Social Media Marketing is still relatively new and we’re all still learning how best to use it for our businesses.

The Profile Photo Faux Pas

Sam recently wrote a very comprehensive post on the importance of completing your social network profiles. I’d like to add a plea to use a profile photograph (also known as an avatar) that gives the message you really want it to. Cute animals and family groups are fine, but only if you don’t intend to use that profile professionally. And while logo avatars are suitable for company pages, owners of small businesses might be better off using a photo of themselves if they are the recognised ‘face’ of their brand.

I’ve been using the same avatar on all my social media profiles since I set them up back in 2007. While I may not look exactly like that photo any more – people still recognise me from it when I meet them at networking events for the first time. Would they recognise you from your avatar?

The Lack of Consistency Clanger

In order to get good results from social media marketing, stay on message and deliver tweets and updates on topics relevant to your audience. While it’s certainly a good idea to voice your opinion on occasion, try to avoid using your blog as a platform to post too many personal rants. We’ve spoken many times on the need to publish blog posts and email newsletters regularly. This can be made easier if you have a plan and use an editorial calendar, not only for blog posts but for all your social media updates.

Having a plan would result in fewer profiles being hastily set up on the latest networks and promptly abandoned. Or perhaps an initial flurry of activity followed by nothing at all for weeks or even months. If you aren’t ready to use a particular social network, then don’t publicise it on your website or blog. That’s almost worse than not setting up a profile in the first place.

However, it’s important not to become too noisy either. Tweeting or updating every few minutes will annoy your followers. No-one has that much good stuff to share, nor do people have that much time to read it all.

Other Assorted Social Media Clangers

Self promotion and little else becomes a turn-off after a while. For example I find that the links shared by some people always go through to a website home page, sales page, an ‘under-construction’ page, or to an error message. Their links don’t lead to content of value to my followers, so I rarely feel inclined to share them.

Tweets which are too long to retweet won’t be retweeted as often. It takes time to carefully edit them down to be within the required character count. If you want people to be able to retweet you, make it easy for them. Keep the character count down to 110-115 to allow for your RT @name and any link to be included.

Too much automation and not enough conversation. While many social media tools are free, that doesn’t mean everything should be set up to run automatically. You still need to work at social media and chat with people if you want to form any kind of relationships online. Being ‘social’ means sharing, liking and commenting on other people’s stuff too. It’s a two-way street.

A lack of social share buttons on a blog can mean missed opportunities. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to read a really good article, want to share it with my online followers, only to find no social sharing buttons to click. Fortunately I have Buffer and Hootlet (from Hootsuite) installed on my Chrome browser, but even the free WordPress.com and Blogger platforms both provide sharing options, so there is no excuse!

What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen small businesses make using social media? 

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigdrumthump/3214172131/

Just as we think we’ve seen all the Email Marketing mistakes

Spelling & punctuation clangers. You’d think having built-in spell checkers would mean better spelling, punctuation and grammar, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case (as Sam found out recently). A well written email marketing message is more likely to be read and speaks volumes for the professionalism of the sender.

Boring Subject Lines. These are so often treated as an after thought and written in a hurry before hitting ‘Send’ – big mistake! The Subject Line is the text that is seen in a list of unread emails and can be what prompts the recipient to open your message. It can also be the only thing that stops them from pressing the ‘Delete’ button.

Mystery ‘From’ Field. If I don’t recognise who an email is from, the likelihood of clicking to open it and find out is much reduced. For example, contact@ or info@ aren’t very friendly are they? As for noreply@ – personally I find this most off-putting!

Lack of or Confusing Call to Action. Every piece of your marketing needs to have a purpose and a clearly defined ‘Call to Action’ (CTA). Email Marketing is no different. Not including a CTA is a waste of your time and effort. Almost as bad is to provide so many options of things to click on or look at that your reader becomes confused – and does nothing as a result. That’s a waste too.

Collecting Email addresses and then not making contact until you want to sell something. This is a crazy phenomenon I’ve noticed recently. I signed up to receive updates on a couple of blogsites and weeks later was still waiting (I did check my spam filters). Then suddenly, BAM! Email after Email promoting a webinar or product launch. No thank you. This practice is just plain bad manners and, as I’m likely to have forgotten who the sender is after such an interval, their messages run the risk of being reported as spam.

We’re certainly not immune when it comes to making mistakes in our Email Marketing campaigns, but we do try our best to keep them to a minimum.

