New Media Mavens

3 More Quick/Easy Ways to Stay Connected with Customers

All month we've discussed the impact of an e-zine (online newsletter) on your business. Even though we are staunch advocates of sending out a value-packed e-zine, some may consider it quite a challenge to churn out an e-zine every two weeks or every month.

In the previous post, Alternatives to an E-zine we talked about how sending brief e-mail postcards can help you keep in touch with customers. To wrap up, we'll explore three more ways you can stay connected without producing a full e-zine:

1. Create an e-mail course. Think of seven ways to do something in your business that your customer or prospect will value. Then create a seven-day course and deliver via e-mail. Or, break up the chapters from an e-book. If you don't have an e-book invest in the time to write a report, white paper or long article. Use an autoresponder like Get Response or AWeber to deliver a section each month. You write it once and forget it! The autoresponder will automatically deliver your content like clockwork while you're busy taking care of other things.
   
2. Write an evergreen e-zine. It's easy to write 52 brief tips on your expertise ahead of time. Try writing "52 Ways to ________" "52 Secrets to _________." Again, schedule the tips in an autoresponder to send every week for an entire year without you lifting a finger for the other 51 weeks.
   
3. E--mail your blog posts to your list. No I don't mean that you become a pest and send a blog post every day to your customers' in-box. You will get more "unsubscribes" faster than you can say jack rabbit! But, compile your most important ones, in a blog digest if you will, and send once every week or two.

With these three quick and easy ways to stay connected, you can now say: "I have enough to write about" or "I have time to do this." Staying consistent, in providing value and staying top-of-mind, with your customer is key.

How do you stay connected with your customers? Write a comment and tell us.

Regards,

Lena Claxton

Want the full enchilada on using new media to skyrocket your business? Try our 30-Day Marketing With New Media Makeover but hurry, it begins on Monday, August 4, 2008!

Alternatives to an E-Zine

The key to a succesful strategy when marketing with new media is consistency. But some business owners say they neither have time nor the inclination to create a full-blown e-zine. What's a business owner to do? There are alternatives.  Some of the best promotions used by businesses are postcards.

The best of the best comes from Nordstrom. Their colorful image entices the reader to click on the visual and go straight to the store's website where more information can be found and a purchase can be made. They also send them regularly and have great subject lines, the key to getting the e-mail opened.

Don't have time to write an e-zine? Consider a postcard.

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven    

Why Businesses Should Blog

After blogging last night on how some businesses are using Twitter, a microblog, to improve customer service I received a call from a small business owner. "Why should business owners continue to blog if a microblog is the newest thing? What's the point?" she asked.

The question highlights a couple of important points:

1. Even if you are communicating using high-tech methods, people still want to talk to people and will use traditional methods, such as phones, letters, carrier pidgeons, to connect with you. This is a very good thing. Technology should never replace actual communication between people, it should merely augment it.

2. There are limited resources, time being one of the most precious and valuable commodites a busy business owner can have. How can they stay on top of what's new and learn what's the best investment of their time?

As a business owner, whenever you think about what new media product you need and want to use -- website, e-zine, blog, podcast, Facebook or other social media site -- you have to think about where your customers are. At the moment and for a relative foreseeable future, blogging is where it's at. Yesterday the Pew Internet Project released their latest statistics on blogging and found that 33% of internet users (the equivalent of 24% of all adults) say they read blogs, with 11% of internet users doing so on a typical day. Business owners need to go where their audience is and right now more of their audience is on a blog than a microblog, which is just breaking through public awareness.

Blogs are also a two-way conversation whereas Twitter limits you to communicate in 140 words or less.

So, why do you need to know about what's coming down the pike? Because the only way to stay ahead of the curve is to know what is on the leading edge. Times are changing...fast! While MySpace started the whole trend in social networking (at least in public perception) Facebook has now taken over and is seen as the leader.

The question for business owners need to keep first and foremost in their mind when marketing with new media is: Where is my customer?

Where online  is your customer right now?

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven

Businesses use Twitter to stay in touch with customers

Businesses often ask why do they need to stay in touch with the latest Internet technologies.

The answer: because they work!

Blogs, like the one you're reading right now, may go the way of digital pagers (remember them?). The hot new application that is gaining momentum is Twitter -- a microblog which asks one simple question: "What are you doing right now?"

Now large companies like Comcast Cable and FedEx are using Twitter to monitor what people are saying about them on the Internet. Read more about it on ABC News' website.

