Here are 5 quick tips that you can implement in your email marketing to start seeing improvements straight away.

1. Brand your email

Is it easy to recognise your company straight away from the design of your email? Remember that your branding, company logo and important messages should be visible in the email preview pane. The size of the preview pane varies between email clients but keeping this information in the top 400 pixels is what we advise you use.

2. Include a Call to Action

Make it obvious to recipients what you want them to do. Simply reading an email is not ‘doing’!  Do you want them to purchase something from your website? Sign up to an event? Call you? Tell them what you want and make it easy for them to do it. Make your Call to Action direct, easy to understand and easy to see.

3. Test

The beauty of email is that it is very easy to test. Some email marketing services even have testing built in. You’re testing different areas of the email to achieve the best possible response. Consider testing -

• Subject lines
• ‘From’ names
• The amount of copy you use
• Layout of the email
• Use of images

4. Personalisation

Have you tried personalising your emails to include the recipient’s name, or reminder dates, or product names? It’s likely your database already has this information about your clients (and maybe even potential clients) so use it to your advantage. Your emails will get a much better response if people feel like they are receiving a personalised communication rather than a non-specific mass email that has been sent out to everyone.

5. Treat recipients differently

You should be treating recipients on your mailing list differently based on their interaction with previous emails you have sent. Try sending a following up email to all the recipients you know opened or clicked your last email. These people are the ones that are most engaged with your communication, and open rates, click through rates (CTR) and conversions will be higher when you segment and target email communications based on what you know about your recipients.

The exception!

Of course, there are exceptions to all rules! Take the cartoonist Hugh MacLeod for example. He sends a daily email out that consistently gets 40%+ open rate. So how does he do it? With carefully crafted copy? Intricate A/B split testing? Nope. He just sends a fun cartoon image!

His emails work because they are based on the premise, ‘that good ideas spread naturally. We are hard-wired to share stuff worth sharing’.

Remember, email can be social too! Craft content that people want to share with their friends and make it easy for them to do so by including social share buttons in your emails like these.

Good luck with your email marketing campaigns and let us know in the comments if you plan on using some of these tips. Perhaps you already do? Let us know how they’ve worked for you!

Further Reading

Switching to MailChimp: A Review
What is wrong with this email?
Email Marketing Mistakes: Keep Your Customers Informed
Powerful Calls to Action

Ultimately, this update from Google is all about enhancing the user experience. You should always first and foremost create content for humans, the actual people that will visit your website, buy from you, share your content and keep coming back for more. Creating your website solely for Google and other search engines is a mistake. Why would you want to do Search Engine Optimisation to rank for a keyword if when someone lands on your web page they can’t understand what you’re selling or telling them anyway? Visitors will leave your website as quickly as they arrived and all your SEO work will be pointless.

Is my website OVER optimised?

As ever with Google, they aren’t telling us exactly what will result in websites being penalised but here’s a list of five things that could flag your website as being over optimised -

1. Titles Tags need to look authentic

Title Tags are the blue text that appear at the top of your listing in search engines. They should contain some of your keywords without it looking like you’re trying to cram them in. Here’s an example of how not to do it. Yes, we get it, you’re a ‘hotel’ and you’re in ‘Nottingham’. Don’t keep repeating your keywords, it looks spammy and doesn’t help the user experience.

2. Link Filled Footers

We’ve all seem them, the boxes at the bottom of webpages that are full of the keywords that they want to rank for. Nobody’s really going to click any of these links, they’re not helping the visitor in any way. There are much better uses of your footer, put information in there that is helpful and that people would expect to see instead.

3. Blocks of ‘spammy’ text

The top of your website might have informative titles, great benefit led copy and a prominent call to action but then, wait, what’s this? A block of text that makes little or no sense to visitors that’s clearly been put there just so they keywords and different permutations of the keywords can appear on the page. This is an extreme example but don’t try and do at all. It’s not helpful to anyone. You’ll confuse visitors and risk damaging the credibility of your website.

4. Links from other websites

Links are essential for Search Engine Optimisation but not all links are created equal. Building good quality links to your website from other quality, relevant sites takes time and effort. If you’ve ever opted for a ‘quick fix’, however long ago that was, you risk being penalised for it in Google’s latest update. The links you want to avoid (and even look into getting removed if you have them already) are the ones from websites like the ones we’ve mentioned above. Theses websites are likely to get penalised and your association with their site won’t doing anything positive for your SEO.  You don’t want bought links from link networks or SEO focused directories, comment spam links, some article marketing sites or even lots of non-genuine reciprocal links (where you swap links with other websites).

