Marketing Monday: 5 tips for better out-of-office messages

With Memorial Day coming up, the summer vacation season is approaching.

Why WHY do you bother with an autoresponder email that says something like, “I will be away April 12-19.” ?

OK. That’s good to know. But what do I do now? Especially if I have an issue that can’t wait?

Here are my thoughts on a good out-of-office message that communicates to your customers that you care about them even when you’re away:

1. Tell me how long you will be away.

Sometimes you might not know. Maybe it’s a family emergency and it’s unclear how long it’ll take to resolve.

Instead of just saying, “I am away from the office,” either give dates or say something like “I am away from the office indefinitely” or “I am away from the office; my return date is not firmed up yet.”

Otherwise, start and end dates help me figure out if I want to wait or find a plan B.

2. Tell me if you’re checking messages and if so, how often.

If you’re traveling for work and doing your best to handle business matters remotely, that’s different from hiking Kilimanjaro.

Maybe you could say, “I am traveling for work and checking email intermittently. My responses might take longer than normal. ” or “I will check messages each evening.”

That is, unless you are off completely, in which case it might be “I will not have access to email while I am away.”

3. Tell me who can help me while you are away.

If you have a great assistant who can triage all your customer and coworker needs, maybe you just instruct everyone to email your assistant instead. Or just forward your emails while you’re away.

But if that’s not the case, provide a name, maybe a title and contact info for the person handling your responsibilities. If that’s several people depending on the need, list them all.

For example, “If you have a question about an order, contact Bonnie in customer support at XXX-XXX-XXXX or bonnie@yourcompany.com. If you need to pay a bill, contact Steve in accounts payable at XXX-XXX-XXXX or steve@yourcompany.com. If you need a copy of a past bill, contact Ellen in records at XXX-XXX-XXXX or ellen@yourcompany.com.”

4. Consider different messages for coworkers versus those outside your company

Your customers and vendors might need different levels of detail or different instructions about who to contact than your colleagues.

Outlook allows you to craft two different out of office messages, so if you’d like to use internal phone numbers and describe where your assistant sits, you can do that for internal recipients without confusing people who don’t work with you.

For those outside your company, please include your signature file — I might not remember why I contacted you in the first place so a little refresher on who you are might be useful.

5. Remember to turn off your message when you come back.

In many cases, you can set start and stop dates for your message before you even leave. But if you either can’t or don’t do that, leave yourself a reminder note to change your voice mail and turn off your out-of-office email responder when you get back.

Incidentally, I think the same rules apply for your voicemail greeting when you’re away: tell me how long you will be out, if I should expect to hear back from you or if I should contact someone else instead, and make sure you turn it off when you get back.

Bonus tip: I know a guy who as a rule sets his out-of-office messages to say he’ll be away one day longer than he actually is. That gives him a day to catch up without anyone expecting to hear back from him.

Related articles

• Entrepreneur Alert – Automate Your Inbox (thelegalstandard.wordpress.com)
• Need to Know Information on Hotmail Autoresponder (email.answers.com)
• Five Helpful Suggestions On Autoresponders (socialpoweredcontent.com)
• How to Transform Your Email into a Productivity Tool (news.terra.com)
• The Good Qualities And Disadvantages Of An Autoresponder Company (socialpoweredcontent.com)
• 3 ‘out of office’ replies we never want to see again
• The Art of the Out of Office Email
• How to write an effective out of office message

From Fast Company: Life lessons from eight successful entrepreneurs

Bing Gordon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A photo of Jimmy Wales used in the 2008 Wikimedia Fundraiser Campaign. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Tim Westergren at the 2010 Time 100 Gala. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently talked with a friend who had married and divorced before she was 30.

We talked about the twin dangers of youth: you know so little because you haven’t yet accumulated life experience, and yet you think you know everything. We laughed about the irony that even as you learn life lessons, aging can make you more conscious of all you don’t know instead of more confident you have it all figured out.

I love hearing people share what they’ve learned along the way. First-hand experience can teach you some things but still leave open the possibility for gaining more as you go.

For example, I ran a series of guest posts back in 2011 called Things I Have Learned, in which each contributor shared one life lesson for each year they’d lived. That’s one of my favorite features in the five years I’ve had this blog.

Fast Company recently ran a feature headlined: 8 Successful Entrepreneurs Give Their Younger Selves Lessons They Wish They’d Known Then

Among the highlights from Grace Nasri’s piece:

Tim Westergren: Avoid the risk of not trying and the regret of wishing you had.

