A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but if your business name isn't followed by a dot-com your customers may never find your business.

Does your choice of domain name for your website really matter?

I’ll say it does!

Your domain name is like your street address. How will customers find you if they don’t know where to look -- or worse, if they go to what they think is your address only to find your company is not there? Here are ten tips to choosing a domain name for your business:

2.  Short and easy to spell -- Shorter is better.  A short URL is easier to remember and less likely to be misspelled than a long one.  For obvious reasons, avoid any domain name that by its nature is hard to spell or confusing.

3.  Company names and brand names -- Whenever possible, register your company name as your main URL.  It’s what people usually try first when looking for your business website. You might also consider registering your product/service names as additional URLs. The reason?  Some companies now create mini-sites specifically for products and services -- think Jif.com or Tide.com. Or they point the product URL to a section of their main website that features that product.

4.  Keywords and household words -- Some companies register industry-specific terms, common words or short phrases that your customers or prospective customers may commonly type into a browser. According to Monte Cahn, CEO of Moniker.com, “Seventy percent of people type directly in the browser address field, while the other 30 percent go through a search engine.”  This has increased the value of domains that are household words, easy-to-remember phrases, or keywords.  Domain names such as Autos.com and Seniors.com sold for more than $1 million each, he says.

5.  Personal names -- Register your own first and last name as your URL if you are a consultant, writer, or other professional whose reputation in your field is critical to drawing customers.  Think TomPeters.com. You have several options here.  For instance, you can use your personal name as your business domain.  Or, you can point your personal-name URL to a separate company website.  Either way, people looking for you are more likely to also find your business website.

6.  Be defensive with misspellings -- Buy up common misspellings of your domain name.  That way, you don’t leave traffic on the table -- and competitors won’t be able to buy the misspelled domains and siphon off traffic intended for your site. According to Cahn, try this method to find misspellings:  Get a number of people in your office to type in your domain name 100 times each in a browser.  If you don’t have employees, get your family and friends involved.  Keep track of every mistyped URL.  Those are the URLs you want to buy and point to your site.

7.  Protect your brand with other extensions -- While the “.com” extension is the most popular, as a defensive measure consider also snapping up other extensions of your domain name.  Secure the .net, .info, .biz and similar extensions.  If you do business internationally, think about securing country extensions, also (such as .co.uk).

8.  Don’t forget mobile -- With mobile devices becoming more popular, big brands are starting to register and develop their .mobi sites specifically for mobile users.  So do what the big boys do and register that .mobi.  You may have no plans to build out a .mobi site today.  But as mobile usage grows you may be glad you have that domain in two or three years.

9. Avoid long hyphenated URLs -- Ochool of thought in vogue a few years ago was to register domain names with strings of keywords separated by hyphens.  The reason?  It was thought that you could get higher rankings in the search engines if these keywords were in your URL.   This approach led to some ridiculously long URLs prone to misspellings and confusion.  This approach has fallen out of favor in most camps, as it is not clear that search engines give any preference to hyphenated keyword URLs.

10.  Register domains for as long as possible -- A final word of advice:  secure your main domain names for a minimum of several years so they don’t expire out from under you. Ten years is best.  What’s $149.50 (the current cost of a 10-year registration through Franbiks Systems) when your company’s entire Web presence is at stake?

Franbiks Systems will send pre-expiration reminders or even automatically renew on your behalf.  Sign up for these protections whenever available.  Be especially careful when using domain registrars you do not know well or trust their services, as they may not offer these expiration-avoidance features.  More than one small business owner I know has been rudely surprised by an expired domain.

1) Find keywords.  Pick a list of words relevant to your business.  Think about which words are most likely to get people to do what you want them to do (convert into leads) and focus on those words.  Then pick one word (or phrase) to use on one page of your site. Google Keyword Tool

2) Put keywords in Page Title. The Page Title is one of the most important things that Google and other search engines evaluate to determine what is on a web page.  Put your keyword or phrase in the title, keep it short.  For more detailed info, read: Why a Web Page By Any Other Title Would Not Rank As Well.

