Now one thing that works for all types of internet marketing approaches is to make sure you have “buttons” for your images, blogs, products or other content worth sharing. While you may already have a button for people to share your content on Facebook or “pin” your photos on Pinterest, you should also have a button so your content can be shared on Google+. You should also be using your brand’s social profiles as channels for putting up current content as soon as it is available.

Tricks That Can Help You

Keep in mind although new, Google+ currently has around 90 million registered users with as many as 60% actually active. With this does come plenty of competition, of course, but that isn’t all bad. What is the good thing about competition? It gives you someone to study to learn from. This means replicating things that work for them by putting your own spin on it and even improving upon it. It also means avoiding making the same mistakes as your competition.

The important thing to do is gear your marketing efforts to fit the different social platforms. The best way to do this is be involved with each one. The only way to understand what someone may be interested in on Google+ compared to Pinterest is to be an active member on both. This can be time consuming, but trying to have a marketing platform that works by doing it blindly is likely going to be wasted effort anyway.

Some other things to know:

• Get your followers involved by using interactive tactics. Fun contests are an example of a way to get people involved and actually having fun.

• Although interest in Google+ started slowly it is now gaining popularity. As users of Facebook grow more and more tired of issues and changes meant to enhance the site that only seem to annoy users, Google+ gains more registered users and activity.

• At this time you do still have to use a real name for your profile, but this does not mean you will not be able to promote your business or brand.

• All in all remember to try to keep it fun. Visitors are much more likely to get involved with your Google+ profile and your website if you make it fun, entertaining and engaging.

While it may seem like all of this is so time consuming, the bottom line is that it is important to your brand and your business. Getting involved with social networking and internet marketing is crucial to the success of your business or could be responsible for the failure of it.

The following rules and tips will help you understand some of the important elements that go into effective email marketing and how you can keep from getting yourself in trouble. Even if you make it to the inbox, all it takes is one click to skip, delete or unsubscribe from the list. So take a little extra time and follow these basic guidelines and you’ll be on the path from sinus supremus to marketing supremacy before you know it.

Send your emails from a real person’s email address.

A transparent “from” name is a good first step to get people to see that an actual person sent the email and that it’s not spam or some mass, corporate junk blast. Something like chris@sanctuarymg.com instead of subscriptions@sanctuarymg.com is a great way to get yourself in the door – or into the inbox where you intended.

Write a great subject line. Then rewrite it again to make it even better.

Your key to the customer inbox is your subject line. It’s the big decision-maker when it comes to whether your potential customer even opens the email, so take the time to get it right. Getting it right involves choosing the right message and testing that message to ensure that the best message is used for the largest segment of your list. Use A/B testing and try new things to improve your open rate over time and find out what works and what doesn’t. Have you heard of split testing? If not, learn everything you can to become better and more effective.

Avoid spammy, BOLD and sales weasel words in your subject line.

This is where the battle can be won or lost right outta the gate. Customers will decide to open an email or even mark it as spam based on what’s in the subject line so take it seriously. Over 69% of your customers will make the decision to click on the “report spam” or “junk” button using the subject line, according to the ESPC. – Email Sender and Provider Coalition (2007).

Don’t be evil. Don’t spam.

Don’t be accused of spamming. Make sure that the people you’re sending to have given explicit permission to receive emails from you and don’t even try to bend the rules. Did Bob Smith explicitly confirm that he wants emails from YOUR company? If you can’t answer this question with an honest “yes” then you’re a borderline spammer. Did you buy a list where people said they might be interested in offers from “companies like yours”? Sorry, you’re a spammer in my book.

The best way to be successful with email marketing is to build your own list and make sure that your subscribers actually ask to be on your list. If they are signing up on your website, provide a double opt-in system to ensure that all email addresses are signed up legitimately. You should also provide ways for customers to unsubscribe without hassle and remind them in the email how they got on your list. Don’t send too often, build trust, provide great value and personalize your message to build relationships. When in doubt read the bible on what’s allowable in email marketing here.

Don’t forget about mobile devices.

Have you heard of the iPhone? (Yea, that’s supposed to be sarcastic!) Here are some stats and quotes for your consideration:

• Mobile email usage increased 36% in 2010, according to comScore.
• Nielsen put the percentage even higher at 38.5% and you can only imagine what it might be in 2012.
• Checking personal email is the most common web-based activity for smartphone users. – Comscore
• Retail has the highest average opens with 20.08% on mobile devices. – Knotice.
• “Email is actually more important than ever with the ground swell of social and mobile,” says Greg Cangialosi, CEO of email marketing company Blue Sky Factory, which also partners with Mashable.
• In November 2010, 70.1 million mobile users accessed email on their mobile device, a figure representing some 30% of all mobile subscribers. – Comscore

Ensuring that emails are designed for mobile devices is more important than ever so make sure this is a focus with your content and design. (More to come on that subject)

Did we say “Focus on mobile devices?”