Further reading:

How not to do Emails

7 Basic Email Newsletter Mistakes (and how to avoid them) 

How not to send out Email Promotions

What Email howlers have you come across? Please share in the comments below.

When you go to all the trouble of crafting word perfect, interesting articles for your newsletter

With so many beautiful templates available from popular Email Service Providers such as MailChimp (aff), Vertical Response, Constant Contact, AWeber, et al, it can be difficult to know which to choose. Especially as, with most providers including the free ones, you can easily customise colours to your brand and add your business logo.

It can be tempting to go for every bell and whistle – just because you can! But depending on your audience, that might be a step too far, and leave you lamenting a trail of unsubscribes. While a more technically savvy audience will happily explore as many new bells & whistles as you can throw at them, a more traditional reader will be happier to simply find familiar features in each issue.

The complexity of design of your email newsletter is also going to depend to some extent on what device your audience is using. You’ll need to consider the growing number of people who will be reading on their mobile phones for example; their needs will be different to someone reading on their desktop, laptop or tablet. Fortunately the professional providers take care of that for you by offering a mobile friendly subscription option.

But no matter what device your readers are using, or their level of tech savvy-ness, there are a few basic design considerations which will make reading your newsletters a good experience for them, and so that they look forward to future issues.

Design Checklist

Your Email Newsletter is not the same as your website so it shouldn’t look like a web page. This style of template shows too many options, some of which look like tabs to click, and are generally too busy and confusing.

Should you use one column or two? Think about how you read on the screen – one column is easiest without a doubt. But two columns do look attractive and can be useful. Just make sure your most important messages are in the left hand (fatter) column, and keep items short in the right hand (skinny) column.

Provide a brief list of contents. This lets readers see at a glance what is included in each issue and gives them a chance to go straight to the content that piques their interest. Otherwise they may well consign your email to the ‘read later’ folder – which is basically a staging post to the delete folder….

Divide your newsletter into clear sections and keep these consistent in every issue as readers will have their favourites. Some will look out for your ‘Quick Tips’ to take away and apply immediately, or book recommendations, events, etc.

Use their first name two or three times in the newsletter. This is a good relationship building tactic, but don’t over-use the personalisation feature to the point that it comes across as smarmy and false. Inject a little of your personality by uploading one or two of your own photos in each issue; your readers will enjoy seeing them and learning about the person behind the newsletter.

The template and design should reflect the visual elements of your brand (logo, fonts and colours), in other words be easily associated with your business. While refreshing the design periodically is a good idea, changing it out of all recognition every month probably isn’t.

Make your page easy for your readers to navigate and keep the overall appearance simple, with lots of white space between columns, sections and paragraphs.

Consider font size and overall readability. Larger headlines will help to clearly define the sections, keep those fun and funky fonts to use as section headers. As a rule of thumb, don’t use anything smaller than 10 point font (HTML Size 2), and 12 point (HMTML size 3) is even easier to read.

Be sure to include graphics because they will enhance your publication, be pleasing on the eye and help break up the text. As I already mentioned, do consider including your own photos which are easy to take and upload using your smartphone.

What design features do you like to see in your favourite Email Newsletters? Please share them in the comments below.

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.

When we spring-cleaned this website/blog recently

A ‘Start Here’ page is a good idea if the first place new visitors see is either your latest blog post, or a slightly overwhelming Home Page.

While the Home Page is where you summarise what your business is about and what people can expect to find on the site, there isn’t enough space to really give brand new visitors a true flavour of what you do, and still keep it clear and concise. A Start Here Page can fill that need and provide a step by step guide of how they can get the best from the rest of your website.

Creating a ‘Start Here’ page will act as a warm, personal welcome, and enable you to showcase some of the useful content you’ve hopefully been putting together as part of your content marketing strategy. For example, you could include:

• An introduction video
• A collection of articles to download
• Links to a selection of blog posts
• A slideshow Presentation (with or without audio)
• Links to other pages on your website

and, of course, don’t forget to include a reminder of your primary Call to Action .

One example of a great and informative ‘Start Here’ page, which provided inspiration for our own, can be seen on smartpassiveincome.com. The owner of the site, Pat Flynn, is one of the ‘good’ guys in internet marketing and he generously shares his online experiences for his readers to learn from.

Do you have a ‘Start Here’ page? If so, what do you recommend including for new visitors to read?

