File this little website design commentary under “Pet Peeves”. I’d add Pet Peeves as a category but I’m afraid WordPress’s taxonomy management system would, sua sponte, reject the petty peevishness.

Here’s the issue: Is there a clearer way of expressing the concepts of “newer” and “older” when it comes to site navigation of article archives?

Is “previous” clearer than “older”? Is “next” clearer than “older”? Is “next” synonymous with “old”? Is “previous” synonymous with “new”? Why bother with “previous” and “next” when what is really meant is “older” versus “newer”?

I’m tired of tripping over this upthrust little root in my walks down Site Navigation Lane. Sometimes “previous” is used to mean “older” and sometimes it’s used to mean “newer”. Ditto “next”.

Can’t we just get along, by agreeing that what we really mean? Isn’t archive navigation always a case of viewing old versus new material?

Do we really need to obfuscate the meaning by employing “next”? Isn’t “next” always going to mean “not here”, i.e., “something else” or “something new” as in “not this article or page, which you’re now viewing”? Does “next” really convey a sense of “where in time or order” – other than “not on this page”?

I dunno. Maybe  I have my cranky hat on and it’s restricting the blood flow to my already enfeebled brain. However, given the aging of some 70 million Americans and countless other global babyboomers, might it not be a good idea to employ the K.I.S.S. rule of design?

Aren’t we really talking about the design of user navigation for navigating a site’s archives? Aren’t archives, in significant measure, about “Old $hit” and “New $hit”?

Oh design world, hear my plea! Keep it simple. Keep it clear. Throw out “previous” and “next”. Tell the truth. This is “Older”. This is “Newer”.

Using “Old” ain’t all bad.Old doesn’t have to be scary. Old doesn’t have to imply “uncool” or “less desirable” or “less usefull”.

And it’s far better than decrepit, expiring, doomed,  . . . which would accurately describe the value of so many articles found in the archives in the digital era.

No related posts.

Why build your own content, when you can have someone else build it for free?  Interview campaigns are one of the best ways to build reputable user generated content.

Don’t waste your time structuring a poor interview campaign. Follow these easy tips to design the best email campaign for user generated content.

Step 1: Creating the Message

Designing the Best Questions

Interviews can be slightly intimidating to any individual. Make your recipient feel more confident by starting off with an easy question. If the reciepient reads the hardest question first, that person may think they’re unqualified or they don’t have the time to answer such detailed questions.

You can rearrange the order of the questions once you have their responses.

Sending Questions in Email, .txt, or doc

When you send interview questions, should you paste the questions directly into the email, add a .txt, add a .docx or do all of the above?  This is an ongoing debate within our firm, so I’ll let you decide.

Email

(+) Recipients prefer to work directly in email
(+) Can copy and paste the interview into the format that person prefers
(+) Two less steps of downloading and uploading for you and the recipient

.Txt or Docx

(+) Easy one step download
(+) Allows recipient to forward documents to others
(+) Formatting is already complete
(-) Fear of downloading document from unknown sources
(-) Programs may be incompatible

Introductions, then Sales Pitch

There are few circumstances when you should go directly into a sales pitch. This is one of them.

Your first sentence should introduce who you are. Your second sentence should tell more about what your company does. Your third sentence should inform the recipient how your company’s interview can actually benefit the reader.

If you already have a few responses to your interview, make sure to include a URL to these interviews. When people see that others have responded to your interview, they’re more inclined to keep up with the competition.

Step 2: Finding Points of Contact

Focus on Smaller Businesses

Sometimes it’s easy to hook the little fish in the pond, over the big shark in the ocean. Send your interview campaign to smaller businesses who are eager to get their name out there. You may notice a better response rate from smaller businesses who have more motive to answer you back.

Target the Public Relations Department

When writing an email campaign for UGC, you should reach out to a professional in the industry. This could include entities such as government agencies or small businesses.

Finding the best individual point of contact is key to a successful campaign. Most small businesses will have their employees listed on a “Contact” or “About” page. I have found that the best point of contact is the PR or marketing department.