One of the most important things you can do to improve your open rate is to ensure that the important part of your email appears in the mobile viewer’s preview pane. Email Marketing Fact: Most people decide if an email is interesting by previewing it, without opening it. If your email begins with images, links, random messages, disclaimers, messages like “Can’t view this? Click here to view online” then customers could skip it, delete it it, or just completely forget about it. The first line of your email is premium real estate so make sure that your most important message and call to action is there as TEXT so you can grab mobile users and not establish any hurdles.

Text, Text and more TEXT.

It has become popular to see who can build the most beautiful emails. While I don’t discount the value of a great presentation, you should never sacrifice effectiveness and you do this by making sure that all your most important information is within the email as text. That should include call-to-action messages, links, supporting information, offers and all important supporting information.

The reason? Many emails programs are set by default to not display images. Many more like mobile devices take too much time to download images or they won’t be displayed at all. If your entire message, offer and links are within an image there’s a good chance that they’re not being seen. Having text in your emails WILL increase your open rate and responses.

Deliverability – Getting to the inbox.

How you send your emails is important. In fact, according to my recent experience and discussions with top industry professionals at a conference in California it’s the only thing that matters. The reputation and the proper configuration of your sending source (the server that actually sends your emails) is critical. Forget about your subject line, your offer, your beautiful email and all the finely crafted wordsmithing in your email if you don’t have a reputable sending source where you can manage your own reputation. If you can’t do this through a company like mine (Sanctuary Media Group), check out the various managed email delivery services like sendgrid.com and smtp.com.

Divide and conquer.

Blasting irrelevant content to your entire subscriber list is another one of the biggest email marketing mistakes you can make. Whenever possible you should try to segment your email list and target your message to specific customers. At the most basic level, maybe this is accomplished by sending a different message to men and women. But you can do this by location and almost any other metric that you have available. Take the time to do this if possible and design your message to appeal to different segments.

Timing is everything.

I won’t even try to say when the best time is to send emails. Everyone has their opinions. Ok, maybe I’ll provide a guess — which would be late morning in the middle of the week. My thinking is that people are caught up with emergencies by this time of the week, they’re awake and they may have time before, during or just after lunch to actually digest an email. But when it comes down to it I think every case is different. If you’re a pizza company, you would probably guess that Friday at 4:00 might be an excellent time to deliver your emails. Again, testing and documenting when you have successes will help you determine what works for you.

Provide great value.

Nothing will help you be more effective than actually providing value to your subscribers. If you continually send the same sale information over and over, customers will tune out or possibly unsubscribe. Your message should be unique, valuable and give them more than just a reminder to buy from you. What this means for you is that you actually have to be creative and do actual work beyond sticking a sale promotion into an email. This is the easy way out. Combine your sale message with advice, subscriber only offers, free downloads, benefits, news and ultimately give them a reason to stay subscribed. Provide value beyond trying to sell them something.

Analyze and Improve

After you send your emails you should have some kind of system to review your successes. You should know how many people opened the emails, who clicked on what and which segments worked better than others. Beyond that you can get as sophisticated as you want but it’s pointless to send a message out to thousands of people without a way to know if anybody opened it. You should measure if it’s working and analyze the date to improve as you go forward.

What else is there? Well, Adobe also promises that you can use this system to invite social media into a multiple channel marketing combination. You can also include experiences on a personal and professional level into social insights. Or perhaps you want to use real-time marketing campaign intelligence. The bottom line is that Adobe’s Social Analytics is meant to make the most of your social media use.

Other Things to Know

One of the main things you may be wondering is who this Adobe system was made for. The answer is enterprise level businesses. Of course, as important and crucial as it could be to users, keep in mind it does come with a price tag. Currently the going rate is around $5,000 annually. Before you simply write it off, you should at least get informed and consider it first.

Think about what your small enterprise invests per year for marketing. Hopefully, you keep track of even the smallest of investments you make for marketing and advertising. Also take into consideration that at this time there is probably nothing else as important to your business marketing campaign as social media. Surprising to think about, but it is probably true. So dividing your marketing and advertising campaign dollars to other channels may not be worth it right now. While social media may not always be this powerful a resource to tap into for marketing, right now it is and to miss focusing on it could be a grave mistake.

