Sneeze It

Writing a Great Email Subject Line

2013-05-13T08:45:00-04:00

If you’re using email to market your products and services, it’s important to know how to write an email subject line that will hold your reader’s attention. Today’s email marketer has to juggle quite a few responsibilities, including managing mailing lists, creating marketing campaigns, and composing high quality sales copy for emails that will be received by current and potential customers. Content is always king, but it’s just as essential to write a buzzworthy line in the subject of your email to optimize results. So how do you go about writing compelling subject lines that your recipients will want to open? Here are just a few easy tricks that will ensure your messages are read and forwarded by recipients every single time you send them.

Make a Good First Impression

When it comes to email, there’s one thing we can all agree on–there is never a shortage of unread messages in our inbox. According to case studies, unless an email subject line instantly entices the recipient to open the message, it will be sent straight to trash. With a powerful subject line, your emails stand a much better chance of getting opened. Stay away from word triggers like “Click Here” and “Order Now.” Court your readers instead with an imaginative pickup line (not really, but hopefully you know what we’re driving at). A positive first impression will lead to more website impressions, which will lead to more sales, which will lead to a higher profit… You get the idea.

What the Fluff?

In order to understand the effectiveness of a subject line, think of it as a book synopsis. It should provide an enticing preview of the details contained within your message. Be clear and concise so that the recipient knows what’s in store for them once they open the message (i.e., leave out the fluff!). Ask yourself how the recipient will benefit from reading your message. If you fail to include this very vital information, you may lose valuable readers. Give them something that will get them excited or they’ll quickly lose interest.

Conclusion

Leave a good first impression, immediately capture your recipient’s interest, and offer value by telling readers what they may obtain by opening your email. By following these simple steps, you are well on your way to creating great email subjects that will enhance your traffic, generate leads, and potentially bring you the financial success you have been craving in your business.

6 Tips for Twitter Engagement

2013-05-04T08:45:10-04:00

It seems like every business and every person out there has their own Twitter account these days. However, few of them are seeing real success from their presence on Twitter. They just put up an account and then throw their hands in the air wondering why nothing is happening. The key, therefore, is in learning to increase user engagement onTwitter. So how do you go about doing that? Take a look at these easy tips and ideas for how to boost your Twitter Engagement.

• Get active – If you send out one Tweet per week, don’t be surprised that you don’t have any user engagement. Twitter is about activity, and you need to get active if you want to see results. Try increasing the frequency of your posts, and seeing what kind of results you see. Find out how much your followers want to hear from you, and what they want you to be discussing.

• Utilize the service - Twitter provides several key ways to interact with other members. One of these is the hash tag. Utilizing hash tags will make your Tweets searchable around popular topics. They’ll also provide a bit of intrigue for your users to easily spot and respond to, as long as you don’t go overboard. Try to include one per Tweet.

• Photos – You also definitely want to be using Twitter’s photo capabilities. Photos are enjoyable to browse, easy to share, and they’ll generate much more response and engagement than another line of text. Stand out from the crowd and give people something to look at.

• Think about your goals – What are you trying to accomplish with Twitter? Is it simply growing awareness for yourself and your brand, driving visitors to your website, directly increasing sales, or something else? You need a strategy in place so you know how to steer your efforts. Twitter should fall into the realm of the rest of your marketing strategy, tailored of course to the platform and the best practices for using it.

• Interaction - Twitter engagement requires interaction. Talk to your followers. Answer their questions, comment on their Tweets, reTweet things which stand out to you. If you’re doing nothing but sending links to your website, why will anybody really care? It’s not a service that thrives on your press releases, you need to interact.

• Watch what you say – You might be really impressed with the technical jargon and underlying know-how behind your new product or service, but are your customers? They might just think it’s really cool, or stylish, or trendy. Watch what you say, in terms of trying to connect with your target audience. You want to reach out to them on their terms and on their playing field. Don’t try to force them to meet you where you are. That’s the only way to actually encourage engagement on the service, and it’s something you’ll need to work on.