Have Multiple Points of Contact

Once you’ve found a point of contact, find another. Many times you will get “out of office” replies, or just blatantly ignored. Sending an email to one person, while CC: the other, holds both people responsible to responding to you. Sending an email to two people will also help you build buzz around the office, which will further increase your odds of getting a response.

Step 2: Contact from Your End

Use a Business Email Address

Email that comes from a credible source is more likely to get a response. Email coming from joeschome@gmail.com doesn’t look as good as interviews@businessconsultant.com.

Use multiple Email Addresses as Backups

Email can be blocked for a number of reasons. This is why it’s important to use backup email addresses.

• Don’t: Send the same interview out at the same time from several email addresses.
• Do: Send an email out from interviews@businessconsultant.com. If you don’t get a response within a week, send the same email from BusinessInterviews@gmail.com

Step 4: Sending the Email Campaign

Contact on a Monday

Messages sent Monday-Wednesday receive the best response rates. Employees are eager for a new project at the beginning of the week, and will be more likely to answer your interview.

Sending messages on a Friday guarantees a smaller response rate. Employees may read your message Friday, but by the time Monday rolls around, it’s long been forgotten, and there’s no “new message” icon there to remind them.

Crafting the Best Subject Line

• Keep the subject short and sweet
• Exclude spam related words
• Explain how the email benefits the recipient
• Include who you are
• If your message requires an urgent response, say so.
• Do all of this in 7-1o words

Avoid hyperlinks in the body

One common spam filter is hyperlinks. Try to avoid adding a hyperlink to the body of your first email. If you have to add a hyperlink, break it up so it is not as easily recognized as a hyperlink, but still makes sense to the recipient.

Ask to be white listed 

The best way to ensure your messages will be received is to ask the recipient to white list your email address. This protects you from being blacklisted in any future contacts. You worked so hard to establish the connection, ensure it will remain opened.

Step 5: Including Social Media

Twitter Improves Response Rates

The best way to improve your response rate is to use social media. Since social media occurs in “real time” it’s more likely that you will receive an immediate response on a social media channel.

Do not send your entire message through social media. Simply ping the related social media account to inform the owners that you have sent them a message. This also helps to find out whether or not your message arrived to the right account.

Contact through multiple channels 

A successful interview campaign requires an aggressive sales tactic. There are many reasons why your message could get lost, so to ensure the best response rate, send your message through multiple channels: Email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Again, don’t contact all of these points at once. It’s best to follow this order:

1. Email
2. Twitter
3. Other Social Media
4. Phone Call

Step 6: You Receive a Response

Post the Interview ASAP

Once you get the interview response, post it ASAP. Once it’s posted, message the interviewee with the link where the interview has been posted. This increases the odds that the person will then link back to your interview. Wallah, delicious link juice.

Track your data

Track all relevant data:

• Business Name
• Website
• Contact Name
• Job Title of Contact
• Contact’s email address
• Subject Line of your email
• Channels on which you contacted
• Website for business social media account
• Week day, Date you sent email
• Week day, Date you received response

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

At the end of the interview post, make sure to give credit to the business who completed the interview. Post a link back to their website, and increase the odds that they will link back to you.

Make the Interview Public

Sending out interviews can be a time consuming task. Once your interview campaign has built traction, you can write an interview post directly on your site. Include a post that is similar to the email you would send out. At the bottom, include the interview. Add an email address that you want to receive the interviews at.

Now that you know the “20 Tips for Writing the Best Email Campaign for User Generated Content,”
learn the 10 Things You Should Never Do in Email Marketing Campaigns.

 Author: Kelsey Libert

Related posts:

1. 10 Things You Should Never Do in Email Marketing Campaigns
2. Outsourcing Content Creation Doesn’t Begin Or End With Writers Writing

Email campaigns are a great way to build content, when done right. If done wrong, email campaigns can chew up countless hours with no reward. Life lesson: sometimes learning how to do the right thing, requires you to learn how to avoid all of the wrong things first.

Email Marketing Campaigns Gone Wrong

Users today have spam filters which accidentally forward email into spam for all different reasons. What’s the number one reason you ask? Spammy subject lines. The number two reason? Spammy keywords in the body. Last but not least, the users themselves may take once glance at your email address, and route you into a blacklist.

