Justin McCullough at Leader 4 Hire shares a recent experience with a newsletter and a sales push: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

This is a detailed look at trust, marketing, and execution on an online sales push from some of the biggest names in Social Media – the good and the bad and how you can learn and apply this to your sales and marketing efforts.

Follow every bit of this through (except the last part) and you will succeed in your next email sales push. The sections I call “What’s Happening Here” should provide the key elements for you to model in your online campaign and sales efforts.

Nearly everything here is actually a success story other than the fifth area below.
First – Chris Brogan eNewsletter

Subject line of email from Chris: “Email marketing and the folks at Blue Sky Factory”

This is a great little sales piece from Chris. It clearly identifies his role in the email, why I (we) received it and who it benefits and why. On top of that, a nice bit of positioning and display of influence by offering an exclusive ebook download and discount to use Blue Sky Factory as a benefit to loyalty with Chris. Well done. This is the right sort of email marketing and who would expect less from Chris?

McCullough goes on to analyze the components of the newsletter, the links and sales pages, and the offers that are made. Pay attention to his description of how “marketing information” is captured when he has an opportunity to download a free e-book.

The big lesson in e-mail marketing

The email marketing campaign that McCullough details is a good one, executed well, until the the final part – where Sales and Customer Service fail mightily. I urge you to read the entire post, and the comments – they are a textbook example of how to manage a situation like this. Before you go, however, consider this:

Read the whole thing here: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

I have a new post up at the SOBEvent blog: Concrete Steps Toward Integrated Virtual Marketing

The old cliche about marketing used to be that a business knew that part of the money and effort spent on marketing was wasted, they just didn’t know which part. A recent survey mentioned in the WSJ shows that this perception is still true in the days of Social Media:

…a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

One of the first questions that people ask when they are setting up a blog for their website is, “Where do I get content?” The answer is often right in front of their faces, in the form of their existing press releases, brochures, and other printed materials. Mequoda.com has published an excellent style article for turning this printed content into a blog post or page. I am going to elaborate on some of their points:

Titling, categorization and tagging rules for online publishing with WordPress blogs

When publishers pull apart their archived content and start putting it up on their blog, they have a variety of style options to choose from when posting.

We recommend taking a little extra time to optimize your old articles (whether they are evergreen or not) in order to make that content as valuable to your blog (and audience) as possible.

The following style guide for unleashing your print archives into a blog is specific to WordPress in terms of folksonomy, but can be applied to any type of blogging platform.

Rule #1: Include at least one primary or secondary keyword phrase in your blog titles and subhead.

Why? Because blog titles are so specific, you might choose to use a secondary keyword in your title (like “repurposed content” in the case of this article) and a primary in your subhead (like “online publishing”). If you want to get ranked on a keyword in search engines (and you do), this is your prime real estate to display them.

Keywords are very important, and the search engines parse your posts looking for the most important words in the text. It is important to highlight them. Which leads to:

Rule #2: Make sure your blog is set up to define your title and subhead in H tags.

Why? H1, H2 and H3 are highly regarded by Google as defining what a page is “about”.

In your “writing page” in WordPress there is a button in the menu bar titled “Paragraph”. In the drop-down menu you will see Heading 2 and Heading 3. I recommend that you use Heading 2 no more than once per page, and Heading 3 for your sub-headings. Edit your CSS to make these headings “pop”.

NOTE: Never use H1 in your content! That tag is reserved for the title of the page and you will be penalized by the search engines.

Examples:

This is H2/Heading 2

This is H3/Heading 3

Rule #4: Assign posts to a single category.

Why? From testing, it’s become abundantly clear that assigning single categories to articles boosts ranking on the category title. Hopefully your categories (or topics) are named as keywords that you want to be ranked on. This can also avoid duplicate content.

You should also keep in mind that your blog should have a few, very focused categories. If you write about cars, for example,you might use categories like Sedan, Coupe, Convertible, then use Tags for more specific topics like Corvette, BMW, and so on.

This is really great information for people that are looking to optimize their online content, and for more information like this, including audio and video with step-by-step instructions and real-life examples, see Writing for the Web, Inside and Out, by myself and Brad Shorr.

