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21 Jan 2010

email image This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

You’ve most likely had an e-mail newsletter for your company for much longer than you’ve had a presence on social media sites. But now that you do both, the two can go hand-in-hand, with e-mail creating an opportunity to extend your presence on social media sites, and social media sites providing a way to get more e-mail subscribers.

At the moment though, most marketers aren’t connecting the dots. According to a recent study published by eMarketer, 48% of marketers include “forward to a friend” features in their e-mails, but only 13% include features that make it easy to share content on social networks. Here’s a look at how to close the gap, and why it’s so important that you do.

Why Include Social Media in Your E-mail?

Just like a piece of Web content can “go viral” as people share it across social networks, your e-mail promotions can get a big boost by making it easy to share them.

A recent study by Marketing Sherpa concluded that simply including sharing buttons to an e-mail marketing campaign led to a “25% boost in reader interaction, and a surge in inbound traffic from social networking sites.” Moreover, huge gains were reported in traffic via social sites: 2,070% from LinkedIn, 1,680% from Twitter, and 1,351% from Facebook.

How to Do It

Share buttons have become common on Web content, but they’re also easy to integrate into e-mails. If your e-mail consists of multiple articles, make sure each points to a page on the Web, and that your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn share buttons are setup to share the URL of each respective article (note: you’ll want to stick to images and text links for your e-mail share buttons as opposed to JavaScript).

Beyond sharing articles though, make sure all of your e-mails include prominent links to your presence on various social sites. Calls to action in a sidebar or in the header like “Follow Us on Twitter” or “Become a Fan on Facebook” will help people connect with you on social sites and help build your audience on them.

Growth Strategies

email growth image Once you’ve integrated social media into your e-mails, be sure you’re cross promoting. There’s no harm in reminding your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, or LinkedIn contacts that you have an e-mail newsletter. And once they signup, they’re the ones most likely to share content with their own networks on social sites.

Beyond that, create compelling content that people want to share. While a good promotion might not be as viral as a funny YouTube clip, your business’ fans will be more likely to spread the word if there’s a specific call to action. Moreover, create content that’s not necessarily a direct sell, but provides value to potential customers in the form of information that’s useful to them. Between good content and easy social media sharing options, your e-mail marketing can become a powerful weapon in growing your business.

More business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– 18 Online Productivity Tools for Your Business
– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– HOW TO: Use a Start Page to Stay Organized
– The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
– HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
– HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, bluestocking, Pablo631, Qoqazian

Reviews: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto

Tags: business, e-mail, email, email newsletters, how to, List, Lists, MARKETING, small business, social media

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Tags: business, content, e mail marketing, fan, HOW, mail promotions, mail subscribers, marketing sherpa, Media, Pablo, Social, social networking sites

Open Thread: There’s No Such Thing As Free Content

In: web resources

21 Jan 2010

So why do users keep expecting to consume it, reuse it, share it and store it without paying for it?

Let me explain: Someone, somewhere ends up putting out money for everything you do online, every piece of news you read, every web app you use. It takes professionals and hardware across a gigantic industry to make these things work. In terms of overhead alone, content costs a lot. So why do some users always kick and scream at the first suggestion of paid content? Do you think content is worth paying for, and if so, what are you personally willing to pay?

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[Image courtesy of Flickr user SFDenverLV.]

This trend has been a common one in our virtual newsroom lately. Whether we’re praising the latest startup that’s had the sense to launch with a freemium model or wondering how old-media models (see News Corp. and the New York Times) are dealing with new media revenue possibilities, the subject of who pays for content and how is a hot one.

As a journalist who came of age career-wise during the print era and as a musician who first recorded songs on these things called “tapes,” I understand the cultural value of great content, and I admire the men and women who make it. I also love being able to support the creators and publications that bring me the content I love.

