Hunter Boyle Of AWeber On Email Marketing and Affiliates #AMDays |  |
- Hunter Boyle Of AWeber On Email Marketing and Affiliates #AMDays
- Kred Story Dives Deeper Into Social Influence
- Give Your Small Business A Morale Boost
- 20 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Should be Using
- Creating An Editorial Calendar For Your SMB Blog
- Hackers Leak 1,000,001 Apple Device IDs
| Hunter Boyle Of AWeber On Email Marketing and Affiliates #AMDays Posted: 05 Sep 2012 03:00 PM PDT Welcome to this interview of Hunter Boyle, the Senior Business Development Manager for AWeber, an email and social media marketing service. At Affiliate Management Days East 2012, Hunter will be speaking on: Ways To Bolster Affiliate Relationships With Email. * * * * *
Hunter: I see marketers across all channels struggling with two major factors: creativity and a customer-focused approach. Neither of these are particularly new, but they’re exponentially more important now because of the smaller windows of opportunity to connect with prospects and customers. With email, for instance, who’s excited about signing up for more email updates these days? We’re already inundated with email, plus we’re checking social media channels on our smartphones more and more, and our short attention spans are getting shorter all the time. The same-old approaches might still work, but if you want big results, standing apart from the crowd means finding the right mix of creativity and plenty of “what’s in it for me” for your audience, which doesn’t care about you, but what you can do for them. Question: What are the most frequently overlooked opportunities? Hunter: Sticking with the creativity theme, a lot of marketers still play it safe and stick close to what’s worked for them in the past. Content marketing has created a lot opportunities to have more fun, and engage audiences with a more personable, less corporate approach. I subscribe to the idea that people buy from people, not just websites, so developing a brand experience that’s easy, pleasurable and fun for users is an opportunity most organizations could do more with. Look at the vibe you get from sites like DollarShaveClub.com and Fab.com, or how Quarterly.com and Etsy use personalities, and you get the feeling that you’d enjoy doing business with them. That’s a huge differentiator. Question: In October of this year, you’re speaking at Affiliate Management Days East 2012, covering “15 Ways to Bolster Affiliate Relationships with Email.” I must admit, I was “tickled pink” when I first saw your proposal. This is one extremely important topic. As a teaser, could you give us the top 3 things that affiliate managers can change in their approach to emailing affiliates? Hunter: Instead of laying out three, let me say that we’ll be exploring a few different angles in line with this concept of having fun with content marketing and client communications. There are a bunch of examples, but the bottom line is really about how you manage those relationships from a human perspective, and with a customer- or client-first attitude. The impact that can have on your business is massive, because the impact it can have on their own business is so huge. That’s also a key factor in cultivating loyalty and developing long-term relationships. Question: What are the top 5 mistakes to stay away from, so you don’t repel your affiliates? Hunter: 1.) Not listening to their needs and feedback. 2.) Not asking them for their input consistently. 3.) Not rewarding them for their performance and loyalty. 4.) Not keeping abreast of changes in your industry, and their businesses. 5.) Not communicating effectively (not enough, not providing value, etc.). Question: If you were to leave affiliate managers with just one piece of advice today, what would it be? Hunter: The best, most fruitful business relationships are always two-way. That’s why the best salespeople are those who listen more than they talk. Think about how you’re interacting with your affiliates. Are you simply sending them emails with updates and news tidbits, maybe some rewards, or are you using an array of communication tools that provide real value, and genuinely help them grow their business, so you both can succeed together? If you haven’t done an audit of your communications efforts before, or for a while, that’s an ideal place to start. See where the gaps are. Ask them what else they could be getting that they’re not. And get started delivering it! * * * * * Affiliate Management Days takes place October 9-10, 2012. More information about Affiliate Management Days being held in Ft Lauderdale, can be found here. Or follow the hashtag #AMDays on Twitter. Register using code SBTAM150 to receive $150.00 off your pass. Register by Friday, September 7 (at Early Bird rate), and save a total of $650.00. Be sure to check out the rest of the interview series from #AMDays. The post Hunter Boyle Of AWeber On Email Marketing and Affiliates #AMDays appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
| Kred Story Dives Deeper Into Social Influence Posted: 05 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT In order to measure social influence, there are many factors that must be considered, so a simple numerical score might not be able to tell the whole story. Sites like Klout and Kred have faced some criticism for this exact reason. However, Klout recently redesigned its service to include a more inclusive social analysis, rather than just a score based on numbers. And now Kred is also changing the way it presents information with its new feature, Kred Story.
