A sure-fire 3-step email inbox weight loss program
The first days of a new year are always a time to recommit ourselves to establishing beneficial habits and jettisoning things, circumstances, and relationships that are holding us back. But if the truth be told, we know that many of these efforts – in the long run – end up in failure, so I wanted to suggest one simple way to “clear the decks” that is virtually guaranteed to succeed and provide you with a good productivity payoff throughout the year: Unsubscribe like there’s no tomorrow! If you’re like most of us, throughout the year you subscribe to a wide range of emails that you end up not looking at. We sign up to get a free download, enter a contest, or perhaps simply by accident. One reason we don’t unsubscribe is because the “unsubscribe” link is always very small and buried at the bottom of the email. Because of that we often end up deleting them day after day, or week after week. It doesn’t seem like a big deal on any given day, but over time, the wasted time and mental effort adds up. Beyond that, a clutter-free email inbox, like a clutter-free home or work environment, is far more conducive to clear thinking and enhanced productivity. With that in mind, let me quickly show you three easy things many of you can do. First, for any email account that is based in Google’s Gmail, there is a little “unsubscribe” link at the top of each individual email – you don’t have to go on a hunting expedition through the tiny type at the bottom of the email. Just click the link! Next, I suggest you try using Unroll.me. It’s an app that will collect all of the emails you subscribe to and put them into one daily email digest. That’s great because it reduces the clutter in your inbox. But Unroll.me has another feature: Whenever it finds a new subscription, it alerts you and gives you the option to immediately unsubscribe from it. Finally, I suggest you take advantage of the filtering and anti-spam powers built into whatever email system or software you use. You can often filter out email that comes from a specific domain as well as filter for specific words in the subject line. If you’ve had the same email address for many years, there’s a good chance you’re getting enough daily spam to really bog down your efforts to sort through your inbox. If you use the simple user-friendly tools I’ve described here, you can regain a good deal of your email...
read moreSmall biz optimism reaches record yearly high
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Optimism Index average for 2017 posted an all-time record high. That’s the headline from the NFIB survey results released today. “2017 was the most remarkable year in the 45-year history of the NFIB Optimism Index,” said NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan. “With a massive tax cut this year, accompanied by significant regulatory relief, we expect very strong growth, millions more jobs, and higher pay for Americans.” “We’ve been doing this research for nearly half a century, longer than anyone else, and I’ve never seen anything like 2017,” added NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. According to the group, the record-high optimism was driven by expectations of better economic policies coming out of Washington, including decreased regulations and tax cuts – both of which have been realized during the first year of the Trump administration. “The lesson of 2017 is that better policies make for better economic results,” said Duggan. “The evidence is overwhelming that small business owners pay close attention to Washington, and that federal policies affect their decisions on whether to hire, whether to invest, whether to grow inventory, and whether to seek capital.” You can find the full December report here....
read moreFully automated small biz marketing now available for $99/month
How does a $99 per month marketing campaign that doesn’t require any more work from you sound? If you reach prospects and customers through Twitter, an automated $99/month marketing program is now available to you. It’s called Twitter Promote Mode and here are some basic details: It’s recommended (read: most effective) for Twitter accounts with up to 2,000 followers, You can expect to reach as many as 30,000 additional people and add 30 followers each month, Twitter Promote Mode Tweets carry the “sponsored” badge, Twitter Promote Mode will boost up to 10 of your first Tweets each day, and You can target up to five interest or metro locations – one or the other, they can’t be combined. I think this program holds a lot of potential for small businesses. Targeting their community could serve a local business very well. And, even businesses that aren’t local, could work their way through various metro centers over time, gaining valuable brand exposure. Below are the interest groups presented to me when I experimented with the signup process. They are somewhat limited, or broad in their coverage. However, most small businesses will be able to find between one and five that serve them well. Promote Mode is designed to be a “mobile first” service, meaning that your Promote Mode dashboard is built into the Twitter mobile app. You’ll be able to easily access your monthly stats from your mobile device. Despite the fact that Twitter hasn’t achieved the kind of growth or profitability that investors are looking for, it remains one of the best vehicles for branding. Couple that with a $99 marketing budget and toss in automation, and Twitter Promote Mode should prove to be a winner for many small...
