New blog design in progress. Excuse the scaffolding. This is just a short about section where you can describe yourself and your site. You'll want to keep it fairly long because there are some layout issues that arise if the area is below a certain width.
Let’s be honest here.
Despite what the marketing experts tell us. Some of us cannot write. Not a Newyork best seller nor a sick note for the boss. Putting interesting words together into a coherent attractive whole has never been a core skill.
I have something to tell you. It doesn’t matter.
Sheepstealer Clothing is a small sports clothing brand in Ireland. It is a personal project where I get to have fun designing t-shirts for passionate fans. It has become my playground to try out different types of marketing. But I have a small issue. I do not know enough about the sport to write about it.
The sport(s) in question are unique to Ireland. Gaelic football, Hurling and Handball. (Read here for a great American perspective of Hurling). It is fast, skilful and great fun to watch with a crowd. I am simply not a sporty person.
What do you do when you cannot write about your market? What I did with sheepstealers is use one of my own core skills. I drew it.
The important thing about content is that it is interesting and adds value for a reader.
I took existing information on the sport and created new interesting visuals around it.
Great, funny quotes from the sport, a guide to the game of hurling or combining other crossover interests. Infographics are a prime example of this technique. They take existing information, statistics and other data and create a new visual representation of it to help the reader better understand.
The result is new content, updated often, of interest to the market and very sharable. The added bonus is this content now appears in Google image search as well and can be posted on sites like flickr. And it all came about because I couldn’t write.
You can’t write.
So what other skills do you have that can add new value to existing content?
Our super cute Toddle mascot landed in our office today. I have to say we love his little hat in time for the autumn. Want your company logo transformed into a cool knitted version? Check out fiverr.com
Email newsletters offer one of the highest returns on investment in online marketing, second only to search marketing. But it only works when you do it right.
Assuming you have interested subscribers; the following are the key parts of an email newsletter guaranteed to bring you success.
1. Subject line
Your very first point of contact. Use this to tempt the reader to open the mail.
I add the company name to every subject line to build trust over time. Readers learn that if the mail is from Sheepstealers then there will be something inside they will enjoy or find interesting.
2. Preview
This text will appear in the preview pane of the email client when it arrives to the inbox. It should add to the subject line and provide more reasons to open the newsletter.
3. Main offer
A clear offer with a strong call to action. A reader should be in no doubt what to do next and why. Fancy fonts will need to be images so make sure you have text and links that work when images are turned off.
4. Sell stuff.
Don’t forget your ultimate goal is to sell your products or service.
5. Being useful
Subscribers would get turned off pretty fast if every mail was about me. I always add content I know would be of use to a subscriber. It increases the chance of them opening again next month.
6. Expand the conversation
People love sharing good links and information online. With an army of subscribers loving your updates, make it easy for them to tell others and chat back to you.
7. Reminder
A personal touch to let them know you are human and a simple reminder of where they signed up can drastically reduce the number who unsubscribe. But if they want to go let them.
8. Short & Sweet
I like keeping my newsletters short and easy to scan. If I have a long article I split it into a snappy taster for the newsletter and a read more link going to the blog.
That’s all! If you start applying these points to your email marketing campaigns you will see your open and click through rates start to rise.
Disclosure: Sheepstealer GAA T-Shirts is a product from Spoiltchild. This email does not currently exist and was produced for this post.
How time flies, FineTuna is a year old. Odd things often happen around birthdays; I think they call it synchronicity, with a lovely review on Site Point today and a push from the Tuesday Push tomorrow.
We had one goal for FineTuna, to become the TinyURL of design feedback. Simple, fast and disposable after you have your point accross.
We got such a positive response that we decided to build it and so a concept became a reality. And we never imagined just how many people would love it. The statistics are truly amazing. Over 25,000 images have been uploaded, shared and reviewed with more than 9 gigs uploaded.
It is really interesting to see how the initial concept for the website changed from how we thought it would work, to what we have a year on. The upload functionality with the Firefox extension really helped its usability. We also decreased the number of buttons from 5 to 4 making things simpler all round.
FineTuna unleashed a truck load of reviews and mentions including TechCrunch, CSS Mania, cnet, and many others during the past year. We are very proud of the coverage FineTuna has received and thank everyone for using, promoting and pushing our efforts.
Just in time for a nice Christmas surprise, Finetuna has been featured in this month’s edition of Webuser UK (the biggest selling internet magazine in the UK). A lovely way to round off a very successful few months for our little app that could. Find us on page 16 under best new websites. Now who says Santa can’t come early!
Finetuna.com has been getting some great coverage around the web recently. The great thing is we didn’t have to bribe anyone, they seem to be finding it by themselves. Below is a small selection of the sites and comments.
Chris Pirillo
The Video Blogger and Author did a live video review of Finetuna on his show here.
Pretty cool! Our web app Finetuna has been nominated for Most Innovative Website kindly Sponsored by iQ content. Some stiff competition there who will all be getting evil stares on awards night on October 11th in Dublin. :)
Fingers and toes crossed.
Finetuna.com is a handy app for adding and sharing comments and feedback on design concepts.
The lads over in Contrast posted a pic of Eoghan deep in conversation last friday. It was crying out for a caption so i asked the guys on Twitter to post a few suggestions using Finetuna and the winner would win a Sheepstealers T-shirt of their choice. Click entries below for full size.
