Email Newsletter Marketing and Social Media

Today I met with my friend Kelly Denson. She works for My Newsletter Builder, a local AVL company that competes strongly with some brands such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and Vertical Response. She was headed to UNC Asheville today to do a presentation on email newsletter marketing and I was very excited for her. I regularly speak there and currently have 3 interns from UNCA that are working with me. Kelly mentioned that maybe I could talk about social media for a few minutes and I said "I will be there!"

We met at Rise N Shine Cafe on Merrimon Ave to eat a great breakfast and throw around some media ideas before heading up to UNCA. We arrived at the school and met with Professor Jeff Foreman. We walked into the class and started getting ready for the presentation. Kelly took the lead, introduced herself, and gave an awesome presentation about email marketing using newsletters. I learned a new perspective and some nice tips. "The Sexy Subject Line" branded me. Thank you Kel! I jumped up after and talked about the importance of email and how it is part of my "sales process" when using social media. I said... "I communicate on Twitter, Facebook, Text and then evolve it to Email once we are ready to get more serious." Then I discussed the many SM platforms that I use, and showed the class some examples from the icons on the AskAsheville website.

Since the class just a few hours ago, I have received a LinkedIn connection, some conversation on Twitter, and a great email from the Professor thanking us for coming! Great day in the social networking and media world.

If you are interested in having an Email Newsletter Marketing and Social Media combo class, we would be glad to do a nice presentation for your company or group.

Social Media & Twitter Tips

Here is an outline I used recently at a social media class presentation at UNC Asheville. I am thankful for the opportunity to share what I know and help the current generation learn and the next generation grow in their new media efforts.

Everyone needs to establish their brand in these online communities:

1. Gmail - email account - The King of Emails!
2. Blogger (Wordpress, Typepad, Squarespace) - blog website - this allows you to easily update information about your business while keeping your main website focused.
3. Feedburner - really simple syndication - rss feed
4. Picasa (Flickr, Photobucket) - online photo album - perfect for showcasing products, events, staff, etc.
5. YouTube (Vimeo) - video channel - a video presence allows you to reach a whole new community and share your vision.
6. Twitter - status updater - simple updates about your business, life or both
7. Twitpic - photo updater - picture updates - great to use to upload a pic from your smartphone
8. Friendfeed - social media compliation platform - post to Twitter tool is awesome, it allows you to add your other social media sites and then auto updates out to Twitter when you post something new.
9. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace - social networking communities are the new "social clubs" as we knew in previous years, but these are online
10. Foursquare - location sharing social network - tells connections what venue you are at and allows you to post to Twitter, add tips, etc.
11. Su.pr (bit.ly, ow.ly, ht.ly) - link shortener / tracker - shortening your urls will allow you to have more writing room in your Tweets!



Twitter Tips -

1. Make an account
2. Go to “Settings” and fill out all of the information for your profile etc.
3. Send out a sample tweet like “Hello, good morning”
4. Find people to follow searching and by looking at other’s lists.
5. Check the people that are following you - and follow them back if they are not spam or porn. If you want to focus on a certain group of people, make a list and check that list frequently.
6. Use a social media management tool like Hootsuite to ultra manage your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
7. Watch your “At Replies / @Replies” - that is where people are talking to you, with you, or about you publicly. Reading these and giving a response is your 1st priority!
8. Check your “Direct Messages / DMs” - these are your private messages. This is where people usually thank you for following them and send a link to their website.
9. A tweet a day is great practice, no matter how unimportant it may seem. Share something.
10. If you are promoting a business, a minimum of 25% of your tweets should be sociable, personal, humorous, quotes, etc. Just tweeting about your business is unsociable.
11. Check the people you are following and if they do not reciprocate and “follow back” - cut them off and unfollow them. (Maybe put them on a list if you need to track them, but do not let them stop you from growing your followers, network, audience)
12. Do not become a Twitter police officer - people from many different niche groups are on Twitter. Some of them may be selling something that you do not like. Do not waste your time chasing them down. Live and let live; Tweet and let tweet.

GSocialMedia