Collating content for e-mail Newsletters

Some of my blogs are 'non-core'.
Like this one.
I set them up so I have a topic related channel and can write up what I need to, without polluting my 'core' brands.
At some point, this might become core, so I try to keep it very focussed and add value.

For my core blogs, I've started writing an e-mail newsletter. And I wanted to collate content for it, over a month, so that when it came to write the newsletter, I had all the content I needed at hand, to make writing the newsletter fast and easy.

There are a lot of services out there now which 'seem' to want to help you do that. Pinterest, Flipboard, etc. etc.

So I tried a few of the popular services that seem aimed at doing this:

• Flipboard didn't seem to want to let me collate individual items, it seems to want to pull in feeds. Well I already use NewsBlur for my RSS feeds. So I don't need that. Account Disabled within 15 minutes.
• Pinterest wants to help you collate individual items so that you have a pin board of 'stuff'. Sounds good. But as soon as you create an account, Pinterest throws up a 'follow 5 people' dialog. I don't really know what to do with the system at this point, so I randomly select 5 people, just so I can move on to see the site. But now I hav a Pinterest home page filled with random junk. Should be simple to fix - just unsubscribe from those 5 random people and... no can do. Account Disabled within 5 minutes.

Clearly, its just me. All I wanted was something to pin things to that I found on the web and share it and ...

So I fell back on the old stalwart. EverNote.

I created a notebook for each newsletter, then started adding items into the notebook.

I tend to copy and paste stuff, rather than use the browser EverNote plugins.

A useful feature I like on my Android devices is the twitter integration. With Twitter you generally have to 'favourite' tweets, but that is a little too public for my sensibilities. But on Android I can 'send to EverNote' and the tweet I want to follow up on, or curate, is added to my EverNote without anyone noticing.

Sometimes, it pays to keep it simple.

Trim your LinkedIn groups on a monthly basis

Linkedin groups are a massive source of frustration.

I was starting to lose all hope of finding any value in them.

But since I was investigating online training, I wanted to find some linkedin groups for that. As I wrote about previously.

Linkedin has a limit on the number of groups you can join - probably to save your sanity. So I had to unsubscribe a few groups.

Linkedin hide the 'leave this group' option. You need to be in the group, then use the 'more...\ Your Settings' link and there you will see the [Leave Group]' button.

My strategy for choosing groups to leave was:

If the number of members is small then, check the recent posts:

• If there were none of interest in the last month - leave the group
• If the questions, or answers annoyed me, leave the group
• If there were no posts in the last month - leave the group

I stayed in a few groups just because of this size of the membership base, and purely for future marketing reasons.

I will repeat the above 'trimming' process on a monthly basis. This will probably help keep me sane.

Working Remotely with Google Hangouts

I recently spent a day working remotely with a team in Romania through Google Hangouts.

We had a few connection issues along the way, I don't think any of that was from Google Hangouts, it was because of local wifi connection issues.

Google Hangouts makes it really easy to setup a group meeting, and remember this is all for free.

You can keep them private and only invite who you want.

The participants can all see each other, and you can share your screen easily. In fact, any participant can share their screen.

There is a chat window for sharing links.

Most impressive of all, was the remote desktop sharing. So I could operate their computer remotely.

I'm not sure I'm ready to use this for webinars yet. But certainly for face to face calls I'll use this as a default rather than Skype,

Online training resources

Are you an independent consultant? Do you conduct online training?

Actually, I don't mind either way, because I do.

So far I've been using Udemy.com. They make it free and easy to get your training to market and I've had no problem being paid on time by them.

As an independent. I wanted to start looking around for other routes to market.

Udemy have some forums on facebook, but this is for discussing Udemy stuff - I wanted to find other places where people discuss online training.

I asked around and was told about a few LinkedIn groups:

• Camtasia Users Group
• eLearning community group
• eLearning edge
• eLearning Global Network
• Instructional Designers
• Instructional Design and E-Learning professional's group
• LMS and e-learning group
• Rapid e-learning group
• The elearning guild

I haven't been subscribed to these long enough to know how much value they will add, but they look pretty good so far.

Some good resources came through as a result of signing up for these

• http://elearningfeeds.com/
• http://www.elearninglearning.com

Hope this helps, and if you know any good additional resources, please leave a comment below.

It seems as though I need to search for things like "LMS" "MOOC" and "e-learning" and not "online training" like I had been. Half the battle is often learning the specific language of the domain when you are a beginner.

Using Twitter for marketing

It seems as though rules of etiquette around twitter exist that I did not know.

I thought:

• If I wanted to read what someone tweeted then I would follow them
• If someone wanted to read what I tweeted then they would follow me.

It appears that this falls in to the naive category.

Apparently, based on what a twitter marketeer told me, and on what I've seen people who outsource their twitter management do:

• If someone follows you, you have 3 days to follow them, before they unfollow you.
• Similarly, if you follow someone, and they don't follow you back within 3 days then you should unfollow them.

Why? Because this increases your reach and influence.

Note, these people don't use twitter for marketing. These people operate as twitter marketeers, who teach other people how to use twitter for marketing. And I have read their twitter feeds, but since they adopt the - 20 tweets a day, regardless of relevant content - strategy, I don't think it works in terms of engagement.

Personally. This all feels wrong to me. And if something feels wrong to you, don't do it.