Kred Story arranges a user's social media posts from an array of sites, creating a sort of collage similar to that of social dashboards like RebelMouse. But what makes Kred different is that it takes all of this information and uses it to analyze social influence. Users can click on their posts and see how many retweets, replies, or other interactions they received, and from whom. This visual representation of social influence allows users to dive deeper into their network to actually learn what types of posts garner the most interaction and results. Instead of just viewing a number and trying to increase that number over time without any real guidance of how to do so, users can see all their posts together and compare them, so they can decide what is working for them and what they might need to change. Kred users can also view posts associated with a certain topic or hashtag. This type of feature could allow businesses to monitor social conversations about their brand or about their industry as a whole. They can also use the tool to find influential people in their network or industry. Kred isn't as widely used as other social influence measuring systems like Klout, but it does present information in a different way and using a different set of factors, so businesses or social media users that want to dive deeper into their social influence summary might consider using it. Currently, Kred Story is based mainly around Twitter, but also includes some information from Facebook. The company hopes to add integrations with more sites like Google+ and LinkedIn in the future. The post Kred Story Dives Deeper Into Social Influence appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
| Give Your Small Business A Morale Boost Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:00 AM PDT Summer is over, and for most small business owners, that means the slow season is coming to a close and it's time to get back to work with renewed enthusiasm. With Labor Day (a holiday created to honor working people) just past, it's also a good time to sit down and take a look at the state of your small business's work force.
Is your staff as enthusiastic about your business as you are? In other words, how is their morale? What are some signs your team might be suffering from low morale? Hopefully you're in tune with your team enough to spot the red flags right away. Frequent sick days or absenteeism, employees dragging in late to work, lack of energy or spirit in meetings, whispered conversations that end quickly when you come into view—all of these can be signs of lagging morale. Unlike engagement, which occurs on an individual level, morale is more of a group thing. One employee with low morale can quickly infect others, spreading the doldrums across an entire department—or company. If your employees' morale is suffering, here are some ways to pep it up again: Be Present An oblivious boss is a common cause of low morale. Even a normally attentive entrepreneur can get sidetracked by stress, deadlines or other demands. If you've been locked away in your office (or out of the office altogether on business trips for weeks at a time) you can easily miss the warning signs that can fester into real problems. Make it a point to get out and mingle with your team or, if you absolutely can't, give a trusted partner or employee the task of monitoring mood and reporting back to you. Check Yourself As much as we entrepreneurs love our businesses, sometimes our morale suffers from long hours, business setbacks or personal issues. Before you starting fixing your employees' outlook, check your own morale to make sure you're not communicating a negative attitude to your employees. If you're less than pumped about your business right now, figure out how to get your mojo back. Communicate It's been my experience that the number-one cause of poor morale is failure to communicate effectively. When employees don't know what's going on, rumors fly and moods plummet. Even if you've got nothing but bad news for your team, sharing it honestly is better than hiding it or sugar-coating it. Let them know what's going on and that you're all in it together. Who knows? Fighting together to overcome the odds just might be exactly what your team needs for their morale to soar. Make It Fun You and your employees probably spend more time together than you do with your families and friends. If those 8 (or 12) hours a day aren't fun, morale's going to suffer – and even in the dullest of industries, there's room to create fun. Take a cue from the high-tech industry and pep up your team's spirits with group activities that build team spirit. Don't just force an event on your staff—pick something that fits naturally with what your employees like to do, whether that's a bake-off, an Ultimate Frisbee tournament or a Friday afternoon beer bash. How do you keep morale high in your small business? Happy Business Team Photo via Shutterstock The post Give Your Small Business A Morale Boost appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
| 20 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Should be Using Posted: 05 Sep 2012 08:00 AM PDT Social media is quickly becoming a main focus of marketing for small businesses. Social media is an excellent tool to build a community around your product or service, expand your target market, and to listen to what your customers want. It's clear that social media is valuable, but measuring social media ROI proves to be a challenge.
