View the full post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/ or keep reading for the quick n’ dirty version.

Social Aggregators

• EventBox EventBox is a mac-only program that integrates the top 5-6 social networks into a single program. From the looks of the site, it’s pretty too.
• http://www.flock.com Flock is a full-blown web browser that has been designed around social media. It integrates with dozens of services and helps make it easier for you to stay connected.
• FriendFeed FriendFeed help’s combine all of your different social networks into a single feed. Make yourself easier to follow, or make it easier to follow others.
• Yumeo Yumeo is a social network that allows you to control many other social sites in one place.
• Ping.fm Ping.fm makes it easier to update your social networks by connecting the most popular networks into one service.
• Second Brain Organize all of your content in one place, including bookmarks, files, etc…
• Plaxo Plaxo is a service designed to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about.

Twitter Tools

• TweetDeck TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that helps organize and make sense of your twitters. You can group tweets based on search terms, time frame, and many other ways.
• Twhirl Twhirl is another desktop Twitter client. It adds the ability to cross-post tweets to other sites, post images to TwitPic, and search tweets (among other things).
• TweetBeep TweetBeep is like Google Alerts only made for Twitter.
• TwitBin TwitBin is a small Firefox Extension that allows you to receive and send tweets anywhere in your browser.
• Twidget Twidget is an OS X dashboard widget that let’s you keep up with your twitter account.
• TwitterBerry TwitterBerry is a mobile twitter client for Blackberry users. It works over the data network with no need for SMS.
• Twittelator Pro Twitelator is a newer iPhone app for twitter. This one has been recommended by several top users.
• TwitThis TwitThis is a social button to put on your website that helps promote your articles on twitter.
• Minggl.com A browser plugin that integrates friends and feeds from Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Digg Tools

• Digg Toolbar A quick an easy toolbar that integrates with Firefox and provides most of the common Digg functions.
• Website Cache View Shows multiple cached versions of any website in case of the “Digg effect”.
• Digg Alerts It’s like Google Alerts for Digg.
• Digg Notify Digg Notify is a desktop app that will display a little notification box with information every time someone Digg’s one of your stories.
• Digg Alerter Digg Alerter is a really cool desktop app that shows you a lot of Digg info. One version of this actually shows information about who’s ‘buried’ a story.
• Digg Defender This is a Wordpress plugin that will save your site from going down under massive traffic by redirecting it through the Coral Cache network.

Tools For Webmasters

• Digg Website Widget Put a list of your latest Digg submissions into the sidebar of your website.
• Wordpress Twitter Tools This is a Wordpress plugin that let’s you pull your tweets into your blog.
• StumbleUpon Website Buttons These StumbleUpon buttons make it very easy for visitors to stumble your articles.
• Delicious Tagometer The tagometer is an advanced Delicious button that shows how many users have tagged a post and with what categories.
• TwitterFeed TwitterFeed takes your latest post titles and posts them to your twitter account.

Miscellaneous Tools

• Spokeo Search Social media search that makes it easy to find information from 41 different networks.
• Jott.com Voice-to-text, task organization, and much more. Post to twitter and many other services by calling in from your phone.
• Gathera Gathera is an internet explorer plugin that aims to connect social media, email, messaging, and many more features into a single place.
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics Search the blogosphere and track/find trends.
• Infegy Social Radar (Commercial) Social Media Monitoring tool that helps track the web.
• Open ID Open ID is a single sign-on solution that is supported by many of the most popular web-apps and networking sites.

Got any more? Comment below, or comment on the original author’s post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/.

I’ve just been confirmed as a shortlisted candidate for the Digital Media Awards: South ‘Freelancer of the year award‘, with the actual award ceremony (and judging) to take place here in Brighton on November 27th.

The Farm Freelancer Award is sponsored by FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk, an online resource for freelancers. It offers every hint and tip to help you thrive not just survive, including podcast interviews with professionals from all industries who have been there and done it.

The award will be judged by members of the Farm, the Brighton-based networking group for web designers, developers and people with related new media skills. They will be looking for examples of innovation, technical and creative skills, business success and the ability to establish successful client relationships and keep to brief.

The event itself is organised by the lovely people at Wired Sussex, and very ably supported by the hard work, resources and brains of the good folks at Midnight Communications and Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP).

