While Facebook generates about $2 billion in ad revenue each year, the company is valued at more than $100 billion.

So where does all this additional value come from? Facebook’s influence, its network, and its information.

When Mark Zuckerberg met with President Obama, it showed that Facebook’s influence went beyond social networking. As the leader of your business, you can have similar influence; you won’t be meeting with the President of the United States, but you can be meeting with other industry leaders.

As Facebook continues to expand its network, it’s connecting people easily and efficiently. These people can, in turn, connect with others and continue to expand their own networks. A big part of your company should be your network – your customers, your suppliers, and others in the industry. There can be a tremendous amount of value in your network, so don’t ignore it.

Facebook has mountains of information – from users’ phone numbers to their favorite movie. Facebook uses this information to tailor a user’s experience. You can do the same with your customers (although you may not have any fancy algorithms to automate it) by connecting with them, using e-mail marketing, and doing what you can to satisfy each individual.

So don’t limit your business you just selling more and generating more profits. While that is an extremely important part of your business, you can increase the value of your company in other ways – by expanding its influence, increasing its network, and using the information at hand.

Direct marketing has many advantages for businesses over indirect platforms such as print and broadcast marketing.

It is generally far more cost-effective for companies to market their product face-to-face with customers rather than through mediums such as radio and television.

Direct marketing is also a great way to get feedback from consumers to reveal what consumers like and dislike about a certain product.

Customers are also far more likely to buy a product as a direct result of face-to-face marketing because they can discuss the ins and outs of a purchase, have any queries answered or even get to sample it themselves before getting the opportunity to buy there and then.

This article takes a look at the various forms of direct marketing to give an idea of which would be best suited to certain products.

Events

Many companies choose to send sales representatives to events or public arenas such as shopping centers in order to directly promote their product.

This is a great tool for brand awareness as thousands of people are likely to pass by an exhibition stand at a popular event or in a busy shopping center. Many companies even choose to hire professional exhibition stand designers in order to make their display stand out as much as possible.

It is also a good tool for customer acquisition as those who pass by are normally in the mindset of spending money.

Residential

Rogue traders may have given residential sales a poor reputation but the success rate of reputable residential sales companies are nothing to be sniffed at.

Many consumers enjoy being taken through the benefits of an item within the comfort of their own home as the process of buying a product is often effortless on their part.

Business-To-Business

Those purchasing a product for their business are often faced with having to lay down thousands of pounds to introduce it across their whole network.

For this reason, many business owners find it essential for the product to be presented to them directly by sales representatives before they make the decision to invest.

Indirect advertising certainly has its advantages as well but more businesses are wising up to the benefits of marketing their product directly.

Targeting is the most fundamental requirement in email marketing. Crack that and everything else falls into place.

The first thing you will need to know is how to define the subscribers to your email list. There is no official list of parameters. Each person has their own favourites depending on their own business and what data they collect. So do not get hung up on each individual title as the edges are fuzzy and overlap. Here are the basic ones:

Demographics

Age, gender and location are generally much more important in B2C although they should not be ignored in B2B. It is obvious that an email intended to appeal to someone in their twenties might well repel another two or three times their age, even if they spent the reception of their daughter’s wedding dancing with the youngsters.

Lifestyle

Whether all you need to clarify is the difference between those who opt for burgers and those who are tofu fanatics is entirely up to you. Depending on your business you might require tens of parameters. What is definite is that the greater the definition the more accurate your targeting.

History

What a person has bought in the past will show their area of interest and also, it should be remembered, what areas you could expand into. Even if you are just starting, the way your subscribers opted in to your email list will tell you something about what they are after.

Value

It is easy enough to work out what the person has paid to you in any set period. However, this is all in the past. What you need to do is work out their potential and what they are likely to spend in the future.

Responsiveness

A variable, but one that will be generally predictable once statistics start to come in. Subscribers’ purchasing habits will vary over time. Be aware that those new on your lists will tend to be enthusiastic and more susceptible, so go for them.

Products

Do not get bogged down into classifying individual products, but just use general categories. It is easy enough to predict that someone who buys a football might well opt for a kitbag but looking at the bigger picture, a wine fancier who buys a crate or two might well appreciate a holiday in the Côte de Nuits.

Accept that different headings can be used, and perhaps should be used, without changing the basic premise. The more you know about your subscribers the more accurately you can aim your products and also predict the likely returns. You will then be able to confidently decide on the other aspects of email campaign planning.

When calling an inbound call center, the agent that you speak to should of course be polite and friendly; but they should also be easy to understand.

If talking is your full-time job, it is important to maintain good telephone etiquette as well as good diction and articulation.

Both parties involved in a telephone exchange need to understand one another completely, and this can be helped by learning the basics speaking clearly and coherently.

According to Dictionary.com, diction is the style of speaking or writing as dependent upon a speaker’s choice of words. It also covers accent, inflection, intonation, and speech-sound quality.

Whereas articulation is uttered clearly in distinct syllables, using language easily and fluently with ideas expressed, formulated, or presented with clarity and effectiveness.

