Email Marketing is one of the cornerstones of online relationship building

Things have moved on a bit (about a million miles actually) since the days of rainbow coloured text emails and using the BCC field for your list while sending the message to yourself, although unbelievably some of these still occasionally drop into my inbox (bless!).

There are many excellent Email Service Providers (ESPs), including Mailchimp (we are fans & affiliates), Constant Contact, Vertical Response and AWeber. Which provider you choose is down to personal preference, but there are compelling reasons why you need to choose and use a professional ESP for your business Email Marketing.

Get More of Your Emails Delivered

Many people think that pressing ‘Send’ is all that’s needed to get their email message to its various destinations. Not necessarily so. For people still using their computer email packages, deliverability is unknown and open & click-through rates are unmeasurable.

Using your web domain host or shopping cart email service isn’t a guarantee of getting delivered either. These are OK for occasional mailings but messages are less likely to get through spam filters, so it isn’t a good idea to use as your main ESP, if you’re serious about Email Marketing.

The number of people reading their emails on SmartPhones is growing rapidly, so making sure your Emails are mobile friendly is becoming increasingly important. The main ESPs have this covered with special templates for the publisher to use and options to receive emails in a mobile friendly format for the reader.

Benefit from their Good Reputation

The best providers have a good reputation they’ve worked hard to establish. Not only for deliverability (over 99% is their proud claim), but also, importantly, for their adherence to the CAN-Spam Act, which they take very seriously.

I was chatting with an Email Marketing colleague recently and he told me the sad story of two clients who had their email accounts suspended as a result of using their computers to send out campaigns. This could have been as a result of the large number of emails going out, or because they fell foul of the Spam filters.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of being without email in my business sends icy shivers down my spine. It’s one of my primary communication channels and I’d really struggle without it.

Professional ESPs use a ‘double optin’ process to further protect their reputation – and yours by association! This process replaces the practice back in the ‘bad old days’ when you simply added all your contacts’ email addresses to a spreadsheet and sent out uninvited and unexpected promotional emails to them. “But wait,” I hear you say, “I still have some of those emails arriving in my inbox.” Yep, me too – and I report them as ‘Spam’ because that’s what they are. I didn’t ask for them.

A Double Opt-In is when you enter your details (usually just Name & Email address) onto a web based form, press Enter and are then taken to another screen with a message telling you to look out for an email which you need to act on. The email usually arrives within seconds and has a link you have to click in order to confirm that you really did fill out that form and want to receive the emails from that person.

The above are just a couple of reasons why using a professional Email Service Provider is so important for the small business owner. Check out our Guide for more information on Email Marketing, and please ask your questions in the comment box below.

If you’ve used plugins, please share which ones you like below – it’s always useful to know the good ones out there!

Although Facebook introduced the Subscriber feature last September,

Intended primarily for ‘public figures’ like celebrities, journalists and political figures, the Subscriber feature is also a boon for those small business owners who ‘are’ their brand. Indeed when I joined Facebook back in 2007, I used my personal profile for business as well as private contacts because there wasn’t another option. Until Pages came along.

I believe one of the reasons for business owners’ understandable reluctance to set up and manage a Business Page is the extra task of keeping it regularly updated, attracting people to ‘Like’ it and the effort involved in building a community. This is all additional time to try and find in an already full day.

In the past we’ve always advised against using a personal profile as a business marketing channel, not only because Facebook frowns on it, but also because using a Business Page provides so much more visibility (as a unique web address which can be easily found by the search engines as well as on the newsfeed of all ‘Likers’).

Another advantage of having a Business Page is that you can have multiple ‘Admins’ to help maintain the page, post updates and respond to comments, so for our Savvy Marketers page this is the best option.

However now, while a personal profile should still be set up as a personal account, enabling the Subscriber function means you can be more selective about who you connect with as a ‘friend’, keeping to only close friends and family. What’s new is that you can now also connect with more casual business acquaintances, for example fellow networkers, by inviting them to become Subscribers to your personal profile instead. One benefit of this is the increased reach of your profile updates which can be seen by all subscribers in their newsfeed (and on the ticker).

You do have to turn the Subscriber button ‘on’, the default is ‘off’.

So, should you enable ‘Subscribe’?

It’s certainly worth considering if you’re nearing or over the 5000 friend limit, because there is no limit to the number of Subscribers you can have.

It may be a good alternative to a Page if you are the only person in your business, and have already connected with other businesses via your personal profile.

A few points to consider before you click to allow the feature

Subscribers will be able to see everything you share as ‘public’ or to ‘everyone’ so it’s important to check your privacy settings BEFORE turning the feature on. Make sure you’re happy for all your photos (or albums) to be seen by everyone and make any changes if you aren’t.

