Your Images and Profiles – We are a visual society, and visuals help us comprehend the written word.  Therefore, we need to use images.  First, save image files using your keywords. Next, when using images for your content, write an Alt Text tag that describes the image using your keywords for search engines.
  4. Don’t Forget Authorship Metadata (Google+) – Post your content to Google+ and indicate you are the author of your content.
  5. Measure Social Media Performance – As with SEO, it is critical to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Develop KPI’s and dashboards to demonstrate how your social media not only increased traffic to your site, but you should create reports showing how your social media helped increase your SEO search rank. Then, you need to develop reports how your social media and SEO efforts increased revenue.

While this blog post shows the importance of using social media to increase your search rank, take your time to read 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking and devise a plan on how to effectively use your social media to increase your search ranking.

Additional Resources on How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking:

In Other SEO News:

SEO, SEM, and PPC Resources

In SEM & PPC News

Link Building News and Resources

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Getting your Social Media Audience to Share in this Weeks Social Media Discussion

Getting your Social Media Audience to Share Source:http://semomarketingsolutions.com/small-business-social-media-marketing/Participating effectively in social media accomplishes two goals for Digital Marketing Managers and Social Media Marketers:

  1. Connect with your target audience in the form of social media audience.
  2. Ability to extend your reach when your social media audience shares about your brand for their social media connections to see.

When you accomplish goal number 2, this is similar to creating word-of-mouth marketing.

Importance of Getting your Social Media Audience to Share

According to a Nielsen Survey, 33% of buyers believe what brands say about themselves. On the other hand, 92% of buyers believe what their peers have to say about a brand. Therefore, when your social media audience shares about your brand, their connections believe what is said.

Keeping this in mind, you want to create an environment on social media where your audience like, retweet, comment, and recommend your brand.

To do this

You need to provide your social media audience with compelling reasons to share your messages that is seamless. Tell your social media audience what is in it for them to like, retweet, comment on, or share their thoughts about your social media content.

5 Motivators for your Social Media Audience to Share

  1. Reputation
  2. Access to something exclusive
  3. Co-creation
  4. Competition and Winning
  5. Altruism

Source: Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Social Sharing

Given these Statistics from a New York Times Study on Social Sharing Do this to spark a response in your social media audience?
75% say sharing helps them better comprehend the news they’re interested in Provide compelling content where a comment will help them understand your content
Before posting a link, 94% consider how helpful a link would be to others Make them feel like they are helping their connections if your brand’s link is in comments
68% share as an advertisement for themselves to teaches others about them Make your audience feel like they are teaching their connections about them when they like, retweet, or comment about your brand
73% say it helps find people with similar interests Give them an opportunity to connect with your followers because they have a common interest in your brand

Source of New York Times Study was included in Marketo’s Definitive Guide on Social Marketing

7 Tactics to Motivate Your Social Media Audience to Share

Sharing Content on social media networks Source:http://www.designzzz.com/free-wordpress-facebook-plugins/

  1. Social Sharing links/buttons before or after your content – ask for people to click the social sharing buttons because they may not see the buttons
  2. When someone downloads your content – provide a pop-up or some message where they can share what they just downloaded
  3. Listen and Respond – Listen to what your social media audience is saying. Respond with content that meets your audience needs.  This action, you will show your audience and their connection that you care.
  4. Refer-a-Friend – provide a compelling offer for your audience if they refer someone. These offers can also be extended to the friends.
  5. Social Sweepstakes – Create a content where entrants spread the word for you.
  6. Polls and Voting – Engage your audience to share their opinions through polls. Your audience votes will be seen by their connections.
  7. Flash Deals – Create a time-sensitive deals that are fun and have the potential to go viral and increase brand awareness.

Conclusion

Since peer recommendations influence how people view a brand, you want to get your social media audience to like and to share about your brand for their social media connections to see your content.  When those connections see your audience sharing about your brand, you are extending your reach.

To get your social media audience to like and share about your brand, you need to post content that will motivate your social media audience to share your content with their social media connections.

