Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing is a very popular online marketing tool. Email marketing works just like traditional mail marketing, except the product is delivered directly to your client’s email inbox. Email marketing can get unwieldy without the right tools. Use an email marketing program, such as Constant Contact, to manage your email marketing campaign. Tools like Constant Contact enable you to create custom, branded templates, create and manage email lists, and track your results to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Web Tracking Tools

In order to effectively judge the success of your online marketing campaigns, you need to utilize Web analytics tools that provide you with detailed results. Google Analytics is one option for measuring your website’s performance, and Google Analytics conveniently integrates with Google AdWords to evaluate the effectiveness of your AdWords campaigns. You can also use third-party tracking tools, such as Mint.

SEO Tools

SEO tools run the gamut from HTML checkers to keyword search tools to spider simulators, and everything in between. For simple SEO, you can use keyword search tools yourself to generate high-converting keywords for your niche. Google AdWords: Keyword Tool is a free tool that can help you select appropriate primary and alternate keywords. If you want a more comprehensive range of SEO tools, SEO Chat has a great selection of SEO tools to cover practically every SEO need. SEO Chat’s tools include SEO calculators, page rank checkers, ROI calculators, and a range of other tools to enable you to tweak every aspect of your site’s SEO.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a fairly new trend, but one that’s growing exponentially. Businesses can utilize existing social media platforms as a valuable advertising and marketing tool. I’m writing a series of articles on effectively utilizing social media marketing, which includes an overview of social media marketing as well as individual articles geared toward how to utilize specific platforms. You can utilize various aggregators and plugins to integrate your social media marketing with existing marketing campaigns and platforms.

Interactive Content Marketing

Interactive content is a way for you to communicate directly with your clients. Interactive content includes things like turning comments into content, as well as things like featuring multimedia content on your website. Video and audio are far more valuable than simple text content, and provide another reason for your readers to visit your website. In online marketing, qualified traffic is the key to conversion, so featuring interactive content on your website gets you one step closer to improving your business.

Go to Google’s AdWords: Keyword Tool

You don’t have to have an AdWords account to use Google’s keyword tool. Simply go here to access the keyword tool, and you’ll see the form where you have various options to generate keywords.

Generate Keywords from Descriptive Words or Phrases

The default selection on the keyword tool is to generate keywords from descriptive words or phrases. You simply type in the word or phrase; one per line. Use phrases related to your article idea: for example, for a real-estate related article, your keyword search box might include:

• Real estate
• Home buying
• Home sales
• Selling a home
• Buying a home
• Real estate Atlanta, GA
• Home mortgage

Or any other words or phrases related to the content of your page. Then, type the validation characters from the validation image in the designated box, and click the “Get Keyword Ideas” button.

When you click the button, Google’s keyword tool generates a list of keywords related to the terms entered, and a second list of additional terms to consider. The search summary gives you two columns of results; local search volume for the preceding month, and global search volume. You can then choose keywords with a high search volume, niche keywords with a relatively high search volume, or keywords with low advertiser competition, depending on your goal. By using keywords from both the primary keyword list and the alternate keyword list, you can widen your search results and potentially increase the number of people who can easily find your page.

Generate Keywords from Website Content

The second option when using Google’s keyword search tool is to generate keywords from website content. You can enter the URL of an existing website, which the Google keywords tool analyzes and then suggests keywords based on your copy. For example, when I enter my own website URL, I get keyword results related to: copy writing, a copywriter, copywriting, writing, copywriter, copy, writer, freelance, writers, editor, copywriters, and miscellaneous keywords. In theory, I could use these keyword search results to optimize my website for popular keyword searches and thereby increase the number of people who click through to my website.

How to Use SEO-Friendly Keywords on Your Website

Once you have the keywords related to your niche or website, select specific keywords for optimization, depending on your needs. If you simply want to capitalize on popular keyword searches in order to increase the potential of readers finding your website, select the most popular keywords for your SEO. However, keep in mind that these popular keywords are typically highly competitive (as indicated by the advertising competition bar on the page) and your page might come up very low in the results on popular keywords.

