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?

Understanding Google My Business It is definitely a task attempting to keep up with all the incarnations Google goes through with their local products. Google Maps, Places, Google+ Local, and now, Google My Business. Before you go running away, throwing up your hands, let me just tell you that it’s not bad at all. Promoted by Google as a way for local merchants and service providers to create and manage listings all in one simple to use platform, they appear to have accomplished exactly that! Google sees this as a way to centralize all your listings that have anything to go with Google; search, maps, Google+ and Local and have them all close at hand for easy access and management. Let’s see what this new platform offers, and why we think it will work for you. 5 Reasons Why You’ll Want to Create Your Local Presence on Google My Business Google My Business centralizes all your information – No longer will you have all your information spread out over several different Google platforms, increasing the chances that you can have errors and thus ranking problems. Now you’ve got one place to go to update, add images, virtual tours, and more. Use Google+ to Connect with Your Customers – Using the Google+ platform integrated with GMB, you have an easy way to connect directly to your customers and prospects through your company’s Google+ page, add content and images, and you even have the ability to use Hangouts. Very cool. Customer Review Management – Everyone likes this one. Now you have a simple solution to managing your reviews through Google+ You can see and easily interact with anyone who leaves a review, and take care of any problems promptly. Run Everything From Your Phone – Out and about? Now using the Android or iOS apps it is possible to run your business with the Google My Business platform wherever you are. This even applies to ad campaigns! Google My Business Customer Insights – A surprisingly useful statistical function shows you where your customers are coming from, what they’re clicking, and more. It also integrates easily with your Google Analytics account, as well as Adwords. Not bad, Google!  

Want to Create a Lead Magnet that Gets Results? If you’re trying to develop an email list of prospects, you’ll need an item of value that’s specific to your intended audience to entice them. What lead magnets are and the way to implement them All of us need fresh leads, and the best way to acquire them is to offer people something valuable in exchange for their contact information, typically their name and email address. What is given in exchange is called a lead magnet. The secret is to create something for this purpose that is specific and will benefit your audience quickly. Nobody wants to wait weeks for a benefit; give them something they can use now! 7 Killer Lead Magnets you can offer A topical infographic – It truly has been the year of the infographic, and it indicates no sign of slowing. There are becoming much easier to make now, and you can also outsource this task. Use videos – There are countless uses for video in your business, from showcasing your business or products to creating an informative how-to video for people (Hint) A short report or PDF – The tried and true method of sending out a PDF in exchange for an opt-in is still working quite nicely. Just keep in mind it needs to be short, powerful and hopefully very specific. Information – packed mindmaps, blueprints and cheat sheets – These are wonderful tools for packing plenty of useful information into an easily deliverable, branded form. Hold a webinar – Webinars are excellent ways to introduce yourself to a potential audience, all the while giving them something valuable via a content-packed webinar. Audio podcasts – Podcasts are one more easily distributable tool for branding and delivering great content. They are very easy to produce as well. Give a coupon or free trials – We all want to save a few bucks. This might be the easy way to not only get more subscribers, but sales as well.

Check Out These 9 Useful Social Media Management Tools Choosing a social media tool set to handle the huge tasks before you is almost as bad as the problem it’s attempting to fix. How to discover which of these tools are actually necessary, and what they can do for you is not easy. Clearly there is a need, as keeping up with social media for your business is not for the faint of heart. It will take a well-thought out strategy, dedicated staff, plus several well placed tools. Let’s take a peek at several of the best tools out there presently, and just how they can help you with managing your social media. 9 Social media tools and why they’re awesome The very first thing to do is decide which of the many social networks you are wanting to try and make use of. Then we can dive into which of these tools may be best for your business. Tweetdeck – A great tool for Twitter that organizes all of your Twitter activity onto one “deck”. This gives you the capability to see at a glance what’s happening. SharedCount – Just how popular is your content? This tool shows you exactly how much play your content is receiving and where it’s being shared. TweetReach – Another Twitter tools that shows you how far your Tweet is reaching, showing you data such as who is retweeting you and what their influence and reach is as well. LikeAlyzer – A pure Facebook analytics tool, this one offers you the ability to take an in-depth look at your Facebook pages and even gives suggestions on what you can do to improve them. Klout – Klout collects details on your various social profiles and comes up with a popularity score of 1 to 100. What’s your Klout? Mention – Would you like to know who and where your brand or name is being mentioned? This is the tool for that! It can track anywhere, and send it to you in an email daily. IFTTT – This automation app can do everything from text you tomorrow’s weather to automatically updating your Twitter with content from your other channels. IFTTT currently makes connections with more than 90 channels, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Buffer – An execllent automation tool that gives you the capability to schedule out social media posting and update to your various accounts. This works well with Facebook, Google+ LinkedIn and Twitter, and others. Hootsuite – Hootsuite is a social media management tool that can help you monitor, measure and manage up to 100 Social Profiles on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ Pages, all from one convenient dashboard.

