How to Keep Your Emails Out of Spam Filters
In this age of spam warfare, it’s very common to send a message to someone only to have it end up in that person’s “spam” folder where it can take days or weeks to be found, if it’s found at all. So how do you ensure that your messages get past your recipient’s spam filters and sitting happily in the inbox where it belongs? Here are some tips. 1. Send messages in plain text, not HTML or rich text. Plain text is clean, elegant, and lean. Since most spam is sent in HTML format with lots of bold, color, images, and other annoying elements, most spam filters...
Read MoreBad website design is expensive
Some people think great website design work is expensive. On the surface, this is true since you generally get what you pay for. However, how often do we stop to think about how expensive bad design can be? Bad design leads to frustrated website visitors who cannot find what they want. If you are a government entity with no competition, this means your constituents will end up having to call your office to get the information they need. This means that you will have to hire more people to cover the phones and spend more time on support issues. This costs more money. I love my community and I...
Read More5 emerging marketing tools you need to start paying attention to
As 2009 wraps up and we look toward the new year, it’s nice to re-evaluate plans for the upcoming year and use the holiday downtime to focus on some initiatives for 2010. I know that the holidays are a great time for vacations but it can also be a great time to work on high-level strategic items, such as business plans, marketing strategies, and processes. It’s also a good time to make some personal commitments about what you will do differently to build your business. Here are 5 marketing tools that are becoming more relevant all the time. I would encourage you to take a serious...
Read MoreWhy consider ghost blogging?
You’ve probably heard all the buzz about blogging by now. As you may have heard, blogging can help build visibility for you and your company through improved search engine rankings and distributed content. Blogging also helps add an element of transparency to your business because it allows your customers to learn more about the people behind the services you offer. Finally, blogging gives you a strong content platform to distribute via multiple channels, including social networks. Blogging sounds like a great idea, right? However, what if you don’t have time to blog or you are...
Read MoreWeb 2.0 Expo in New York
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. My session went very well and we got excellent feedback but I also had a wonderful time attending the other presentations and learning from other speakers. The first session that really piqued my interest was “The Elephant in the Room: Social Media ROI.” It was an interesting session and the presenter did a really good job of keeping the concepts simple and productive, like reminding us that ROI is simply “(Profit – Investment) / Investment” – a concept that we sometimes...
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