Luckily, there are numerous free and low cost tools you can use to measure your social media activity. Do you want to know the increase in brand mentions? The number of conversions directly related to social media efforts? The growth rate of your online community? Know what you are measuring and why when choosing your social media monitoring tools. Here's a list of 20 free social media monitoring tools worth checking out: 1. Hootsuite Hootsuite is a web-based dashboard that allows you to monitor multiple social networks in one place. You can collaborate with fellow employees, schedule messages, and assign tasks to your team. It's particularly great for managing multiple accounts on the same platform. This is one of my personal favorites. 2. Klout Klout provides an influencer score based on your social media activity. Your Klout score is determined using over 400 variables. In addition to working on your own Klout score, you can look at your influences and who you influence to regularly share content that is of the highest quality from trusted sources. 3. TweetReach Who is reading your tweets? How is it being shared? What is the measured impact of what you're putting out there? TweetReach is a social analytics tool that helps you capture this valuable information. 4. TwentyFeet TwentyFeet aggregates your activity from various social media platforms so you can get the full picture of your online presence. Then, you can determine which of your activities are most valuable. 5. Twitalyzer Measure your impact, engagement, and influence on Twitter with this tool. They offer three plans, depending on your needs, Individual, Business and Agency, all at a very reasonable price. They do offer their three most popular reports for free, so just connect your Twitter account and start Twitalyzing. 6. PeerIndex Use this tool to determine your online authority and who your online brand advocates are. Learn which topics are best for you to focus on and who to connect with to spread the word. This dashboard gives you all of the analytics data related to your Facebook page so that you can track growth and impact. Use the Insights to better understand your followers and reach the right audience. Track and measure who is talking about you, your company, your product, or any topic related to your industry. SocialMention pulls data from hundreds of social media services to give you the most accurate, real-time information. This tool allows you to track and monitor social mentions and respond in real-time. Find potential customers, listen to what your competitors are saying, and get immediate feedback about your business. 10. SocialBro Manage and analyze your Twitter account with SocialBro. This tool gives you detailed information about your Twitter community so that you can interact with followers more efficiently and garner the best results. 11. FollowerWonk This Twitter analytics service, now owned by SEOMoz, allows you to understand and sort your followers. Learn when your influential followers are most active so that you can select the best times to engage your community and to ensure you're reaching the right people at the right time. 12. HowSociable Measure your brand's impact online with this tool that provides you with a magnitude score. The score analyzes your level of activity online so that you can determine whether you have enough of a presence. 13. Seesmic Manage all of your business' social media accounts in one place with Seesmic. Quickly view and respond to social activity in real-time even from your mobile devices. 14. Engag.io This is a great tool for managing your conversations on social networks. Engag.io provides you with valuable insights into the people you are talking to via social media and also gives you a place to track whether or not you've responded. 15. TweetDeck Arrange feeds from all of your social networks in one place using the TweetDeck dashboard. You can also schedule tweets and set-up customizable feeds for your social search needs. 16. Brand Monitor Track your brand across numerous social media sites. Find where conversations relevant to your business are taking place so that you can start becoming an active social media participant. Learn trending keywords and measure conversation engagement to help bring more valuable brand content to social media platforms. 17. Kred Similar to Klout, Kred mines social data to give you a Kred score. The score is a combination of your influence and your outreach activity. Kred measures how often you tweet or post, how people interact with you, and the growth of your audience. Kred gives you a detailed breakdown of your score so that you know exactly where you should improve and the areas in social that are working well for your company. 18. Google Analytics Social Reports Nicely integrated into your Google Analytics platform, Social Reports helps measure how social traffic is directly impacting your conversions. Using an overview of your social networks, this tool allows you to visualize your social traffic so that you know where your time is best spent in the social world. 19. TwitterCounter TwitterCounter tracks Twitter users to give you statistics and usage information for your account. This service offers a very basic free package with graphical data, but you can pay a bit more for access to an account comparison feature, more updates, report exports, and more. 20. Topsy This is a real-time social search engine. Sort through the latest social activity related to your industry, brand, or community and apply that knowledge to future business decisions. There’s a lot of overlap in the services these social media monitoring tools provide. It’s most important that you find the tool that aligns with your business needs and personal preferences. Social Media Photo via Shutterstock The post 20 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Should be Using appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
| Creating An Editorial Calendar For Your SMB Blog Posted: 05 Sep 2012 05:00 AM PDT One of the most difficult things about blogging is consistency. It doesn't matter if you're a large brand or a small time consultant; we all have trouble producing unique, authoritative content on a regular basis. Especially if we haven't planned for it in advance. And that's where editorial calendars come in.
