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6 Tips to Quickly Grow Your Email Marketing List

PEM 6 Tips to quickly grow your Email marketing List

6 Tips to Quickly Grow Your Email Marketing List

Building the list and growing an engaged group of subscribers is much easier said than done. With these 6 tips though, you’ll be well on your way to growing an engaged and profitable email marketing list.

If you’ve been in the online business world for more than a few days you’ve likely already heard that building an engaging email marketing list is paramount to the long-term success of your business. What you’ve heard is true. Unlike social media followers, you own your email list. Everyone who subscribes to an email list has given their permission to be contacted by that brand for future content and promotional marketing purposes.

This post may contain affiliate links.

  1. Relevant Subscriber Freebies

If you haven’t already identified the core problem that your readers face, then you are missing the boat when it comes to not only growing your email list but your business overall. As a content producer, it is your job to create blog posts, subscriber freebies, landing pages, social media, and other pieces of content that engage and help your community.

Your email list will only grow when you have email opt-ins that meet the needs of your readers. What problems are they facing? What are their challenges? Brainstorm these topics, then create small ebooks, checklists, printables, planners, and any other piece of content that you are willing to give them for free in exchange for their email address.

  1. Solid Marketing Funnel

After you’ve created one or more relevant subscriber freebies, you need a solid marketing funnel that will convert these new freebie subscribers to paying customers and raving fans of your brand. Their conversion can only happen when you have a solid marketing funnel that takes them from freebie seeker to customer.

Every email marketing funnel should at minimum include a welcome sequence. Typically, once someone subscribes to a list they are automatically placed into an email automation sequence that takes them through a series of 3-5 emails that introduce them to the brand they’ve just subscribed to. This sequence can take anywhere from 6 to 15 days on average. Don’t bombard your new subscriber with a ton of emails in their inbox right off the bat. Space out the welcome sequence every 2-3 days for each new email.

After the welcome newsletter sequence, consider moving the new subscriber to a more specific content list which relates to the freebie which they subscribed to.

  1. Weekly Newsletters

Not creating and sending email content on a regular basis is one of the quickest ways to lose email subscribers. When you refrain from sending newsletters to your list, they won’t get to know you, your brand, or your content. This is the quickest way to be forgotten as a brand. When you do send an email, your subscribers won’t recognize your brand or remember that they signed up for your list. When this happens they are going to hit unsubscribe or, worse yet, mark your emails as spam.

  1. Engaging Content

The emails that you send to your list need to not only be on a regular schedule, the content needs to be engaging. Have you story branded your business or brand? When you story brand you’ll no longer wonder what message to communicate to your readers, no longer wonder about their needs, and no longer be without words for content.

When you create content that your readers want to read and engage with, you’ll be well on your way to transitioning freebie seekers into warm contacts and ultimately paying customers who love you and your brand.

  1. Social Media Marketing

Taking advantage of social media is a great way to quickly grow your email marketing list. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn (depending on your niche) are gold mines for finding and acquiring new subscribers to your list.

When creating graphics for marketing your new subscriber freebie and newsletter on the various social media platforms, make sure that you’ve taken the time to create high quality images to advertise your content. Visuals sell content online.

Once you have the images and other steps in place, don’t forget to advertise your subscriber freebie on a regular basis. Posting once and never again will not grow your list. Sharing in groups, pages, and in other relevant online communities will help gain awareness for your list and freebie. Don’t neglect your freebie, don’t neglect your list.

  1. Content Plan

It truly goes without saying that all of this is for naught without a solid content plan. What good is it going to be if you grow your list but then don’t have a solid content plan in place to make the magic happen?

When you create a content plan, otherwise known as an editorial calendar, make sure to include new subscriber freebies, newsletter topics, and the promotion of the freebie in your plan. Without a plan it is easy to forget many of the important aspects that go into effective marketing.

Feel like you need some extra help with email marketing? I highly recommend Homeschool Blogging’s email marketing course.

8 SEO Strategies for Every Blog Post

8 SEO strategies for every blog post.

For most bloggers, search engine optimization (SEO) is the big bad wolf of content writing. We know we need to optimize for organic traffic but actually doing it is a whole other story. It’s overwhelming, it’s confusing, and frankly, we just want to write. After all, isn’t that why we got into blogging in the first place? These 8 SEO strategies for every blog post will put you well on your way to optimizing every piece of content with ease.

If you follow these 8 SEO strategies, your blog posts will be well within content best practices. 

Title Length

Aside from the image, the blog post title is what readers use to decide whether they are going to open and read an article or not. Your title needs to be interesting and relevant but it also needs to fit within SEO best practices.

When drafting a blog post title you must take into consideration character length. Your title and website name must be greater than 30 but less than 60 total characters. Anything over 60 characters will be cut off in searches.

The quickest and easiest way to determine the character length of your titles without doing extensive crawls of your website is to use a spreadsheet. Simply copy your blog post title including website name into a spreadsheet such as Excel or Numbers, then use a formula in the function settings to calculate character total. To use the function, enter =LEN(cell) in the formula bar and press Enter.