“Be sure to ‘notice’ ideas when you have them. Stop. Take the time to consider them seriously. And if your gut tells you they’re compelling, be fearless in their pursuit,” Westergren said. “For most people, the idea of chasing a personal passion or being entrepreneurial is simply something they don’t think of themselves doing. We’re so programmed to walk well-trodden paths. But, we live life only once. So, rather than avoiding the risk of trying, avoid the risk of not trying. Nothing is more haunting than thinking, ‘I wish I had…’.”

~ Tim Westergren, the founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pandora

Jimmy Wales: Spend wisely early in life so you can achieve the financial independence to follow your dreams.

“I think one of the things that most 21-year-old people should do is to recognize now that you can make life choices which control your expenses, and that controlling your expenses is one of the most crucial steps toward the kind of financial independence that you need in order to follow your dreams in the future. Whether it is a change of job, or an entrepreneurial dream, the less you NEED to spend each month, the easier it is to follow those dreams. There are several rules of thumb that can help with this, but one of my favorites is to never go into debt to finance any kind of luxurious consumption. Only go into debt if necessary for some kind of investment, like student loans, for example.”

~ Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia

Bing Gordon: Work as hard as you can, and then work harder.

“After decades of hiring college grads, I’ve learned that the people who get the most opportunities also start fast. They overachieve from the very beginning. They ask the best questions and always seem to have good ideas. As one Hollywood producer once said, ‘Work as hard as you can and then work harder.’ But the number one piece of advice I would share is to recruit a mentor. Find someone you admire who is at least one generation older, and has no direct authority over you. Lack of context and perspective can cost you months and years–with a bad career choice, an unwise relocation, short-term negotiating posture, and, generally speaking, sophomoric thinking. ‘”

~ Bing Gordon, a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers

Paul Bennett: Take the time to listen.

“Listen more,” Bennett advised. “For most of my twenties I assumed that the world was more interested in me than I was in it, so I spent most of my time talking, usually in a quite uninformed way, about whatever I thought, rushing to be clever, thinking about what I was going to say to someone rather than listening to what they were saying to me. Slowing oneself down, engaging rather than endlessly debating and really taking the time to hear and learn is the greatest luxury of becoming older.”

~ Paul Bennett, the Chief Creative Officer at IDEO

There’s more good life experience here: 8 Successful Entrepreneurs Give Their Younger Selves Lessons They Wish They’d Known Then

Related articles

• 8 successful entrepreneurs tell us what they wish they’d known back then… (holykaw.alltop.com)
• 8 Successful Entrepreneurs Give Their Younger Selves Lessons They Wish Theyd Known Then | Fast Company | Business + Innovation (lifechngr.com)
• From bespoke to just plain “be”: the validity of a strong point of view (metacool.typepad.com)

Marketing Monday: 5 tips for getting started using Pinterest for marketing

Last summer, I wrote a series of guest blog posts for Stirring Up Success, a B2B blog run by Dawn Foods, a manufacturer of bakery ingredients and products and distributor to the bakery industry. According to a case study by Crossroads, StirringUpSuccess.com has been featured in top industry trade publications as a unique and helpful tool for bakery owners.

Here’s my fourth post in the series, offering bakeries some pointers for getting started using Pinterest as a marketing tool. Even if you don’t run a bakery, the basics apply, but I apologize if you find yourself suddenly craving a piece of cake.

*****

Pinterest is the hot new social network, going from almost nonexistent a year ago to Hitwise’s list of top 10 list of social networks by December to 21 million unique visitors in July 2012, according to Compete.

Pinterest allows users to visually share by posting, known as “pinning,” images or videos to collections called pinboards – it’s sort of electronic scrapbooking. Users can upload images or pin things they find online using a “Pin It” button or cutting and pasting the URL on Pinterest.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter still draw more visitors than Pinterest – but what’s been called the fastest-growing website ever has some obvious utility for bakers since popular categories on Pinterest include food and drink, weddings and events and kids.

Here are five tips for getting started using Pinterest for business:

1. Set up your account – Until recently, Pinterest was still in beta and you had to request an invitation to join. Now you can simply go to Pinterest and click the red “join Pinterest” button at the top. You will have to select five images you like before you can create an account by connecting to your Facebook or Twitter account – or in small print, electing to sign up with your email address.

2. Fill in your profile – Go to settings and fill in your details. If you want to use Pinterest for your business, use your company name, a description of your business and your specialties, and links to your website, Facebook page and Twitter account. (If you’re just getting familiar with Pinterest, you might consider making a personal account first — so you can do your experimentation without having trial and error visible for your business brand.)

3.  Create boards on topics of interest to your customers – Go to “add” in the top right and create a new board related to a specialty of your business. Start with a topic that’s consumer friendly, like wedding cake, for example.

