The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released another study indicating that social media is not where most people find local businesses.

It continues to baffle me that so many small businesses are taken in by the hype of social media to the extent that they are starting to lose focus on the big picture.  Social media is important yes, people use social media for both personal communication and getting information, but it’s not the ONLY method they use.  And different demographic groups use it in different ways and for different purposes.

The study indicates a strong tendency for people to get information about local community events, services, establishments, and news in multiple ways.  TV, newspaper, radio, Internet, word of mouth (phone, text, email, chat, face-to-face) are all still important channels of communication in peoples’ lives when it comes to local information.  People make judgements about the strength and validity of the information based both on who stated it and how they came across it.

So when it comes to your marketing, don’t bet the farm on Facebook, you need to create a variety of mechanisms to consistently communicate your brand message.  You need to understand your audience and how each communication channel “fits” your company’s culture and your products and services.  This is why I tout a strategic approach to Internet marketing.

The Pew organization is highly trustworthy and their research is widely valued.  It’s worth your time to read the study if you can.  It’s long so if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, at least read Part 5: The Role of the Internet.

I’ve been telling my clients for years, “Don’t get too comfortable with your Social Media marketing, it’s going to change tomorrow.”  You may have noticed Facebook’s recent plethora of changes.  They’ve changed the newsfeed (again), added a timeline (questionable usefulness), and they’re reducing the value of the Like button.  Wait… what was that???

That’s right.  The ubiquitous Like button, which has become so much a part of our online lives, is evolving into more of a voting mechanism.  In my opinion, this is great news.

So what does this mean to you?  You’ve spent countless hours and maybe thousands of dollars, increasing your “Likers” on your Facebook business page.  It always seemed almost ridiculous to me, that we as marketers should be practically driven into a frenzy of getting people to “follow” our brand.  90% of our messages get ignored anyway.  This is why small business marketers say their Facebook page doesn’t work for them.  At least not in the sense that it gets them any business.

Users will now have a way to “vote” on content.  To me this makes a whole helluva lot more sense.  It means the boring, all-about-me promotional content that we see so much of can now get voted down into oblivion, while the interesting cool stuff will get promoted to the top.

This is one Facebook change I can hang my hat on.  From both a consumer’s side and a marketer’s side.  From a consumer’s side I will no longer have to tolerate crap on my Fb feed.  From a marketer’s side I will have a lot less competition, and my truly authentic and valuable message will clearly shine amongst the drivel.

Not that I think for a moment that the spammers won’t come up with some way of getting around it.  Like hiring legions of $2/hr off-shore teenagers to Vote Up the crap content they post for their clients.   Black hat will always exist, but somehow the brains behind the beasts (Google, Facebook, etc.) will continue to find ways to combat it.  Good for them.  And for us.

I invite you to read Mashable’s blog post, which was my source for this post, at: http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebooks-changes-marketers

A lot of importance is placed on deliverability in email campaigns.  What this refers to is the percentage of emails that actually make it into the subscribers’ inboxes.

But another important metric is the actual mix of email clients your subscribers are using to view your emails and how each of them displays your message.  Even people who have been doing email marketing for a long time sometimes don’t pay enough attention to this.

For example, many email clients (“email client” means Gmail, Outlook, Eudora, etc.) will have a default setting that turns off all graphics in the preview window.  The reason for this is spam-related, the details of which are beyond the scope of this post.  And since most email campaigns have graphical banners at the top, those banners won’t load when graphics are turned off.  If you’re not aware of this, and you don’t design your email template the right way in order to compensate, your viewer might see just a big blank box in their preview window.  Clearly not what you want!

Some people might say, “But isn’t that why we also include a text-based version?”  While it’s good to include a text version, the reason for doing so is not what you might think.  The text based version is for people who specifically need text-only emails for accessibility or bandwidth reasons.  HTML is text too, from a technical standpoint.  Turning off graphics in an email client still renders the HTML properly, it just doesn’t download and display the images rendered via the HTML <img> tag.

Here’s one final tidbit to seal the deal… mobile devices do not load graphics in the email program, at least my iPhone doesn’t.  It doesn’t even LET me load graphics!  And guess what?  The iPhone is the second most popular email client for one of my lists.   My ESP (E-Mail Service Provider), which is MailChimp, tells me what email clients are used to view my emails.  Take a look at the chart, Gmail is #1 and iPhone is #2.  It would behoove you to check your own list to see what your email client mix is.

Another activity you should consider is email client testing.  Any time you change your email template, you need to retest it on at least the top five email clients that are used by your subscribers.  It’s easy enough to create accounts for yourself on these different clients, and send tests to those accounts and just view them.  View them with graphics turned off and then on.  View them in the preview window and the full reading window.  View them on different devices if you can (Windows vs. Mac vs. iPhone/iPad, etc.)

Yes, this all sounds like a bit of a pain, but isn’t it worth it if it means just a few more of your subscribers will actually have a better reading experience?  For all you know some of your readers are opening your email just to see a blank box (your header) and with 100 other emails waiting to be read, yours might just get passed by.

I don’t want that to happen to you any more than you do.  If you need help, or have a question about this, just post a comment and I’ll be happy to respond with more details.

Myth #4: E-Mail Marketing is Complicated / Difficult – Part 2

[This is part 6 of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

In my last post I gave you some tips for getting over your fear that you’re not a good writer. Hopefully it gave you the confidence to start working on the next article for your newsletter.

The second most common thing I hear from new writers is “I don’t know what to write about.”

This problem is actually a lot easier to solve, because all it takes is a little research. The thing is, once you have the mindset of constantly looking for ideas to write about, the ideas will just start coming to you all by themselves. It’s pretty amazing actually, and that’s the way our minds work.