More useful is selecting a niche keyword and pairing it with a popular keyword, or optimizing your page to appeal specifically to the niche. If you want conversion, appealing to the appropriate niche is more likely to land you qualified leads. Concentrating on the widest possible search range brings you leads, but they might not necessarily be qualified. The ideal combination for good SEO is to pair a popular keyword search with a niche keyword for optimal results.

This, I think, is why language gets complicated. People want to try to convey a concept that doesn’t quite exist, or there isn’t quite the exact right way to say it, so people coin new terms or create additional meaning for existing words. Language is constantly evolving, and things have been added to the dictionary in my lifetime that appall me (see: ain’t). It’s in the nature of language to evolve, though, and words continue to take on new meanings, and new words are added to the dictionary every year.

TED Talk: The Opportunity of Adversity

In part, this musing on language was inspired by a TED Talk that I watched last night: Aimee Mullins: The Opportunity of Adversity. Ms. Mullins was born without shinbones, and spent her childhood ‘overcoming’ the adversity that condition imposed. In her talk, Aimee discussed the dictionary definition for disabled, and then a modern update to that definition. The definition of disabled itself contained nothing but negative language, and Aimee’s point was that using a term that only contains negative connotations restricts the people you’re labeling with this term. In her case, she was labeled with positive, powerful words as a child, and she was able to work with her adversity to accomplish amazing things as an adult. In large part, because of the words used to describe her; the power of language.

Implications and Connotations: What Language Means

The thoughts from that TED Talk have been percolating in my mind since I watched it, and today I was working on a project and noticed I was having trouble finding the right word for a concept. I was talking about ‘getting a job.’ It occurred to me that “getting a job” doesn’t really mean what people typically accept it to mean. You can’t just go to the grocery store and get a job, like you’d pick up a jar of peanut butter or some dog food. So “get” clearly wasn’t the right word. What, then, was correct?

I tried “find a job,” but that didn’t seem right, either. Finding a job is only part of the battle. Once you find a job, you must catch the attention of the people hiring for the job, and compete against the other applicants to be selected for the job. This usually involves a plethora of steps between finding a job and being hired for a job, so that clearly wasn’t the right phrase, either.

In the end, I concluded that I couldn’t find a phrase that was exactly right for the process of acquiring a job. But if one of your friends walked up to you today and said: “Hey, I just got a new job,” you’d congratulate your friend and understand exactly what he meant, even though “get” isn’t quite the right word.

People Accept the Flaws Inherent in Language

Both from the TED Talk, and from my own musings about the imprecision of language today, I’ve concluded that people simply accept the flaws inherent in language and find ways to work around them. Think about conversations you have with your friends or the people around you. How often do you say exactly what you mean? In most cases, you probably say something close to what you mean; something that is commonly accepted to mean what you trying to convey, but isn’t quite the right way to say it. And people simply accept that as inherent in the language itself, and generally don’t think twice about the fact that they didn’t say what they meant to say, but that they were still able to convey their intended meaning.

Finding the Right Word Removes Imprecision

Language can be imprecise, but finding the right word removes that imprecision. That’s why I sometimes spend chunks of time pondering a single word choice; not because I don’t know how to say something, but because I’m thinking about the best way to say something. In many cases, any word will do. With the right contextual clues, people can figure out what you’re trying to convey even if you didn’t use the best word for the job.

But using the right word or phrase removes the need to rely on contextual clues, and removes imprecision. With the right word, you never have to worry about whether or not people will understand what you’re trying to say. And by using the right word, every time, writing becomes clearer and more precise. Clear, precise writing is a joy to read, and its message is more powerful for readers, so it’s worth spending a little extra time to find the right word.

And if the right word doesn’t exist, blame it on the imprecision of language.

How to Leverage Social Networking for Your Business: Part 2 – Facebook

How to Leverage Social Networking for Your Business: Part 1

Since posting Part 1 of this series, where I mentioned that Twitter hasn’t released information about its user base, I’ve found references to indicate that Twitter has grown from 6 million users in February 2009 to over 28 million users in February 2010. This is an unprecedented growth rate, and Twitter is now a prime social networking tool you can use to reach millions of users with a relatively simple, inexpensive marketing campaign.