The Power of Adobe Social Analytics

Maybe this is all new to you. Not to worry, there are ways to research this topic more in depth online. Before spending an annual amount of $5,000, it makes sense to do your homework. There are some basic key things you should know about what Adobe Social Analytics does and can do for you. For one thing, it has the distinct power to hunt keywords from almost 50 different social networks. The analytics can then determine if any conversations actually affected business and transactions directly.

The bottom line is that this helps you understand better how to direct your business and marketing campaign efforts so you can see direct results. Not to mention with this comes the strong reputation that the Adobe name carries. If you are looking for a better way to see results from your social media marketing, it may be time to put all your eggs in one basket and invest in Adobe’s Social Analytics.

Google Webmaster Tools is a handy and fairly user friendly web service put in place by Google for webmasters. One of the best things about this useful tool is that is is free of charge. The main purposes for this service are to be able to analyze as well as work on issues a site may be having and to maximize the visibility of a website. This valuable resource also helps with crawling and indexing for your site.

This has also become extremely important for those who have established a website that does not bring the anticipated traffic or is not performing as desired. Google Webmaster Tools can let you know how your site is performing by alerting you to areas of the site Google has difficulties reaching. Ultimately the point is to use the Google tool in order to make your site more Google friendly.

• Search Engine Optimization Optimized – The recent improvements to Google Webmaster Tools means enhanced alignment with keyword search rankings. Not to mention it also helps with impression and changes. In other words your search queries can now be better and have improved results.

• What about Sitemaps? The improvements mean greater visibility on errors. You can also expect more detail on the pages being crawled and indexed.

• Good News for Top Search Queries – When Google Webmaster Tools made its most recent updates there was also some focus on the Top Search Queries. With the upgrades came more appropriate match expectations in relation to search engine rankings. This is especially good news for those users who previously thought the results did not match what the expected results should be when conducting a search, even a specific one.

• Testing Sitemaps – Before submission, you can now test your Sitemaps thanks to improvements made on the Google Webmaster Tools. This was another area in which users feedback helped result in change. Not only that by the manner in which the errors are pointed out has changed, making it easier for developers and users to understand and alter.

• Deleting Sitemaps – Another recent change is the way the delete button function works with the Google Webmaster Tools. When you use the delete button now, it will actually remove the Sitemap from Webmaster Tools including your account and accounts of the owners of the deleted site.

There are other improvements, but these are some of the main ones you may find benefit you greatly.

If you are not already including a ‘Like’ button on your site or your blog, you should be aware of a few things. For instance ‘Likes’ with comments have been shown to get three times more distribution and four times more engagement. Users are more likely to click on a ‘Like’ button then seek out your site on Facebook and take the extra time to ‘Like’ it that way. In fact, it has also been proven that people are twice as likely to click on the ‘Like’ option if they happen to see a friend’s face by it or know a friend already likes it. Actually, when more than one friend already likes something on Facebook, a person is six times more likely to also ‘Like’ it themselves.

All about the Marketing

While many people love Facebook for personal social networking reasons, the truth is this has become a crucial part of marketing these days. As long as it isn’t abused, there is nothing wrong with using social media to market your brand, business, blog or products. The move towards popularity with inbound marketing is another reason this is so important.

As internet users tire of the old outbound marketing strategies in which they may feel bombarded by sales pitches, inbound marketing allows potential customers to come to you. When someone ‘Likes’ your page on Facebook, this helps promote whatever it is you are trying to bring attention to. In other words, you get greater exposure and increased traffic and it all came to you. This is one of the ultimate methods to use to increase your inbound marketing results.

Adding the Button

The trick to adding a ‘Like’ button to your website or blog is that you may need additional resources to do it, but the good news is that it is free. There are various ways to do so, and for most with a basic knowledge of code this should be an easy task. For those who may feel this is out of the realm of what they can take on should leave it to their web developers to handle.

The important part is getting it done. Even if you are new to all of this, you have to realize how crucial it is to use social media to your advantage. Not to mention it cannot be stressed how crucial it is to have a way for your visitors to ‘Like’ your blog, your brand, your products, a page or all of your website on Facebook. Those who try to get around this are only going to be disappointed when they get left behind.