Sorry for not posting in a while, I have taken on a new gig as a restaurant manager at Wolfe’s Tavern in Wolfeboro, NH. I have been in the hospitality industry for 15 years, and was not looking to go back to it, but they needed some help.

The good news is that my GTD system has survived the transition and I am pretty confident that I will be able to get back on track with posting and finishing up my productivity e-book by the end of the month.

Right now I am pretty busy training some new staff, getting expenses in line, and creating a community for the restaurant (follow us on Twitter at @WolfeboroInn), we will be Tweeting about our specials and other cool stuff.

Thank you for your patience and support, I am looking forward to having some good, real-world examples on productivity in the workplace for you shortly. Have a great day, and let me know what kind of tips you might be looking for in your own work-life situation.

Valeria Maltoni has a brilliant post inCreating the Desire for News

Creating desire is equivalent to creating demand. If there is one lesson in new media and our life online, it is that time and time over we go back to the places where we find value, we refer them to our network, we are more likely to become involved with those spaces, the people in them, and the services and products they talk about.

Are we still not making good use of the depth, that third dimension of the Web that opens us through links? How about mapping the user experience? Do we connect the dots? What are the longstanding facts behind your product’s story? How do you get to the product in the first place? We are fascinated by the exploration of the journey, aren’t we? Is the community involvement ready for that part we don’t know about?

In talking with an experienced technology product development professional recently, we were saying that no new technology product works perfectly on day one. The beta phase, the moment when the product is released, is when we start the real development.

Her post is inspired by this one at Newsless: The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are four key parts to news stories, and we typically only get one of them, even though journalists possess all four, and the other three are arguably more important.

Note that when I say “news stories,” I mean an ongoing news topic, such as “health reform,” not a particular article. In fact, health reform’s been on my mind a lot recently, so perhaps it’s a good subject to help illustrate what I mean. I’ll start with the part of most news stories we get in spades:

WHAT WE GET: What just happened

Take a look at this Washington Post topic page on health reform. As I write, it includes a list of headlines signaling recent events in the health-care debate: several Democrats called the public plan essential, key senators are pushing cooperatives as an alternative, patients want more transparency on doctors’ links to Pharma, etc.

This stuff is what most news organizations consider the foundation of journalism: the news. To the extent that any of the other parts of a news story get traction, they must fit into a structure where the news is the main attraction.

Of course, this is also the most ephemeral piece of a news story. …  By October, this story will lose most of its present meaning.

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

Both writes discuss the very important parts that are missing from news stories of today: transparency and honesty. I have maintained for years that the big, corporate news orgs have willingly gone off the rails of objectivity while pretending to be objective and mainstream. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my biased look at the news just like anybody else. The difference is that I know my news source is biased, I know which way they are biased, and I accept their reportage in that context. I also go looking for other perspectives on the issue at hand, especially if it is a complex one.

Matt points out what is, in my opinion, the biggest weakness in modern journalism – and simultaneously the reason for the financial collapse of print news – WHAT WE MISS (2): How journalists know what they know.

This is a component of every news story that journalists tend not to provide for two reasons: 1) explaining how we get information disrupts our institutional authority and 2) we think it makes stories less interesting.

I think both assumptions are wrongheaded. Understanding how a news story came together is often a vital part of both understanding and enjoying that story.

I agree with Matt, and I will tell you why. Take a look at this: (Ridiculously funny movie, BTW)

This DVD comes with two discs, the movie itself on the first and on the second, commentary, behind the scenes footage, and bloopers. “So what?!?” I can hear you now, “They’ve been doing this for years.” Of course they have. Because the studios have learned a lesson that journalism hasn’t. People like stories, especially the ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff. They also like to see mistakes, out-takes, and generally embarrassing moments captured forever on film.

But, Journalism is Serious Business

So are movies. The movie industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. An enterprise that once thought it might get destroyed by home video. So, rather than sit around waiting for extinction, the studios embraced video, started pushing small, not-likely-to-be-successful movies straight to video and offering special features with theatric releases. ( I know that I am simplifying things a bit here, it’s an illustration.)