3) Put keywords in Page URL.  Google and other search engines also use the text of the URL of the page to determine the content of the web page.  You should use your keyword or phrase in the URL of the web page - either the folder/directory structure or the HTML file / page name itself.

4) Put keywords in Meta Data.  While the page metadata (Page Description and Keywords) are not nearly as important as they used to be, they still count.  Take advantage of them by putting your keyword or phrase there.  The description should be readable by a person and make sense and the keyword metadata should focus on your keyword or phrase - do not make it long, less is more.  For more detailed info, read: Understanding the Magic of Meta-Data.

5) Put keywords in your H1 text.  The H1 text is usually the title of an article or some larger bold text at the top of your page.  Google and the smaller search engines can see this and they put extra importance on the words in the H1 text.  Make sure your keyword or phrase is there.

6) Use keywords in the page content.  Putting the keyword in your page content also signals to search engines that the page is actually about the keyword and should show up in search results.  IWe have heard from "experts" that you should use your keyword anywhere from 4-6 times to 10-12 times.  Our advice is to just write naturally.

7) Monitor your rank. Give the search engines some time to do their thing (couple days) and then keep checking your rank to see what happened and track your progress. Free Website Analysis Tool

1. Having 2 Profiles: Personal and Professional

Not only do you not want to have two profiles (I'll explain why), but also if Facebook catches you, they will shut your account down. Now, you really don't want to have two profiles because, honestly, do you want to have two accounts to update all the time? On top of that, how are you going to determine the line between the two accounts - which account will you show to your friends from work or your college roommate who now works in your industry? The lines between personal and professional worlds are blurring and you should be transparent and confident enough to let them blur. Sure, you may not want your boss seeing photos of you drinking in college. But Facebook has amazing privacy settings that you can customize so your professional connections are limited to what they can see on your account. There is no reason you need to have two separate accounts.

2. Creating a Profile for Your Business Instead of a Page

Profiles are meant for people, pages are meant for business. Because pages were meant for businesses, they have different features to them that make them incredibly more valuable for a business. For example, business pages don't need to "accept" friend requests, they can get "liked" by anyone. Also, business pages come with analytics on engagement so you can understand your reach and marketing effectiveness on Facebook. If you think that a profile has something you want for your business that a page doesn't have, you're wrong.

3. Turning Off Wall Posts for Your Business Page

The point of Facebook is to interact with your community that's already hanging out there. Turning off wall posts or comments on your page is like saying to your customers, I don't want to hear what you have to say. Maybe you are scared of what they'll say - what if it's negative? - but keep in mind, you can't stop people from saying things about your brand. What you can do is let it happen on your turf where you can respond. Plus, every time a user interacts with your page, that interaction gets in front of that user's network, spreading your reach far beyond your existing customer base.

4. Not Updating Your Business Page

As with wall posts or comments from your users, you want to be interacting on your own page as well. Your Facebook page should be a living, breathing thing where you can share content and engage with your customers. If you update your business page with interesting content, your users are more likely to engage with your page, and their interactions get shown to their networks, expanding your reach exponentially. This virality is what makes Facebook such an incredibly powerful tool for businesses. Don't miss out on Facebook's key benefit.

5. Not Being on Facebook

Finally, if you're not on Facebook, what are you waiting for? Facebook has over 500 million active users, many of whom log in every day. Unless your target market is 70 year old grandfathers, your audience is on Facebook. Some of the fastest growing demographics are users over 55 and the majority of Facebook users are older than college age. Whether you think your audience is not on Facebook (you're likely wrong) or you think Facebook is a fad and will be gone in a few years (it doesn't matter, it's big now), you're missing a huge opportunity by not being on Facebook.