Why to Pursue Social Networking for Your Business Through Twitter

Twitter provides you an ready-made platform through which to interact with your readers and customers. Twitter is useful from a social networking standpoint in that you can do many of the same things as you can with Facebook, but due to the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter, it’s more appropriate for discussion and interaction. Maintaining a Twitter account gives people a direct way to contact you immediately, instead of having to go to your website and type a lengthy email or go through other contact channels. Twitter also provides a great way for you to update followers and generate traffic to your website.

Grow Customers Virally Through Twitter

One of the biggest benefits of using Twitter is the opportunity to grow customers virally through Twitter. When you post updates to Twitter, your followers can click a simple button to ‘Re-Tweet’ your content. This means they can easily and quickly share your updates with all of their friends, and their friends – on and on. You can easily grow your customer base by dozens, hundreds or thousands of people with a few well-placed Tweets. In fact, if your Tweets get picked up by one of the many celebrities using Twitter, your content could reach over a million people.

Link Your Profile to Your Website

Twitter provides very basic ways of interacting with your readers. On your profile itself, you have your Twitter name, a picture, a link to your website and a 140-character biography. Use your profile to link to your website, because readers won’t be able to find out much about your business from your Twitter profile itself.

Choose a name consistent with your business. For example, in my Facebook article, I did a case study on a local business called Formaggio Kitchen; their Twitter username is Formaggio. Keep your Twitter username relatively short and easy to find. Every time users Re-Tweet your content, your name counts as part of your 140-character limit, so part of your content may get cut off if you have a long username or post at your 140-character limit.

Initiate Discussion

One of the best ways in which Twitter can serve your business is to use Twitter to initiate discussion. You can elicit feedback from your clients via Twitter, or even just chat and trade messages with your clients via Twitter. If you want to widen your metaphorical net, offer a really good promotion or introduce a controversial topic for discussion. This makes people more likely to re-Tweet your content and spread your Twitter ID – and therefore your business – to more friends. At the very least, you can use Twitter to get feedback about your business and services; and at best, you can use Twitter to discuss new potential offerings or item features so you can improve your product or services.

Share Information with Your Followers

Another way to get your name out via Twitter and get people following your posts is to share information with your potential clients via Twitter. Share early updates with your followers, with links to press releases or new product information. Or discuss special offerings, company downtime or anything that is relevant for your readers to know. By sharing valuable information, you’re more likely to induce people to follow you via Twitter, and are more likely to have those people visit your Website when they’re ready to use your services or buy your product. You can also use Twitter to share information about upcoming events and drive traffic to your site.

Manage the Perception of Your Company

Another valuable aspect of using Twitter for your social networking campaign is that it provides you with a ready-made tool to manage the perception of your company. For example, you could use Twitter to respond to customer concerns or feedback. Or you can simply portray a personable, friendly person via your Twitter account – adding an element of humanity to your business.

For example, Southwest Airlines reached out to actor Kevin Smith via Twitter a few weeks ago when he had an unfortunate incident on their flight. Southwest used Twitter to quickly respond to Smith’s concerns, and it gave them the ability to show clients “Look – we responded to this man’s concerns right away.” In that particular case, the Twitter contact didn’t resolve the issue, but it was one outreach tool that the company could utilize to manage perceptions of the company.

Use Special Offers to Gain Followers and Mentions

If you want to build followers on Twitter, you have to give them a reason to mention or re-Tweet your content. One effective way to quickly get the word out about your business is to use special offers to build followers and mentions. Some companies offer giveaways to people who re-Tweet or mention the company name in Twitter posts on a certain day, or during a certain time frame.

For example, one company held a drawing to give away a free Mac laptop to users who mentioned their business name anytime during a specific week. Users could mention the company once per day for a chance to enter the drawing that day. Hundreds of users mentioned the company every single day, which drove more people to research the company and enter the contest; and this company gained thousands of mentions during the course of that week.

