Community Marketing Blog

5 Criteria For Qualifying Social Media Consultants

By Andrew Ballenthin October 20, 2009 President, Sol Solutions Biography

Connect.Follow.Network.

Despite having a time line that stretches over a decade it seems that it's only over the past few years that social media consultants and guru's have become popular new job titles. How is one to measure what their level of expertise is if their is no national or internationally standard for measuring quality standards and professional competency?

Website Optimization and Conversion Rate Killers: 4 Avoidable Mistakes

More and more businesses are realizing that to stay ahead of the competition they need to pay attention to, and devote resources to strategies and tactics for “website optimization.” The goal of website optimization is to ultimately drive more traffic to your website. However, I learned of some recent research which indicates that certain techniques of website optimization can also influence click through rates, conversion rates, and campaign response rates.

On October 5th and 6th, I attended MarketingSherpa’s  Annual B2B Marketing “Summit,” a gathering of some of the best and brightest minds in the marketing industry. One of the speakers, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of a company called Marketing Experiments, was a particularly engaging speaker. I found his presentation entitled “More Revenue for Less Money-The Top Five Ways To Increase the Performance of Your Lead Generation Program” very informative, so wanted to share some highlights.

Social Networking in the Real World: A New Explored Frontier?

Before there was internet people somehow managed to meet each other so once in a while. Since the digital revolution took place it is barely imaginable how people were able to arrange meetings and exchanged information in any organized way taking the Jurassic tools they were using into account. It seems ages ago that worrying about your profile going around in cyber space or exchanging documents in a mouse click were only actual for captain Kirk and his Enterprise buddies. And even in their reality Kirk, Spock and Scotty arranged face-to-face conferences at captain’s bridge to deal with endless upcoming surreal encounters.

Why instant feedback on the internet can be BAD

This past week I was in PEI Canada - working with companies.  Given the beauty of the surroundings and given that my wife was with me with no teenagers - I stopped Twittering, Blogging and Facebook Posting. 

From this I learned that instant feedback from the web had caused me to change the "voice" of my writing.   Over time I had learned how to post messages and content that maximized chances of "retweets" "blog postings" , blah, blah, blah.

15 Tips For Better Email/Newsletter Marketing and Increasing Your Sales

Email (or newsletter) marketing is one of THE most cost effective tools for promoting your business. At a mailing cost of only pennies per contact, it has the power to connect your business or service directly to the person that needs you. BUT if you miss a number of the following points in your email marketing campaign, you'll risk having your customers see you as irrelevant or annoying. The following tips can help prevent this disaster and increase response rates and sales.

Must Read Books On Email Marketing

Check out these helpful books to learn more about effective campaigns, successful newsletters, one-to-one permission email marketing and more.

Email Marketing: The Economy Is Down. Do You Know What's Up with Your Customers?

Listening to Your Customers Builds Loyal, Recession-Busting Bonds

It's hard to imagine any business that hasn't been touched by the recession. Auto makers, corporations, big-box retailers, franchise owners, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and Main Street shops alike are all asking themselves, "How are we going to survive this economy?"

The answer may not come from a Harvard Business School case study or even from the White House. What you need to know to keep your business going strong may be yours for the asking -- with your own customers.

Thanking Customers That Sign-up For Newsletters Goes A Long Way

Any long-term relationship starts with a good first impression. Like our real-life relationships with spouses and significant others - business relationships with customers need to be nurtured.

Your welcome letter is the first impression you make on a customer. How you handle it sets the stage for your relationship and how well your future email communications will be received. Keep in mind, when a potential customer or client signs up for your email list on your website, you have one golden opportunity to welcome them to your brand, your community, and your content - before your communications begin to arrive in their inbox.

How to Build a Strong Bond with Customers

What might be the obvious way to get customers to notice you could be working against you.

Have you noticed your inboxes are filling up faster with promotions from businesses desperate to get your attention?

When the economy is down, the knee-jerk reaction for a lot of businesses is to turn up the frequency and volume of their customer communications. It seems like a simple solution to just email customers more often, hoping that something gets through to them. In fact that's the opposite of what you should do. In other words...

Resist the urge to overcommunicate!

Excerpt of Email Marketing Coaching With A Client

Following is an excerpt of email marketing audit points Sol Solutions is working through with a client to help them re-brand and improve convesion rates. The company is Research Review Service which specializes in providing manual therapists (RMT, Physiotherapist, Chiropractors, Sports Therapists, Osteopaths, etc) with valuable research and reviews of research that can assist them in improving their treatments for clients.