The DiMAS came about through the work of SCIP and Wired Sussex delivering the legendary Brighton and Hove Web Awards down the years. We recognised that the digital cluster in the south (and especially in Brighton) had become much more than the web agencies alone and we wanted to reflect that in these awards whilst maintaining that uniquely Brighton spirit which always made the Web Awards such an entertaining evening.

Please, wish me luck!

It was only a matter of time that email marketing and social media would collide (I’ve been racking my brains for the last few months trying to find a way to marry the two) and kudos to Silverpop for bringing their version to market first.

Disclaimer: I’m no tech journalist or product reviewer, but I think this is big, great news - hence my quick breakdown of what their offering is and what, in my opinion, it means to email marketers. If you have an opinion or thought, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

A quick analysis

Called ‘share-to-social‘, Silverpop’s offering allows email marketers to include an ‘Addthis’-style button to any outgoing email campaign sent using their platform.  The addition of the button allows recipients to share their personalized email message with friends on the social network of their choice (although from what I can see, Facebook and MySpace *update: and Digg* are the only supported networks so far).

Once posted, any dynamic content in the original recipient’s email is kept intact after posting to a social page.  An example (as per Silverpop) is that a geographically-segmented, personalized email announcing a Golf sale in Tucson would retain its dynamic attributes once posted to a social networking site.  The same applies for a recipient of the same email in San Diego, whose content was targeted to them via email segmentation.  Once they post the email content to their own social networking page, others will be able to see the sale details and attend the sale in San Diego.   While from a marketer’s standpoint this functionality almost writes its own copy, it seems to assume that most ‘friends’ in a social network are local.  As anyone who uses Facebook (or MySpace) will attest, most friends are far from local, effectively nullifying this functionality. However, it’s better to have it than not have it.

Regarding tracking, it seems Silverpop have really nailed it here. All posted campaigns contain a unique tracking code, allowing the original sender to not only report on which social network their message was posted on and how many clicks that network generated for future use, but also which recipients were responsible for future viral activity.  This advanced tracking allows the email marketer to segment future lists and target content specific to the most (or least) active social networkers as they see fit.  Furthermore, this same unique URL can be used to track conversions originating from those social sites, allowing the marketer to gauge which networks drove the most interest, interaction and conversion. As Silverpop put it:

One of the most powerful benefits of Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature is its ability to pinpoint which recipients share your message on their social network and cause it to go viral. You’ll be able to quickly build list segments targeting recipients who post your message or who generate the most opens or clicks from their shared items. For the first time, you’ll be able to understand which recipients are your most influential and ardent evangelists. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to target those individuals with specific offers and content that rewards them for their efforts or encourages them to share new content.

What does this mean for email marketers?

Silverpop have addressed something that needed attention – as I said it was always coming, it was just a question of who did it first.

Social networks are on the rise.  As I’ve stated in a previous article, just visit this page by Ignite Social Media and scroll down quickly.  The overall prominence of left-to-right climbing is clear. They’re here to stay; humans are innately gregarious and socializing is in our blood.

What’s more, email marketing and social networks have always had a steady relationship. Email is not only the vehicle of choice for all communication between a social network and a new member, it also facilitates intra-network messaging and retention.  While these methods aren’t always email marketing per se, they reflect the importance of email as a tool that compliments social networks and media.  Effectively, Silverpop’s new offering inverses that relationship, making email the primary tool to engage and leverage the power of social networks.

It might be too early to tell, but it looks like Silverpop have hit a goldmine here.  I’d assume they’ll start to roll out more social sites as their technology permits, and would be more than happy if they considered productizing this functionality as a standalone offering, complete with en suite reporting.  They’d stand to make a whole lot more than restricting it for use on their platform alone, but we’ll see! If you know of anyone who has used it, or have creative related to it, post it here!

