Design Rangers has the pleasure of posting this article written for us by Tammy Oler – our dear friend and awesome wordslinging partner. Enjoy!

Between blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, there are more ways than ever to connect with your customers.  But direct marketing still works – and email newsletters can be a powerful way to reach out.  The key to success with an e-newsletter is cutting through the clutter of your customers’ inboxes, and giving them good reasons to click through to your content.

Here are five tips for making your e-newsletter more newsworthy:

Offer Unique Value

Give your readers unique and valuable content: relevant news, exclusive how-tos with case studies or examples, resources, and information on sales and discounts are all excellent ways to connect with customers and keep them reading. It’s easy for people to delete and unsubscribe, so make sure that you’re publishing information your customers care about!

Make It Entertaining & Fun

Don’t send boring stuff to your customers!  (This one seems obvious, but it’s important to keep in mind.  Consider just how much boring stuff you receive from companies…)

Get Social

Incorporate social media into your e-newsletters to connect your customers on multiple channels.  Invite your newsletter readers to link to you on your other social sites, and share your newsletters on those sites.  You can also conduct polls or solicit content from customers on other channels and share in your newsletter.

Be Familiar

Readers are more responsive to communications from friendly, trusted voices.  Write your newsletter as if you were an insider talking to another insider.  Give your newsletter a club or community feel.

Deliver on Your Promise

Make sure you tell people what they’ll get when they sign up for your newsletter – and make good on your promises!  Be clear about how often you will send out emails and what types of content they will contain.

Oh, and don’t forget to proofread!  Just like with blogs, spelling, punctuation, and grammar still matter!

Good luck with your email marketing!

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.

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Social Media Monitoring: Free Tools to Manage Your Online Presence

We’ve posted on the importance of listening as well as some of the ways you can use social media for engaging with your customers, including Twitter, blogs, and Linkedin.  But it can be a real challenge to monitor what is being said about your business or industry online.  There are plenty of social media monitoring tools and services you can purchase, but these may be out of reach for many small to mid-sized businesses.  The good news is that there are several free and helpful tools you can use to begin to monitor and measure your online presence:

Google Alerts are easy and critical monitoring tools.  Set up alerts for keywords and topics you want to monitor, and Google will email you updates with the latest relevant Google results.

TweetBeep is a similar service to Google Alerts, but with a Twitter focus.  TweetBeep will send you updates of Twitter conversations on selected topics and keywords.

Social Mention is a real-time search engine that includes a wide range of social media sites.  In addition to search results, Social Mention also provides some basic metrics for reputation management, and you can set up email updates.

Keotag is a simple and awesome tool for searching tags across seventeen platforms, including the major search engines, Digg, Reddit, and more.

TweetLevel is a nifty and simple tool that measures your Twitter influence, popularity, engagement, and trust.

HowSociable provides a useful snapshot of your brand visibility.

Twitter Search is a basic tool for checking out real-time Twitter conversations. If you’re already using a Twitter client or application (highly recommended!) like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or HootSuite, make sure to set up searches that will automatically refresh and keep you updated on conversations.

Are there free tools that you would recommend?

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.  Follow her on Twitter here.

Linkedin has become a powerful tool for professionals looking to network and find career opportunities as well as companies looking for talent. Linkedin also provides some unique tools that can be particularly effective for small business marketing. Here are some tips for making the most of Linkedin:

Get Your Company In

Create a profile for your company, and make sure to include relevant keywords in your descriptions. Linkedin can be a great source of SEO links, and your profile will start to appear in Google and other search engine results.

Get Your Team In

Make sure that your principals and team members have Linkedin profiles. They can easily create unique URLs (http://www.linkedin.com/in/name) so their profiles will be easier to find. Individual profiles should also include relevant keywords as well as good photos.  Linkedin is a great way to put a face on your team – and your company!

Get In the Conversation

A unique feature of Linkedin is the ability to ask Questions and provide Answers to other members. Providing smart, helpful answers can position you or a team member as an expert, and increase your network of connections. You can also ask thoughtful questions as a way to start conversations. With Linkedin, you can also join or start groups! You can join relevant industry or local groups, or start and facilitate groups of your own. Group discussions can lead to increased connections, industry insights, referrals, and even prospects!