4. Search for topics of interest to your customers – Using the search box in the upper left, you can search the captions of pinned photos for terms like “birthday cakes,” “cupcakes” or  “sourdough bread.” When you find something you like, comment on it and consider “repinning” it to your board – that is, add someone else’s wedding cake image to your wedding cake board. You can follow that board or follow the user if you want to see what else he or she pins later.

5. Add your own content to your board – Pinterest etiquette discourages being too pushy, but if you add photos of your best birthday cakes to a board about birthday cakes, that’s useful to other users. Use the caption area to include words people might search for like “birthday party” or “sweet 16.”

As with all social media accounts, you’ll do well to cross promote it: mention your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts on your website, in your email signature and on your brochures, for example.

If you’re stuck figuring out what to say, start by figuring out your strategy for social media and let that guide the kinds of boards you create and pins you post. We’ll talk more about strategy and content in a future post.

Colleen Newvine Tebeau is a former reporter and editor who then earned her MBA at University of Michigan with emphases in marketing and corporate strategy.  She is a marketing consultant who helps small and midsized organizations with strategy and tactics, including social media and communications.

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• Complementary Pinterest for “Business Guide” and new “Pins for Pinterest” course from Internet Business How To (prweb.com)
• Review: Pinterest update cleaner, easier to manage (miamiherald.com)
• Why Pinterest is Necessary for YOUR Business (tactfulsocialmedia.wordpress.com)
• 4 Pinterest Do’s for B2B Social Media Marketers (business2community.com)
• 7 Tips: How to Run a Successful Pinterest Contest (business2community.com)

Marketing Monday: Lessons from Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Breadpig and Hipmunk

While thousands of music fans watched bands and ate good food in the rain at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, just a few blocks away, Launch Fest gathered a couple hundred entrepreneurs for talks about how to score investors and how NOLA can develop its tech-savvy talent pool.

I got fired up by the enthusiasm and knowledge of the presenters, including my Brooklyn neighbor, Alexis Ohanian, whose resume includes leadership at Reddit, Breadpig and Hipmunk. He’s also an ambassador for legendary start up accelerator Y Combinator and author of the book “Without Their Permission.”

Ohanian shared several lessons he’s learned, including:

1. Don’t overdo your launch, whether it’s a new business or a new product.

If you shoot the moon with a huge Hollywood-style launch, you set customer expectations too high. Instead, if you soft launch by telling people, “This is our first effort, we’d love your input,” they’ll be more willing to give you feedback and give you room to make some mistakes.

2. Take the time to appreciate and thank your customers.

Website form builder Wufoo had a team building exercise where every employee hand wrote thank you notes to their customers. Imagine getting a thank you note in the mail from a tech provider, Ohanian said. How much of an impression would that make?

He added that your earliest customers deserve special thanks for believing in you. Show them how much you appreciate them helping you achieve your goals.

3. When you’re building your website, you need it to be good enough so visitors don’t hit the back button — or click away to cat photos.

The Internet is full of temptations, including numerous cat photos Ohanian shared. If you don’t want visitors to your site to click on the back button so they can search for something else, or to bail out to look at cat photos, make your content and design compelling enough to stay.

The day included lots more advice and experience so check out my Storify round up of some of the day’s tweets below.

Launch Fest 2013 talks start ups in New Orleans

A couple hundred entrepreneurs (and want-to-be entrepreneurs) gathered at the New Orleans Museum of Art May 2, 2013. Here’s some of what they shared on Twitter.

1. 

   Silicon Bayou News@SiliconBayou

   “Don’t wait for people to give you permission because they never will.” @alexisohanian #launchfest

   Thu, May 02 2013 10:23:30

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

2. 

   Tutti@TuttiDynamics

   “Less meeting, more tweeting” @paulsingh #LaunchFest @launchpad #NOLA #inspiration

   Thu, May 02 2013 09:32:01

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
3. 

   Launch Fest@launchfest

   ·

   Thu, May 02 2013 08:13:24

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

4. 

   Colleen Newvine @cnewvine

   Networking hacks: Run an email list, host great dinners in your vertical. Be known in your space, suggests @paulsingh. #launchfest

   Thu, May 02 2013 09:22:10

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

5. 

   Alexander McConduit@WhoDatWhoDidnt

   What I’ve learned at #launchfest so far…. 1. Figure out & follow my biz’s important metric 2. Build community into your product

   Thu, May 02 2013 09:40:57

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

6. 

   Blair H duQuesnay@BlairHduQuesnay

   Great stuff from @delk at #launchfest. Legitimize yourself, find internal champions, empower them, ignore laggards, double down on traction.

   Thu, May 02 2013 08:19:16

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

7. 

   Launch Pad@launchpad

   “It comes down to hustle, and just working your ass off.” @schlaf Steve Schlafman, Lerer Ventures @launchfest #LaunchFest

   Thu, May 02 2013 09:37:26

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

8. 

