Jennifer Dixon

As a small business owner you know that email marketing is so important when it comes to building your business. Email marketing can drive traffic to your website, fill seats at your event, it can also promote your products and services. An email campaign can build a list of loyal subscribers that could eventually become your customers.

Below are some email marketing tips to keep in mind for your next campaign:

Permission based email. Always, always, always get permission before adding someone to your list. Every single person on your email list should have opted-in through an opt-in form or expressly given their permission to be added to your list. Sending unsolicited emails is just spammy.

Quality not quantity. A larger list is not necessarily a better list; ideally you really want a targeted list. It’s better to have 500 targeted prospects, than 5,000 untargeted leads.

Segment your list. For better results, take time to segment your list and send appropriate emails to appropriate leads. For example, send subscribers that have already bought from you special offers or coupons for their next purchase.

Deliver valuable content. Every time you send an email, you want to deliver valuable information to your subscribers, by providing relevant, valuable content consistently; they’ll come to look forward to hearing from you.

Call to action. Every email should ask your prospects to take some form of action. You may want them to call for a free consultation, register for your teleseminar or a check out you newest product.

When used correctly, email marketing is a great way to maintain a relationship with your subscribers and it can have a huge impact in the success of your business.

How have these tips helped your email campaign? Please share your comments below.

For most people, after creating a profile on LinkedIn, the focus tends to shift to growing the number of connections they have, but more important than the number of connections is the strength of those connections. If you only connect to someone but haven't any dialogue, what are you really accomplishing?

Having 250 strong connections that you know well and can connect to on a deeper level generates more business and creates more meaningful relationships than having 1000 connections.

The key to making your LinkedIn connections work is developing relationships, having meaningful conversations, and when possible in-person meetings are essential to moving from the connection phase into the relationship phase.

Here are five ways to turn those connections into more meaningful relationships:

Timing - After you’ve made a new connection, provided an introduction, answered a question, asked a question, or had someone comment on your status update or group discussion you've found a reason to take the next step and initiate a conversation. Conversations can lead to phone calls, ongoing dialogue, or in-person meetings.

Leverage Events – Find events in your area, that your connections are also attending and reach out to one or two of those connections. You can send a message to let them know you will be attending the same event they will and that you look forward to meeting them.

Traveling – Reach out to connections when your traveling to let them know you’ll be in their area and ask them to meet you for coffee or lunch.

Get Advice – Everyone loves to share their opinion.  Asking for advice will make your connection feel important which can lead to a deeper relationship with your connection.

Be a Resource – Helping your connections is a great way to develop more meaningful relationships. Read status updates or discussion topics and questions to see where you can reply and add value, then send a detailed message with additional tips and resources to benefit your connections.

How have you strengthened your LinkedIn connections? Please share your comments below.

If you have a Facebook page and sell products, then Payvment may be just what you need to create a free storefront on Facebook. Payvment is an application that makes it easy for customers to complete a sales transaction without having to leave Facebook. To get started all you need is a PayPal account.

Some features of Payvment are:

Product Search – help your customer find exactly what they’re looking for

Facebook-wide shopping – customers can complete their purchase from any storefront on Facebook

Share Ability – customers can tell their Facebook friends about an item they like in your store via their news feed and it’ll link back to your store

Discounts – offer storefront discounts for those who "Like" your Facebook page

Once you add the Payvment application to your page, you’re able to add and manage your products within the application itself. The application also creates a “Shop Now” tab for your store.

Payvment makes it easy to make sales directly from Facebook. Are you selling your products using Payvment? Share your experience in the comments are below.

To convert attention into desirable outcomes, you’ll need to:

• Create content (programs, teleclasses, ebooks, reports, etc) with an “end” in mind. Do you want your reader to sign up for your teleclass, download your free audio, join the mailing list for your newsletter, call for a free strategy session or purchase your program?
• Learn where your click paths break down, you want to make it as easy as possible to share, download, donate, buy, join or take any other action. Too many steps or a process that’s too complicated will deter some people from participating
• Measure your performance

By measuring your performance, studying your conversions and how your audience responds you can learn to develop more meaningful and relevant engagement practices. The bottom line is to always keep your content consumable, shareable and actionable.

