Twitter is something of a mixed blessing. There is no doubt that it can be an invaluable and effective tool for reaching out to online users. If you doubt it, simply survey the long list of celebrities and political figures who use Twitter to send their messages to the masses. At the same time, however, most of us can think of a few instances in which social media faux pas did significant damage to a corporation’s public image, suggesting that perhaps Twitter can prove detrimental, at least when used improperly.

What is it, though, that separates the companies in these two groups — those that harness Twitter to effectively build their brand, and those that stumble into one Twitter PR blunder after another? There are many factors to consider, but the bottom line is that the most effective corporate Twitter users tend to be the ones that have a strong and specific strategy in place. That strategy involves understanding the risks that come with Twitter, safeguarding against them, and recognizing how Twitter can be used to build a strong and authoritative online brand.

The Dangers of Twitter

First, businesses should understand the dangers of Twitter. It goes without saying that any Twitter post that is offensive, racist, sexist, defamatory, or insensitively-worded can cause a company grave damage — but there are other, more innocent ways in which Twitter blunders happen.

One example comes from the American Red Cross. Months back, the charity’s social media manger logged into her personal Twitter account to post something about how drunk she was. The problem was that it wasn’t tweeted through her personal Twitter account. It was the corporate one, and her tweet did not go over well with those who prefer to think of the American Red Cross as a totally upright and above-board healthcare organization.

Meanwhile, we can all think of plenty of companies that have sought to use current political headlines — including tragedies — to sell their products. Doing so causes companies to come across as brutish and uncaring.

Setting Boundaries

The point is simply that there are many ways in which even the best-intentioned companies can fall into common Twitter pitfalls. Thankfully, a written, corporate Twitter policy can help to ward off these potential problems. There are three specific things that a company’s social media policy should address:

1. Determine Twitter Ownership

For starters, the policy should specify who is tasked with updating the Twitter account — whether it is your CEO, a VP of Marketing, a designated social media team member, or someone else. It is advised that this person be someone other than an intern or part-time employee — that is, it should be someone who really understands your company’s vision.

2. Protect Your Passwords

Your Twitter policy might also denote that passwords are to be changed every week or two, to help protect against mishaps like the one that befell the Red Cross.

3. Set Clear Goals

Finally, your company’s social media policy should address your company’s broad Twitter objectives; exactly who are you trying to reach, and what are you trying to accomplish? Clearly setting goals can help keep things on-message, and it prevents against many of the ill-advised tweets that tend to happen when companies are flying blind.

The Benefits of Twitter

Companies can really get the most out of Twitter by acknowledging that it is more than just a potential PR deathtrap. It is also a powerful tool for building a strong, positive, and authoritative brand identity. To use Twitter for the purposes of online reputation management and brand enhancement, companies need to think critically about the kind of tweets they are sending out.

For starters, remember that Twitter is a great way to show your expertise within your industry or niche. When breaking news sweeps your industry, use Twitter to share some basic opinions and insights. Also use it to provide customers with illuminating tips, guidelines, how-tos, and strategies — even post links to relevant industry blog articles. Use Twitter to educate and to engage, not simply to promote.

Another tip: You can use Twitter to brand your company as socially responsible and charitable. Use Twitter to send links to non-profits that you support. If a member of your organization spends a day serving soup at a soup kitchen, or building a Habitat for Humanity house, send out some Twitpics.

Finally, businesses can use Twitter to make their brands more relatable — to show off their “human” side, as it were. Something as simple as a behind-the-scenes photo or anecdote, involving your team, can go a long way toward building this kind of emotional resonance.

In other words, Twitter is neither a blessing nor a curse. It is as helpful as companies wish to make it, and approaching it strategically can indeed result in significant brand enhancement.

Image source: reputation.com

These days blogs are a dime a dozen. It seems that everyone has a blog, but not everyone is able to make money from blogging. Successful blogs are able to bring in money from a variety of sources. Some of the most successful bloggers are able to make an entire income just from their blogs. Their efforts are inspiring, and anyone can make money from their blog if you follow the right tips.

While you may not be able to bring in a full-time income from your blog, these tips will help you bring in some side income so you can have a little extra cash at home.

1. Place Affiliate Ads On Your Blog

Affiliate ads are some of the oldest forms of blog-style advertisements. These are easy to set up. All you do is sign up with an ad network and place the ads you are eligible for on your blog. Affiliate ads can be Google-style, where random ads related to your content are placed on the pages of your blog. They can also be gathered through an affiliate site, like Commission Junction or Click Bank.