With so many barriers to get around, it’s easy for your email campaign to be lost in cyberspace forever.

If you’re going to spend countless hours creating, optimizing, and tweaking an email campaign, make sure you do it right the first time. Avoid the mistakes of a beginner by learning the top ten bloopers to avoid in email campaigns.

10 Things You Should Never Do In An Email Campaign

1. Use an Unidentified Email Address

Avoid sending an email campaign through a @gmail @yahoo @hotmail account. Professional email should be sent through the company’s email account (@yourbusinessname). Your email will represent a valid source if it is sent by a business account. For example, for the interview campaign done on Foliage.org I tested two email accounts:

• __@foliage.org
• __@gmail.com

The response rate for @foliage.org was much higher than the @gmail. Testing two email accounts comes into use in tip #9.

If you must use a gmail account, make sure the preceding name of the account is descriptive about your business. Don’t use Jenny@gmail.com if you should be using businessconsultant@gmail.com. Yes, a lot of GMail accounts are taken, but do your best to secure one that tells more than just your name.

2. Write Spam Filled Subject Lines

The subject line is the first message a recipient sees before he or she reads the email. I know you have deleted an email before even opening the message. Why waste a couple extra minutes reading an email if it already seems spammy from the start? My time is valuable, and so is yours. However, the recipient of your email campaign is thinking the same thing.

Tips for Subject Lines:

• Sometimes including the recipients name in the subject line can trigger a spam filter
• Write a subject line that tells the recipient the benefits of opening your email- what’s in it for the reader
• Identify who you are and what your business is about
• Keep it short and sweet (8-10 words max)
• Provide a sense of urgency when applicable

In order write a successful subject line, you need to test a few subject lines first. Ideally, you should test 3-5 subject lines for each marketing campaign. This will help you find out which type of subject lines are most successful in your business. Use this information to tailor future campaigns.

Spam Trigger Words:

• Free!
• 50% off!
• Click Here
• Call now!
• Subscribe
• Earn $
• Discount!
• You’re a Winner!
• Lose weight

3. Forget About Recording Data

This may be one of the most overlooked parts of sending an email campaign. It also is the biggest headache to go back and record this data (trust me, personal experience). The data you receive from your email marketing campaigns can help you structure and improve future email campaigns.

This is an idea of the important data that you should track:

• Name of Business
• Business Website
• Name of Contact
• Job Title of Contact
• Contact’s email address
• Subject Line of your email
• Channels on which you contacted
• Website for business social media account
• Week day, Date you sent email
• Week day, Date you received response

4. Forget about Marketing Analysis

The countless hours you spent customizing your email campaign will be wasted without marketing analysis. The reason you record the data is to eventually analyze it, right? Marketing analysis may be a little time consuming, but it’s worth its weight in gold, especially if you plan on doing future campaigns. Use the data you receive to record which subject lines had the best response rates, which channel was most successful, and what day of the week returned the best response.

5. Not Using The Power of Social Media 

Through running email campaigns on several websites, I found that the most successful campaign came from using social media. Since social media occurs in real time, so you are often able to contact your recipients and receive an instant message back.

Don’t use Social Media as your only point of contact. Instead, use social media as a back up for sending your email. Once you send your email campaign, ping the related Social Media account to let the agency know you just sent them a request for an interview. Most agencies will reply within hours if not a few days.

Not all agencies have social media accounts, but most that do will have that account listed on the homepage of their website. Try contacting through Twitter first, and use Facebook as needed.

6. Only Contact the CEO

That’s great, you managed to find the email address of the CEO. Now, you’ve basically guaranteed your email won’t get read. A CEO would love to promote the company name by doing an interview. However, as a CEO, this person is probably much to busy to read your interview, let alone respond to it. If you must email the CEO, then CC this person, don’t make that individual your only contact.

In fact, by forwarding your message to a CEO, you may improve your success rate of your campaign. Have the PR person be your main contact, but copy the CEO in order to hold PR responsible for responding to your message.

7. Only Contact One Person

Going along with the previous tip, it’s best to contact more than one person in a department. This holds each individual responsible for replying to your message. It also builds buzz about your message. If a person sees that they are not the only contact, it’s likely that the multiple contacts will want to discuss your email.

