All posts by Kay Svela

Kay is the VP Business Development at Cyberwalker Digital and author of three books: Read This Before You Kill Yourself, Super You, and Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed. She is based in Tampa, Florida. Email her at kay@cyberwalker.com

How to simplify your social media posting: Use Hootsuite

May 14, 2015 Kay Svela

Owning a social media account is not enough; you have to keep it populated with good content. Share blog posts and other valuable content you post regularly on your website at least three times per week.

You can do this easily if using a free online tool called Hootsuite. When you setup an account you can schedule your social media posts to go out regularly through out the week.

How to simplify your social media posting: Use Hootsuite

What you need to know about Hootsuite:

Hootsuite is a hosted social media management system that helps you keep track and manage your many social network channels.

You can use Hootsuite to:

Post on multiple social media platforms at the same time
Automate your social media posting
View posts from all your platforms in one place and reply to them easily
Receive alerts when someone interacts with your social media posts
If you have a team of people that manages your company’s social media they can see the activity of others
Improve your customer service by speeding up your response time
Use the Hootsuite app and manage social media from anywhere using a mobile device

To find out more about Hootsuite or to sign up for a free account visit: http://www.hootsuite.com

How to write content that converts

May 14, 2015 Kay Svela

What if you could write content for your web site, web store, blog articles, ads, social media posts and emails that’s so engaging it sells your products and/or services automatically?

I am about to tell you how to do this. There’s a secret formula that many of the world’s greatest copywriters use to achieve this. And you can remember it easily by using this acronym: AIDA.

It stands for: ATTENTION – INTEREST – DESIRE – ACTION .

Below I reveal what each component means. The tactics will help you develop highly effective sales copy for your business.

How to write content that converts:

ATTENTION: How to get your reader’s attention: If you want to get a reader’s attention (in your target demographic) you need to first gain an understanding of who you are speaking to. Before you start writing your sales copy, find out:

What they like,
what they don’t like,
who they spend their time with,
what they do on the weekends,
what their hobbies are,
what time of day they like to shop
when they like to read their emails…

…the list goes on. These are just some examples, but the better you understand your potential customer, the easier it will be to sell to them. The more you know, the more you’ll be able to write to them knowing what they want. (As an aside, the mistake inexperienced copywriters make is writing from the perspective of what they want.)

The best way to get to know your target market is to survey them or interview them or ask someone you know that is close to an individual in this target group. If you are selling to Moms of toddlers, go talk to a few and pick their brain. You can do this while in line at Starbucks or call a relative with small children or check with a neighbor.

Find out their “pain points”. What are their complaints and problems with every day life? What do they need help with? What do they want to avoid? Use this information in your copy.

Secondly, assume people, are too busy to read what you have to offer. So, if you want them to stop and take a minute to read an email, blog, or an ad you’re company has produced, it has to be something that they either:

Need right now
Is too weird for them to bypass

These two tactics when executed effectively will take your reader from a passive state of attention to an active state of attention.

Active concentration happens when a reader is so immersed in the material you’ve presented to them that they drop everything else to focus on the task at hand. When you engage in learning a new skill it requires this type of concentration.

How to get attention using the “need right now” tactic:

There are three ways to get a reader to come across something you’ve written, stop everything, and read it right away. If it:

Solves a problem
Saves them from a potential disaster
Speaks to a deep desire or passion

Here are some examples of headlines:

Solve a problem: “What to do when your car won’t start”

Saves them from a potential disaster: “7 dangerous mistakes most parents with teenagers make”

Speaks to a deep desire or passion: “How to be the sexiest person person in the room regardless of your looks”

How to get attention using the “be weird” tactic:

Another incredible attention grabbing tactic is: Be weird. It works because humans are curious by nature. But be careful. When you say something outside the norm you do have to follow it up with valuable information to maintain your credibility.

Here’s an example: CWD recently used this tactic for a forklift dealership in California and increased web traffic on day it was posted BY MORE THAN 10X. How did we do that? On April Fools day CWD added this listing to the company web store for a hover lift truck:

Remember: Learning how to grab attention is the most important step in writing in the AIDA format. If you don’t grab attention the rest of what you write is useless. It simply won’t get read.

