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If you’re like most folks and want to be successful, then you need to learn as many million dollar email marketing secrets as you can.
And that’s why we’re going to share with you one of the best videos out there about successful email marketing secrets. So join us for the next hour and seventeen minutes as John Chow presents his million dollar email marketing secrets to the Vancouver Business Network.
Some things just aren’t worth keeping to yourself, like successful blog tips.
And that’s why we’re going to share with you one of the best videos out there about successful blog tips. So sit back for the next thirty-four minutes and watch with us as John Chow presents his blog success tips to the Society of American Travel Writers in Germany.
It’s July 23, 2014 and today we’re reviewing a webinar entitled “The Value of Social Data” presented by the link shorting folks at Bitly. Today’s webinar includes presenter Mark Josephson, Bitly CEO, along with one of their partners, Chris Kerns, Director of Analytics & Research at Spredfast. So, if you missed today’s live webinar here’s a summary of “The Value of Social Data”.
Spredfast places brands at the center of meaningful digital interactions. They enable their customers to engage in real time, producing dynamic content with the world’s most powerful social marketing platform.
From one-on-one conversations between consumers and brands, to amplify conversations that are already out there about a brand, they bring the consumer voice into everything. They have tons of touch points to create this social data, not just from Bitly but from their many partners as well.
Through content engagement we discover what activities and content engage our communities the most. Social data helps you to understand the effectiveness of your content. It tells you what dives your audience toward your goal and establishes a benchmark for performance, allowing you to compare current performance to historical trends.
Within the Bitly dashboard you can discover where content engagement is working, find out which topics are resonating with your audience, and understand the half-life of your content. It’s key to use social data to find out what’s working and what’s not working.
Chris gave a great example of how real-time marketing works with an example of the “Bite Heard ‘round the World.” Although there are a lot of opinions as to whether or not this type of marketing is good or bad, you can’t deny that it engages your audience. Consider the McDonald’s Uruguay Tweet of Luis Suarez biting Giorgio Chielliniwas Retweeted over 77,000 times; while the account usually sees only a 2-3 Retweets of their normal content. Ten brands jumped in on this relative conversation that their audiences were already talking about and all of them saw their Retweet performance jump astronomically.
Social data gets rid of opinion and focuses on performance. And it’s not just about engagement. Clients have used Spredfast to increase conversions as well.
Again the Bitly dashboard helps you to not just understand who clicked, when they clicked or how long before they clicked, but to know where they were when they clicked, from what source they were at when they clicked, etc. All of this allows you to understand your audience much better.
You can also see who’s sharing your links the most and thus identify influencers of your content, possibly allowing you to reach out to those individuals and align yourself better with them for addition content sharing.
Given the increase in social data you need to set goals around it, if you’re going to take it serious. To get the most out of your data your organization needs to be using it every day. And you need to be testing. Test what you learn. Use different languages, calls-to-action, #hashtags, media, and most of all diversify your use of social networks.
Like everything else in life, always be testing and always be learning in order to make the most out of your social data.
That’s a pretty quick summary of Chris’ comments about social data and Spredfast ability to help manage and further engage your audience. At this point Chris turned it back over to Mark to continue the presentation.
Talking about massive amounts of data. Mark discussed how every day Bitly works with over 40,000 brands, who create over 500,000,000 (million) links each month, that are clicked over 8,000,000,000 (8 billion!!!) times across every social platform, media site, and brand site in the world. They are the large link shortener on the planet.
Once you collect your social data you can use it to influence your paid media and to optimized your spend. Having the ability to identify where your audience is and their demographics you can take that knowledge and optimize your paid spend, further target you audience, reduce waste spend and improve ROI.
Diving into your data you can discover new customer segments. Usually we start at higher levels, but having all this social data available you can dig down into deeper segments and see additional customer groups that are interacting with you. And once you have this data analyzed, you can use it to drive sales.
