by Kimberly | Sep 23, 2009 | Blog, Internet Marketing, Marketing, small business
Analytics Help You Understand Your Effectiveness and Reach It is reported that nearly 20% of email marketers do not know how well their email marketing campaigns are working simply because they do not track them. The importance of reviewing and analyzing the metrics of your email or e-newsletter campaigns is a major component of knowing whether or not what you are doing is effective or is providing you with any return on your investment. Here are the major components of the metrics of any email marketing campaign. Delivery Rate: The delivery rate is simply the total number of email that were actually delivered to the intended inbox. Delivery rate percentages are determined by taking the total number of emails that bounced (undeliverable) by the number of emails sent. Spam filters and other issues can cause an email to be bounced. You can reduce the chances of having your email bounce by asking the recipients to white-list your email. Open rate: This is the number or percentage of total delivered emails that were actually opened by the recipients. There is some debate about how accurate this number is and whether it is reliable. However, it is still an important number to be aware especially as you send out multiple emails and if you are seeing any drastic change in your open rates over time. Industry research estimates the average open rate is 30%. If your rate is lower than this, you may want to research and evaluate how effective your emails are to the target audience. Click-Through Rate: This tracks the number of times a link in your email was...
by Kimberly | Aug 26, 2009 | Blog, social media marketing
If you’ve been thinking at all that maybe, just maybe, you need to figure out if you and your business should be getting involved is this whole “social media” thing, you should watch this video. It really makes the point about how social media is here to stay. What are your thoughts about the necessity of having a strong social media/ social networking...
by Kimberly | Jul 27, 2009 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing
A new report out by Wetpaint and the Alitmeter Group showed that companies with the greatest engagement in social media in the past year grew their revenues by 18% while companies that were the least engage showed about a 6% decrease in revenue. The study included the top 100 brands and include such social media channels as blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook and discussion forums. Not surprisingly, the top three brands with the highest levels of engagement included Starbucks, Dell and Google. Where it gets interesting is that the analysis revealed that these companies had dedicated teams of people who were actively engaged in using the variety of social media channels. WebProNews reports that: Basically, it shows that it pays (literally) to have a team working full time on engaging with customers via social media. Even if that team consists of one person, it means they will not be distracted by other tasks and can give the social channel the attention required for it to make a significant impact. What this means for the small business owner who may not be able to afford nor need a “dedicated” staff of employees to help them engage with their customers using social media, but they do have the ability to work with a Social Media Virtual Assistant and make an impact on their overall online visibility and more importantly, their bottom line. Social media becomes an effective marketing channel when it is used as part of a strategy and with continuous and ongoing efforts. The small business owner or entrepreneur who may not have the time or the capacity to get started...
by Kimberly | Jul 16, 2009 | Blog, Featured, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistance
I was thrilled to be included as one of the people interviewed for this article about working with a Social Media Virtual Assistant for help with social media tasks and managing your online presence. Dawn Pigoni of Be Social Worldwide, another Social Media VA was also interviewed along with social media greats Chris Brogan and Lon Safko. It was an honor to be included and portrays a good representation of how a social media virtual assistant can help with one’s online visibility and their social media tasks. Many thanks to the author, Lydia Dishman for writing up a great article. Here is the article in it’s entirety. Should You Outsource Your Online Presence? You can save time and money by leaving social media marketing to the pros. July 7, 2009 Between blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and updating a LinkedIn profile, it’s a wonder how a business owner has any time to answer e-mails and phone calls, much less run a company. But the time invested in social networking is well spent in this age where maintaining a social media presence can be a necessary piece of a successful marketing strategy. Trouble is, as the number of platforms grows, so does the time it takes to feed and groom each account. Not to mention the front-end investment of setting everything up. For those caught up in a social media blitz–and those contemplating taking the plunge–why not consider outsourcing? A virtual assistant can tackle those time-consuming tasks. What Can a Social Media Virtual Assistant Do? Many administrative professionals who provided support services such as correspondence, search engine optimization and event planning via...
by Kimberly | Jul 15, 2009 | Blog, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media
Facebook has gone yet one step further in providing you with the ability to embed a widget on your web site or blog which includes posts from your Facebook Fan page along with the option to show your current fans. Best of all, it provides a quick and seamless way for a reader of your website or blog to become a fan of your site from right there. (Assuming they have a Facebook account.) This is awesome new feature which allows you to create yet another way to engage with your target audience and to bring them in to part of your online social network. It’s also a great move on Facebook’s part to push Facebook out even further into the Internet stratosphere. To get the code for the widget for a fan page, you must first be an Admin for the fan page. This means you can’t just go and add a widget for any fan page that might grab your attention. As with anything that you post on your site, it should be something that you have explicit permission to post. As an Admin to a Fan Page, when you go to the page, you will see the option just below the picture or your logo which says, “Add Fan Box to Your Site.” There you will actually see two options, one for getting the code for adding a fan box and the other option provides you with code to get a Live Stream box which shows all the updates from your friends and where you can also post your status. Grab the copy and paste it...