   Elizabeth Dolinski@edolinski

   “If you want to raise money ask for advice. If you want advice ask for money.” @rosshinkle via @longomr #launchfest

   Thu, May 02 2013 09:37:09

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

9. 

   Amanda Trotenberg@amandatrot

   My exclusive interview with Alexis Ohanion, co-founder of @reddit: youtu.be/WbDjXOTz-fY via @youtube #launchfest

   Fri, May 03 2013 07:02:42

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

10. 

    Blair H duQuesnay@BlairHduQuesnay

    The only thing that could have made #LaunchFest better? Female speakers! Where are the women entrepreneurs? @LaunchFest @Launchpad

    Fri, May 03 2013 11:51:15

    ReplyRetweetFavorite

storify.com

Colleen Newvine Tebeau is a reporter and editor who then earned her MBA at University of Michigan with emphases in marketing and corporate strategy.  She is a marketing consultant who helps small and midsized organizations with strategy and tactics, including social media and communications.

Related articles

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• Marquee Founders Believe New Orleans is a Music Tech Hub, Launch Incentivized Mobile App (siliconbayounews.com)
• Launch Fest Attracts National Speakers to Inspire Next Generation of Entrepreneurs (siliconbayounews.com)
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band Guests With Billy Joel at Jazz Fest (jambase.com)
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Marketing Monday: 5 tips for getting started using Twitter for marketing

Last summer, I wrote a series of guest blog posts for Stirring Up Success, a B2B blog run by Dawn Foods, a manufacturer of bakery ingredients and products and distributor to the bakery industry. According to a case study by Crossroads, StirringUpSuccess.com has been featured in top industry trade publications as a unique and helpful tool for bakery owners.

Here’s my third post in the series, offering bakeries some pointers for getting started using Twitter as a marketing tool. Even if you don’t run a bakery, I hope the basics apply, but I apologize if you find yourself suddenly craving a cupcake.

Using Twitter for the first time can feel like hearing people speak  a foreign language – or for those old enough to remember, it’s like turning on a CB radio, where voices you don’t recognize are using slang you don’t understand in conversations you aren’t sure how to join.

Getting started on Facebook probably feels a little easier, because its format is closer to websites or blogs. But with a little watching and listening, you can use 140-character tweets for business communication.

Here are five tips for using Twitter for business:

1. Set up your account – Go to Twitter and fill in your name, email and password. On the next screen you choose your user name, sometimes called your Twitter handle. If you’re new to Twitter, I recommend using your personal name so you can experiment without attaching your business name to your trial and error. Because Twitter users communicate with each other by using handles, choose something short and easy to spell. JessSmith is better than Jessica_Lynn_Smith-Kluczyk, for example.
2. Add a photo and a description.  Your Twitter photo, also called an avatar, helps identify you with your tweets. Your photo and profile description both help create a credible presence, and demonstrate you’re real, as opposed to the spambots you will encounter.
3. Set up saved searches.  Start with the name of your business, then any related ways people might talk about your business or product, to scan Twitter for what people are already saying about you. Enter a term at the top of the page, then click the gear on the right of the results screen to get the option to save. Your saved searches will appear when you click your cursor in Twitter website’s search box.
4. Follow people.  The quickest way to learn is to watch others. Try following some of Twitter’s most popular accounts, some of Time magazine’s best Twitter feeds, and use Twitter’s profile search or a directory like Twellow.com to find people with your interests.
5. Talk to people.  Twitter can initially feel like you’re talking to yourself. The easiest way to make sure someone is listening is to tweet at another user. When you see an interesting tweet in your saved search or news feed, click “reply” and Twitter will insert an @ symbol ahead of that user’s handle, letting him know you’re answering.  RT means retweet, sharing someone else’s tweet with your followers, and MT means modified retweet, generally because you had to shorten it to make 140 characters. Be sure to read your own @ replies so you know when someone’s talking to you.

 

If you’re stuck figuring out what to say, start by figuring out your strategy for social media and let that guide the kinds of tweets you post. We’ll talk more about strategy and content in a future post.

Colleen Newvine Tebeau is a former reporter and editor who then earned her MBA at University of Michigan with emphases in marketing and corporate strategy.  She is a marketing consultant who helps small and midsized organizations with strategy and tactics, including social media and communications.

 

Marketing Monday: When should your business express an opinion?

I held off on Marketing Monday last week — it just didn’t feel right to talk about increasing your business when we were still learning the extent of injuries in Boston.

Deciding if, or how, your business should respond to current events can be tricky business.

Maybe it seems straight forward to post an expression of grief about the Boston Marathon on your business Facebook page.

But what if one of your customers responds with a mention of how many civilians the U.S. has killed in the Middle East since 9/11, and a political debate about American international policy erupts? How would you respond?