5. Lots of pages targeting very similar keywords

It’s good practice to have specific pages for each product or service that you provide so you can put lots of informative and helpful text on that will encourage visitors to stay on your site and maybe make a purchase or send an enquiry. What you want to avoid are pages that are very similar. By that I mean pages that target modified versions of your keywords with only slight changes.
Look at this example. Are visitors going to know what the differences are between all these ‘different’ pages? I doubt it. It’s obvious the pages exist in an attempt to increase where they appear in search engines. It’s not helpful for the user so don’t do it.

Google’s mission has always been to serve the most relevant and useful results for searchers. If the results that appear at the top when you do search don’t contain the information you want, the websites are hard to use or look ‘spammy’ you’re likely to feel disappointed. Google doesn’t want that, it wants to delight its users and you should to! Make sure your website it up to scratch before Google Penguin takes effect on your website and avoid any nasty surprises that might be a result of over optimisation.

The reason we’re telling you this now is that we want to make sure you don’t miss out on the great video series that we’re launching shortly. Every member of Team Hallam has recorded informative and instructional videos on Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing, Local Search, Social Media and more to help you improve you business online.

This is your chance to ‘meet’ the team behind all the great content on this blog and learn from their skills and experience, for FREE!

To make sure you see all the of the videos in the series, visit Hallam Internet’s YouTube Channel and click on the subscribe button at the top.

You’ll see that the first video in the series has already been posted. If you’ve not already watched it, take a few minutes to watch and learn hints and tips on ‘What’s New With Google’, presented by Susan Hallam.

In fact, you can find us on lots of social media platforms, not just YouTube. Follow and connect with us to be the first to hear the latest news from Hallam Internet -

Facebook : www.facebook.com/hallaminternet

Twitter : @HallamInternet

Google+ : Hallam Internet’s Google+ Page

Whether you’re already a customer and you’d like to catch up with us while we’re in London or you want to find out more about Hallam Internet and the services we offer, come along to our stand 1136. We’ll have lots of examples of our work, we’ll explain exactly how we work and how we help your business succeed online.

You’ll also be able to see our brand new Competitor Spy Report. This comprehensive peek into your competitors activities online will give you an ethical advantage over the competition and will help you to match and exceed their success online.

Register for your FREE tickets now – www.businessexpo.biz

We’re looking forward to meeting you there! Tell us in the comments if you’re going or if you’ve been before.

Some people think social media takes up a lot of time, but like all things, if something’s worth doing it’s worth doing well. You can make using social media a lot easier for yourself by using our FREE social media content calendar – all we ask for in return is a Tweet! It’s been designed in Excel so it’s really simple to use!

Originally designed for print publications, a content calendar is an extremely useful tool to keep your updates and posts on track and organised. Our calendar contains space for you to plan updates on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and on your Blog. You can use it to plan your posts on as many or few of those platforms as you want.

Why use a Social Media Content Calendar?

• You’ll be more organised
• Ensures you post regular updates and content
• Lets you look at the ‘bigger picture’ and helps you achieve your social media goals
• Makes a connection between all the social  media platforms you use so you have a consistent message
• Everyone knows ahead of time who is responsible for making the updates and what is required of them (so no more shirking!)
• Plan timely updates and promotions to tie in with holidays or events to create maximum interaction and engagement
• Prevent writers block, whether it be for a 1000 word blog post or a 140 character tweet!
• Save time

How to use a Social Media Content Calendar

Each month, decide…

• Who you’re talking to. Who is your target audience? Mums, teachers, people in a particular industry?

• What are you going to talk about that month? Can you tie it in with a promotion your company is holding or a particular theme or topic?

• What is the goal of your social media update? If you don’t set a goal, you won’t know if you’ve been successful!

Then fill in the main body of the spreadsheet with the text for your Facebook updates, Tweet, LinkedIn updates and ideas for blog posts. (Our calendar has tips and advice for how you can do this!)

You can plan your social media updates a month in advance, 3 months, or even a year! Whatever you’re comfortable with and works best for you. Remember, this is just a plan, nothing is set in stone. You can change your plan if you want to and tweak it to get the best results.

At the end of each month…

• Look over your updates and decide if you have achieved the goals you set. If not, why? What didn’t work? Can you make changes for next month? If you did achieve your goals, why? Try to replicate and increase your success next month!

• Which types of posts worked best for you? What was it about the posts that made them successful? The images, the way you wrote the tweet, the length of the Facebook update?

• Also look at the time that you made the update or post and see if that had a bearing on how successful it was?

Your FREE Social Media Content Calendar

At Hallam Internet, we want to make you life as easy as possible so we’ve created a content calendar for you so you can get started planning straight away! Download your FREE Social Media Content Calendar now – all we ask for is a Tweet in return (and you can edit the text however you wish).

Enjoy!

Why integrate Facebook with your website?