2 Great Articles from Social Media Examiner that Show you How to Get your Social Media Audience to Share your Content:

Sources for a Blog Post

Social Media Network News and Resources

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Pinterest

Instagram

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4 Ways to Reactivate Inactive Email Subscribers to Increase Email Deliverability in Email Marketing Weekly Discussion

Inactive Email Subscribers and Active Email Subscribers Source: https://www.responsys.com/blogs/nsm/email-marketing/the-art-of-seduction-3-ways-to-re-engage-your-inactive-customers/To establish engagement with your email subscribers, Digital Marketing Managers and Email Marketing Managers need to maintain high quality email lists. By removing inactive email subscribers, you can maintain a high quality email list, increase deliverability, and establish engagement.

However, before removing inactive email subscribers, give them a chance to reactivate their email subscription, so they remain on your email subscription list.

To be considered an inactive email subscriber, an email subscriber has not opened, read, nor unsubscribed to your emails in a given period of time. Even if they opted-in or confirmed their email subscription, an email subscriber becomes inactive by not opening, reading, nor unsubscribing your emails.

According to Marketo’s Benchmark On Email Performance study, 26 to 50% of emails on marketers email subscription list are inactive.

Advantages to Removing Inactive Email Subscribers

Increase your email reputation with ISPs Source:www.cleansender.com

  • Higher deliverability
  • Lower SPAM complaint rate
  • Decreased costs
  • Increased reputation with ISPs
  • Increased engagement
  • Higher ROI

Currently, email marketers struggle to get their emails into their email subscribers’ inbox. Emails get delivered, but the emails go to to SPAM folders. This occurs when an organization has a low reputation with ISPs because they have a high amount of inactive email subscribers on their email subscriber list.

“In the end, removing inactive subscribers is often the action needed to get your mail back to the inbox and in front of your customers” according to Melinda Plemel of Return Path, an email service provider.

Given Melinda’s quote, it is worth the effort to remove your inactive email subscribers to increase your reputation with ISPs and increase the number of emails delivered to your email subscribers’ inbox.

Before removing inactive emails, give your inactive email subscribers a chance to reactivate their subscription.

4 Ways to Reactivate Inactive Email Subscribers

Example of a reactivate email subscribe effort to inactive email subscribers Source:http://openmoves.com/blog/email-reengagement/

  1. Series of Emails to Inactive Email Subscribers – Explain your email subscriber’s status and give them the option to activate their email subscription or Unsubscribe. You could give them free content or a discount on their next purchase. Make sure each email mentions the risk of being removed from your email subscription list.
  2. Mass Unsubscribe the Inactive Email Subscribers and Send a Final Email – Send one last email and give them one last chance to reactivate their email subscription.
  3. Perform a Telemarketing Campaign – Providing you have phone numbers for your inactive email subscribers, you may consider a more pro-active approach and call your inactive email subscribers.
  4. Deploy Direct Mail Effort – If you have mailing addresses for your inactive email subscribers, you could send them a direct mail piece.

You spend a lot of time and effort to build your email address list, and the idea of removing email addresses is scary and counter intuitive. However, by keeping inactive subscribers on your email list, it hinders your reputation with ISP’s, and ISP’s wont deliver your emails to your email subscribers’ inbox.

The idea of your emails NOT getting delivered to your email subscribers’ inbox is worse than removing inactive email addresses.  Therefore, take the time to identify and remove your inactive email subscribers.

Call to Action in Reactivating your Inactive Email Subscribers to Increase Email Deliverability

  • Identify your criteria of an inactive email subscriber
  • Determine the length of time to be considered an active vs. inactive email subscriber i.e. 2 months or 4 months
  • Consider any web activity by your inactive email subscribers
  • Create and deploy your reactivation campaign
  • Remove inactive email subscribers
  • Marketing Sherpa suggests this process occur every 4 to 6 months
  • Come back for next week’s Email Marketing weekly discussion on Deliverability
  • Come back for the next Digital Marketer Post about getting your target audience to share on your social media networks

Sources

Case Studies

Additional Resources and News Updates

Next Week’s Email Marketing Discussion: Deliverability Best Practices to Improve Reputation with ISP’s and Get Your Emails Delivered to Your Email Subscribers’ Inbox.

