What is CAN-SPAM and What Does it Mean for Your Business?
As of 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act made spam illegal in the United States. According to the FTC’s website: “Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly.”
No kidding! Fortunately for us, the FTC site also lists their requirements, which I’ve paraphrased below:
- Don’t use misleading header information. (This means that your “From” and “Reply-to” email address must identify the person or company who sent the email.)
- Don’t be deceptive in the subject line.
- If your message is an ad, say it’s an ad.
- Tell recipients where you’re located.
- Always include an unsubscribe option somewhere in your email.
- If you hire someone to handle your email marketing for you, the legal responsibility still lies with your company.
For some great resources on email marketing, check out the MailChimp resource center.
5 Things Every Business Website Should Have
If you’re thinking about changing, redesigning, or getting an all-new website, here are 5 things you should consider before getting started. This list is by no means all-inclusive. I could think of dozens of things a business website needs, but these are five big things that came to mind:
1. A Way to Find You
Some visitors head to your website for one reason: to get in touch with you. They want to get driving directions, a phone number, or an email address. Make sure all of this information is easily accessible from the home page (and preferably every page on the site). Some folks prefer email, while others prefer to talk on the phone. Give them options. While we don’t recommend putting individual email addresses in your contact page (the spammers will find you!), you can use a role-based email ([email protected]) or a form.
2. An “About Us” Page
If you want website visitors to consider your products or services, an “About Us” page is crucial for building trust. Yes, I know they’ve been around for so long that they’ve become might seem cliche, but users expect your site to have one. If it doesn’t, red flags go up. If you want to have fun with your About Us page, add some social flair using some of the tools in this blog post by the brilliant John Jantsch.
3. A Products/Services Section
Your visitors have found your site. They know how to get in touch with you, and they even know who you are. But what do you do exactly? Tell them in your products/services section. This can be a page, a set of pages, a video demonstration, or a combination.
Here are some examples:
4. An Offer (They Can’t Refuse)
Your prospects don’t want to give out their personal contact information for no good reason. They fear that floods of emails, unwanted sales calls, and junk mail will ensue if they give out their contact information. For them to get past this fear, you have to offer something pretty compelling. The more compelling the offer, the more likely they’ll opt-in. For example, your run-of-the-mill monthly newsletter might not get many takers. But your monthly newsletter with exclusive videos, coupons and chances to enter a contest and win fabulous prizes might be more compelling.
Other examples of compelling offers
- eBook
- Whitepaper
- Free Trial
- Free Sample
- Coupon
5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization
Your website might have an intuitive contact page, a dazzling About Us page, an educational products/services section, and a compelling offer, but this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if your visitors can’t find you in Google. Do your research and figure out which keywords you want to target the most, and incorporate them into your site.
Keyword Tool
SEOmoz (Popular Blog on SEO)
Do you want a website with these 5 Things and more?
Learn how you can get one for free when you sign up for our social media services.
These five things are just a start. What would you add to this list?
How to Add Social Media Icons to Your Email Signature
Despite all the buzz around social media, email is still the primary method of communciation for business users. Why not bring your social media profiles to a new audience? In this post, I’ll show you how to add social media icons to your email signature using Microsoft Outlook in 14 steps.
1. Download social media icon pictures. You can find TONS of social media icons at icondock.com. Open this page and scroll down to the bottom of the post until and click on “Download.” Save the .zip file to your desktop.
2. When the file has finished downloading, right click on the .zip folder and click on “Extract All.” You will be prompted to set a destination for the extracted files (your desktop or “My Documents,” for example).
3. Once you have extracted the files, you should be able to open them and view the pictures. Now we’re ready to start building your signature!
4. Open Outlook (Note: I am using Outlook 2010, but these instructions apply to Outlook 2007 as well).
5. Open a new message in Outlook.
6. In the new message, click on the “Signature” button. When you see the drop down menu of options, click on on “Signatures.”
7. You will have the option to edit your “Default” or “Internal” email signature. Let’s edit the “Default” signature.
8. Edit your name and contact information to your liking. You can also add a picture of your logo (.gif files work best for email signatures).
9. Click on the Picture icon to add your social media icons.
10. Browse to the location where you extracted your social media icon files. Click on the folder “Vector Social Media Icons.” You will see three folders, 32px, 24px, 16px. These folders indicate the size of the icons. For example, if you want larger icons, click on the 32px folder.
Once you’ve selected the size you want, click on the first icon you wish to use.
11. After you have inserted your icon, highlight it and click the link button.
12. Type the URL of the page you wish to link your icon to. In this example, I typed in the URL for our Facebook page.
13. Repeat steps 10-12 until you have added all the links you wish to use.
14. Click “OK” and you are ready to go!
Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section. We would be happy to build social media email signatures as a part of your internet marketing plan with Nexxtep. Get started today!
How to Get More Facebook Fans
I recently read a blog post about the one surefire way to get more Facebook Fans. This is not a trick, but something that is completely ethical and actually proven to work, every time. Want to know what it is?
It’s called a “Reveal” page, and I learned about it on this post from Guy Kawasaki. Here’s how it works: create a special landing tab on your Facebook page with an offer for something your fans would find valuable. Then, when they “Like” your page, they will receive instructions on how to redeem that offer.
Here’s an example…
We just placed a landing tab on our Facebook Fan Page offering a copy of our new 56 Tech Tips book to fans.
After you press “Like,” a new image is revealed with instructions on how to get a copy of the book. (Note: If you’re already our Facebook Fan, you will see the instructions on how to get the book. And THANKS for being our fan!) Only fans will be able to see the instructions. You can do this with a coupon, PDF download, video–almost anything you can think of!
How do you do this? You’ll have to do some coding using the Facebook Markup Language (Facebook’s version of HTML), OR we can build one for you when you sign up for an internet marketing plan with Nexxtep!
Interested? Sign up for a 90-day Internet Marketing Action Plan.
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