These ads offer two campaign types:

• Pay per click: With pay per click ads, you get a small amount of money each time someone clicks an ad on your site. Sometimes, these ads also store cookies from your site so that when the visitor ever visits the sponsor’s site again, you receive a commission. This is the easiest way to bring in income, but it also pays the least amount.
• Pay per sale: With pay per sale, you are only paid if a customer buys a product. The commissions for these ads are much higher, but fewer people make a purchase than click on an ad.

2. Get Sponsors

Sponsors are another way to make money on your blog. A sponsor pays for the ability to place an ad on your site. In some cases, they may also pay an affiliate commission, but in others, they may simply pay to place ad space on your site. Usually, you can only get sponsors if you have a large amount of traffic. Large sponsors may give you money or products to review their products, host giveaways, or mention their products in posts.

3. Sell Products On Your Blog

Another way to bring in income from a blog is by selling products. You can make products, like ebooks, printables, graphic designs, organizational tools, crafts, or a huge variety of other products.

This blog is an example of one that sells a product. Diana Urban, the founder of this blog, sells marketing ebooks including guides to Facebook and blogging. You can see that at the bottom of most of her blog posts (including this one), she has a call-to-action linking to the sell-page for a relevant ebook. But on blog posts that don’t have a corresponding ebook, there’s a CTA for some other free offer, or no CTA at all. This is an example of using effective targeting to drive sales from each of your blog posts.

You can also sell the products of friends or sponsors on your blog for a commission. All you have to do is join their individual affiliate network and place the unique affiliate URL on your site. The best way to make these types of affiliate sales is to write a review or how-to article for that product on your blog.

Blogging gives you the ability to make money from anywhere. However, when you are limited to traditional networks, it can be a challenge to work on the go. Luckily, mobile internet providers enable bloggers to create their own Internet connection wherever they are. With an income-producing blog, you truly have the freedom to live the life you always wanted, or at least the extra income to pay for your next vacation.

When you first consider starting a new site for your business, it can be quite an exciting time. You start looking at the various Premium WordPress themes that might work for your vision and your brand, and you begin to think about all of the different types of posts and articles that you will write in order to start attracting more leads and readers. Of course, you do have to make sure that you are utilizing the WordPress platform fully and that you are adhering to a few basic rules that will help to make your publishing experience on WordPress much better.

Here are three of the most important steps to take when launching your WordPress site:

1. Make Your Site Look and Work the Way You Need It To

First, you should realize that your site is going to be very customizable when you use WordPress. The nature of the themes and the platform in general means that making changes to the site is quite simple. With tons of plugins available, and the fact that you have so many different types of themes from which you can choose, it should be quite easy to get your site looking and working the way that you need. Once you have a theme selected, you could also hire someone to tweak it a bit more if needed.

2. Have a Goal and Launch Plan in Mind

Before you start your site, you really do need to have a plan in mind. Knowing your goal is going to be a huge help when you are planning your WordPress site. Here are just some of the questions you should have an answer to:

• What are the types of posts and articles that you plan to include?
• Are you hoping to create a site for eCommerce?
• Should the site have content that helps your readers and entertains them, or are you looking for a static site that only offers a scant amount of information?

The fact is that with WordPress, you are going to be able to create any type of site that you might need. Of course, even though you might have an idea in place now, things could change. You might find that another content type on your site works better for you. It is always possible to change your site, use a different theme, and go in a new direction. Just because you have a plan, it does not mean that you have to follow it slavishly.

3. Create an Engaging Online Community

One of the best things about the web is the connections that you can make with other people. You are going to want to look at some of the ways that you can make your site a place where people want to gather and discuss whatever your niche topic might be. Having high-quality posts and content on your site that gets people talking is one of the things that you are surely going to want to do. However, you do not want to have your readers talking all alone. Because of the great features of the comments sections on WordPress, you are going to find that it is easy to engage with your readers as well. This can help you develop more of a sense of community.

When you look at some of the other successful blogs that are out there today, take some time to look at the comments section. You will probably find that the site owner, or writers of the posts, are engaging with the readers on the site.

WordPress is a great platform with plenty to offer anyone who wants to start a website today. Make sure that you keep up with all of the changes that are happening with the platform so that you know what new update is going to bring.

Yesterday was a scary, sad day for us Bostonians. Two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line, and two were left undetonated in the area. Three people have died, and about 150 wounded. It was a tragedy.

As a born-and-raised New Yorker, my mind immediately flashed back to 9/11, and that same panicked feeling set in. I called my husband to make sure he hadn’t gone downtown, and then emailed our immediate family to let them know we were both safe at work. And then I went to Twitter to see the latest updates.

Twitter has long-since replaced CNN and the major news broadcasts as the most immediate news source. CNN was reporting things that were reveal on Twitter a half hour earlier. For the most part, people were simply sharing the news, sending messages of hope and prayer, and giving the victims and Bostonians their support. But there were things I saw on Twitter throughout the day that were downright horrible.