Look through the privacy settings of your contact details carefully. For example, is your mobile phone number set to public? That may be fine for close friends, but do you really want everyone to know it? I don’t mind who contacts me on Facebook but deliberately keep my other email addresses and phone numbers private, as you can see by the little padlock symbols in the screenshot below.

Once you enable ‘Subscribers’ you will automatically be subscribed to all your friends as well. You can choose between receiving ‘all’,‘most’ (the default setting) or ‘only important’ updates to avoid being bombarded with too many.

Anything you post as ‘public’ on your personal profile wall will be seen by your Subscribers in their news feed. The screenshot below shows that ‘public’ is my default for sharing updates but you can opt for ‘friends’ or ‘custom’ by clicking through and changing your privacy settings. You also have the option of selecting who you share individual updates with too.

Do you have the Subscriber option turned on? Do share your experience or opinion in the comments below – we’d love to know what you think of it!

There’s lots to do when it comes to running an online shop

A few small things can make all the difference and there are common mistakes owners of online shops make, which can even send visitors away! Here are 4 things to make sure you’re not doing on your website:

1. Complicated Navigation

Having pages too many clicks away from the home page can put visitors off from finding what they want. Making people click too many times is not only bad for usability, but can put the search engines off too! Try to make sure your products are no more than 3 clicks away from the home page to maximise visitor satisfaction and ensure efficient indexing by the search engines. Additionally ensure your products are categorised sensibly – the number of times I’ve clicked through to what I thought was a sensible category for a product on a website only to find it’s been put elsewhere! Also, if you have a site search facility make sure it works and brings back results from products relevant to the search (you’d be surprised how many site searches don’t work properly).

If you’re unsure about these things, get a few friends or contacts to complete a short usability test and give you feedback.

2. Delivery/Returns Info Buried Away

Some of the first things I look for when making a buying decision are delivery costs, returns policy, and how to contact the company if anything goes wrong. This makes me trust the business more so I’m more likely to place an order with them. But if this information is buried and hard to find, then it won’t inspire me to buy, and I imagine it’s the same for other people. The worst thing you can have on your site is only a contact form and/or mobile phone number. I like to see a physical address, email address and telephone number (landline) that’s easy to find on the site with all the information I need about buying a product from the company. Review your delivery and customer service pages to make sure you look like an honest, trustworthy business – not a fly by night site trying to make a quick buck! This leads us nicely onto customer service.

3. Shoddy Customer Service

Tip top customer service will ensure your customers stay happy and keep coming back, and this is an absolute must for any business, not just online shops. As mentioned above, your customer care information must be prominent on your site, but there are other ways you can keep your customers happy too. Twitter works well for businesses and they can respond to questions quickly and be seen to be doing so, which is really important. A blog can also act as a way of interacting with your customers and minimising anything that goes wrong – put up your hand and admit any mistakes you make rather than trying to hide them. We’re all human and as long as you keep customers informed, there’s no reason why they should go elsewhere. Above all though, don’t promise what you can’t deliver!

4. Shopping Cart Problems

Is your shopping cart making visitors jump through hoops to buy? This is another major sticking point for online shops, so if you’ve not reviewed your shopping cart process in a while, then it’s worth doing so. You should be able to find out your shopping trolley abandonment rate and make sure it’s not too high. You could also send a polite email to shoppers who didn’t complete transactions and ask them why. Whatever you do, ensure you don’t lose valuable sales during the final part of the process!

These are all mistakes that can be fixed but are still common across the web. In these uncertain times, fixing these issues can make all the difference between you retaining customers and keeping them happy, or losing them to your competitors!

A blog is so important to the online success of all small businesses that it can truly be called the real heart

Have we convinced you yet that your blog is important? OK, here’s why it is:

It is the heart or hub of your online presence, and is the bridge between your website and the social networks.

For service business owners especially, a blog is where you can demonstrate your expertise by regularly adding written, audio or video examples of what you do, and provide proof that it works. It also a place to announce new products or services in a non-salesy way.

It’s the place where you can build online relationships with your readers who, if you’ve targeted them correctly, are also prospective clients for your business. Your blog gives them the opportunity to get to ‘know, like & trust’ you much more easily than  short updates of 140 characters.

It’s where you can send social networking connections to learn more about you, somewhere that isn’t just a sales page. It always amazes us when people still do this.

When you publish a new blog post, you instantly create new material to use as informative updates and share on your social networks.

By regularly adding new posts you increase the occasions on which Google & Bing will return to visit your blog. This in turn increases your general online visibility and rankings in the search engines. It’s a vital component of your content marketing strategy as this excellent post by Ardath Albee shows.