Solid Advice About Email Frequency to Your Lists One question that often arises with people just starting out with email marketing is how often you should communicate with your list. This is a question borne from anxiety, as you don’t want to push away the very audience you are trying to cultivate, but at the same time you want to give them the most information you can about you and your products and services. The truth is there’s not a standard answer. One business may need to communicate a lot more than another, while another might need to send just enough to stay in mind. So let’s take a brief look at a few of the principles you should keep in mind when finding that perfect number for your business. What you should know about email frequency Understand first that everyone’s email inbox is a battleground: lots of messages vying for consideration. To stand out from the herd, you have to follow a couple of rules. The best case scenario for any business is to build a long-term relationship with your email list, one in which you are trusted and your opinions respected. If you can reach this email Nirvana, you’ll have the option to send out sales pitches from time to time and not be perceived as a scummy marketer. The way to make this occur is by delivering terrific value in your non-sales emails, and be truly interested in giving out the best tips and information you are aware of, to be able to further engender, know, like and trust in them. First and foremost, don’t sell in every email. As a general rule, if you’re using this advice, it’s possible to mail 2-3 times a week without it being seen as an intrusion. Remember, this changes if you’re not offering value and over-selling. You’ll quickly get a feel for how much is too much, and not only that, your subscribers will tell you. If you’re ever getting lots of unsubscribes, examine the reasons. If it’s because they’re hearing too often from you, they’ll say so. If the content isn’t relevant, you’ve got other issues to address.

See Four Reasons Why Your Business Has to Adopt Mobile Marketing Here’s a fairly interesting statistic: people are now checking their mobile phones around 150 times per day on average. Is that a bigger or smaller number than you might’ve thought? So what that comes down to for marketers is opportunity, and for those who’ve either missed it or stubbornly refused to go mobile, a missed opportunity. However you cut it, mobile marketing is here to stay. Just in case you need one final push over the cliff toward mobile, here’s 4 reasons you’ll want to implement it as soon as possible. See these 4 reasons mobile marketing can deliver for your business Mobile is the consumer’s tool of choice – US mobile users are spending 23 percent more time on their mobile device compared to what they did in 2013. You can also see this reflected in the chasm developing between mobile use and desktop: People are spending 2 hours and 51 minutes a day on mobile versus 2 hours and 12 minutes on a desktop. Mobile is imminently sharable – Mobile is by its very nature social, and this could result in the possibility that your content can have a far wider reach than you might have envisioned when you created it. Once someone shares your content, their followers and friends have the chance to share it with theirs, and so on. Mobile users are more apt to take action – Mobile users are prone to act. 70 percent of mobile searches result in an action within only one hour! They are often out and about, searching for products and services, and you need to be on their radar. More people will see or open your messages – Since now over 90 percent of American adults own a cell phone and 42 percent have a tablet, more of your communications are going to be opened. Text messages can reach people where phones might not, and an astounding 98 percent of texts are opened within one hour. We’ve morphed into a world where many more communications take place in a far more compressed time period. Your business must be mobile to stay competitive.

Learn How Easy It Is to Mess Up Your Landing Pages Your landing pages are some of the most critical pieces of virtual content you have, and we have to take all measures to make sure that they perform to optimum efficiency. There are several really great ways you can totally screw up your landing pages. No really, it’s very easy! Before you become a victim of this unfortunate happenstance, let’s check out what some of these horrible mistakes are, and how you can avoid them. Check out and avoid these 6 landing page killers! Your page takes forever to load – Since it’s been established in study after study that you have around 3 seconds to get your page on before they leave, it’s definitely time to take that seriously, especially with landing pages.  Be sure to check this frequently, to head off any problems. Design clean, uncluttered landing pages – Strive to keep your landing pages focused. Avoid big blocks of text. Use white space. Don’t cram in whatever you can think of attempting to pry the action out of them. Just deliver clean, simple content focused on one purpose! Links that lead elsewhere – A big no-no! Including anything other than a link to your desired action will cut conversions drastically. Don’t supply them with a choice by including site nav links, social media buttons, or anything else. If you want another shot at them if they not decide to click your link, use an exit pop. Too much text – Make sure you think carefully before implementing a long form salesletter on your landing pages. Most of the time, shorter works more effectively. Asking for too much info – One guaranteed way to get a lot of people to leave is by demanding more information than you really need. Consider what you really need, and test this aspect of your landing page. Not mobile ready – Closely related to the point above, no one really wants to fill out forms on their phone, so make the mobile version of your landing page as simple and size appropriate as you can. Your conversions will thank you!