Letters From Dan

Some important folks visited my blog this week. I say important because they’re important to me, but it’s not like the guy who invented Oreo’s stopped by to read this stuff. :) They’re stopping by occurred the same time I was working with a new client. And unfortunately the lesson I was trying to teach the client, I hadn’t adopted myself.

In our first meeting together, I was explaining what my role would be. I was explaining how my job was to bring new clients in the door using the internet, how I was going to go about capturing the information about the new clients and then how we were going to keep marketing to them via e-mail or mail or whatever.

Well, it occurred to me while I was there that the local business had a job too.  While it’s my job to get new clients there, it’s the local businesses job to keep them there and leave the door of possibility open that the person would come back.  What I mean by that is their job is to be friendly, clean, current and fair. Even if you have what the client wants, if the place is not inviting – they’ll unsubscribe from our e-mails.

That lesson came back on me. It’s hard to have a dirty blog, but it’s not hard to have outdated information. After getting back from my meeting with them, I took a look at this blog and realized the About Me section is from the first week I started. Lettersfromdan has morphed over time and that part is just not relevant.

What my important visitors thought when they visited, I’m not sure. But I can tell you right now the About Me section doesn’t reflect what I told them I was writing about. So this weekend, it’s time to take my own medicine. You can read the old “About Me” section right here, otherwise, I’m committing to you that all parts of this blog will be up to date.

Thanks for stopping by!

I gotta tell ya, this blog comment magnet is the coolest tool I’ve seen in a long time. There are a lot of tools out there, and some of them are pretty ingenious. I love programs like Market Samurai and Traffic Geyser, and Firefox plug-ins like “Screen Capture Elite” and “Google Global”.

But seldom do I actually promote products. In fact, over the last 2 years I’ve only promoted 3 products. I did so for the P90X Beachbody folks for a while, but with all the informercials they didn’t really need any help.  And then I’ve been a huge fan of GoBrevity (which you can read about here) and SiteBuildit. Those are two great services.

But then today I came across the Maxblogpress Subscribers Magnet, which for some reason I call the blog magnet tool. This is a WordPress plugin that does the work of 3 other things and also does a few things that nothing else can do. I’m going to list out a few things it does, but I really want you to go to their site and see the video.

Just seeing it is enough.

So, should you enable these things, here’s what it can do:

• Add an opt-in floating light box to your site – with a time delay if you want. (Also available in aWeber).
• Add an opt-in form to your sidebar (which is available free with WordPress Plugin)
• Add a “subscribe me” button to the comment form at the end of each blog post (not sure if that’s available elsewhere)
• AUTOMATICALLY fills in the name and e-mail address of your visitors when they arrive at the site. That means they only have to press the “subscribe button”.
• Add an opt-in box to the beginning or end of every post
• Add a floating footer bar at the bottom of screen with newsletter opt-in form embedded
• Silently subscribe anyone that leaves a comment on your blog. They’ll then automatically get a “thank you for leaving a comment” e-mail, along with the “confirm your subscription button.
• Fully customize everything – and it works with AWeber, 1shopping cart and most other opt-in box providers.

I’m not sure if that’s enough or not. The plug-in costs $147, but now you can finally have an e-mail capture strategy, design and tool. Truly an amazing tool – one I’m proud to help promote.

I urge you to check out this sales page of theirs: http://danmorrismarketing.com/blogmagnet – and see for yourself. If you’re a local business and you’re driving traffic to your website, this is the best hands off method to help capture that traffic.

Check it out . . . and take a look at their form below.

I’ve been dabbling with the new “social media” app called Foursquare. It seemed, from the very beginning to be a great app to help small businesses reach new customers.

So I decided I’d not only try it out, I’d jump in and do everything you could do with it so I could really see how small businesses are using it, and perhaps be amongst the first to know of any changes or monetization ideas.

To some degree Foursquare is a game.  For small businesses, that may make it hard to conceptualize as a revenue generator. But the game involves GPS in mobile phones, which means people must find you in order to play.

If you’re small business goal is to increase exposure,  then Foursquare might be a small part of that strategy. From the game perspective, that only works if checking into your business contributes to the player achieving a Foursquare goal like attaining a new Foursquare Badge.

(By the way, it’s really a mobile phone scavenger hunt where “badges” are the prize and “check-ins” are the requirements.)

So far some big companies have been able to get their own badges, like Lucky Mag, Explore Chicago, Mountain Dew and Zagat’s. For the small business, that hasn’t been an option.

But the other side of Foursquare is where small businesses have made some headway.  The person who checks in the most times at an establishment gets labeled as the “Mayor” of that location. Places like Starbucks are honoring Mayors with 15% off at the register.  Get your customers competing to be the Mayor – and perhaps you’ll increase the number of times your regulars show up.

For some businesses (like this one), Foursquare has been a tremendous asset to their bottom line.  But the ease of “check-ins” make me wonder.

In my quest to get all the badges being offered by companies and Foursquare, I’ve noticed a few things.

1. You can check-in without going inside and sometimes being as far a city block away. Occassionaly I ran into a pop-up that said “Whoa, you’re too far away to check-in”, but it is rare.
2. You can drive around like in a scavenger hunt and check-in at all the places you need to. (Though there is a pop-up if you check in to several too quickly).
3. If you’re GPS shows you to be somewhere else, because of a glitch, you can check-in wherever your phone thinks you are. But if your GPS rights itself and you check in again locally, you’ll get a “Whoa, you couldn’t possibly have traveled that fast” pop-up.
4. Finally, it’s hard to check-in if you’re business is in a building that inhibits your phone GPS from working. That’s the most frustrating part.

There’s little downside to listing your business on Foursquare. Probably the very best thing is knowing that anytime someone checks in within a 1,000 meters, they have a chance to see that you’re a nearby business – which they may have never known before.

If you’re “playing” foursquare and have some ideas for small businesses – leave them here and let’s chat about them!