INTEREST: How to spark interest: Once you get a reader’s attention it only takes one sentence to lose it. Especially if they feel they are being sold to. Here are some interest-building tactics you can use:

Prompt them on a free giveaway
Tell them they’re going to learn something they don’t know / or immediately show them they don’t know something they thought they knew or hadn’t considered
Create a bond of relatedness (i.e. you write something that makes them feel like they know you)

How to use the “Prompt them for a free giveaway” tactic: Tell your reader you are about to give them something valuable, but don’t give it to them right away. Make them wait for it.

Humans are by nature self-serving. So, you can easily develop interest when you prompt them to receive something they would find valuable. (Especially if it’s free!)

For example, a great email may have a line like: “Below, you’ll find a link to the article: Top secret expert tip for freeing up an hour per day”.

Then, you place the link at the bottom so they have to read the rest of your email. Or, you may write a sales letter with a line that says: “I’ve enclosed a promo code that you can use to redeem a $50 Amazon gift card if you take 2-minutes to read this letter”.

How to use the “teach the something invaluable they won’t learn anywhere else” tactic:

Information is as valuable (sometimes more valuable) than free tangible goods. Learning an interesting fact that only experts know is interesting and often worth reading.

If you use words like “top secret”, “exclusive”, “only for you”, it conveys to the reader that they are about to receive confidential information. And most people won’t refuse learning something top secret.

Example: “Yesterday we interviewed the leader of the Transhumanism party who is running for President in 2016. Read this interview to find out why he says advances in stem cell research in the next five years will create a war between religious bodies and the government”.

How to use a “create a bond of relatedness” tactic:

Connect to your reader on a intimate level by sharing an interesting story about yourself that relates to them deeply. Or mention a phrase, or make a joke only they would understand.

Examples: “We haven’t met in person, but like you, I’ve lost a loved one to cancer too.”

“When I was pregnant I pee’d my pants on a New York city subway car, which is why I thought you might want to know about these new support underwear for pregnant women”.

DESIRE: What you need to know about developing desire in writing:

This is where someone who is interested becomes completely emotionally invested in what you’re saying so that they have no choice but to take action.

Carlton suggests that the best way to do this is to have your reader envision a future of favorable outcomes that result from them taking an action you are about to ask them to take.

With interest you are saying “how would you like this product” but with desire you are saying “here’s what you get when you purchase this product”. Here are to tactics that help to build desire:

A bulleted list
Testimonials

How to create use the “bulleted list” desire tactic:

When you create a bulleted list one of the most effective formats to use involves three points.

Bullet point 1: Presents you as credible by fully giving away what they are about to get as a result of taking the action you want them to take

Bullet point 2: Gives away a bit less information

Bullet point 3: Reveals a sneak peak of what they’ll get but keeps them guessing.

Here’s an example:

In this book you’ll learn:

How to establish yourself as a leader in your industry by positioning yourself as an expert resource. You can do this by building a content-rich web site that naturally attracts individuals in your target market because it irrefutably demonstrates your expertise.
Search engine optimization, how it’s done and why it’s a necessary component of your overall marketing strategy.
The 5 free must-have tools available to you online that will make your life much easier.

How to use the “testimonials” tactic:

At CWD, we’ve tested the conversion rates or landing pages with and without testimonials. We found that pages with landing pages always have a higher conversion rate.

The best way to use testimonials is to present them with images. When people see faces it helps present the testimonials as credible sources. As a business you should always collect testimonials that you can use online.

ACTION: What you need to know about asking a reader to take action:

Action is the easiest part of the process but it’s often overlooked. It’s the second most important aspect of AIDA, besides Attention.Once a reader has gone through the emotional states of desire it’s an opportune time to ask them to do something.

Many sales people lose the sale simply because they are too afraid to ask for fear of getting a “no”. It also helps you understand if a reader is engaged.