Target your email to contacts in the PR department. Since these employees are the head honchos for promoting the business, they have a higher response rate.

8. Send Email Marketing Campaign Late on Friday

Research shows that office work on Friday consists of Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. Shameful, I know, but we’re all victims to the end of the work week drag.

The worst thing you can do is to send your email campaign out on a Friday. Most employees will rarely respond to an email they receive late Friday, since one foot is already out the door by 12:00 pm. Sending an email on Friday increases the likelihood that your message will never get read. If your message does get read on Friday, many people will forget to respond by Monday.

9. Use Only One Email Address to Send a Campaign

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Since there are many variables that could cause an email to get routed into spam, it’s good to test two email accounts. Be wary of coming off as spam mail. Don’t send the same campaign out using two emails in one day. Only use your backup email account if you don’t receive a response within the first two weeks after you sent the message.

10. Use Only One Channel to Send Your Message

If you’re really determined, use more than one channel to send your message. A fully staffed team should call the contact after all other channels have failed.

Author: Kelsey Libert

No related posts.

When content marketing authors run out of useful material a safe place to retreat to is to write an article about writing killer headines . . . for articles.

Here’s the rub: a killer headline is only as valuable – to a reader – as the killer content that follows.

And how rare is that? Content that just slays you, by which I mean transforms the way you think about something, changes the way you perceive the world, or otherwise radically shifts your behavior?

So allow me to suggest that the next time you see a website pumping out a series of articles on writing fabulous, evocative, killer, super-ultra-magna-luxe-hot-fab headlines – instead of simply pointing you to the sites one good archived article on the subject – it may be time to start looking elsewhere for inspiration.

Because nothing is less inspiring than reading one more headline about how to write . . . headlines.

Oh, and not to leave you wanting, you want to know how to actually write a super-duper headline?

You do that by researching a topic, studying an issue, dissecting something, pulling back and analyzing – all of that, and more – until you are thoroughly convinced and thoroughly prepared to write, and thereby reveal and effectively communicate, something not previously known or understood or grasped or presented, that will – IN FACT, IN THE ACT OF READIND YOUR WRITING – change someone’s life in a way that will actually matter, make a real, material difference in the quality of their life or the lives of others.

You do that first and then you have the right to craft a title that promises a lot and that evokes hope or excitement.

You fail to do that and you wonderous skills at crafting titles that promise the world but only manage to deliver the latest in a long series of disappointments will only serve to mark you as another BS artist.

Under promise. Over deliver.

No related posts.

“Domainer logic” goes something like this: Generic descriptive domains are great assets because they get type-in traffic, are easy to remember, and therefore can save entrepreneurs big money that would otherwise have to be spent on “branding” a Web address.

Due to their inherent greatness, value, traffic generation . . and domainer savvy . . the VAST majority of generic descriptive domains are held by . . . domainers.

One consequence of domainer logic is that the development of generic descriptive domains has been held up, a bit, since many potential domain endusers look elsewhere when confronted with domains that are already registered.

Had vast numbers of generic domains NOT been snatched up by domains IS IT possible that a significant number of the large, “established in the market” players might have registered those same great generic domains?

Probably.

Would those same established companies have developed those domains?

Probably not, as most large players in any vertical “already have a brand”. Therefore, a great generic domain would likely have served only as a redirect, not as a “new brand for an existing player, at least for the past 10-15 years.

But what about the newcomers? Would an emerging regional bank have opted to use Bank.com as its Web address? That wouldn’t surprise me. And on the story goes.

Of course, building a brand on Pets.com does not guarantee success. However, Diapers.com and Soap.com proved that the right domain plus a knowledge of the industry can take you far enough to either impress . . or worry . . the likes of Amazon.com

So while we, the self-titled domainers, hold sway over many great generic descriptive domains – by virtue of a certain domain institutionalized idiocracy, i.e., NOT developing the great domain platforms ourselves – the very proof of the greatness of generic descriptive domains “as development platforms” has been hampered, delayed, hamstrung.