Get In with the Media

Most people get connected with professional colleagues, service providers, clients, friends, and associates. But don’t miss the chance to connect with journalists, bloggers, and other media professionals. If you meet or are introduced to a media contact, invite him or her to connect on Linkedin! Staying connected helps keep you top-of-mind and may lead to PR opportunities.

Keep Your Contacts in the Loop

Use Network Updates to keep your contacts informed about your professional news, and select the News Module to share the latest news about your company. A word of caution: Linkedin is not a micro-blogging site like Twitter and it’s not nearly as personal as Facebook. Encourage your team to be strategic and limit their number of status updates.  If you are a prolific tweeter, it’s not a good idea to connect your Linkedin updates to your Twitter profile. Don’t overwhelm your professional contacts!

We’re looking forward to seeing you Linkedin!

Design Rangers would like to thank Tammy for another awesome guest post! We are proud to call her partner and friend. Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY. Connect with Tammy on Linkedin. Connect with the Design Rangers, Chris and Jenny, on Linkedin.

Compared to Twitter and Facebook, blogs can feel a bit old-fashioned. Blogs take a lot of time and energy to maintain, and many small businesses find them to be a challenge. But blogs are powerful – and creative – marketing tools. They demonstrate your expertise, show off your company’s personality, and increase your visibility online. Blogs can also generate content for your other social media channels. Above all else, a blog can demonstrate that you care about your business, your industry, and your customers.

What Have You Got to Say?

I’ve found that many small businesses share the same blogging challenge: they don’t know what to blog about! Here are some ideas for posts:

1. Report industry news. Share information, commentary and insider knowledge on news that impacts your industry or products. This is a great way to build value for your customers and establish your expertise.
2. Share advice and tips. Provide guidance and help to your customers and readers. Everyone loves a post full of tips. (Like this one!)
3. Product announcements and case studies. Are you rolling out a new product or service? Blog about it! And don’t forget to share success stories.
4. Roundups. Create a regular roundup of useful or relevant links to share on your blog. It’s a great way to make use of other resources online – and to make your own web surfing productive!
5. Guest bloggers. Invite other bloggers or subject matter specialists to submit posts. This is a great way to bring resources to your customers. Your guest bloggers might just invite you to do some guest blogging, too. (You’re reading a guest blog right now!)

Tips for Better Posts

Once you’ve got your content, make the most of it! Here are some things to keep in mind while you’re writing:

1. Make it concise. You should definitely use more than 140 characters, but keep your posts brief (300-500 words is a good range).
2. Develop clear, clever titles. This is especially important if you will be posting your blog content to Twitter and Facebook! Make your titles clear, so that prospective readers know what they’ll be reading, but see if you can make them snappy, too.
3. Include links. Provide links to people, articles, and blogs that you reference. This is useful to your readers, and it also helps you to build connections in the blogosphere.
4. Proofread your posts! Even in the online world, spelling, grammar, and punctuation matter. Don’t forget to proof your posts.

My 500 words are nearly up… happy blogging!

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY. Follow her on Twitter here.

As you reflect on your marketing efforts in 2009 and prepare for 2010, it’s easy to focus on what you accomplished (or didn’t) and what kinds of strategies will meet your needs going forward.  But before you design a plan that’s all about YOU, remember that no marketing will work unless you put your customers first.

Ask yourself the following question: how often do you listen to your customers?

Listening is critical to your business.  Listening – seriously – to your customers will not only provide you with key insights about your products and services, but it is essential for developing a strong and effective marketing plan.  As you move into 2010, make sure that a fundamental component of your strategy is setting up a listening post to talk to your customers – offline and online.

Listening in the Real World

This sounds simple, but most companies try to avoid actually talking to customers unless they have to.  Don’t skip out on your chance to connect personally and get honest feedback about what you’re offering!  If you’re a small business, chances are good that you have developed relationships with customers in your target markets.  Listening is as simple as asking them how they have experienced your product or service, how they perceive your company, why they choose you over a competitor, and what you can do to improve. This feedback can help you determine if your messaging and design is effective, if you’re using the right marketing channels, and if your performance delivers against your promises.