On the other hand, as a typical NMD and one who lives almost entirely online, I have done my share of content scalping, whether that be lifting a copyrighted photo for a design project, illegally downloading a single or two from a multiplatinum artist or diving deep into the world of torrents, where all the films are gloriously free and inconveniently subtitled in Hungarian.

Like any petty thief, I tried to justify my actions to myself by saying that I’m only taking from those who can afford it. But let us speak frankly: The creative and publishing industries are all at a crisis point because of hundreds of millions of people like me who say the exact same thing. I’ve lately started to come to grips with my hypocrisy and start paying for content, whether that be a legitimate iTunes purchase or a Netflix subscription. I tell you, it feels like I’m giving money to a feed-the-children charity when I’m really just paying for something that should have never been free in the first place.

Today, YouTube has announced its plan to help indie filmmakers (and increase its own revenues) by asking users for a $5 fee to watch a selection of Sundance Film Festival movies. I’m wondering how many users will balk at the fee, and what will go through their heads when they do so.

Will they be thinking about the months or years each filmmaker spent creating the movie? Or the time the actors spent preparing for and performing their roles? Will they think about filming equipment rentals? Will they consider the cost of hosting online videos at a scale that accomodates huge volumes of traffic around the globe and around the clock? Will they think about the developers who work tirelessly to make the magic of online video possible?

Or will they simply knee-jerk and proclaim a loud “How dare they!” at the thought of paid content?

(As a side note, I’m also curious to see a Venn diagram showing the overlap of people who object to paying for online content while vigorously complaining about “distracting” online advertising.)

So, what makes the difference between the analog days, when creators charged for their creations and theft was theft, and these digital times, when anything that’s been transformed into ones and zeroes is fair game for free consumption, piracy, remixing and redistribution?

I’m curious: What kinds of online content, if any, are you willing to pay for? And how much will you pay for them?

Would you pay for news? Special, in-depth reports? Entertainment and multimedia? How about a blog subscription? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss

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Tags: content, crisis point, money, news, online, petty thief, publishing industries, revenue possibilities, share, virtual newsroom

Boxee Plans a Payment Platform for Premium Internet TV

In: web resources

21 Jan 2010

As we saw at CES 2010, IPTV is going to become real in a very big way this year. Boxee has been one of the big players in this space for quite some time and today the company is announcing a move that will offer users and content partners more options and flexibility: Boxee Payments.

Boxee plans on releasing a Payment Platform this summer so that users can make purchases with one click of the remote. This will allow content partners to offer shows, movies and channels that were previously unavailable on Boxee. Partners can price and package content however they want, whether it’s pay-per-view or subscription.

The details are still being worked out, but Boxee will charge a small fee for the transactions (the plan is to charge less than the 30% that many other app stores and content ecosystems charge). By doing this, Boxee is, in their words, “[tying] our success as a business to the success of our partners.”

Having micro-payments built into Boxee has huge implications for the platform as a whole. Right now, the only downside of a system like Boxee is that although more and more partners are signing up to offer content through the service or offer an enhanced experience, when it comes to getting movies or TV shows that are accessible through platforms like iTunes or VUDU or CinemaNow, users are out of luck. This gives Boxee as a platform the opportunity to offer those enhanced options.

I’ve long wanted to see one of my favorite streaming content services The Auteurs on Boxee, because it’s really just a beautiful fit. The Auteurs streams premium film content from partners like The Criterion Collection to users at an affordable price. With a Payment Platform, stuff like The Auteurs could be accessible on your Boxee Box or HTPC, as well as on your laptop or desktop computer.

Make no mistake, subscription content plans that are aimed at IPTVs are coming. Apple might not have hit Apple TV out of the park, but the idea of being able to buy or rent content on your TV that you can also watch on your Mac or PC (or even iPhone or iPod) is compelling. Boxee is legitimizing itself in a sense by making it clear that it wants to play in this space.

The convergence of media options is upon us, and it will be fascinating to see how content providers, content platforms and consumers respond and react to these changes.

Reviews: Boxee

Tags: boxee, iptv, micropyaments