If they take an trackable action like clicking a link in an email or purchasing a product, you’ll be able to tell that the copy you’ve written is effective.

If you ask for action later, often the emotions are gone and the rational mind kicks in. Instead of “I need that right now” they could be thinking “I still want that but I don’t really have the money to spend, so I can wait”. The sense of urgency is gone.

How to ask for action:

Be direct and concise. Remove apologetic words like “please” or “feel free”. Be straight.

And perhaps, the best way to show you is to make a request:

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How to become an expert in your industry: Publish a book

April 14, 2015 Kay Svela

One of the most effective ways of quickly establishing your company as an expert in your industry is to write a book. They are great because they create immediate credibility for your business. They also promote you naturally through the sharing of your industry knowledge.

You can also use books as giveaways. You can send books to current customers as gifts, or to potential leads, you can also give away zegarki damskie accessories as presents, your customers will be pretty happy with them. And of course, (here’s a big feature to book writing) you can repurpose the content on your web site , blog, on social media, and for email marketing.

How to become an expert in your industry: Publish a book

Here is a quick step-by-step outline of the work you’ll need to do to create a basic (50-page minimum) book. In this article, we explain the complete process we used to create one of our most recent publications: Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed.

(PS. If you want this book you can get it by clicking the button at the bottom of this page. Or, click here, if you know you want it now).

Step 1: Establish your book topic. To establish your company as an expert on a specific topic that will also attract your target market, you’ll need to consider what you know that they don’t know. This knowledge gap is what you want to fill a book with. It should be the inspiration for the topic covered by your book.

Ask yourself: What does our company know best? What is it you do better than your competitors? What information are your customers consistently lacking that could make their lives a whole lot easier if they understood it? What do you know that they don’t know about your business?

You may also want to consider polling your target market to find out what they think would be most valuable.

Example: At Cyberwalker Digital, our book Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed, completely gives away our proven-results web strategy that we use on many of our clients to turn their businesses into lead generators. In it, we talk about the importance of content marketing and how to use your web site, SEO, email marketing, social media, and web store effectively to gain leads and turn those leads into buyers.

Choosing our topic was easy. Most people have a very limited knowledge of digital marketing, and many have not done the research to understand what’s most effective. Our team of experts has. It’s our job too.

As you can see, whatever you’re an expert in is often easy to put on paper. It’s part of what you do everyday.

Basically, we used questions our clients ask us all the time and turned the answers into a book. It allows them to understand what we do and shares with them how they can do it themselves, if they choose too. (Though, most people don’t because the experts still do it better! So, don’t be afraid to give all your secrets away.)

Step 2: Write your book

If you’re not a good writer – or don’t have the expertise in-house, writing a book might seem as impossible as climbing Mount Everest.

But, it’s important to understand that this type of book is more about valuable content then about beautiful language. If you can explain to someone how to do something in person, you can as easily write the steps out on paper.

If you have the funds, hire a copywriter to write the book for you. If you don’t read on…

However inexperienced you may be as a writer, this blueprint will help:

Start with your Table of Contents. You want to break down your book into manageable segments for your reader. You should have at least 5 chapters and each chapter can have various sections. The table of contents is a crucial first step because it is your blueprint. Classic beginner mistake is to skip the table of contents (even if you’re told to write it first! ).
Never write the introduction or conclusion until the body of the book is written. Always write the chapters first and go back to the introduction once you’ve completed the book. Here’s an analogy to think about: A producer can’t create a trailer for a movie before the movie is complete.
Get your content out in a sensible manner first. Evaluate grammar and intonation second. If you are not the best writer you can get the rough content out and hire a content writer to edit and put the book together for you. Have a writer interview you and then assemble the interview into a written chapter.
Get the book professionally copyedited – that means get the spelling corrected, the grammar adjusted and the sentences tightened and focused.
.And it’s always a good idea to have people in your target market read the book to understand if it’s effective. Get two to three people to read the book and give you feed back before you publish it.

Also, the length of your book should be a minimum of 50 pages for it to work as a valuable giveaway. (At 300 words per page that’s a 15,000 word manuscript.) Most paper back books at Amazon run between 500 and 85,000 word. Your book doesn’t have to be super long.