Your editorial calendar is your plan for your blog. Quite simply, it's a schedule of the content you plan to produce, who will be writing it, and when it's due for publication. By putting your calendar in place it works to keep everyone accountable, lays the groundwork for the company's blogging commitment, and ensures that blog doesn't hit an unexpected dry spell because you get busy. Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes an editorial calendar, however, below you'll find a number of best practices to help you construct an editorial calendar that will most work for you, regardless of its form. 1. Decide On Your Tool Your editorial calendar can take whatever form is most convenient and comfortable for you. In the past I've used Basecamp Whiteboards, Notepad files and even a constant stream of Post Its on my computer monitor to help me organize my ideas. Today, many bloggers today use Google Docs to construct their editorial calendar because it's accessible from anywhere and provides the ability for multiple people to share and edit the calendar. By making it shareable, everyone gets ownership of the content that is going to be produced. Another available option is to use the Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress. Here, you can create your calendar directly in your blogging form, quickly see all scheduled posts, and even move them around as needed. 2. Think About Goals Having goals surrounding your company's blogging is important regardless of whether or not you're adhering to an editorial calendar; however, your calendar can help you make them actionable. You're able to tie what you want to happen (increase rankings for the term [male cowboy boots] by tying them to specific actions ["We target [male cowboy boots] in a post a week"]. When putting together your content calendar, you'll also want to consider things like:
It's important to map these things out before scheduling content because it will frame the way you think about things. For example, knowing you'll need to post twice a week about your core SEO terms will have a dramatic effect on the editorial calendar you put together. By building your calendar around goals it will help focus your efforts and increase ROI. 3.Map Out Keywords In many cases, the keywords you'll be targeting on your blog will mirror the terms you're targeting on your main site. However, you may find there are other opportunities for long tail terms. Remember that you're blogging as a way to highlight key services, bring attention to what you offer as a company, and to build thought leadership. So your keywords and topics should be selected to go along with those goals. You'll also want to think about which pages you'll want to be driving users to and select topics that will match up. Once you have a list of keywords you'll want to target, assign where you'll want these posts to link off to on your site. For example, if you're a florist wanted to target the phrase [Seasonal Plants], you'll want to link off to pages that show those plants. You should do this with all of your keywords to help yourself, and your staff, so that everyone knows where they should link to based on the content they're writing. When you're thinking about keywords, remember you're also thinking about the terms you'll want to use in headlines, subheads, tags, ALT text, and within other areas of your post. These are all equally important. 4. Brainstorm Content Types When it comes to blog content, the options for what you can produce are virtually endless. Create a list of the content types you'd like to try out or what you think you can realistically handle. Some content types to consider:
Once you have an idea of the type of content you'd like to create for your blog, rotate the different types around the calendar to keep things fresh and so you're not posting all your videos in the same week. Content diversity will help keep both you and your reader interested in your blog. 5. Check Your Other Calendars While you're still thinking up potential content ideas, take a moment to pull out your business calendar. Are there any anniversaries or birthdays coming up that you can create content around? Is there an industry conference happening that you can work into your schedule? Have a big offline marketing campaign launching first quarter? Consider all of these and find ways to work them in. Don't forget to check a real calendar, as well! Is there a way to tie-in blog content with national holidays, the seasons, well-known events (like the Olympics that just passed or Back to School season?). All of these things can be incredibly helpful in making your blog relevant and interesting. 