Here’s what you should NEVER EVER post on social media during a time of crisis, including terrorist attacks.

1. Gruesome pictures of the victims

To show the pictures of blood on the sidewalk is one thing. I think it’s borderline inappropriate, but yes, it helps show the gravity of the situation. But it’s entirely different to show a picture of a man with his legs blown off. Or women lying on the sidewalk in pools of blood, also with lost limbs. Or someone’s leg lying in the street. People were posting and retweeting these images all throughout the day, often with no warning as to the graphic nature of the photos. But forget caring about traumatizing the viewer — what about those poor, poor victims? I’m sure right now all they care about is getting better, but eventually, they’re going to know that the most horrific and vulnerable moments of their lives were flying around the internet for all to see. It’s just disrespectful.

Days like yesterday make me grateful that social media didn’t exist yet for 9/11.

2. Unverified facts

By unverified facts, I mean the kind of thing you hear from your panicked coworkers in the office, or something you overhear someone shouting on the street. Don’t just run to Twitter and post it with a tone of authority unless you see that an accredited news source has verified the information. When people take to Twitter to learn the latest updates, suddenly every tweet is taken as a reliable news source (which is a mistake itself), and could be retweeted and spread. At some point around 5-6pm yesterday, people were tweeting that 12 people had been killed. In actuality, only two had been killed at the time. When you live in the victimized city, and you know coworkers who were near the event site, 12 is a huge number. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than 2. So don’t tweet something you’re not sure is true. You’ll just upset people more than is necessary.

3. Assumptions about the guilty parties

After 9/11, people jump to conclusions about who’s guilty for acts of terror. And people were flocking to Twitter to share derogatory tweets. This really doesn’t help anyone. Officials seem to have no idea yet who did it, and are even leaning toward it being domestic terrorism. News flash: you don’t need to be a Muslim to be a terrorist.

On a side note, people were also getting sensitive about people calling the attack a “terrorist attack.” They implied that calling it a “terrorist attack” means making assumptions about who’s guilty. I get the sensitivity, as I mentioned already. But a terrorist attack is any action that inspires terror in a group of people. If two bombs go off on a crowded city street, and it causes harm, death, and panic, it’s a terrorist attack, no matter who was behind it.

4. Posting RT and share bait

I’m pretty sure people had already photoshopped heartfelt messages onto photos of Boston before the smoke even cleared. And that’s all fine and well — but too many people were using the event as a ploy to get more followers and retweets. Posting a picture of a bloody street with the message “Share this photo if you love Boston!” is wrong on so many levels, but it also clutters the stream of legitimate news and updates. People looking online to see whether or not they’re going to be able to take the train home really don’t want to see your share-bait.

While these things were all hard to see yesterday, there were some really inspiring moments on social media as well, when Bostonians and others came together to support each other. There was a massive Google Doc where Bostonians were offering up their homes to people who wouldn’t be able to get to their own homes or hotels that night. Google quickly put together a person finder so that people could easily find their loved ones. There were messages of love and support. These are the moments we should remember.

But the next time a horrible event rolls around (because really, there will be a next time), try to remember to keep calm, stay respectful, and be supportive in a time of crisis. Don’t make the situation worse than it already is.

My thoughts are with those poor victims and their families.

When choosing a commenting system for your blog, there are some fancy alternatives to WordPress’s native commenting system. When you look at some of the top blogs out there, the majority are using either Disqus or Livefyre. These boast features like social media login, related post syndication, or incorporating social media conversations into the comment stream. They promise real-time conversations, streamlined moderation functionality, and better spam filtering.

But the truth is that WordPress’s native commenting system just might be the best option. I have had both Disqus and Livefyre installed on this blog, each for a significant amount of time. The other day, I uninstalled Livefyre and decided to do away with these 3rd party commenting systems for good.

Do the benefits of using WordPress’s native commenting system outweigh the fancy features of 3rd party commenting plugins like Livefyre and Disqus? Here’s why I chose WordPress’s commenting system (and you should, too):

1. It’s easier for your readers to use

Ease of use should be the top factor in your decision of which commenting system to use. If someone comes to my blog and wants to make a comment, all they have to do is fill in their name, email address, website (optional), and write their comment. Done and done.

Livefyre and Disqus’s plugins are free. This means that they’re going to try to sign up as many of your readers for their service as possible. So when you try commenting via Livefyre, for example, it tries to get people to create a Livefyre account before posting their comment. And they keep making it harder to make a comment as a guest.

Disqus’s UI is a bit more intuitive. They don’t require signing up for Disqus but they do encourage it.

Using the WordPress comment system provides the most simple interface to join the conversation.

