Using Social Media and Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

By G. L. Giddings, Chairman and CEO, GLG and Associates, LLP®
(The POWER Group Organization Team®)

Social Media isn’t just for updating your friends and sharing your latest photos; it can help you grow your business! I use it daily to help GROW my marketing team across the U.S. and Canada.

Recently, Facebook approached its 700-millionth signup. You don’t even have to tweet to enjoy Twitter. Whether you tweet 100 times a day (please don’t) or never, you still have access to information about what interests you. Many people like myself simply use Twitter as a way to keep up with friends and acquaintances, share the latest information on your interests, and to keep potential prospects and clients updated on various events, promotions, and services.

According to a SocialWare survey, 79% of the largest Fortune 500 firms use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, or corporate blogs to communicate with customers and others. And 69% of them report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits from social technologies, including more effective marketing, more innovative products and services, better access to knowledge, lower costs of doing business, and higher revenues.

To read the entire article, click here: http://www.venturestreet.com/thepgoteam/articles/ 

Getting To Inbox Zero - How To Stop Drowning In Email

Posted by Nitasha Tiku

Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet doesn't blame you for tweeting when you get to inbox-zero. "It feels good getting to that magical place." Sabet offers a few comment now on his blog, and his savvy followers chime in with their own. For starters: Watch how many e-mails you send out--they tend to invite responses. Delete e-mails you never want to see again. Tweet or blog while you're on vacation--it's more of a deterrent against would-be inbox cloggers than an "out-of-office" auto-responder. And, finally, never get into a serious debate from your inbox.

SoundCloud founder David Noel manages 6 e-mail inboxes for his company. In the comments, he recommends answering immediately then archiving or deleting, marking with a star if you need to follow-up, and only keeping e-mails in your inbox that you intend to answer that day. Turkish VC Cem Sertoglu has started using direct mails on Twitter in lieu of short e-mails. DigiSpeaker owner Jon Smirl says in Gmail, the trick is two inboxes. Set the top one to "is:unread" and the bottom to your normal inbox and filter subscription items so that they are set to archive and bypass your inbox.

To read the entire article, click here -
http://www.inc.com/staff-blog/2010/01/yelp_bags_50_mi.html