H1 Tag

Every page and post on your website needs an H1 tag. H1 tags tell search engines like Google and Bing that your content is relevant and related. In most cases, website themes are set up to, by default, assign an H1 tag to each page and post title. Check the settings on your theme or design to make sure this is the case with your site.

If your theme does not automatically assign an H1 tag to page and post titles, then you can either have a designer change your CSS code or make sure when you are publishing content on your site that you assign an H1 tag to a line of content which contains your keyword.

H2 Tags

Although not required for SEO best practices, H2 tags will help set your content apart from your competitors. Content with H2 tags will generally outrank competing posts with the same keywords.

The easiest way to think of H2, and H3 tags for that matter, is similar to organizing notes from a lecture. Think back to a time when you were in school and had to outline a lecture or a paper you planned to write. Each outline had a title, numbers followed by letters, and finally lower case letters.

In the case of SEO and H tags, H1 is your outline title, H2 tags are your main numbered subheadings. and H3 tags are the lettered points under the subheadings.

H tags help to tell search engines how your content is organized and help show that your content is relevant and related to your title and keywords.

Image Alt Tags

When you add a photo or other media source to your website’s media center, you have the option, among other things, to add an alt tag. Alt tags for images and media files tell search engines that the images and media in your blog posts are relevant and related to your content.

Image alt tags should be written in plain speak and complete sentences, and be easy to read. Adding images or media sources to your blog posts without alt tags will hurt your overall post and content SEO ranking.

Keyword

The keyword for blog posts is the word or long tail keyword that your content focuses on and that which you are trying to rank for in organic searches. Every blogger’s goal is to rank on page one for their niche keywords.

There are various SEO plug-ins that you can use on your site to indicate a keyword for search engine crawls. Yoast is by far the most popular and diverse SEO plug-in and serves the needs of most bloggers sufficiently.

When planning your editorial content calendar, be sure to research and plan your keywords when drafting blog posts.

Meta Description

Meta descriptions are the text that appears under a post title in search engine results. These descriptions also show up on social media when a blog post link is shared. It is critical for SEO ranking and traffic that your meta descriptions are well written and most of all include your keyword or keyword phrase.

Not only do meta descriptions need to be well written, there are best practice guidelines for the length of content descriptions. When writing your blog post meta descriptions, the total length must be between 70 and 160 total characters to meet current SEO best practices.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords are a feature of SEO that content writers and website designers used to use to backload content and pages for keywords. This practice was overused and abused to the point that a number of years ago Google removed meta keywords from their SEO ranking algorithm.

Unlike the other strategies in this list, meta keywords are something you do not want to add to your content. Not only is it not best practice to add meta keywords to your blog posts, it is recommended that you do an audit on all existing content and remove meta keywords from all posts and pages.

Deep Links

One of the advantages of strategically planning your content and editorial calendar is the ability to deep link between posts on your website.

Linking blog posts and pages together on your website tells search engines that the content on your site is relevant and related. Content that is interlinked on a site will outrank its poorly linked competitors in search engine results for the same keyword.

In summary, the 8 SEO strategies for blog posts are:

  1. Title Length
  2. H1 Tag
  3. H2 Tags
  4. Image alt tags
  5. Keyword or keyword longtail phrase
  6. Meta description
  7. Meta keywords
  8. Deep links

When planning and writing blog posts, if you keep these 8 SEO strategies for content writing in mind, you will be well on your way to outranking your keyword competition.

Pinterest Marketing Best Practices April 2018

Current Pinterest marketing best practices. A must read for marketers!

It is no secret, Tailwind has their finger on the pulse of everything related to Pinterest. The two brands are closely related and spend a great deal of time communicating with one another. As a social media marketer, I appreciate that Tailwind works so hard to bring us, their users, Pinterest marketing best practices so we can leverage both platforms to best of our abilities.

Today, Tailwind hosted a lengthy live broadcast with Pinterest and was able to get answers to our burning questions related to current marketing best practices on Pinterest. It was a long meeting, so I’ve distilled down the key points for your ease of consumption.

Don’t forget, Pinterest management is a service that we provide to bloggers and online business owners. If this is a project you want to outsource, contact us today for your free quote.

Pinterest Marketing Best Practices

  1. The time of day that you pin does not matter. BUT, priority is given in the following tab to the first 5 pins that you pin (live or scheduled) at midnight UTC.
  2. In the following tab you can see when your audience is engaging, this data can be used to target what time you pin your content.
  3. The following tab is an exclusive place to find content from those that you have chosen to follow.
  4. 3 ways to get your content seen:
    1. Smart feed
    2. Hashtags
    3. Following tab
  5. Pinterest prefers consistent pinning over a large volume of pins.
  6. Commenting feature is now universal on the original pin from the source. This increases engagement on the pin. This includes multiple images for the same URL. The comments are universal in 1 thread.
  7. For ranking, SEO is #1, photo tries/comments are 2nd priority.
  8. Do not add hashtags to older pins
  9. Hashtags, 2-3 per pin are to be added to new content only.
  10. Out of stock or broken link pins, edit them ASAP to link to a valid URL or source.
  11. Readers sharing your content directly from your website tells Pinterest that your site has engagement and is worthy of showing.
  12. Do not delete underperforming pins. You are not penalized in Pinterest from pins with low repins.
  13. Backlinks to your pins or boards do not matter in your Pinterest ranking.
  14. Keywords in your description should relate back to the blog post title and related themes.
  15. Save your pin to the most relevant/related board first. The first pin of a piece of content should relate to the board title and description. That information is held together with the original pin of a piece of content.
  16. File name of an image on your website does not matter for Pinterest SEO purposed.
  17. Hashtag searches are ordered by recency.
  18. Fresh content on Pinterest equals new posts and new images for old posts.
  19. The exact image that you add to Pinterest does not need to be on your original content source.
  20. Scheduled pins are not penalized in the feed. Your account is considered active so long as you are actively pinning, live or scheduled.
  21. Recommended to save pins regularly, have a business account, and claim your website.
  22. Follower count does not matter. Your pins are shown to far more people that your follower total.