My new LifeStream on SweetCron

If you haven’t yet noticed, there’s a new nav item at the top of this page, entitled ‘LifeStream | Me, Online’. This LifeStream basically aggregates my various activities and actions across the various social media sites I frequent. Such sites include Delicious, Twitter, Last.FM, Flickr, ColourLovers, this blog, and more. (more…)

Marketing & Wordpress: 15 Top Wordpress plugins

It’s safe to say that Wordpress is now officially more than your basic blogging platform. Often touted as a basic CMS (content management system), Wordpress offers SMB’s a great opportunity to get a professional-looking website up in minutes – allowing for easy creation, updating and editing of content with little to no technical knowledge. (more…)

14 Email Marketing Design resources

So, here’s a list to help all email marketers design the ultimate email. You’ll find information, inspiration, downloads, tools (free & paid) and further reading. Of course I haven’t selected everything out there or this post would be a mile long, but if you feel I’ve missed any important ones, feel free to leave a comment. (more…)

How to use Twitter for marketing

(This is the third and final article in a series of three articles on Twitter.)
So you’ve read about Twitter & Tipping points, what it’s for and who uses it… so now’s the time to start using Twitter to effectively market and promote your offering. The sky’s the limit for how you can integrate Twitter into your marketing, but here are few ideas of how to use Twitter and in what capacity: (more…)

Design the Perfect Email: Dimensions & Design

Welcome to part 4 & 5 of this 10 part series. This post looks at the ideal dimensions of the perfect email followed by a main design checklist for your email campaigns. (more…)

How to install SweetCron on local server - EasyPHP

As I’ve just installed and themed my very own LifeStream courtesy of SweetCron, I had some of the expected ‘issues’ installing it on my own local server, running EasyPHP. As much for myself to not forget next time, here’s the boiled-down version of how to install SweetCron on your local EasyPHP server. (more…)

Best of March 2008 - Email Design Round-up

A single collection of all things email design-related for the month of March. (more…)

Outlook 2007, Part II

As a daily email marketer who frequently designs, programs and sends email marketing campaigns, Outlook 2007’s apparent step in the wrong direction had me pretty up in arms for many reasons. As a recap for my initial post, Outlook looks set to take a few steps back down the evolutionary staircase and use Microsoft Word as its HTML email-rendering engine. Not IE7. Not IE6 even. But Word. What does this mean? That campaigns that look great now in our inboxes won’t look good come February to those running Outlook 2007. (more…)

25 Great Marketing-Oriented Web Designs

Although website design is (in my opinion) one of the most hotly-contested environments on the web right now, most of the beautiful websites you see on various CSS galleries are single-service, offering either web design or web design/development by use of a graphical portfolio. Here I’ve rounded up the other folk – the SMBs or one-man teams offering multiple services centered around web marketing, including such ninja-like disciplines as PPC, SEO, email marketing, and of course effective web design.

So here are the top 25 websites that combine beautiful design with various web marketing services (not just web design). (more…)

The Longtail Rule (aka the 80-20 rule) is everywhere!

Ever notice how certain things you do at your day job seem to integrate themselves into your everday life? A perfect example is the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80-20 rule, the Longtail, the Zipf law or the Power Law. Whatever you know it as, it has become very well known to the internet industry due to the www’s ability to offer greater choice and inventory than previously possible in a brick and mortar store. For the sake of this article, I’ll be referring to the Pareto principle as the Longtail rule. (more…)

This is purely an opinion piece and one of many future pieces as I strive to offer a more personal touch to this notebook/blog, rather than basic reporting of news and events as they happen.

To me there are 3 main reasons to attend a tradeshow: 1) to get ideas and insights not otherwise accessible by normal media channels or from within your current environment (our situation), 2) to generate sales & leads (via your exhibitor booth), and 3) to target and acquire solutions to address pre-conceived pain points in your business (via an exhibitor’s booth). A possible 4th might be to simply network, but I’d say that’s inherent in the first 3.

After attending all 3 days of the show, in retrospect I can safely say that the DMA show was a poorly chosen one for our current and future needs. This oversight was no one’s fault per se, it simply wasn’t targeted to what we (I) needed to take away from it. I was hoping to find ‘the next big thing’ – the next new, cutting edge digital marketing idea or solution that had the potential to significantly change a part or all of your business. Of course that hope in itself is a bit of a fantasy, and more so considering DMA’s primary audience, but either way when you attend a large tradeshow, it’s easy to get excited.

In reality the DMA was highly disappointing. However it crucially showed me a side of marketing that I thought had gone extinct long ago. Without attending, I never would have noticed the huge disparity between online and direct marketing. What’s interesting to me is that the gulf between the two seems to be as large as it was years ago, if not larger. Shouldn’t this be a cause for concern?

