See These 10 Email Marketing Best Practices Keeping up with all of the trends in marketing could be a full-time task, and it’s the same with email marketing. Within the last several years there have been changes made that only make an already effective technique even more so. However like all business models, there are some best practices you’ll want to follow for the greatest results possible. Let’s detail some of those for you here and now. Ten best practices for email marketing Craft an attention-getting subject line – This is task one, as if you don’t make this something that compels an open, you’re finished. Use short, bold and punchy text. Mobile optimized emails – If you’re not mobilizing for mobile now, you’re missing out, as some 67 percent of all emails are now opened by way of a mobile device. Let them know who it’s from – Having a bland perfunctory “From” address can result in your emails never getting opened. Make it recognizable. Utilize several calls to action – If you really want the click, sell it, and make sure you have one of these above the fold. Make the body text brief and to the point – No one is planning on reading a thousand word email, so don’t be that guy! Say what you need to say, using bullet points if you have several points, and ask them to click elsewhere for more. Utilize videos and images – Videos and compelling imagery can often make the case your words may not. Everyone likes to view, so be sure and give them what they want. Benefits over features – No one wants to know the specific features of your gizmo or service; they want to know how it will make their life easier, and how fast! Don’t send too little or too much – This is one you need to test, as all audiences are a bit different, but be assured that once a month is too little, and a dozen times a week is excessive. Social sharing is a must – Make sure your emails are able to be shared socially, as this can increase their reach many times over. Create compelling content – Delivering valuable, timely content your readers can use will do you more good than almost any other of these best practices. Become somebody they want to hear from, and you’re halfway home.

7 Easy to Make (and Correct) Mistakes on LinkedIn LinkedIn is a great source of leads and professional contacts, when it is used properly. Seeing as LinkedIn sends four times as many leads directly to your homepage than both Facebook and Twitter combined, it’s high time to take this platform seriously. Unfortunately, many of us are strapped for time and already burdened with way too many tasks, neglect to take the time to optimize our LinkedIn in order to receive the full benefit it offers. Let’s see if you can help you change that right this moment. 7 Mistakes you can easily avoid making with LinkedIn Poor or inappropriate picture – Make certain that any photo you use is something that would serve you well in a business setting. Posting that fun picture from the cruise in Puerto Vallarta (that you don’t remember) may send the wrong message. Blowing the headline – This is your opportunity to tell the LinkedIn world what you do, in 120 characters or less. Don’t be vanilla and simply list “Doctor”. Make your headline compelling, truthful and inviting, all at the same time. Not Using the Summary Section – With 2000 characters to work with, this is your opportunity to tell your story in a way that invites connection. Make this a min-pitch of your services and talents, and make the reader want to know all there is they can about you. Not completing your profile – This says a lot about your business in general, that you wouldn’t take the necessary time to complete your profile. This is easy to remedy, so do it! Not including key links – You want to make sure you include links to your websites, social media, IM and any other ways you’d want to be contacted with. Don’t make them have to go anywhere else to determine how to get hold of you easily and quickly. Sending spam – LinkedIn is not a place to spam contacts with promotional offers and sales material. Everybody knows what spam looks like. Don’t do it. Not coming around – If you update your account once every few months, people will view you as someone not serious about this platform, and consequently, of little interest to them. Don’t be that guy! Update frequently.

What Services NOT to Buy For Your SEO If you’re just trying to rank your site and you come across offers to help you do precisely that for a measly fee of $299 (or a lot more) it can be hard to know what to do. After all, not all of us are exactly up to date on what’s working presently in the search engines, and it can be quite easy to take these people up on their offers. The bad news here is that what worked last year may not work now, and you have no way of easily knowing that. These companies have vested interests, and offering you services is how they keep the doors open. You need to simply make sure you’re not doing something that can hurt you, and maybe help. So instead of raise the white flag of surrender, let’s take note of 5 SEO services we know no longer work, so you don’t spend any of your precious marketing budget on them. 5 SEO Services to Skip Yelp, Yellow Pages and Yext – I’m tempted to say anything that begins with “Y”, but I can’t bring myself to add Yahoo. (Yet) All of these companies purport to help raise your local rankings in the search engines, but you can do anything they do for free, and avoid the negatives associated with each. Yelp especially has run into many problems. Any review sites can easily fall from grace so beware. Any search engine submission service – Most search engines, Google especially, PREFER to find your pages on their own by crawling them. Being sure you create relevant and timely content, and sharing it socially does all they want to do for you and more. Spun content to oodles of pages – Since we all know that Content is King, many kings would be good, right? Not so much. The practice of taking your articles or blog posts, spinning the holy mother out of it, and submitting it all over the web was the basis for the recent Penguin update. Link farms – Creating linkwheels and link pyramids worked like a dream for a long time. To have success with this now, you need to be smarter than Google. If you are, proceed with glee! Buying backlinks – Purchasing backlinks, particularly run of site links, are easily discoverable by Google, who will slap your site silly. These days, getting legitimate backlinks is easier than ever, so why risk it?