This is part of the solution for journalism, especially online journalism, where news stories that get 2 minutes on TV or a couple of column-inches in the paper can be updated, expanded, and crowd-sourced via comments. Good journalists that are also good writers, good listeners, can create conversations with their readers – creating a place where readers would willingly pay to go in order to get the ‘behind-the-scenes’ skinny on a story that interests them.

Keep “News” free, Sell the Backstory

Imagine this scenario as a news item:

Work-at-home-Mom Has Bad Experience with Major Appliance

An area woman had some difficulty with her washing machine recently. A brand new machine that retails for over $1,000 broke down quite soon after she brought it home and it took more than three weeks and multiple visits from repair personnel to get it running again.

The unfortunate woman, Heather Armstrong, had a very difficult time with customer service which she wrote about in detail on her blog (personal online journal) and on Twitter (a text-messaging site where people write about what they are having for lunch). Luckily, a customer service representative from a rival company (@BOSCHAPPLIANCES) contacted Armstrong and offered to replace her old Maytag washer with a brand new machine of her choice.
As the old machine had (finally) been fixed, Armstrong convinced the Bosch rep to donate the new machine to a local charity.

You can read more about Armstrong’s experience here (subscription required).

Of course, I’m no journalist, what do I know. I think that a short, stubby article on a “news story” could be used to draw people in as subscribers. Paying subscribers. Or not. What do you think? Leave a comment.

I have a new post on Critical Priorities for Entrepreneurs at the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers site today:

Get Your Website Up and Running

Your website has to say “This is who we are” to the world in a way that is compelling. A great web design doesn’t have to cost a fortune. If you don’t have the HTML skills or graphic talent in-house, look for a young and hungry web designer who’s looking for a shot, as you are.

Expect to update your website regularly and improve it constantly over time. Having a website with months-old or irrelevant content is a real deal-killer. It makes your company look stagnant, at best.

My friend Dawud Miracle has put together something pretty special for small businesses and service providers. I would not normally promote something like this (it’s a kind of competition for my own business) but I know Dawud personally. Dawud knows what he is doing and what he is talking about.

I know, why am I shilling for some product? Because the economy is tough and everyone needs something to help build their business. Well, I coach people on how to do this for themselves and what kind of coach would I be if I didn’t point to excellent resources that are available. Seriously, even thought it’s not my own product I can recommend it with confidence. This service can help your business grow, and as you see next, it helps me a little bit too. (Please read to the end for a special offer from me)

NOTE: There is an affiliate program, so I get a little piece of the purchase – but you can too! Click here and follow the link to the affiliate program.

You simply can’t go wrong with this offer!

Small Business Owners & Service Providers:

Get an attractive, modern business website or blog – at a great price – WITHOUT all the guesswork, technical difficulties and hassles.

And, until Sunday, August 30 at 12:01pm, you can get your business-ready website or blog for the incredibly low price of $350!

((( BEGINS – THURSDAY, AUGUST 27th at NOON EASTERN )))

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s not – at least until Sunday! No tricks, no games, no gimmicks and no bait-and-switch.

You see, I’m celebrating. Not only is this price to celebrate the long-awaited birth of my turn-key business-ready website design service (The Website Habitat), but in a few weeks my wife will give birth to our fourth child. So I’m just giddy.

If you have been thinking about getting (or upgrading) a website for your small business, church, home business (or whatever), click this link to The Website Habitat and see just what Dawud has to offer. For example, the first 5 people to order a website get a free membership to Chris Garrett’s Authority Blogger online course. (Authority Blogger provides you with in depth, detailed strategies on how can be using your blog to marketing and promote your business, the course retails for $397. Just this course is worth the purchase!)

To make this deal even better, I am going to give anyone who buys a website from Dawud using my affiliate link a $50 discount from my own Writing for the Web Training Course. All you have to do is send me a copy of your confirmation e-mail (take out any personal/confidential info, of course!) and I will send you a discount code! You can use the contact form.

After reading the book “Young Guns” for last week’s review, I decided to expand on some of the ideas put forth by the author, Robert Tuchman. You can read all of these posts at the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Event site under the “7 Priorities” tag. The first two posts are up now, the remaining posts will appear on the next 5 Tuesdays.

Leave a comment there, I’d love to know what you think.