If you already have a Page on Facebook why wouldn’t you want to let your website visitors know about that? Integrating Facebook with your website lets you -

• Show visitors how many people like your Facebook Page and if any of their friends already like you on Facebook
• Like your Facebook Page straight from your website without having to leave
• Display recent Facebook status updates directly on your website

Ok, so you’ve decided that you want to integrate Facebook with your website, great! Now you’ve got two choices, you can choose to add a Facebook Like Box or just a Facebook Like Button. Examples of each can be seen below…

How to add a Facebook Like Box

It’s actually really simple to add either to your website, and best of all, they’re both FREE!

To get started, just go the the Facebook Developers site here – How to create a Facebook Like Box and follow the instructions.

As shown in the image below you can change the design and layout of your Facebook Like Box depending on which options you turn on or off.

After you enter the name of your Facebook Page in the ‘Facebook Page URL’ field you can start changing the -

• Size
• Colour scheme
• Pictures of your fans
• Recent Facebook posts (i.e. ‘Stream’)
• Border colour

When you’ve got the Facebook Like Box looking how you want, just click on the ‘Get Code‘ button at the bottom. This will open up a new screen where you can copy the code for the button you have just created.

To make the Box appear on your website you will need to paste this code into the template of pages of your website where you want the box to appear. If you have access to the code of your website it’s an easy job to do, otherwise, pass the code to your website developer and ask them to do it for you.

How to add a Facebook Like Button

If you don’t want something quite as large as the above on your website, it’s a very similar process to add a Facebook Like Button which is much smaller.

Just go to the Facebook Developer site again here – How to create a Facebook Like Button and follow the instructions.

A Facebook Like Button has the added advantage of letting you choose any URL to create a Like Button for. You don’t even need to have a Facebook Page. You can choose to enter your website address in the ‘Choose your URL’ field if you wanted to.

What’s great about this little button is that when someone clicks the Facebook Like Button on your website, a story appears in their friends’ Facebook News Feed with a link back to your website or Facebook Page (whichever URL you chose). This will help you to easily spread the word about your website or Facebook Page!

If you’ve got any questions, just pop them in the comments and don’t forget to LIKE Hallam Internet on Facebook!

Further reading -

• Using NEW Facebook Insights to improve your Page
• How to make a Facebook fan-gate
• Encourage people to Like your content on Facebook

Hyper Alerts is a simple service that is designed to email you whenever posts or comments are made on Facebook Pages that you want to monitor. You can be emailed alerts for posts and comments made on your Business Page, or for a competitors (if you wanted to snoop!), any Facebook Page at all.

By using Hyper Alerts you won’t have to keep visiting your Facebook Page numerous times a day just in case someone might have written something on your Wall, commented on your post, or worse, posted something offensive that needs dealing with immediately.

You can choose to receive emails ASAP, hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. It depends on how busy your Page is as to how often you should be alerted but I’d suggest you don’t choose anything less than daily. 24 hours is a long time on Facebook.

Why I think you should use Hyper Alerts

1. It Actually Works

If you’ve tried to use Facebook’s own alert system you will know that it is sporadic at best and very seldom works at all for me (!)

2. It’s FREE

You can’ argue with FREE, especially if it actually delivers what it promises like Hyper Alerts does!

3. It’s easy

Enter your email, select the Pages you want to monitor, choose how often you want to be alerted, done.

4. You won’t miss important updates anymore

Eliminate any worries you might have about content on your Facebook Page going unmoderated for days.

Recommended Reading

Using NEW Facebook Insights to Improve Your Page

An Introduction to the Facebook Algorithm: Edgerank

This year we were inspired by SEOmoz’s mascot, Roger mozBot. SEOmoz ran a poll for fans to decided which Halloween costume Roger should wear. As well as being fun is was also a great way to engage their audience, (clever SEOmoz)!

The Storm Trooper outfit won and while we do like that outfit, we wanted a Halloween Roger mascot of our own. So, let us introduce Roger Pumpkin Bot!

We’re a little bit scared of him at night…(!)

It seems the creativity of Team Hallam know no bounds! SEO, Internet Marketing and now, pumpkin carving extraordinaires!

Roger, if you’re reading this, we think you’re ‘fang’tastic! Happy Halloween!

Is your company doing anything to celebrate Halloween?

The two sessions are being held in our beautiful new offices and we want to invite you to come along!

This summer Google has made a record number of changes and updates and we want to give you an overview of them and how these new developments will impact on your business.

The areas covered will include Google’s ‘Panda’ update and how this could have caused your business to lose ranking position on Google, Google’s new design, Google’s new social media venture ‘Google+’, Google Places updates and much more.