6. Plot Your Course Just as there are many tools to help you create a calendar, there are many ways to set it up. Some bloggers create editorial calendars simply be plugging a keyword + content type (article, interview, photo, etc) into a specific day so they know on Sept 1 they need a post that matches these elements. Others will take a step further and start brainstorming actual titles, complete with keywords, tags, and the interior pages you'll be linking to. Some will color code the calendar based on author or topic. However you want to do it is up to you. Personally, I like writing down the keyword I'm going after and the proposed title. For me, this does the best job of setting up what is to come that day and to get my mind moving in the right direction. I also like knowing what the other people I'm working with will be targeting so that I can offer ideas or helpful links, when possible. But again, whatever makes sense for you. The above is how I go about putting together an editorial calendar. What does your process look like? Image credit: kovaleff / 123RF Stock Photo The post Creating An Editorial Calendar For Your SMB Blog appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
| Hackers Leak 1,000,001 Apple Device IDs Posted: 05 Sep 2012 02:30 AM PDT Uh-oh! It may indeed be the ultimate security debacle. A hacker group seeking to reveal an alleged FBI breach that it claims would have allowed the Federal agency to spy on citizens, leaked 1,000,001 IDs belonging to Apple users. It’s an allegation the FBI denies. But for businesses increasingly worried about privacy and the security of their customers’ information, it’s just one more headache. Here’s another look. Apple LeakWorst of all. As bad as it is, it could have been much worse. Hacker activist group AntiSec insists they obtained the data in an effort to expose the FBI’s questionable activities. Though the group trimmed a great deal of personal data from the information released, they say they obtained Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs), user names, names of devices, type of devices, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zip codes, cellphone numbers, addresses, and more. The Next Web Makes no difference. The FBI denies AntiSec’s claims, saying that the computer the group supposedly accessed had never been hacked into, and that the Federal agency was never in possession of the supposed data in the first place. But to the many customers whose data was leaked, how the information was obtained makes little difference. The problem is, that the information was shared without consent. All Things Digital The real problem. No matter how the latest security breach occurred, the underlying difficulty remains. Security consultant Aldo Cortesi writes passionately on industries that have been warned repeatedly about security and privacy concerns but have failed to fix their problems. Businesses of all sizes must step up and realize the importance of privacy and security in our data-driven economy. Corte.Si Safe and SecureThe more the merrier. With privacy concerns growing by the day, the question is how much data businesses large and small should continue collecting on their customers. The answer, says entrepreneur David K. Williams, is as much as they can. Here’s how to apply the information you collect properly and improve the customer’s experience. Forbes Feast or famine. One entrepreneur soon discovered he hadn’t collected enough information about one of his business associates, yet had given that employee too much access to his company’s technology. The result was sabotage and a lesson on the need to collect more data and improve security for all companies, especially those heavily reliant on tech. SmallBiz Technology Another kind of security. There is another way you need to look after your business’s security, and that’s in the area of liability protection and business structure. Both of these will help protect your business and add a level of privacy, says Nellie Akalp, a 2012 Top 100 Small Business Influencer, who has made it her role to help many small business owners add security to their companies. Small Biz Diamonds Where personal info should be shared. Guest poster Jessy Troy argues there is at least one place you should be a bit more free with your personal information–when it comes to your blogging persona. Here are six reasons Troy argues you will want to use your real identity and some personal information when blogging for your business. The Frugal Entrepreneur The post Hackers Leak 1,000,001 Apple Device IDs appeared first on Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends. |
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