If you want to learn how to write like a professional check out the work of John Carlton. He’s one of North America’s top copywriters.

Step 3: Publish your book

When it comes to publishing your book there are two options:

1) Hire a team to do this for you. You will need a writer to put it together, a copyeditor to make it crisp and clean and a graphic designer to create the cover and lay out the book, and a printer to print it.

2) Do it yourself. (As long as you have the skills to make it look professional)

Here are some great online tools that can help you:

99Designs.com: For a small fee (approximately $200) you can pay to have a bunch of graphic designers create a cover for your book. You choose the winner and they get the money.

Blurb.com: Blurb allows you to choose from a large gallery of book templates and lay out your own book. You can upload art and text into their templates and print the book when you’re ready.

If you decide to hire professionals, you can always give Cyberwalker Digital a call (wink, wink!). It’s what we do.

No matter how hands on you decide you’d like to be, (or have the ability to be), make sure you create an ebook version of your book in PDF format. You can order it from Blurb if you use them, or you can create your own PDF in Word.

That’s what the folks at DinoColoring did. They created a printable PDF ebook with the dinosaur coloring page from their site.

Step 4: Promote your book

Once you have a finished product here is what you can do with your book:

Repurpose the book’s content as blog posts on your web site. At the bottom of each blog post you can place a “Order the book” button. The post acts as a preview for the book and sells the reader to order a free copy.
When you use the book content on your site you can also optimize the pages for keyword phrases. This SEO work will help to drive your site to the top of Google search ranks quickly.
If you use the book content to create blog posts you can push the posts out on social media.
Use your book as a free giveaway on your site. Offering an opt-in will allow you to capture the contact information of leads that visit your site.
You can use your book as a giveaway for email marketing. Or, you can use it’s content to create multiple giveaways for email marketing purposes.
Send your book to potential customers whose business you’d like to attain. Write a compelling sales letter and put it in the mail with the book.
Give your book to other businesses to give away on your behalf. It helps to spread the word about your business and makes them look good.
Give your book away at live events.
If it costs too much money for your company to give too many physical copies of the book away, just use your ebook. Give it away online and give out coupons that give away your book.

As you can see, while writing a book does take some time and effort, the return on investment is major. If you have a question or inquiry for Cyberwalker Digital about this process, you can send us your question easily using our online inquiry form. We will send you a response within 24-hours.

And, if you want our book: Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed. You can order that here:

Is your website mobile-friendly?

April 13, 2015 Kay Svela

On April 21, 2015, Google will change it’s algorithm. All sites that are mobile-friendly will become more available on search engines. Sites that aren’t will be penalized and could lose major business.

Mobile-friendly web sites will get a significant boost in web traffic in Google listings on mobile phones . They will climb the search engine ranks over non-mobile pages that contain similar information.

Whereas, sites that are not mobile-friendly will be penalized and possibly dropped from Google results on mobile devices.

There are five things to keep in mind about this update:

1) Mobile search results only: It will only impact results shown on Google for mobile queries.

2) All language update: This is a global roll-out. Those that manage pages across geographies that cover multiple languages should know about this.

3) Individual pages: Pages are being evaluated on a case by case basis. So if 10 pages on a site are mobile friendly and the rest of the site is not. Those pages will rank in the mobile results and the rest may not.

4) This is one factor on how Google will rank a mobile page result: The update raises the importance of a mobile-friendly experience, but it is no the only not the only factor that Google is considering when ranking a page.

5) Good content can still rank. If the content on a non-mobile friendly page is considered the most relevant for the search by a user it will still rank high for the moment but that may change in the future.

Is your website mobile-friendly?

It’s easy to find out if your website is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly test. Just click on the link to the left. It will take you to a page where you can enter your URL. Google will analyze your website and let you know where you are at.

Here’s the message you are looking for:

If you don’t get the: “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly” your web site needs some quick work to get mobile-friendly.