Each principle relies on timing but for different reasons.

When pronouncing a word for example, the English Language relies on the stress of each word to infer its importance.

So when speaking to someone on the telephone, you will often find that the most imperative words that support your meaning are stressed; tending to be louder than the rest of your sentence. All others are non-stressed.

This can be helpful when either party wants to get across their point or be honest with one another, such as: ‘I really need to get this done by Sunday, and, don’t worry sir, I will get that done for you as soon as possible.

Equally, stress can also infer sarcasm, happiness, or anger. A call center agent should always answer the phone like it sounds as if they are smiling. It is certainly something people pick up on from the moment they answer the telephone.

An agent should also make good use of intonation, which is the rising and questioning-type sound (governed by pitch) that you recognize when you are being asked a question. It should be clear in someone’s voice when they are asking a question.

In all these cases is its extremely unlikely that someone will remain flat, or monotone, on the telephone, as this can seriously interrupt the effectiveness of communication.

In contrast, an articulate speaker is someone who times and chooses their words well, which is crucial during a telephone exchange.

A call center agent should choose their words well and be truthful in their use of them. A common framework for a telephone conversation could be described as formulaic.

Firstly, the phone will be answered, Good morning; followed by an introduction and offer, ‘Chris speaking, how may I help you?’

Then a request will come, Can I speak to Sarah please? and a truthful and explanatory answer, I’m sorry, she’s in a meeting at the moment.

The call center agent should then offer a resolution immediately, ‘Would you like to leave her a message?’ and wait for the appropriate reply, ‘That’s fine thank you, I will call back later’.

After wrapping up with a polite exit, the exchange is complete. But without finding the right words and correctly getting across your meaning by stressing the words; effective telephone communication is simple not possible.

Experts from within the industry have predicted that email marketing is set to grow to become the most heavily-used marketing platform and it is suggested that the recent growth in social media will allow marketers to do even more with their email campaigns.

There are a number of flaws which need to be avoided but if done properly, email marketing could work wonders in promoting your business.

Below are a few reasons why small and large business owners alike should embrace email marketing.

Ease and Speed

Email marketing is arguably one of the easiest platforms in which to conduct a professional campaign. There are loads of professional email marketing companies which can help marketers plan a campaign and even provide a range of attractive email marketing templates.

As well as being relatively easy to launch, it is one of the speediest marketing methods. Emails are sent to potential customers within seconds without anyone having to leave the office.

Cost-effectiveness

Another reason that email marketing is so attractive for new businesses is its cost-effectiveness in comparison to other methods of marketing.

Many companies choose to invest their savings on hiring a professional email marketing company to make the most of their advertising campaign.

Customer Retention

Email marketing is primarily aimed at consumers who have already expressed an interest in a brand. Keeping previous customers in the loop of new developments within the company is a fantastic way to build relationships with consumers and customer loyalty to a brand.

Building this loyalty can encourage consumers to spread the word about a brand and attract new customers.

There are plenty of reasons for new businesses to embrace email marketing and it is no wonder that the market for email marketing companies is getting more competitive than ever.

One such method is email newsletter marketing.

As boring as it may sound at first, and as reluctant as you may be to add to the digital landfill by potentially becoming a junk mailer, an attractive newsletter circular is sure to give visitors pause for thought. However, choosing the right design should be done with great care. Readers should be attracted at a glance and able to digest what you desire to convey within moments, without forcing them to puzzle over your call to action. Inbox flooding due to the high volumes of online traffic has become commonplace. With the normal person unable and unwilling to absorb every bit of information that the mass media is shovelling at them 24/7, cognitive cherry-picking has become necessary to filter all the babble.

The reality is that you literally have but a few seconds to flirt with your customers before they decide to take things to second base. Nobody wants their message to go in the one ear and out the other. This is where effective html newsletter design comes in. But before you start thinking that this means you need to botox your newsletter, have it go on a low fat diet and invest in silicone enhancements, explore how a few basic styling aspects can perk-up your appeal.

Again, design is not everyone’s forte, which is why pre-designed newsletter templates are often the best bet. There are many varieties of these to choose from; though before you commit to one, buy a house and grow old together, make sure it really is a keeper:

• The newsletter design should be industry-specific. This is all too obvious, but often the first major oversight. Show your customers what they are interested in seeing, not what interests you in seeing. So, for example, if you are advertising sports cars your newsletter should fit that paradigm by looking equally slim, extravagant and fast – and not like you are trying to punt a bake-sale.

• Get tested. Whereas many people are contented to just snatch the prettiest one and then rush along without concern for picking up something bad later in the campaign, you should make doubly sure that the HTML Newsletter you choose is tested to render/display across all the big email clients. Accounts such as MSN, Yahoo!, Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird and so on, are good places to start.

• Everyone likes to play, and your newsletter template should allow you the freedom to do the same. The ability to personalize content goes without saying, but it is the extent to which you can use the template to produce that prized design will rapidly reveal whether a particular one is going to be worth the trouble. See what you are practically allowed to do and what the limitations are. Most designs are generically flexible, but opt for the newsletter template that is pliable enough to rock your socks off.

