[Small Business Optimizer] Social Buzzing with Laura Rubinstein
If you #39;d like to optimize your business results check out the free resources http://www.melaniebensonstrick.com. Serial entrepreneur Laura Rubinstein starts businesses to solve problems. When...
By: Melanie Benson Strick
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[Small Business Optimizer] Social Buzzing with Laura Rubinstein - Video
Best Social Marketing Software for Meaningful Engagement - Omevo.com
https://www.omevo.com/ offers a social media management, monitoring analytics software to grow your business. Great for brand engagement customer relationship management.
By: Omevo
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Best Social Marketing Software for Meaningful Engagement - Omevo.com - Video
Using email and social media marketing is a great way to reach existing and potential customers. Minal Patel, marketing manager at Constant Contact, shares advice on how you can get started.
Constant Contact is a supporter of our small business competition The Pitch 2014. Find out who won this year's contest and register your interest for 2015 here.
I feel like I missed the boat on social media and now its too late. If youre a small business owner thats saying or thinking that, you should know that youre not alone. Just because social media has been around for more than a decade now doesnt mean that its too late to get on board. And since 20-40% of many businesses annual sales happen between November and January, now is the ideal time to start or restart your social media efforts and integrate them with email marketing for maximum effectiveness.
Jumpstarting your social media marketing
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram are only a few of the bigger social networks where your customers are hanging out. Keeping up with all of the networks can be exhausting and besides, you already have a full-time job.
To determine where to focus your energy, work out which two social networks your current and ideal customers are most active. Before you dive in, spend time watching and learning how people and businesses interact on the network.
Next you need to make sure your online profile(s) are complete. You might think that should be easy enough. Yet youd be surprised how many small business owners miss out on sales opportunities because they didnt fill out important information on their business profile. Since search engines, including Facebooks Graph Search tool, pick up on the vital stats related to your business, make sure your profile is complete. This includes: your business address, phone number, business category, hours of operation, and company description.
Also, on your Facebook page dont forget to include information such as menus, a list of products and services, an events calendar, and other relevant facts that customers will find of interest.
Why you shouldnt sell on social media
Now youre ready to engage your audience by joining and initiating conversations, sharing relevant news, and responding to other peoples posts. While there arent any hard and fast rules per se, one recommendation is to never use social media as a vehicle for overtly marketing your business.
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A quick start guide to social media & email marketing
Columbia, MD (PRWEB) December 29, 2014
Pixe Social, the Maryland-based start-up and developer of social marketing solutions, announces its partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), producers of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), to provide the official social photo sharing solution at the 2015 Show held in Las Vegas, NV between January 6-9, 2015.
CES is the largest face-to-face showcase of emerging innovation in technology, which attracts over 3,000 exhibitors and 150K+ professionals from the consumer electronics industry. While exhibiting at CES 2014, Pixe Social impressed CEA by engaging with thousands of fans both during the show and online through their powerful social marketing solution.
At CES, Pixe Social will provide a roaming team which will engage the event participants to share their photos with other CES fans in real-time. Show attendees are invited to visit the CEA Center in the Grand Lobby of Tech East to capture their memorable hi-tech experiences at the event and share them with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram live from the Show floor. Photos will be framed with a special #CES2015 visual theme, and posted instantly to the CES Pixe Social Facebook Page, Twitter, and Instagram with the official event hashtag.
In an exciting contest, users are encouraged to tag, like, and share their Official CES 2015 photos online for a chance to win a GoPro Hero 4 from Pixe Social by collecting the most likes on Facebook by Friday, January 23, 2014.
Show attendees can also share their own CES 2015 moments from their personal mobile devices by downloading the CES 2015 Pixe app. This custom, branded social photo sharing app is available for free download through Google Play and the App Store so that all show attendees can have the chance to share official Show photos on their own social networking channels.
App users can keep the #CES2015 social buzz going by posting their photos directly to their own Twitter with hashtags #CES2015 and #PixeSocial to enter to win a complimentary $200 Amazon gift card provided by Pixe Social. Please visit this page for terms and conditions as well as additional details about the contests.