Hopefully with the above tips you’ll be able to get started increasing your Twitter engagement as quickly as possible. Remember to have a game plan in mind, and to use the service in the way it was meant to be used, which means interaction, hash tags, photos and all the rest. Get out there and get active, and watch as you see improved performance and overall follower engagement.

SEO Is Not Dead

2013-02-07T14:45:00-05:00

Since the onset of Penguin and the climactic changes taking place in the online world, we’ve heard it said repeatedly, in the voice of gloom and doom, that SEO is dead. In fact, SEO today is more important than ever before. With so much riding on the correct layout of your pages, your navigation and your overall search engine visibility, SEO is an important part of our website plan.

SEO is not the same as once it was, that much is true. The ability to build links and to have them count as the vote that they were at one time in a search is simply no longer an option. Your best option, as opposed to this kind of linking, to building bad links, was then and still is to network your site to get it noticed, to build the best SEO that you can into your site, and to work in such a way that your customers, your prospective buyers and the search engines who visit your site know that you’ve done the absolute best that you can to give them a positive experience.

SEO is an Important Part of Your Website Design.

Creating a site that the search engines can easily spider and that people will be able to quickly find and use is what SEO is all about. While the methods which are being used are less like those which were used even two years ago, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the old days, marketers were using methods that were “in your face” and quite often in violation of what Google, Yahoo, and Bing said was the right thing to do. Links which were not relevant and should not have counted for anything at all were being read as offering rank to the sites in question. It is correct, and is it positive to say, that kind of SEO is in fact dead and, may we add, it’s about time.

Relevant links which are arrived at by networking with sites that are relevant or related to your own, are typically those which count the most heavily. That means that your prospective customer can follow links from your site to another, or from another site to you and get more information on their chosen topic. Those are quality links and they mean something to both the search engines and the people who are seeking more information on that topic.

On page meta tags, quality article writing that does not show overuse of keywords and offers solid and quality information are going to get your site noticed while at the same time giving you the kind of traffic that your site needs to keep you moving forward.

Social media also counts, as well it should. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and many other sites such as Pinterest are going to give you extra traffic and extra notice when you add links out to your sites. Make sure that you’re at least doing rudimentary social networking in order to get the best that you can from your website.

Is SEO Dead? In reality some aspects of SEO, specifically the aspects which were not giving the user a good experience, are in fact dead. But SEO as a whole is alive and well and more important than ever before.

How to Maximize Customer Service on Twitter

2013-01-21T09:45:57-05:00

Twitter is by far the most up-and-coming customer service channel for brands who want to provide near real-time support, as well as show the Twitterverse that they are a customer-centric brand.

However, like other customer service channels, it is important to monitor performance in terms of response time and satisfaction rate. WaveMetrix has looked at some of the best practices from brands that are successfully providing support on Twitter, to help other brands understand where to start and how to go about it.

The first step is to make sure you have a brand-centric Twitter account (handle) and a separate dedicated support account, rather than combining customer service with brand-centric discussions on one handle. For example, Delta Air Lines has a @Delta handle where they post competitive information, fun facts and news about the company. Alongside this, their @deltaassist handle deals with customer complaints and queries.

Similarly, T-Mobile has a brand-centric @TMobile handle to share news of sponsorships, contests or new products, whilst @TMobilehelp deals with complaints.

Having a dedicated Twitter support handle helps channel negativity away from your main brand space, where you should be focusing on building positive brand engagement.

The second step is to make sure you are responding to complaints in a timely manner and to compare your performance with the rest of your industry. Consumers expect a fast response on social channels as they would with a call center. Every unanswered complaint represents negative buzz about your brand until you address it.

