This free email marketing tool can make your life easier
Small business owners are always on the lookout for a good email marketing tool that will greatly simplify their job. It’s often the case that a business owner will invest a great effort to get an email list going and then drop the ball by not engaging it regularly. Any email marketing tool that can simplify and speed up newsletter creation is a welcomed edition to our bag of small business tricks – especially when it’s free. I took Revue for a test drive the other day and really liked what I found. It has a free level for up to 200 subscribers, and honestly, even the monthly paid levels aren’t bad: $5 for 1500 subscribers $8 for 3000 subscribers $10 for 4500 subscribers $15 for 6000 subscribers $19 for 5500 subscribers For bigger companies, unlimited team members can get access to the account and you can have up to 10,000 subscribers. By the way, to give you a little of the back story, Revue was founded by Martijn de Kuijper of the Netherlands as a side project. He created a minimum viable project in about four weeks and launched it on ProductHunt. Within two weeks he had more than 2,000 registered users. He tells the whole tale in this blog. Creating a curated content newsletter with Revue is so simple, you’ll be up and running in minutes. Let me give you the basics. You create an account by signing on through one of your social media platforms. For my test, I used my Twitter account. The account your select, by the way, becomes your first source of curated articles to include in your newsletter. You can add a wide range of other content sources, including RSS feeds. Once you’re logged in, you press “create” and you’re presented with a template that has your basic information filled in. If you sign in with Twitter, for example, it will pick up your profile photo and your biographical paragraph. You can edit most of this information as you’re working on your email newsletter. Putting content into your newsletter is as simple as selecting the source in the right-hand column, clicking on the article you want to include, and dragging it into your template. You can add other elements – body and headline type, for example – to get your newsletter looking just the way you want it. Once you have your newsletter ready, you can schedule it to send. For your mailing list, you can import from Mailchimp, import via a CSV file, paste addresses in, or manually add subscribers. You can also “invite” people to subscribe who follow you on Twitter, Facebook, or are in your Gmail contacts. In many ways, Revue is like the love child of Paper.li and Flashissue, if you’re familiar with those social media/email marketing tools. Paper.li automatically creates daily “newspapers,” which can be used as email newsletters or even website content. Flashissue is a Gmail plugin with a drag-n-drop interface similar to Revue’s. If you’re a Gmail power user, you’ll appreciate how it works. They each have their strengths – and slightly different purposes – but for hand curating a newsletter on your own schedule, you should definitely spend some time working with...
read more13 mobile apps that will change your habits, increase productivity
I’ve heard it said that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit, but I think that’s only true for bad habits – good habits seem to take a lot longer. In your business, professional, and personal lives, creating good habits is fundamental to optimum productivity. I like to think of habits as “personal automation” – things get done automatically, without having to think about them. Therefore, due to the importance of creating positive habits and the difficulty involved with establishing them, we need to leverage every tip, tool, and tactic we have to help us form new habits. One of the best tools available to us right now are apps we can put on our mobile devices. They allow us to set goals and parameters, remind us, track our progress (or lack thereof), and I in some ways reward us. They can also help us recognize the stumbling blocks that are preventing us from creating a new positive habit. Let me give you an example. A friend was trying out the free habit tracking app Stride. He wanted to spend a few minutes journaling each day because the process helped him set goals and be accountable to them. He set a goal of journaling five days a week and a reminder notification to go off each morning at 8 a.m. After a couple of weeks of only fairly good success he realized that trying to get his journaling done in the morning was a problem. Virtually every day his 8 a.m. reminder appeared, he wasn’t in a position to do the journaling. He realized that mornings were an unrealistic time to do this task. Had he not received that daily reminder, he might not have discovered this truth. There are many good habit tracking apps on the market for both iOS and Android devices. The chart below features what I believe to be the most popular. The ratings and number of reviews were taken almost exclusively from Apple users. I recommend starting with one of the apps that has a lot of users; that indicates a level of trust in support and compatibility as operating systems are updated. Click on the “X” for a website link. Finally, if you have experience with a habit tracking app that isn’t included here, please note that in the comments below and we’ll try to include it in an update of this article. App Reviews Rating iOS Android Cost iOS Cost Android Way of Life 3419 4.5 x x free free Balanced 2729 5 x free NA Habit streak 2727 4 x NA free Streaks 2238 4.5 x x 3.99 free Strides 1464 4 x free NA Coach.me 1320 4 x x free free Momentum App 734 4.5 x free NA Habit list 560 4.5 x 3.99 NA Habit streaks 259 4 x free NA Done 60 4 x NA NA Daily habits 51 4.5 x free NA My habits 26 4 x x NA free Tally 25 4 x free NA...