1. Google+ is currently available on an invitation-only basis.

2. Google does not consider it a Facebook competitor (at least publicly).

3. Google+ is currently available for download as an app in the Android Market.

4. When you download that app, it splits off the "Huddle" feature as a separate app.

5. Users can post status updates, and these appear on the Google Profile under a tab called "Posts". The +1's and Buzz tabs remain separate. I have to wonder if we'll see Buzz and Posts merge eventually.

6. What is available now is "just the beginning" according to Google. These are just the first features or presumably many more to come.

7. Circles is one current feature. It lets you share things with different people (kind of like Facebook Groups) but with a very different user interface. Watch this video.

8. Another feature is Sparks. This looks for videos and articles it thinks you'll like, so "when you're free, there's always something to watch, read, and share." Filter Bubble anyone?

9. Hangouts is another feature. It's basically group video chat. Google describes it as "the unplanned meet-up."

10. Instant uploads is a mobile-specific feature. Photos upload themselves as you take them, and are stored in a private area on the cloud.

11. Huddle is another group-conversation feature for mobile. Essentially, it's group chat.

The Stream

12. The stream is basically the equivalent of the Facebook news feed.

13. When you share something with Google+ it's added to your stream and the stream of everyone you shared with.

14. The stream shows you what all of your Circles have shared with you.

15. If you mention a user, using the "+" or "@" symbols, the person may receive a notification that you mentioned them.

16. You can see who specific posts were shared with in the stream -- whether they were shared publicly, to extended circles, or a limited group.

17. You can filter the stream by specific Circles.

18. You can chat directly in the stream

19. You can report inappropriate content.

20. You can search for people from the search box at the top of the stream.

21. Soon, Google says you'll be able to search the stream itself from the search box.

22. If you leave comments on a post, you can edit or delete them.

23. The same goes for posts, but you can't edit a post's sharing settings after the post has been shared. However, you can delete the post and share again to different circles.

24. You can "reshare" posts made by others (like retweeting).

25. You can "mute" a post. This will let you stop receiving updates from a post, like if the comments get out of control for example.

26. You can use the "Google+ Bar" that appears at the top of various Google products as your connection to the social network.

27. When you're signed in you'll see your full name or email address displayed with a photo or avatar next to it, to help you identify which account you're currently signed in to.

28. If you've enabled multi sign-in you can sign in to two different Google accounts and switch between them using the Google+ bar.

29. When you sign up for Google+, you're also signing up for Picasa Web Albums, so all photos and videos uploaded to Google+ (including from your phone via Instant Upload) will also be available in Picasa Web Albums.

30. You can use the Google +1 button from the stream.

31. You can have a ton of friends on Google+. Robert Scoble quickly added over 1,000.

32. The central user interface is very Facebook-esque.

33. Google+ quickly became the butt of a lot of jokes (and even cartoons), but has also received a great deal of praise thus far.

34. With Google+ Google adds a "You" link to the recently redesigned (painted black) navigation bar across Google properties

35. You can view public Google+ content without actually being invited (Danny Sullivan has a guide on how to view it ) 36. China is already blocking Google+. That didn't take long.

37. Invitations have been listed on eBay.

38. There are already privacy concerns about Google+ but the Privacy Guide can be found here.

39. According to the Financial Times article, you can share something within a closed "Circle," but somone from that circle can then reshare it with anyone, and even make it public.

Is Google+ destined to bring real competition to Facebook or will the hype fade? Share your thoughts.

There are a number of ways one could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Here are a few definitions from other much wiser people on the ‘what is a blog?’ question to get us started (and once you’ve seen what they have to say on the topic I’ll share my own thoughts):

• ‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

• ‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

• ‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

• ‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

• ‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

• A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

Increasing your opt-in list of targeted email clients is the most important email marketing strategy you can use. Your email list is actually a group of potential “sales leads” and you should treat expanding your email list as one of your most important marketing activities, second only to creating your web site.
The more effort you put into developing your email list, the more potential customers you will have. Conversely, if you fail to collect email addresses, your online business growth will halt. It’s that simple.

