Five reasons you should start sending a newsletter

I’m a huge fan of newsletters (no surprise to you if you follow my content :) ). Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with people in a reliable and regular way. Today I’m going to break down five reasons I think you should be sending a regular newsletter to your audience. 

1)   Who doesn’t check their email?

Almost everyone checks their email daily, if not 500 times a day (I admit nothing!). People check their email far more reliably and more often than they do any other social network so getting into their inbox means they are much more likely to see the information you want to share with them.

2)   They asked for it

People have a tendency to think of email as bothersome, but remember that if you have someone’s email address it’s because they gave it to you (if they didn’t, you need to make sure you make a few changes.) 

If you convinced someone that they want to receive email from you, they probably want to hear what you have to say and it’s not remotely a bother to them.

3)   You know they saw it

Advertising on social networks, or any other kind of advertising, will never guarantee that your audience will see your message. Facebook algorithms, and whether or not they’ve logged in to potentially see the message at all is a big unknown.

When you are sending someone an email they are almost guaranteed to have seen that you sent them something. That doesn’t mean they’ll open it, or read it (this is why subject lines are SO important), but it does mean that they saw something from you. This is much more reliable than any other way of getting in touch with your audience.

4)   You can measure the success

Newsletter tools have amazing ways to measure the success of what you’re sending. You can see who opened the emails and what they clicked on, you can run tests to see if you have more opens based on the time of day that you send or based who you’ve sent the email from (we’ve played around a lot with sending emails from “Wellman Wilson Consulting” vs. “Lara and Karen”). Metrics let you know if what you’re doing is working, something you always need to pay attention to in order to make sure that the efforts you’re putting into online marketing is worth it.

5)   It works

I can’t say this as confidently for any other online marketing tool. When I talk to people about the success of their newsletter, especially if it’s sent with regularity, everyone tells me it impacts not only relationship building, but also sales. An email newsletter gets results and that has to be the biggest reason of all to have one. 

Do you want to start an email newsletter but you’re not sure where to start? Join us for a free webinar on Tuesday, September 16th at noon EST. In this one-hour webinar we’re going to be covering the basics of why you need a newsletter, what you need to consider when starting a newsletter, what you should be saying, and answering all your newsletter questions. 

Sign Up Today!

Throwback Thursday - why it's fun for businesses too

Every Thursday I love going through my social network feeds and seeing old photos of my friends for Throwback Thursday/#TBT (Throwback Thursday is when people share old photos, primarily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). I know I’m not alone because the likes and comments on these posts are all super high. So, what is it about Throwback Thursday that people like so much?

Who are you?

People want to know about you.  They want to get to know you.  They want to feel like they’re talking to a human being who they can connect with. 

That photo of you and your sister at the beach in 1986, or the photo of you at your high school graduation, it gives people a glimpse of you that touches an emotional point in them. Those old photos help make you seem more human to them, which makes them feel more connected to you.

It’s the story

All of this comes back to the idea that people love a story and Throwback Thursday is giving people another glimpse at your story. Who you are, how you became the person you are and how that relates to the people you deal with in your audience is always key.

Should YOU be sharing old photos?

If there are photos of you that you feel comfortable sharing and that you can relate back to your business, either because it has a direct link or because it lets you share a story that your audience will relate to, it’s a great idea to share the photo. I have shared a lot of Throwback Thursday photos on my personal Facebook timeline, but I am now inspired to share some here with you.

Take a look at this photo from 2010 of a gang of friends in a “Losing it in Ottawa” group (the first project Karen and I started together) taking part in Run for the Cure. We’ve done a lot of fun things together!

 

Or this photo, of my husband and I before we were married. It was taken for an article in Glue Magazine about couples who met online, proving I’ve been making online connections for a long time!

Or this one of me taking part in a workshop to learn how to make videos on my phone, which reminds me, I need to start doing that again!

 

These little glimpses into my world will hopefully make you feel like you know me a little bit better, and that’s what I’m always looking to have happen in my online communications. I want to build relationships with people so that when the time comes, you think of me if you’re ready to take the next step and learn more about online marketing. Spend some time and think of how you can do the same with YOUR audience.

Then leave me a comment and let me know if you share Throwback Thursday photos personally or for your business, and if you do, share a link - I’d love to come and see them!

Is the #ALSIceBucketChallenge a case of slacktivism?

If you’re online you have surely seen people pouring ice water on their heads over the last couple of weeks. It’s one of the most viral trends I have ever witnessed and that alone makes it worth talking about.

What is the #ALSicebucketchallenge

Simply put, the ice bucket challenge is a challenge where people pour a bucket of ice water over their head and then challenge three friends to do the same within 24 hours.  If they don’t pour the ice water over their heads they need to donate $100 to XYZ charity. Friends of Pete Frates turned the ice bucket challenge into an ALS cause. Check out this video if you want to find out more about how it happened.  

Is this slacktivism?

The challenge states that you don’t have to donate if you pour ice water over your head. That means that you’re getting OUT of donating by doing this. Because of this, and the fact that there are definitely many people who are taking part in the challenge and not donating, many have started complaining about this challenge, suggesting that this challenge was a case of slacktivism - making it seem like you’re doing something for a charity without doing anything at all.

However, it quickly became clear to me that this was more than just slacktivism because slacktivism doesn’t raise money.  Since July 2014 millions of dollars have been raised for ALS. The numbers are so big and growing so fast that I can’t even keep up with them.

When I looked on Friday night ALS Canada was about to hit three million dollars in donations. On Tuesday afternoon, they were over eight million dollars. Pouring ice water on your head HAS helped - enormously.

Isn’t it a waste of water?

