Top 4 Fears of eMail Marketing


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Home Office Holiday Party

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In preparation for our office party this year, I wrote a poem. Then I gathered together the things I would need to have a party with Romeo and Danielle. (The Temptations were for Romeo, the phone for Danielle, and the coffee for me.) Romeo, my cat, is used to hearing me talk out loud as I proofread and he was unusually excited about hearing the poem. Danielle, who lives several time zones away in Saskatchewan, also works alone (and helps me out lots) so I invited her to my office party by phone. It was a good move because she's a master at rhyming words. After much anticipation, I started to read the finished poem aloud to them. As you can see in the photos above, I had their full attention. Ode to a Midnight Blog Silent night, late at night, I've still got my blog to write. My laptop propped up on my bed, I'm hoping ideas will fill my head. Yawns escaping, eyelids drooping, Neck is stiff, my thoughts are looping. My brain is sore, I th...
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Quick Tip - Avoid Hidden Format Problems

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When you're inserting content into your newsletter, website or blog, you're often copying it from other documents.  I suggest you always compose in Word (or similar) to take advantage of its spelling and grammar-checking functionality. Your formatting in Word may not be the same as your default formatting in these various applications.  While there are a raft of applications that make it easy now to do your own newsletter, website and blog, most of them are converting your content to html code in the background.  When you copy in text that is already formatted, you're possibly creating problems behind the scenes .  As well, you'll end up with differing fonts and sizes that all have to be corrected before you publish. You can avoid the potential for problems by stripping off all formatting before you paste into the application.  An easy way to do this is to use Notepad (or similar).  You simply open a blank notepad document, paste your con...
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Reusable Content Ideas to get you Unstuck

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You’re stuck and your deadline is looming. It’s been a long day and you’re far from feeling inspired to write for your blog or newsletter. The more you try to think of something to write about, the more uninspired you feel. Sometimes I feel like that too, so I came up with a list of ‘topic triggers’ that can be used over and over again. The next time you’re feeling that what-am-I-going-to-write-about stress, come back to this list and pick an item at random. All of these triggers can give you topics to write about immediately. Use an online idea generator tool. Check this article for links to three of them. Check your blog or newsletter archive for what you wrote about at this time last year. Expand on the topic, referencing the original post. Scan your social media feeds for a post that you agree or disagree with. Embed the post and explain. ( example ) Search “what’s new in (your industry)?” Provide a commentary on someone else’s article or sum up views from several a...
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Build It and Work at It

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A newsletter is not one of those ‘build it and they will come’ things. It takes work to both maintain and build on each relationship that you (re-)start with each issue. Maintain: Give your readers what they want, not what you want to give them. Deliver VALUE in exchange for your readers' time. Respond to everyone who replies to your newsletter, even if it’s just to say “Glad you enjoyed it.” Build: Add new contacts to build your list. Promote each issue through social media to extend your reach. Make it easy for people to share and subscribe. photo by subsetsum / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article
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Curate to Become a Trusted Resource

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Whatever your specific goals are, your content needs to get read to have any impact and be valuable . It must be useful and interesting to get read. It must get read many times ( consistency ) to be trusted. You want to be that trusted resource. I have a trusted resource for social media updates which is a great example of valuable curated content. Do any of us have time to keep up with all of the changes to the social media platforms? Yet we use them every day. I like to know about new functionality and new apps, but I don't have time to keep up. Getting a point form summary of all the changes in my inbox once a month is extremely valuable. It saves me time, I can dig deeper if I want, and I can use the information to make decisions about my social media strategy. Curating content is a great strategy for providing timely updates about things that change fast. ( Tweet This ) social media update section in newsletter Want to see this great example? Click here to view Twi...
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Being a Rebel (Book Review)

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Interesting and frustrating. Those are the two best words to describe my reaction to Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing by DJ Wadlow and Jason Falls. The book was interesting because it was well-researched and full of case studies and examples. It explains a lot of aspects of email marketing in great detail. In particular, the authors do a good job of describing how email and social media work so well together - calling them Batman (email) and Robin (social media). Their definitions of social connecting, social sharing, and other social terms cover the basics but they fall a bit short of offering unique ideas about combining the two. The book was frustrating because it was about email marketing in general and I specialize in enewsletters. I kept thinking, "But that's not true for newsletters" or "I wouldn't do that." Much of the information referred to promotional marketing rather than content marketing . While some things hold true for both, ther...
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Social Media Day Halifax 2018 Marketing Conference

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For the first time, Halifax will be celebrating Social Media Day in grand style this year. I'm proud to be one of the organizers of the first Social Media Day Halifax 2018 conference taking place on June 22nd. The conference is for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals working in social media roles for companies and organizations. Sessions and workshops are for anyone and everyone who wants and needs to improve their social media communications and marketing. Since Social Media Day Halifax is all about increasing marketing expertise on the east coast, recruiting presenters who are both subject matter experts AND excellent training facilitators is key to the success of the conference. Ideally, we’ll find social media professionals who want to help encourage, inspire, train and motivate colleagues in the local marketing community. If you're on the east coast of Canada and do social media marketing, you don't want to miss this conference and the chance ...
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How to Answer a Question on Your Small Business Blog

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You might think your website FAQ page is the best place to answer questions but I would argue that your blog is even better. In fact, I suggest your FAQ page should list the questions, and perhaps short answers, with links to blog posts for more detailed answers. If your answers to frequently asked questions are individual blog posts, that content is ultimately more shareable via social media, email or chatbot. It's also a great way to make use of common keyword phrases, boosting your SEO. The Question The question you're answering might serve well as your post title or you might include it in your first paragraph. If it makes sense, you might also add some context which gives information about who the answer is for. For example, I might mention that I get asked this question often when networking with other small business owners. The Answer Generally, there are two types of answers. Facts and/or opinions: In this case, the question might start with something...
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REAL Twitter Users Don't Schedule Tweets

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PHOOEY on that, I say! I’m tired of hearing that to use Twitter ‘properly’ you have to be there to have conversations. Apparently some people have no problem being there 16 hours a day. Those are the Twitter divas… the ones who look down their noses at the rest of us who can only spare a half hour a day from our busy schedules to have these deep conversations. They’re also the people who have found a way to make money by being on Twitter. Or they’re unemployed and have nothing better to do with their time? Anyone with a REAL job surely can’t spare all that time. These Twitter divas assume that the rest of us are there for the same reasons they are. And if we’re not, maybe we’re supposed to be somewhere else? See, not everyone I want to connect with is on Twitter during that specific half hour I can spend there every day. Even if I spend 2 half hours, I’m still not going to reach very many people. Let’s get real. How many people can you have deep conversations with in a half hour ...
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Creating Content that is Useful

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Your newsletter has to be both useful and interesting to be successful. If one of your goals is to be seen as an expert, consider that the usefulness of your content can have a big impact. What types of content are useful? Here are some suggestions. Hot-off-the-press information: Timeliness is important if you have access to information (or photos) in advance of your target market. How-to’s, quick tips, detailed instructions, diagrams: The goal here is to save your readers time and effort – to shortcut the learning curve. Examples, case studies, templates, worksheets, maps, directions: You can make use of document-sharing and photo-sharing applications to provide access. An example of this would be our own newsletter gallery on Flickr .   Links to useful resources and people: Share exceptional items that you have created or already vetted. Reviews, summaries and recommendations: You can do this for books, articles, white papers, videos, TV/radio shows, and mo...
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