So here’s my call to action, has this post been helpful in knowing how to better prepare content by having a desired outcome in mind? Leave your comments below; I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Having a content marketing strategy is just as important as having a social media marketing strategy. Knowing what the pain points of your customer are will help in creating your content. Once you know the pain points, you can create relevant and valuable content around a solution. Your content can include an ezine, articles, ebooks, slideshare presentations or any other method of delivery. The key here is to create really good content on a consistent basis and share it through your social media networks. And in delivering your solution to your audience, you can share content through list building and lead generating activities like a free teleclass or an opt-in to a free giveaway. Sharing your captivating message or story consistently will help you continually attract and retain customers. In my research I came across an excellent resource called Content Marketing Playbook 42 Ways to Connect with Customers, hope you enjoy it.

There are two types of Facebook insights:

• User Insights: include total page Likes, number of fans, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, demographics, page views, tab views
• Interactions Insights: include daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments) and daily page activity (mentions, discussions, wall posts, video posts)

While Insights offers a lot of information, you may want to determine what’s most important to track and measure. A few insights to track could include:

• The average number of Likes or comments: will help you identify which discussions are of more interest to your fans,  extremely helpful in making  decisions around your content strategy and changes to your editorial calendar

• Page views: helps you identify the number of fans actually coming back to your page, you can determine this number by subtracting the number of unique page views from the number of page views

• Mentions: is the number of times someone tagged you in their post, it’s also the easiest way for friends of your fans to click through to your page; every time someone tags you, the name of your page appears as a link

Understanding the data in your insights dashboard will help you make better decisions about your engagement and content strategy that will allow you to have more effective interactions with your fans, how has your Insights data shaped your Facebook engagement and content strategy?

A lot of people are using the WordPress platform for blogging, but to really make your blog exceptional you’ll need to have the right plugins. Plugins that will enhance the readers experience and also help you manage your blog. I recently came across an article about blog plugins and thought I’d share some of my favorites with you, needless to say I’ll be making some updates to the plugins on my own site. Here’s a few of my faves:
 
Google XML Sitemap – helps your blog get indexed by Google as well as other search engines
 
WordPress Editorial Calendar – this plugin lets you view all your posts on a calendar with the ability to drag and drop posts, great for blog management, excellent for planning and organizing future posts
 
Widget Context and Widget Logic – you have the control over which pages your sidebar shows up on,  these plugins are great if you want to create squeeze pages or landing pages on your domain but do not want the sidebar to distract your visitors
 
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – displays a list of posts and/or pages related to your current entry, which encourages the reader to read more of your content
 
Google analytics – easy way to find out what’s happening on your blog, this plugin lets you know how many visitors your site has, what pages are viewed and where your visitors come from. 

With so many great plugins available to help support your blog goals, there’s even more reason to love the simplicity of WordPress! I’ve shared some of my favorite plugins, what are yours?

Social Media makes promoting and managing events much simpler and for severalreasons. It’s easier to RSVP, easier for others to help promote your event, your event promotion can reach a wider audience and it’s easier to add to online calendars.
 
Before the Event – Blog about your event beforehand to get the word out and make others aware but also to give them an opportunity to register and attend
 
Facebook has a convenient RSVP system, and makes it easy to share event information and media (links, photos, video)
 
LinkedIn can help you promote your event to business contacts that may not be social contacts and also has a convenient RSVP system 
 
Twitter allows you to announce your event, ask others to retweet and track it mentions of your event by using a hashtag (#)
 
During the Event – Take photos or videos to post later, this will create buzz and your photos or videos can be distributed on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr; annonce future events; ask Twitter users to tweet about the event as they experience it
 
After the Event – Post photos and video on Facebook; comment on walls and event profiles thanking attendees and also thank your attendees on Twitter; blog about your event after to provide a recap, let those that couldn’t attend know what they missed and encourage your readers to attend any upcoming events 
 
How has social media helped you fill seats for your event?