Tip #1: Offer Them Content

People don’t just like to give out their email addresses online (and with good reason nowadays!) But if you offer them something in return, such as an informative newsletter, a free ebook, a forum membership or free software, they will be much more likely to give you their email address when subscribing.

Offering subscriptions, whether to a newsletter, ezine, ebook, software, or online course, is the number one legitimate method of increasing your email list (and is used by all of the big and successful sites online).

In recent studies of why people go online, results are showing that most of us go online for one of two major, basic reasons: to communicate or to learn. Are you meeting one of these needs? You will be, if you offer them high-quality information or interaction through one of the above methods. Don’t just send people who sign up to your list ads (unless they have specifically requested news on current specials); spice it up with information that they can use.

They will remember you, will pass your newsletters around to their friends, and your name and company will get known. It’s one of the best methods of marketing around, and your home-based business can start to grow if you do this.

Tip #2: Make It Easy For Them

It’s amazing the number of online businesses that have subscription forms tucked away deep within their site hierarchy, or don’t even have interactive subscription forms for signing up. Don’t just rely on the customer taking the initiative of sending you an email asking to subscribe to your content; have a web designer create an easy-to-use form that they can fill in and subscribe to.

Place your subscription box in a prominent area. Normally, the left top side of a web site is the area that a visitor looks at first. This is a natural area to place a small box that says, “Subscribe to our informative newsletter” or “download our free software” to increase your email list. Alternatively, you could create a pop-under that appears before they leave, asking if they would like to subscribe to your quality content. Don’t let them leave your site without offering them the chance, with an attractive ad, to sign up - and give you their email address.

Be sure to have a link on each and every web page on your web site, offering visitors the chance to subscribe. Otherwise, they may go to your site, click around, and by page four, forget that they meant to sign up for your newsletter or ebook. Remind them frequently with a tasteful link or box on each page, and watch your subscriptions rise.

Tip #3: Assure Their Privacy

When a person visits a web site online, they often hesitate to give out their email address. Since they don’t know you, they often fear the worst: that you could be an unscrupulous email harvester, who will turn around and sell their information to sleazy porn sites or lending companies charging high interest rates. They don’t know that you’re a responsible, ethical Mom at home working to help support your family, since the Internet is a pretty anonymous medium.

One way to overcome this natural hesitation to give out information is to place a prominent privacy notice near your subscription form that states: “Your privacy is important to us. We will never sell or disclose the information that you provide us with.” You have just overcome the number one reason that people don’t give out their email address, and increased greatly the chances that your opt-in list will grow.

Tip #4: Don’t Use Force, and Don’t Ask for Too Much Information

Nowadays, some sites have become quite aggressive in their techniques for getting email addresses, to the point that they won’t allow you to enter their site without giving it. Most people will click away from sites that use techniques that don’t offer choices. Instead, make subscription their choice, and never, ever force the issue (even if the web developer you finally hired to revamp your web site tells you ‘but everyone is doing it nowadays’. You aren’t everybody, you’re a highly ethical person growing your online business).

When asking for subscriptions, don’t ask for too much information from first-time visitors such as their age, phone number, and other information, or you will frighten them away. Your subscription box is not meant to be marketing research and shouldn’t be used this way. At this point, you are creating an initial contact with potential clients. Simply ask for their email address, and nothing more, and you’ll see more subscribers.

Down the road, when they know you better, you can always send out surveys to find out more about them. But at that point, you’ll be letting them know you’re trying to improve your customer service and help improve your offerings and their experience when visiting your site, and they’ll know who you are (you’re the ethical, polite business that offers them a great service or products at an outstanding value).