Analysis of average response time on dedicated support handles shows that they enable faster responses compared with brands that don’t separate the two:

74% of complaints on dedicated support handles get a response within four hours, versus only 51% of complaints on single brand handles

Finally, you should measure what proportion of positive consumer tweets your support handle is getting to see whether customers are giving positive feedback about your service. There are strategies which can help increase the amount of positive feedback you get. For example, Delta, HP and Bank of America used naming reps, which gets them a higher proportion of positive feedback than competitors as the relationships feel more personal:

These are just a few steps to building customer relations through Twitter. Read more details about WaveMetrix’s customer service best practices by downloading the PDF paper here. Or contact Leonie Bulman at leonie.bulman@wavemetrix.com

This study was conducted using the traditional WaveMetrix methodology, combining technology to measure response time and reach, with 100% human coding to analyse sentiment and topic.

Five Reasons to Consider Guest Blogging

2013-01-07T21:06:33-05:00

There are many reasons why people blog, but for businesses it’s mostly to increase revenue and gain credibility while reaching new customers. One way to do this is to lend your expertise to other sites as a guest blogger. Now, you may question the benefits of guest blogging and wonder, “Why help somebody else get new content on their sites when I can be focusing on getting fresh content on my own sites?” Well, that’s a valid question worth exploring so here are a few reasons why you should consider guest blogging:

Increase Quality Traffic To Your Site – If you put out quality work as a guest blogger, you’re apt to get quality followers. This alone can drive traffic to your site and grow your network. The goal is to get people interested in what you’re saying and create credibility so they become curious about your body of work. It’s customary to provide a link to your sites when agreeing to write for someone else; therefore readers can follow the link and see what you have to offer. If you happen to get a guest blog posting on an extremely popular site, you may even attract thousands of visitors in just one day, hopefully gaining admirers who will seek you out.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – In addition to credibility in your area of expertise, you’ll want “cyber cred.” The most effective way to gain this is to acquire quality back links to boost your ranking in search listings. But what exactly are backlinks? They are ways to expand the comments section of your blog through another blogger (for example) posting a comment on their blog about your original message. It’s an excellent way to add viewers and drives your search engine rankings up. So the more guest blogging you do, the better chance you have of a higher ranking in search engines. Also worth noting, is that having your blog posts or articles on well-known websites will help you gain top spots on search listings, meaning you may not have to put in as much effort on complicated SEO activities.
Build Recognition In The Blogosphere – Writing for yourself is great, but it will keep you virtually unknown in cyberspace. To establish yourself as a subject matter expert, you need to reach out to other bloggers and websites so you can get exposure via as many channels as possible. Through guest blogging you can reach additional people in your targeted audience as they begin to recognize you as an authority on your subject matter. This will also help brand awareness within your industry.
Create A Portfolio – Not unlike a resume, your guest blogging can actually produce an impressive body of work that can easily become a portfolio for future opportunities. Having a comprehensive collection of your best columns will make it much easier to acquire leads and secure future jobs. Keeping track of the blog sites where your writing appears is important when people ask about your previous assignments. Keeping a list of URLS will enable you to quickly direct them to where your writing has appeared online.
Develop Your Writing – These days, there are probably as many novice bloggers as professional writers online. Not everyone has a journalism degree or will win prestigious awards for their compositions, but that doesn’t mean readers can’t learn something from you. Keep in mind that if you write frequently your skills will improve. Doing a high volume of writing through guest blogging is ultimately your best teacher and can develop your abilities. Combine that with your knowledge and it’s a noteworthy union that brings with it the reputation for being a source of relevant information.

Partnering with others to broaden your recognition and build relationships online through guest blogging is an excellent way to create an audience. Ensuring you have factual and pertinent content is imperative, but the informal atmosphere of online writing gives you some room to be creative and have some fun with it.

As for me, I’m looking forward to introducing another guest blogger on Sneeze.it in the coming weeks. Leonie Bulman of WaveMetrix will discuss her company’s findings about Twitter and offer suggestions on how to get your return on investment using that social media site.

Are you an expert in the field of social media marketing? We’d love to have you guest blog for us too. Please contact Terri Stanton, Public Relations and Marketing Manager at: tstanton@thesteelmethod.com.

