An Internet Guru's Guide To Successful Newsletters

Long before social networks dominated the earth, emails played a much prominent role in businesses getting the attention of their customers or prospects. There is a great deal of content written out there that downplays an email’s effectiveness. Nonetheless, given that social networks have progressively become more tied with unproductivity, email marketing is again riding a resurgence.
Come to think about it, what is the only communication platform that is being utilized by the most workplaces by default? It certainly isn’t Facebook. I once read somewhere that US businesses generally lose an hour a day of their employee productivity due to browsing the social networking giant. This study has prompted many business owners and executives to ban the use of these platforms from the workplace. This leaves email platforms the best way to reach the most people while they are at work, which is where most people spend the largest chunk of their day other than at home.
Use these tips, which came from internet gurus with proven internet marketing business, to leverage your business through the age-old power of newsletters.

Be Consistent

The first concern a business newsletter needs to plan for is the consistency of the emails. You want to be sending out regular updates, but you also do not want to flood the inboxes of your recipients. Remember that it only takes them a single click to tag your email as spam. After that, all your following emails would go straight to the spam folder. Sending a bi-weekly newsletter should be enough to strike that balance you’re after.

Time your Deliverable Perfect

From what we’ve gathered, most experts agree that the best day and time to send your newsletters are in the early morning and noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Plenty of analytics exists to support that emails received at this time are more likely opened and read.

Segment Your Audience

Having an in-depth knowledge of what your customers’ outlook towards you is vital. You wouldn’t want to keep sending out hard sells to your loyal customers don’t you? In the same manner, if it’s a bunch of prospects you’re going to send to, you’ll want to tempt them with promotions, freebies, and downloads. Doing so adds tangible value to your email for those who have yet to build up trust with your business.

Find a Powerful Email Marketing software

There’s nothing wrong with using free email clients, however, every internet entrepreneur would tell you that there’s just no getting around having a robust email marketing software. You’d want to find a product with excellent deliverability and features. Pure Leverage seems to be the new darling on this block.

Find a Compelling Template

Without a doubt, the number one reason why businesses forego the advantage of email newsletters is due to the difficulty in composing a professional, compelling and interesting email campaign. What’s surprising though is you can grab a copy of something that works. Some are free and others are paid, often it’s best to find the ones that are paid.

Featured image License: Creative Commons image source 

Author Bio:
Michael E. Rivera is a dedicated social media consultant. He’s one of those fully committed to a project such as the one he’s engaged with now – Pure Leverage.

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How to Protect Your Organization With Google Alerts

Introduction

Back in the day, if you were really serious about keeping a handle on your image or the image of your company, you subscribed to one or more clipping and news monitoring services. Those services still exist, and they can be part of a coordinated effort to maintain the public face of your business. However, if your budget won’t allow for comprehensive news monitoring, you still have options. One powerful tool, Google Alerts, gathers news stories, videos and other web content concerning your company and delivers the results to your mailbox or feed reader – for absolutely no charge.

What Are Google Alerts?

Companies concerned with their images can use Google Alerts to keep track of how they are being covered by mainstream news media. Google Alerts can also monitor content on social media such as blogs. Image-conscious companies also use Google Alerts to avoid having potentially harmful content go unchallenged.

For instance, if a blogger is making derogatory but untrue claims about your company, Google Alerts will inform you, so that you can present evidence to disprove the accusations. Google Alerts will also give you a heads-up if customers or clients post complaints about your company.  A large number of complaints about an incident or aspect of your business may indicate potential trouble that your company should address.

Basic Set Up

Google Alerts harness the power of Google’s search engine to seek out result based on search terms that you establish.  Basic set up is simple.  Enter the word or phrase for which you want to establish a search.  Enter your email address, and then confirm the search.  If your company does not have a Google account, you will receive a confirmation email before the alert goes into effect. Establish a separate alert for each keyword or phrase for which you wish to monitor.

For instance, you can set up a simple alert with the name of your company.  A second alert could monitor mentions of a product or service your company makes. Other alerts could monitor the names of prominent officers within the company.

Google Alerts can also alert you to negative publicity or coverage or the possibility of derogatory coverage or remarks you may be aware of or that you may suspect may be a problem. In this case, setting up Google alerts for the phrases related to the controversy allows your company to respond before circumstances get out of hand...




