The Power of Social Media

“You are what you share.”                                                           ~~ Charles W. Leadbeater, We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity

I now begin my third year of Power blogs and Linda’s Connection Corner. It is hard to believe that I am now scribing my 25^th blog!  My first Power was on Social Media and this becomes my third blog on the subject.

Have I become the SM guru?  Most assuredly, I have not!  In fact, if anything, I’ve become less versed in the art.  Earlier I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  Now I know what I don’t know.  So, how do I adjust for my lack of knowledge in a world that I’m playing in?  I surround myself with very competent – and younger – people, and I leave it up to them to handle our social media.  One skill I have mastered is delegation.  No longer do I feel the need to do tasks myself to assure they are done correctly.  It’s a whole new dichotomy for me, and I feel gratefully relieved!

The norm in today’s world is to use an email marketing service.  This comes to you via Constant Contact, the leading service used for newsletters, flyers, invitations, surveys, etc.  Others are Mail Chimp, iContact, Campaigner, Get Response, AWeber, Stream Send, Vertical Response, and many more.  Almost everything we send out to groups of individuals is done through Constant Contact.  There is not a day that goes by where we are not working on Constant Contact.

We conduct numerous meetings and send our invitations through Constant Contact, which allows people to rsvp and pay online.  We can keep track of everything.  We know who opened the invitation, who did not, who is attending, who is not, who has paid, who has not.

We publish two newsletters:  Linda’s Connection Corner and Healthcare Think Tank Newsletter.  We can see who opens and does not, what links are clicked on, who unsubscribes, and much more.  The analytics we receive are incredible.

Because we never do blanket eblasts, we rate much higher than the law of averages.  We have a much higher open percentage rate and much lower unsubscriber and bounce percentage rates.  I know everybody in my database, so I am much more interested in watching the analytics than people might be who eblast to thousands of people at a time.

Here are some of my tips from the experience I’ve had over these past two years:

• Be very careful about unsubscribing.  If you are unsubscribing to a friend’s or associate’s mailing, be aware that they will know you did so.  And to get back on the approved list is no easy task.  You will not be able to receive anything from that person.

Example:  Someone unsubscribed from my Connection Corner – just doesn’t like to receive newsletters.  He asked to be invited to a Healthcare Think Tank meeting.  The system will not allow us to send him an invitation.

Solution:  That person should have contacted me via email and asked me to kindly remove him from the Connection Corner list.  He would have been removed from that list only.

• If you just don’t want to receive certain emails, consider blocking them rather than unsubscribing.  You can also direct them to a special newsletter file which you can selectively empty at your discretion.  They will reflect on the sender’s side as unopened.

Example:  I get several newsletters and other mail that I am not interested in reading, but I’m sensitive to the feelings of the person sending them.  Also, there just might be one on a topic that is, in fact, interesting to me.

Solution:  Personally, I’ve never understood what the big deal is in having a lot of mail in my inbox.  I simply highlight all of the ones I want to delete and click “delete”.  It takes all of 5 seconds at most, the time it takes for a sip of coffee.

•  There are occasions when I see that someone has unsubscribed that I find rather surprising and wonder if it might have been in error.

Example:  On my July letter someone very surprisingly unsubscribed.  He’s a good friend and has asked me to help him build his business.

Solution:  I sent him an email letting him know I was surprised, wondering if he might have unsubscribed in error, which is easy to do.  His response was, “I went through and unsubscribed to facebook, twitter, and 18 other items.  Time to clean house.  Nothing personal.”   He asked me to stay in touch.  Hmmm – have to mull that over a bit.

• If none of my suggestions suited you and you still have the overwhelming need to unsubscribe to a mailing from someone you know, try to ease the pain for the sender.

Example:  One was recently received from a prominent business man and friend whom I’ve featured on my website in the past.

Solution:  This person took the time to write a reason for unsubscribing which I appreciated.  Here’s what he wrote – “Sorry, but I do not read the newsletter and I’m trying to eliminate unnecessary e-mails.  Thank you!”  I smiled in appreciation for his honesty!  You might try doing the same thing.

A very special THANK YOU to all of you have made it this far on my blog.  I have received many kind emails expressing appreciation for my messages.  You make all of this effort worth it for me.  I sincerely appreciate your uplifting remarks and most importantly, I appreciate that you are in my life.

One last bit of suggested advice.  I would love to have you make your comments on my blog.  When playing the game of social media, comments are important.  This applies to all of those lucky folks, like me, who have you as a friend!!