If you have chosen a self-hosted blog then your blog is a part of the internet owned by you. Which is more than can be said for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…… even if you do pay for hosting and buy a premium blog theme, setting up a blog is still an extremely cost-effective way to establish a professional presence online for your business. It’s also where you have total control over the content and are free to make as many changes as you wish, as your business develops and grows.

If you’d like to learn more about blogging, here are details of a short guide which may be helpful.

So, how are you treating the real heart of your business online?

If you found this post helpful, please share it by clicking one of the links below.

As a small business owner myself, I know how tricky it is to allocate the time to promote what you do through PR.

In most cases we are all so busy actually doing the work, we really don’t have the time to sit down and agonise over writing press releases that we fear will end up being filed under BIN when we send them to our local paper or trade publications.

The good news is you don’t have to organise elaborate PR campaigns to let people know about your successes – you just need to start telling stories.

I’ve been writing for more than 20 years as a journalist on regional papers and magazines and now I work as a freelance writer and editor. I also work with businesses large and small advising them on building their profile.

Seeing your website as a way to set your own news agenda is a really positive move. You can create your own blog space and keep people up to speed with everything that is happening in your business.

Don’t see it as a selling tool but as a way of communicating with the wider world. Turn your online editorial into stories with a purpose that will charm and draw the reader in, offering a real insight into your situation.

There is a balance to be struck and you should beware of being too indiscreet – but at the same time your stories should inform and entertain.

Remember engaging stories are:

• about people rather than processes
• build empathy
• written in a bright, breezy style

Getting into the habit of writing for your own blog will make it easier to make the next step -making relationships with local media.

Contact books stuffed with the names and numbers of people to ring on a slow news day are the lifeblood for any journalist – and making your way onto a contact list for a local reporter should be a priority.

Often there is a concern that cultivating links with a journalist could land you in hot water and you could end up in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. My advice is simple – if you don’t want them to know something, don’t tell them.

As a former regional journalist looking to fill pages every day with the latest hot news, I know the pressures that newsdesks and reporters are under. Often they are tied to their desks crafting copy with no time to get out and about meeting new contacts.

I can assure you journalists in print, radio and TV rely on people contacting them with a news story and often it can become the start of a great relationship.

Here’s a few important tips:

• Make sure you are ringing with a genuine news or picture story – a journalist can spot PR ‘puff’ from a mile off
• Journalists are busy people – check when their deadlines fall and call when you know they will have time to listen
• As the relationship builds, you can become their eyes and ears tipping them off about stories – this will really get you in their good books.

For more than 20 years Kate Thompson worked as a journalist on regional newspapers. Her background is in political writing but most recently she worked as the Woman & Lifestyle Editor at the Daily Echo in Southampton for five years. 

In 2007 she became a freelance writer and set up Nutmeg PR. She is the editor of Shoreside magazine and has also written two books – one commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the other about allotments.

Last week saw another major change in Google search

In my opinion, this recent move seems to be a double edged sword, which I’ll explain.

Every day, through the social networks, millions of people are sharing articles, videos, podcasts, in fact all manner of content by tweeting links to their followers, or sharing updates on Facebook or LinkedIn. From motivating quotes and funny cat videos to more serious information, we all like passing on items we think will be of interest to our contacts. Social Media has made this very easy to do and those who do it well are well thought of.

Sifting through many blog posts and websites to eliminate the dross and only sharing the best is being thoughtful. It also helps to establish your reputation as a reliable source of good, timely information. I tend to leave sharing ‘big name’ news to others, and research a little deeper for articles I believe will be helpful to my social media connections. Their feedback tells me they like my links.

Curation Tools to use

As you might imagine there are a growing number of curation tools available to use, depending on your needs. This post and video from Mari Smith provide an excellent introduction to the subject.

Before content curation became more well known, my favourite sharing tool was delicious – which was simple and effective (but I stopped using it after reading it was to be abandoned by Yahoo! just over a year ago).

I briefly dallied with paper.li as a way to automatically curate by choosing and publishing each day using feeds from my various subscriptions, but I found the stories it included were far too random and so discontinued it.

Alltop is a great source of latest blog posts and top stories that you can personalise for the topics in which you are most interested.

How curation can help your blog

Do you find it a struggle to know what to blog about? I know I do at times. I worry about finding something new and interesting to write about after over 4 years of regular weekly blogging. But somehow a new post is created and shared each week. One of the things I do that helps is to regularly read other people’s blogs, and get inspiration from them. For example, because I knew I’d be writing about content curation this week (from our Blogging Calendar), I had been on the lookout for articles about it and collected several (using Evernote) in readiness. In effect I curated that content.

Content curation can also help you to produce blog posts by using content that isn’t yours! But before you rush off and collect articles & videos with cheerful abandon, there are a few etiquette points to be aware of.