In the couple days I’ve used WordPress’s native commenting system, I’ve gotten more comments on my blog than I did in two weeks with Livefyre. Ease of use absolutely makes a difference.

2. It’s easier to customize the formatting

With Livefyre and Disqus, you can’t have complete control over the formatting with your website’s CSS file. While they each let you add some CSS on their backend admin panels, you can’t rearrange the avatar, name, date, etc., or make advanced customizations.

With WordPress and the Thesis theme, I was able to create custom containers and CSS to make my comments as fancy as I wanted to — both the commenting tool and the stream of comments. It requires a bit of CSS know-how, but the point is that it’s possible at all.

3. Frequent updates won’t break your comments

In the past couple months alone, Livefyre had two updates that broke my comments in some way. As part of the first update, they changed the class names in their HTML divs, rendering my custom CSS completely useless. I had to re-do my CSS on their whim. With WordPress’s system, this is less likely to happen — it does depend on the theme you’ve chosen and how often the developer rolls out an update. But for the most part, the comment classes on your theme will stay the same.

The second update completely broke Livefyre — and my site. I logged into my blog one morning, saw that an update was available, and quickly applied it. I then headed to work and didn’t check on my blog until the next day. This was my fault. I should have looked at my blog immediately to make sure the comments didn’t break. But sure enough, the next morning I looked at my blog, and the comments were at the very top of the page above the header, with all this white space in between their comments and the blog itself. It was so bad that when I tried zooming out to get a screenshot, I couldn’t even fit it all in my screen. I probably lost tons of leads and subscribers that day. And the problem wasn’t fixable on my end — their plugin was suddenly incompatible with my theme, and I would have to wait for their west coast support team to wake up, get to work, see my email, and look into it. This was the moment I decided to do away with 3rd party commenting systems for good.

4. Page load speed won’t be reduced

The reason I uninstalled Disqus about a year ago was because it was affecting my page load speed too much. Having a slow page load speed is actually bad for SEO. Google prioritizes sites that load quickly because they provide a better user experience for readers. Readers get impatient when they have to wait for a page to load. So if your site is too slow, it will hurt your Google rankings.

Disqus and Livefyre have both gotten notably better at reducing the load time of their plugins, but with either installed, your site still won’t be as fast as it would with WordPress’s native commenting system. Pingdom has done analysis the effect of comment plugins on page load speed, and they found that these 3rd party systems aren’t too big a drag on site performance, but they do slow things down just a tad. Also, their tests were limited — performance will also depend on what other plugins and scripts you have running on your site and how they interact with the comment plugins.

5. Comments won’t disappear if you optimize the URL

If you learn about the best practices of SEO after writing a few blog posts, you’ll know that optimizing each URL to include relevant keywords will help you get indexed in Google for those keywords, thus helping you get more relevant traffic. As long as you create a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL, it provides a seamless user experience for people who click links that still point to the old URL, and it carries over all the SEO juice from the old URL as well. Easy peasy.

However, Disqus and Livefyre both can’t handle when you change the URL. Your old comments will disappear, and in Livefyre’s case the entire commenting widget will disappear as well.

I emailed both Disqus and Livefyre’s support teams about this issue. Disqus has a migration tool that’s supposed to fix this issue — however, their migration tool was broken for two weeks while I tried to migrate a bunch of blog post URLs over. I was frustrated waiting for a resolution, and kept getting generic canned-response emails from their support team when I tried reaching out to them. Of course, it’s a free plugin, so I expected as much. Livefyre’s responses were much more personal, but they couldn’t even figure out what was causing the problem even after one of their senior developers got involved.

Regardless of how helpful one support team is versus another, in either case it just wasn’t worth the hassle. I’ve never had this issue with WordPress’s native system. #win

6. Social media conversations should stay on social media anyway

One feature that drew me to Livefyre was the fact that they detect social media comments on Twitter and Facebook and plug those right into your blog post’s comment stream. Pretty cool, right?

Actually, it’s not. Turns out, if people are having a meaningful conversation on your blog post, those social media updates look really out of place.

Additionally, there are Twitter spammers out there who will reply to any of your updates with a link to a virus or some other spam site. So if they reply to one of those tweets about your blog post, that virus link ends up on your blog post. That’s bad news. So the point is, blog comments should be for blog comments, not for any other social media activity.

What commenting system do you use on your blog? Do you think the benefits of your 3rd party system outweigh these benefits of using the native commenting system?

A like gate tab, otherwise known as a reveal tab or a fan gate tab, is a customized tab you can create for your Facebook page that shows content only to people who have liked your page. Everyone else will just see messaging encouraging them to like your page in exchange for whatever content you’re offering.

