3 automated ways to reuse and recycle for marketing success
When you reuse and recycle website content and social media marketing posts, you may not be saving any trees, but you are certainly saving yourself a lot of effort. Better yet, if you have the right “recycling” plugins and apps working for you, you can take time away from your digital marketing and not worry that you’re letting hot prospects escape your attention. Here are three good ones – and most of you should be using at least two of them. (You’ll see why in a moment.) Revive Old Post. This is a WordPress plugin that automatically “reshares” your older blogs on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You’ve put too much effort into creating those articles only to have them burst onto your social media stage merely one time. You set up the frequency at which you want to re-promote older content on your site. And, if you have posts or categories that shouldn’t be re-shared, you can exclude them. There is a free and paid version of this plugin. One of the main differences with the paid version is that it will include images in Tweets when you re-publicize a piece of your content. Edgar. You may be more familiar with Hootsuite and Buffer than Edgar. All of these are good and have their individuals strengths, but there is one advantage of Edgar’s that will motivate you to give it a hard look. Edgar will follow schedules to post on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, unlike most other automated social media tools, it will re-loop through its schedule, going back and re-posting items when it gets to the end of the content you’ve originally given it. In other words, it just doesn’t come to a dead stop – your queue never runs out of content. Further, you put your social media posts into categories and each category can have its own schedule. Edgar, however, is much more expensive than Hootsuite or Buffer, both of which have decent free plans. Edgar seems to start at around $50 a month. SocialJukebox. This is a newer player in the game and it’s another idea from the brain of Internet entrepreneur Tim Fargo. You create jukebox play lists of social media posts (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). Each jukebox has its own schedule; you assign both hours and days of the week when you want to publish. A jukebox will either loop (randomly grabbing posts) or go through its posts once and stop. You can also assign a date range for a jukebox to post. You can tell a jukebox how many days to wait between repeating a post. SocialJukebox offers a free plan that limits you to a maximum of five tweets per day and one daily post on both Facebook and Linkedin. Paid plans range from around $20 to $100 a month. Earlier, I said you need two of these. Since Edgar and SocialJukebox share a lot of functionality, I would choose one or the other. If you have a WordPress website, I think Revive Old Post is a plugin you should definitely try out. Do you have any favorite tools that have automated your marketing? Don’t keep them a secret – Please share in the comments below!...
read more3 automated ways to reuse and recycle for marketing success
When you reuse and recycle website content and social media marketing posts, you may not be saving any trees, but you are certainly saving yourself a lot of effort. Better yet, if you have the right “recycling” plugins and apps working for you, you can take time away from your digital marketing and not worry that you’re letting hot prospects escape your attention. Here are three good ones – and most of you should be using at least two of them. (You’ll see why in a moment.) Revive Old Post. This is a WordPress plugin that automatically “reshares” your older blogs on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You’ve put too much effort into creating those articles only to have them burst onto your social media stage merely one time. You set up the frequency at which you want to re-promote older content on your site. And, if you have posts or categories that shouldn’t be re-shared, you can exclude them. There is a free and paid version of this plugin. One of the main differences with the paid version is that it will include images in Tweets when you re-publicize a piece of your content. Edgar. You may be more familiar with Hootsuite and Buffer than Edgar. All of these are good and have their individuals strengths, but there is one advantage of Edgar’s that will motivate you to give it a hard look. Edgar will follow schedules to post on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, unlike most other automated social media tools, it will re-loop through its schedule, going back and re-posting items when it gets to the end of the content you’ve originally given it. In other words, it just doesn’t come to a dead stop – your queue never runs out of content. Further, you put your social media posts into categories and each category can have its own schedule. Edgar, however, is much more expensive than Hootsuite or Buffer, both of which have decent free plans. Edgar seems to start at around $50 a month. SocialJukebox. This is a newer player in the game and it’s another idea from the brain of Internet entrepreneur Tim Fargo. You create jukebox play lists of social media posts (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). Each jukebox has its own schedule; you assign both hours and days of the week when you want to publish. A jukebox will either loop (randomly grabbing posts) or go through its posts once and stop. You can also assign a date range for a jukebox to post. You can tell a jukebox how many days to wait between repeating a post. SocialJukebox offers a free plan that limits you to a maximum of five tweets per day and one daily post on both Facebook and Linkedin. Paid plans range from around $20 to $100 a month. Earlier, I said you need two of these. Since Edgar and SocialJukebox share a lot of functionality, I would choose one or the other. If you have a WordPress website, I think Revive Old Post is a plugin you should definitely try out. Do you have any favorite tools that have automated your marketing? Don’t keep them a secret – Please share in the comments below!...
read moreWill this wrestling professional fight for small business?
