Growing and Nurturing Your Email List

Every now and then, I see an article that suggests email marketing is dead; however, this is far from the truth.  I’ve met many home business owners who say the majority of their income comes from their email subscriber list. If your list isn’t producing results, it may not be because email is dead. It’s more likely that you’re using it wrong. Here are tips to growing and nurturing your email to increase profits.

Growing Your List

Part of the success in email marketing is to have a list that is growing. Many people I’ve met who are struggling with email marketing have a stagnant or shrinking list. Here are some tips for growing your list:

1) Have opt-in forms on every page of your site. For example, if you have a WordPress blog, have an opt-in list sign-up form in your sidebar. You might consider having one at the end of your content as well.

2) Entice them to sign up. Offer a freebie such as a report or video for signing up for your list. Let visitors to your site know what the freebie will do for them. So many online businesses simply have a form that says “Sign-Up to Get Updates,” which isn’t a compelling reason to join. Some online business owners indicate what their incentive is, but not in a way that entices people to join. Instead of saying, “Get my free report on how to lose weight,” say, “Start losing weight today!

My free report will tell you how!”.

3) Promote your incentive on social media. Most social media platforms have areas you can include information about your list and offer in the profile. You can promote the list itself, but you’re more likely to get results by promoting the free offer. Which would you respond to: “Join my list to learn about saving money!” or “Get ‘52 ways to save $1,000 a Month’ free.”

4) Include information about your incentive in your bios and emails. If you guest blog or appear on someone’s podcast or website, make sure your bio includes information about your incentive. Every email you send should mention your free report in the signature line.

Nurturing Your List

Growing the list is only one aspect of email marketing. Once they subscribe you need to provide value or they’ll unsubscribe. Nurturing an email list is a delicate balance of staying connected without overwhelming subscriber’s inboxes. Even more important than keeping on the list, is having them eager to open the email to see what you have to share. Here are tips for making your list an effective marketing tool:

1) Email often enough that subscribers remember you, but not so often you annoy them. This number depends a great deal on your home business. Most successful email marketers I know email two to three times a week. Emailing even just once a week, may not be enough.

2) Be you. The most successful marketers know that their effectiveness comes from selling themselves first.

Put another way, people will connect with and want to buy from you because of who you are. Your subscribers have many options for who to do business with, but if you can make a connection, build rapport and trust, they’ll choose you. So don’t be afraid to share stories and true-life anecdotes.

3) Give value. Whatever you email to your subscribers should enhance their lives. Money always follows value.

4) Make list members feel special. People who give you their name and email should be treated with the respect they deserve. Make sure they know it by thanking them as well as giving them things that no one else gets. For example, I provide a freebie every Friday that only my subscribers receive. It’s my way of thanking them and acknowledging that having their email is a big deal. 

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ConvertKit’s 30 Day Landing Page Challenge

This post contains affiliate links.

How big are you dreaming this year?

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In just 10 minutes you can have a fully designed and branded landing page live and ready to share with the world.

With that in mind, ConvertKit is hosting this challenge to help you get your next idea up and running with a landing page to gain as many new subscribers as you possibly can.

For one creator who can set up a landing page that grows their list by over 100 subscribers in one month, ConvertKit is giving away a grand prize of:

• $5,000
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• And a year of coaching with one of their account managers
• There are also more great prizes for anyone who doesn’t quite reach that level too!

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<Grow your list to fund your future with the 30 Day Landing Page Challenge>

For Traffic Generation, Differentiate Your Brand with Awesome Copy

HAVE you ever noticed that you stay on some websites a lot longer than others?

To market your brand and business, you need to elevate your copy so readers love to interact with your website. The most loyal customers will anticipate each blog post you write, excited for new insights and entertainment.

It sounds like a lofty goal, but with the right ingredients, you can bring in new traffic with electrifying content and awesome marketing copy:

Make Your Copy Short and Sweet

Although long-form copy performs well in some industries (particularly in B2B sectors), most marketers need to trim down their work. Ideally, every word on a website shines a light on the value of your service or product. Copy that emphasizes how a company can transform customers’ lives is most likely to strike a chord.