And there are no short cuts, the only compatible way to comply with the Google change is to move your current site content into a mobile-friendly template.

There are four triage solutions that could buy you some time while you put together resources and find someone to rebuild your site. But this are only short-term solutions. You could:

Install a mobile-friendly site plugin. This is not ideal, but if it takes you from no mobile functionality to some functionality while you implement a more robust solution its not a bad short cut. Your webmaster should be able to do this in a few hours.
Build a mobile solution that looks for mobile devices and redirects to a subset of mobile friendly pages for high page rank content (pages that rank well on Google). This should include your homepage and contact pages. This again is better than nothing and will not prevent a loss of SEO ranking completely. Google recommends against it but says its not as bad a no mobile strategy. This would buy some more time likely.
To properly resolve this need a “responsive” redesign that will serve the pages to different devices using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) technology. This takes the content of the page and formats it for the screen it will be displayed on.

If you need help figuring out what to do you can ask the experts at Cyberwalker Digital. We’ll give you free advice and guide you to resources that can help you. Our team of web site strategists and designer understand the changes you are facing and can develop a strategy that supports your SEO efforts

Click the button below to send provide us with your url that’s being affected by Google’s algorithm change and any questions you have. We will contact you within 24 hours (on a business day) with actionable solutions. CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Google’s mobile SEO update: What you need to know

April 8, 2015 Kay Svela

Google recently announced a change to their search engine algorithm that will come into effect on April 21, 2015. If you have a website, you need to know about this change because it could massively diminish the amount of business you generate from search engine traffic. Especially, if your web site has not been recently updated so it displays well on mobile devices. Here is what Google announced:

Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

This means that mobile-friendly web sites will get a significant boost in web traffic. These sites will climb the search engine ranks .

Web sites that are not mobile-friendly will be penalized. Ranking decreases for sites with negative usability metrics.

Google’s mobile SEO update: What you need to know

The impact on your business could be major if you site ranks well on Google. Your company could lose a great deal of organic traffic and consequently business. Companies that sell directly on the web could be impacted directly.

Is your site mobile-friendly? Find out using Google’s Mobile-Friendly test.

The easiest way with your Gadgets i Want with you to find out if your web site is mobile-friendly is to use Google’s Mobile-Friendly test. All you have to do is enter your URL. Google will analyze your web site and provide you with your current status. This is what you’ll want to see:

If you don’t get the: “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly” response you need to do some work to update your web site so it is mobile-friendly.

What you need to do if your site is not mobile-responsive?

You may not want to read this but, you’ll need to completely redesign your site so that it is mobile-friendly. There are no short cuts that comply with the Google algorithm.

Though, there are four triage solutions that could buy you some time while you put together resources and find someone to rebuild your site.

Here are some short-term solutions you may want to consider:

Install a mobile-friendly site plugin. This is not ideal, but if it takes you from no mobile functionality to some functionality while you implement a more robust solution its not a bad short cut. Your webmaster should be able to do this in a few hours.
Build a mobile solution that looks for mobile devices and redirects to a subset of mobile friendly pages for high page rank content (pages that rank well on Google). This should include your homepage and contact pages. This again is better than nothing and will not prevent a loss of SEO ranking completely. Google recommends against it but says its not as bad a no mobile strategy. This would buy some more time likely.
To properly resolve this need a “responsive” redesign that will serve the pages to different devices using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) technology. This takes the content of the page and formats it for the screen it will be displayed on.

How to do on-page SEO yourself

March 17, 2015 Kay Svela

Here’s a quick tutorial that will walk you through how to do on-page SEO yourself. It will tell you where you need to place your seo keyword phrase to optimize your web pages for best results with search engines. If you want the full information and process, order our free 60-page book, called: Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed, at the bottom of this page. However if you really want to increase your online traffic with up-to-date internet marketing strategies without spending much money, webdesign499 offers Best Priced In South FL

How to do your own on page optimization

1. META and TITLE tag:

There are a series of tags in the header of each page – between the tags that contain information that describes the content on the page. The two tags you should focus on are the <TITLE> tag and the META DESCRIPTION tag.