One of the most intriguing picks President-elect Donald Trump made for his team is Linda McMahon to head up the Small Business Administration. The press hasn’t spent very much space reporting on this nomination (as it doesn’t spend very much time on small business issues at all) so you may have heard nothing more than Trump picked the “former chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)” to run the SBA. First I want to note that I find it fascinating that she comes from an industry known for being flamboyant and expert at promoting…as can be Trump himself. Who knows how these early picks will work out over the long and arduous journey of taming and training this beast we call Washington D.C., but there are a few things I’d like to note about this WWE veteran. McMahon is consumer savvy. There have been plenty of picks from business among Trump’s appointees, but none really understand the heartland consumer like McMahon. She, her husband Vince, and their WWE team have created millions of rabid WWE fans. And, I have to say that some of the enthusiastic Trump rallies weren’t very unlike WWE events. McMahon has won in a male-dominated arena. Is there a sport or entertainment more macho than WWE? Certainly, there aren’t many, but McMahon has been able to get in there, rub elbows, be heard, and make crucial decisions despite swimming against a heavy flow of testosterone. McMahon has been a “have-not.” It’s easy to look are her success today and just assume she was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. That’s not the case. She has worked as a receptionist, been on food stamps, declared bankruptcy, and started WWE with less than 15 employees. McMahon didn’t stay a “have-not.” This is the message I hope she sends and I hope she couples it with legislation that better enables Americans to start their own businesses and move from poverty to prosperity. Frankly, in many ways our leaders in Washington do not make tremendous societal and economic shifts. When you boil everything down, the decision to start a business rests on our shoulders. However, one of the most powerful tools our leaders have is the ability to inspire, and I think McMahon can tell an inspirational story. Let’s give the new head of the SBA our support and encouragement. I’ve been pleased to hear many comments from Trump and his team about the importance of making life easier for small business owners and would-be owners. If they follow through, we should be in for a good four years. Image: Linda McMahon at #FITN in Nashua, NH, by Michael Vadon, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike...
read moreSmall Business Inspiration for 2017 National Technology Day
Since 2016, each year at this time in January, we note National Technology Day. But I must add that at the current rate of development, almost every day seems like a National Technology Day! However, because things change so fast, it’s very easy to veer off the wise application of technology to our businesses in two different directions: Some give up on staying current and continue to rely on old – and maybe “proven” technology. Others jump from new technology to newer technology as soon as they come along. Each of these paths creates problems. If you fail to modernize, you eventually get to a place where you’re unable to leverage newer, practical, and cost-effective technologies. But if you chase every shiny new technology, it becomes costly and you may never fully realize the potential of any single tech development. A middle path is preferred, but you also need to be technology literate. In honor of National Technology Day, I want to briefly discuss an area of the Internet of Things (IoT) that is beginning to mature and could be very useful to many small business owners: home automation. Many of the major tech players – Apple, Google, and Amazon – are introducing hardware and software to automate various functions of our homes. Third-party manufacturers are creating devices that work with the systems these tech giants have introduced. I believe that savvy small business owners will find ways to use these in their businesses, making operations and management easier and less costly. Lights, alarms, and locks There are many Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-enabled lighting systems, alarm systems, and door locks. Just a couple of years ago a friend of mine tried to install a simple Web-based video surveillance system at his vacation cabin. He never got it to work properly. Today, however, that are many user-friendly Wi-Fi video cameras that use the cloud so if you want to be able to check your small business facility when you’re away, it can be done easily and inexpensively. You can also control lights and locks from a distance. For example, with the Schlage Sense system, a vacationing restaurant owner could set up a temporary entry code to let a plumber in during off hours using his or her smartphone. For lights, and anything electrical, there are outlet controllers that are inexpensive and easy to use. If you want to minimize your small business utility bill, check out the various smart thermostats. Although they are marketed for home use, many small business owners will find them useful. Ground control You don’t have to worship the ground you walk on, but you can use technology to optimize it. How about trying one of the vacuum cleaner robots to keep your office floor always looking its best? This might save you some cleaning time and costs. If you have outdoor landscaping at your small business, consider a smart sprinkler controller. Put one of those into service and you won’t be the person watering in the middle of a rain storm. Appliances I know many small businesses, such as motels, that do their own laundry. There are several brands of washing machines and dryers that can be controlled via Wi-Fi. Further, there are IFTTT recipes that you might find handy. One, for example, would send...
read moreTry this New Year’s resolution to boost email marketing ?
Let’s make a New Year’s resolution together: Let’s agree to experiment with using an emoji or emoticon in the subject line of an email marketing piece or email newsletter. Okay? According to some numbers published by Experian, 56 percent of the brands who are working with these kinds of graphic symbols in subject lines have experienced higher open rates. Now let’s be honest: That’s slightly over 50 percent, so the results are not overwhelming…they are however, somewhat promising. Power and danger of symbols There are some dangers when using emojis in your marketing and branding materials, whether in email subject lines or elsewhere. You need to understand how they are going to “play” with your audience. Will your customers and prospects find them cute and engaging or shallow and cheap? Here are some specifics from the Experian survey: The heart symbol boosted open rates for 56 percent of the brands analyzed, The black heart, while often used, only improved open rates by 2.2 percent, and The black sun with rates made the biggest impact, improving open rates by nearly 15 percent. The study also suggested that you might find that these symbols help for a while and then their magic power wears off. That is essentially the pattern that all “new” Internet things follow. They catch our eye and attention for a little while and then we soon get to the point where we have seen them so often, we begin to ignore them. They fade into the virtual background. How to use emojis Fortunately, getting these symbols embedded in your subject lines is not hard. Just find a set you like, select the one you want to use, copy it, and paste it into your subject line. This collection of Facebook symbols is a good place to start. They are nicely designed and people are familiar with them; they are “friendly faces” – except for the ones that display anger or other emotions! Graphemica has a cool search feature. Put your term in the site’s search box and it will return symbols with that tag. I just searched for love – or at least an emoji symbolizing love! – and got a whole page or good symbols. If you’re marketing to a younger crowd, there’s certainly a place for these symbols in your emails and probably in other marketing materials. Make a promise to yourself to explore this more...
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