read moreListen up: A ‘sound’ approach to increased productivity
Do you like taking your laptop down to your favorite coffee shop to work? Do you feel like you’re at your most productive in that environment? Well, I don’t know if you can recreate your favorite beverage at home or the office break room, but you can recreate that distinctive high-trafficked coffee shop sound. Coffee shop is one of the ambient sounds available via the Noisli website and app. Noisli also has all the standard background sounds – wind, water, waves, etc. It seems like there are three approaches to boosting productivity via sound: Ambient or white noise sound generators that mask distracting sounds, which improves your ability to concentrate, Music styles that engage your brain, acting as a cognitive stimulus, and Other styles of music – notably mellow New Age music – that operate somewhere between engaging music and masking ambient sound. I don’t know if my categories are totally scientifically sound, but I do know that science supports the notion that background music or sounds can improve productivity. Companies have been pumping music and white noise into their work areas for many years to help get the most out of their employees. Protect your hearing! Many workers a generation or so younger than myself swear by techno or hip hop. They pump their music into their heads at what I consider ear-splitting volumes. (And please, no matter what your preference is, keep the volume attenuated, especially if you’re using headphones of any kind. Trading a little extra productivity today for hearing problems tomorrow isn’t a fair exchange.) For many of us, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is to remember to cue up the sounds or music, especially if we work at home a lot. If you habitually multitask – which you shouldn’t – you can get distracted and forget to provide yourself with the ideal working environment, including music or ambient sound. Choosing an ambient sound is fairly simple, you just need to find the ones that do the best job for you. I’ve already mentioned Noisli as a sound source. Tyler Hayes has penned a good article over on FastCompany that reviews three good ambient sound apps. Music is more challenging to deal with…and more prone to cause arguments in shared workspaces. Mostly Mozart works well Generally, instrumental music is preferred to vocals, and classical music, like Mozart, has always scored well when scientists have tested which music works best to improve brain function. If you browse the “productivity” playlists on Spotify, you’ll see that they lean heavily toward instrumental music. If you want great classical music and are an Amazon Prime member, Amazon has some wonderful free classical playlists and channels available that you can enjoy without the ads you get on Spotify. Will the right background sound increase double your productivity, no, but it will make a noticeable...