As the name would imply (Direct Marketing Association), the DMA was really meant for those marketers with strong backgrounds in the ‘traditional’ (i.e. offline) marketing arenas, significantly direct mailing, telemarketing, couponing, and many others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that their discipline of choice makes them any less of a marketer (most of them could probably talk me under the table when it comes to response analytics, branding, direct mail metrics, print advertising, etc.), but the difference is that all of those disciplines are still firmly (and clearly) rooted under a typically ‘old school’ umbrella. Not one of the sessions, booths or attendees truly struck me as a real ‘onliner’ for lack of a better term. Instead there was a very strong feeling that I was, with no lack of respect intended, surrounded by relics from an old, almost forgotten world of marketing. Of course direct marketing will still exist, as will all of the traditional forms that form a greater marketing mix, but of course I am biased as this is my blog, and I’m 100% online-based. So when I visit a tradeshow that has sessions called ‘email marketing boot camp 101’ I think to myself ‘what am I doing here?’

OK, now for the good stuff. What’s this rant got to do with the DMA? To me, my experience at the show not only highlighted the huge growth potential in both the B2B and B2C online marketing arenas, but it also hinted that the current economic conditions are just ripe for online marketing. The DMA attendees weren’t just attending 101 sessions on email marketing, but also SEO, PPC, SEM, social media, and many other channels and methods that me or you might take for granted. This online stuff is really all I’ve known, yet it represents a huge challenge of understanding to these ’old-schoolers’.

Basically, direct marketers are starting to catch on to the theme that online marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective and accountable ways to reach your audience. Almost every channel within the online marketing sphere is cheap to enact and offers a great return. What’s more, with the slow, steady and steam-rolling pace of the internet’s overall penetration, your audience is almost guaranteed to be online now, or will be soon.

Don’t believe me? Here are some basic stats to back up my claim:

• By quickly scrolling down this page: http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-network-traffic-analysis/ you can’t help but notice a rise from left to right – indicating growth for almost all social network sites. We’re all either online, or will be soon. A whopping 60% of Americans already use social media sites, as per ITfacts.biz.
• 69% of internet users have used a web-based software application (ITfacts.biz) – most of which are email clients, followed by photo-sharing sites (did you know that Facebook is the largest photo-sharing site in the world?)
• US online video advertising spend is projected to hit $5.8B by 2013, and online video infrastructure will be nearly 400 times what it was in 2000.
• The UK market for paid search marketing will reach £2.42B in 2008, up 23% from 2007 (e-consultancy.com). SEO spend will increase 32%, to £330B. 63% of companies are planning to up their paid search spend, with 61% upping their SEO spend.
• Google accounts for 71% (US) and 74% (UK) of all internet searches. We’re all online, we’re all using Google to search for other things online.
• The UK market for Web Analytics grew by an estimated 25% last year, to £70M (e-consultancy.com).
• The UK market for Affiliate marketing grew by 45% in 2007, upping the online sales generated by this channel to more than £3B (e-consultancy.com).
• As famously found by MarketingSherpa, Email marketing offers an ROI of at least $45 for every dollar spent.

In whatever way you digest the (somewhat random) stats above, one theme is clear – the internet is quickly becoming more ubiquitous every day, and therein presents huge opportunities for most businesses. The direct marketers who adapt and adopt new technologies the quickest will be the better ff amongst their peers, and those already in online marketing are in what I would humbly suggest is one of the strongest industries for growth there is. We’re in a good place right now, and it’s only getting better.

For a while I looked for the ultimate method of doing my own LifeStream, and was spurred on when I saw (and subsequently tried to emulate) Darren Hoyt’s fantastic version in his newest Wordpress theme ‘Agregado‘. I also checked out (and built on) Yahoo Pipes, thanks to James Whittakers great post on how he built his LifeStream using Yahoo Pipes and a little magic.

Of course I looked at various other ways, but none really offered what I wanted (to be fair at that point I didn’t really know what I wanted). One of the many I checked out included Yong Fook’s SweetCron. SweetCron is a server-based LifeStream tool that is an awful lot like Wordpress: it’s powered by PHP, has a similar set-up and architecture, and comes with a nice user interface that, once you’ve done the coding & dirty work, makes it a breeze to manage and add new feeds.