Tip #5: Give Them a Gift

Ever since we were small children opening Christmas presents underneath the tree, we have all found free gifts irresistible. You can offer your site visitors an extra incentive for subscribing to your newsletter or email communications: let them know that they will get a free gift when they sign up.

This free gift could be a free ebook, a special screen saver, or information that they can use. Or, you can give them access to special areas on your web site that they couldn’t get to otherwise, when they sign up and register.

If you use this technique, you should see response rates to your subscription requests go up tremendously. Don’t know how to write an ebook? This isn’t a problem. There are plenty of sites that offer free content, reports, and ebooks that you can download, and offer to site visitors (example: just try typing in “free content” into Google, and you will be deluged with links from sites begging you to give away their content).

Then, take the time to sort through what looks good, and would meet your customer’s needs best, and voila! You have a freebie to offer your site visitors.

Tip #6: Ask Them to ‘Pass It Along’ (Viral Emailing)

In the lingo of online marketing, ‘Viral emarketing’ doesn’t describe teenaged hackers bent over their computer screens, sending viruses to unsuspecting recipients. Instead, it’s a highly accepted and used method of increasing email lists. Basically, you are asking those who receive your newsletter or email to share it with their friends who might enjoy reading the great information in it. Chances are, if they like it enough, they will click on the “subscribe” link (you do have one, don’t you, at the bottom of your newsletters and/or ezines?), and you will have a new address for your list.

The Internet is all about sharing information, and we love to let others know about good places to learn at. If you make yours a great one, you’ll start seeing people share the wealth with others-and your web site URL will get seen by more people.

Tip #7: Give Them More Choices

People have different needs when going online. It can help to sit down, and think through what kinds of things visitors to your online business site might want to see, or need, and add these features in.

Offer visitors to your site different options: some may want to subscribe to a newsletter, others may want to read your special articles, while yet others only want to hear about special product updates. Create your subscription box to offer different choices, then deliver them what they asked for.

This is called ‘market segmentation’: you are meeting the needs of different sectors of your market, and this is good, sound sales practice that will cause your email list to expand.

If you’re just starting out, you can offer simpler choices, such as receiving a “text” versus “HTML” version of your newsletter or emails (most mail managers let you create both). People appreciate being given a choice, and will remember you positively for it.

Tip #8: Develop a Relationship With Your Clients

Who would you rather interact with and trust, someone you have never heard of, or someone you have had a positive experience with before? This same principle is doubly true online. You should be emailing all of your current customers promptly in response to their questions, to confirm product orders, and other business communications in a polite, friendly manner. They will be more likely to sign up, subscribe, and ask for product updates if they’ve heard from you before, and if you are professional in all of your communications.

Email Rule Number One: Never, Ever, Ever, SPAM

Most likely, you’ve received SPAM, or unsolicited email, at some point (it seems to start just hours after creating your first email account).You may have even considered sending out a nice, friendly email to some of your customers, to let them know about your latest product or discount, and wondered if this is okay.

But if they haven’t given you PERMISSION to email them, it’s SPAM. And that friendly little email could get you into a lot of trouble (even if it’s just to a few people), and can create a very negative impression of you and your online business.

You should be aware that SPAM is illegal in over 18 states (as in if you are caught in California and Washington, to name two, they can bar you from your server and fine you large amounts). In addition, legislation is before Congress to create federal anti-spam legislation. And if you get added to a SPAM “blacklist”, your email address will be automatically filtered from major ISP servers, and your mails will never get delivered. Plus your ISP will terminate your service…you get the drift.

But most importantly for those of us marketing our business online, SPAM doesn’t accomplish what you want: target interested consumers. Response rates to your emails are much, much higher if you are sending emails to people who have indicated that they want to receive your information. There’s ways to get them to do this, and I’ll be discussing this in a later lesson.