This is not to suggest that the Boston attack was justified or that businesses are wrong to offer public condolences. Instead, it’s suggesting that when you wade into responding to tragedy or passionate issues, it might not be as simple as following your heart.

On the flip side, what if you *don’t* respond and continue business as usual? Is that inappropriate?

This post doesn’t offer clear direction but instead I offer questions you might ask yourself:

1. What topics or issues will our business address?

Convince and Convert called this Smirnoff ad about gay marriage its social media image of the week.

If your business isn’t generally political — you aren’t an advocacy organization, you just sell your goods or services — are there causes or times that would make you take a position?

When hurricane Sandy hits, does your business respond in some way? Does it matter if you’re geographically close enough to feel its effects?

Then if you take up a collection for Sandy victims, what if one of your employees asks you to do the same for the American Cancer Society? Does it matter if the cause is AIDS or mental illness instead?

What if one of your team members feels strongly about gun control or abortion and wants the business to publicly support that cause?

Convince and Convert, a marketing firm, hailed a Smirnoff ad that supported gay marriage.

Depending on the business and its philosophy, it can be a valid decision to stay neutral on every topic or to be passionately vocal on divisive issues — but wherever you are on that spectrum, you should probably think through a consistent approach and philosophy.

2. What tone will we take?

If your usual marketing tone is light hearted, do you get somber for something serious or try to pull off being playful? Is it better to have a consistent voice or switch it up if you might offend?

It’s pretty typical to see critiques of businesses’ response to tragedy on social media, so much as I would hate to find myself in Glamour magazine’s fashion don’ts photo roundup, I’d hate to end up being a model for what not to do in a tragedy. For example:

• Digiday on bad brand responses to the Sandy Hook shootings
• Citi’s social media director takes Epicurious to task for their post-Boston tweets
• A New York Times analysis of businesses’ marketing response to hurricane Sandy 

The Times story included this snippet about a business maintaining its usual playful tone, even in the face of natural disaster:

the Town Shop, a lingerie store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that is known for posting cheeky comments about news events in its windows.

For Sandy, the Town Shop reworked a sign that appeared in August 2011 after the tropical storm Irene battered New York: “We have no ‘D’ batteries …,” the new sign read, “but plenty of ‘D’ cup bras! And ‘DD’ and …”

If your family lost its home or a loved one died in Sandy, how would you feel about that? Does it matter that they’re known for their cheeky commentary?

3. How do we think our employees and customers feel about those topics?

When the politics of your company run counter to the politics of your customers, it can get sticky, as the CEO of Eden Foods found when the company filed a lawsuit objecting to covering birth control in the company’s health care plan.

If you feel strongly about something and you know your employees or customers see it differently, would you follow your own beliefs or shape your company’s public stance to align with those others?

What if you’re staying on the sidelines out of respect for employees who have multiple views, but they actually want you to take a political stand? A Harvard Business Review article headlined
Study: Employees Want Employers to Talk Politics suggests that might be the case:

Our data suggests that employees overwhelmingly support the notion of employer-provided issue and political information. Employees not only want more information from their employer about issues that affect their livelihoods, they tend to believe their employers over other sources.

BIPAC conducts extensive biennial studies of employer-employee communications programs through both national polling and surveys within companies deploying such communications. Our Prosperity Project (P2) strategy and platform is the largest and most pervasive business grassroots and advocacy platform in the United States. According to the 2010 National Poll commissioned by BIPAC and performed by Moore Information, Inc., overall, our studies consistently and conclusively show employed voters believe (43% in 2008, 52% in 2010) their employer “should be active in promoting public policies favorable to their industries.” In 2010, 46% of employed voters said they wish their employer “would let him/her know how government and political issues impact his/her job, company and industry.”

4. How will we respond if people question or challenge our motives?

Maybe it’s a kind and generous thing to offer a discount to people affected by a tragedy — maybe a restaurant or hotel runs an ad offering 50 percent off to families affected by the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, for example.

What if someone accuses you of trying to capitalize on tragedy? Would you feel comfortable calmly responding that you’re trying to be supportive, not exploitative?

A social media marketing consultant wrote a blog post warning businesses of the perils of “socialteering” in a disaster — he’s got a vested interest since he and his family evacuated when their power went out for a week post Sandy:

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, I’ve seen brands doing Like or retweeting promotions whereby they’ll donate money to the Red Cross et al for each action followers and fans take.

Don’t. Please, don’t.

I’m calling this distasteful phenomenon “socialteering”.

Damaging your brand by trying to capitalize on a tragedy is tasteless. Just donate the damn money and tell your fans that you did. You’ll gain respect, or at least not lose it, for doing the right thing and not acting like complete marketing douchebag.