SweetCron comes with 2 pre-packaged themes: Sandbox and Boxy. Sandbox is the basic list view of social feed items, similar to Agregado’s (just not as nice or AJAX-y) but Boxy is great. Seeing as SweetCron is very similar to Wordpress, if you know Wordpress you can easily customize a theme for your lifestream after getting some basics down. The version you see in my own LifeStream owes a lot to Yong Fook’s original. It didn’t hurt that I’ve always loved this style of site structure, so I of course jumped at the chance to try my own version using Yong Fook’s as a template.

Safe to say, I eventually stuck with SweetCron. It represents what I needed for my LifeStream:

• Simple management of feeds via a nice user interface
• Easy-to-use/code backend (still getting used to it, but if you know Wordpress PHP, you’ll know SweetCron
• Ability to host on a dedicated subdomain (http://lifestream.carbongraffiti.com). Sure I could have made my own page with any other method, but an install of SweetCron on a new subdomain just seems cleaner, nicer, smarter.
• A place that aggregates all of my activity in one place. Many offered this, but I think SweetCron just got my personal preference.

However, for what it’s worth, SweetCron isn’t without it’s faults. The interface is nice, it does the job, but it falls slightly flat once you realize it’s not nearly as powerful as let’s say Wordpress’. This ties in with my one and only recommendation for SweetCron 2.0:

SweetCron 2.0 needs the ability to create (in the backend) a one-time, flexible template for feeds similar to Wordpress’ index file, allowing you to create a new feed on the fly from within the interface *without* having to get stuck into the code again.

My example is that if I find a new great social media site, the addition of that new site into my SweetCron feed isn’t going to be… shall we say ‘a breeze’. Add to that recommendation the use of a library of images for all new and/or future social site feeds, and someone could add any new feed at any time without the need for coding.

Once SweetCron gets this functionality up and running, it’ll be a fantastic tool for aggregating your social life into once easy-to-read, easy to manage area. For the time being I’m more than happy with it, and I hope the adoption rates of SweetCron as people’s lifestreaming tool of choice continues.

Some interesting links to SweetCron-related material include:

• SweetCron Themes, a site (soon to be) dedicated to publishing quality SweetCron themes for download and use. I’m still deliberating on whether to include mine, but I don’t think it’s up to scratch!
• TechCrunch’s TC50 Aggregator used SweetCron to great effect to aggregate all social media coverage on their recent TechCrunch50 event. Unfortunately they failed to credit Yong Fook for his work until after the fact…
• A basic tut by NETTUTS on how to build your own SweetCron site
• A very SweetCron-inspired site by GM, plus a video presentation by Yong Fook entitled ‘Teh Blog are Dead’
• If you need to know how to install SweetCron on your local (EasyPHP) server, I’ve already posted about it.

In internet marketing, this same rule applies. Specifically in SEM, 20% of your keywords generate 80% of your traffic. That 20%, known as your ‘head’ keywords, usually consist of your branded terms or terms that relate directly to your product or service, rightly delivering your best traffic. The remaining 80% of your keywords are your ‘long tail’, characterized by low traffic offering and (as has been statistically proven) much higher conversion rates due to their specificity. An example is searching for ‘DVD players’ (a ‘head’ term) versus a search for ‘Black Toshiba DVD player XD-1903 Brighton’.

So, as I work with keywords all day long, I start to do what anyone would do - I start seeing the same long tail/zipf law/power law/Pareto principle in my everyday life. I know it’s a bit sad, but it’s just unavoidable! Here are just a few, but please if you have any to add, feel free!

• All great music albums seem to have 20% of their tracks that contribute to 80% of your listening time.
• iPod playlists. See above, same applies.
• 20% of the numbers in my mobile phone receive 80% of my calls.
• Emails. Same as above, but reversed. 80% of the emails I receive are from 20% of the people I know.
• Facebook friend activity - same as above.
• 20% of people commenting on any given blog contribute 80% of the comments
• Websites I frequent. 20% of the sites I visit represent 80% of my online behaviour.
• 80% of the cars on the road are made by 20% of the car manufacturers
• 80% of the personal computers around the world are made by (less than) 20% of computer companies. Obviously the same goes for OS’!
• 80% of the mobile phones we use are made by less than 20% of mobile manufacturers.
• TV channels. 80% of my watching is done on 20% of the channels (namely Setanta Sport!)
• 80% of the tweets I read are made my 20% of the tweeters I follow.