read moreThis week in small business: Special New Year’s 2018 expanded edition
This Week in Small Business took a hiatus between Christmas and New Year’s, so this edition of curated content covers two weeks worth of top-notch articles from around cyberspace. Enjoy, but pace yourself! Leadership, management, and productivity Courtney Connley gives us five things we should do to boost our productivity in 2018. The email idea in number two seems pretty good. Laura Emily Dunn profiles Katie Witkin, Co-Founder and COO of the AGW Group, in this edition of Women in Business Q&A. With clients like Red Bull, HBO, and Condé Nast, Witkin draws on a wealth of experience. As the saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” For some deeper insights, check out Amy Morin’s article on the five ways mentally strong people set themselves up for success. Sam McRoberts contends that the system is rigged, but he doesn’t whine about it – he gives you some great strategies for beating the system! It’s always risky going out on a limb and predicting trends, but I think Bridget Weston Pollack is on pretty solid ground with her three 2018 trends for small business. Bringing thoughtful control to the relationship between you and your email client is fundamental to productivity. Sreeram Sreenivasan gives us five tips to help us manage our inbox “like a boss.” They say that the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life is when he buys his boat and when he sells his boat. That pattern is true for some businesses as well and if you want to maximize your happiness at the sale of your business, review Shakir Akorede’s 3 Signs It’s a Smart Time to Sell Your Online Business. You may see stress as your ultimate enemy, but Tyler McConville puts a different twist on the topic, explaining how to use stress to triple your workplace productivity. Marketing and sales How about learning digital marketing in 14 days? Ankit Shukla provides the blueprint. Writing for the Shopify blog, Nick Hajicosti boils down email marketing to four essentials, but he hits all the critical details required for success. If things are hectic in your business, you need to check out Shivangi Sharma’s Busy Marketer’s Guide to Storytelling & Digital Marketing. John Pilmer explains how the new media – including blogs and podcasts – give every business owner new opportunities for PR. I think you’ll find at least two or three ideas you haven’t yet tried in Alyssa Gregory’s article on highly effective small biz local marketing ideas. The folks at Esferasoft Solutions chronicle how a landing page became their best Internet marketing tool. What better way to start the new year than with some solid sales tips? Al Davidson gives us a few in this article. Continuing on this topic; if direct sales are your thing, you’ll appreciate Kevin Kruse’s profile of Betty Palm, Avon’s president of social selling. Nathan Colombo shares some good ways local businesses can collect email addresses in his article that covers email list basics. Brands can use the ever-growing Internet of things to market their products or services and attract more customers, says Irfan Ahmed Khan in his article on content marketing and the IoT. Writing for the Marketo blog, Katrina Niemisto delivers an SEO “cheat sheet” designed to introduce you to on-page optimization...
read more3 reasons to diversify your online marketing
Too many small businesses are one algorithm tweak or shift in the social media popularity winds away from a wiped out digital marketing program. These businesses essentially put all of their digital marketing effort into one strategy or social media platform. The online marketing world is littered with their corpses: The businesses that depended on organic SEO based on backlinks from low value sites. (Their Google rankings disappeared when the search engine giant started penalizing sites with those bogus links.) Companies that relied on their posts appearing in the Facebook newsfeeds of their fans and followers. (Facebook is constantly erecting new roadblocks between your posts and news feeds.) Influencers who launched careers using Snapchat stories. (Many lost their audiences when Instagram got into the “story” business and caused an exodus of users away from Snapchat over to Instagram.) 200 million Vine users were lopped off when Twitter decided to shut down the mini-video platform. These examples capsulize the first reason you need to work hard to diversify your online marketing: 1. When you depend on one platform or strategy, it’s not a question of “if” conditions will change, but “when” they will change. We’ve encouraged you to be exploring multiple social media platforms to find where your top prospects hang out. That is always a sound strategy, and it should be an ongoing one. Not only do the demographics of your core customers evolve (they tend to get older!), but the next generation of your top prospects is out there…somewhere. Your job is to find out where they are and start laying the groundwork for bringing them into the fold. For these reasons: 2. You should develop multiple marketing channels to convert current prospects and nurture your next generation of customers. The third reason is as much about you as it is about your prospects or customers: 3. Exploiting multiple marketing channels develops and improves your creativity and broadens its appeal. Maybe you are an incredible article writer or have one on your team. But how good are you with images or videos? Teachers are well aware of the fact that people learn best with differing modes of delivering educational content. Some are visual learners, other are auditory, others need a tactile experience. I think that for most businesses a parallel situation exists with prospects. Don’t think that your 2,000-word blogs will press everyone’s button, in fact they might turn off some prospect. Some may need to see that information in an infographic or video to become truly engaged. Make your marketing multi-dimensional. Don’t sing a one-note song, your audience will soon become bored....
read moreMarketing tips: How to find out what’s hot (and not) locally
The way I see things, it’s usually a good idea to jump on the bandwagon, because even if you’re the last person on, you still get the benefit of the ride. The “bandwagon” I’m talking about here is trending Internet topics. We’ve posted here before about sites to check out in your search for trending topics to use in content marketing. Among those are Twitter and Google. I want to quickly touch on that topic again, but focus on local trends. For many small businesses, global trends may not be as important as the trends in their states and cities. Fortunately, you can drill down on some sites to get more localized trend intelligence to use in your digital marketing. Twitter is the place to begin. By default, you get what Twitter calls “Tailored Trends.” These combine your interests and your location. I believe it also includes the larger “global” trends. In any case, sometimes you can squeeze more information out of Twitter Trends, by changing your settings so that it only includes trends based on your location. On your Twitter home page there’s a box labeled “Trends for you.” Click “change,” then click “change” again in the pop-up that follows. Next, you’ll see some recent locations. The location you want to check – your hometown, for instance – will probably be listed there. If so, click on it and you’re done. If you don’t see the location for which you would like to see local trends, click on “Select your location” in the middle of the pop-up box. From there you’ll get two pull down menus that will let you select your country and your city. Go through these steps and you’ll be able to see exactly what Twitter trends are sweeping your local area. You can also evaluate local trends on Google. By evaluate, I mean that you can measure the relative interest of trending search terms. You can’t go to Google and find out the search trends for your area; you can only get as “granular” as your country. However, if you want to find out the relative popularity of a specific search term in your area, you can drill down to your state and the bigger cities within your state. Here’s what you do: From the Google Trends page, enter your search term at the top of the page and hit return. In the Interest by region box, click on the United States (or your country). In the Interest by subregion box, click on your state. Find your community or nearby larger city to see the relative popularity of your search term. Armed with these local insights, you have the power to create content that engages local prospects by jumping on the bandwagons that they are already riding....
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