Ergo, when we wish to argue how “potentially great” or, better yet, “great in potential” our domains are . . and how well they can and will work . . we, the domainer community, are just a little bit . . light on the proof of the argument. Call it a self-inflicted wound, the stuff of a certain . . systemic . . idiocracy.

Perhaps our eyes are slowly opening. Perhaps we want to test the merits of our own arguments. Perhaps the loss of PPC revenue, alone, is enough of a kick in the pants to move from domainer to developer.

Whatever the reason, more than a few other domainers – all of whom have taken a hit on their PPC revenue – are now working on developing the proof of the value of their generic domains.

And yes, before you get your knickers in a knot, I too am a member of the domainer idiocracy, one who is working on raising his development IQ.

Related posts:

1. Bad News For Domainer Developers
2. Chossing a Brandable Domain or a Generic Keyword Domain
3. Converted Leads and Domain Name Aftermarket Values

You or I can waste a lot of time looking for answers to our internet marketing questions.

Why are such searches  time wasters?

One BIG reason is the millions of websites clawing at our eyeballs, with “article title hooks”, that are intended to trigger our brain’s basic human instincts.

So, how do you find the good stuff – real brainfood, not junk food, amidst all the cunning, deception and noise?

One way it to use “filters”, preferably high quality ones that filter out the detritus (waste material) and cancel noise.

What’s an example of a decent working filter? One that works, except to the degree that it may suffer a bit from social campaigning yet still manages to deliver value?

Take a look at The Semmys, self-touted as “the year’s best posts in search engine marketing”.

Are the articles really “the best”? They’re pretty good. Better than you might discover “by search alone”.

Effective use of filters requires a bit of mindfulness. In this case mindfulness that any version of online voting can be subjected to social campaigning, i.e., getting your friends and social networks to vote for your article. In the case of The Semmys social networking skills and strategic efforts to win are to be assumed.

That, in itself, might not negate the value of the winning articles, particularly in the case of the Semmys.

Why? It’s the filters, once again.

IF an author can win a “Semmys election” – amidst the highly competitive field of candidates – THEN there’s a good chance that the winner-author has the just demonstrated the very skills that should be a prerequisite . . . to writing about . . . internet marketing and social media marketing . . . in the first place.

Examples of other sources I use as filters for continuing my online marketing education:

Search Engine Land, because most of the contributing authors qualify for the title “professional” in my analysis and the topics all lie near the bulls-eye of the insights and skills to succeed in online marketing.

WebmasterWorld’s Homepage, because it represents the confluence of what is on people’s minds and what they wish to talk about with a decent degree of editorial discretion. (Disclosure: I am a moderator at WebmasterWorld.)

SEOMoz’s Homepage. Although they’re selling themselves and their services and their approach, SEOMoz provides more depth and analysis than most, while allowing engagement/comment to either fill in any whole or challenge the presentation’s methods or findings.

Honorable mention goes to Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com with the qualifier that, of late, a healthy chunk of the public content has focused on what is broken or wrong with Google. He does a great job of articulating and supporting his writings, and if he wants to lead the charge then that’s his prerogative, but . .

I guess sometimes you have to pay for the “good stuff”.

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Part of the bad news for domainer-developers is simple math.

In my experience a well optimized domain name lander or “domain parking page” can generate a click-through rate (CTR)  of twenty to twenty-five (20% – 25%) or higher.

By “well optimized” I mean a domain parking page that is hand crafted with human intelligence. The links on the lander consist of keyword phrases targeted to the meaning or intent of the root domain. The root of the domain forms one of the anchor words in the links. For example, if the domain is “widgets.tld” then the domain lander is populated with keyword phrases such as “blue widgets”, “cheap widgets”, “wholesale widgets”, etc. The phrases should be picked according to their search popularity and advertiser competition.

So, a well optimized lander is build using keyword phrases that become links that trigger advertisements that are paid for by companies that want to target traffic that is searching using those keywords. It can all work rather nicely for certain domains, such as domains with significant natural type-in traffic, which domains have a high commercial intent, i.e., “hotels” versus “galaxy 233-M”.

So what’s the simple math?