There is so much social data out there and so many ways to connect it, however, there are three key takeaways for you to remember:
By the way, Mark noted that Bitly is working on new tools to help further unlock your social data and help drive your growth. At this point the webinar was opened for questions.
That’s it. Another webinar summary for those of you who were not able to attend live.
Now that you read the summary you only need another 34 minutes and 16 seconds to watch the complete video. It’s really not that much time and we could only summarize the webinar, so make sure you watch the video and gain all the insights presented by Chris Kerns and Mark Josephson today.
To your success!!
As Mari said “Woohoo, what a fabulous webinar we had today!”
On Monday, June 9th 2014, Mari Smith hosted a webinar with Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. both from Canva, in which they shared the tactics and best practices for crafting the perfect, most effective social media posts including:
And for those of you who missed it, here’s a quick recap of the “How to Create Awesome Social Media Visual Content That Gets Results” webinar.
First and foremost visual content is the way to go in social media. In fact, social media is now all about creating eye catching visual content that makes the viewer to want to share the content, not only with all their friends and followers, but also inspires them to take action; to sign-up for your list and to become a follower of your brand.
Remember that social media is a marketing platform for your brand. Take it seriously and your brand can soar above your competition. With that in mind here are 10 Key Points of the Perfect Post as recommend by Guy and Peg.
Probably the most important philosophical point to consider when creating your social media post is “Will it pass the re-share test?” Are you sending something out that is so interesting, informative, entertaining, that others will share your content. If your posting achieves just this one key point, you’ve probably cover 90% of what needs to be done when writing a post.
Be Valuable. But what or who determines value in a post? It’s certainly not you! You need to send stuff out that is: Informational (what just happened), Analysis (what does it mean that this happened), Assistance (how to avoid a bad thing or have a good thing), or Entertainment (is this just funny stuff).
All this means is that you should feel “free” to express “your opinions!” Express your thoughts, regardless of the topic and do not be worried about negative comments. You’ll get them and you’ll also get plenty of positive comments too. So take a stand and be bold.
These are guidelines: Fifty Character headline, Three-sentence body, Active Voice. Social media is NOT a replacement for blogging. Your blog, like this one, can share valuable information that is rather lengthy. The key to social media is K.I.S.S… and we know what that means (Keep It Short Silly). Make it brief with eye-catching photo’s and you’re golden.
Always, always, always credit your source. When you find great content form someone else just give them credit. When people see you sharing their post, it helps you establish a relationship with them and it fosters better engagement. And as Guy says “It’s good karma.”
Add a photo or image that helps tell your visual story and create more activity on each of your post. Text only isn’t going to grab attention on every platform. And if you’re re-posting / sharing something that doesn’t have an image, then create one or find one you can use that helps sell the story. By the way, size matters a lot in social media. You’ll want to use properly sized images per the platform your posting to. Here are Peg’s recommendations, in pixels of course: Instagram (640×640), Pinterest (735×1100), Facebook (940×788), Google+ (800×600), and Twitter (1024×512).
These have become extremely important in social media. The reason to use them is it ties content together. Typically when you click on the # tag it gives you a listing of all the posts that relate to that topic, so it’s a great way to connect all of your content with related content created by other people. By the way, don’t forget to “check” your # tag before using it or you could pick one that’s already being used for other (possibly inappropriate) content or totally unrelated to your target audience.
You want to trickle your content out at a steady pace. Don’t send out a bunch of tweets or post over a half hour or so. Find a scheduling tool that works with your service, if the service you’re using doesn’t have one, and schedule your content to go out at different parts of the day and days of the week.
You need to be consistent on social media. Being consistent helps people know that you’re a resource they can count on and use. Especially when new features or problems arise in your niche, you want people to be able to visit your site and find content and discussions taking place about the subject at hand that allow them to find the answers they’re looking for. In addition, frequent posting helps build your brand and (as long as it’s not thin or spammy) Google loves sites with lots of content.