Inspired by this post from Amber Naslund (Productivity and Time Wasters in Social Media):

We all want to be more productive and know that where we’re spending our time is worthwhile. I’m asked this question a lot and I see it of others, so I wanted to discuss, in specifics, some of my most productive activities in social media, and some of the biggest time wasters I encounter (and avoid wherever I can).

Naslund goes on to describe her job and how she uses Social Media tools for building and maintaining relationships. Her list of places where time is well spent (I would use the term invested) is very similar to my own (In the post she shares more details of what these things mean, the extras below are my own take):

• My Twitter presence.
• Attending in-person events.
• Responding to email.
• Commenting on blogs.
• Keeping up with LinkedIn.
• Content creation and sharing.
• Reading books.

How I invest my time in Social Media

• Twitter presence. I love Twitter, because I get to talk to people that I know from all over the world about this and that. Many of these folks I met at conferences (see the next bullet) and they have amazing things to say, things that I can learn from every day. You can see my list of people that I follow here (hdbbstephen on Twitter), and you may notice that there are only about 500 of them. I find it difficult to participate in conversations or catch the good information that comes from these folks if I follow many more than that. The good news is that many of these people share awesome links to other Twitter people that I don’t follow, so that the best of the best information still gets through. I also use Twitter for reaching out to new clients and readers for this site, but that is another post!
• Attending in-person events. My favorites are Social Media conferences and Chamber of Commerce events. I love the networking and learning opportunities that come out of them. I am actually planning a pretty cool project involving my local Chamber and some hyper-local news opportunities (stay tuned).
• Reading/Responding to email. This is vital to my business, especially in the website construction and maintenance part, where responsiveness and customer service are part of my differentiation strategy (slow response from website designers is a frequent complaint). Also, I no longer use a RSS feed reader for keeping up with news and other blogs. I only subscribe via e-mail – and these updates are filtered into a special folder in Thunderbird. This way I can catch up on blog reading at my convenience, whether I am online or not.
• Commenting on blogs. This is a fantastic method for reaching out to a larger audience, creating opportunities for guest-posting and larger discussions of topics, and drawing traffic to your own site/community. When you are able to enhance a discussion or provide more information on a topic it shows that you know what you are talking about, an attractive feature for web-surfers. I use this technique in conjunction with reading the e-mails in my “Feed” folder – when I see an interesting post that I can make a contribution to I can click over and leave a comment.
• Keeping up with LinkedIn. I know that I need to be better about this, LinkedIn is such a powerful tool. Unlike other social networking platforms it has very little spam or distracting foolishness. I love to watch how people use the Q&A feature.
• Content creation and sharing. Again, I need to do more writing [those pesky clients are keeping me busy! ], especially about the business development part – a lot of time lately is being invested in my new e-book on Productivity: Today, Tomorrow, or Later. I am also part of the Work.Life.Creativity forum community, which is a lot of fun – creativity is definitely an area in which I want to invest more time.
• Reading books. One of the best investments that you can make is in reading books. Actual books with pages. Yes, really. Oh, I suppose that printing out a PDF of an e-book works too, because I like to take notes while I read, even write in the margins. Reading and learning is, for me, one of the most effective methods – I tend to do a little less well with audio and video content (it may have something to do with my ADD…).

I know that the original post contained time-wasters, but I am not going to dwell on those (I think that we all know what they are for ourselves!) What are some things that you invest your time in for effective, productive work? Leave a comment.

Bill Whittle and Austin Bay have a discussion about how Twitter can be used to network and communicate in ways far beyond “what am I having for lunch”: The Strategic Implications of Social Media (link to the video, 12 minutes).

Here is part of a post with some background info:

“Iran’s Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and “micro-blogging” service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran’s tyrannical mullahs. Tehran’s thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile phones are essentially small computers, instant Internet access is widely distributed. Men, women and children hold a global link with audio- and video-recording capability in their palm.

Twitter is the latest in a line of “social media” phenomena spawned by the digital communications revolution. Social media like Facebook and MySpace connected users on the Internet. Twitter, which specializes in brief “text messages,” bills itself as a service that answers the question, “What are you doing?” That message is shared with a group of friends or the world.

“Tweeting” Iranians let the world know they were launching street demonstrations and seeding an anti-regime rebellion. “