Why “Thank You” is Good for Business

2012-12-26T20:54:51-05:00

At Sneeze.it we’re always looking for new ways to help clients increase revenue and expand their social network. So it’s not uncommon for us to share little known facts or information that helps to get their creative juices flowing. Our goal is to prompt our clients to build unique marketing and advertising strategies around social media that make them stand out from their competitors. If providing unusual facts or calendar items like National Talk Like a Pirate Day makes this happen, then all the better.

That brings me to my point. When you take something out of the ordinary and build a marketing campaign from it, sometimes you get great results that you didn’t count on. We laugh at some of the bogus holidays that seem to pop up every year and joke about Hallmark commercials, but if you think about it, appealing to people from an emotional or fun and visual standpoint is a good way to get your Facebook postings, Tweets, and Pinterest boards shared with others. But what does this have to do with why thank you is good for business? Well, January is National Thank You Month!

I’m challenging you to take this opportunity to come up with creative social media campaigns that thank your customers, show employee appreciation, or highlight the reasons people should or are thankful for your products and services. These are just a few examples, but if you think about it, saying “Thank You” gives you a lot of material and when coupled with your social media sites it can be the basis for lively interactions with your followers.

For example, why not have a contest that allows your customers to post videos on your YouTube channel about why they’re thankful for your product, pick the best video for a grand prize, then announce the winner and share it on Facebook? Promote the contest on Twitter, Pinterest and your other sites, create your own video thanking all your customers and announcing the big winner then share it far and wide. Are you seeing how you can use your social media to its fullest now?

Okay, so National Thank You Month may not be a federal holiday, but showing appreciation in unique ways is not a bad thing. And how many of your competitors do you think will be talking about thanking consumers in addition to discussing New Year’s resolutions and offering discounts? If you take a different approach, use your social media network effectively and keep your content educational and fresh, you just might get a lead in the marketplace from the onset in 2013. Need ideas? Give us a call at 800-223-4342.

Why your social media strategy should be like Festivus!

2012-12-10T16:12:04-05:00

As we prepare for the holidays and start looking ahead to 2013, it’s a great time to think about how you’re going to differentiate in the marketplace and take advantage of social media networking next year. It’s also a chance to reflect on the business practices that have worked for you and to discontinue the ones that weren’t effective. So naturally, this made me think of Festivus!

Diehard fans of Seinfeld will recall that Festivus was a holiday that as a kid, Jerry Seinfeld’s friend George Costanza was forced to celebrate on December 23 instead of Christmas like most of his friends. His father, disillusioned by the commercialization of Christmas decided he was going to create his own holiday so instead of a tree he put up a metal pole, and at each Festivus Dinner, he’d begin with the Airing of Grievances and followed dinner with the annual Feats of Strength. It was just that simple. The holiday others continued to celebrate didn’t satisfy him, so he set out to create his own.

Mr. Costanza was onto something… Year after year we follow our competitors and watch them celebrate their wins in the market place from using the same old tactics. We continue to try and beat them at the same tired game or go along for the ride but if we dared to be different, had engaging content, and created new social media strategies, we’d have our own Festivus! Why keep trying to fit into the same mold when you can use your social media resources creatively and beat your competition on your own terms? If you aren’t winning on their playing field, change the game and win on your home turf.

Now is the time. Clear the air of grievances, tap into your strengths, and dig into your social media sites to find the platforms that work best for your business. Do something, anything, that’s going to make you stand out and get your audience’s attention. If you do, you’ll likely see a shift occur and soon your competitors will be catch up to you. So I say get in there and think outside the box and I wish a happy holiday to all and Happy Festivus to the rest of us!

Getting Ready for Israel…My trip down memory lane!

2012-11-26T20:43:51-05:00

The mission of the Young President Organization (YPO) is Better Leaders Through Education and Idea Exchange”™ and it’s that core value that I’ve been honored to be a part of through the years. One of my passions in life is teaching and thanks to YPO and many successful corporations, I’ve been able to be a keynote speaker and share my knowledge of sales and social media marketing.

On December 27 I’ll once again be speaking for YPO’s Israel chapter and addressing members on the topic, “It’s not what innovative technology does for people; it’s what the innovative people do with technology.” In preparing for this presentation I became a bit nostalgic and came to realize exactly how much technology has actually helped shape my career. So, I thought I’d share my personal path and take you along for a brief ride down memory lane.