Did you watch the broadcast? What other tips and best practices did you get out of the session?

Issuing 1099s for Affiliates

Issuing 1099s for affiliates has huge tax implications.

Paying Affiliates: Do I Need to Issue a 1099?

Having an affiliate program can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you gain the power of having hundreds or even thousands of commissioned sales people all promoting your product. But on the other, you have to deal with the tracking and bookkeeping. And come tax time, that means staying in the good graces of the Internal Revenue Service.

How the IRS Defines an Affiliate

Before we delve too far into the various forms of affiliate payments and what level of reporting you’re responsible for, let’s take a minute to talk about how the tax man sees affiliates. Since your affiliates aren’t employees, you’re not expected to withhold taxes from their payments. Much like a subcontractor (your VA, for example), you simply pay the agreed-upon amount, and he or she is responsible for his or her own tax reporting.

But there is a catch.

Not only does the IRS want to know from the affiliate how much he or she earned, but they also want to know from the vendor (that’s you) how much he or she paid to each affiliate. That’s where form 1099 comes into play – but only if your affiliate meets certain criteria.

When is a 1099 Required?

On the surface, it’s pretty easy to determine when to issue a 1099-MISC. If you pay a subcontractor (or affiliate) more than $600 in a single calendar year, a 1099-MISC is required. The only exceptions to that rule are if you and/or your affiliate do not live in the United States, or if your affiliate is a corporation. Sole proprietors, LLCs, and partnerships are all subject to the 1099-MISC rule, provided the $600 earnings threshold is met.

The PayPal Gray Zone

Beginning with the 2011 tax year, the IRS passed a law saying that any “payment card organization” must begin reporting earnings in excess of $20,000 on form 1099K, if those earnings were as a result of at least 200 individual transactions. A “payment card organization” is any company that handles electronic transactions, such as PayPal or your credit card processor.

What that means for a lot of affiliates is that they are potentially being reported twice – once by you, on a standard form 1099-MISC, and once by PayPal, on the new 1099K. You can see how this could cause some confusion, not only on the part of the vendor, but on the part of the IRS as well.

To 1099 or Not?

If your affiliate lives in the United States and earned more than $600 in commissions during the year, he or she needs a 1099 form. The only question is, should that form be issued by you or PayPal? Since you can’t possibly know if the affiliate meets the threshold for receiving a 1099K from PayPal, it seems reasonable that you should in fact issue a 1099-MISC. As with all things involving taxes, however, it’s probably best if you seek the advice of a qualified tax professional, rather than risk getting into hot water over missing or incorrectly filed forms.

10 Best Books for Online Marketers

10 Best Books for Online marketers

Best Books for Online Marketers

Are you searching for new marketing books to add to your kindle reading list or nightstand collection? One of the best decisions that I’ve made this year is to be intentional in reading, especially books on social media, email marketing, and business productivity. From my personal experience and feedback from fellow marketers, these are the 10 best books for online marketers.

This post may contain affiliate links.

General Marketing:

These books are great resources for general marketing knowledge. These marketing resources will help you stay up to date on online marketing trends and best practices.

The 1-Page Marketing Plan

Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is forever changing. New platforms, new channels, new algorithms, and best practices that change with the seasons. In addition to staying on top of everything social media in the Premier Social Media Society, these social media marketing books will put you well on your way to getting a strong handle on social media marketing in general.

500 Social Media Marketing Tips

The Art of Social Media

Email Marketing

Second only to social media marketing, our clients and community members regularly ask about email marketing best practices and resources to learn more about this growing marketing platform. Growing an engaged email list is one of the best ways to grow your business, earn an income for your influence, and leverage influencer marketing.

Email Marketing Rules

Email Marketing Demystified

Productivity & Work Flow

Hands down, one of the best books I’ve read this year are on the topic of productivity and workflow. If you have a steady flow of client work the challenge then becomes balancing it all, managing your time, and getting more accomplished in less amount of time. 12 Week Year is by far my #1 recommended resource for mapping out your business, goals, and weekly tactics.

12 Week Year by Brian Moran

Story Brand

Essentialism

The E-Myth Revisited

What books would you add to this list? If you’ve read other books on business management or marketing, I’d love to hear in the comments.