Online Newsletters Replacing Printed Newsletters

Many organizations have decided to stop printing and mailing newsletters to save money. In fact, in a recent survey a majority of business owners said they prefer to receive their monthly newsletter via email.

As the first step in replacing printed and mailed newsletter, many organizations are currently posting a standard PDF file on their web sites and sending emails linking to the PDF file.

Long term we think a better solution is a newsletter designed for the web. Here is a sample of what we are developing for the Dunedin Florida Chamber of Commerce. http://adsharp.com/blog/.

The Dunedin prototype is a blog or content management system. The end result is a "newsletter" that looks like a web page. It is designed to be read on computers. Trying to use printing technology and make it fit a computer screen is a mismatch and old technology.

Of course, most organizations are familiar with printing technology and they will have to learn new skills. From my point of view, the production skills are very similar but many people are resistant to change and to the cost and time of learning new skills.

Bottom line, I believe most organizations will move to real online "newsletters." The cost saving are substantial and most business people prefer to communicate via the Internet.

I wrote an earlier post about disappearing phone books. Here is a link to a story about the changing business model for yellow pages.

Are Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter good advertising for small business?

Are Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter good advertising for small business?

“Yes” and “no” depending on your particular business.

What type of business will Facebook and other social media work best?

Some Dunedin, Florida businesses including Gregory’s Salon, the Dunedin Fine Art Center, the Dunedin Brewery and the Dunedin Blue Jays, are using Facebook or MySpace as a way to promote special events, entertainers and games to current customers. Click here to see Gregory’s MySpace page. These Facebook pages make sense especially for young people looking for something to do “tonight” or this weekend. It’s free and the respective staffs do all the work. I recommend Facebook and MySpace to night clubs, bars and other places with live entertainment which changes often.

Why not use Facebook and Twitter?
By definition Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are social media. They do have some business applications but they are designed to exchange personal information (conversations, photos, ideas, games, etc.) among families and friends.

Are your customers or potential customers using the technology? Facebook and Twitter skew young, especially Twitter. If the bulk of your audience is still using other communication– TV, newspaper, direct mail, email, etc. - then why push Facebook or Twitter? Trying to push customers and potential customers into a new media behavior is expensive and unnecessary 90% of the time.

Social media is labor intense. You need to be making changes or updates every day or even several times a day.Do you have enough content to share via a free application or widget on Facebook or a Twitter feed? Social users expect companies that engage in this space to be active. If you just create something and infrequently update the content users are left unfulfilled.

Facebook and Twitter don't do a good job of targeting. Social media does not demo or geo-target so you would be talking literally to the whole world, not necessarily your market area.
Facebook pages are not open to the general public like your web site. The owners of Facebook pages have to physically agree for someone to become a “friend.” People become “friends” on Facebook because they are attracted to the content or people. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are groups of people who share a common interest and what to exchange information.

“Facebook is the last place I would use to look up a business service. Google, Yahoo or any other Internet browsers are a better ways to look for information, products and services,” is a typical opinion.

But the big companies use Twitter? I saw on TV during the British Open that Stewart Cink had more than 500,000 followers on Twitter.

The big national and international companies and personalities are using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter because their market is literally the whole world. They also have the staff and dollars to do a good job in this media. If you business comes from a few miles around your business, why spend time and money going after customers that will never travel to your location? Conversely, if your customers come from all over the United States or the world, than Facebook and Twitter might make sense.

How can I use my web site better and can I use social media with my web site?

You can add a blog (see Julie Scales blog as an example) to your current web sites and give free tips to your current customers and potential customers about ways to save money or improve something.

Distribute a nice looking and informative email to your existing customers and link the email to your blog. Use emails to get people to go to your blog. Send new emails (an eblast) once per quarter and update the blog weekly with new helpful information.

Add an email collection system to your web site offer free helpful information. Add these new emails to each eblast.

The key to blogs and emails is to provide really useful information, not a sales pitch. If the recipients feel the blog or emails are only a sales pitch, they will tune out and mark your emails as Spam or Junk.