This list can go on and on. Feel free to comment with your own and I’ll add them in.

I never said there was much point this post, but hey, its fun putting what I do at work into context of my everyday life.

Take PPC (pay-per-click) for example. According to MarketingSherpa, US SEM spend is expected to hit $16.5 billion by the end of 2008, with Google accounting for 71% of all US search traffic (74% for the UK). Add to this the news of Google’s recent deal with Yahoo, and the search engine marketing landscape (with paid ads in particular) is shrinking. With less competition, we’re witnessing the formation of a quasi-monopoly that can only drive keywords costs up. As a cost-aware marketer, you’ll still have to rely on the long-tail keywords to maximize conversions, but you won’t be able to avoid some competition over pricey keywords and your online budget will take a hit.

However, the true beauty of online marketing is the multitude of choices available that are either cheap or free. In this time of impending economic doom and gloom, below is a list of various marketing tactics you can do that won’t break the bank… and if anything they’ll only add to it.

• SEO is a great, cheap and long-term strategy to drive qualified traffic to your site. Start with the end in mind by making a highly relevant, tiered keyword list that you’ll use as your bible for all future web dev work and content creation. Aim to end up with a tiered list of core, head keywords followed by secondary and tertiary keywords that make up your long-tail. SEO might be a long-term method, but a very effective one. It can drive perhaps the most qualified, cheapest traffic to your site for an amount of work that would pale in comparison.
• Create and submit your sitemap to Google. There’s a Wordpress plugin that does this for you, and doing so ensures your new site content gets spidered ASAP, rather than the weeks or months it might take otherwise.
• Use Google Analytics or similar (free) website analytics program. Knowing where your customers are coming from, how they’re getting there, what pages frequent vs. those they don’t is invaluable to making the right business decisions and generating revenue.
• More free analytics tools: try CrazyEgg’s free trial – a fantastic heat-mapping app that lets you see exactly where on any given page your visitors are clicking, and where exactly those clicks are coming from.
• Check out Google’s Ad Planner, even if you don’t intend (or can’t afford) to buy traditional online media. Google’s free tool lets you identify sites for targeting with either online media or their own content network via placement targeting, but you don’t have to use it for exactly that. Instead use the tool to export a targeted list of sites you feel offer opportunities for a link exchange, banner exchange, newsletter co-registration, or just sites to keep an eye on.
• Check your keywords using tools such as Google’s Insight, Adwords keyword/traffic estimator and Wordtracker to ensure you’re covering all the possible keywords related to your business. Keep adding to your tiered keyword list, and keep adding new, fresh, keyword-rich content to your site.
• Make friendly links for all of your content. Doing so makes your site more indexable by robots and more scannable by humans when they’re viewing a SERP. Permalinks than use ‘?p=1283′ are likely to lose potential traffic compared to those that use descriptive links such as ‘gardening/tools/shovel.aspx’
• Add a ‘subscribe now‘ field to your website along with a sample of your newsletter. Take the time to make your newsletter design, content and angle unique enough to entice new subscribers. The communication channel you open with new or potential customers is hugely important, and by nurturing this relationship properly using email marketing, you can drive huge revenue with very little upfront costs (remember, an email campaign costs just pennies to send). Once you’re using email marketing, make sure you’re telling your customers you love them.
• Talking about subscriptions, be sure to include an RSS feed icon on your company’s blog and/or corporate website. Whereas email uses a ‘push’ method versus RSS’s ‘pull’ method, both do the leg work for you by bringing interested, qualified visitors to your site. By displaying your recent updates in your visitor’s RSS reader, they’ll come to you without you spending a thing!
• Bonus: Add the ’subscribe now’ field to your blog, next to your RSS feed. Give your visitors every choice to keep the conversation going.
• Create a blog, using a hosted version (such as Wordpress.com) or a self-hosted one (such as Wordpress.org). The power of blogs these days can’t be overlooked; they’re a great way to generate fresh, keyword-rich content for SEO, and they can do wonders for building online relationships and customer loyalty. Basically, blogs (specifically self-hosted versions like Wordpress.org) can do a lot of things a flat site can’t. As proof, take a look at my recent article on the top 15 Wordpress plugins for your online marketing needs.