If you’re not sure if your marketing copy is concise enough, take a highlighter to a printed version of your website page. Mark every word that helps your audience understand what you do, why you do it, and how your company stands out from the crowd. Leave out superfluous details, so your message can truly shine.

Be Authentic to Your Brand

In order to create traffic, you need to understand the unique attributes you offer customers. Instead of mimicking the voice and pitch of other brands — especially competitors — write down what appeals to you about their marketing. Maybe it’s their killer Instagram account? Or their confidence in connecting with their audience?

Awesome copy is an extension of a company’s brand, so also identify what makes you different from competitors. Perhaps, it’s your stellar customer service or your big community. These are the characteristics you want to identify in your copy. If you struggle to identify what sets you apart, record your voice in a smartphone describing your original vision for the company. Type it up. Next, go through the copy, and cherry pick the clearest, boldest copy to use on your website.

Incorporate Feedback from Your Ideal Audience

Even if you follow these two steps, you’re still not out of the woods. Amazing copy resonates with an audience — the best way to find out if it hits the mark is to ask. To ensure you’re crafting awesome copy to your website, reach out to a batch of people who represent your target audience. They could include a set of honest friends, or loyal customers who are willing to answer a short survey.

You can also offer an incentive to email subscribers, such as 15% off a future purchase for participation in the survey. For a template, consider the following survey request from the clothing and homeware shop Anthropologie — it’s a pretty stellar way to ask for help.

In your survey, share some simple questions that gauge your audience’s perspective on your current marketing campaign. A simple Google Form or a free tool such as SurveyMaker will due the trick. Creating a survey with anonymous responses increases the likelihood of participation. With accurate feedback, you can gauge the extent to which you need to adjust your marketing copy.
These three guidelines to awesome copy extend to social media, email marketing, and print materials too. By crafting language that resonates with both your brand and your audience, you pave a clear path toward increased traffic generation and higher sales.

Tell us how do you feel about it and don't forget to share it with your friends..

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Is Your Social Media Content Boring? Here’s the Only Way to Fix It for Good

Social media marketing. Three words that every marketer utters when backed into a corner for answers and results. But here’s the hard truth about social media marketing. Not all marketers see an ROI. In fact, even though 77% marketers claim to be using social media for marketing, only 48% of them seem to have any ROI whatsoever. Why? Not all marketers invest enough to create fresh and effective content.

Is your content boring and overdone? Let’s think realistically. It’s hard to put out fresh, intellectually stimulating, humorous and compelling content every single day. Or is it? Maybe you haven’t discovered a creative process that allows you to perform that way yet.

1. Tickle your tastebuds with flavors that make you want to sing

“Successful creators don’t just like knowledge, they thirst for it,” says Keith Sawyer, author of “Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity”. Serial entrepreneur and tech revolutionary Elon Musk and IT veteran Bill Gates have both confessed to being avid readers. To be a successful creator, you have to develop a desire to consume a lot of content yourself. But what content should you ideally consume?

Every exceptional artist has a muse, just as every talented content creator has go-to sources for inspiration. What are yours? Here are a few ways to find inspiration.

• Inspiration can come from anywhere – books, movies or even conversations with interesting people. Any piece of information that’s new can break you out of old thinking patterns that are holding you back. Ensure that you have time for good books, movies and conversations every week.
• Long walks, rides or meditation can do a lot for your creative imagination. Sometimes, your mind is full of ideas, but you are not in the right mind space to access them. During such times, you could indulge in meditative or refreshing activities to clear your mind and let ideas flow.
• Today, there are tons of apps and platforms serving content. But not all content is good content. Instead of letting these apps take over your life, why not control your content consumption and make it actually beneficial?
• Additionally, you could also use a content curation app like DrumUp to curate fresh content for daily inspiration.

The idea is to build daily habits that enable your creative imagination, helping you generate ideas easily so you can keep your social media content fresh. If you’re still stuck, you could try one of the following:

• Watch TEDTalks. They usually have new ideas and great language – two great precursors for fresh content ideas.
• Begin curating an inspiration file with pieces of ideas, writing, design or stories that intrigue you. They’ll come to your rescue during tough times.
• Watch interviews of your favorite personalities. You might find their lives and experiences inspiring.
• Listen to new music. If you are visually receptive, new sounds may prompt the flow of new ideas.
• Try remote association exercises. For instance, you can take the first line of one song and try to connect it to the last line of another song by writing the lines in between. You could also consider three completely random ideas and spin them into a story. Such activities generally get your creative juices flowing.
• Make a collage or build a lego house. You could also do something simpler if you lack resources. Arrange your desk or doodle random ideas in your head.