Make sure your web site address is featured in all your other advertising. Most people find web sites through traditional advertising. Build your web site “brand name” and then use the web site as a way to provide new information at low cost.

Use your staff to collect email addresses for potential customers and send them special eblast with money saving tips and good advice.

Email information to your current customers and offer them incentives for new business they refer.
Continue advertising that you know works! If you can measure results of specific advertising (TV, newspaper, direct mail, etc.) continue and refine what works.

Make sure “the latest and great thing” makes sense for your business before you invest time and money.

Web Sites Are Not Important

Recently I heard a self proclaimed social media expert talk to a group of business people about the LinkedIn, Twitter, My Space, blogs, etc. According to this expert, “web site are just online brochures and not really all that important”. Of course, this expert was blowing his own horn and attempting to convince his listeners that his service was far more important that web sites.

I strongly disagree with this position about web sites but agree that social media can be helpful to business.

Just to make sure I am not missing the boat to the latest technology, I talked with a friend who manages a very large national digital media budget for one of the world’s biggest advertisers and I asked her about this comment. Here’s what she had to say.

“Wow, that's an exceptionally broad statement. One with which I completely disagree.

“A website can be anything from a brochure to a final sale. I find value in all of it. Even if it's designed as a simple brochure, it's a brochure at the exact right time. I find HUGE value in that. Any time someone wants to see images, locate your business, find your hours, or see nutritional info on your product - they can.

“On the more advanced end, today alone I've booked online a zoo membership and hands-on penguin experience for an anniversary gift, a haircut and color appointment, and a Father's Day gift. All of those are transactions those companies didn't have to resource people for at a call center nor did they have to miss the folks who choose to make those purchases during "non-business" hours.

In the middle, our clients’ websites are extremely in-depth with info b/c we know that 80%+ of our consumers do research on our sites before buy. If you're interested in a (brand name) you could easily spend an hour on the web sites. Again, the amount of info we can convey there saves our client millions of dollars on having to communicate with an actual human being either in-person or on the phone. Another example is recipe hubs for national food marketers which are proven to build brand loyalty and directly link to sales/CRM.”

It is hard for me to imagine any business today without a web site. Potential customers must be able to find your business on the Internet and you can not depend on third party web sites to have current and correct information about your business.

The End of Yellow Pages and Newspapers?

Web pages are replacing telephone books. Craigslist, EBay and other web sites have replace newspaper classified ads. Most consumers now use web sites to find information that they used to find in telephone books. Recently a new Verizon Yellow Pages book was delivered to my office. It is about half the physical size of the previous year and it is gathering dust on the shelf. It has never been used. The sales people for all the various yellow books appear to be selling web site listings rather than the printed book. It seems only a matter of time when the printed telephone books will completely disappear.

Recently I sold a 15 year old racing bike on Craigslist in three hours for my asking price. There was no cost for the ad. My son and his wife now have two successful retail stores in the Atlanta, Georgia area as a direct result of an online business.

On May 18, 2009, the Tampa Tribune quit home delivery in Pinellas County dropping about 11,000 Monday-Saturday subscribers. Newspapers all over the United States are making major cuts in staff and circulation in an effort to stay in business.

The Internet has changed the way people buy products and find information. Newspaper consumers tend to be older and young people have found new ways to find information. The future of printed newspapers looks gloomy at best and newspaper owners and managers have so far been unable to develop a business model that generates the income necessary to survive.

So what does this mean to businesses?
Every business including the smallest retailer must have a web site. Without a web site, consumers who use the Internet as their primary source for information will not find you. Retailers in particular must have basic information on the web – your location, hours and contact information.

Evaluate how you spend your money in telephone books and other printed material. A few consumers, especially older men and women, still use telephone books but you must be on the web too.

Where are you running your employment ads or selling your products? Look to the Internet for free or low costs web sites as additional ways to sell your products or hire employees.

If you are still doing things the same way you did two years ago, than you are missing costumers and probably wasting money on telephone books that few people use.