Rule Number Two: Collect Addresses in a Responsible Manner

While SPAM doesn’t work, opt-in emails do. These are email lists created because the client asked to be added to the list. But there are methods that are considered ethical and responsible for collecting email addresses, and others that aren’t. Be ethical, and use permission marketing techniques (your customers ask to be added to a list, or willingly give you their email address in return for a service you provide them with, and for which you indicate that they will receive regular emails). Your customers will appreciate it, and you’ll see much better response rates and fewer angry letters and SPAM warnings.

Never, ever “harvest” email addresses, which is the opposite of permission mail lists (we’ll discuss this in more detail in lesson six). In addition to being unethical, it just doesn’t work. Harvested email lists normally generate clickthrough rates of less than 0.01%, which are abysmal, in addition to all of the negative perceptions and problems it causes (see rule number one above).

And please, offer those on your list (that they opted into) the option of unsubscribing from your mail list. While we all hate to lose email clients, you will have the assurance that those who are on your list are there because they want to be, and aren’t deleting your emails before they even open them.

Email Rule Number Three: Provide Contact Information

When people read your emails, they may have questions, concerns, or want to tell you how great your emails are. They may even want to learn more about your products or services. They can’t do this if you don’t provide contact information in the email, since hitting the “reply” button in some cases sends the email back to a list server address.

Let folks know who you are. It’s good business practice, and reassures them that you are a real, ethical, responsible business person that they want to do business with. When you provide them with a clear email address or toll-free phone number that they can reach you at in each of your email communications, you’ve helped establish your reliability.

Email Rule Four: Provide a Link to Your Web Site

If it weren’t sad, it would be funny how many people forget marketing basics when they send out their emails, letting them know about their great online product or service. We think “letter” and forget “marketing”. Remember the real purpose of email marketing was discussed above: to bring people to your web site, where you can sell to them. Include a clear link to your web site in each and every email communication that you send out, even if it’s a customer survey.

This way, you’re giving potential customers a chance to contact you, and learn more. And encourage them to do this: make your link entice them a bit. Instead of a plain link, why not say, “See our newest products” or “View our discounts available only this week” for your link. Of course, you can also use the word “free” to get them to contact you: “click here to see our FREE ebook (or newsletter, or software download).

Email Rule Five: Use Good Grammar

Have you ever received an email advertisement or newsletter that was poorly done, or contained numerous grammar errors? What did you think of the firm that created it? Email communications can be an important method of increasing customer loyalty, or creating the perception that others have of your online business. That image in their mind will rise or fall based on the quality of your communications.

If you aren’t a good writer, or are unsure how to create clear, legible email communications, consider hiring a professional to assist you. Your customers will notice the difference, and your business will be perceived as extremely professional (they don’t need to know that you work out of your home office, and are working in your sweat suit and slippers; they’ll see the polished, quality emails you send out and place you mentally with the real pros).

Rule Number Six: Be Honest In Your Communications

Have you ever received an email with a header that stated, “About what we discussed the other day…” Thinking that a friend had changed their email address, you clicked on the mail, only to be greeted by SPAM. The sense of betrayal and anger are remembered long after the email is closed and deleted, and I doubt that emails that use “gorilla marketing tactics” like this have much success, or positive perception from customers.

Honesty is the best policy in email communications, including headers. Don’t “trick” customers into opening your emails; instead, get them curious, or state clearly a benefit that your email will provide them with, then deliver it in your email. This creates a “win-win” situation: they’ve received real, honest help, and you’ve maintained positive contact with your customers.

Email Rule Seven: Be Polite

Which message would you rather hear: “BUY NOW AND MAKE LOTS OF MONEY!!!” or “Here are some helpful car maintenance tips that will help you get extra gas mileage.” The first uses capital letters and exclamation points (considered “shouting” online) along with a highly unrealistic promise that insults the intelligence of most readers. While there is a place for sales copy, the second is more likely to get customers to click and open it, since it offers them a real benefit directed towards a real need with today’s high gas prices. The fact that after highly helpful tips, it includes an ad for tune-up services at a national chain doesn’t annoy those who read it, since they’ve learned how tune-ups can help them get better gas mileage in the article they read.