In 1981 there was a communication revolution, though it wasn’t heard by many people, it starting was a turning point in my life. That was the year the Hayes Smart modem was introduced. Some of you may recall that 30+ years ago there was no such thing as broadband and computers communicated through telephone lines. You’d pick up a phone, dial a number (of another computer), rest the handset on the modem and then you’d be able to log into a mainframe computer.

What the Hayes Smart Modem enabled you to do was dial a number without the use of a phone and it could auto answer if another modem was calling. That’s all I needed to come up with an idea and then put it into motion by creating a Bulletin Board System, BBS, on my TRS-80 Color Computer by Radio Shack.

I guess you can say, “Once a techie always a techie.” Even before I created BBS I was interested in computers and networking. As early as sixteen years old, I worked for a computer software store to support my technology habit. It was there that I got my first experience in sales - I was the #1 salesperson in the #1 store in the country. But it wasn’t because I knew how to sell (that came later), I simply understood very early on that you need to have a good message and a network to share it with. Although it was many years later, that’s exactly how I built Sneeze.it, my social marketing company. We build the core messages, share the social media tips and help businesses find their way into the social media world.

Why all the tech talk? Well, I think the saying goes, “It’s hard to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.” BBS systems though archaic, were the predecessor of the social media applications we use today. When I look back it’s apparent to me that a lot of the strategies now used for marketing online stem from the one underlying principal that supports these extremely effective, tight knit online communities -- content. No matter the social media platform, if you’ve got quality content that gets your audience’s attention then you’re ahead of the game. Couple that with a good social marketing plan and consistency in messaging and you’ve got innovation joining technology. This is what I try to convey when I’m presenting – today’s technology makes it convenient to share your products and services virally, but if your content isn’t up to snuff, it won’t matter where you publish it.

After all, when you strip away the polished interfaces of modern day social media applications you’re left with your core message, and that can get lost in the shuffle in our digital world. I hear it all the time at these events and when working with new clients. They know about Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites, but they can’t seem to figure out why they aren’t reaching more people. Which brings us full circle and back to my prepping for Israel. If you want to grow a garden, you have to plant the seeds and water the flowers –I can’t wait to get help the YPO Israel team cultivate growth. Thankfully, it will probably be from a laptop or an Ipad and not a tin box with a monitor that resembles a television. You’ve got to love progress!

6 Ways to Control Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings

2012-11-12T11:31:16-05:00

Do you use Pinterest and Google+, promote your business on Facebook and Twitter but still don’t see the value in using LinkedIn to network online? LinkedIn can be a very valuable tool when trying to reach a target audience. The fact that over 187 million professionals worldwide are using this popular social media platform may also help to change your mind. That’s why I’ve invited Linda Coles to be a guest author to share her perspective on maintaining a LinkedIn account and to offer some tips about using it to its full potential.

Linda is the founder of Blue Banana, where she trains business professionals to use social media tools to grow their brands online. She is particularly well versed on using LinkedIn to network and leverage connections. Linda is not only a trainer, but also a guest speaker who runs workshops and seminars in addition to regularly writing for her blog and publications such as www.socialmediaexaminer.com, and www.mashable.com, to name just a few.

I’m looking forward to hearing her insights about LinkedIn and sharing her knowledge of this popular social media site with my readers. Below is Linda's article, “6 Ways to Control Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings,” which discusses LinkedIn privacy settings. While one of the main reasons for using social media is to network and build relationships online, you also want to be sure you’re attracting the right contacts and perhaps, if you’re new to LinkedIn, start slowly and build up to creating a larger presence. Linda provides valuable tips about ensuring your privacy settings work for you and shares ways to customize them to suit your needs. Take a look and let us know your thoughts. Are you going to update your settings? Does this information ease your mind and inspire you to create a new LinkedIn account? Let us know!