read moreUse the ‘personal touch’ to fight ‘personalization’
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so the big retail outlets must be quite impressed by the smaller local stores that line the Main Streets and neighborhood commercial areas of American cities and towns. When customers walk into a well-managed local store, there’s a good chance that the sales associates and counter clerks will recognize them, greet them, and even anticipate their needs. There are a several ways tech developers are trying to bring personalization to larger retail outlets. However, I think that no matter what they develop and what becomes popular, there will always be a wide chasm between “personalization” and the “personal touch” – and as a small business owner, you need to understand the difference and make the most of it. Using AI in retail One of the latest schemes I’ve heard of is an earpiece that retail clerks would wear that pumps information to them about the customer they are serving. It might use facial recognition software to identify a customer, pull up purchase history, and artificial intelligence (AI) to make recommendations based on buying patterns. We have all experienced similar systems when we shop at Amazon. However, I’m sure that each of us has also experienced how inappropriate these recommendations can be as well. A friend was telling me how he purchased a kayak online and then continued to receive kayak recommendations at ecommerce sites for months after he already had his boat. “A guy doesn’t need more than one kayak,” he told me. Had he bought his kayak at a local store, on subsequent visits employees could ask him how he was enjoying it, was it working out for him, or whether or not he had explored a nearby lake in his new kayak yet. Those questions would represent “the personal touch” – not merely “personalization.” Further, the employees at the local store would know that trying to sell him another kayak the day after he bought one would be pure lunacy. The possible limits of AI I understand that artificial intelligence is getting “smarter and smarter” and perhaps someday it will be able to mimic the dialog a local sales clerk would have with a regular customer…then again, maybe it will never get to that point. In either case, it’s not that good today and as a local merchant, you need to take advantage of this fact. Further, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes it will never care about customers on a personal level. This is where your personal touch can always be leveraged as an advantage. The software that powers Amazon doesn’t care about our families or the local economy. You and your customers do. When we talk about building relationships with our customers, this is something you can do when you run a local outlet. When a business is totally online, we can do a great job creating the trappings of a relationship, but real relationships happen face-to-face. Strategies to beat AI If you run a local business of any kind, don’t settle for the kind of personalization that can be achieved via online technology. Develop a personal touch that will set your business apart from online competitors and from the big global chains relying on AI. Here are a few strategies you can use. Help employees learn names....
read moreThis week in small business: Productivity hacks, growth hacks, and much more
All the tips we’ve collected for you this week should have you firing on all cylinders in your personal productivity and career success. Start with getting your office desk in order and then move on to your career. Leadership, management, and productivity This infographic by Rose Leadem gives us 12 office desks hacks we can use to improve our productivity. (Gamers will really like #6.) Former Marine and current online job search expert Susan P. Joyce takes a different approach to SEO: Personal SEO and career success. And if it’s personal success you’re pursuing, here are three ways to attract it, according to Maleeka Hollaway. Ransomware. It’s a modern-day nightmare. The American Bankers Association has an article and infographic here that gives small businesses five ways to protect themselves. Godaddy’s Justin Tsai is the guy behind this infographic, “What the mobile technology explosion means for small business websites.” Adopt the seven financial habits of the most successful small business owners, and you’ll probably do quite well. We can thank Matthew Baker for these insights. In this edition of her Women in Business Q&A, Laura Emily Dunn profiles Jasmina Aganovic, president of Mother Dirt, a line of innovative biome-friendly personal care products. They test new drugs in the lab. A good place to test many business ideas is the flea market. Here are Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead’s tips on using a flea market as a startup incubator. Marketing and sales Matei Gavril gives us five marketing tools to boost ecommerce; if you aren’t familiar with all of these – and you sell online – you need to be. I love articles that come with real-life examples and that’s what Ross Andrew Simons does in his Hubspot article, “4 Examples of Fantastic Inbound Marketing Web Design.” Blake Morgan asks a very interesting question in her Forbes article: What would happen if marketing was eliminated at your company? Can you spare 15 minutes a day? If so, Brian Honigman says you have enough time to do marketing. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Writing for Entrepreneur, Amanda Lewan profiles Cindy Pasky and how she started her own staffing company, which now grosses more than $300 million a year. I love this profile by Kathleen Elkins: “94-year-old entrepreneur shares her best advice for young people.” If you’re ready for a gut check, you need to see this piece by Rodney Williams where he asks, “So, you want to be an entrepreneur?” Get started on the right foot: Kevin Indig offers sound advice on how startups should do SEO. Is Instagram part of your marketing strategy? If it’s not, Jonathan Long says you need to get on the stick ASAP. Time to give you startup’s PR a kick in the pants? Wendy Marx has some growth hacking strategies for you. The winners today are often those who automate best. That’s why Jerry Kelly’s article on features to look for in marketing software is very timely. If you think entrepreneurship is a shortcut to riches, think again, says Jayson Demers. Politics, government, and the economy Positive economic sentiment seems to be running high in recent months and weeks. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says that deregulation should help deliver robust...
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