Share your content far and wide. If you have something you want people to see, you have to get it out in-front of them which might mean sharing it on multiple social media platforms. And you might want to consider not sharing exactly the same thing at the same time across each of the networks you’re a part of. Spread it out and format it differently on each network; it doesn’t have to be drastically different, just different enough and with any specific features the individual network requires.
Known as incognito in the the Chrome browser, while other browsers call this private browsing, this allows you to see what other people see when they visit your social media post or profiles. When activated its as if you are not signed into any services, so some features within a service won’t track your viewing habits and thereby show a profile owner that you were stalking them. BTW… it doesn’t necessarily hide things from your service provider or employer, so don’t think you’re following everyone.
Well there you have it. Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick have shared with Mari Smith every thing you need to know in order to create social media visual content that gets results. But wait, that’s not all.
After sharing all these great tips on the art of the perfect post, Guy and Peg shared some additional information about tools / services that make their social media content creation that much easier. They also listed some sites that have great content that you can add to your sharing process.
Since Guy and Peg are Canva employees, they offered a special deal to everyone which you can also access even though you couldn’t watch the webinear live. They encouraged everyone to tryout Canva, an online graphics tool that you can use to design really great images for social medial and more. There are plenty of designs available for you to use, for a small fee, and plenty more that are free or you can upload your own items.
And to wrap things up they gave a quick demo of Canva. Oh… and as great live demos go, Guy dropped himself from the Google Hangout… oops! It didn’t take him long to reconnect, but Peg did the demo just to make sure we could see it :o)
Thankfully Mari understands that not all of us can join a live webinar due to other commitments and timezone differences. So, as promised, she recorded the entire event and here’s the replay link.
(If the above link doesn’t work for you, you can watch the replay video directly on YouTube.)
Plus, the slides from the presentation can be accessed via Guy’s SlideShare account.
Now set aside some time, specifically 1:01:29;29, and watch this video so you can learn even more about Creating Social Media Visual Content That Gets Results and The Art of the Perfect Post.
Another webinar review and this time it’s all about email marketing. On June 12th, 2014 Vishen Lakhiani of Zentrepreneur hosted a free Masterclass with Andre Chaperon about advanced email marketing tips related to – How To Double Your Sales – Without Growing Your List – Using 12 Email Marketing “Hacks” – and to establish that rare ability to make sales on demand.
For those of you who missed the live webinar here’s a summary of it, so you don’t miss out on the 12 Email Marketing Hacks that Andre reviewed. Plus you’ll also learn in this Masterclass:
Oh and before we begin, sorry about not recording the very beginning of this webinar. We had a slight technical problem and missed the first few seconds of Vishen’s intro. Fortunately we didn’t miss anything important and that’s just how live events go. Not much you can do when your browser freezes.
For those of you not familiar with Andre he’s one of the top email-marketing experts on the planet. Not only has he won countless affiliate competitions (with tiny lists), he also created the game-changing course Autoresponder Madness.
Andre has also become known as THE go-to guy in the email world. He’s different from most marketing “gurus”, because he believes that your email list should be based on a trusting relationship that you nurture as you build and focus your marketing efforts. And should you do this, Andre believes you can realistically double or TRIPLE the amount of money you make.
Yes, these really are Andre’s hand-written notes on using the art of storytelling within the context of email marketing. It’s his personal framework that he’s used for creating most of his storytelling emails.
Basically there is a universal framework for storytelling which consist of 8-points:
The story is the emotional delivery vehicle (a narrative) of your marketing message that leads people down a (specific) path that they follow and eventually complete your call to action.
This seems so easy, but it isn’t. Owning someone’s attention isn’t free. You must be relevant. An individual needs change over time, so you must stay relevant to their needs. Your trust equity starts at or near zero, builds non-linearly, and if you abuse the trust that you’ve earned with your subscribers, it can vanish overnight.
Note: Vishen suggest using a ratio of 7 emails that add to trust equity for every 3 emails that might take away from trust equity.