6 Ways to Control Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings

“Privacy is on life support” is a saying I heard recently and I am not just talking about what you say on Twitter or Facebook.

We are all pretty much up with the play with our Facebook privacy settings, but have you thought about what privacy settings you should be using on your LinkedIn profile if any?

Consider looking at making some privacy changes if you are:

A job seeker who is still employed
Recruiting “under the radar”
Someone who wants to keep their connections private
Unsure what options are available to you
Simply a very private person

What can you do?

By clicking the SETTINGS link, which is at the top right of your LinkedIn page under your name, you will find the options open to you.

(image via Linda Coles/Blue Banana)

These are the choices of privacy settings that are open to you. Let’s look at what they mean and how to control them:

Turn on / off your activity broadcasts. Each time you make a change to your profile such as edit your current position, if this option is turned on, everyone you are directly connected to i.e. your 1^st degree connections, will all be notified via an alert sent to their home page. This alert is also triggered when you make a recommendation, or follow a company, and will also be shared in your own activity feed.

If you are a job seeker, then you may want to turn this off, you don’t want your boss to see you perfecting your LinkedIn profile in interview preparation and following your business’ competition.

Select who can see your activity feed. This can be customized so that anything that appears in your activity feed is only seen by just yourself, your 1^st degree connections, your greater network or absolutely everyone. Again, if you are a job seeker, then select just yourself.

Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile. If you are looking at others’ profiles for maybe pre interview intelligence, or if you are actively recruiting a position, you may feel comfortable letting that person who’s profile you have viewed know that you have been by. If you wish to remain incognito, then you can choose to simply be known as “someone in your industry and title”, or completely anonymous with “anonymous user”.

Even if you have the premium account, you won’t be able to see any more information about someone if they have chosen to limit their privacy settings.

Select who can see your connections. Only people in your 1^st degree will be able to see your connections, no one else, and some industries, particularly recruitment, seem to keep them locked down, out of the prying eyes of the competition with the thought that others will see their client base. I wish all of my connections were clients if that is the case!

Again, the choice is yours whether you keep them on display for your connections to see. If you do choose to hide them, any shared connections you have with this person, will still be on view as LinkedIn figures you both know that person, so it doesn’t matter.

Change your profile photo and visibility. You can set this so that your photo is visible to your 1^st degree connections, your greater network or open to everyone.

If you don’t want others to see your picture, then set it to connections only. It is important to have an up to date photo on your LinkedIn profile as you are several times more likely to show up in search results with a complete profile, so if you are looking to expand your business or be recruited, this is a must.

Viewers of this profile also viewed. If you don’t want people to go snooping around looking at your competition, or recruiters looking at the rest of your team, then this is something you may want to turn off. As a professional speaker, I don’t want to advertise on my page who others have looked at and give them any ideas.

Once this is turned off, you can’t see who you are being compared to either, so decide on what is important to you.

No matter what your reason is for making an adjustment to your privacy settings, it’s better to have the knowledge to make the right decision than find out the hard way if you show something you wish you hadn’t.

Have you considered your LinkedIn privacy settings? Will you make any changes after reading this article?

Pinterest Polarizes Demographics, Provokes Knock Offs, Unites Marketers and Makes Billions

2012-10-29T09:10:36-04:00

It already exceeds Google+ and LinkedIn in daily traffic flow and it’s breathing down the neck of Twitter for the most users. It’s the virtual pinboard called Pinterest. Despite its popularity, there are still those who doubt Pinterest’s ability to make companies money and interest multiple demographics.

Do you buy the theory that Pinterest is primarily a social media site for women? Many people do, but the truth is, successful businesses know it’s a very lucrative platform to promote their brand and reach a large number of users no matter that the target audience is or the type of product or service being sold.

In the October edition of Sold Magazine, The Steel Method column discusses this and Pinterest’s quick rise to fame. Read my article, starting on page 22, “Pinterest Polarizes Demographics, Provokes Knock Offs, Unites Marketers and Makes Billions” then tell me what you think. Does your company have a Pinterest account or do you believe Pinterest is mostly for women?