2. Diversify your social media content with videos, infographics, quotes, GIFs, memes and storytelling

Facebook mobile users spend no more than 1.7 seconds on each piece of content. That’s the time you have to grab their attention. Doing that by sharing the same kind of social media content repeatedly is impossible because people who lose interest easily will switch to another page. However, you can keep audience attention by diversifying your social media content.

It’s the purple cow principle. Remember Seth Godin’s infamous TED Talk “How to get your ideas to spread”? People won’t stop for a cow, but show them a purple cow or a cow with golden locks and…

• It’s hard to keep surprising your social media audience when you have to post content everyday. But you can easily “keep it fresh” by using different content formats such as videos, infographics, GIFs, memes and quotes.

Each of these content formats can be easily designed even if you don’t have designing experience. There are tons of Saas (Software As a Service) tools that offer ready templates which you can design these types of content. 

For instance, Venngage has several infographic templates that you can work with and Giphy makes GIF making easy.

• Use storytelling on every social media post. People are drawn to stories because they evoke strong emotions rooted in their earliest years of life. How do you use storytelling? Create characters, narrate scenes and take people through the experience that you want them to have.
• Work with all the special features on different social media platform. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat Stories, Instagram Boomerang and Twitter Moments are all creative opportunities to change the way social media users perceive your brand. Not only do “Stories” appear prominently on top of social feeds, but they also disappear 24 hrs after publishing, giving you the freedom to share more freely.
• Save your posts and ideas in online content libraries such as the ones on DrumUp, so you can work with them just before publishing. You could also save great posts to inspire future posts or inspire the start of a series.

If you still don’t have enough to embellish your page with vibrant and original social media content, here are a few things that you can consider.

• Curate content from other brands, personalities who are in your space but don’t compete with you. DrumUp’s keyword based content curation will help you find articles written by journalists, whom you can also @mention when sharing posts through the tool.
• Share simple questions, quizzes or contests that can engage your social media audience.

 3. Invest in empathy; understand customer intent and feelings

Every social media marketer reads hundreds of blog and social media posts for social media marketing inspiration. However, few of them can actually drive results for brands using social if marketers lose sight of the most important part of having a social media presence – being human. Companies who anchor their social media marketing strategy around this fact are more likely to have larger and more loyal social media followings and better sales.

The beauty of social media is that it allows for two way communication, wherein current and prospective customers can respond to brands and share opinions. Use that fact to build real connections with your social media fans.

• The first mistake that many brands make on social media is that they overdo professionalism and end up being boring. People don’t want more “corporate talk”. They want to know who you are. So, be as genuine and authentic as you can on social media. Give your brand a personality that people can relate to.
• One of the biggest mistakes that brands make on social media is focusing too much on their brand, products and services. In marketing expert Guy Alvarez’s words, “Social Media is Not a Bullhorn”, and you should stop writing about why your products are amazing. People today can’t be bothered by what you have to sell. They’re interested in how you can change their lives. Show them that by sharing more customer-oriented content.
• Make people smile. Want to stay on top of customers’ minds? Tell them something that will make them smile. Create content that will come back to them when they’re driving or shopping or being bored on the internet.
• Give more than you get. Think about this. Would you rather spend time with a friend who’s there for you or someone who’s always asking you for money? Limit your social media sales pitches. Instead, try and befriend your social media audience.

The easiest way to build a rapport with your audience is by understanding how they feel. Here are a few ways to do that.

• Look carefully at support queries. What emotions have customers expressed towards your products and services? That can tell you a lot about how to approach them. For instance, if customers have displayed signs of uncertainty and anxiousness, you should invest in understanding what their concerns about your products are.
• Talk to customers face to face or on the phone when you can and ask for feedback related to your products and content. Pay attention to their tone of voice and emotions instead of focusing only on what they say.

