A Social Network Face Person

There's an important side benefit to all this email marketing sharing. Search engines like Google and Yahoo will notice if there's big buzz on the link that points to your newsletter's home on the web. As more traffic gets to it and more people link to it, it gains a momentum all of its own and rises higher in search rank. It takes a lot to get on the front page of Google, but you never know: A well-distributed, super-specific newsletter just might show up when someone searches for a term or combination of terms. Will your home loan newsletter rank top three when someone searches "home loans"? Nope. But you might have a chance if someone searches for "home loans" & "Spokane" if your newsletter catches fire in the sharing circles (and you live in Spokane!) Some companies have found the Web 2.0 world to be so lucrative that they've hired a "Social Network Face Person." Sometimes this is a fulltime position or sometimes a person in charge of branding, advertising or marketing does this. Very often, the small business owner does this alone as a part of their every day routine.

The job description is this: Someone should be ever vigilant to the online reputation and promotion of your product. This means they run the Twitter account and they update the Facebook page. But just as important, they visit sites and forums where their product, service or industry is discussed and they interject themselves in the online conversation.

Honestly, honesty is key. If you build guitars and your face person masquerades in guitarist website forums as Joe Blow guitar enthusiast, constantly deriding the competition while extolling the virtues of your product, he'll soon be snuffed out and exposed. The whole of any community is almost always smarter than any individual. You'll do your company more damage than benefit if you're caught tampering with the unbiased conversation in these places. Better that your face person clearly identifies his or her company affiliation while offering truthful tips while countering possibly bad information that is deemed harmful AND untrue. So that's it. We hope that this free email marketing manual makes you better, safer and more effective in your email marketing. No doubt the industry will evolve because it has been since we've started in this business. The great news is that it's getting better and easier for you.

And though it may sound cliché, this certainly rings true: All this technology is greatest when used responsibly. Because it's so easy to send out millions of emails, make sure you do it right so that we all can continue the privilege of email marketing to those customers who enjoy this highly-interactive, super-effective means of business communication.