Sites populated with contextual ads, such as Adsense or Kontera, tend to generate CTRs or click through rates, in the one percent (1%) range and slightly up from there. It’s possible to create sites with higher rates but they tend to be “thin content sites” with little useful content and a high density of ad blocks. Not sites destined to rank naturally in any search engine for a long period of time.

Let’s assume you have a modest am0unt of type-in traffic for a highly commercial domain in the legal, investing, insurance or other competitive market. Let’s  say you get 5 type-ins a week and 3 of those are people shopping for domains. So, in theory you are getting 2 “really interested type-ins” a week. That’s a 100 type-ins a year for a highly commercial, highly competitive domain. That’s not all that bad if the PPC clicks are paying $2-$3.00 or more.

Do the math: 100 type-ins a year X 20% CTR on ads = $40.00-$60.00+ a year on an $8.00 domain. That’s profitable.

Now, develop that same domain. What do you get?

Let’s assume that search engines are “long term stupid”, so that whatever advantage an “exact match domain” has, for ranking purposes, that advantage may not last forever. It will likely always remain one important variable in ranking but its ranking weight or up-thrust won’t cause the same domain to crush the SERPs. So, for the sake of a durable analysis let’s assume that the traffic the domain gets will remain fairly constant with the pre-development traffic, at least until such time as you domain a bood bit more work to develop a site, gather links, etc.

So, developed the domain that got 20 clicks or a 20% CTR will now, as a small or early developed site, will get one percent (1%) CTR, effectively reducing the PPC income from $40-$60.00 to $2-$3.00.

So, what you end up having to do is to increase traffic 10-20 times.

You think it’s easy to generate targeted traffic via search engines in competitive markets? You KNOW it’s easy?

It’s not. Anyone who tells you that it is tends to be selling something that isn’t worth the price you paid.

So, the bad news is that by developing parked domains the domainer tends to suffer an immediate loss of income.

Call it the development disincentive.

And get used to it. It’s the price you will pay, as a domainer-developer, for avoiding the train wreck that may await domain parking as a model of monetization or monetizing domain portfolios.

No related posts.

Facebook isn’t just for college students anymore. It has now become a valuable marketing tool for businesses as well. Facebook “Fan Pages” have drawn in big businesses from Microsoft to Wal-Mart to McDonalds (who has 2,448,565 fans and counting). Facebook is a critical tool in today’s market that allows you to build your brand’s presence in the consumer mind.

If you prefer direct marketing, you can simply buy Facebook Ads to reach your target audience. But, if you want to reach an even bigger audience, setting up a Fan page is your best bet. Advertise your Fan page on your website, blog, company newsletter, and other relevant areas to get the word out.

Ways to use Facebook Fan Pages to promote your business:

• Discounts, package deals, and exclusive offers: What is a Fan page without the coupons? Keep them up-to-date and link them to your website if necessary. Exclusive offers for Facebook fans only are a way to measure your return on investment via Facebook.
• Post lots of pictures of your products, in-store and website events, community involvement, and customer-submissions in your Photos gallery: This boosts interest, builds goodwill, and lets consumers know what kind of company you are.
• Link YouTube Videos to your page: If you have some interesting videos that show how amazing your company is or the new things you are doing let the customer see it!
• Use Polls and Surveys: Ask about new, existing, or future products you may carry to see what users like… and don’t like.
• Make the page fun and interactive: A colorful and fun design and atmosphere will attract people to your page.
• Don’t ignore negative feedback: This is your opportunity to appease and retain disgruntled customers. Word-of-mouth can be a big downer on sales so make an effort to reach out unhappy customers.

Facebook Demographics

IStrategyLabs has been tracking the growth of Facebook since 2007. Their Facebook Demographics and Statistics Study (http://www.istrategylabs.com/2010/01/facebook-demographics-and-statistics-report-2010-145-growth-in-1-year/) shows that the 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base. AND… The 55+ audience grew an astounding 922.7% in 2009! So, there is a huge opportunity for businesses to take advantage of this group as well as those college kids. Don’t think for a second that Facebook users have no buying power!