 4. Work hard on that sense of humor, every single day

Being humorous is a great way to catch the attention of your social media audience. By appealing to them emotionally, you stand a better chance than others at generating curiosity about who you are and what you sell. It also stands that humor is great for brand awareness and brand recall, two things that can help you stay etched in your target audience’s memory longer.

However, writing jokes is hard. The activity requires a rare combination of creative intelligence and an understanding of customer psychology. Here’s a list of tips that can help.

• According to Dr. Peter McGraw and Dr. Caleb Warren, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, humor occurs when two events coincide –

i) Someone threatens a person’s worldview (his or her) sense of how the world should be, and ii) The threat is amiable but potent. Try and satisfy these criteria with the jokes that you write for social media.

• Practise writing humor everyday, because only 10% of what you write maybe usable material. Just as any other skill, writing humor takes practise and you’ll get better at it over time.
• Follow a bunch of comedians and novelists you consider raconteurs, so you can breakdown their work and study their style of writing. When breaking down their writing, try and pay attention to the details – the words they use, the tone they use, the visuals that they try to paint with words. Some good examples of novelists to study are PG Wodehouse and Caitlin Moran.
• Curate humorous content for your social media fans. There are tons of great social media pages already posting funny content. You could simply repost some of that content (with tags and proper credit) for your audience’s benefit. The admins of the pages you help promote will definitely thank you for it.

If you’re still unable to find enough inspiration to add humor to your social media content, you could try one of the following.

• Wit is underrated. Use witty quips (crediting them to the author) or create your own. Try and give new endings to old sayings or come-up with new “terms” that have funny definitions.
• Poke fun at your brand. That’s a great way to endear your social media fans. Ellen DeGeneres tells a lot of jokes targeted at herself (click here for link to video below).

5. Strike the pinata at its heart by vanquishing customers’ pet peeves

When people don’t convert, it’s usually because they have a very specific issue stopping them from doing so. When customers leave, they usually have very specific problems that haven’t be addressed. Strategic content can bridge these gaps and boost both your conversion rates and customer retention rates. That’s why you should focus on creating social media content that relates to customer and prospect issues.

Here’s what you need to know when creating content to solve issues that customers and prospects face.

• Before you begin solving issues, it’s important to know if they actually exist and what they are. Many social media managers make the mistake of assuming likes, dislikes and concerns of target groups, leading to the incorrect investment of time and money on creating content that’s not really relevant.
• Once you’re sure of what concerns customers and prospects have, it’s time to understand exactly how to address them. The content format and script that you use matter to a great extent. You conversion and retention depend on how well you address issues using content.
• Use simple resolutions in content that your target groups can follow easily. Avoid using terms that can confuse people and don’t unnecessarily complicate your content.
• Invest in content formats that you know your target groups consume. For instance, if your target groups include people who read a lot, you can focus on blog posts. Else, it’s important to complement blog posts with videos, infographics, GIFs and memes. The videos you create should ideally be short and easy to consume – 60s or less if you plan to share them on social media platforms.
• You could use success stories, case-studies and testimonials to illustrate to your target groups how you can solve important issues. In fact, doing so will add social proof and credibility to the equation and make your brand appear more trustworthy.

Here are a few extra tips to ensure that you aim right and successfully eliminate the issues that your target groups have using social media content.

• Google keyword planner (and other keyword research tools) are excellent ways to understand customer intent. If you create blog posts using data drawn from such tools, you can attract attention on social media and drive SEO traffic to your website.
• You can also use a tool such as FAQFox to search for queries on forums such as Quora, so you can identify important questions that your audience is asking.

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Social media marketing is an important part of every marketer’s $0 marketing plan, but few of these marketers ever see the results that they desire. Why? They’re using the wrong content or targeting the wrong channels. This post suggests the only way you can take boring social media content and turn it interesting.

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The #1 Content Marketing Mistake You’re Making (& How to Stop It)

In Seth Godin’s words, “Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left”. If you’re part of a content agency, you know just how much businesses are willing to invest in content marketing. And for good reason.

But there’s good (effective) content marketing and bad (ineffective) content marketing. Businesses who do invest in content marketing expect to see results. If you’re not seeing them, you could be committing one of these 7 content marketing mistakes.