The positions you take can be part of your business reputation — think Tom’s shoes or Ben and Jerry’s — so consider how your behavior on tragedy or social causes shapes your public perception.

Marketing Monday: Make sure your email address is working for you

Most of us don’t choose our phone numbers, and unless you live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you probably picked your home first and the street number just came with it.

However, you can choose your email address.

As of last year, an Ipsos poll showed about 85 percent of people in the world use email. That might be even higher today. The odds are high that you have at least one email address, maybe more, and that you’re regularly interacting with others who are on email and want to know how to reach you.

If you work for a big company, chances are they select your email address for you, something like firstname.lastname@thecompanyname.com.

But if you’re a business owner or a freelancer, you’re free to do what you like. If you’re a job seeker, you probably use a personal email address on your resume and in networking.

Here are five questions I’d consider to make sure your email address is part of your marketing — that it helps you achieve your goals instead of hindering you:

1. Is your email address embarrassing?

Imagine you get a phone call from your dream client or dream employer making you a fantastic offer, and the call concludes with “Can you give me your email address so I can send the paperwork?” Would you blush as you say it’s CuteKitties@yahoo.com or BeerPongChampion@aol.com?

These are extreme examples, but if you have any sense that your email address doesn’t represent your desired image, it’s time for a new one. If you run a beer pong tournament business, you can keep the beer pong one.

2. Is your email address confusing?

If you find you have to explain constantly that it’s 3, the numeral three, not spelled out, or that there’s a hyphen in Newvine-Growing, you might have a problem.

Sure, many times people will find your email address on your website or your business card, but when you say it out loud, it should be as easy to understand as possible. Why make it hard for people to reach you?

3. Is your email address hard to remember?

Related to the above, if your name is John Smith and you really wanted JohnSmith@gmail.com, but by the time you got there, you had to settle for JohnSmith78932@gmail.com, you can probably do better.

How about JohnMiddlenameSmith@gmail.com? Or John@Smith.com? Or John@JohnMiddlenameSmith.com?

If you had to add a string of numbers to your chosen email handle, you’re probably defeating the point of your address being obviously connected to your name.

I think an ideal email address is one I can remember next time I’m at my computer and want to email you. Domains like .net or .biz don’t help there, either, since people generally assume an email address is .com.

Register.com is just one of numerous options to buy a custom email domain so you can send emails from an address like you@yourbusiness.com.

4. Is your email domain telling people you’re behind the times?

I’ve read numerous articles about the judgments people make based on your email domain, including assuming people who use aol.com or hotmail.com are behind the times.

That might be unfair, but why risk making a bad first impression?

It’s easy and free to set up gmail.com email, which doesn’t have the negative baggage of some of the other Web-based email services. It’s inexpensive to use a service like namecheap.com or register.com to buy your own domain so you can have an email like colleen@newvinegrowing.com instead of colleen@yahoo.com.

If you already have a website with a custom URL — something like http://yourname.com or http://www.yourbusiness.com — you might be able to easily add email accounts. Because I bought newvinegrowing.com, my website designer set up my colleen@newvinegrowing.com using gmail. I don’t pay extra for having that email address associated with newvinegrowing.com.

You can import email from another account into gmail easily, and send email from more than one address with a single log in.

5. Are you sticking with an email address you’ve outgrown because switching is a hassle?

If you have given out the same email address since the late 1990s, and everyone from your elderly aunt to your high school sweetheart to all your best clients have it, it can feel risky to turn it off.

But there’s a compromise: many email providers allow you to forward to another address, as well as to import mail from another address. Think of it as putting in a change of address form with the Post Office, just for electronic mail.

I like gmail’s ability to combine multiple email addresses into one account in part because I can also separate them — if I’m looking just for emails sent to colleen@newvinegrowing.com, I can filter those out for a quick review. But on a day-to-day basis, I combine them to make it easier just logging in to one account.

What thoughts do you have about your email address as part of your marketing outreach? Does your email serve you well?

Related articles:

• From Lifehacker, Know What Your Email Address Says About You
• From The Oatmeal, What your email address says about your computer skills
• From Huffington Post, Email Stereotypes: What Your Address Says About You

Colleen Newvine Tebeau is a former reporter and editor who then earned her MBA at University of Michigan with emphases in marketing and corporate strategy.  She is a marketing consultant who helps small and midsized organizations with strategy and tactics, including social media and communications.

Pointers from 31 self-help books, compiled by New York magazine

Earlier this year, New York magazine ran an article headlined “How to Read 31 Books in Four Minutes.”

Far more abridged than even Cliff Notes, the article included just a handful of ideas from each self-help book.