About Pixe Social Pixe Social is a Maryland-based start-up providing turnkey social marketing solutions that is on a mission to take the challenge out of social media marketing by converting audiences into brand ambassadors. Pixe Socials solutions have the unique ability to extend a brands online community and boost social presence in a matter of days.
About CEA The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) unites 2,000 companies within the consumer technology industry. Members tap into valuable and innovative members-only resources: unparalleled market research, networking opportunities with business advocates and leaders, up-to-date educational programs and technical training, exposure in extensive promotional programs, and representation from the voice of the industry.
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Consumer Electronics Association Partners with Pixe Social to Engage with #CES2015 Attendees with Social Photo Sharing ...
By Molly McLaughlin
Email marketing should bean important part ofevery business strategy, and Benchmark Email is a goodchoice. Like Vertical Response, Benchmark Email offers a free plan that givesaccess to most features, so you can give it a try while you grow your subscriber base. Its free plan includes twice as many contacts as Vertical Response's plan and creating emails and adding users is much easier with Benchmark Email, too. Editors' Choice MailChimpalso offers a free plan, however, and neither it nor Campaigner, with which it shares ourtop rating,showed the same sort of glitchiness I saw with Benchmark Email in my testing.
To understand how Benchmark Email stacks up against the competition, I calculated how much it would cost a small business with 2,500 contacts in its marketing database to sign up forthe service. The price tag would be $28.95 per month, similar to that of iContact. While many email marketing tools have a cap on how many messages you can send in a month, a List-based subscription from Benchmark Email (more on this in the next section) means there are no limits on the number of messages you can send per month, which is also the case with iContact.
Pricing and Features Benchmark Email's free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts and up to 14,000 emails per month. This is similar to MailChimp's Forever Free plan. If you opt for a paid plan, you can pay by the number of emails sent each month or number of contacts you will contact each month. Send-based plans start at $9.95 per month for 600 emails and max out at $375 for 100,000 emails per month, while contact-based plans start at $11.95 per month for 600 contacts and go up to $4,000 for up to 4 million emails per month. Higher-volume plans are available, but you have to contact the company for pricing.
You can also create auto-responders, such as welcome emails or confirmations, and you can conduct A/B tests on both email subjects and content. Inbox checker lets you see how your emails will look in different email programs, and it helps you avoid spam filters, too.
Creating a Subscriber List You can add subscribers to BenchMark Email by copying and pasting from a list, importing a list file, or manually adding entries one at a time. If you want to import contacts from another program such as Gmail, Hotmail or Zendesk, you have to first export your contacts from that other program. Other competitors, including MailChimp and GetResponse, can grab contacts directly from Gmail and other third-party sites.
I uploaded an Excel file and my contacts showed up in seconds. Once you've added contacts, you can create segments of contacts based on many factors such as signup date, zip code or any other information you've collected. You can't create custom fields, though.
Setting Up a Benchmark Email Campaign Benchmark Email offers several ways to create a campaign You can choose from a drag-and-drop tool, a plain-text tool, or the classic editor. I opted for the drag-and-drop tool, which is relatively easy to use, except thata few times it hung,and I was forced to refresh the browser and start over. Before digging into the templates, you can edit the email's permission footer; that is, the "you are receiving this email because" messaging. You can also opt to add Google Analytics tracking to all URLs. Social media integration is limited in that you can connect to Twitter and Facebook. The only thing you can do on social media is to auto-post a message when your newsletter is sent. iContact offers far more in the way of social media integration, covering more services and allowing you to schedule and track your social media posts.There's also an option to allow commenting on your campaign and to include a Web-based version of the email.
Creating an email is easy for the most part. You can drag images and text elements into the newsletter and remove them easily. If you're adding images, you can connect to Flickr, but this didn't work in my tests. (Flickr's error message referenced an "unrecognized oauth token.")
When I got to the send screen, I was surprised to not find an option to send a test email. It turns out you can only send a test from within the editor, which I found a bit odd. You can preview your email easily, but only on desktop, not mobile. My test email went to my spam folder in Gmail as did the official newsletter. The email successfully got to my Hotmail inbox, though. You can also use Benchmark Email to create event invites (including ticket sales), polls, and surveys.
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Benchmark Email Marketing