• Although cliché, becoming a ‘thought leader‘ is a valid method if you’re truly the best person to speak to concerning your product or service. Let your target market know that you know what you’re talking about. Evangelize your product or the community through your blog, and have the community disseminate your information in their own way. Best of all, it’s free, or at least puts the years of experience you have to some good use.
• Create a Facebook page for your company, and start with your peers and close customers to get the ball rolling. Once the momentum grows, you’ll get more fans, and more recognition of your brand. All for free.
• Create a Twitter account for your company, and give the real deal on your company’s happenings and internal machinations (something you should already be doing on your blog). Don’t worry, everyone’s doing it, and the more transparent you are, the more appreciative your customers will be.
• Create a dialogue with your potential customer base by ‘fishing where the fish are‘. Comment and interact in places you know your audience frequents such as forums, other blogs, and review sites. Stay above board, transparent, and make it clear who you are, and provide linkage back to your site for free, qualified traffic.
• One of the most over-looked methods of increasing sales for cheap is right under your nose. Your website might work, but how well? Sign up for Google’s website optimizer and start testing your core, converting pages for the best combination. You’ll be amazed at how much impact the placement of your ‘hero shot’ can make.
• Frequent sites that you feel offer high-value, neutral content? Offer a link exchange with them. A win-win situation, link exchanges help to drive traffic either straight from the other site as well as increasing your ‘Google juice’.
• Be sure to add your site to all of the appropriate web directories, and under the appropriate sections. DMOZ still represents the largest web directory, and it’s always a good starting point. Another is Yahoo’s directory.
• Get your site visitors or customers involved – ask them for their opinions, get them talking, and have a pen & paper handy. By engaging your customers (using an online survey, telephone interview, or other) in an open and friendly way you can get priceless feedback about your product that you’d have to pay thousands for from a consultancy.
• Although potentially not free, it’s still cheap to podcast or vlog. All you need is a microphone and/or a video camera. There are tons of podcasting platforms out there, and YouTube remains the best free video platform out there. Also take a look at Vimeo and Seesmic.
• Go OFFLINE! Be sure to include your website, blog and social media addresses on your business cards or outbound collateral. Check out moocards for a great business card service that’s highly affordable and super easy to use.
• Email signatures are often overlooked. Often more applicable in a B2B setting, email sigs represent another free way to help drive traffic to your site. Check out Feedburner’s ‘publicize’ option for creating an email signature that auto-updates with your recent blog entries.
• Go viral by making sure there’s a ‘forward to a friend‘ link on all of your pages. When someone reads or finds something they like online, chances are they know someone else who can benefit from the same info. Give them the opportunity to send it right along as quickly and painlessly as possible and let them kindly do the work for you.
• Go social by adding a social bookmark utility to your pages. ‘Addthis‘ is a great free app that lets your visitors add your content to their favourite social bookmarking service. What’s more, AddThis also includes the ‘forward to a friend’ function as described above.
• Assuming you’re showing up fine in Google for your ‘head’ terms – often those keywords directly related to your brand name – but not so for your more specific, longtail terms, don’t worry. Longtail terms statistically show a higher conversion rate, and therefore a prime use for PPC. Although not free, bidding on the most effective long-tail terms for your business can generate huge ROI.

• 1.    Download Sweetcron to your www folder. Leave named as ’sweetcron’ even if you intend to change this on your live server
• 2.    Edit config.php base URL to http://localhost/sweetcron/
• 3.    Edit config.php uri_protocol (a little down the page) to “AUTO”
• 4.    Modify your .htaccess file to include the following (if you can’t view your .htaccess file on your pc, visit this page)
  

  Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /sweetcron/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

• 5.    Edit the database.php file, adding your new database name, username, and password.  Leave/edit the hostname to [localhost]
• 6.    Add the database entry to your EasyPHP admin, as you would with any Wordpress installation (if you don’t know how, follow these great instructions)  For more info, visit this thread
• 7.    Voila! You’re up and running; just follow the next steps, name your sweetcron, add feeds and you’re good to go.

