Email Marketing - Segmentation & Targeting

Email marketing, if used properly, is an extremely cost effective digital medium to contact your current and potential customers. However, if not used properly, unsolicited emails can quickly evoke the word "spam," which has become a very dirty word and instantly irritates email users with just the mere mention of it.

But don’t let this get you down. By applying email best practices to your campaigns you can assure your emails will not fall onto deaf ears (or blind eyes? ...you get the point).

 

Using Advanced Twitter Search

Twitter can be a great source of competitive intelligence for your company. But getting information out of the Twitter fire hose can be a challenging task.

This post is to help you get acquainted with the Twitter advanced search features to find the tweets you are actually looking for.

Twitter for Restaurants - Food for Thought

So you want to get your restaurant up and running with twitter?

We like your enthusiasm! But before you jump head first, here are some things to consider:

1. As Chris Brogan points out in his new book Trust Agents, make sure you spread other peoples messages about 12 times more than you do your own.

This is so you don't sound spammy and actually gain some traction with your followers and prospective customers. Twitter users are very quick to notice (in a bad way) someone who only toots their own horn.

It reminds them of something…. Oh right advertising!

People use Twitter and other social networks to communicate with real people and share thoughts, ideas, hopes, and dreams. Not to read your advertising messages.

Design like IKEA

If you are one of the few people who has not had the pleasure of visiting an IKEA store or they have yet to come to a city near you, go or book a plane ticket (just kidding)

The Alter Imaging team recently traversed to the Charlotte NC IKEA for some inspiration (and some new stuff) .

What we found was more than that.

Facebook: Jump on the Bandwagon

Using Facebook to promote your company or brand can be a powerful tool. However, not all social media sites are meant for EVERYONE.

Facebook isn’t one size fits all. Each company and/or brand should have a unique strategy that fits them.  Some companies can and will use Facebook to their advantage, while others will simply set up a page, pat themselves on the back all while the page becomes increasingly stagnant over time.

So before jumping into Facebook, here are some important things to consider.

Why Facebook?

Making Viral Retweet Links in Twitter

In this post we are going to describe (and show... video at bottom) how to create a viral link in your tweet that, when clicked on, is self replicating. The tinyurl link in your tweet will repopulate the clicker’s twitter status update box with the message of your choosing.



What’s in it for me?

Good question.  What this does is remove a step in the retweeting process for the end user, provided they are still using the basic web twitter interface... www.tweetdeck.com and www.hootsuite.com are much better twitter clients.

Step by Step Rundown

Okay first you are going to need a catchy message, this is a no brainer. For the purposes of this post and too be cheaky we have decided to use this message: “RT this because it is viral and will RT itself when you click this link: http://budurl.com/viralRetweet via @alterimaging.”

7 Essentials Tools for Social Media Monitoring

Never before in history have your customers had such an influential voice on your brand. With the power of the Internet at their sides, they have access to reach literally millions of people with an opinion of your company. This is a scary notion, but even scarier if you are not listening in and monitoring what they are talking about.

But don’t fret. The truth of the matter is that, while social media is a fairly new way of thinking about your communication strategy, it’s not that difficult to monitor what is being said about your company or brand.

So with any new technology comes a bunch of new and shiny tools to help you shift through this massive amount of data overload!

Alter Imaging wants to give you a nudge in the right direction. So here are some tools to help you monitor your brand…. and they are all free!

Do you know what is being said about your company? Let's find out...