This is a great way to get more people to like your Facebook page. But this custom tab will only be successful if people are actually seeing it. Without promoting it correctly, it will be hidden on your Facebook page, and won’t entice anyone to do anything.

Here are a few ways to make sure that visitors to your Facebook page actually see your like gate tab.

1. Link to your like gate tab from your website

You can promote your exclusive fan-only offer on your website, and link directly to your like gate tab. This way, you’ll be encouraging your website visitors to like your fan page, and since they’re already visiting your site, they’re be more likely to do so than random Facebook users.

To find out what your like gate tab link is, go to the Apps section of the Admin tool.

Then click Link to this Tab under the custom app you’re using for your reveal tab.

Then you’ll see the direct link to your like gate tab.

Now that you have your like gate URL, you can create hyperlinks on your website leading directly to your like gate tab. For example, in my author bio at the bottom of every blog post, I link to my Facebook page using this like gate URL.

2. Pin a promotional story to the top of your timeline

If you’re giving something awesome away on your like gate tab, post an update about it and pin that story to the top of your Timeline. This way, your new visitors who don’t go directly to your like gate tab will see this story right at the top of your timeline.

Learn how to pin as story to the top of your Facebook page timeline here. Remember to re-pin this story every seven days if you always want it to be at the top of your page, since Facebook removes the pin after that amount of time has passed.

3. Strategically name your like gate tabs

You can customize the name shown under the thumbnail image of each custom app tab on your Facebook page. This is a prominent place for new visitors to see that you have some sort of offer in place. Here’s an example of what this looks like on U Stand Out’s Facebook page:

Here are some ideas for strategic names you can use for your app like gate tab, depending on what you’re actually offering to fans only:

• Free Download
• Get a Discount
• Get 50% Off
• Earn Rewards
• Win a Prize
• Latest News

Learn how to change the name of your app tabs here.

4. Prioritize your like gate tab by reordering your app tabs

You can reorder your app tabs so that the most important tabs are toward the front. The first tab will always be the standard Photos app, and that cannot be changed. So the 2nd tab should be your most important tab, such as your reveal tab.

To reorder the images, first click the down arrow to the right of your tab images:

Then hover over the tab image you’d like to reorder and click the pencil icon. Then select the tab you’d like to swap with this tab.

5. Run Facebook ads that link directly to your like gate tab

You can run a Facebook ad that links directly to your like gate tab. This is a great Facebook marketing strategy — you’re not just dumping all these paid visitors on your timeline; instead, you’re leading them to the tab you’ve specifically created to encourage them to like your page. This means you’ll get more ROI for your ad spend.

When creating a new Facebook ad, choose the Get More Page Likes option.

Then when you build your ad, you can select the Landing View — choose your like gate tab here!

What other creative strategies have you used to get new visitors to your Facebook page to see your like gate tab? Let me know in the comments below!

Facebook has launched a new feature on Facebook pages that allow you as a page admin, as well as your fans, to reply to individual comments on each of your posts. This allows for more of a threaded conversation, as are typically seen on blog comments and some forums.

This feature not only makes conversations easier to follow, but it should also increase engagement, since you can now reply to fans individually, thus encouraging them to continue the conversation with you since they’re getting individual attention. It also allows your fans to reply directly to each other. Previously, if too many comments happened since a particular comment you wanted to reply to, it was hard to indicate who exactly you were talking to, and this probably dissuaded people from replying at all.

As of right now, this is a feature that page admins need to turn on. To see this option, make sure that your admin panel is collapsed by clicking the Hide button, if necessary.

Then click Turn on Replies. If you don’t yet see this option, it should roll out to all Facebook pages soon, so keep checking back.

You will then see a confirmation message that replies have been turned on.

Replies are only available in NEW posts that are published on your page. The feature will not retroactively be added to old posts. To reply to an individual comment on a post, simply click the Reply link instead of entering your comment in the regular text field.

Then you can enter your reply in the right place.

What do you think? Will you use this feature frequently?

We all have busy lives. And for those of us who work in tech (and even those that don’t), our jobs happen over email. We have a work email address, a personal email address, maybe even another less-important personal email address considered a “spam” email address. Our phones and tablets chime every time we get a new email. It can be quite overwhelming.

To cut down on clutter, you may want to unsubscribe from emails you no longer want to receive, or unsolicited emails you never signed up to receive. There are several right ways to unsubscribe from these emails, along with a couple wrong ways to go about it. This article is for two groups of people: those who are looking for the fastest way to unsubscribe from emails, and perhaps are feeling frustrated enough to send an angry reply instead. And it’s also for email marketers out there who need instructions they can send to those angry repliers.

Here are the best ways to unsubscribe from email, in order of effectiveness and ease.