This may not sound like much of an issue, until you consider the steady rise in those who are using mobile devices these days. Also, if you were to consider the amount of mobile device users who now take care of things such as email or accessing their social media networking sites such as Facebook. If an app doesn’t work correctly, a site isn’t user friendly on a mobile device or the email in your campaign isn’t compatible with a mobile device, it’s money and effort down the drain.

Taking Careful Steps

Before you launch that new email marketing campaign, it is important then to test how your email will read on a mobile device. One key aspect is that the email itself is readable on a device like this. If so then the next most important aspect is to see how it comes through if it is meant to be interactive. If you have a call to action in your email marketing campaign, you need to know it is actionable from a mobile device.

What you should be aware of is that as much as 15% of people are reading the emails that make up your email marketing campaign by phone or mobile device. These same people are “processing” them out within a matter of two seconds. So why should you care about this percentage? One of the main reasons is that you could be losing 15% of your target audience right off the bat mainly due to poor design planning for your email marketing. Imagine if someone is even interested but skips it because the call to action doesn’t work for them. This is equally important to consider when it comes to lead nurturing as well.

Make a Change

The most crucial thing to do is careful initial planning for your emails in a lead nurturing or email marketing campaign. From there, it is also important to test your email before sending it to your leads. This gives you the chance to fix glitches before releasing your campaign efforts. You have this option, so take advantage of it. Skipping this because you assume it works or you are eager to get the campaign rolling out could cost you valuable traffic or revenue.

The best thing you can do is also try to make your design for clicks to be touch friendly, for all systems. Not only is this easier for you, but it makes it much more likely your call to action can and will be used immediately as long as your email is working correctly. Remember, when in doubt allow a professional to help with the design instead of using a DIY approach that doesn’t work on mobile devices.

What Is Domain Authority, Exactly?

The simplest answer to this question is that it is a prediction for how your website might perform in the search engine rankings. Because there are so many signals to determine this score (150 in all), it can be quite complicated. Scores are ranked from 0 to 100 and tend to fluctuate from week to week or even day to day.

Domain authority can be difficult to influence, at least directly. It is not like search engine optimization that can allow you to perform certain tasks to boost your rankings. While you cannot specifically gear your efforts to increasing your domain authority, you can make sure that you are improving your overall search engine optimization skills.

How Important Is Domain Authority?

Domain authority, as one of the best predictions of how well your site will perform when compared to the millions of others, can be vitally important. Why would you waste your search engine optimization efforts if you are not focusing on the overall package? Your link building skills are just as important to how high you can push your site’s ranking on the search engine results page.

How Can I Learn What My Domain Authority Is?

Knowing what your domain authority number is can be just as important to understand it’s worth to your site. One way to learn your domain authority ranking is by visiting www.opensiteexplorer.org, which is a website with more than 58 billion url listings and over nine trillion links. You can go to this site and enter your website or the link and see the results.

How Do I Increase My Domain Authority?

The best way to boost your domain authority is with quality links from other sites that have equally high domain authority. Great content is the key to getting those quality links. After all, if the content on a site is less than high quality it will decrease the rankings of that site.

You can determine the quality of the content and the link and therefore get a good idea of the domain authority via the RAT checklist. RAT stands for Relevance, Authority and Transfer.

• Relevance: Does the link have a theme? Can you anchor texts to the links or to the website that eventually links back to you?

• Authority: One of the main ingredients to increasing domain authority via quality linking is time.

• Transfer: You gain value from links that can be transferred within the website from page to page via links.

As long as you can create a link that works, you can increase your domain authority.

It takes incredible knowledge and the ability to stay on top of the ever changing, ever expanding internet marketing industry. It is time consuming, and many business owners just cannot spare the time to realistically make the most of their own efforts.

What Are the Top Criteria for Selecting Your Inbound Marketing Agency?

There are several things that you should be looking at when interviewing prospective inbound marketing agencies. These are:

Do they offer the exact, right services for your listed needs? Most inbound agencies offer different types of services. If your goal is to attract more traffic to your website, then hire the agency that has their priority in traffic generating services such as blogging or content creation. If you want more leads and customers, though, the focus should be on premium content creation, a killer landing page and marketing automation.

Does the agency have a clear and definable process? Because there are so many steps to search engine marketing and so many pieces of the puzzle, it is important that the agency can come up with a complete and comprehensive strategy. The agency should be able to explain and lay out their strategy for your business and how it fits into your goals and business plan. But, more importantly it should be clear and have had demonstrable success.

Can the agency discuss measured success?

The words that you should be hearing during the pitch from the agency include: metrics, benchmarks and analytics. As a business owner, you have set goals. As your prospective inbound marketing agency, those goals should be their goals.