When – Friday 4th November OR Thursday 24th November
Where – Hallam Internet Ltd, Foxhall Lodge, Nottingham, NG7 6LH
Start – Arrive for 8:30am and enjoy coffee & croissants, followed by a prompt start at 9:00am
Finish – Around 10.30am
Your Host – Susan Hallam

If you’re serious about doing business online, can you afford not to attend?

Maximum of two attendees per company please. Places are limited so book NOW!

Not getting the response you want from your Facebook Page? Not sure that what you’re putting on Facebook is working? Don’t know who’s seeing your content? Then maybe Facebook’s New Insights data might have the answer for you.

Last Friday (7th October 2011) Facebook launched a new version of Facebook Insights. Facebook Insights provides metrics about your Page content. It’s sort of like a very slimmed down version of Google Analytics just for your Facebook data.

How do I see my Pages Insights?

The Insights tab has moved to the left hand column of your Page in amongst your other tabs like ‘Info’, ‘Wall’ and ‘Friend Activity’ etc. Don’t worry though, even though the tab has moved visitors to your page will not be able to see this information. Only Page Owners and Administrators can see your Insights data.

When you’re logged into your Page as an Administrator, click on the tab with the purple logo (like above) and you’ll be able to see all of your Insights data.

Are your Facebook Activities Successful?

A quick way to keep an eye on the success of your marketing activities on Facebook is to look at the four metrics that now appear at the top of your Facebook Insights -

Total Likes is the number of unique people that have liked your Page.

Friends of Fans is a new and very interesting metric. This shows you the number of unique people who are friends with your fans. (The number also includes all of your unique fans as well). What this is showing us is the potential number of people that your Facebook posts could reach if all of your fan’s friends saw your post in their Friend’s feed. As with all online marketing, the potential reach is huge and very exciting for marketers!

People Talking About This is also a new metric. It shows you the number of unique people who have created a ‘story’ about your Page in the last 7 days. The ‘story’ might include people:

- Liking your Page
- Posting on your Wall
- Liking, commenting on or sharing a post, photo, video etc that you put on your Page
- Answering a question you asked using the ‘question’ feature
- RSVPing to an event
- @ mentioning your Page in a post they make
- Tagging your Page in a photo
- Liking or sharing a check-in deal
- Checking in at a Place

Along with Total Likes, this is the only other metric that is visible for everyone that visits your Page to see. Facebook claim that it will serve as a good indicator to visitors about the quality of your Page.  It’s possible that people will get used to looking at this metric and make a snap decision about whether they want to be involved with your Page based on how high or low this number is. The more people talking about your business, the more people you’ll be able to reach on Facebook. You’ll see now why it’s so important to get people interacting and engaging with your content in the above ways.

You might also be interested to know that top brands are currently getting 0.7% engagement (on average) on this new metric. How does your Page compare to this?

Weekly Total Reach is the number of unique people that have seen any content associated with Page in the last 7 days.

Simply put, if all the numbers are increasing then you’re doing something right(!)

Know your Audience!

Facebook Insights will also show you a breakdown of your audience by gender and age and also the country, city and language that they list in their Profile. In the below example you can see that this Page is more relevant to women in the UK who speak English. Have a look at this data for your Page and make sure you target your content accordingly.

Reversely, if this data shows you information that you did not expect then perhaps your Facebook Page has uncovered a new target market for you to explore (well done you!) Or, you might need to think about what content you are posting and possibly consider altering it to attract the people now in your target market.

Optimise Your Content

This section of Insights gives you, well, um, deep ‘insight’(!) into each post you make on your Page. Displayed here is the date, post type, a snippet of the post, the reach, number of engaged users, people talking about this and the virality of each post.

Reach is the number of unique people who have seen your post.

Engaged Users is the number of people who have clicked anywhere on your post.

Talking About This is the same metric as discussed above and is the number of people who have created a ‘story’ from your post.

Virality is the number of unique people who have created a story from your Page post as a percentage of the number of unique people who’ve seen it.

From this information you’ll be able to definitively know which posts are working for you. Once you’ve hit on a ‘winning formula’ be careful not to exhaust it. People on Facebook will tire very quickly of seeing the same types of posts from you so make sure you always mix them up.

Unfortunately, I think there is one thing missing from this table and that’s the time the post was made. Interaction and engagement can change hugely depending on when your fans and users are most active on Facebook. Drill down on the posts that have the most engagement or virality and see if there is a common theme in relation to the time the post was made.

There’s More?!

There is much more data available in your Facebook Insights than what is written about here. Explore your data, think about what you want to achieve on Facebook, look at what has worked well for you previously and this will allow you to make informed decisions about future Facebook activity.

If you want more information about any of this, comment below or post on our Facebook Page!

Recommended Reading

An Introduction To The Facebook Algorithm: EdgeRank

Crowdbooster: Measuring Your Social Media Efforts

Why your business needs a Facebook Fan-Gate