Celebrity Twitter Users

Twitter is somewhat unusual in that it has introduced a way for ordinary people to interact with celebrities. Some celebrity Twitter users have over a million followers on Twitter. When a celebrity on Twitter mentions something, potentially over a million people could see that mention. Some celebrity Twitter users have been known to ‘break’ websites by sending too much traffic when they Tweet content. Wil Wheaton, for example, has over 1.5 million followers, and has repeatedly ‘broken’ websites when he has posted links to T-shirts or interesting items he’s found on the Web. Imagine getting 1.5 million people to your website. This is the power that celebrity Twitter users wield.

Conversely, that power can also turn to power to hurt your reputation. Kevin Smith, for example, had around 1.5 million followers when he Tweeted about a negative experience he had with Southwest Airlines. This turned into an ongoing saga that led to news articles and even TV show offers for Smith to talk about his negative experience. And all of this started because Kevin Smith sent out a barrage of negative Tweets about Southwest Airlines when he was in the middle of having a negative experience with them.

Twitter is a Powerful, Free Social Networking Tool

Bottom line: Twitter is a powerful social networking tool that you can use to generate traffic, build followers and manage perceptions of your company. And Twitter is a free tool. You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for a television ad, or even hundreds of dollars for a print media campaign; all you need is a few minutes each day to create and maintain a company presence on Twitter. Take advantage of this powerful, free social networking tool to market to today’s Twitter audience of roughly 28 million people.

Add Dynamic Content Frequently

People have no reason to return to your website if you don’t add content periodically. Static websites provide information, but they don’t give a reader a reason to keep returning. Therefore, you might lose out on potential clients when readers have forgotten about your website weeks or months after viewing it. By adding dynamic content to your website frequently, you give readers a reason to come back. If readers come back, they’re more likely to think of your website, and utilize your product or services when they need it. Adding dynamic content regularly also enables you to broaden the keyword search terms by which people find your website, thereby expanding your potential audience.

Utilize Social Network Marketing

Social networking is the new buzzword, and it’s here to stay. Savvy companies are beginning to realize that they can leverage social media to spread word about their services or products, and to elicit responses and discussion from customers. This provides companies with an opportunity to reach consumers directly, and to respond to feedback, positive comments and negative criticism. Utilizing social networking enables you to grow your customer base organically through word of mouth and viral marketing with a minimum of effort, and simultaneously gives you an opportunity to influence how clients perceive your company.

Create Guest Blogging Opportunities

One valuable tool that can help you build followers for your website is guest blogging. Guest blogging has a few variations, but the most common technique for guest blogging is to invite someone to write an entry on your blog, and/or offer to write an entry for their blog. In this way, you reach out to the other blogger’s audience by showing them your content and a link to your website, and vice versa. If you trade guest blogging opportunities with a popular blogger, you can grow your audience by hundreds or thousands of people with one well-written post.

Exchange Links with Related Blogs

You can practice a similar strategy to grow your readership in conjunction with guest blogging, or independently: initiate a link exchange with related blogs. This is important: look for related blogs to trade links. By exchanging links with related blogs, you ensure that you have something to offer readers, and you gain a qualified audience that is interested in what you have to say. If you trade links with unrelated blogs, you won’t necessarily have anything to offer readers and your chances to increase conversion are low.

When it comes to establishing related blogs, look for blogs whose readers might be interested in your product or services, but aren’t directly competing. For example, if you have a personal injury law firm, you might want to exchange links with a motorcycle website. Motorcyclists might need your services, and you can provide them with important information about motorcycle injury statistics and how to deal with a motorcycle injury case. You wouldn’t want to exchange links with another personal injury attorney, because there is little value in reaching out to your competitor’s audience via your competitor’s page. (It’s much more useful to reach out to your competitor’s audience in other ways, where you can subtly establish why readers should choose you over competitors.)

Post to Article Directories

Finally, if you want to reach out to a wider audience and build followers for your website, consider reaching out to an audience via a large, well-established website. Article directories are a great way to reach potential clients who wouldn’t find you otherwise. When you post to an article directory, you gain the additional leverage of their weighty SEO. You can then post a resource box with a link back to your website, which is especially effective if you create a call to action in your article.

At the very least, posting to article directories gives you a chance to establish your expertise. At best, someone who is interested in your products or services can learn about what you have to offer and reach out to you directly through your website.