Maybe the universe will collapse in on itself if I further summarize an already very brief synopsis of some of the books they chose, but I’ll risk it. But seriously, read the whole thing — where else can you get this cross-section of ideas this quickly?

How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less By Nicholas Boothman

Lessons:
• Find moments during a conversation to say “Me, too” or to otherwise establish common interests.

• The next time you’re talking to someone, synchronize your body language with the other person for 30 seconds.

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59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute By Richard Wiseman

Lessons:
• If you’re male, arrange to have a female friend accompany you on a night out to purposely laugh at your jokes.

• To be more creative at meetings, lean forward, grip the table, and pull against it. When your creativity is blocked, cross your arms.

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The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business By Charles Duhigg

Lessons:
• Make your bed every morning; other good habits may take hold.

• To start a new habit, pick a specific cue and a clear reward.

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Mastery By Robert Greene

Lessons:
• Embrace tedium.

• Mastery is not genius; it is a function of concentration and time.

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The 4-Hour Workweek By Timothy Ferriss

Lessons:
• To avoid wasting time, check email twice a day: first at noon, and again at 4 p.m., the two busiest times for binging on email.

• Instead of responding to voicemail by phone, go through email instead. This teaches you, and your contacts, to be concise.

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Steal Like an Artist By Austin Kleon

Lessons:
• Start copying. Copy your favorite writer, musician, painter. You’ll get a better sense of how they think and create.

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The Start-Up of You By Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Lessons:
• Create an “interesting-people fund.” Use it to pay for coffee or ­lunches with people you find interesting.

• Who are the 10 people you’d reach out to if you ever got laid off? Reach out to them now, when you don’t need anything from them.

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Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion By Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.

Lessons:
• Prepare the ground for making a request of someone by doing him a small favor.

• Ask for more than you want; once you’re turned down, ask for what you want.

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The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It By Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

Lessons:
• Exercise your willpower brain muscles by planting temptations throughout the house—hiding candy bars in plain sight, etc.—then don’t have them.

• Chart your willpower for a week. Then plan your schedule strategically and limit temptation when you know your willpower will be at a low.

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How to Think More About Sex By Alain de Botton

Lessons:
• See bad dates the way you see bad weather. Natural parts of life that can’t be prevented or controlled.

• Reframe your view on impotence—not as a sign of inability, but instead as a sign of evolved compassion and kindness.

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New York magazine is one of my favorite publications — we’ve pared down our hard-copy subscriptions to eliminate clutter and waste, but this one still makes the cut every year. Check out “How to Read 31 Books in Four Minutes” but also check out the rest of their site, if you’re at all interested in New York or popular culture.

Marketing Monday: Getting started using Facebook for marketing

By this point, Facebook has become so culturally ubiquitous that probably even the remaining holdouts who don’t have an account have at least seen it and are aware of the concept of the interconnected social network.

But even those who are active personally might not know how to use Facebook for marketing.

Sadly, it’s getting harder, as Facebook’s algorithm for what users see in their news feed limits the number of users seeing page content – the rough number thrown around is that only about 10 percent of those who’ve liked the page see that page’s posts in their news feeds. So even if you’ve already liked my business page, or Coke’s or Justin Bieber’s, there’s a good chance you’re missing what we’re sharing with you.

Still, it’s a huge, free channel to not just share your message but engage your fans in conversation, so it’s worth getting to know.

So here’s a guest post I wrote last summer for a business-to-business blog for bakeries, on how to get started using Facebook for business.  Stirring Up Success is run by Dawn Foods, a manufacturer of bakery ingredients and products and distributor to the bakery industry. According to a case study by Crossroads, StirringUpSuccess.com has been featured in top industry trade publications as a unique and helpful tool for bakery owners.

My first post in the series encouraged bakeries to take the time to define their business goals to help them be more effective on social media. Then we built on that with some how-tos for Facebook beginners:

Social Media Strategy – Facebook

Facebook has more than 1 billion active users so odds are good you already have an account with the popular social media site. But are you using it to find high school friends or to help grow your business?

Starting with a strategy for your social media will help guide you, as I blogged about last month. For example, do you want to use Facebook to talk to existing customers or try to reach new ones, and are you trying to make more sales or help improve customer support?

Once you have defined your social media goals, here are five tips for using Facebook for business:

Set up a page – not a profile, not a group. When you create your page, you can choose from designations including local business or brand. Facebook prohibits businesses from using personal profiles, so if you previously set up a profile instead of a page, here’s how to convert it.

Fill in the “about” section. So many businesses don’t take advantage of this obvious place to answer visitors’ basic questions about who you are and what you do.

 

Manage your page’s settings. Click on Edit Page, then Update Info and you can customize the name of your page to something like https://www.facebook.com/NewvineGrowing . You can also set up email notifications when users comment, and get the ability to either post under your business name or as a person.