With so many brands competing for customer attention, basic emails will no longer suffice in order to create the desired response levels.

It is for this reason that email marketing software has become so popular with email marketers. Some experts may even argue that it is now essential to purchase some form of software to assist with an email marketing campaign.

There are a dozens of computer programs available to help improve the content sent out to customers. So what should marketers look for from their email marketing software?

Email tracking software

Most companies will invest in some sort of tracking software in order to monitor the response rate of their emails. It would be impossible to measure the success of any marketing campaign without a set of figures based on response. Most email marketing software will allow users to track anything from open rates and click through rates to response and conversion rates for all email marketing campaigns.

Creating customized emails

The goal for any form of marketing is capture the attention of a potential customer within a few seconds. A decent email marketing software package should offer a wide range of customization options for your marketing campaign. Examples of these options could include refer a friend links, template and image altering or links to social media.

Event-triggered emails

An event-triggered email is any email sent due to the occurrence of a predetermined event. These can include simple events such as new blogs being posted on a website or complex occasions such as a birthday of a customer’s relative. Most email marketing software should allow the customization of occasions when event triggered emails can be sent.

With the vast amount of email marketing software currently available on the market, website owners should shop around for the most quality product before investing in what has become an essential email marketing tool.

The updates, named either Google Panda or Google Farmer (depending on preference), caused a lot of controversy amongst website owners after some saw their traffic hit up by up to 99 per cent.

The aim of the updates was to decrease the searchability of content farm websites which produce lots of duplicate material therefore giving prominence to quality websites which provide original insightful material.

This article aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Google Panda and questions what is next for the search engine.

What websites have been affected

The latest post-Panda traffic figures suggest that the main beneficiaries are large news companies or national newspaper websites. Popular farm websites such as eHow, ezinearticles were amongst those hardest hit by the updates.

However, internet message boards have been filled with complaints from website owners who claim they have been unfairly punished by the new updates.

How to avoid being punished by Panda

Spokespeople from Google are keen to encourage websites to avoid being punished by the Panda update. The main communications coming from the search engine advises website owners to produce constant quality content as this is what Panda is trying to promote.

Other tips to improve SEO include moving any bulk content offsite and addressing any pages that have low visitor performance.

Panda evaluation

The Panda update may have upset a fair few business owners and at present there seems to be little evidence that smaller, quality websites are directly benefiting from the updates.

However, there is no question that Google’s intentions are definitely in the right place as the majority of web users would much rather be guided towards quality original material rather than websites producing copies of old material.

It could be suggested that there is still some work to do make Panda perfect, but the updates have certainly made the web a better place.

In a poorly handled media mishap, last December Yahoo! announced it would be shutting down Delicious, only to later clarify (or change their mind?) that they would actually be looking to sell the site. If the site is anything like their parent company, who wouldn’t want to buy it?

So now, instead of a site run by a company on the brink of failure and whose function has remained mostly unchanged, Delicious will be run by a growing site that is continually expanding its influence.

All users will be able to keep their current usernames, passwords, information, bookmarks, etc. It will just be transferred over to the new company. And while it may be several months before there’s any noticeable difference or changes with the site, there has already been one huge improvement.

You no longer have to sign in with your Yahoo! account. Or, for those of you who abandoned Yahoo! around the same time you abandoned Brittney Spears, you won’t have to sign up for a Yahoo! account just to get a Delicious account. Current users will have to sign in one final time with their Yahoo! ID, but moving forward will be able to login with just their username and password.

What the strategy for all of this is, I don’t know; I don’t understand if there’s some sort of advantage to handcuffing one account to another, but it’s certainly inconvenient.

So, moving forward, we’ll just have to wait and see what Delicious brings us. I doubt the changes will be drastic, and it will still be a good site for personal and public use; but hopefully it will once again on the up and up.

When I’m submitting content to be featured on a website or a link to be included in a directory, the individuals in charge of that website have no responsibility to automatically include your link or your article. To the contrary, most of them have specific guidelines as to what they will or won’t accept. While there are some things no site will accept (things illegal or offensive in nature), there are others that are less strict.

For instance, social networking sites will allow you to post pretty much anything. Sites like Delicious, Reddit, Digg, etc. will let you submit content that will instantly be available. If enough people mark is as spam or report you for offensive content it will likely get taken down quickly, but the sites allow you to make that initial submission without any editorial decision.

Because of this, these sites are often less valuable when it comes to link building and SEO. However, those sites that must approve links or those sites which go through a strenuous editorial process – especially if they’re bigger or more popular sites – are going to provide you with more valuable links.

This, one can suppose, is a big reason why Google’s recent Panda update negatively affected so many of the article directories online. Too many of them would publish pretty much anything without having any editorial standard.

As mentioned, this sort of editorial discretion applies for both link building and guest blogging. So while there is a great amount of benefit in going after easy links and guaranteed traffic, there’s always a greater benefit from putting in the extra effort to earn a higher-profile link.

So when developing your link building and SEO strategy, take into consideration that you may need to work a little harder for those more valuable links.