Advanced Options

Advanced options for Google alerts allow you to control each alert individually. You can set preferences for how often you receive alerts, what sources the alerts monitor, how you receive the alerts and an option to export your alerts in CSV forma that can be opened by Excel or another spreadsheet program. If you prefer, you can also opt for alerts to be delivered by RSS feed that you can read in any feed reader.

For instance, if there is a known issue with a product or service your company provides, you can set a Google Alert for  the keyword phrase “[Your Company Name] complaints” to search for all sources, with results to be delivered as they occur to your email inbox or RSS feed. For less critical keyword phrases, you can set alerts for once per day or once per week. You can also specify that results should be limited to Google News Search, Google Web Search or Google Blog Search.

For Further Reading

• Advanced Options
support.google.com/alerts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175929&topic=28417&ctx=topic
• Basics
support.google.com/alerts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175926&topic=28416&ctx=topic
• A Case for Using Google Alerts
articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-01/features/ct-tribu-social-google-alerts-20120301_1_visit-google-com-results-term
• Common Questions
support.google.com/alerts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175950&topic=28418&ctx=topic
• How to Use Google Alerts
foodblogalliance.com/a/how-to-use-google-alerts-5-quick-ways-to-get-news-about-you-your-blog/
• Media Monitor Services and Clipping Services
tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Media-Guide/html/monitor_clipping_services.html
• Use Google Alerts to Keep Tabs on the News You Want
pcworld.com/article/244280/use_google_alerts_to_keep_tabs_on_the_news_you_want.html
• What Are Google Alerts?
support.google.com/alerts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175925

Author Bio:
Guest post contributed by Simon Morgan on behalf of www.veribo.com – Veribo provide an Online Reputation tool. Simon is a freelance writer and has been actively involved as a web development consultant for over a decade.

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Circle Me on Google+ if You Don’t Exists

I’m not posting anything on my blog since last 6 months because I moved to Google+. Google+ is now only platform where you can interact with me because I’ve have given everything for Google+ from email to facebook, from twitter to blogging, etc.

Since Google+ is an interest based network here are the suggested circles you can put me in:
• Bloggers: Blogging since 1995 :P
• Fun and Interesting :D
• Technology: 90% of my post are about tech related stuff.
• Social Media: 70% of my posts are about social media
• Google+ Related Stuff: I share significant amount of posts about Google+
• Humor: I do share funny stuff every now and then.
• Blogspot Bloggers: I’ve two major blogspot blogs.
• Fun Stuff: Self Explanatory.
• Hot News
• Google+ Tips: I share lots of Google+ tips.
• Google+ Helpers: Need any help with Google+? DM me..
• Must Follow :D

Why you should circle me?
1. You want interesting content in your stream.
2. We have similar interest eg: Gaming, Android, Google, Social Media etc.
3. You love my Blog :D
4. You love Google+
5. For other reasons.

Awesome People I've found via Google+
1. Awesome Bloggers and SEO Experts: Mark Traphagen, Lee Smallwood and Ivan Dimitrijević
2. Tech Genius like Eli Fennell and Patrick Sharpe
3. Helpful Plussers like Jaana Nyström, Laurie DesAutels, Gabriel Vasile, Denis Labelle, stephanie wanamaker, Bud Hoffman and Hannah Roberts
4. Fun and Interesting: Elle Gray
5. Incredible Artists like Bearman Cartoons and Paul Stickland
6. Interactive Plussers like Max Huijgen, Maria Stepanov Sommerfield and Marc Jansen
7. Photographers like Victor Bezrukov, Steve Gill, pio dal cin, Susanne Ramharter and Michael Stuart
8. Awesome Googlers like Neeta Tolani and Karthik Nagaraj
9. Hangout and Marketing experts like Yifat Cohen and Luis Galarza
9. Awesome Writers: Giselle Minoli
10. Foodies Jake Croston


I will see you on Google+

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How To Improve Google AdWords Quality Score

Google AdWords is the perfect match maker. When the user is searching for something and finds exactly what he needs that is what Google aims for and considers a great user experience. When ad provides a great user experience that is reflected in the Google AdWords Quality score. Quality Score is basically an attempt to describe the overall effectiveness of the advertising campaign. In other words, Google AdWords Quality score is the type of grading mechanism where grades range from one to ten, ten being the highest and one the lowest.

Why is it important to have a high Quality Score?
Having a high quality score brings all kinds of benefits. Just like it is in your personal interest to have a high Quality Score ad, it is in Google's interest as well. For that matter, Google rewards ads with high quality score by reducing the fee per ad click and giving the ads a better position on the page. In other words, the more relevant your ad is - the higher quality score and the better your position - the less you will have to pay for a click.