1. Right Way: Click the unsubscribe link

Email marketers are supposed to comply with CAN-SPAM, meaning that they need to provide an easy way for recipients to unsubscribe to their emails. So typically, you can look at the bottom of any marketing email and see an unsubscribe link. Simply click on this link.

Every email service provider — the software companies use to send their emails — has different unsubscribe functionality. For some, clicking the link will immediately unsubscribe you. For others, you need to check a box to be unsubscribed, or select which emails you still want to receive. Either way, this is the quickest and most effective method for unsubscribing to unwanted emails. Always look for the unsubscribe link before taking any other approach, including replying to the sender with a request to unsubscribe.

Here is the unsubscribe link at the bottom of Banana Republic emails:

Here is what CVS’s unsubscribe link looks like:

This is the unsubscribe link at the bottom of HubSpot emails. I work at HubSpot, and any emails I send will have this footer (or an equivalent footer, depending on the design of the template I’m using). Our ~9,000 customers have a similar footer at the bottom of their emails.

U Stand Out has one of these footers because I use HubSpot to send my emails.

2. Right Way: Reply with “Unsubscribe” or “Remove Me” in the subject line

Some companies do not use sophisticated email service providers, and have a more manual email marketing workflow. Because of this, their instructions in the footer might tell you to reply to their email and replace the subject line with “Unsubscribe,” “Remove Me,” or some similar variation.

Since this usually relies on a human to manually remove you from their email list, you might need to do this a couple times, but it usually does work the first time.

3. Right Way: Set up a filter to delete incoming emails

Some senders have a more annoying unsubscribe process, where you need to login to their system — which means remembering your password — in order to update your email preferences. If there is ever an annoying unsubscribe process, simply set up a filter to delete any future emails send from that email address.

For example, here’s how to set up a filter in Gmail in 30 seconds or less. First, check the email you want to unsubscribe to, and then click More > Filter messages like these.

Next, click Create filter with this search.

Then check the boxes Delete it and Also apply filter to # matching conversation(s). Click Create Filter.

That’s it! It takes under a minute to set up a filter like this, and you’ll never see messages from that sender in your inbox again.

4. OK Way: Reply to the sender offering friendly feedback as to why you unsubscribed

If you’re unsubscribing to an email for a specific reason, without which you would have continued being a subscriber, you may want to reply to the email with some helpful feedback. Maybe you were receiving one too many emails from the sender each week. Or maybe the offers in the email weren’t really relevant to your interests. This type of feedback is actually extremely helpful to email marketers, and can help them make sure they don’t make the same mistakes again. So if you have the time, go ahead an send your feedback. But send it in a manner that is friendly and helpful, not insulting or demeaning. But if you feel this isn’t worth your time, stick to options 1, 2, or 3 above.

5. Wrong Way: Reply to the sender with a scathing message

The wrong way to unsubscribe to emails is to reply to the sender with an angry email. Keep in mind, we’re talking about emails that made it into your inbox. These aren’t the viagra, enlargement, Nigerian prince scams, or whatever other emails make it into your spam filter. So these are more likely marketing emails from legitimate companies, bloggers, etc. So there are several reasons why sending a harsh reply is a bad idea.

It’s not worth your time

The biggest reason you shouldn’t send an angry reply is that it simply is not worth your time and effort. You’re busy, right? That’s the reason you’re so annoyed to get unwanted emails in your inbox. So why should you spend several minutes crafting and email explaining why the sender’s behavior is so obnoxious? When you can simply click “unsubscribe” or set up a delete filter in a matter of seconds, taking this approach just isn’t worth it. Besides, you’ll just make yourself angrier writing the email. And life is stressful enough as it is!

There is a real person at the other end of that reply

You may think that you’re venting to the anonymous interwebs, but chances are there’s someone at the other end of that email address, or someone monitoring the marketing team’s inbox. And what you say can be very hurtful. They might have just been doing their job sending that email, or following instructions from a superior, or they’re a new hire charged with sending an email for the first time, and accidentally clicked the wrong list. We’re all human — everyone makes mistakes. What nobody needs is to open up an email that says something like: “You annoying b!+ch, get the f&$% out of my inbox!!!!” Email marketers are people, too.

The email may be unwanted, but not unsolicited

There’s a reason I called this article “How to Quickly Unsubscribe from Unwanted Emails” rather than “How to Quickly Unsubscribe from Unsolicited Emails.” Since I do email marketing as part of both my job (HubSpot) and my hobby (U Stand Out), I see this all the time. At work, we take spam very seriously. We only send emails to people who have specifically opted in to receive them, and we send them emails relevant to their interests, rather than just sending the same message to our entire email list. I follow this same practice with U Stand Out. Yet once in a while, I’ll see a question from someone asking why they received the email. I can go into our contacts database and see exactly when they signed up, and which page on our site they signed up on. Some people simply don’t remember signing up for something, or entering their email address to get a cool download.