• You will still need to create your own, original content if you want people to take notice of your thoughts & ideas.
• Make sure to give full attribution to the original source.
• Don’t just copy and paste whole blog posts or articles – that’s just lazy and will annoy people.
• Don’t publish posts full of links to influential websites in an attempt to increase your SEO rankings – Google won’t take any notice.

Do you curate content? If so, what sort of content and using which tools? Please share in the comments below.

If you have the budget to pay for a graphic designer to design exactly what you need, then it’s money well spent. However, if your budget doesn’t stretch to that and you want to test the water before investing money in your blog, then you’ll need to find a template that suits your needs. Some are free and some are paid for. If you use a free blogging service such as WordPress.com, Blogger, Tumblr or Typepad, then you can choose from their pre-designed options, many of which you can customise to the look and feel of your business branding.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, then you can choose from a very wide range of templates available online. WordPress.org comes with a couple of free templates, although from past experience, you’re quite limited as to what you can do with them. For example, you can be stuck with the fonts and layout. That means looking elsewhere.

If you search on Google for ‘wordpress templates’ or ‘wordpress themes’, you’ll get hundreds of results and it can drive you mad finding one that suits – basically there’s too much choice. You also need to be careful where you get your templates from. Ideally get one from a reputable site which supports the template. If there’s no support, then there’s no come back if something goes wrong, or no help if you have problems customising or setting up your blog.

Buying from a reputable provider should also mean the code is robust and less open to being hacked.

You may notice I used the word ‘buy’ in the last sentence! To be honest, the best templates out there are paid for rather than free, and most are very reasonably priced. I’d be wary of free when it comes to blog themes as it’s unlikely they’re supported in any way. Plus if the blog is your main business website, you want to give a good impression to your visitors, generally the design of paid for themes is a lot better.

If you’re struggling to find a reputable provider, then the following have some excellent themes:

1. ThemeForest  – one of the most popular theme websites, not only for WordPress sites but also for Joomla. They have a wide choice and you can choose themes depending on the use, such as business, creative portfolio, e-commerce etc. Prices are around $35 per theme. (aff link)

2. Elegant Themes – good choice of lovely designs, again for different business purposes. One yearly fee at $39 gives you unlimited access to all themes.  (aff link)

3. Headway – this is the theme we use for Savvy Marketers and is great for business service providers. It’s easy to use and customise and very well supported. Prices from $68.  (aff link)

4. Thesis – this is a very popular theme for business use and very well supported too. I use this on my Forty First website. Fairly easy to customise although some coding knowledge is useful. Prices from $87.  (aff link)

Frankly all of these themes are very reasonable compared to paying for a professionally designed theme from scratch. You may need a bit of techie help with some of them, but they’re all well designed and will give visitors to your blog a great impression of your business (plus you get to join their affiliate programs and earn a bit of extra cash )

Happy blogging!

Have you bought a theme for your blog? If so, please recommend any you have experience with in the comments.

Have you noticed how social media sites are giving slide presentations a new lease of life?

Not so long ago PowerPoint (and its Mac equivalent Keynote) had a bad reputation with many presentations rightfully earning the label: “Death by PowerPoint”. Slides were often too busy, too wordy to read, or just too complex to understand. Even worse were those presenters who used them as auto cues, reading word for word and boring their audience to sleep.

But now it seems that a whole new generation of talented presenters are breathing new life into PowerPoint slideshows. The best ones are creating visually pleasing and attention-grabbing images, making text short & snappy and, most importantly, keeping us interested. No mean feat in this much reduced attention span age!

So in addition to using slide presentations at traditional offline events, such as when giving talks or running training workshops, there are now online opportunities for this frequently overlooked medium.

1. Presentations uploaded to Slideshare.net quickly show up in the search engines so it’s worth taking the time to categorise and tag them properly. A basic account is free to set up and very easy to use. Here are the Savvy Marketers presentations we’ve uploaded.
2. YouTube is already known as the second largest search engine and millions of videos are watched every day around the world. Recording your slide presentation, accompanied by audio, and uploading the result to YouTube means you can then embed the video in your website or blog, and share it with your Facebook fans & friends too. Other free video sharing options worth considering include Vimeo and Viddler.
3. Another good place to share your PowerPoint presentation is on your LinkedIn profile or LinkedIn Company page. You can either add the Slideshare application or embed the video into a Google Docs presentation.
4. Webinars are becoming an increasingly popular way of sharing information online. Depending on the service used, screen-sharing means including a slide presentation is straightforward and adds that important visual element to help get your message across and keep your audience’s attention.

Creating slide presentations is yet another great way to share that all-important content, and one that doesn’t require too much writing.

What new or different ways have you seen PowerPoint used recently? Please share in the comments below.