I admit, this argument bothers me. Especially here in Canada, we have no lack of fresh water. Do other people lack it? Yes, of course. But we can’t send the bucket of ice water to the people who need it, so, in my opinion, using it to help a different cause is a great thing to do. In places where they have less water (like California) people are being discouraged to take the challenge.

My favourite response with regards to water is from Matt Damon who I think does a great job of making serious issues fun with his organization water.org. He did the ice bucket challenge by using water from the toilets in his house. His toilet water is cleaner than a lot of drinking water is in other countries, making the clean water message come through without sounding bitter, all while doing the ALS challenge.

What made this so successful?

This is one of the most successful fundraising campaigns ever, and the reason for that is because it wasn’t started by a charity, it was started by people. People decided to do this and they challenged their friends. They combined this with something that is fun to watch (videos of people dousing themselves in ice water are funny) and easy to do (we all have access to water and ice). It’s a story, it’s personal, and it doesn’t feel like it’s driven by someone just asking for money.

I doubt this will be reproducible for ALS, but for now, they are getting more money in donations than they ever have before and if they can keep even a small percentage of their new donors engaged to give again in the future, this is a HUGE win for them.

What I would love to see is the world getting behind causes like this on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if influencers with as much of an audience as Mark Zuckerberg and Will Smith got behind a charity on a yearly basis? I have no idea what the next funny challenge will be or if we’ll ever see something like this again, but it has been fascinating to witness and speaks volumes about the amazing potential that the internet and social media has for doing good.

My turn!

I could hardly write a post about this without doing it myself so I took the challenge on with two of my kids. We also made a donation. Here’s the video!

Your turn! Leave a comment and let me know if you’ve done the ice bucket challenge, if you’ve donated to ALS and if you think this is a worthwhile cause.

Post by Lara Wellman.

The Value of Recommendations and Endorsements on LinkedIn

There are a lot of great features on LinkedIn.  It’s a great way to connect and network, to find great information and it’s a great way to get social proof on whether someone is worth working with.

Because of that last point I think the recommendations and endorsements are really key.

Recommendations

Recommendations are the equivalent of testimonials on LinkedIn.  They are given by people who have taken the time to write out why they have liked working with you, working for you, or having hired you.

3 tips for getting and using recommendations

1)   Ask for them.  LinkedIn makes this easy, but make sure to tell people what you’re looking for, and only ask people who could easily give you a testimonial (don’t ask people who have never worked with you!)

2)   Ask people who have given you recommendations if you can use them in other marketing materials and on your web site.

3)   Give recommendations to others.  This is not only a nice thing to do, it will often encourage the recipient to do the same for you.  

Here are a few of my recommendations.  They’re really nice to have :)

Endorsements

Endorsements are a way to tell people what you do and prove that people know what you do.  You set up a list of skills and people will click if they agree that you do that.

It is important not to think that these are testimonials.  Most of the people who endorse you haven’t even worked with you.  Instead it is a way to know if what you’re putting out into the world is what you want.  The important thing is to take it all with a grain of salt.  People will likely endorse you for things they’ve never seen you do, or for things you don’t even do.  Take it as an overall measure of what you’re projecting to the world.  

For example, if you are a mortgage broker and you are being endorsed for planning events then you need to figure out how to put more information about your ability to help with mortgages.  If you have skills that you wish weren’t there at all (maybe someone added them or you’ve changed your focus) you can edit them.

Challenge

1) Make a list of 3 people you could write a recommendation for.  What are the key points that you would share in a testimonial about them.  Go write them now!

2) Go to LinkedIn and endorse 5 people.

Leave us a comment here or on Facebook to let us know you did it!

Facebook page? Group? Account? What’s the difference?!

As I talk to people, I often realize that one of the key things that confuses people is understanding just what the difference is between the sections of Facebook. When I ask if someone has a Facebook page, they often say yes, or they tell me they have two and then I quickly figure out that what they actually have is an account.

So I’m going to break it down here in the hopes that it will lessen the confusion for everyone.

Facebook account (a.k.a. personal profile)

This is YOU on Facebook. When you sign up for Facebook and set up a password and then go in and add a photo and then start making connections with other people on Facebook by “friending” them, it is done through your personal profile.

Only individuals should have a Facebook account (there is an exception, but for simplicity we aren’t going to get into that). 

This is who I log in to Facebook as – this is my Facebook account.

Key distinctions:

• You have to be a person
• People can’t see any information you share (that isn’t made public) without being connected to you
• To make connections with someone both have to agree

Facebook page

A Facebook page is your business’ presence on Facebook.  By Facebook’s rules, businesses are not allowed to have an account and interact with other people on Facebook the way that people do.

Page is the distinguishing word here.  If someone says “page” they mean something that looks like this where you can go and like the page and allowing it to possibly get some of it’s content into your newsfeed.

Key distinctions:

• When you like a page you get immediate access, nobody has to approve anything
• There are analytics that lets a business measure the success of what they’re posting
• Information comes out of the page to people, but people’s information (other than basic demographic information) doesn’t come in to the page.

Facebook groups

There’s yet another kind of Facebook space that people can create, a Facebook group.  A group is like a discussion forum.  It is created by one person but everyone within the group can post to the rest of the group.  There are a variety of different kinds of groups, public ones (which are called open), private ones (which are called closed and secret ones that can’t be found by search at all.

They are great for many reasons, including planning committees, classroom discussions, clubs, etc.

Key distinctions:

• Only individuals (using your Facebook account) can be a member of a group, not business pages
• People can converse with each other without being Facebook friends. Other than what is posted within the group, people can only see information that is made public if they are not friends with you
• There are no analytics or options for advertising so it is not an alternative to a Facebook page, but can be used by a business to create more community

Leave a comment and let us know if this was helpful and if you’d like more of the language of Facebook broken down in future posts.