Next Digital Marketer Post: Social Media – How to get your target audience to share with you on social media networks?

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How to Write Meta Descriptions that Standout and Increase your Click Through Rates from Search Engine Result Pages in this Week’s SEO Update

Meta Tag Description Source: http://www.mysecondmillion.com/meta-tags-title-tags-meta-descriptions/Your keyword strategies and SEO tactics have landed your website on page 1 of a search engine result page (SERP), but now, you need to convince people, searchers, to click the link to your website versus another link. A well written meta description about the content on your website can help you stand out from other websites on a SERP page.

Is the likelihood of your competitor landing on the same SERP page as you high?

If yes, you can use Meta Descriptions to persuade searchers and make your website seem more appealing than your competitors.

What is a Meta Description?

The text below a webpage link on a SERP is a meta description about the content on the webpage. The meta description can lure searchers to click through to your website instead of another website.

Think of a Meta Description as a short sales pitch for your webpage.  This is an opportunity to engage searchers before they get to your website.

An Example of How Meta Descriptions Appear on a Google Search Engine Result Page:
Example of a Meta Description on a Google Search Engine Results Page Source: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/website-design/meta-tags-explained/adding-a-meta-description-tag

Personally, when I complete a web search, I always read the meta descriptions to find out which website can meet my informational needs. Reading the meta descriptions can be a time saver, so I try to find the meta description for the best website to satisfy my search query. If I personally use meta descriptions to find the best website to click through to, I wonder how many other searchers might read meta descriptions as well.

A snapshot of the HTML Code to Help You Set Up Your Meta Tag Descriptions:
HTML code for Meta Description Tags Source: http://www.mycomputerforum.com/tutorials/meta_tags_seo.html

How to Write Meta Descriptions that Standout?

Components to set up effective meta tag descriptions that increase click through rates Source:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/complete-guide-meta-tags/

  1. Use Action-Oriented Language – use action words to tell readers what they will see if they click.
  2. Include a Solution or Benefit – give a convincing preview of how your content will satisfy the searchers needs.
  3. Length should be under 150 characters – the date when the content was posted could be included in the meta description, so you want to convince searchers to click through to your website in 130 characters or less. Best to be on the safe side.
  4. Be Honest – make sure your content on your webpage can deliver what your meta descriptions says it will deliver. This is your chance for searchers to build trust in your website. Don’t waste this chance.
  5. Be Relevant and Specific with Descriptive Words
  6. Meta Description should Accurately Describe the Content on Your Webpage, so expectations are met, and bounce rates are decreased.

Avoid these Meta Description Pitfalls

  • No Meta Description – Google will use text from somewhere on the page that matches the searchers’ query, and this text may not convince users to click through to your website.
  • Keyword Stuffing – Only using keywords may not properly describe the content on your webpage, and you do not want to mislead searchers and risk them never clicking through to your website in the future.
  • Bounce Rate – To avoid searchers from clicking the back button when they click through to your site, make sure the sales pitch in your meta description will be fulfilled by the content on your webpage.  Be aware that a high bounce rate may hinder your SEO and reduce your ranking.

Finally, don’t you hate it when Wikipedia outranks you on your keywords?

Use your Meta Descriptions to stand out and lure searchers to click through to your website instead of clicking to Wikipedia.

Have fun creating Meta Descriptions for your website and come back to learn more SEO tips and tools to help drive traffic to your websites from search engines and reach your digital marketing objectives.

Sources

Additional SEO News and Resources

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29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses to Build Your Email Marketing List in this Weeks Email Marketing Update

collecting email addresses to build your email marketing list Source: http://jimijones.com/blogging/email-list-building-strategies/

Last week’s email marketing update talked about establishing a relationship with your email subscribers from the moment they give you their email address.  Today, we will talk about all the different ways to collect email addresses to build your email marketing list.

As a Digital Marketing Manager, one of your email marketing objectives is to increase your email marketing list with email addresses from your target audience.  There are many different tactics to obtain email addresses, and you want to use tactics that will attract your target audience.  Of the different methods that are available to obtain new email addresses, pick the ones that are relevant for your brand and your target audience.