How do they calculate the Quality Score?
Every time someone types in a keyword relevant to your ad, and by doing that triggers your ad, Google AdWords calculates the Quality Score. For the process of calculating the Google AdWords Quality Score, Google goes through number of different things related to your account. Namely, Google AdWords checks the relevance of your keyword – how relevant it is to your ads, how relevant it is to what a customer is searching for and how often that very keyword led to clicks on your ad. Google AdWords also reviews your whole account history – how well your ad has been doing on this and other sites, how successful your account has been in the geographic regions you're targeting as well as your overall click-through rate for all the ads and keywords in your account. Last but not least, they check how often you received clicks with your display URL and the quality of your landing page (destination URL).

How do you improve your Quality Score?
If you are not satisfied with your quality score, do not worry, there are procedures you can take in order to improve it. First of all Google AdWords offers you some tools that can help you with your keywords, placements, optimization and more. Besides tools, there are simple steps you may follow in order to increase Quality Score.


If you want to increase your Click-through Rate, the best way to do it is to make your ad interesting for a user to click on. You can achieve that by the use of punctuation in the key areas, making the title a question and ending it with a question mark, ending the final sentence with the string of three periods or with the use of symbols such as $ or % to make your ad stand out.

The use of the same keyword in your Ad Text as well as in the landing page will improve your quality score. For example, if you are offering a special discount or any kind of special offer for that matter, and display it in the ad text, be sure to display it in the landing page as well. Using the keywords that are most relevant to what the users are looking for will tell Google’s algorithm that your landing page is highly relevant to your keyword and your Ad. However, if you have a keyword which receives tons of impressions but has very low Click-through Rate makes sure to pause it as soon as possible as it will only decrease the CTR of your entire campaign.

Also, the use of an outbound links on your landing page that are relevant to your targeted keyword may help you increase your Quality Score. Make sure that the very web page has a good reputation (e.g. Wikipedia). This re-affirms to Google’s AdWords algorithm that your page is directly related to the users search query.

Author Bio:
Ivan Dimitrijevic works at Dejan SEO Australia as a Senior SEO Consultant. He contributes to many blogs including and 123SEO blog for small businesses and his favorite topics include Search Engine Optimization, Google+, Social Media Marketing, SEM - Search Engine Marketing, Web Design, WordPress, Photography and Art.

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Top social media tips for bloggers

Social media is not a mystery anymore as even a school going kid has an account on Facebook and seems to be well versed in using it. But the role which social media plays in SEO is far more salient than just chatting and sharing photos! The bloggers are sometimes at a loss not knowing what exactly they have to do to drive the right amount of traffic to their website and get popular.

Some reproach social media saying that even after taking paramount efforts to socialize and share their blogs, the returns haven’t been satisfying or have never shown improvement. But, if you ask successful bloggers on how they built a massive group of loyal followers and ranked high, they would say that it can’t be achieved overnight or through a single executable plan. Here are some social media tips that will take your blog to the next level.

• Become an active user on various social networking sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon. Create your own community of friends and followers. You have to concentrate on building contacts with other bloggers and SEO experts as they can turn to be beneficial for your blogging activity. The more the number of social contacts you have, the wider your blog will spread.
• Every time you post something new on your blog, you have to share it with your social media friends. This will make them aware that you have a new post on your site and drive them to read your blog.
• What is the key to make new visitors become your regular readers? Well, you can have a social plugin or share buttons such as +1, like, pin it and tweet which enable your readers to share your content with their friends. Also, you can have a social media icon besides your name or picture so that when the visitor clicks on it, he will be instantly imported to your profile page. You should always give them easy access to social networking sites.
• Shorten your links to get statistics about the number of visitors and the time at which they visited.  Also, get an RSS feed and connect it to your LinkedIn profile.
• Be pleasant and responsive to your readers. Reply positively to those who comment, ask queries or give a negative response.  While you are commenting on other people’s blogs, link your social media profile to it whenever possible as it will increase your visibility.

So here is a message to all aspiring bloggers. In social media your online presence and user engagement plays a very crucial role.  Social media success can be achieved only by producing quality content, blogging consistently, alluring visitors to your blog and cleverly making them share your content.

This is a guest post by Robin Mckenzie of Buycenturylink.com, a site that offers savings and current information on high speed internet deal and phone services around your area. Clilck Here.

(Image courtesy onbile)

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