Here’s a list of the top 10 ways you as a company (no matter how big or small) can use email to interact, engage, and show your customers or website visitors that you’re human and that you care.  Utilize all, some, or just one of these, but however many you choose to use can make a huge difference to your customer satisfaction, which goes hand-in-hand with your company’s overall success.  Remember: the extra effort you take in crafting the right email can positively affect the way a recipient sees and interacts with your brand, product or company.

1. 1. Birthday email – Simple enough to overlook, but a birthday email can make your customers feel appreciated. They should be, they pay you money that pays your salary. The least you can do is wish them a ‘Happy Birthday’.  Why not throw in a discount off their next order?
2. 2. Welcome email – Assumed and expected, this might be one of the most overlooked and important communication pieces sent out with your company name. Just like in real life, first impressions last. Make this email stand out and really make an impact on your new customer and enjoy a great relationship.
3. 3. Double opt-in confirmation email – Just like the welcome email above, this email is usually overlooked and underpaid.  Often a basic quick and dirty text email, you should make the most of the real estate (should be customizable in most ESPs) and tailor a nice message for the subscriber. They have just extended their hand to you to start a communication, so keep it going as you want it to continue.
4. 4. Cart abandon email – They were so close to buying, but something happened. Earthquakes, ovens left on and hair washing are all likely stories, but really they left because they didn’t find what they wanted.  If you use a login-based shopping cart, you have their email address. In a polite and friendly (read: Non-Big Brother) way, ask if they found what they were looking for, offering suggested products they might like based on their past behaviour, or direct customer support.  You’d be surprised how many shoppers just needed some help or couldn’t find what they needed.
5. 5. Inactive for XX days/wake up email – All good CRM systems should track new customers from the day of sign up to the day they (hopefully never) leave.  Within that time customers might leave your product and possibly flirt with the competition. It happens. Sending a polite ‘nudge’ (or ‘poke’ these FB days) can help to rekindle the lost romance and keep that customer on the straight-and-narrow.
6. 6. Transaction confirmation email – Sounds basic right? People pay you for a product or service you’ve made, spent their hard-earned cash on it, and you’ll send them a basic old transactional email for their ‘records’.  Why not jazz it up a little? Add some character, personality, and what about a discount for their next purchase, or a type of loyalty/points scheme? Just because you made a transaction, doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels – keep them coming back for more and make it a win-win.
7. 7. Service/product cancellation – For technical reasons too far from the scope of this article (port numbers and EasyPHP if you must know) I had to uninstall Skype from my PC.  After the uninstall I was automatically redirected to a ‘sorry to see you go’ page online. Great idea, and one that should be done with email as well.  Knowing why your customers leave can keep current ones, or even get them back if you resolve the issues.  Show your (soon to be ex) customers you care, and they might change their mind.
8. 8. Pre-expiry notification email – In the Skype example above, an email would be sent once the service was cancelled. Head the customer off at the pass and prevent them from cancelling or expiring in the first place by sending a well-worded, timely email notifying them that their account/product/service is about to expire. This would also be a prime time to offer a discount or similar perk thanking them for their loyalty.
9. 9. Customer survey + prize email – Send the customers who already love you (the loyal 20% who do 80% of the stuff you want them to do) and ask them to take 5 minutes to fill out a survey.  Offer up a prize, and everyone wins.  Use the survey results to fine-tune your product/brand/service/etc, and get more customers who love you. Repeat steps above, and wowzers, you’re doing well.
10. 10. Event/launch invitation email – Show your customers you love them by inviting them (or at least those who live in the same city) to an event you’re putting on/hosting/attending.  Segment your list by geo-location, and send away.  Invitations for face-to-face meetings can have huge long-term benefits, and open channels of communication and feedback that aren’t possible over mediums like email or phone.
11. 11. Bonus** Thank you email – Why adhere to a schedule at all?  If you appreciate your customers, think they’re great, and want them to tell their friends about your great customer service/retention skills, why not just openly thank them?  Sure, you could use a pre-determined occasion for it, such as the non-religious holiday season, or any other occasion (company anniversary, new year, end of financial year), but either way, a simple ‘thank you’ to your customers goes a long way.  They’ll thank you back.

Have any suggestions of your own? Let’s hear them!