The TITLE tag contains the words that show up at the top of your visitors web browser. They are also an indicator of page content. In other words, this is what people see when they pull up a description of your site. So, it’s a good idea to use language that’s enticing along with placing your keyword phrase here. Your page’s keywords should go in here.

They should also be the first words in the META DESCRIPTION, followed by no more than 160 characters. (Google doesn’t pay attention to anything past 160). You will find the tital tag and meta description tag on the back end of your WordPress site below the text box.

The META DESCRIPTION tag also describes the pages content and is used as a summary preview when the page is index by Google. Here’s what the title and meta tag would look like on the back end of this article.

Title Tag Example: <title>How to do your own seo</title>

META Description Tag Example <meta name="description" content="How to do your own seo? This quick-read article will give you the basics on seo.CLICK HERE." /> *Quick tip: Put the words “CLICK HERE” at the end of all your meta descriptions. It’s a call to action that emphasizes the web searcher click on the link and go to your site.

2. URL tag:

Make sure your keywords are in your URL or web page name. Keywords in a URL are a great indicator of the page’s content so Google will use this as a key indictor on ranking the page. On the back of your WordPress site you can edit your url by clicking on the edit button beside the permalink under the page or post title. See image below for placement. As you’ll see, the title of the post and URL have the same keyword phrase.

3. <H1> and <H2> tags:

Your seo keywords should appear at least in one set of the headline tags on your page using the <h1></h1> tags. Be sure to use <h2></h2> or <h3></h3> subheads through the article too and sprinkle related keywords in these. If you don’t know much about web code putting a phrase in h2 tags is easy.

And so you are clear what h2 tags do, if you look at the bold headlines in this article, for example where it says “how to do SEO yourself” above, that’s an h2 headline. You can size headlines easily and here’s how:

When you are in WordPress writing an article, flip over to text mode by clicking the “Text” tab at the corner of your text box (beside where it says” Visual” – top right of the screen). Then, locate the phrase you want to bold. Put the h2 tag code around it. That looks like this: <h2>How to do your own SEO</h2>

4. Image ALT tag:

Using one image for each page or post is essential for seo best results. Search engines look at the “ALT” tag description of the image. Your keyword phrase should be placed in the alternative tag box. This is what the back end of the image looks like on this post.

5. Body text:
Your keywords should appear three to four times through out the body text on a page. Feel free to use synonyms. Use this Keyword Density tool to ensure the density of your keywords is done. If you put too many keyword phrases in your text, the Google algorithm will penalize you. This practice is called keyword stuffing. A lot of seo’ers tried to trick the system, but Google’s been adapted to deal with this.

As you can see, it’s fairly easy to learn seo yourself. If you have any questions give us a call or order the book, which includes up to 30 minutes of free coaching.

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, order our 60-page ebook: Digital Marketing Secrets Revealed. Its free! To get your copy of the book now, click here:

Two free tools to simplify your social media

March 16, 2015 Kay Svela

There are many great social media tools. But at CWD, there are two we particularly love and use frequently.

Two free tools to simplify your social media

#1: Hootsuite

A great social media tool that will save you lots of time is called Hootsuite. It’s a hosted social media management system that helps you keep track and manage your many social network channels.

You can use Hootsuite to:

Post on multiple social media platforms at the same time
Automate your social media posting
View posts from all your platforms in one place and reply to them easily
Receive alerts when someone interacts with your social media posts
If you have a team of people that manages your company’s social media they can see the activity of others
Improve your customer service by speeding up your response time
Use the Hootsuite app and manage social media from anywhere using a mobile device

To find out more about Hootsuite visit: http://www.hootsuite.com

#2: Klout

Klout is a social influence measurement tool that provides you with a rating from 1-100, which suggests your business’ influence on social media. The higher the Klout score, the more influential your brand is.

Scores are based on an algorithm that evaluates your brand on 400 different variables. Each one is related to your activity on social media. It tracks certain characteristics like: Ratio of reactions you generate for the amount of content you share.