However, there are things that can really put visitors off websites and over the years, I’ve come across common mistakes time and time again. Here are a few things that you need to check on your own site:

1. Make sure your contact details are easy to find, preferably on each page of your website. On this site, our phone and email address are within the header image, with a separate contact page too. It’s surprising how many sites still have their contact details buried away.

2. Make sure you tell people what you want them to do – lead people through your website, tell them which pages to visit first and make sure you put a call to action on your pages, such as contact us now, buy now, subscribe etc. If you don’t tell your visitors, it may not be obvious to them. If you’re not sure what the point of your site is, then read Louise’s post from last week: Do you expect too much from your website?

3. Equally, don’t give too much choice – you really don’t want to give your visitors half a dozen things to do or look at otherwise they won’t know which way to go either. If you’re promoting your own products, make sure someone else’s aren’t on the same page as yours (for example if you also have affiliate links on your site). You don’t want to steer them away from your own offering when you’ve put time and effort into getting the visitor to your site in the first place!

4. For service providers, explain the outcomes of using your service, how the visitor will benefit from working with you, how you will solve their problem. Don’t explain the process as most people won’t be interested in that, it’s the end result that they want. Case studies are a great way of showing off results you’ve achieved for other businesses.

5. Equally if you sell products, give your products descriptions that will resonate with your target market. A poorly written, bland description probably won’t motivate them to buy from you. Reviews can also help influence buying decisions, and I recently wrote a post on this subject: Product Reviews Increase Conversion Rates.

6. Scatter testimonials around your website, don’t just hide them away on one page. I always tell clients to put their testimonials around the site and on the corresponding product/service page.

7. Check your web stats regularly – check for trends over time and popular pages. If you’ve got a high bounce rate for particular pages on your site it could be that the page is poorly targeted, so look at the keywords you’re targeting and how the information on the page is presented.

8. Finally make sure that you’re writing for your target market and that they understand your terminology. Avoid using jargon that people won’t understand or writing in a very formal style. People scan web pages so highlight important points in bold, use bullet points and a more informal writing style.

What improvements have you made to your site to enhance your visitors experience? How have they worked for you?

If you think you could benefit from an audit of your site and feedback on where improvements could be made, please contact us to see how we can help!

Image: Frank, May 29, 2011 – choice by pat00139, on Flickr

Many small businesses have a website built because they know they need to have one. But they don’t give much thought to what they actually want it to do for their business. Most people we speak to look surprised when we ask this question, and answer:‘More business – of course!’.

Well yes, eventually that probably is the desired result of having a website. But it isn’t usually the immediate outcome, unless of course your website is an e-commerce site. For professional services businesses there are many steps between someone visiting your site for the first time and becoming a paying client.

So, if selling isn’t the point of your website, what is? Here’s what we mean by that question

Here on Savvy Marketers website, we want to inform and provide great tips for small business owners. The ultimate outcome is obviously to be hired but before that happens we know we have some serious convincing to do. That’s why the most prominent request in the sidebar is for you to sign-up to our ‘Savvy Marketing Tips’ (with free Guide). That is one of the main points of this website and everything else we offer – the twice-monthly newsletter and the free information-packed monthly webinars are all a cunning plan to persuade people to join our little community!

Once they have entrusted us with their email address, we want to build on that initial contact and start to develop a good relationship with them. To achieve this, each blog post invites comments, and most provide links to other interesting posts (perhaps here or also on other peoples’ sites), as well as introducing related products or services. We certainly don’t stop providing useful information just because we have the email address. And we don’t send out spammy email campaigns either

The point of our website therefore, is to inform and teach, to encourage people to join our online community, and to begin a relationship that will hopefully result in business in the future.

What’s the point of your website?

We’re all for creating lots of different streams of income,

You don’t want to dilute the expertise you’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money building up. Being a Jack (or Jill) of all trades may be useful, but people prefer to deal with a specialist when they have a problem they need help with.

You do want people to remember what you do. If you have a long and diverse list it will be harder to make your message clear and succinct, especially when you’re out networking.

You will have to work so much harder!

If you’re effectively running several different businesses, you’ll need to market each of them separately. Imagine the plate spinner who has to keep checking and adjusting to keep each plate from falling.

Your website will be a mess if you use it for several unrelated products or services. I remember visiting a life coach’s site a while back and being surprised and confused to see a page about candle-making! Even a hobby deserves to be separate and there are many completely free ways to do this.

It’s perfectly possible to have more than one business provided you take care with their organisation, presentation and with your time. The alternative is to ensure your additional revenue streams are clearly related to your existing business in some way, so you don’t confuse your prospects!