Keep a Spreadsheet of Your Expenses

The most important thing I do to keep track of my self-employed tax liability is to keep a monthly spreadsheet of expenses. At the very least, you should track all of your business expenses. I actually track all of my expenses, business and personal, so I can track where every penny went and make sure I’ve got everything properly allocated. I create one spreadsheet for each month, and save them all together in a workbook that covers that tax year. I enter expenses into various categories, depending on the expense, such as “Marketing,” “Unreimbursed Expenses” and other relevant categories. Then I total up my monthly expenses on the same line of each spreadsheet (for example, this year I used a SUM formula in line 50 of each Excel spreadsheet to aggregate my monthly expenses in each category).

At the end of the year, I put together a “Year End Summary” spreadsheet that pulls data from all of the individual month spreadsheets. For example, on my year end summary, I use this Excel formula to pull data from all of my monthly spreadsheets:

“=SUM(January!A50)+(February!A50)+(March!A50)+(April!A50)+(May!A50)+(June!A50)+(July!A50)+
(August!A50)+(September!A50)+(October!A50)+(November!A50)+(December!A50)”

Just a simple SUM formula is all you need for most of your expenses, and then you have a nice aggregate page of all of your annual expenses.

I’ve found that the easiest approach is to sit down for a few minutes every month and enter all of your month’s expenses. That way you’re not stuck sitting at your computer for hours at tax time just creating a summary of your expenses. Doing a few minutes every month is much more manageable, and makes tax time much less of a chore.

Use the Appropriate Tool for the Job

Make sure you use the appropriate tool to handle your taxes. Personally, I’ve used tax preparation services (H&R Block) and tax preparation software (Turbo Tax and Tax Cut) in the past 10 years. I’ve found that Turbo Tax Home and Business is the ideal tool for me; affordable, and covers everything I need to do in a level of detail that works for me. I prefer tax prep software because then I have the leisure to compile the appropriate data at my own pace, instead of setting up an appointment with a tax prep professional only to discover that I’m missing important paperwork or relevant data. If your finances are more complex, you might be better served by working with an accountant or CPA to prepare your taxes to ensure you meet your liabilities.

It’s Your Responsibility to Report Your Income: 1099 Hunting

Some of the self-employed individuals I know erroneously believe that if they don’t get a 1099, they don’t have to report the income. Unfortunately, that’s not true, and an IRS audit could come back and haunt them for operating under this erroneous belief.

Any client who pays you more than $500 through the course of the year is required to issue you a 1099 reporting your income. Smaller clients might not be so good at keeping track, and you may have to contact them to ensure they issue your 1099. If you track your income on an ongoing basis, you’ll know if you’re missing 1099s and can easily contact the outstanding clients. Although clients have an obligation to issue you a 1099, it’s your responsibility to ensure you report all of your earnings, so you may find yourself hounding clients to get your 1099.

Making Estimated Tax Payments = Good

Estimated tax payments are a common bugaboo for many self-employed individuals. The IRS requires that you make estimated tax payments if you make over a certain dollar amount, and you can be penalized if you fail to make estimated tax payments, or if your estimated tax payments aren’t high enough. Practically speaking, this also presents a problem for you at tax time because you could find yourself owing thousands of dollars if you haven’t made enough estimated tax payments.

This is another case where it’s extremely helpful to track your income and expenses in a nice summary spreadsheet on an ongoing basis. You can check your monthly income and expenses, and make more accurate estimated tax payments every quarter. Remember: making accurate payments up front prevents you from falling behind and owing more than you can afford.

Investigate Every Possible Deduction

The world of a self-employed individual is a world of deductions. Depending on your income, expenses and operating specifics, you may be eligible to claim deductions for a portion of your rent, your mortgage payment or your utilities. You might be able to file deductions for office supplies, uniforms or a myriad of other work-related expenses. If you elect to prepare your own taxes without the aid of a professional or tax prep software, make sure you do the legwork to search out every possible deduction you might be eligible to apply. This is one case where using tax prep software or a professional really pays for itself, because these tools help you get every possible deduction and can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.