A Facebook Fans’ Return-on-Investment

Some Interesting Facts from the Syncapse Corporation’s Study on  “the Value of a Facebook Fan“:

This study says average value of a Facebook Fan is $136.38 based on the five following variables:

• Product spending — Facebook fans spend, on average, $71.84 more than non-fans over a two-year period. McDonald’s saw the largest variability with Fans reporting spending $159.79 more per year than non-fans. Oreo saw the lowest value with a difference of $28.52.
• Loyalty — Facebook fans are 28% more likely to continue using a brand than consumers who are not fans on Facebook.
• Propensity to recommend — 68% of fans are “very likely” to recommend a product to family and friends (as opposed to 28% of non-fans).
• Brand affinity — 81% of fans feel a connection to the brand (versus only 39% of non-fans).
• Earned Media Value — The large reach and frequency of contact that Facebook provides.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Marketing Is NOT About Relationship Building
2. Social Media Educational Event Saturation

Trust is essential to building new customer or client relationships.

Trust helps to build certainty and remove doubt. In the context of website design trust keeps the “conversation” and the conversion process moving ahead. By virtue of building trust you keep me engaged, reading onwards, clicking to the next step on your website – your connection between me and your company.

So when I have my first encounter with a company’s website undermines my trust I think “Why should I form a relationship with a company that I’m already experiencing doubt about?” I will break the connection right then and there. Walk away. Click away.

Today I came across two situations where my interest in a service was lost due to a loss of my trust.

If you run a hosting company and put a banner on your site advertising $149.00 managed dedicated servers, make certain that you actually offer such a product. When I discover that the only offers are $189.00 and up . . well . . guess whose trust . . and business . . you just lost?

If you are going to attempt to promote your company in an affiliate forum, but you hog-tie your affiliate manager’s hand by not allowing the affiliate manager to disclose the name of the company (except via a phone call), how much further do you really think I’m going to go in building a relationship? You won’t even tell me your name – or anything else about you – and you expect me to call for a date?

A business is often said to “take on a life of its own” and, like human beings, a corporation is often known for it’s character – or lack thereof. Marketers oftenrefer to a business’s character as that company’s “brand experience”. Brand experience is a convenient way of expressing the idea that a company’s brand, in any one consumer’s mind, represents an aggregate of many variables: quality of product, customer service, etc. IN a sense, a “brand experience” is highly akin to what we humans call a “person’s character”, somewhat the sum total of a person with an emphasis on their fundamentally important attributes, such as decency, honesty, stand for something, trustworthiness . . .

When your online business is looking for new customers or new clients you are really looking to build relationships. The lack of trust or loss of trust is lethal to almost any type of relationship.

Do you want my business? Then be a company of good character.

That would include being a business or company worthy of my trust, a company whose brand experience includes that it is a “trustworthy company”.

Do you want to blow any chance you have of having a happy long-term relationship with me?

Then start by blowing my trust from my very first encounter with “you”.

Related posts:

1. Rip Off Report: Trust Rank? Fer Shur!
2. Social Media Success Does Not Equal Business Success

A constant concern, when outsourcing copywriting or “content creation”, is the writer’s English language skills and ability, including spelling, grammer and the ability to “write like a native English speaker sounds”.

One way to to assess skill level is to read their posts on public “job/assignment seeking” forums. If their writing sounds wooden or if they make errors handling simple statements of business practices then you already know what to expect.

A better way is to engage in an old-fashioned online real-time chat via IM, using Yahoo Messenger or MSN messenger, preferably followed by a Skype session if you believe you have found someone able to handle your assignments.

A real-time back and forth exchange should quickly establish a content developer’s or copywriter’s vocabulary, grammatical abilities, naturalness or flow of expression, and typing speed/skill.

So, next time you are wondering if your writer-candidate possesses the degree of writing ability your work requires ask to see a writing sample.

Live. In real time.

If you are planning on outsourcing a larger or multi-article writing project then, after passing the “IM test” ask for a Skype session to further discuss research needs, search skills, article structure, outlining practices, editing, etc. Unless, of course, you prefer to set yourself up for a disappointing ourcome.

A copywriting “test” by IM. Simple, isn’t it?

Related posts:

1. Outsourcing Content Creation Doesn’t Begin Or End With Writers Writing