Social Media = any kind of media that creates a social or community experience for the audience. Facebook lets people do this by sharing photos and videos and news with their friends.

New Media or Emerging Media = The exciting (and confusing) part of technology advancement is we don’t always know what to call it. That’s this stuff. Currently this includes social media, online communities, mobile marketing, and a bunch of new tools and platforms we’re learning how to use.

It doesn’t matter what it is; a newsletter, postcard, fun picture or a sample of your work, sending anything out to your address book on a semi-regular basis is good for business. Let’s be clear: I am NOT advocating sending out a digest of boring crap that you think is important. I am NOT cheering for the rights of the cheezy sales guy sending me a 3-page long “regular priced 199 but for you it’s 99 (if you order in the next 10 minutes)”. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT endorsing the emailing of a daily quote that will be the first thing I curse at every morning….

What I am always encouraging of is the sharing of your brand and your personality in a way that betters the lives of those around you. If you are a online video company send me one of your coolest videos (if you have cool videos… if you don’t then just make one that’s funny) every month. If you’re a celeb photographer send me something no one else has seen yet. Are you getting the drift yet?

The trick to a great newsletter/eblast/marketing thing is

1. Be consistent with your personality.

If you are funny then your email should be funny. If you are overly stuffy then your email should be funny. If you are boring your email should be funny. If you are nerdy (like me) then it wouldn’t hurt to share something that will make everyone else feel a little more smart than they did before (I share my tech love of the month). Just don’t over-educate people – keep this short and entertaining!

2. Give the audience something that matters to them.

I know you want to sell your widget. Or talk about how cool you are. Restrain yourself. Think for a minute about who your ideal client is – a CFO? CEO? Small Biz Owner? IT guy? What really matters EVERY DAY for this ideal client of yours and what could you give them that would help this? Is it a coupon to the mac store, or the inside scoop on a new product (that has nothing to do with your products, but is consistent with your brand as “smart techie person”). Maybe your contacts would like to know about an upcoming charity event, or a community day at the park. Giving value doesn’t necessarily mean giving a discount on your product – but giving value always means make your readers day better than it was before your email.

3. NOT trying to “trick” anyone into something

If you are giving a coupon away, just give it away – don’t make people fill out a survey or give you their email addy – you already had it to send them the email with this amazing coupon!!!!! I know some sales coaches that tell you a 3 sentence “sales tip” at the top of their newsletter, and then go into 3 pages about how super-fantastic-incredible their coaching services are. I even know a girl that sends out “quotes of the day”… every single day… and I love her sweet heart, but it’s an automatic service that she doesn’t send every day – she pushes a button once and then forgets about it… while I get ANOTHER email in my inbox that I don’t HAVE TO read… it’s rather tragic.

So if you can take these 3 tips to heart I think you’ll shortly be a part of this wonderful newsletter family I find myself in – welcome to a world where people are happy to hear from you and ask to be on your mailing list.

R

*Author’s Note*

Please don’t think I hate email. I love love LOVE email. I just greatly dislike junk email. I also really really REALLY like saying hi and keeping in touch with colleagues. I just greatly dislike junk email. Notice a pattern?

It’s worth noting also that eMarketer found a correlation with shorter email subject lines and an increase in the read rate – take away from this that your subject line can be more important than the content. What good is fantastic content if your audience never reads it because the subject line is so NOT interesting?

Cheers,

Rebekah

More than six out of 10 US high school and college students surveyed “never” or “hardly ever” read marketing e-mails, according to an October 2008 survey by eROI. The majority of respondents said companies were not effectively speaking to them personally through e-mail.

And look at this little graph – text messaging is often the preferred communication method!

I’ve done quite a bit of marketing to High School & College students for my clients via Facebook and MySpace and have fantastic successes by keeping our messaging in the tone and manner that the students use. We don’t say “Would you like to join our fan page” we say “Hey there, we’ve just setup the fan page so we can do giveaways and stuff, here’s the link if you’re interested”. Fortunately for us, MySpace & Facebook both have SMS alerts for users, so part of our great response is undoubtedly do to our recipients being able to reply via their mobile phones.

But are you ready to embark on the world of SMS messaging? For some it’s a hard question to answer. First timers rarely have a database of cellphone numbers in their back pocket, so list purchasing is often your first recourse – and that can get expensive. What would you do with it anyway?

One bar we know of sends a SMS message (aka Text) to their subscribers with the daily special, and that could be broadened to a message containing what teams are playing on their tv’s that night, or what band is playing on that night. Ever noticed a commercial on the TV saying “just text PIZZA to 23434″? That’s how American Idol handles much of their voting process.

As with any marketing tool there’s a myriad of ways to employ both SMS and Email Messaging, what you must always ask yourself is “What does my audience want to hear?” and “What will inspire my audience to take action?”. A message saying Our new Phone system is the best solution for VOIP is much less likely to do you any good compared to Win a free sfsd phone, the same one that saved XYZ company $300 last month, just text MINE to 23453″. When you can get out of your head (stop thinking about what do I want to say), and you get into the mindset of what your audience wants to hear – the results come immediately after.

While I’m glad that such a large number of these small business owners have caught up with the marketing benefits of newsletters, I’m dissapointed to say that many of these same folks have missed one very important element: the unsubscribe link.

Sure, you’ve worked so hard to build your mailing list, and you hate to lose readership (I don’t blame you) – but in addition to holding our mailboxes hostage, you are also violating CAN-SPAM law.

ANYONE that sends out email information; be it daily news, inspiring quotes, event invitations, or newsletters needs to read over the CAN-SPAM in it’s current incarnation here. You don’t have to use a service (even though it can be a HUGE CYA for all legal issues), just put a little note telling people to reply with unsubscribe in the subject line if they wish to no longer receive your emails. DON’T PULL A FAST ONE: you must keep track of the unsubscriber and not send them emails next time.

This is why I am a big fan of Vertical Response (or any other service for that matter) – their system keeps track of all my emails for me and the unsubscribes. I have great friends that have unsubscribed from my eblasts because they are admittedly on information overload. These pals want to get emails from me personally (thus I want to keep their contact info in my address book), but they just don’t want the eblasts. No biggie.

Treat your address book like gold, respect your subscribers – you can and will get a reputation as a spammer if you aren’t careful. Do you really want people to feel that your emails are “junk”? If the answer is no you’d better learn to use systems and respect the rules of the industry, or you’ll loose more marketing points than you ever gained by sending out any newsletter at all.

R