Be polite, and offer your customers a real benefit for reading your emails to them. You may even get grateful mail back in return (and win a new loyal customer!)

Thank your customers for asking for more information in your autoresponders. Let them know that you appreciate them, and that providing them with outstanding client service is your top goal.

Treat them the way you would like to be treated, and you’ll see increased response rates.

Courtesy is at times a forgotten art in our busy, rushed society today. Treating those you email as real human beings, and giving them a refreshing dose of courteous, polite behavior will be remembered long after they close the email.

This was lesson one in our series, “Email Marketing Techniques.” Be sure to look for lesson two, in which we discuss “Building Your Email Mailing List”.

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications.

What sort of email?

In its broadest sense, the term covers every email you ever send to a customer, potential customer or public venue. In general, though, it's used to refer to:

• Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again
• Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship
• Placing your marketing messages or advertisements in emails sent by other people

Give me an analogy...

You can think of these three main forms of email marketing as the electronic equivalent of:

• Direct mail
• Sending people a print newsletter
• Placing advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers

There is, however, one extremely important difference - the issue of permission (see later).

Why is email marketing so popular?

Email marketing is so popular because:

• sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication
• email lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message)
• email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right

Let's briefly review the three types of email marketing:

1. Direct email

Direct email involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email. It might be an announcement of a special offer, for example. Just as you might have a list of customer or prospect postal addresses to send your promotions too, so you can collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses.

You can also rent lists of email addresses from service companies. They'll let you send your message to their own address lists. These services can usually let you target your message according to, for example, the interests or geographical location of the owners of the email address.

2. Retention email

Instead of promotional email designed only to encourage the recipient to take action (buy something, sign-up for something, etc.), you might send out retention emails.

These usually take the form of regular emails known as newsletters. A newsletter may carry promotional messages or advertisements, but will aim at developing a long-term impact on the readers. It should provide the readers with value, which means more than just sales messages. It should contain information which informs, entertains or otherwise benefits the readers.

3. Advertising in other people's emails

Instead of producing your own newsletter, you can find newsletters published by others and pay them to put your advertisement in the emails they send their subscribers. Indeed, there are many email newsletters that are created for just this purpose - to sell advertising space to others.

Where's the catch?

This all sounds great of course. Imagine how much cheaper it is to send a message to thousands of email addresses, rather than thousands of postal addresses!

It's not that simple, unfortunately. Quite apart from the complexities of designing and delivering email messages to the right people, getting them to actually read and respond to your message, and measuring and analysing the results, there is the issue of permission.

What's "permission"?

Responsible email marketing is based on the idea of permission. This is a complex issue and the subject of intense debate in the marketing community.

Essentially, you need an email address owner's permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you don't have this permission, then the recipients of your mail may well regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial (bulk) email.

You do not want to send spam!

If you are accused of sending spam, then you may find your email accounts closed down, your website shut off, and your reputation in tatters. In some parts of the world, you may even be breaking the law.

Quite apart from these practical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work anyway if they're permission based.

The big question, of course, is what constitutes permission...and that is the main subject of debate. It's important to remember that it's not your views, or even the views of the majority, that count, but the views of those receiving your emails and those responsible for administering the infrastructure of the Internet.

An example of permission is when your customer buys something from your online store and also ticks a box marked "please send me news about product updates via email". You now have "permission" to send that person product updates by email, provided you also give them the opportunity to rescind that permission at any time.

Educate yourself

It's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up on the subject of permission and spam. If you don't understand the importance of permission and the risks of ignoring it, then you could be heading for commercial disaster.

Don't panic, though. It's actually relatively easy to ensure that the address lists you use or build yourself are permission-based.