Corporate emails are so boring and will put you to sleep. Being interesting is a dance… it’s entertaining, relevant, preeminent, teasing, flirty and gives value (but never at the expense of giving it all away.) Lust ends when craving ends, so you must always leave your subscribers with a sense of something else that something better is coming.
The only hack that isn’t optional, hence the exclamation mark. You must segment your email subscribers. Why? Because everyone on your list has some shared core needs, wants and desires, but only very broadly. As your audience’s level of sophistication increases, so will their needs and desires. Thus your emails will need to evolve in order to meet those needs and desires; relevance is achieved through segmenting.
Don’t promote “shit” (sorry that’s Andre’s word not ours, but we’ll agree) and burn your list for any commission. Regardless of your niche you should strive to be the fiduciary (the most trusted adviser) to your prospects, customers, and clients. So never promote products or services that do not help move your audience towards their desired end goals.
Why are stories so much better as a delivery vehicle for your marketing message: It’s because stories have a unique power to move people’s hearts, minds, feet, and wallets in the story teller’s intended direction. Stories teach, unite, and motivate by transporting audiences emotionally. The building blocks of all story telling are to: create a challenge, describe the struggle, and deliver the resolution. Stories don’t have to be long, but they must have a surprise.
Nothing will grab the attention of your subscribers faster than their need to know what happens next. If you can keep your readers constantly guessing as to what’s next, you’ll have them hooked. Use an open loop, something like “I’ll explain why this is important shortly”, between two paragraphs will hook your reader. And you don’t even have to answer your open loop in the email it’s in; how insane is that?
Don’t treat people just as a numbers… metrics and stats. The people on your email list are not just a commodity. They are real people with feelings, emotions, needs, wants and desires. And when you start treating them as just numbers, it becomes easy to burn your email list to the ground. Unless of course that’s how you want to be treated? Hopefully not, because your customers and clients will be the lifeblood of your business.
Hard selling is for amateurs. If you know the products you’re offering to your list fit their needs, there really is no need to sell. Your job is simply to bring a product to their attention and demonstrate to them how it fits their needs and desires.
There is no reason to have multiple actions in your emails. One and only one desired end result, call to action (CTA), per email is all you need. Trying to get someone to do just one thing is hard enough. Getting them to do four or five is impossible! Including more than one CTA creates choice, which creates confusion, and you’ll lose people. Stick to one thing and your emails will be much more successful.
Create a series of emails and include an open loop indicator at the end of the subject – Part 1, Part 2, etc. This will set an expectation with your audience and they’ll be looking for more. And if you want to be really sneaky… skip a part (that’s a Ninja strategy) just to create conflict in your reads mind. Watch the video and hear more about that tactic around the one-hour mark.
Tightly linked to Hack #1, use this hack to call out any extra people who are interested in being exposed to a promotion you have. You’re getting people to raise their hand that they want more; they’ve shown interest in your offering. Be transparent, it builds trust. You want to do business with pre-qualified people (those who’ve raised their hand.)
This is the Holy Grail in Andre’s email marketing strategy. Sending out only broadcast emails is manual, it requires a ton of commitment, and has many other built in detractors. Build an email sequence and leverage automation to get it out to your audience. There’s a beginning and no end to the sequence, because over time you keep adding to the end of the sequence.
There you have it a summary of Andre Chaperon’s Email Marketing Workshop with Vishen Lakhiani. If you didn’t before, you should now realize that everyone has needs, desires, and wants and that your fulfilling their desire is the end result.
Now set aside some time, 1:24:22 to be exact, and watch this email marketing workshop mastermind by Andre Chaperon, as interviewed by Vishen Lakhiani.
And what would a video replay be without the associated documentation? Make sure you download Andre’s Email SOS Story Framework and his How To Double Your Sales eBook.
Our goal is to see you succeed and to succeed you need to take action. If you made it this far you’ve taken action. Now download the two PDF files, watch the video, and begin implementing Andre’s email marketing strategies into your business; then come back and leave a comment and let everyone else know how these strategies have helped you.
To your success!!