Listening in the real world can also provide you with key information on how to plan your online and social media marketing.  This type of marketing requires a large investment of time and, often, resources, and it’s critical to determine how to make that investment.  Make sure to ask customers in your target markets how they use the Web, what (if any) social networks they prefer, and if they feel it would be useful for you to be there, too.

Listening in the Virtual World

You also want to make sure that you’re listening online.  Many businesses make decisions about their online presence and social media channels without ever first assessing how their customers use the Web and the sentiment of customers towards products, services and competitors online.

To listen online, start by searching for your company name on broad range of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Blog Search, and general search engines.  How large is your online reach, and how positive is sentiment about you?  Next, do the same thing for your competitors.  Are they reaching customers in ways or places you are not?  Take the time to inventory how they are using the Web.  Finally, start searching for conversations about the types of products or services you offer.  Are there influential blogs you should be watching and contributing to?  Are customers even talking about your types of products and services on certain platforms? Remember that you may be able to gain new customers and strengthen your relationships very effectively online and with social media channels – but only if people in your key markets are actually engaged with that channel.

Make online listening an ongoing project!  You can automate this in several ways, including setting up Google Alerts to track mentions of your company name, your competitors, and other keywords that are essential to your business.

One More Thing: Be Prepared For Less-Than-Awesome Feedback

If you’re listening, chances are good that you’re going to hear some things that you might not want to. But negative feedback might be among the most valuable feedback you can receive.  It represents an opportunity to respectfully and considerately respond as well as to improve!  Remember that with social media, your customers are asking you to listen to them. Responding in an honest, authentic and ongoing way is the surest way to support your marketing efforts and build stronger relationships.

Here’s to a 2010 with more listening – and more effective marketing!

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, consultant and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.  Follow her on Twitter here.

Seven Super Tips for Tweetslingers

In my previous posts, I’ve blogged about why Twitter is important for businesses and what individuals can gain from the service, so today I’d like to focus on how you can make the most of your tweets. First impressions count in the real world, and they’re even more important in the Twitterverse. Whether you are tweeting for an organization or just for yourself, you want to make your 140 characters count!

Here are seven super tips for tweetslingers*:

Ignore the Twitter prompt. The answer to the question “What are you doing?” is just generally not that interesting.  If you’re going to tweet about something you’re doing, make sure that it’s relevant, engaging, and worth the attention of your followers.

Be authentic. This is especially important if you are tweeting on behalf of a business or organization.  Don’t be a billboard or a press release!  Give your tweets a real human voice.

Retweet regularly. Share (and credit!) relevant and interesting blog posts, articles and links that you or your followers will find interesting.  It’s not only good Twitter karma, but it’s also a way to build credibility and your reputation in areas of interest.  (Note: If you aren’t quoting someone directly, you can also use “via @username” to share his/her link while still distinguishing your words.  This also results in Twitter goodness!)

Use humor abundantly. Use snark sparingly.  Know the difference!  Feel free to be funny and thoughtfully critical, but too much negativity can turn off followers.

Use #hashtags to make your tweets more searchable. Words that follow the # symbol in tweets are called hashtags.  This is an informal way of assigning a keyword to a tweet so that others can easily find it.  Hashtags are a method of connecting tweets about the same subject, making it easier for users to find tweets on the same topic. Hashtags are often used by event conference organizers as a way of streaming all tweets about the event.

Revise your tweets. Take a moment before you hit ‘Update’ to check your spelling and read for clarity.  It’s always a good idea to see if you can make your tweet shorter, too.  Shorter than 140 characters?  You bet!  If you want your tweets to be retweetable, you’ll make sure to give your followers some unused characters.

Converse. Social media is just that: social!  Respond to tweets, join in conversations, and encourage your followers to talk to you!

Happy tweeting!

(*Bonus: awesome alliteration!)

Twitter for the People!

My last post on Twitter focused on how organizations can use micro-blogging to develop customer relationships and build communities, but what about individuals?  What can people possibly get out of a social network limited to 140 characters? And why bother with it if you’ve already got a Facebook account?