Why is Klout important? If you are as influential as Klout score leader Barack Obama, who has a score of 99, when you talk people listen. And that often relates to your credibility as an authority on a given specific topic. Get to a score of 99 and when you say “click”, people will, well, click.

Want to learn more? Get the free 60-page book: Digital Marketing Secrets for companies in Materials Handling.

Materials handling and social media

March 16, 2015 Kay Svela

These days, it’s crucial your materials handling company has an active social media presence. Not only does it give your company credibility, it’s also an incredible way to grow your business. You can use social media to grow your following, get more viewers on YouTube, educate the public about your business/products and communicate with your target market.

However, once again, if you are not careful with your social media strategy, you can do more damage than good to your brand. Here are some important things to keep in mind.

Materials handling and social media:

If you want to see a materials handling company doing a great job with social media, check out TPC Automation.com on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

Here are some of things they do effectively:

Post frequently on social media. Few will find you if you don’t post on a regular basis. Post often and post great stuff and they will become programmed to watch for you. If they go to your social media feeds and see stale content they may not return.

Post valuable content. Post the content you generate for your web site and email lists to social media. Give great stuff away often. If you help your audience they will come to you for assistance. If you’re too salesy you will seem pushy and self-centered. People aren’t attracted to this behavior.

Share other people’s content. Don’t just self-promote. When you post other people’s content it’s an easy way for you to grow your list. When you share other people’s content they will notice you. If they post your material to their list you will reach more people.

Make sure you have social media links on your web site: Every web site should have social media buttons that link to their company’s profiles on social media. Make sure that they work by testing each link yourself.

What social media platforms should your business establish?

To be competitive in social media you’ll want to establish a presence on the following platforms:

1. Facebook

2. Twitter

3. Linkedin

5. Pinterest – It’s not necessary, but highly valuable for some businesses. Female-centric products and services should use Pinterest. It is very popular among middle-aged women.

For each platform, create consistent graphics to your brand to dress your company’s page. It’s always a good idea to involve a graphic artist to do this work, so it looks clean and professional.

Learn more about social media and how you can use it to grow your materials handling business. Order a free 60-page book (and get an ebook version right away) called: Digital Secrets for companies in Materials Handling. CLICK on the button below to request your free copy:

Materials handling email funnels

March 16, 2015 Kay Svela

Once you get set up on an email marketing platform, the first thing to do is to ensure you hook it up to the lead capture forms on your web site. That way, when a site visitor signs up on your site their contact information goes directly into your email marketing system and database of contacts.

What do you do with that contact information? Get in touch with them as soon as possible. Do not let your contacts sit there for a long time while you figure out what to do next.

When a contact signs up on a form on your web site, you immediately know they are interested in your brand and what you have to offer. It won’t take long before that excitement dies and they forget. So, get in touch with them immediately. If you use a system like Infusionsoft this can be automated.

The other important thing you need to do before you start sending emails is understand anti-spam laws.

Read about American email laws from CAN-SPAM at:http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/can-spam

Read about Canadian email laws at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm

Materials handling email funnels:

The two most strategic email marketing funnels

An email funnel is a strategically planned sequence of emails that is intended to produce a specific outcome. An effective one takes contacts on a journey and primes them to take a specific action. There are two popular email funnel formats, for two customer segments. They are:

1. New Contact Funnel – for people new to your brand

2. Existing Customer Funnel (sometimes called a “nurture funnel”) – a “stay-in-touch” funnel that keeps you top of mind

Here is the basic premise of a New Contact Funnel:

A contact enters the funnel -> receives a number of emails with giveaways (useful content, etc) on a regular basis -> is asked to make a purchase

Here is the basic premise of an Existing Customer Funnel:

A contact that has already purchased enters the funnel -> receives a sequence of emails with giveaways on a regular basis that prime them to continue to purchase -> makes another purchase -> continues to receive emails….

The two funnels should be connected, so that anytime a lead makes a purchase they go into the existing customer funnel. This way, they will be nurtured to continue to buy and/or or engage with your brand.

