Email is quick, casual and convenient–and a potential minefield. An email gaffe can be amusing, embarrassing or even career-ending. Use these guidelines for proper email etiquette to make sure your electronic messages don’t come back to haunt you: Remember that readers cannot hear your tone of voice or see your facial expressions and gestures. [...]
To create an effective marketing campaign that will drive growth in your company, you have to know your customer -- and that sounds a lot easier than it is. There are two angles to the issue of knowing your customer. 1. Have a clear picture of your prospective customers. 2. Have a clear picture of [...]
You can’t make it through a day—or even a few hours—without hearing something about social media. A social media policy for your employees is essential. A social media strategy for your company is equally—if not more—important. Do you have one? Keep these issues in mind when developing your social media strategy: • Begin with [...]
If you use the "social media shares" feature of Constant Contact, here's a tip: Edit the announcement that will go out on your social media channels. The basic default message promotes Constant Contact (example: with a hash tag for Twitter and "check out my latest Constant Contact campaign" for Facebook). You can edit that language [...]
A while back I posted a blog about "camel mail," which is a direct mail technique of making your piece lumpy so recipients are curious enough to open it and find out what's in it. Recently I received a piece that took a slightly different spin on that concept: The "envelope" was a brown paper [...]
Sales professionals know that a gatekeeper is anyone they must go through to get to the decision-maker -- and it can be a challenge to get past the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers are typically receptionists, secretaries and assistants, but they could also be first-line managers, other decision-influencers, outside consultants or even your competitors. Many sales reps view [...]
We all know the benefits of online advertising. The top ones that come to mind include: It's affordable. Online ads have one of the lowest CPM (cost per thousand reached) rates of any medium. It can be tightly targeted. You can define a very specific market and reach only those people. It's global -- or [...]
Is it possible to avoid spam? Sadly, I don't think so. One of the reasons I had my website redesigned recently was to integrated my blog with my primary site for greater search engine optimization. It worked. More people are finding and visiting my site--and more spammers are leaving comments filled with links on my [...]
Full disclosure: I'm a ghostwriter. I write books, articles, blogs and more that are published under my clients' names. Using a ghostwriter is a smart move for busy executives, professionals and subject matter experts who need to publish material but don't have the time and/or writing skills to do it themselves. One caveat: If you [...]
Press releases can be a powerful weapon in your marketing and public relations arsenal. Just be sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot with them. I can’t count the number of press releases I’ve written over the years in my career as a business writer--and it’s almost as hard to count the number [...]