The distinction between Twitter and Facebook is a useful one. On Facebook, your objective is to find your friends and share with them.  On Twitter, you find people to “follow” and you cultivate “followers.” Facebook is primarily a social tool that focuses on reaching out to people you already know.  Twitter, on the other hand, is a tool for finding and communicating with people well beyond your circle of friends.  Because of that, Twitter is a very powerful tool for social networking, talking with people who share your professional or personal interests, and getting real-time news and resources.

But a lot of folks never make it past their first experience with the Twitter. Tweeting feels pointless or narcissistic — or both!  Most people don’t know what to expect, what they can accomplish, or how they can use the tool.

So until there’s a new Dale Carnegie training course on how to use Twitter to win friends and influence people, I’ve decided to share three ways you can use and enjoy Twitter.  It DOES require time and energy, but it can totally be worth it.

You can:

Connect with people in your field and find people who share your interests.  Twitter is a dynamite way to find and follow people who share your professional or personal interests.  Do a Twitter search to find people who tweet about your interests, or check out who other people are following.

Share knowledge. Twitter is great way to find tips and links to resources.  You can ask your followers questions and get feedback and advice – right away.  Post your own tips and links to articles, blogs and resources. This is an excellent way to position yourself as a specialist or a leader in your field, and essential for freelancers and consultants. Make sure to retweet valuable information and posts from other people!  I also like to use Twitter to curate the Internet for me: I follow smart people in different fields to take advantage of their expertise and read their links.

Get real-time news. Twitter has become the first choice for many people looking for breaking news online.  It’s also fueling citizen journalism.  If you’re looking for eyewitness accounts of anything, check Twitter first.

Promote yourself. If you’ve got something to market, you can do it on Twitter.   Just don’t go overboard!  Too much self-promotion, and your followers will disappear pretty quickly.  And make sure to balance your self-promotion with interesting and valuable tweets to keep and build followers.

Talk to people! Yes, have fun!  This IS social networking, after all.

Above all else, think about what you’d like to get out of Twitter when you start using it.  It’s not intuitive, and it’s not necessarily easy.  But if you’re looking for another way to increase your network, expand your knowledge, and share good stuff with the universe, Twitter is a great tool.

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, consultant and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.  Follow her on Twitter here.

Twitter for Business: Using 140 Characters and a Good Strategy to Build Your Community

As media buzz builds about Twitter, more and more businesses and organizations are starting to realize that the micro-blogging site is not just a teen textfest or an outlet for discussing your breakfast cereal of choice.  In fact, Twitter has evolved into a thriving professional network, a real-time news feed, and an effective way to share information and resources online.   So what can your organization do with 140 characters?  A lot.  

Here are four powerful Twitter activities that are essential to any good social media strategy:

Listen. Twitter is a powerful tool for finding out what people know and think about an organization, a product, an issue, news, or an event.  Use Twitter to find and solicit feedback and opinions.  But be prepared to receive honest feedback, which means that it may be less-than-positive.  It may not be what you want to hear, but it might be what you need to hear. Twitter’s search engine isn’t bad, but there are lots of robust search tools out there.  Check out Twitter Search, Tweetbeep, Twazzup, Tweefind, and TweetDeck.

Reach Out and Connect. Twitter is a great way to post news, events and promotions, but don’t stop there.  Post links to related information, and retweet news and resources that will be valuable to your followers.  This is especially powerful for non-profit organizations, but it’s useful for businesses, too.  And don’t just promote yourself!  Give your followers useful resources, inform them, and entertain them — you’ll build credibility and loyalty.

Promote and Join Conversations. Talk to your followers, respond to questions, and join conversations that you discover through searches.  Remember: Twitter isn’t just a communications or marketing tool.  It should also be part of your customer service strategy!

Give Your Organization a Personality. Your customers don’t want to interact with a brand identity or a public relations message. The best way to create trust and relationships is to be honest, ethical, transparent and friendly.  In other words: be human. Check out this great Mashable post (with examples!): 7 Secrets to Tweeting Your Corporate Culture.  My favorites: reveal industry insights, profile customer successes, and be responsive.

If your organization isn’t on Twitter, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to connect.  And if you’re already using it, make sure that you’ve got a strategy to get the most out of it.  When it comes to building your business or cultivating a community, every 140 characters count!

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, consultant and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.  Follow her on Twitter here.