77% of marketers ask for email addresses on their website according to Marketing Sherpa’s 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report.

Extremely Effective Method to Collect Email Addresses on your Website

My favorite way to collect email addresses on a website is to use a floater.  The image below is an example.

Example of Floater to obtain an email addresses From Mequoda Source:http://www.mequoda.com/articles/email-marketing/using-floater-order-forms-to-increase-landing-page-conversion-rates/

  • Looks like a pop-up. However, the floater does not function like a pop-up.
  • Floaters have seen a 20-50% lift in website conversions according to Mequoda
  • Floaters briefly interrupt the user experience, and the user can easily close out of the floater without affecting their experience on your website.
  • Benefit of a floater is that it can appear on any web page where a user enters your website
  • Finally, you can configure the floater to only appear on the user’s first visit to your site.
  • For more information about the floater please refer to Mequoda’s Use Website Floaters to Increase Email Conversion Rates.

Since the user can easily click out of the floater without providing their email address, you should provide additional methods on your website to collect email addresses. Depending on the layout of your website, find the best place where you can obtain the highest number of email addresses.

Different areas on a webpage to collect email addresses:

  • Sidebar
  • Header
  • Footer
  • Middle of Page
  • Bottom of Content
  • Welcome Gate – Instead of a floater, a welcome gate redirects visitors to a landing page before visitors enter your website.

Before moving on to other email address collection methods, one tip:

Find the best balance in placing the right number email address collection options on your website that will not hinder your target audience’s experience on your website.

As a Digital Marketing Manager or an Email Marketing Manager, you should go through all the different options of collecting email addresses and evaluate which options work best for you. It is important to maximize the number of ways to collect email addresses to help you reach your email marketing objectives.

29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses to Build Your Email Marketing List

Collect email address to build your email marketing list Source: http://www.businessonline2u.com/business-information/start-an-informational-product-business-%E2%80%94-step-by-step-guide

  1. Website registration page
  2. Social Media sharing buttons in email
  3. Registration during purchase
  4. Online events (webinars, podcasts, webcasts, virtual tradeshows)
  5. Facebook registration page
  6. Email to a friend for content on your website
  7. Paid search
  8. Blog registration pages
  9. Co-Registration programs
  10. When someone comments on your content
  11. When someone downloads content from your website
  12. When someone sends you a message on your contact us page
  13. Ask your current customers
  14. Via QR codes
  15. Using Twitter’s lead gen cards
  16. Place a link to your website registration page in your Social Media updates
  17. Forward to a friend link in your promotional emails
  18. When someone makes a purchase in your brick and motor store
  19. At the end of an online survey
  20. During tradeshows
  21. During presentations
  22. During offline events
  23. Put an offer on the back of your business cards
  24. Put a link to your website registration page in the signature of your emails
  25. Giveaways (See infographic under the additional resources for ideas)
  26. Incentivize your employees to collect email addresses during sales calls
  27. Ask Trade Associations or local Chamber of Commerce for space on their websites to promote your website registration
  28. Send a post card to your mailing list with a link to your website registration page
  29. Leave postage paid email sign-up cards behind when you visit clients

As you can see, there a lot of ways to collect email addresses to build your email marketing list. Not all of these options will be applicable to your brand, but it is worth taking the time to investigate these different options. Use email address collection methods that make sense for you, your brand, and your target audience.

Happy Email Address Collecting

Sources

Additional Resources

Next weeks Email Update: Maintaining a High Quality Email List

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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Spelling, Grammer, Proofreading Oh My! from Digital Marketing Manager’s Weekly SEO Update

Keep calm and SEO on Source:http://seogadget.com/beware-of-the-google-over-optimization-update/Everything on your website affects SEO, and as a Digital Marketing Manger, you want to do to as much as you can to help your SEO. As the different search engines make refinements to their algorithms and updates in order to deliver better search experiences for their visitors and try to increase their market share, you need to keep up with your SEO to drive traffic to your website from search engines, and you need to be aware of search engine updates and tweaks to see if it will affect the amount of traffic from search engines to your website.