So here are some tips for beginners, to get you on the right track.

Keyword Research

I’ve talked about keyword research many times, and how important it is. It’s also useful to give you ideas.

Go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in some words or phrases you think your buyers might be searching on. It will spit back a long list of things people actually are searching on. This is a great way to fill your mind with ideas for things to write about, because you certainly want to be writing about things your buyers are searching on!

Idea File

I use my smart phone for this, but I used to keep a little notebook and pen in my car or in my purse. If I see something while I’m out and about, and it seems interesting in some way, I write it down in my Idea File.

When it comes time to sit down and start writing my article (or a blog post), if I can’t think of anything right then and there I consult my Idea File.

These ideas don’t necessarily have to be related to your industry. It’s amazing how you can tie things you see in every day life to your field, and these connections will be made once you start writing.

Customer Questions

As businesses owners our customers ask us questions all the time. If you find yourself answering the same question more than once, it’s probably safe to assume that more people have the same question and they just aren’t asking it.  This is a great topic for an article.

A question that has a fairly complicated answer can be the topic for an entire article. Or if you have a list of fairly simple questions you can write about a handful or related questions all in once piece.

How-Tos

People love to learn how to do new things. As an expert in your industry you know how to do all sorts of things, and many of them are things your customers want to know also.

How-To articles are always big hits in my field. It’s probably true of yours also.

Seasonal Topics

Do you own a beach resort? A gift shop? An accounting firm? A landscaping business? Many industries have seasonality, and your customers will get big value from reading about seasonal topics.

Just remember to stay ahead. Don’t write about planting shrubs in July, write that one in March or April. Don’t write about taxes in March, write about them in December. Stay ahead.

Interviews

Many people like reading interviews with interesting people. That’s why magazines publish articles based on interviews.

Who do you know in your field that is interesting, or has a success story to share? A mentor? A customer? A competitor outside your territory? Interview them and then either publish it word for word, or create a story out of it.

Article Writing Tips

So now you have lots of ideas (I hope!) for some upcoming articles you can write. Here are just a few quick tips on writing good articles…

1. Keep it short. 500-1,000 words is plenty. My articles usually run about 700-800 words. That’s a good length to keep people’s interest.
2. Write longer articles and break them up into a series. This makes people look forward to your next issue to read the next installment.
3. Be interesting. Have someone else read your article and tell you if it’s interesting enough. Make sure it’s someone you trust to be honest with you.
4. Be entertaining if possible. You don’t have to be funny or wildly clever. Just put a few quips and stories in there to keep people engaged.

Good luck! I invite you to post a link in the comment box below to your own newsletter so I can check it out. I promise I’ll be honest but gentle .

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.

Myth #8: ROI is Hard to Measure

[This is part 1 of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

Last week I promised you I would start a series based on the presentation I recently gave to the Chamber of Commerce, called “Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing.”  I’ve decided to start at #8 and move backwards.  So here’s the first of eight myths.

ROI Is Hard to Measure

Many people say that the return on social media is hard to measure.  I believe that’s more true than any other type of internet marketing.  However, when talking about e-mail marketing, this is actually one of the easiest channels to track success with!

The trick is knowing what to measure.  Once you’ve got the tools, and you’re using those tools to measure the right data, the rest is fairly straightforward.

First, I’d like to share some tips to help get you started.

1. Identify clear goals for your campaign.  What do you want your customers to do?  Buy a product, click on your article, read your blog, or go to your Facebook page?  Choose your objective(s) and stick with it.
2. Know what your click rate averages are for your industry.  If you have a high quality list, it’s easy to get better than average click rates.
3. Know the average click rates for your own list.  You want to try to continually improve them.
4. Have a great landing page with a clear and compelling CTA (Call To Action). Give your readers only ONE thing to do, and tell them why they should do it.  Then tell them exactly what to do to take that action.  Ideally each e-mail campaign will have it’s own landing page.
5. Understand “conversions.”  There is a lot of great information out there about this, so I won’t go into it here.  If you’re not sure, do some research — you can learn everything you need to know (for purposes of this exercise) in about a half hour.

There are two measurement tools that you absolutely must have.

Google Analytics

This is a free tracking tool that will give you information about what your users did on your site.  Where did they go?  How long did they stay?  What kind of browser were they using?  This information can give you a lot of control, and a very granular level of measurement, particularly useful when you want to “drill down” into a specific metric.

ESP Performance Reports

All ESPs (E-mail Service Providers) provide at least basic reporting tools with which you can measure the relative “success” of any campaign in a variety of ways.  I have my own particular favorite, which I’ll cover a few posts from now.  These performance reports will offer one very specific piece of data which, in my opinion, is the most important one: click-through rate (CTR).  This tells you how many readers actually clicked on one of your actions in your e-mail.

So, now that you have sent off your e-mail campaign, you will simply wait a few days and then go check your reports.  (Some e-mails have a longer shelf-life, but most of your activity will take place in the first 48 hours after the e-mail is delivered.)

Let’s look at a hypothetical example.  Remember you need a clear goal for your campaign so let’s say you are inviting people to sign up for a free seminar (your CTA).

You need to know what the average revenue is that’s generated from these seminars.  How many new customers will you get?  How many products will you sell?  If it’s a new customer, what is the average potential revenue over the lifetime of the customer?

Is it $10?  $100  $1,000?  Let’s imagine that it’s $100.  In this case the total return on the campaign would be $1,600 (16 conversions at $1,000 each).

Now determine what was the cost involved in sending that campaign?  If you spent 6 hours putting it together and your time is worth $150 per hour, your investment was $900.

$1,600 / $900 = a 170% return.

There’s your ROI.

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.