Although from a marketing point of view I understand the following.

• When I follow someone, they receive a message saying that I have followed them.
• They may check out my profile and timeline to check if they want to follow me.
• If they don't follow me then they don't see my timeline.

If I actually want to market to this person via twitter then they need to see my tweet. So I have some choices.

• I could unfollow - as the marketing strategists suggest. At which point I gain no insight into what they care about and couldn't structure tweets that meet their need.
• I could mention them in tweets directly. They will see these mentions in their twitter tool. They might choose to follow, or interact.
• I could unfollow, and then refollow later, in the hope that they will eventually follow. I don't know if this works, I've never noticed someone unfollow me and later follow me.
• Perhaps I should market to them off-twitter. Perhaps I should link in with them.

I need to do more research on this, but it seems that if you use twitter as a marketing tool you may well lose site of the engagement part because if you follow 6000 people (to pluck a large number out of the air). How can you engage with them or monitor the stream of tweets for information you find useful.

I suspect I'll adopt the following strategy:

• grow your follower base organically
• follow people I want to read, and people I want to market to
• try to create tweets that people re-tweet
• engage specific people directly through questions
• use linkedin and email for direct marketing approaches

I'll keep researching until I build a good model for this, but in marketing, and business, if it feels wrong and you can't justify it, then don't do it. Ever. Despite what the Gurus tell you, but keep researching, just in case they do have valuable information - and because you might change your mind.

Ask for, and give, recommendations

Do you ask for recommendations?

I don't mean for your CV in terms of references. I'm not even sure that people follow this stuff up any more or ask for them. I mean recommendations.

• "Would you recommend me or my work to someone else?"
• "Can you give me a quote that I can use that describes your recommendation?"

LinkedIn makes this easy to do, but I never asked for recommendations.

I would happily write recommendations for others. Unasked, because I appreciated the work they did.

I never had any concerns about writing recommendations for others. But I know that people sometimes feel they don't have to write recommendations because "this person is obviously good, they don't need a recommendation", or "it might seem too obsequious", or a variety of other reasons. This is simply a psychological barrier.

I wrote recommendations for people, as an easy way of saying thank you.

And I still have many more recommendations to write because I've worked with so many people who have skill sets and attitudes that make them valuable and I would want to work with them again.


But I never asked for recommendations.

When I look back on why, I can see psychological barriers

• I don't want to impose
• Will it seem needy?
• This isn't what I do

I wasn't concerned if they thought my work was good or not, because I believed my work was good. It just wasn't something I did.

But this is business.

And psychological barriers are not conducive to good business or good marketing.

"Social proof" is one of the key marketing strategies that we use to sell. Recommendations act as a simple form of "social proof". These people like it, you will too. I need to harness that to sell my work as a consultant.

So I recently decided to "just do it". I used the Linkedin features to ask a few people I had worked with if they would contribute a recommendation to my Linkedin profile.

With the act of doing so, and the receipt of each response, the psychological barriers lowered and changed.

It was easy. I didn't feel needy - if anything I felt manipulative. But the responses I received contained higher praise and more heartfelt praise than I would expect through manipulation.

I did feel like I was imposing, but people will either ignore the request or respond, and those that responded seemed like they valued the chance to say thank you for the work I'd done with, and for, them.

I will do this now more often. The responses help boost the Linkedin profile and add some social proof. But more important to me. The responses humble me. They will make me maintain my work ethic and quality of work, because I now have to live up to those recommendations, and keep living up to and exceeding those recommendations.

I'll ask for recommendations because the act of asking helps me overcome any marketing or social reticence. And if they honour me with a recommendation. I'll work ever harder to boost my skill sets and maintain my abilities so that I can live up to it.

Now I know that when I'm giving a recommendation to someone, I'm not just saying thank you. I'm giving them something to live up to. 

Using LinkedIn for marketing by connecting to everyone

When I first signed up to LinkedIn I only every connected with people that I knew. And had worked with. And was prepared to acknowledge as a professional contact.

LinkedIn also recommend that you only connect with people that you know.

I'm changing tact.

Now, if someone asks to connect with me. And if I view their profile and can see they are a 'real' person, with some relation to my area of expertise. Then I connect to them.

Why the change of heart?

You never know where the next work is going to come from.

As a consultant, we rely on, word of mouth and connections to get work. So the person you connect to, that you don't know now, might get in touch for some work later.

Also, when I accept their request I can send them a pro-forma 'hello' letter, with some upsell links and promote my work. With no guilt. Because they wanted to connect with me. And who knows, my free work might help them.

I have a pro-forma response in Evernote, so when I reply I just copy paste.

Warning - when you copy and paste into linkedin, make sure that you select the white space in the response box, otherwise the copy and paste process will convert all the new lines in your email into double new lines, requiring you to edit the response.

My basic response looks something like this. I refine this all the time, so this is my current iteration:


Hi, 

Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn.

As my new connection, you might be interested to learn that:

1. I am running some free webinars that you might be interested in signing up for, I have a mailing list which you can sign up to for details <insert link here>

2. I am running a 25% discount on my <details> course so it now only requires <details> to join <insert link here>

:)
Thanks again, and if you need any consultancy or training, and you think I can help, then feel free to get in touch,

Alan
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P.S. visit my websites if you haven't been there before:
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