This weeks SEO update from Digital Marketing Manager includes news on search engines:

Matt Cutts Explains How Comments With Bad Spelling and Grammar Affect A Page’s Ability to Rank– While providing the opportunity for your website visitors to comment on the content on your website helps SEO, comments often have spelling and grammar errors, but these errors will not affect your SEO. However, if your content contains spelling and grammar errors, your SEO could be affected.

Make sure to PROOFREAD.

Example, let’s say your website talks about different species of bears, and you type the word “bare” in multiple locations of on your website.  Since “bear” and “bare” mean different things, search engines may get confused. Search engines are not people, and search engines can’t tell the difference between “bear” and “bare.”  Therefore, you need to proofread your content and make sure that when you want the would “bear” to appear, the word “bear” appears.

My example may be a little silly, but it was the first thing that came to mind. However, it does illustrate my point to proofread and reinforces the idea that websites without spelling and grammer errors is important.

In other news SEO news,

Also, in SEO news:

Yahoo Improving Local Search through Partnership with Yelp – In order to improve the search experience on Yahoo, now you can see local listings, reviews, and photos when looking for local establishments.

Struggling with getting your SEO back on track with all of Google’s major updates from last fall? Check out this Infographic to help you wrap your head around how to implement your SEO strategies for 2014. This infographic brought to you by Just Go Web helps translate your old SEO strategies to the new SEO strategies after the search evolution from last fall.

Want people to link to your content? Check out these 7 Ways to Attract Higher Quality Links With Better On-Page Content. These tips not only will help you attract links to your website, but these tips will help you produce great content to create superior experiences for your target audiences.

Contact or Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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What is Content Marketing? See the Top Content Marketing Influencers Answers

How would you answer “What is Content Marketing?”

What is Content Marketing thought bubble Source:http://www.docstoc.com/article/163249665/What-Is-Content-Marketing
After reading this post, please share your thoughts in a comment.

As I scour the internet for information on how to improve digital marketing skills including content marketing, I try to provide information to help Digital Marketing Managers meet their objectives efficiently and effectively as well as provide information on how to create superior experiences for their target audiences.

Before my search, I already knew CONTENT IS KING!

BUT

What is Content Marketing?

Before this post, I had a basic understanding, but the goal in this post is to create a definition of Content Marketing for all marketing professionals to use.

The Top 25 Content Marketing Influencers Thanks for our friends at Onalytica, they did some research and collected many responses to develop a list of the Top 25 Content Marketing Influences located at Slideshare.

Who better to answer “What is Content Marketing?” then the top influencers of content marketing?

Here are the Top Content Marketers Thoughts on “What is Content Marketing?”

Juo Pulizzi Image Source:http://contently.com/strategist/2012/02/06/joe-pulizzi-content-marketer-of-the-year/ According to Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is owning, as opposed to renting, media. It’s a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance consumer behavior.

Jeff Bullas Image Source:https://twitter.com/jeffbullas In his The One Best Thing Some of the Best Content Marketers Forgot, Jeff Bullas refers to content marketing as the result of the successful intersection of search engines, social media, email, content and blogging. Done well it is a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge of making your content as visible to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger, corporate marketer or a small business.

Michael Brenner Image Source:http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/about From Michael Brenner’s 9 Questions On Content Marketing Q&A, he states that the most effective content is that which best meets the needs of the audience. List posts and “How to” articles go a long way to building this kind of credibility but they aren’t enough. This kind of content needs to be balanced with deeper thought leadership that also inspires our customers to think differently about the challenges they face. He goes on to say the golden rule of content marketing is that it has to put the needs of the customers first and then the business results will be earned through trust and value already provided.

Doug Kessler Image Source:http://info.tracepoint.co.uk/blog/bid/188163/How-to-get-started-with-inbound-marketing-from-the-coalface-IMUK13-speakers During an interview, Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners explains what makes up great content. A brand creates great content from a variety of media that contains a point of view on it’s market. The content takes on issues that it’s audience cares about and puts a new spin on it, the brand puts some effort into producing special content. Great content is ambitious and confidant.  As a content producer you need to find your sweet spot which is the overlap between what a content producer is an expert at and what the audience cares most about.