#7 Action without strategy

Effective content marketing is a mix of smart strategy and tactical execution. Strategy is like your infrastructure, as marketer Rebecca Lib once said. Without it, your actions will be misguided and chaotic.

Ask the questions “what” and “why” before you get to “how”. If your social media executive spends 20% of her time at work creating memes, you should probably ask why. Why memes and not something else? Do you have numbers that justify that investment? If you plan to write blog posts all day, you should be sure of how many leads each post will yield and how. Ask the same questions of all of your content.

Suggested reading: How to Create a Block-buster Content Marketing Strategy with These Three Social Media Tools

#6 Incorrectly hypothesized personas

According to an IBM study, customers feel like brands don’t understand them. The reason is that most brands take data at face value and ignore their understanding of human behavior. Gut instinct is critical to judgement calls made by social media and digital analysts.

It isn’t enough to assume that your target persona is “Head of Marketing, 35-45 years, lives in Canada”. You need to have data to back the assumption, and you need data and an understanding of what your target groups like and dislike. For instance, do members of your audience like getting daily emails? Or would they appreciate one weekly email sent mid noon? The more you know and understand about your audience, the more you’ll succeed at content marketing.

#5 Irrelevant content

There’s a massive gap between what content marketers assume about their audience and what the reality is. So, all the content they create on a daily basis could be irrelevant and ineffective.

Delve deep into your audience’s mind by getting feedback. Collect customer feedback once in a while, conduct face to face interviews and if possible measure how well your audience responds to your content. Google Analytics’ Page Analytics – views and on-page time and social media analytics are great to get a basic understanding of how well your content is performing. One way to ensure that you always have fresh, relevant content is by using a content curation app such as DrumUp.

Suggested reading: The Ultimate Content Curation Guide 

#4 Carelessly leveraging controversy

Controversy attracts attention. But mixing controversy with brand messaging is a very risky idea. Take for instance, what happened with PewDiePie in 2017. The biggest YouTuber in the world lost his contract with Disney because he published anti-semitic.

If you want to use controversial subjects in your blog and social media content, consider the repercussions very carefully. Even if there’s a small chance of your message being misconceived, don’t do it. The positive results you may get can’t outweigh the risks. Companies as massive as Pepsi have experienced a dip in sales because of playing with sensitive ideas.

#3 Off-brand messaging

Creating a brand image is probably the most important thing you can do to help your business. This is one of the reasons why Disney pays so much attention to maintaining the image of all of its stars.

If you don’t stay on-brand, you might be remembered by the world for all the wrong reasons. For instance, United Airlines faced a media storm after its flight attendants unceremoniously removed a passenger from an overbooked plane. Every act of yours has the potential to inspire content on the internet. It’s critical to ensure that the content is in your favor. One way to manage your reputation on the internet is by using a monitoring tool such as Brand24.

#2 Monotonous single-format marketing

Monotony is a merciless engagement killer. This is particularly true because people have so many choices for content and they won’t follow yours if it is monotonous. Monotony is especially common among brands that publish content as a meaningless routine.

There are several formats of content that you can try. The more you surprise your audience, the more likely they are to stay engaged. HubSpot, for instance, is always experimenting with types of content on their social media pages. As a result, their audience has stayed engaged with the brand. It’s just as Seth Godin said in his well-known marketing TED talk – give people a purple cow and they’ll pay attention.

Suggested reading: 

7 Types of Social Media Content That Drive Most Engagement 

16 Types of Visual Content to Revitalize Your Social Media Marketing

#1 Not experimenting

The two most important things that a content marketer can do is to keep reading and experimenting. If you read, you’ll find new ideas and those ideas will work for you only if you experiment with them.

Test all of the ideas that you find/think of by creating a measurable experiment. Use the results to refine/revise your idea. You’ll find that content marketing ideas rarely work the same way for all brands. The formula for your brand may be completely different from the formula that certain content marketing experts follow. To ensure that you’re doing what’s best for your brand, run experiments on a regular basis.

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There you have it. 7 content marketing mistakes that you could be making. Figure out which ones are holding you back and revive your content marketing today!

Feature image sourced from Freepik.com 

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