Marketing Checklist = Social Media & Email Marketing for Small Businesses
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Email Marketing – 43% ROI – most valuable tool out there
- Use Constant Contact – https://albertkaufman.constantcontact.com
- Consistent Branding
- Stick with 2-4 colors
- 1-2 fonts
- Relevant Message – short and Sweet
- Welcome Email: What to expect, how often you send and a special offer
- Newsletters: Blog posts, press releases, events, announcements
- Promotions: New and compelling offers, clear call to action
- Consistent “from” name
- For mobile-friendly emails (which should be all you do at this point) stick to one column and keep logo left-justified or centered
- Contact information in the body of the email
- Add in social media links
- Clear call to action
- Quality photos
- Link your logo/photos back to your website
- Links, Links, Links
- Give a short description or teaser line and link the rest of the info.
- Join My List button (always!)
- Social Share Bar (in header options)
- Web page version option (in header options)
- White space is your friend!
- Use the “Share this email with your friends” option
- Be yourself… use conversational text!
- Don’t forget the Humor!
Social Media Suggestions
- Learn about Hootsuite, Buffer and Sendible (pick one and use it)
- Buffer has a great daily newsletter
- Make sure all accounts are filled in
- Think about a different voice for each type of account
- LinkedIn – business casual
- Facebook personal page: personal
- Facebook fan/business page: about the business
- Twitter – short and sweet
- Google+ – think about keywords and SEO
- Always be thinking about keywords and SEO 🙂
- Pinterest/Instagram – pictures pictures pictures
- Double-check your spelling
- Think ahead – editorial calendars are great!
- Are there holidays, other events coming up, tomorrow, a year from today!
- Follow your competitors – what are they posting?
- Err on the side of over-posting – with the new algorithms, it’s likely followers won’t see much of what you post (see why Email Marketing is a preferred way to spend your time/$$$)
- Try things – make mistakes
- Everyone is learning social media together – no one is an expert – try something clever and your post may go viral
- Upload native video to Facebook and elsewhere.
- Be prepared in case anything ever does go viral (have all accounts filled in with website URLs – landing pages where you would like people to get to
- Think about the what, why, who, kinds of questions often – who am I trying to reach with what message?
- What would success look like?
- Consider trying FB advertising – boosting posts vs. advertising
Feel free to keep in touch. I love fielding questions about social media and email marketing. Don’t get discouraged – this is a new field and it’s a constant learning curve! Good luck, Albert Kaufman