This could be you. You may have legitimately entered your email address on the sender’s website, but you just don’t remember doing so. We need to enter our email address in so many places online, it can be hard to keep track. So don’t punish the sender for taking an action that you don’t remember. If you don’t want the email, simply do option 1, 2, or 3 and be done with it.

If you share an email address, someone else may have signed up

This one happened to me last week. Someone sent me a mean — bordering on cruel — email insulting my character. It was intended to hurt my feelings. In his email, he indicated that I was spamming his “company” with emails they didn’t sign up for. So of course, I checked my contact database. Sure enough, someone from his “company” did sign up for my emails. I had their email address, date, time, and exact form they filled out. It wasn’t my fault there was a lack of communication on their end, or that someone used the company email to download something from U Stand Out. Because of this, it didn’t hurt my feelings. There was no way for me to know a difference for this particular email address. What bothered me more is that people think that it’s ok to be malicious to one another for something so minor as an unwanted email. Or that they would take the time out of their day to do so. Unsubscribe or set up a filter. It’s really that simple.

It’s not worth your time

I need to say this one again for those situations in which you really shouldn’t have received an email. Maybe someone bought a list of email addresses, and yours happened to be on it. Maybe you’re receiving legitimate spam, and you have a right to be angry. But it’s just not worth your time to do anything besides unsubscribe or set up a filter.

Life is short. Let’s not sweat the small stuff.

Social networking is currently dominating in a full-fledged manner and the growth of mobile social media has also been phenomenal. Interesting trends have been predicted by experts for the year 2013 and as time goes on, these trends are becoming more and more predominant. At present, statistics show that almost 61% of the people who use smartphones are accessing social media sites through their gadgets.

Mobile social media is now being used to promote brands and posting reviews and comments about various products and services. Smartphones and tablets are now being used to browse the web and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn and so on. Multimedia engagement is on a rise and e-commerce has turned into M-commerce.

Here are major social media trends that are expected to take place this year:

1. Growth in use of Pinterest

From the time of its arrival in March 2010, there has been significant growth in the usage of Pinterest. Now, Pinterest is available on mobile web, personal computers, and in app form and the time spent by the users for Pinterest has experienced substantial growth. In the year 2012, the time spent for Pinterest on various platforms is as follows:

• Personal computers – 1,255,225,000 minutes
• Apps – 720,973,000 minutes
• Mobile web – 120,486,000 minutes

2. Twitter has come out as the driver of Social TV

Twitter has become another name for social TV interaction and will continue to be so in 2013 as well. When viewers are watching different types of news and sports videos, they are also using Twitter to express their views to people whom they know. Twitter is going to be more attractive this year with a number of new features.

3. Social networks will generate positive sentiments

Studies conducted in the year 2012 show that 76% of the users of social networks stated that they are feeling optimistic once they started using social networks. Staying connected and getting informed are two features that will keep users engaged in 2013.

4. There has been a paradigm shift of content to mobile

Earlier, users searched for content on the web via their personal computers. However, as laid down by the statistics of the NPD group, approximately 37% of these users have shifted to their smartphones and tablet PCs. Internet surfing and Facebooking are the two principal activities that the users are participating in. About 27% of people who use tablets are using their personal computers only on rare occasions for browsing the Internet and 20% of them for using Facebook. People who use smartphones have cut down both web surfing and Facebooking on personal computers.

5. Facebook fatigue might kick in

The Internet and American Life Project Study of Pew Research Center is of the opinion that some people who have been using Facebook might get tired. A study was conducted which indicates that around 27% of people using Facebook in the United States are contemplating to reduce their usage in 2013 in comparison to just 3% who are intending to devote additional time.

6. Rise in video monetization

Well, this is an interesting trend. Online video advertisements are now competing with television advertisements and this has been confirmed by the video monetization report of FreeWheel. In the last year, majority of the online video advertisements were 30 second advertisements. In the previous year, advertisements with the duration of 15 seconds were used predominantly. About 2% people watched video advertisements online during the last three months of 2011 versus 12% in 2012. These were viewed on gadgets like tablets, smartphones (iPhones and android devices), and game consoles and the trend is on a rise.

7. Using more than one gadget

As stated by the Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends 2013 by Forrester, there has been a significant rise of usage of three or more gadgets by people who are working in the information industry. These people presently comprise around 29% of the overall manpower in the world, and this has shown a hike from the year 2011 (23%).