Post a mix of content. Photos pop visually in your fans’ news feed, links can direct your Facebook fans to content on your website or blog, questions let your customers know you care what’s on their minds. Variety lets you see what your visitors respond to, and keeps you from sounding monotonous.

Experiment with posting at different times and on different days. According to social media scientist Dan Zarrella, Saturday is the best day to post to Facebook and the best time is noon if you want maximum engagement. That’s on average, though, so it’s important to see if that’s true for your customers.

How will you know if you’re on the right track? Facebook Insights gives you data on how many people your page has reached each day and what kinds of results each of your individual posts got. If you aren’t sure what any of the numbers mean, hover your cursor over the question mark or data point and you’ll get more information.

 

 

Marketing Monday: Five ideas for what to say on a business blog

A few weeks back, I wrote about how to blog if you don’t like to write — take photos on Instagram or chat on camera using YouTube, for example.

That post prompted several people to ask variations on the question perhaps best posed by Michael: How do I blog without looking like a douche who is bragging?

There’s an oft-used analogy that social media is like a cocktail party. You probably don’t want to walk into a room, talk only about yourself, ignore everyone else, then yell about the sale you’re having as you bolt for the door. I’ve met people who are entertaining raconteurs,  who have the ability to talk about themselves at length without seeming like a self-absorbed creep, but you have to be pretty danged interesting and charming.

Who wants to read a blog that’s all about someone bragging or trying to sell you stuff? Ick.

So don’t blog that way either.

Instead, if you’re looking for topics for your business blog, you might:

1. Share what you know.

If you’re an expert in your field, share your knowledge.

Maybe your friends know you’re a lawyer — but they don’t know what you do specifically, so blogging about some specifics might help them make referrals. You’ll give people useful links to share on their Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc. if they think their communities will want your content. And you can engage people in a low-pressure conversation that might lead to  sales.

One nice example is Brooklyn-based intellectual property lawyer Jason Rosenblum, who blogs about a variety of IP topics, such as Don’t Delay in Protecting your Products and Brands, which explains why you should promptly trademark your logo, for example.

2. Share what you read.

If you keep up on trade journals, subscribe to interesting email newsletters or regularly read mainstream media, put your reading habit to work for you.

Share a link and a quick summary of the article, explaining why you thought it was helpful or entertaining or whatever.

Much like creating your own content, acting as a guide to others’ content helps establish you as a knowledgeable resource.

Ragan.com points out to lots of content they don’t create, supplementing their own original material and keeping their site fresh.

3. Give people a peek backstage.

If you’re in a business where people don’t routinely get to see the heavy lifting that leads to results, show them the rest of the story.

Whether it’s photos from a restaurant kitchen or video of stocking a retail store for the Saturday before Christmas, your customers might enjoy understanding more about what you do. And if you show some of the labor that leads to your final product, it might have the added benefit of helping them understand why you charge what you do.

This goes double for anyone in a “glamorous” profession. Show a band rehearsal or an artist working on a painting in process or an athlete weight training and fans are likely to love that special access.

Some examples of behind-the-scenes blogging:

• Disney
• Google Maps
• Brooklyn Museum

4. Ask questions.

Don’t just talk about yourself — use your blog to ask questions. Maybe even offer rewards for the best answers? This is not only an opportunity to start a conversation but to get some free market research.

To go back to the cocktail party analogy, it’s tiresome to talk to someone who only talks about himself, and one way to switch that up is to ask the other person a question.

If you write a post asking for feedback, ideas, etc., say thank you, maybe ask a follow up. This is the blog equivalent of nodding to let the other person you’re actually listening.

To get you thinking:

• Online Business Hour
• ProBlogger

5. Feature your customers or fans.

If you don’t want to seem like you’re bragging or selling, how about using your blog to showcase the fabulous people you’re fortunate enough to work with?

Maybe these blog posts are a subtle endorsement, or maybe they’re just a straight-up shout out to the people who keep you in business.

 

What you blog about depends a great deal on why you’re blogging and who you want to reach. If you start by getting clear on who you’re trying to reach and what kinds of content that ideal audience might find useful or entertaining, it might naturally lead you to some good blog topics — and staying focused on what your audience wants will probably also steer you away from bragging and hard selling.

And as a little bonus: What NOT to do on your business blog, from SocialMediaToday.

Colleen Newvine Tebeau is a former reporter and editor who then earned her MBA at University of Michigan with emphases in marketing and corporate strategy.  She is a marketing consultant who helps small and midsized organizations with strategy and tactics, including social media and communications. Her WordPress blog, Newvine Growing, is in its fifth year, and prior to that, she used Blogger for three years on an earlier blog called Big Apple Bound.