A Materials Handling example of how to use email effectively:

Case study: A dealer of warehouse racking has a list of contacts comprised of warehouse managers in their sales district. They want to use email to boost sales. Here’s what they should do:

Step 1: Generate great content for warehouse managers that helps them understand racking and optimize their warehouse for efficiency, spacing saving and productivity about. Content could be in the form or: Articles, white papers, links to videos, infographics etc.

Step 2: Give away the great content for free on email each week.

Step 3: Approx. 10-15% of the time offer them a deal on rack. This could be a limited time racking special. It’s important to note: You want to send them great free stuff regularly first so they enjoy your emails and trust your brand.

Step 4: Once you’ve offered your contact to buy a product, contacts that do purchase should go into the existing nurture campaign where you continue to give them great stuff and upsell them once and a while on new products. If they bought from you once, chances are, they will buy from you again.

For B2B companies with largest services and products, you’ll want to use the same strategy. However, for you, it’s more about brand awareness. Create yourself as an experts resource, so you stand out in your industry.

For more information on email marketing and other digital tactics, order this free 60-page book:

Purchasing an email marketing platform

March 16, 2015 Kay Svela

Many companies don’t yet understand how impactful email marketing can be as a method of growing their business. The marketing budget for email is minimal and many businesses use inexpensive platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact and iContact, to send mass emails.

purchasing an email marketing platform — The back end of an Infusionsoft campaign.

While these platforms are less money and do offer some ability to track emails sent, they are not at all comprehensive. The services they provide are somewhat limiting.

Companies who are serious about using email marketing to generate sales should invest in an email marketing platform such as Infusionsoft. It is one of the top email marketing platforms currently on the market. There is also Ontraport, Marketo, and several others. At CWD, we use Infusionsoft, so we will briefly highlight its benefits.

Purchasing an email marketing platform

What is Infusionsoft?

Infusionsoft is a comprehensive email marketing platform that’s hosted by the company Infusionsoft. To purchase Infusionsoft the initial investment is $1,000 to $2,000 for setup. There is also a monthly hosting fee of $300 to $500 per month. (Price is based on number of email addresses you’ll be sending to and features used.)

It offers more features than most basic email marketing platforms. Here are some of its advantages:

Email automation. You can set up large networks of automated email systems. Infusionsoft allows you to easily see what emails are being sent and when. Each email you create is mapped out on a grid, which provides a visualization of the system you design.

Web forms and landing pages. You can build web forms and landing pages in Infusionsoft. You can hook them up to email or you can use the url to post the form or page online (on social media, for example). When you build web forms the information that a contact enters into the form can be set up to populate under that contact’s record in the Infusionsoft database.

Lead score system. Infusionsoft allows you to track your hot leads. Based on information such as open rates and number of links clicked or actions taken, the system will rate the engagement levels of your contacts. You can set it up so you receive an alert when a contact is ready to buy. Or, you can nurture contacts that are losing interest, or have gone cold.

Keep your contact list organized. You can upload all your contacts into your Infusionsoft database and categorize them appropriately. You can apply tags, which are labels, to contacts based on their characteristics and behaviors.

Build emails. You can build your emails inside Infusionsoft. It’s very easy to create emails and upload pictures, email headers and footers. You can add links to your emails or upload attachments. It’s all very user-friendly.

Track engagement levels. There is an entire section with conversion reports that you can review on a regular basis. It provides you valuable information such as how many people are opening your emails, how many of them are clicking on links in those emails, and how they get into your system.

Customer support. Infusionsoft has live support staff that can help you with your campaigns and teach you how to use thesystem’s features.

Templates: Infusionsoft offers a marketplace that includes a gallery of email campaigns. Based on the emails you’d like to send, you can upload a template directly into your system and then personalize it. This makes it very easy to set up email marketing funnels if you are not yet an expert.

At Cyberwalker Digital we provide free tutorials to anyone interested in learning more about Infusionsoft. If that’s you, visit https://cyberwalkerdigital.com/infusionsoft-inquiry to learn more. You can also visit http://cwd.link/infusionsoft to see a tour of the product.