Ann Handley Image Source:http://www.annhandley.com/about/ Ann Handley is “waging a war on writing mediocrity in 2014.” In her New Year, New You: 3 Things Every Marketer Should Be Doing in 2014 article, Ann stats ” I’m not talking about adhering to the rules of grammar; I’m talking about upping the importance you place on what you say, and how you say it. As a cornerstone of good writing (along with other things!), voice and tone are hugely undervalued in content and social media. Together, they constitute the secret sauce of great content, and I expect that more companies will pay attention to both in 2014.

Brian Clark Image Source:http://www.copyblogger.com/its-all-my-fault/According to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you are educating people, so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Conclusion

After looking at what the top influencers think about Content Marketing, the common elements are producing authoritative pieces that educates their target audience and meets their needs.

SO

When you prepare a piece of content marketing, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Does it show that I am an authority or expert on the subject?
  2. Is it creative?
  3. Does it inspire OR is it motivational?
  4. Does it answer my target audiences questions OR does it fulfill my target audiences need?

If you answer YES to all of these questions, you have a piece of great content marketing.

Please leave comments with your answers to “What is Content Marketing?”

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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Building a Social Media Army to Extend Your Reach Plus Updates and Tools for Social Media Networks

Building a Social Media Army Source:http://fingercandymedia.com/7359-building-a-social-media-army-3

Finding target audience members to follow your brands on social media networks can take time, but there are people within your grasp who can help. As another tool in your digital marketing toolbox for your social marketing efforts, you can recruit these people to become members of your social media army to help your brand extend it’s reach on social media networks.

Last fall, I attended a presentation by Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Content Marketing & Social, LinkedIn. During the presentation, Jason made a reference to using a social media army to promote your brand on social media networks.

With the help of Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing,  I’ve taken Jason’s idea and put together a rough outline how you can recruit members and build your own a social media army to extend your brand’s reach.

Purpose of a Social Media Army:

Share your posts and retweet your messages in social media networks to reach army members’ connections and attract additional potential customers to experience your brand.

Think about what you want your army members to share and engage their social media connections to seek you out.

NEXT, start recruiting your own social media army.

Potential Social Media Army Members:

  • Internal Stakeholders
  • Employee Advocates of Social Media
  • Internal Thought Leaders
  • Top Industry Influencers
  • Brand Evangelists
  • Long-Time Customers

What’s in it for them to become a Social Media Army Members?

  • Personal Branding
  • Building personal social media marketing skills
  • Building relationships with your target audience
  • For Internal Members, building customer relationships
  • Increasing your company’s reputation as a thought leader

Train your Social Media Army Members:

Teach social media army members to create army strong stories Source:http://mashable.com/category/u.s.-army/

  • Provide background/history on the different social media networks
  • Explain the types of content that gets posted to each social media network
  • Outline the social media participation rules
  • Provide content tips
  • Instruct them how to post images, video
  • Provide formatting parameters for posts
  • Tell them how to optimize messages for SEO
  • Teach them how to create army strong stories to entice their connections to find your website
  • Tell them how their connections can give you their email addresses
  • Create a series of blog posts for your social media army members for communication and training

Think about the following quote from Pete Cashmore, CEO & Founder of mashable.com, “We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.”

A social media army can get your messages inserted into as many channels and increase your value.

Facebook Like in Fatigues Source:http://www.army.mil/article/84850/You can’t do it all. HOWEVER, with a social media army, you can participate in more social media networks and your messages can reach more potential customers than if you tried to build a target audience on social media networks all on your own.

SO, recruit some help and start building your social media army today.

Sources: Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

To learn more about Building a Social Media Army, look at Jeff Bullas’s How to Get Others to Do Your Social Media Marketing for Free article.

Updates and Tools for Social Media Networks

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Instagram

Pinterest

Next Weeks Social Media Update Topic: Getting your Social Media Followers to Share your Brand’s Messages

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough