How to Start Your Email Marketing List from 0 with Free Tools

This is a tip for all my artist and entrepreneur friends. If you plan to do anything in your future and invite people to donate/attend/whatever...the highest converting method is an email. Not Twitter, not Facebook, not an ice bucket. Sending personalized email to people who know and like you will help you accomplish your goals. The only messaging medium that I’ve seen perform better than email is personal text messages (so collect cell phone numbers if you can). Do this pre-work now and reap the rewards for years.

1.) Start Your List

You can track as many pieces of data for each contact as you like but keeping it simple usually helps. Start a new spreadsheet (I do mine in Google Drive) and label the columns: email, first name, last name, zip code, state, cell phone. Do you best to fill in whatever info you have. You don’t need to collect zip code/state if you don’t do any in-person events. I also never use the last name field in emails but it helps me know who is on my list.

2.) Fill Up Your List

You’re going to take some quality time to really comb through your emails and contact apps to start your list. Here’s places I’ve pulled email contacts from in the past that you might try…

• Looking through every email I’ve sent (sent folder)

  • I look through my sent mail instead of my received mail for new contacts. I figure if I haven’t emailed you back then you’re probably not a real connection.

• People who have purchased or attended something I’ve done

  • Search your computer for anything you’ve done in the past where folks may have registered with an email.

  • Check your Google Drive for any spreadsheet with the word “email” on it.

  • If you’ve sent calendar invites to folks, you can find their emails on your calendar from past events.

• LinkedIn

  • You can export your first-degree LinkedIn connections and get some emails. Use these instructions from LinkedIn.

• Contacts App / WhatsApp / Signal

  • Add folks from your phone to your list. Message people and ask them for their email if you don’t have it.

3.) What can you teach your audience without selling to them?

You can either build your mailing list or sell to your mailing list. Basically folks love building support for something until you ask them for money. So if you have no plans to sell anything anytime soon, this is the perfect time to start building your list.

Sometimes a lot of resistance comes up when I tell people to teach to their list for free. Play with what is an even energy exchange with your audience. People are bombarded with advertisements everyday in every way. Many of us have started to ignore anything that looks like an ad before even opening it.

I don’t expect anyone to invest in reading my newsletter if I don’t invest in them first. I teach something to my audience in every newsletter. When I have something to sell them, they already look to me as the expert.

Here’s some random ideas on content you could be sharing to invest in your audience before you ask them to invest in you…

• How to Get Started With [my special skill]

• What I Learned [doing something your audience is intrigued by]

• How to [do something that your audience wants to learn]

• New Recipes

4.) How to Deal with Changing Emails

People’s emails change. I’ve found that my friends keep their corporate emails for about a year and they keep their personal emails for about 5 years. This means that up to 50% of your list may be changing emails every 2.5 years.

Any decent email newsletter app will track which emails are no longer working and let you know. If I know the person with the bad email, I’ll try to reach out to them for a fresh email. If I don’t know them, I just remove them from my list.

You can’t stress about people changing email accounts or no longer checking an old account. You CAN invite new folks to join your list. And you CAN put out such useful content that you subscribers take you will them to their next email.

5.) Invite People to Join Your List Everywhere You Appear

Wherever your name appears, invite people to join your private list. If you’re speaking at an event where you don’t get the email list of attendees, end your presentation with an invitation to email you for something (copy of the slides, lecture notes, check-list.)

If you are offering content on social media, ask folks to send you their email address and cell phone number for the download.

Add an invitation to join your mailing list to your website and all social media accounts.

If you do any in-person events, make an event sign-in sheet that collects emails of anyone who didn’t register in advance.

Where To Start Optimization Testing On Your Website

If you're just getting started with web optimization testing or have limited testing resources (hey that's like everybody), which pages you test is the most critical decision you have to make. At today's WhichTestWon's Conference I learned from Justin Rondeau that our optimization instincts are probably wrong on where to start testing.

Page Requirements for Optimization Testing

Before you can test a page, it must meet these two requirements:

• Does the page get enough traffic to reach statistical significance in a reasonable time frame (1-5 weeks)?

• Does the Page Directly Impact Conversation? If Yes, what is the current conversion rate? If No, what is the long term value of the conversion that this page lifts?

Start Lower in Your Funnel

For an eCommerce site, start as late in your conversion funnel as possible. Here's a typical eCommerce funnel:

• Entry Pages: These are politically charged since many people may be involved in creating these campaigns, skip optimizing these first.

• Category Pages

• Search Results

• Product Pages

• Cart & Checkout: START HERE. Few people will challenge you to improve the cart because carts are just carts. You can create a lot of lift here.

• Receipt/Thank You: Rarely tested! Try an up-sell or cross-sell here instead of during checkout.

Next, Where Is Your Landing Money?

Don't start with high bounce rate pages. We know–they're sinking ships that you'd like to save. Not worth your time. Try landing pages for your highest conversion traffic. Or landing pages for your most expensive (PPC) traffic.

Next, Test Your Conversion Path

Now that you've improved the beginning and end of the funnel, now you can test the middle. This means testing your category pages, search result pages, product pages, and so on. Find everything that is stopping people from buying in your funnel and test how to fix it.

Next, PPC Traffic

If you're paying for customers to click on your links, you need to nail the landing page. At a minimum, your page needs to feature what your ad claimed. You'll be surprised at how many people screw this up.

Next, Referral Traffic

Know who is sending you traffic and where they are sending them. Make sure you're meeting the standards that people expect.

Am I Done Yet?

Of course not! Follow WhichTestWon for more testing ideas or get you butt to Austin for the Live Event. 

What I Learned Turning Off and Tuning In

Picture of me in a hedgehog onesie on a giant teddy bear from New Years 2016, photo by Jane West.

2016 brought a lot of learning and a lot of joy.

My biggest lesson of 2016 was figuring out how to serve myself first in order to serve everyone else sustainably. People had always warned me about "burning out" but I had never hit my limit. Creating the 2nd Annual Women Grow Leadership Summit in Denver for over 1,200 women was my greatest accomplishment. It was also what broke me.

Although I could have blamed external challenges for breaking me. I realized that all my external challenges were reflections of my own inner struggles. So I went about investing everything I had into working on myself. Yoga, meditation, books, dance, music, purpose-driven leadership, cannabis, psychedelics and the School of Womanly Arts were my practices. We found a new CEO to take over my role at Women Grow on July 1st and I focused on myself full-time.

Leaving the CEO role at Women Grow was the hardest transition I've ever made. The unexpectedly tough part of aligning your personal and professional purpose is allowing them to separate when needed. It took me almost three months just to stop thinking of myself and my role as one.

I ran away to play in Spain, speak in Berlin, camp at Burning Man, and work Symbiosis. I traveled 26 weeks of 2016. I learned a lot.

I learned how to love myself unconditionally. I learned how to stop using food to solve problems that food doesn't solve (and lost 30 pounds). I learned how to stop caring about what people who don't care about me think. I learned how to put myself first every day. I learned how to process dark emotions and self-hatred. I learned to stop over-thinking the past at the expense of being present. I learned I didn't have to be afraid of my full emotional range.

I took six months off for myself. The changes I've made to my mental, physical, and emotional health have just begun to benefit me. I'll be back at the 3rd Annual Women Grow Leadership Summit in a few weeks. I invite you to join me at the summit, Feb 1-3. It’ll be an experience like you’ve never had. Click here for more info.

Scroll down to see how I learned how to be in a museum, how to Burn in Spain, new psychedelic treatments, the final Summit at Sea, winning licenses, and at the very bottom, everything else I'm up to this year.

I Learn By Teaching

I perfected the blend of education, inspiration, and community that encourages women to take huge risks. Over 1,200 women gathered in the Ellie Caulkin's Opera House in Denver to hear 32 speakers, including Melissa Etheridge.

I Learn What Burn-Out Really Is

I was wiped after this event. I couldn't think. We tried to do long-term planning but we had exhausted ourselves and the entire team. It was impossible to follow up on this momentum. I'm so grateful to the so many of you who gave me space during this sensitive period to grow and recover. I was no longer taking care of myself and I had failed to care for my team.

I Learn How to Release

I Learn How to Be in a Museum

Being featured in the Oakland Museum's exhibit on Cannabis in California was a first. You sometimes feel like you're both predicting and making history on days like this. I'm grateful we got over a dozen women featured in this exhibit.

I wrote

You have everything you need to start. Every time you are waiting for another teacher, you are wasting time. Learn in practice, not study.

I Learn to Relax in Europe

Grateful to Bar-Keep for showing me the most diverse Burning Man event in the west. 2,000 Europeans gathered on a small plane in the Spanish desert for a week in scorching July to build a humble city and party down.

Grateful for the invitation to speak at Tech Open Air in Berlin. I got to debut my talk on "Clarifying Your Calling with Cannabis" to a packed house.

Grateful to edge pushers like Cindy Gallop on "Why the Next Big Thing in Tech is Disrupting Sex" if you want to know what's up after cannabis.

I Learn About Relationship...

Excerpt from More Than Two

Grateful for the many books I read on relationship this year...including American Savage, Goddesses Never Age, The Law of Attraction, The Art of Everyday Ecstasy, and More Than Two.

Learning at the Burn

Getting the bus tuned up before we leave for the Burn.

Playa-bound!

For my fourth Burning Man, I attended for 10 days and lead a camp of 35. Friends from across the world came. I learned to run my first electrical grid (with lots of trial and error). I found a pair of exceptional Tantra Energy Teachers and became enraptured with their workshops.

I Learn About Fear & Love

John Lennon and I share a birthday in October and this thought

"There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."~ John Lennon

I Learn About Psychedelic Treatments at Horizons

The Horizons conference presented research on MDMA & psychedelics from celebrated universities...NYU, Columbia, John Hopkins.

Multiple studies showed patients experiencing up to 8 months of relief from symptoms with just one "magic mushroom" therapy experience. These "peak spiritual experiences" were leading to increased positive attitudes, altruism, and deeper development of social relationships.I was seeing that we had extended our physical bodies past our ability to fill our lives with meaning. Alzheimer's disease was preventable if we stayed mentally active and engaged. These patients showed how spirituality was actually a component of health, particularly at end of life.

I Learn Prototyping in November

I took Prototyping for Creative Innovation with Megan Goering, formerly of Google. We ran through prototyping techniques and tests until we could do them by habit.I wrote out dozens and dozens of business ideas and then weighted them on factors like start-up costs and market size. I began testing messaging of all the different things. The cannabis helps with ideation but didn't make narrowing down any easier.

I Learn About Sex & Sugar at Sea

On the eve of the election, I boarded a cruise ship for 3,000 "innovators" and we sailed out to the Caribbean. Marijuana was legalized in six states but we were all shocked by the Presidential election. We gathered to build new ways to a future we all want to live in. We workshop. We dance. We drink. We eat. We snuggle.

I attend panels like "Sugar is the New Tobacco" and learn from Dr. Dean Ornish that 86% of 3 trillion dollars spent in healthcare are spent on chronic care for mostly reversible conditions. We've created a food system, which externalizes all the costs of eating cheap food that causes illness.

Dr. Ornish reveals that "bad habits" are developed to deal with the isolation of modern life. He uses lifestyle as treatment by asking people to eat well, stress less, move more, and love more. He's found that fear is not a sustainable motivators for people to change bad habits. You have to fill the voids those habits leave with even more joyful and pleasurable motivators.

I Learn Good Work Pays Off in December

Grateful to the Women Grow community in the Bay Area celebrating two years.

Grateful for the dispensary license process in Maryland where two teams I had advised won licenses.

Get Free Press For Your Startup With Original Data

Getting traditional PR coverage is hard! As new startups flood journalists with lame press releases, how do you stand out from the pack? Will Flaherty of SeatGeek taught "Data Driven PR" at General Assembly today.

Startups have a treasure trove of valuable, propriety data regarding some aspect of their given vertical. When packaged in a digestible and usable format to the right journalists, it will get you mentioned. Although it may not be a love story about your company, it will get you more free press.

What kind of data do you have?

• Demographics about your audience

• Trends in your marketplace

What Your Data Can Lead To

• Print: Stories were created from data sent to individual writers.

• Radio

• TV: Since television is a visual medium, they place the highest value on giving them someone who is immediately available to be on camera. This means you need someone who can talk knowledgeably and is willing to meet a camera crew wherever local news crews are.

• Infographics: These are produced by SeatGeek and take about 15-20 hours to produce. You'll notice in their Final Four infographic that they partnered with Seamless to get even more interesting data.

How to Pitch Data

1. Create a couple of hypotheses around a topic that your audience might find newsworthy. SeatGeek picks a type of event and location to focus their analysis on based on which news outlets they want to attract. It's faster to chase existing stories in news (like the Super Bowl) and provide data to earn mentions. SeatGeek has also done well digging up deep data on an original story to get higher quality mentions.

2. Pull the raw numbers into something like Excel and analyze it while keeping an open mind for new findings.

3. Synthesize the trends you're seeing in the data. What are the changes over time, locations, etc. Write compelling punch bullet points.

4. Create a visual element (graph/infographic) to convey your data in a different and powerful way. (Don't forget to include your logo & URL on the graphic)

5. Push the pitch out to interested journalists, bloggers, and media members.

Building Your List of Media Members To Pitch

• Find the media members who are writing stories in your locale/vertical/etc. If you know one site that perfectly epitomizes the readership you're looking for, copy their URL. Then do a Google search for "related:URL.com" to see the sites that are similar to them.

• Most of the time, their email address will be listed on their stories or website. If not you can use a few tricks to find it.

• If they work for an organization with a common email structure like first.last@company.com you can use that. You can use Gmail tools like Rapportive to confirm your guess.

• You can search the journalist's tweets for their email address using sites like Snap Bird. Just enter the target's Twitter name and the search term "email".

How to Contextualize Your Data Points

• Comparison: How do prices/demand/profits compare to others or past? How do customers in your area compare to other areas?

• Superlatives: Most expensive/popular thing in X years.

• Trends: How is prices/profits/demand changing over time.

• If Statements: If you bought all components individually would it be cheaper than buying them individually? If you had bought this widget it the past, what would it be worth now?

• Use Google Alerts to track what are popular story topics in your industry.

Writing Your Pitch

1. Punchy, description subject line. Use an actual data point that will stand out to a journalist drowning in story pitches.

2. Personalized opening paragraph. Make it clear this isn't a stock email to hundreds of people. Mention your specific relationship with them whenever possible.

3. Crisp, clear data points. Write in complete sentences (that the journalist can copy) and bold the numbers you're pitching.

4. Always provide a link. Encourage the journalist to link to your site by providing a landing page that supports the story (hopefully a page that puts readers a click away from a transaction with you).

5. Give them a method to follow up. Make yourself available to provide more data or provide a quote. Will uses a Google voice number that forwards to his cell phone (which I thought would be great for scaling later on, if you want to have different folks answer at different times).

Check It Out

• OkCupid (a dating site) pulled aggregated data on their users to create buzz-worthy blog posts and earn press mentions in the New York Times.

• Yipit (a daily deal aggregator) has become the go-to source on daily deal industry metrics. They produce detailed data reports that they sell to the other daily deal sites and the financial community.

5 New Years Resolutions for Entrepreneurs

Photo: Jazmin Hupp, Women Grow Co-Founder | Tamara Beckwith/NY Post | Read Article

Tis the season for NewYears Resolutions but NONE of these include going to the gym. Take a look at five things I've learned benefit every entrepreneur no matter what stage your business is in.

1. Focus on the Important Over the Urgent

If there's one skill that separates the entrepreneurs who are driving their businesses versus the businesses that are driving their entrepreneurs crazy, it's this. There will always be urgent tasks but they often fill up your day so that none of the important things get done. Here's a few different tactics to keep your focus on what really matters:

• Don't start your day by checking your email or social media. EVER. This is the fastest way to get sucked into urgent instead of important.

• Start your day meditation, reciting affirmations, or journaling about your goals. It will be easier to make choices that align with your goals if you review those goals every morning.

• Rewrite your to-do lists into time blocks. Write out what you'll be doing that day in 15-minute increments. It'll be easier to tell when you've over-promised how much you can get done that day and you'll quickly learn how poor you are at estimating how long tasks take.

• Find at least one thing to say no to every day. The hardest part of leadership is deciding what NOT to do. There are a million opportunities out there and it's easy to get excited about something new every day. Start every morning by removing at least one thing from your to-do list that doesn't support your goals.

• Delegate at least one new thing every day. Even if you're a one women show, I bet you have friends and family wiling to lend a hand. I use FancyHands virtual assistants to take small tasks off my list like calling my cable company.

• Hide from the world occasionally. The office, our phones, and our laptops are an unending opportunity for distractions. For big projects, setup an auto-responder on your email and turn OFF your phone for the day. Turn off notifications, social media alerts, and anything else that pops up on your screen. Take that day to make big progress on your goals.

2. Start Tracking Your Time

Time is the only finite resource. No amount of money in the world will buy you more hours in the day. You must fiercely protect your time. Start tracking how you spend your time and you'll recognize the real costs of projects. This is the first report I look at when I'm considering hiring or getting an assistant. Time tracking shows me the things that could be delegated to a less expensive resource. On Mac I like Harvest and RescueTime. Many task managers and company accounting software have time tracking plug-ins for freelancers. 

I just started using AND.CO and its brilliant for tracking your time and billing for it.

3. Read One New Business Book a Month

The majority of business people read a business book about once every 5 years. If you can increase your reading to one book a month, you'll be in the top 1% of 1% of business learners (without shelling out thousands for an MBA). Even reading fiction can help improve your empathy and reading of social cues. If reading isn't in your schedule, try audio books. Here's a few books I love for entrepreneurs:

• Contagious: Why Things Catch On. If you've ever wanted something to "go viral" read this first.

• Bossypants by Tina Fey. I listen to this audiobook twice a year. Tina Fey is hilarious while navigating male-dominated fields of comedy and Hollywood producing.

• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Learn what separates great leaders from the rest.

• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Learn how the founder of Zappos went broke before enjoying the success of creating an organization designed around the people he wanted to surround himself with.

• Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action. If you don't have time to read 100 business books a year, John Spence already did it for you and summarized the basics.

4. Practice Some Form of Mind Control

The research continues to mount on the benefits of meditation and other forms of mindfulness. I don't care which practice you choose to follow but it's worth finding one that works for you. If you use alcohol, cannabis, or pharmaceuticals to increase your focus, fight depression, or decrease stress, look at meditation to supplement that dependence.

5. Get Serious About Building Your Email Lists

We're limited in how we market in this industry so the most-effective and lowest-cost method is email newsletters. That's right! Email converts at higher rates than Twitter or Facebook so stop spending all that time retweeting and get serious about collecting email addresses of your supporters and customers. Try this:

• Setup an easy way to add the people who email you to your email lists. No matter how early stage you are, it's never too early to start building your email list. You can use a combination of Gmail, Zapier, and MailChimp to start building your email list for free. Here's the full instructions on how to setup building your email list with free services.

• Make acquiring email addresses the first priority of your website. The vast majority of your website visitors never come back. Do everything you can to convert every visitor into an email newsletter subscriber so you can bring them back. Talk to your web designer about improving email signups on your site.

• Import every business card you get. We're all bad at actually following up on all the business cards we receive. Make some time to import the contacts you receive into your lists regularly.

Building Your Email List with Gmail + MailChimp + Zapier in 2 Clicks

This is a tip for all my artist and entrepreneur friends. If you plan to do anything in your future and invite people to donate/attend/up vote/whatever...the highest converting method is an email. Not Twitter, not Facebook, not an ice bucket. Sending personalized email to people who know and like you will help you accomplish your goals. Do this pre work now and reap the rewards for years.If you use Gmail (free but well worth $50/year to upgrade) & MailChimp (free up to 2,000 subscribers), Zapier will turn anyone who emails you into an email subscriber in 2 clicks (free up to 100 times per month). Just to clarify that math for you, if you're a small brand looking to build an audience, ALL these tools are free until you get bigger. And when you do get big, shelling out less than $50 a month on these tools combined will be the most effective marketing dollars you spend.

1. Sign Up For Free Accounts

If you haven't already, create accounts on the following services (I get a free monkey on Tuesdays if you sign up using these referral links):

• Gmail

• MailChimp

• Zapier

2. Set Up Your Email Lists & Groups in MailChimp

Do a little thinking about why you might email people to support you in the future. If you don't have particular projects on the horizon, maybe you dump everyone into one list. If you have a company (Women Grow in my case) and web design services, you probably want to be able to email groups of people separately for those topics. Just note that this method only allows you to put people in one group at a time. (You can't add the same person to company list & web design services at the same time, so don't make too many categories.)In MailChimp got to Lists > Create Lists and create your large master list (you can even call it master list if you like). If you only have one group of folks to email, then you're done. If you have multiple topics and want to group subscribers, go to Manage Subscribers > Groups > Create Groups. Create some logical topics for your group names like:I'm interested in...

• Women Grow

• Web Design Services

3. Set Up Your Gmail Account

Creating Labels in Gmail for Your Email List Groups

In your Gmail account you're going to create labels that are easy for you to remember which ones refer to the MailChimp groups you've already made. Go to the Settings gear in the upper left > labels > create new label. You can name these whatever you like but I start mine with periods so that they're always at the top of the label list when it comes to applying them to emails.

4. Set Up The Zapier "Zaps"

Create_New_Zap_-_Zapier

Create_New_Zap_-_Zapier

Create_New_Zap_-_Zapier

Zapier is a service that connects data between tons of different web services. Sign into your account and verify your email with them. Then go to Make a Zap.For some reason sometimes connecting the services to your account can error out so just try it at least 5 times before giving up. Follow the screen shots below. Ok you've got your Gmail account and MailChimp account connected. Let's setup the mail list add now.If you have more required fields (like last name), you'll need to put some data in there or the form will error out. I put the same name in first and last name to get this working.Hit Continue & Test the Zap!

1. Send a new email to yourself (preferably using an email address that isn't already on your list).

2. Label that email with the label that corresponds to the email list you want to add them to.

3. Click Ok, I did this.

4. Click Get Threads to test it worked. (If it fails, try going in and re-applying the label to your email and returning to your inbox to make sure the label is saved.)

5. Click All done.

Create_New_Zap_-_Zapier

Now you'll need to repeat this step and create a new Zap for each mailing group you want to have.

5. Test It!!

Dashboard_-_Zapier

Send yourself another email from an account not already on your mailing list. Open the email you sent and apply your label. Wait about 10 minutes and check in with your Zapier account to see if the Zap is picking up their data. (There's a 5 minute delay for free accounts.) You should see a little number next to the Zap that is working.Enjoy building your email list easily and quickly without leaving Gmail.

7 Reasons You Should Focus on Women in Your Advertising & Your Business

Cindy Gallop opened the second 3% Conference in San Francisco, named because only 3% of Creative Directors in advertising are women. Gallop's keynote is required watching for men and women, as she teaches us how businesses are missing out on innovative ideas and ultimately profits by staying male-centric.

Key Takeaways

• Women ARE your target audience. Women are no longer a "niche" marketing target. They make the majority of purchases in almost every sector and are key purchasing influencers in every sector (even traditionally male-dominated ones). Women influence 60% of car purchases and 90% of technology purchases. Women are even the majority of gamers today, if you include social gaming.

• "Women share the sh*t out of everything." At any social gathering listen to the men talk about sports scores while the women share their experiences. Women have shared their experiences to build intimacy since the world began so it's no mystery why today they are the majority of social media users.

• Women get stuff done. Even if your product is aimed at men, Ms. Gallop recommends targeting your advertising at women. Women are the norm. Men are now the niche audience. There is a ton of money to be made by taking women seriously.

• Marketing done with women through the male perspective is no longer acceptable. When the 97% of Creative Directors are men, you gets ads that don't feature women in dynamic, engaging, and aspirational roles – instead you only see women as mothers, girlfriends, and sidekicks. We need a new approach to creativity – created by women, presented to female Creative Directors, for female clients.

• "Women challenge the status quo because we are never it." Women innovate and women disrupt. If you want your company to be innovative, find every department run by an all-white-male team and add women to it.

• "Women notice things that men don't." They notice relationships. They notice how people communicate. They notice how to get people to work together more cooperatively naturally and intuitively. Women notice the things that will make your company run better than it does today.

• "Women get sh*t done." How many women do you know that support men by doing the things they don't want to do? From the laundry to Sheryl Sandberg operating Facebook so Mark Zuckerberg can do what he really wants to do. The men who recognize this can still be the stars of the show but have a much smoother operation behind the scenes.

Your To Do List

Cindy Gallop implores men and women to do the following things to help change this culture, and ultimately make a ton of money.

1. Call It Out. If nobody says anything, nothing will change. Every time you see a conference with an all-male line-up – say something. Every time the junior male account rep tries to take over a meeting you should be running – say something. It doesn't require being angry, it just requires pointing it out, because gender bias is often unconscious. You have to "break the closed loop of white guys talking to other white guys about white guys."

2. Put Yourself Forward. Women who don't promote themselves help this male-dominated cycle continue. Gallop cites how there's been a ton of outrage over Twitter's lack of female board members but women she knows (and are highly qualified) hesitate even nominating themselves to advise a new startup.

3. Redesign the Business. Business has been built for centuries around a male model of command and control, which is perfectly logical because, for centuries, women weren't allowed to work. The Future of Business is about complementing that with female values – collaboration, consensus building, and community. The system of business today is based around men going to work and women staying at home to support them. The reason we don't have enough women in leadership is because the very system is built to work for men and not the women who shoulder an unfair amount of the home support work. When women look up at the men running their organizations and see the grueling hours, they opt-out. But why have we designed every position at the top to be so unbearable? It doesn't have to be. Gallop challenges us to redesign a bite-size chunk of how something is done at your company. Redesign it the way you want to work and point to it as an example of how a redesigned business process makes work better for everyone.

Gallop believes the business model of the future is "shared values + shared action = shared profit (financial & social)". This is the business model she urges brands to adopt. Go beyond "co-creation" and pursue "co-action" between brands and people to benefit everyone. This business model also applies to men and women working together to create a world that we will all love working and living in.

Watch It!

How You Can Create a Cannabis Industry We Can All Be Proud Of

1. Be A Good Neighbor

Reach out to your neighborhood–from local businesses to local citizens. When the federal government shut down Oaksterdamn, the NCIA got neighborhood businesses to hang green flags in solidarity. It's a lot easier to move forward with neighborhood organizations on your side.

2. Be Professional

Everything from answering the phone to paying your bills on time affects your own business and the cannabis industry as a whole. Don't use marketing that you wouldn't want your mother to see. Create a professional industry that shows the country what they've been missing.

3. Engage Politically

Find out who your elected representatives are and get on their email list. Attend their events and give money to their campaigns to support your cause. Be present and make phone calls so that they hear from the Cannabis industry a lot more than they do now.Make it easy for your customers to engage their officials as well. Reward customers that call their elected representatives or send emails. Make it easy for customers to engage while they wait. Harborside Health Center has a robust Patient Activist Center that rewards customers with product for participating.

4. Join an Organization

If you come from any other industry, you're no stranger to organizations and why they're important. Join an organization like Women Grow, that will lobby for Cannabis businesses.

2014's Hot Homepage Design Trend: Mega Images

Justin Rondeau examines tests from over a thousand brands every year, as Chief Editing & Testing Evangelist for WhichTestWon. Justin explained the Mega Image trend he's seeing across the industry and some tips on doing better testing at WhichTestWon's Live Event in Austin today.

Do Mega Image Homepages Work?

You know those giant brand images filling up new home pages? Looks great but does it work? Justin presented a case study from KinderCare, which had been fine tuning their home page for years but was looking for a big lift. After the redesign with a Mega Image, they experienced a 17% lift in conversion. That's a huge lift for an established homepage but the resources required to pull this off are also huge. Unlike changing the color of a button, you've got to coordinate fresh creative that blows your brand out of the water.

Mega Image Tips

• Make sure your photo scales with the browser window size.
• DON'T use stock photos: make it genuine, make it your brand! At one company we spend about $30K a year shooting photography of our employees and our customers. (If you're looking for a team to do the same for your business, I use Meier Brand's creative team.)
• If you're using faces, try to make sure the person in your photo is looking where you want the visitor to look. Faces grab a lot of attention and will be the first place your visitors look. If they compete with your main message you probably won't see a lift.
• Don't implement blindly, make sure to test this. Although there are lots of instances of this working for other brands, your experience may be different.

Mega Image Homepage Designs With Movement

I don't have testing data on these, but was intrigued but two Mega Image homepages that use movement to complement the design. Click through the images so see one very common and one not-so-common movement implementations.

How To Start Testing

Many marketers say they don't have the resources to start testing but tools like Optimizely make testing easier than ever. Here's a few tips on getting started.

• Education is #1: The tools are great, but it doesn't replace a sound education in testing fundamentals. I personally recommend WhichTestWon's Live Events to start. You can also download their report on testing trends.
• Hire a Proper Team: Optimization requires people. If you have no one, push for a part-time resources. If you have part-time resources, push for full-time, and so on.
• Push for an Ideological Shift: If your organization doesn't believe in a data-driven testing, you're going to have to push for that from the top down. That means constantly communicating how your testing, the learnings and your results (good and bad). Showing the improvements you're making constantly will build trust in testing.
• Stay Curious - Question Everything: If there is one thing to look for in your testing culture, it's insane curiosity. Do you question everything? Great! You're doing to go well here.

Stop Sporadic Testing

Many organizations are testing as they like without a methodology.

Why It Doesn't Work

• No Long Term Gains: You may be small lifts but you won't be able to scale that effect.
• No Test Learnings: Just because changing a button color created a conversion lift, doesn't mean you know why. If you can't figure out why, you can't apply that learning going forward.
• Higher % Failure Rate: Your tests are much less likely to be correctly formulated if you don't do this very often.

Why We Don't Test More

The majority of organizations only have one person dedicating half their time to testing. It's your job as an optimizer to build the case for more testing resources with a proven track record of successful lifts. If you're not reporting back on your successes and continually proving your contribution on the bottom line, start now!

Your Company's Facebook Posts Will Soon Be A Waste Of Time

Without boosting your Facebook boosts with advertising spend, you're shouting into the dark. No matter how hard you worked to build your fan base, as many as 98% of your fans never return to your Facebook page after liking it.

Facebook Organic Post Reach Is Diving Off A Cliff

The percentage of your fans that you reach organically (without paying for ads) is rapidly declining: from an average of 12% in October 2013 to 6.2% in February of 2014 (according to social@Ogilvy). The day when your organic posts will reach virtually no one is coming fast.

Shift Strategies or Abandon Facebook Organic Posts in 2014?

Even though Facebook has become an advertising network (with a social media network as a lost leader), you can still target extremely specific audiences. What other medium can you find 15-17 year old girls who live within 50 miles of Cleveland, Ohio, and own an iPhone 4 or iPhone 5? If you have the ability to craft campaigns that speak to your customers in their own homes and phones you can reap enormous rewards. I can't name another newspaper that is sent directly to all of my customers, for as little as $25 a campaign. Can you?

Custom Audiences Are Your New Best Friends

You're going to upload lists of email addresses and lists of phone numbers from your customer contact lists. This will allow you to target your current customers for ads (even if the haven't liked your page) and find more people like your customers on Facebook. Custom Audiences will allow you target people who have shopped with you before.Uploading your customer's email addresses and phone numbers to Facebook puts a lot of trust in their court. Facebook says that they encrypt the data that is uploaded, use it for matching purposes at that time only, and then delete the data. This means you should update the data periodically to add new customers. Privacy is never perfect but this is likely worth the risk for your brand. (Technically, they hash the data, not encrypt it, if you want the full technical explanation.)If uploading your customer lists are too creepy, try tracking everyone who visits your homepage. You'll install a tracking code in your header tags so that you can retarget ads to anyone who visits your company's website. Slightly less creepy and it continues to grow as your website traffic grows. 

Lookalike Audiences Are Your New Holy Grail

How often do we sit around as marketers and complain: "I wish I could find more people who are just like my best customers." Facebook is offering to deliver them to you. Once you've uploaded a list of your best customers, you can tell Facebook to match their entire database of people within any single country to your type of people. To get started, see Facebook's "How to Create Lookalike Audiences".

So Now Facebook Is Just Like Any Other Advertising Network? Nope!

It seems clear that Facebook is turning into an Ad network and should be treated like the New York Times or Google Adwords. But one thing still separates Facebook, according to the Ogilvy report. There's one thing that STILL means your social media marketing messages should be fundamental different from other paid ads.

Personalizing B2B Sales Relationships at Scale

Marketers think in terms of campaigns and touch points, whereas traditional sales people think about one-to-one sales calls. This conflict is being riled up by a few factors:

• Less selling involves in-person contact (more demos are online or remote)
• There's an increased volume of leads coming from marketing
• It's hard to hire more bodies to interact with them with all leads

Tawheed Kadar has solved for these conflicts by making each sales person a mini marketing organization with his 5x5 Method, which he spoke about the Sales Hacker Conference today. Oh and if you haven't guessed yet, his company ToutApp will help you do this.

The 5X5 Method

5 Pre-Planned Templates

These are the five touches a sales person will need to make with an inbound lead. These can be emails, phone calls, tweets, or LinkedIn messages.

5 Days/Weeks/Months Apart

Each touch is going to be 5 days apart. You may elongate the schedule but unless the prospect is super engaged, you don't want to overwhelm them with touches too close together.

5 Strategic Touches

You'll give a little bit and take a little bit over five contacts with the prospect.

1. Introduce yourself: First touch is simple, don't ask for anything!
2. Provide value: Again–don’t ask for anything! Just provide information that the customer will value. Not about your product but about their needs.
3. Offer help: Next you offer them help with a need they have.
4. Engage for feedback: Build rapport.
5. “The Ask”: Only after all these touches, do you actually ask to meet.

Is This Sales Automation?

Yes and no. You’re using your staff to run a drip campaign but with their active involvement so you’re building a better funnel that engages sales people. You don’t want these emails to look like designed marketing emails. The email should look personal.

Best Practices for Touches

• Automate when possible: You may want to automate certain inbound lead collection funnels.
• {{Personalize}} as much as possible: Make sure your email system pulls in multiple data points to personalize the email touch points.
• Use Engagement Data to drive next steps: Front-load leads that visit your blog or pricing page. If your prospect is engaging you online, your rep needs to skip waiting 5 days and call now.
• Constantly iterate and test new messaging: Someone on the team needs to be testing new subject lines and messaging to create the ultimate text.

How You Can Provide Value to the Client in Your Touch

• Use LinkedIn: Research who you’re actually talking to and what the people above your lead are asking them to do.
• Check Glassdoor for Employee Reviews: Are employees leaving? Can you offer help in retention? What do employees complain about? Do you solve for that?
• Check Indeed for Jobs: Hey it looks you’re hiring VP of Sales, do you want my lead list of VPs of Sales that I just interviewed?
• Read their Blog: “Gateway to the soul of the company.” Incorporate what they care about into your touches.

Will This Work In Your Organization?

Check out the ToutApp blog for more sales education materials.

B2B Technology Sales Without a Sales Force

John Marcus runs a software company with a sales force of just himself–but he doesn’t touch 90% of the deals. In his work with Hubspot he studied the science behind sales conversions to build Bedrock Data, and here is how you can sell to businesses without a sales force.

MECHANISM OF ACTION

Starting with your product, look at your product will help sales reps FROM OTHER COMPANIES  to:

• Shorten their sales cycle
• Close bigger deals
• Increase their sales close rate

HOST RANGE

Find the other companies that can use your product to overcome objections from their prospects. In Bedrock Data's case, they integrate business databases so they went about finding business data companies.

VECTORING

Next you will infect organizations that can benefit from your product with your DNA. There are two vectors but only one that works:

• Corporate Exposure Vector: Emails about new features and partnerships are typically deleted.
• Direct Exposure: Find inside sales reps of your target companies that are crushing it on LinkedIn. Look for young, smiling, and socially connected sales reps. Send them information about your product and tell them how you can help them shorten their sales cycle, close bigger deals, and increase their close rate. Then you're going to offer to get on sales calls with them to assist. After you do a few calls, they're typically able to sell on your own so you can piggy back on someone else's sales force.

CONTAGIOUS

Start doing co-marketing and joint white papers. If other organizations see deals being closed because you were involved, they will pull you in to intro you. Make your materials easy and natural to share.

FROM THE SALES HACKER CONFERENCE

Notes are from the New York Sales Hacker Conference today in New York City. A few hundred sales managers gathered in a dark basement of a ping pong club with a crackly A/V system to listen to a mix of B2B sales content. Here's hoping they take the ~$300 per person for a better venue next year.

Changing Behavior With Persuasive Technology

I attended Behavior Change: As Value Proposition, given by Chris Risdon (@chrisrisdon, #behaviordesign) at SXSW Interactive in Austin.Changing behavior is hard:

• Why do you drive short distances when you could easily walk and be healthier?
• Why do you avoid going to the dentist when you know waiting longer will make your dental problems worse?

Using Opportune Moments

In 2004, you see a story about a Tsunami while waiting in the airport, which is followed by a commercial to donate to the Red Cross. You're moved to donate but then you have to take a flight, get home, unpack, and feed the dog. Maybe you remember to go to the Red Cross website but now you have to decide how much to donate, figure out your credit card billing information, and so on.In 2010, you saw the Haiti Tsunami story at the airport. You could text "Haiti" to 90999 and donate $10 via your cell phone bill to the Red Cross. This much simpler process matched the timing of the trigger and took advantage of your motivation in the moment.

Behavior Design

Design with the intent to change someone's behavior or attitude.

A bitter nail polish makes your finger nails taste bitter so you don't chew your nails. A study of countries by how many people volunteered for organ donation showed that countries had radically different rates because of the how they designed the sign-up process. Countries where you had to opt OUT of organ donation, had the majority of people registered for organ donation. Countries which made you opt IN to organ donation had the lowest rates. Just by changing the form process, you are able to design for your intended result, these are called "good defaults".

Persuasive Technology

Technology designed to persuade the user to use a system or platform in a desired way.

Amazon one-click is an example of a process designed to make purchasing easier. Instead of building a cart and comtemplating shipping charges, you're one click away from making a simple purchase. In the product space, software and services make it plain that you are trying to help the user organize their travel plans (TripIt) or finances (Mint). More and more of these sites use highly personal data to help you change your own behavior.

The New "Me" Generation

Products and services designed and marketed on the premise that their befits – the value received – are specific behavior-based outcomes.

• Data collection is a primary feature: Nike FitBand collects data on your physical activity throughout the day.
• System makes recommendation or guidance: Mint recommends credit card with less fees based on your purchasing data.
• Behavior is measurable: Users can see their progress.
• Prescriptive/Constrained self-determination: Service narrows options to guide user to their chosen outcome.

Sensors & Data

If it can be connected, it will be connected in the Internet of Things.

Sensors using GPS, Accelerometers, RFID, etc., measure everything from where we go to how fast we can bounce a basketball. Consumers are becoming less and less afraid of giving services access to personal data. Mint has convinced thousands of users to give them the login information for all their financial accounts.

Feedback and Feedforward

The progression from weighing at your weekly WeightWatchers meeting to a WiFi-connected scale that tracks you daily, illustrates how personal sensors can provide better timed feedback. Feedforward is proactive service design that gives you information before you make the decision instead of just showing you the results. Chris spoke about how at Subway sandwich shops he always intends to each a healthy sandwich but ends up buying the cookies at the end. What if a service detected he's entering the Subway and tells him how many calories he'd have to burn to get those cookies?

Framing & Profiling

Not everyone is motivated in the same way. Some folks need a cheerleader to "ra-ra" them up the hill, others need a drill sergeant to scare them into running harder. This is called "Persuasion Profiling," which means each one of us has a different set of triggers that will persuade us to act differently. Just in the wording of a choice, you can guide behavior.

Collection > Visualization > Story

We understand how to use the technology to show users their behavior but do we understand that every design decision influences the user? Documentaries demonstrate that HOW we tell a story changes people's perception, and eventually their behavior. Next stop let's go beyond the graph and show people how to change their word.

More Resources on Behavior Design

• Robert Calidini 
• BJ Fogg
• Dan Lockton
• Dan Ariely

6 Ways You Haven't Used Social Media To Improve Your Blog

No matter how long you've been doing social media for, there are new tricks and tips coming out every day. Tip #1 and #5 were well worth the price of admission for my organization. Here are my notes from Austin Gunter's (Brand Ambassador, WPEngine) presentation on "Developing Digital Marketing (Social Media) In Your WordPress" at WordPress Camp NYC.1. No One Cares About What You Just Said On TwitterThink about your site from the perspective of a first-time visitor, they're looking for a reason to trust you. Stop using the standard Twitter widget to show the last few tweets you've sent (which could be awesome or random rants). Instead reconfigure your Twitter widget to display your account's favorites. Favorite great tweets about your organization and re-label your widget something like "140 Character Testimonials".2. It's Time To Make Sharing Your Content AwesomeUsing the standard Facebook & Twitter share links are LAME. It's time to do some custom development for elegant sharing solutions. Instead of a tiny Pinterest button above every post, Wedding Chicks does an elegant job of encouraging pins. Every image you mouse over has a "Pin It" badge appear in the lower right.3. You Can't Fight On TwitterThere are going to be customer support issues and people are going to complain. You need to take it off Twitter. Generate a support ticket for the customer and email them or reach out another way. 140 characters is not enough to be logical and really help.5. Facebook is for Developing Your Existing Fans, Not First-Time CustomersYour customers aren't going to follow you on Facebook until they've already experienced your brand. Liking a brand on Facebook is akin to putting that brand's bumper sticker on your car. Use Facebook to develop deeper conversations with your biggest fans, not sell to first time customers. Austin likes integrating Facebook with his blog post comments so the comments on his site spread to Facebook too (and vice-a-versa).5. The One Thing To Use Google+ ForGoogle is now using Google+ profiles to determine who is writing what online for SEO with rel="author". People who have been writing quality content for years will benefit from this move (which fights SEO cheating). To do this, follow these instructions to update your Google+ profile with what sites you write for (or guest post on). This will allow your headshot to appear next to your content on search results (which may increase your click throughs) as well as possibly raise your general rankings.6. Turning Twitter Conversations Into Real StoriesYou can use Storify to collect tweets around a topic or conversation. It allows you to comment and expand on what was said. We've seen great summary posts on conference, news events, and locations.Bonus: Check out Buffer for a super easy way to share what you've read online into scheduled posts that are even faster to use than HootSuite.

Increasing Page Views & User Retention on Your Wordpress Blog in 3 Minutes

Do your readers leave your site right after they finish the first post they came in on? Neil Mody from nRelate gave a great overview of all the elements you need to use to drive more readers to your site and get them to stick around for longer at WordPress Camp NYC today. If you know the basics already, skip to the end for all the plugins your should install in 3 minutes to increase page views.You've Got Nothing Without Great ContentFocus on your message first. Create an original consistent presence on the Internet with quality content first. Then you can build a long-term audience. Everything else optimizes on high quality content. Without good content you won't get far. Your Site Must Load in 3 Seconds or LessYou must use a caching plug-in to speed up the load time of your pages.

• W3 Total Cache (free)
• WP Super Cache (free)

Then you need to use speed loading testing tools to check it.

• YSlow (based on Yahoo Tools)
• Google Page Speed Tools

Hosting Options (from least to most expensive / least to most scalable)

• Blue Host
• Liquid Web
• Media Temple
• WP Engine (specialized hosting that starts at $29/month)
• Rackspace (high-end if you have dedicated staff)

Everything you add to your site will make the site slower. Your site should load in 3 seconds or less. For every extra second your site takes to load you lose a portion of visitors according to Google's analytics.Bring Style to Your Substance With a Quality ThemeHow your site looks can be just as important as your content. Having a stylish theme with clear navigation affects how many users stick around to read more. Just as how a book's cover design affects how many people buy the book in the book store, your theme will affect how many users will read your site.Social Sharing in NOT OptionalYou need to:

• Link to your site on Twitter
• Have an active Facebook page
• Start using Pinterest

You MUST reach out to people in your community and engage! Start commenting on other people's posts. Sending out your content is just half the job, engaging others is your other.Be Where Your Audience Is

• Depending on where your audience is, you need to rank well there. In the US, search traffic is dominated by Google so you must rank well in Google.
• Study your referral traffic and see what terms readers are coming in from. Build content around your most profitable terms.
• Setup Google news alerts for related terms to your content. Build content around trending topics.
• Link parties are collectives of bloggers who are linking to each other to building incoming links. You have to be careful though because your links could end up on less desirable sites.

FINALLY! Engage Your Audience Beyond the One Post They Came in OnnRelate makes plugins for most of these functions but there are tons of great options out there. Tell us which plugins you like in the comments.

• Auto-linking plugins automatically ads a link back to your other content whenever you add certain words to your post.
• Photo galleries and slideshows increase page views (but can be really annoying).
• Related Post plugin should be in your sidebar or at the bottom of your post.
• Most popular post plugin should always be in your sidebar.
• Flyout plugins suggests a related article to your reader when they reach the bottom of the post
• Social sharing and commenting plugins allow your users to easily share your content to their network. One developer said you have to un-gate (not require login) to encourage commenting.

Why Don't More Women Go Big With Their Own Business?

With few female entrepreneurs to look to, MIT Sloan hosted a panel on how women can go big with their own businesses. The panel included Joanna Rees (Founder of VSP Capital), Katrina Markoff (Founder of Vosges Haut-Chocolat), Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Founder of Gilt Groupe), and was moderated by Fredricka Whitfield (Anchor, CNN).

What Is Getting In the Way?

Joanna thinks that fear and giving up after set-backs gets in women's way. Some women quit after their first major failure instead of taking it as a learning lesson and pushing forward. Joanna got rejected by hundreds of investors in the process of starting VSP Capital. Her tips for negotiation meetings was to "ask for the order" and make sure you know where you stand before you leave. Alexandra emphasized listening to all the negative feedback you get while pitching. You may learn that there is a hole in your business plan or way you could explain something better. The road to success is not smooth.

How Important Are Support Networks?

Imperative! Gilt was built on personal connections. Alexandra didn't have the money to the buy a marketing list so they had to sign up quality customers through word of mouth and personal networks. Joanna suggests that you need to surround yourself with people you trust that can collaborate with you on solutions. Katrina is working on building her advisory board to supplement the help she already has. We must remember to help each other as well. Joanna revealed that when she ran for mayor of San Francisco she reached out to mayors and legislators across the country. Interestingly, all the men she asked met with her. but all the women sent their staff to meet with her in their stead.

What Role Do Role Models Play?

Alexandra thinks that less women pursue founding companies because there are few female role models. She says female entrepreneurs should share their stories and she has gone as far as writing a book with Alexis (co-founder) on their journey.[box type="shadow"]Women 2.0 offers videos and local meetings where you can hear from successful female founders.[/box]

What Role Does Confidence Play?

Alexandra talked about her father- and mother-in-law. Her father-in-law will spend a few minutes cooking and declare the results the best in the world. Her mother-in-law will spend hours in the kitchen cooking multiple courses and fret it isn't good enough. Why do women always undersell themselves? Katrina opened a retail store in NYC without telling her accountant or banker (who would have told her not to) because following her inner voice has lead to the best results. Going big requires taking big risks, working hard, and be resilient.

What You Need To Know About The Future of the Web

Roger McNamee explains what you need to know today to understand where the web is going tomorrow.Let Jeff Bezos remind you there's a long path of innovation ahead of us online.

New Trend: Video Holiday Cards - Bergdorf Goodman Goes to the Dogs

I received more video holiday cards than physical cards from businesses this year for the first time. Whether your business is trying to save trees or just preparing for the Postal Service to go out of business, a video holiday card might be right for you.

Tips For Spreading Your Business Message with a Video Card

• Set a budget: Although a video card is cheap to send out through email, you can spend much more producing a video than printing paper cards. Make sure to set a budget and find a video director that can work within it.
• What's the payoff?: The best holiday videos have a plot payoff for watching them. You know how the best commercials can make you want to cry in 30 seconds? Can you make your story pay off at the end? Watch Bergdorf Goodman's longer holiday video for their heartfelt ending. Or check out LivePerson's charity donation at the bottom of this entry.
• Keep it short: 30 seconds to 2 minutes is optimal
• Keep it agnostic: Unless you're sure all your customers celebrate Christmas, it's better to go for general Happy Holidays.
• Make it fun(ny) or unusual: If you want the video to be shared, make it fun or funny. On the unusual side, Tekserve's most successful viral video featured $60,00 worth of recycled iPods.
• The delivery method is the most important part (and often overlooked): Once you have the perfect holiday video card, the most important part is getting it watched. Make sure you consider the timing of sending your video to recipients, the holidays get busy and any non-essential message gets trashed. Can you create a great email message that will make them want to click-through? Will your recipients be able to view it from their mobile phones?
• Seed the sharing: If your holiday message is meant to reach potential customers as well as existing customers, reach out to target blogs and ask them to embed the video. Don't forget to upload it to your Facebook page and YouTube.

Bergdorf Goodman's Holiday Card

Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in Manhattan, created a great holiday promotional video card by letting famous New York dogs lose in the store. Not only are cute pet videos more likely to be shared, but also I would argue that BG's target customers are dog owners. Because having a dog in Manhattan is a luxury, their shoppers are more likely to be pet owners. The fun footage of dogs running through the store gave them a great excuse to show off a lot more products than a typical commercial. Although I would have made the video shorter, the ending is the perfect heartfelt payoff that their target customers will love. If you check the audience analytics on YouTube, you'll see this video is most popular with women age 35-54 (their target customers).

Offering to Donate To Charity

With more businesses limiting gifts to employees, donating to charity on their behalf has become popular. LivePerson sent their customers an email asking them to visit the page screen-shot below and choose from one of twelve charities for a donation. This method aligns your organization with doing good while making your customers feel good. You'll notice LivePerson doesn't mention how much they will be donating so the bottom-line impact was totally up to them.

12 Things You Haven't Tried To Improve Your Website's SEO

"Best practices are things you should have done if you had thought of them first." If all your competitors are doing it already, you won't get the returns you're looking for by jumping in late. Try taking best practices from other industries and reusing them. This quote is from Byrne Hobart, who taught the Advanced SEO course at General Assembly that I attended last week.How to Advance Your Way Up the Blog HierarchyHere's how to work your way from nothing to a top-level blog or news source.

• Do a Google search for "your industry blog" and you'll find the most popular ones. Pick a highly-ranked blog that speaks to your prospects. Then use Google to show sites related to the highly-ranked blog by searching for "related:rankedblog.com." Less popular related blogs will be returned. Continue to do this until you find the least popular blogs with readership communities. Collect these into a list.
• Stalk your new blogger friends. Comment on every post they write on your industry and re-tweet their stuff. After a few weeks they'll start to recognize you as a loyal reader.
• Write a post they'll like on your blog and send it to them. For example, write a deeper-dive into a topic they cover or a clarification of something they wrote. If they repost your piece you're in! Plus you'll be the girl they turn to when they need a quote or clarification on your industry.
• Now use their repost of your content to trade up to more popular blogs. Most bloggers read all the blogs larger than theirs and a few sites less popular than theirs. Write an email to a more popular blog, "You may have seen my post on LesserBlog.com, I liked your related post, and so I write this post."
• Continue trading up until you reach the top blog in your industry.

Get More Shares By Giving Up CommentsYou can get more shares if you make sharing the only action available at the end of your post. When someone gets to the bottom of your post, they typically have a couple of choices: commenting, reading a related article, etc. If you make the only option sharing the article with their network, you'll get more shares. This works especially well with controversial content where your audience wants to add their input but can't because you've removed commenting. Google doesn't discern between people linking to your page because they disagree or agree with you.Fast Content Gets Shared FasterContent that is fast to read will get shared more often and more quickly. Shorter posts rise to the top of Reddit because Reddit takes the velocity of votes into account. So a photo that takes five seconds to read and react to will rise further than a well thought-out post that takes ten minutes to read. So if you have a long article, create an infographic of your top data from the post that you can share everywhere and then link back to your longer article.Get More Shares By Figuring Out Why Your Audience Really ReTweetsWhy do most people actually share your posts? They want to show off that they read your type of content (regardless of whether or not they do). This is why posts by Malcolm Gladwell are tweeted seconds after they're posted. Your audience wants to show off how smart they are for finding your content and sharing it with their friends (Facebook) or potential bosses (LinkedIn).Test Keywords Using AdWords Instead of SEO Because It's Cheaper (Really)Ranking on your keywords through organic search can take weeks and even months to climb to the top. You can buy the top slot through AdWords and check if the keywords you've chosen really convert before investing in a longer-term SEO strategy. Once your keyword terms move into organic search the conversion rate won't necessarily be the same but this is a great tactic to compare potential keywords against each other.Swap SEO Friendly Headlines In After Everything-Else Friendly HeadlinesSEO friendly headlines are stuffed with keywords that target searchers. Everything-else friendly headlines use a teaser proposition, controversial view point, or question to encourage click-throughs and shares. You can post the article with your teaser headline, get a lot of shares, and then switch it to your keyword stuffed headline later. Your article will retain it's popularity for being shared even after you change the headline.How A Print Ad Can Increase Your Search RankRun an ad campaign that tells your audience to search for "your company + what you do" on Google. If you get enough people searching for your brand name in conjunction with high-priority keywords, it will rise your search rankings. You'll be more likely to appear in the search suggestions for what you do. Coupon Cabin ran subway ads asking people to Google their name for coupons instead of listing their URL.Optimize Your Guest Blog BioWe all know that guest blogging (in both directions) will help bring credibility to your site. What you may not have thought of is optimizing the keywords used in your guest blog bio. Try to keyword stuff the link back to your company's site. So instead of "Jane Smith is Founder of Company.com" try "Jane Smith is Founder of the most popular widget company in New Jersey."Links Are ForeverWhen someone posts about your business but doesn't link to you, simply contact them and ask. Articles last just as long as the news cycle but links are forever.Use WordPress if You CanSimply put, search engines love WordPress. To solve the SEO drawbacks of WordPress, download the All in One SEO Pack.Use The Most SEO-Friendly URL For Your BlogYour blog's URL should be YourSite.com/Blog for maximum SEO benefit to your site. If you're in a "serious" business and the term "blog" isn't appropriate for your target audience, use YouSite.com/Articles or YouSite.com/Research.This post also appeared on Women 2.0's Blog For Female Entrepreneurs.

6 Trends in Web Design Coming To A Website Near You

Web design shifts and changes every season just like the fashion world. Instead of watching a runway on Fashion Week, here's a few sites I use to preview what's likely to take off next:

• Behance Network - Creative Professional Platform to share what designers are working on now. Filter results by Blogging, Web Design, or Web Development for a peak. Behance is a NYC-based startup.
• Dribble - A nicely designed portfolio site, check out what's been posted in web design lately. Allows you to search by color if you have one in mind.
• DeviantArt - Less curated than Behance but still relevant, click my link for an overview of popular web interfaces submitted in the last week.

Huge F'ing Background ImagesPopularized into the mainstream by Bing, this has spread to tons of tech startups and newer page designs. Go Right Not DownWhen web designers found out that folks didn't want to scroll down for more than a few page views, they started asking viewers to navigate to the right.Arranging Images In Tag Cloud StyleJust like a word tag cloud makes more frequent words appear larger, some sites are now organizing their images using this principle to make more important images larger. Notification AlertsUsing smart icons with red badges has become prevalent from iPhone Apps to Facebook.

 

Grey GradientsBlack is too hard to read and white is so 1996, so we've settled on grey gradients as the cool kids color.Better TypographyWe finally got bored with half a dozen font choices and the following companies are driving better typography coming to the world wide web.

• Google Web Fonts
• Fonts.com
• WebINK
• Fontdeck
• Typekit