Have you come across a website that confused you with unrelated offerings? Please let us know in the comments below…

I’ve just received another automated Twitter Direct Message inviting me to join yet another new social network.

Sometimes the sheer volume of invitations and notifications from networks you belong to can become overwhelming, especially when added to all the usual emails and other messages demanding your attention.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on how off-putting it is to receive invitations to connect that make no attempt to personalise the initial message and you can see in the comments that Sam feels the same!

We’re much more likely to accept invitations from people who have taken a few seconds to introduce themselves. It makes a huge difference when an invitation says: ‘Hi, we met at such & such networking meeting recently’ or ‘I subscribe to your newsletter & would love to connect here’ or ‘We have a mutual contact/interest in x’.

The trouble is, we don’t want to refuse an invitation from someone who could potentially be an interesting connection just because they don’t use the right words!

Setting up a connection policy or process can help

1. Is there a photograph of the person?

I like to see who I’m connecting with, so a logo, grey avatar or pet photo isn’t helpful (or professional). It’s a bit like going to a local networking meeting wearing a mask isn’t it?

2. What does their profile say about them?

It’s often difficult to know what to put in these boxes. I look for clues about what the person does and also what they’re like as an individual, so blank boxes or sales copy are a turn-off.

3. Do they have a website and/or blog?

This is their online home and I often decide whether to connect based on what I read in their ‘About’ page. If there isn’t a link to click on, this gives me the message that they aren’t very serious about their business online. The same applies if the only link takes me to a Facebook Page.

4. What connections or interests do we have in common?

If we have nothing and no-one in common then why should we connect? Another reason why 2 & 3 above are so important.

5. What do they tweet about?

For Twitter connections, I always have a look at their timeline or stream of recent tweets to see if they chat with their other connections and share other people’s stuff. If all that’s there is a list of self-promotional tweets, then they obviously don’t ‘get’ Twitter and I don’t connect with them

I hope this doesn’t come across as too ruthless, but realistically I can only engage with a limited number of people in a day, week or month. While I freely admit to making regular use of automation tools, I try hard to personally connect with as many people as I can every day too. It is called social networking after all!

Related posts:

Connecting with Social Media

Friends and Acquaintances

Getting to Know You

What have we missed? Do you agree with this post? Please let us know in the comments below.

As the brighter, lighter days show up the cleaning jobs

If you’ve been on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for a few months or more and intend to continue using social networking as a marketing tool in your business, then it’s worth revisiting all your profiles to see if they need revising or sprucing up in any way.

Here’s a short checklist for you:

1. Have you uploaded a professional-looking photograph of yourself? No matter how cute your pet rabbit is and how elegant your logo – they won’t help me recognise you should we be at the same networking meeting.
2. Check your Twitter 160 character bio. Does it include keywords about your business as well as sharing something personal too? People like to connect with people, so show that you’re human.
3. Do you have a special social media landing page on your website? It’s a lot friendlier and more professional than having fellow social networkers land on your home page or, heaven forbid, a sales page.
4. Are all your social networks listed on your website Contact page? You need to give people every opportunity to connect with you and become part of your network. They may not be ready to pick up the phone yet, but may well comment on a Facebook update.
5. Have you updated your LinkedIn profile with all recent changes? And are your website urls still current? I recent checked one for a client and found it linked to a blog last updated in 2008!
6. Do you have a ‘pretty’ url for your Facebook Page and Profile? You’ll need 25 ‘likes’ on your page, then go to facebook.com/username and claim your url.
7. Look at the info tab on your Facebook personal profile as well – are your web addresses up to date? Have you included the url of your Facebook business Page on that list? I was surprised at how many people forget to do this, and then they wonder why so few people find their Page
8. Make use of the friend list facility on Facebook so you can more easily keep up with all those important family & friends updates.
9. While we’re on the subject of urls, do a quick check by clicking on each live link you come across to make sure they still go where they’re supposed to.
10. Check your Facebook Profile Privacy Settings are as you want them to be. The latest updates made changes you may not have been aware of.
11. Go to a service like Twunfollow or ManageFlitter, find out who isn’t active on Twitter and unfollow them. While you’re about it, check to see who isn’t following you anymore, you might want to unfollow them too.
12. Sort your Twitter followers into lists – this will make it easier for you to keep track of their tweets and join in with the conversations.

What have I missed? What other spring cleaning are you going to do for your social networks? Please share in the comments.