Using Twitter to enhance customer service is just one application. How do you use Twitter?

Tell us by connecting to the Mavens at www.twitter.com/alisonwoo or www.twitter.com/lenaclaxton and become one of our Tweets.    

E-zine Secrets to Success: How One Life Coach and Boompreneur Does it

One of the most common complaints of writing an e-zine is that it is time consuming. Life coach and boompreneur Jeannie Fennell (CEO of Lifeworks) has solved that problem by creating two e-zines -- one full lenth e-zine and one short e-zine that offers tips. Fennell also uses her e-zines to promote other businesses, all while garnering a steady stream of revenue for her new media products. To hear how shes does it, listen to the interview. Plus we offer tips on how to promote your own e-zine.

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven

Brad and Angelina Register Twins' Website Names

Photo courtesy of Universal Studios

Just minutes after announcing their twins' birth on Saturday, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt registered their babies' domain names. The twins, Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt and Vivienne Marchelline Jolie-Pitt, were born Saturday in France but their cyber-savvy parents said they registered the names to prevent cyber-squatting.

For more, read http://www.jossip.com/angelina-jolie-is-knox-and-viviennes-domain-name-administrator-20080714/.

What does this teach small business owners? It's never been more important to protect your online identity. Whether you are a small business, individual or Hollywood celeb, your domain name is part of your brand. Protect it and the names of your products and services. You can forward it to your main website URL or you can keep it for the day you need it. Either way, don't forget to think about your URL when you're protecting your baby...whether it's work-related or a real, live one.

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven

alison@newmediamavens.com

All E-Zine Writers Should Be Aware of New SPAM Guidelines

If you currently write an e-zine, or online newsletter, or are thinking of writing one for your business in the near future, you need to be aware of new stricter SPAM guidelines that went into effect on July 7, 2008. Four new rules were added to existing guidelines. Here are some of the highlights:

• The "From" and "To" portions of your e-mail need to be clearly identified as coming from your organization;
• You cannot use an incentive to forward your e-mail, such as "Forward this e-mail to 10 new readers and you will get a 10% coupon;"
• You can now use a valid P.O. address;
• Your opt-out method must not be complicated. Your reader must be able to go to one single page to opt-out of receiving your online communication.

For a comprehensive explanation of the new guidelines, visit http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/05/R411008frn.pdf.

Using an e-zine provider can help e-zine writers stay compliant with SPAM regulations. Don't use your own personal or business e-mail, such as Outlook, Yahoo! or AOL to send your e-zine out because it can be read as SPAM by your customer's e-mail program. You don't want to go through the effort of producing an e-zine without knowing it will get to your target.

Choose an e-zine provide that can meet your needs. The three main e-zine providers are Constant Contact, iContact and Get Response. Take the tour that each provider offers and find the one right for you and your business.

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven

Succesful business owner discusses the secrets to a great e-zine

Hear Frazer Dobson, owner of legendary Park Road Books, an independent bookseller in Charlotte, NC discuss the secret to success to the store's amazing e-zine, or online newsletter.

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven

Market Your Business Effectively with an E-Zine

E-zine Marketing is a Solid Keep-In-Touch Strategy

Despite the proliferation of sexier new media marketing tools such as social media, blogs, wikis et al, using an e-zine (online newsletter) to market your business is a solid keep-in-touch strategy to build and sustain relationships with your prospects and customers.

In this time-strapped world, many of our clients ask (with shoulders sagging), Do I really have to send out an e-zine every week or every two weeks?

In our book, How to Say It: Marketing With New Media we say send it once per month. Shocking! Many marketers would shoot us down with: Customers will forget you! you won't stay top-of-mind! and yada yada.

You see, we believe in simultaneously using other new media to stay in touch. Blog two to three times per week, create an active Facebook profile (with your customers as friends), podcast weekly, set up an auto-responder that automatically doles out follow-up content THEN you send out your value-packed e-zine once per month. The result is a streamlined information flow that touches your customers from various points.

Regards,

Lena Claxton
Marketing/New Media Maven

Facebook Faux Pas

What do you do when you get an invitation to be a friend on Facebook but you're not sure if you should accept it or reject it? According to the social and manners editor of The New York Times, the answer depends on what you use social media for.

Check out their answer at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/fashion/06social.html?ref=fashion

Alison Woo

Chief Media Maven