Can the agency demonstrate the skills to handle this project?

From the start, you should not have any concerns that the agency will be able to handle your project whether it is big or small. The agency that you choose should have good communication skills, the right amount of time resources and the right skill sets.

How do you feel about the inbound agency’s own website?

It is not enough just to check out the inbound agency’s past clients and their numbers- if their landing page or their social marketing presence is not up to par or is not what you would be expecting, then it is unlikely that they are right for you.

Before you commit to an inbound marketing agency, consider using the prospect for a small, shorter term project, aiming for around three weeks to three months. They should fit in as a part of the marketing team. You can see how that project goes for the allotted time and then assess whether to continue or start shopping for a new inbound marketing agency.

It is quite common, in fact, for a business to lack a member or team that can pull together to master every detail of content and internet marketing. Where many organizations make a mistake is simply letting this be their weak spot and still trying to work around it. Remember a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a marketing campaign is only as impressive as its most memorable content. Don’t let this be your downfall when there is a way around it.

Turning to Outsourcing

The first clarification to be made is that this is not about outsourcing out of the country. In fact, we suggest you stick with outsourcing in your immediate local area if possible. This not only helps support your local community, but increases the chances for hiring a team that has inside information and an understanding of your area or even your business. This helps prevent issues such as language barriers and also helps if you want to write about Ohio, for example, from a resident’s perspective.

Aside from that, there are other things that can help you have a successful team. For one thing make sure the individual or team you hire has a true understanding of the ultimate goal or master plan as it were. Also, help everyone identify his or her role within the big picture. This will help them feel like a part of the working team not an outsourced resource.

Other Things to Keep in Mind

Getting your outsourced resource on board to make your internet marketing campaign a success is one of the instrumental parts of making it a success. For that reason, you should also be certain outsourced resources are still accountable for certain goals and objectives. This should be above and beyond a shared goal of obvious increased traffic. There should also be a way to establish how you intend to measure the success this partnership creates.

One of the most important aspects to making sure someone will be a good fit for your team as an outsourced individual is be sure the person even wants to be part of the team. The same way you would want each person on your own staff to be motivated to be a team member, you want your outsource members to feel like part of the team. Of course, the most crucial aspect is whether your outsourced individuals or team can produce quality content that matches your vision as this is the main purpose for including them. Having good content marketing but not material that represents your organization is not any better than having poor quality content in the first place.

Maintaining a consistent content marketing campaign is critical to the success of your internet marketing efforts. Of course many times this is an ‘easier said than done’ type of task. Chances are your plate is already pretty full. Not only is there so much to do to run and market your business, but you may not have the resources, skills or time needed to consistently produce the regular flow of content required to succeed in your online marketing efforts. Don’t feel bad…because you are not alone.

It is quite common, in fact, for a business to lack a member or team that can pull together to master every detail of content and internet marketing. Where many organizations make a mistake is simply letting this be their weak spot and still trying to work around it. Remember a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a marketing campaign is only as impressive as its most memorable content. Don’t let this be your downfall when there is a way around it.

Turning to Outsourcing

The first clarification to be made is that this is not about outsourcing out of the country. In fact, we suggest you stick with outsourcing in your immediate local area if possible. This not only helps support your local community, but increases the chances for hiring a team that has inside information and an understanding of your area or even your business. This helps prevent issues such as language barriers and also helps if you want to write about Ohio, for example, from a resident’s perspective.

Aside from that, there are other things that can help you have a successful team. For one thing make sure the individual or team you hire has a true understanding of the ultimate goal or master plan as it were. Also, help everyone identify his or her role within the big picture. This will help them feel like a part of the working team not an outsourced resource.

Other Things to Keep in Mind

Getting your outsourced resource on board to make your internet marketing campaign a success is one of the instrumental parts of making it a success. For that reason, you should also be certain outsourced resources are still accountable for certain goals and objectives. This should be above and beyond a shared goal of obvious increased traffic. There should also be a way to establish how you intend to measure the success this partnership creates.

One of the most important aspects to making sure someone will be a good fit for your team as an outsourced individual is be sure the person even wants to be part of the team. The same way you would want each person on your own staff to be motivated to be a team member, you want your outsource members to feel like part of the team. Of course, the most crucial aspect is whether your outsourced individuals or team can produce quality content that matches your vision as this is the main purpose for including them. Having good content marketing but not material that represents your organization is not any better than having poor quality content in the first place.