8. India and Indonesia will continue to grow

In 2011 and 2012, Indonesia and India were the two countries which experienced significant growth in the usage of social media. The percentage of growth in 2011 in these two countries was 51.4 and 51.5 correspondingly. In 2013, this trend is going to spike. Africa, the Middle-East, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region will also witness massive growth.

9. Social media will be more effective for both consumers and businesses

In 2013, more businesses will use social media to address the grievances of customers. At the same time, consumers will continue to listen to what people say about the products and services of various businesses.

Backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, are links from other websites to your website. Getting more backlinks to your site is an off-page SEO strategy that will help you rise in the search engine rankings, as opposed to on-page SEO — things like editing your title tag, meta description, etc. so that Google knows what keywords to index your blog posts for.

When you optimize your on-page SEO elements, it helps Google understand what your blog post is all about. Google then indexes your post in its search engine with the keywords used on that post.

Even though Google may now know what your blog post is all about, it’s not going to automatically put you on page one. It’s not going to do that until your site has some authority, so you could still be far back in the rankings.

When you get backlinks from other websites, it helps Google understand that your content is remarkable. Google wants to be as helpful as possible to its users, so only wants remarkable content on page one. So the more links you have coming into your site from authoritative sources, the more Google will promote you in the rankings.

Link-building is an essential aspect of your blog’s internet marketing strategy. Some of the best link-building strategies are inherent to your blog content — the best way to get inbound links is to create stellar content that people want to link to. But there are some additional tactics that will help.

1. Create linkable content

Creating content should be your highest priority, above any of the suggestions below. Create interesting and valuable content that other people will want to link to. Here are some tips for creating content that people will be more likely to link to:

• Use numbers (examples: “5 easy ways to” or “7 best strategies for”)
• Start your post title with “How to”
• Use relevant keywords people are searching for
• Include benefit to reader (examples: “get more visitors” or “reduce costs”)
• Be controversial (example: “Is the iPad useless?”)
• Be specific – don’t fill your blog title with puns or try to be too clever
• Be unique

2. Ask for links from people you know

One of the best ways to get back links when you’re first starting out is to ask people you know to link to your site from their site using a target keyword as the anchor text (the text being used as the link to your site). Here are some people you can ask:

• Friends and family
• Mentors (or mentees) you’ve found through Twitter
• Customers you’ve built relationships with
• Partners
• Vendors

3. Guest blog on similar niche industry blogs

Guest blogging is a great way to build backlinks. In each of your guest blog posts, you can usually add anywhere from 1-3 links to your own site, whether in the content itself or in your author bio. As long as you effectively target relevant, authoritative blogs, your backlinks from these posts will get your site a lot of credit. Guest blogging is also a great way to establish yourself as an industry thought-leader and get traffic back to your blog from readers following your links.

4. Write a blog post about a fellow niche blogger

Create a blog post reviewing a blog post on another niche blog in your industry, and link back to them. They may post a reply to you in return, and include a link back to your post in which you reviewed them.

5. Interview an industry expert with a website

Interview an industry expert who has a website or blog, and then create a blog post about the industry. When the post is up, send the link to the person you interviewed, thanking them for the interview. They’ll be likely to promote the post on their own site in order to promote themselves.

6. Create a badge for other websites

The badge strategy is simple in concept: you provide an image for others to place on their site. Maybe it’s an “editor’s pick” award that someone wants to place on their blog/site to show the quality of their content. The benefit for you from a link building standpoint is that this image has a built in link (with proper ALT-text) to a page on your site. Other suggestions include:

• Building an application that gives out a grade. People will then start placing their grade on their website or blog.
• Offering an online certification that can be placed on the recipient’s site
• Providing a badge to promote a contest you are hosting

7. Create a contest

Holding a contest with a useful prizes can also generate links to your site without using a badge. The prize can be a free service or a credit towards a purchase, or perhaps some form of recognition. The important thing here is to find a prize your target audience will like. Then develop the contest and spread the word and encourage people to link to it.

Once established you should consider making the contest a regular occurrence with a regular winner. This will encourage continual link building. Alternatively, you can hold the contest only once a year, hype it up and build a lot of links in one swoop.

8. Become a product reviewer

Search for opportunities to become a product reviewer. For example, sites like Amazon allow users to leave comments on most products and others, like CNET, review products themselves. You might be able to find an on-line review service in your industry, so apply to become a reviewer. In the byline of your review, you might be able to leave a link. You might also be able to have a link in your profile. This will help establish you as an expert and build links back to your blog.

9. Add links to your social media profiles

Take advantage of any SEO opportunities you have on your social media profiles to link back to your website. For example, you can link back to your website on your Facebook page info section, your Twitter profile biography, and your LinkedIn profile about section.

Can you add a #10 tip to the list? Add your favorite backlink strategy to the comments below!