Newsletter

[SecTrainer]

Does your company put out a newsletter?* If so, you're undoubtedly always sniffing around for topics to write about, and preparedness (or "business continuity") is one of those evergreen domains that seems to generate wide interest almost any time, but especially when some disaster is in the news.

The SBA has a site where you can get a lot of material about business preparedness and continuity. Here's the link: http://www.preparemybusiness.org/ - click the topical links ("Planning", etc.) on the left.

* There was some talk in Internet marketing ("IM") circles awhile back about the "demise" of the newsletter as a marketing tool. Well, this talk proved to be nothing but guff, and in fact one of the IM "gurus" who put out a very widely-circulated video pronouncing newsletters to be DOA (in very emphatic terms) had to put out another video a few months later, apologizing for his mistake!

Newsletters are still marvelous outbound outreach tools because people love to receive free information. I can't emphasize this enough. The primary change is that it is now more common to publish the newsletter on your website, and then when you have a new edition you just mail out (or tweet, text, etc.) the link to it rather than emailing the whole newsletter like we used to do. Think "mobile"!! Mobile folks want links, not hefty downloads.

This is actually even better, because it brings people to your site where they would hopefully see other things like "Our New Patrol Computers", a press release "Vangard Services Adds Five New Patrol Clients", "Officer Williams Honored For Quick Response to Warehouse Fire" (he saved $millions of inventory from going up in smoke, of course) - or whatever.

[N. A. Corbier]

People who said newsletters are dead are usually the ones trying to sell facebook/twitter/social marketing packages as "social media experts."

They also advocate using Facebook as the sole company web presence.

[Nauticus]

With that said, I think social networking sites are very valuable as well.

[SheepdogProtective]

Social media is helpful, especially since they offer for free the ability to link their outlets to your webpage and so on. In fact you could say go to Facebook, list the URL for your newsletter and say how the newest edition is out. Next thing you know, it automatically replicates on Twitter and if you are using an RSS subscription program, your return clients can start recieving e-mails about it.

[N. A. Corbier]

Social media is helpful, especially since they offer for free the ability to link their outlets to your webpage and so on. In fact you could say go to Facebook, list the URL for your newsletter and say how the newest edition is out. Next thing you know, it automatically replicates on Twitter and if you are using an RSS subscription program, your return clients can start recieving e-mails about it.

If you're using an e-mail subscription system (mailchimp, constant contact, etc) they integrate with facebook with a simple OAUTH transaction, much like twitter does. MailChimp, for example, allows you to capture emails on your facebook company page for your campaigns.

Also, most of these services have a free plan for low-medium volume transactions, i.e. under 12k emails for Mailchimp.

[SecTrainer]

Don't be fooled by the "linkages" between various platforms that tempts you to think of them as if they're all just one big mashup application.

They're not.

Maximize the features of the various channels by understanding what they each specialize in doing (and what audience they reach). Aweber isn't Facebook, Facebook isn't Twitter, Twitter isn't YouTube, YouTube isn't S3, S3 isn't SlideShare, SlideShare isn't Squidoo, Squidoo isn't Udemy, Udemy isn't Moodle, etc., etc.

Oh - and when it comes to using any of these tools for business purposes, the "freeness" of any of them doesn't matter worth a spit. You save a few bucks trying to use Facebook as an email system when it only runs about $20/mo to get the sophisticated email campaign management and list management features of Aweber. So - you've gained exactly what? Nada. And just to save the price of a few Happy Meals?

I know two trainers. One decided to use a "classroom app" on Facebook. The other uses Moodle, which is a free, full-blown, widely supported courseware application that can - and does - support online learning for entire colleges (and which, by the way, installs on a website in about three mouse clicks if your web host is running Fantastico, as many do). Tweak a few settings in the management console (if you want to), and Bob's your uncle. The University of You has just opened its doors. Teach one course or a hundred - Moodle doesn't even breathe hard.

Now, from just this description of these two trainers, see if you can guess which one gets to spend his time developing content and courses, and which one is tearing his hair out just getting his trainees registered?

You there in the back row - did you say something? Well, kindly save your bald jokes for after class if you would, please.