OK, now that you're armed with some brief background information, browse the rest of this site to find the resources you need to develop a better understanding of how email marketing can work for you and your (potential) customers. Or to speed things up, try some of these

Social Media Marketing for business using Facebook can build relationships and provide value to those within your Facebook network. Facebook allows you to be real, get to know other people with similar interests while building credibility and trust.

In this article, we’ll discuss five simple steps to getting started on Facebook.

1. Create a profile in your real name
2. Connect with others
3. Communicate to others by wall posts
4. Update your status
5. Join and participate in FB groups

Create A Profile
When creating the perfect Facebook profile for social media marketing there are several things to keep in mind; like posting a great recent picture of you with a smile. People want to put a face with a name and posting a picture that does not include the whole current you doesn’t build credibility. Choose a tagline that grabs the readers’ attention while it explains who you are and what you do. Complete your profile by filing in personal information such as hobbies, favorite music, and maybe your goals and aspirations. Including personal information helps others want to get to know you better because you may have similar personal or business interests. Remember to be real, when you are fake, people can see right through you.

Connect With Others
Connecting with others is the reason Facebook was created in the first place. To get started, import your address book or search Facebook for people you may know or have done business with. You can also connect with new friends by viewing the friend list of your connections, you may find others that you would like to get to know better. Unlike Twitter where you can follow anyone, Facebook requires a friend to accept your friend request. When sending a friend request, send a personalized message with your request. There’s nothing like someone you do not know requesting to be your friend and not even introducing themselves. Include who you are and why you want to get to know the person, your chances of getting accepted will be much higher. Once accepted, you can view your new friends profile and they can view yours.

Communicate To Friends By A Wall Post
Start communicating with your friends by posting an interesting quote, asking a simple question or providing valuable information about your interests. You can post on a friends wall to say hello, give good wishes, or help friends find solutions to their business problems.


Update Your Status
Updating your status is similar to a wall post except it is where you post what you are up to, how your day is going and to encourage interaction between friends. This is how you develop and grow your credibility and contribute to your social media marketing. Friends will get to know and trust you. By contributing to the conversation and posting valuable information relevant to your niche or industry you will raise your trustworthiness and become a know expert.


Join And Participate In Facebook Groups
Joining and participating in Facebook Groups is a great way to expand your social media marketing and get in touch with others with similar interests. Simply type groups in the Facebook search and you will see a list that includes the groups that your friends belong to. You can also browse groups and sort them according to your interests. There are many groups to choose from and you can even start your own. Once you have joined a group, participate by adding to the conversation; this is the way you will make additional contacts. Don’t be shy, contribute to the conversation and introduce yourself.

Facebook has gone through some major redesigns in the past few years but one part that has more or less stayed the same in all those years is the site’s blue color.

Everything is so blue about Facebook right from the sign-up page to the logo, their mobile app and even the site pop-ups that have shades of blue. Why?

I was recently listening to an episode of Twig where host Leo Laporte pointed to this New Yorker story on Mark Zuckerberg that seems to explain why Facebook is all blue in color.

The young Facebook founder is color blind but can see blue:

Colors don’t matter much to Zuckerberg; a few years ago, he took an online test and realized that he was red-green color-blind. Blue is Facebook’s dominant color, because, as he said, “blue is the richest color for me – I can see all of blue.”

Blue – The Web’s favorite color

Facebook is not the only Internet brand the loves blue. An interesting study by Color Lovers has revealed that blue is the most popular and dominant color among the top 100 sites in the world followed by the red color.

Update: Emil Kostov sends this note on why Facebook maybe sticking with blue:

It is part of their well planned Marketing plan. Most colors distract and make the human eye focus on them while blue act as a transparent palette for 65% of time spending watching the main background aka index space. It is well known also that blue color is the nirvana for the brain, as well green. Well, their choice make the competition envy most of the time.

 

Below is the original design of Facebook when it was called thefacebook.com – you were required to have an .edu email address to even open an account on Facebook.