Here is this week’s most oft-asked question:

“In social media, how do you separate your personal life from your professional life?”

photo credit: Kelly Hau Photography

The questioners explain that they thought LinkedIn was professional and FaceBook was personal — but now that people are using FaceBook for professional reasons — what is one to do? (And what about separating Twitter accounts: one for personal, one for professional?)

The answer: Think in terms of your “personal brand.”

What is your brand personality? Quick! Name your three personal brand attributes. Don’t know what they are? Find your personal brand attributes with an easy exercise! In branding exercises, we know that “your brand is what people say it is.” Find out what your customers, prospects, and markets are saying about you — that’s your personal brand. Balance this with the image you’d like to project to the world.

When you know your personal brand attributes cold, go to FaceBook. (Or LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, your blog, et. al.)

Before you post hastily, ask yourself,

“Is the content I’m about to post consistent with my personal brand attributes?”

If it isn’t, don’t post!

Your brand is what people say it is. You may not like it, but when you participate in social media, you have a personal brand.

Choose to present your brand wisely! Future employers are listening. Your customers are listening. Your prospects are listening.

Represent!

Be yourself!

Be your best self.

I love my friends and family dearly. And I really like receiving funny emails and jokes from them. It shows they are thinking of me! They want to stay in touch!

But I run a business, and sometimes an email with a 10mg video attachment of sweet Aunt Sally’s cat can prevent me from getting fast access to more pressing business email.

photo credit: Conor Lawless

Email Attachment Abuse

For years, I’ve tried to re-train my “email attachment abusive” friends — with zero success.

In 2006, I even created a 5 minute audio podcast explaining email attachment netiquette.  It worked for about 3 months.

Oh, I could always block abusers for their bad behavior — but I really DO want to keep the lines of communication open with Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob!

photo credit: ™bluhousworker

Some of my business pals suggest that I give out separate email addresses — just for my gravest abusers. But that makes me work extra hard. Further, this only enables their unwittingly bad email manners — and allows abusers to spread their abuse to others!

Stop Enabling Today!

So today, I’m trying something new. We’ll see how it works.

This is what I did, in two easy steps:

1. I set up my inbox rules to automatically delete any email that hits my server that is over a certain size. (I’m not going to publish the size, because abusers can be sneaky — they might want to see just how much they can get away with!
2. I also set my inbox rule to automatically reply with the following message:

I’m sorry, but the email you sent me contained a huge attachment, so I’m not accepting it.

If you want to share a huge file with me (or friends, family, and colleagues that you care about!) please consider using a free service like www.filemail.com instead of sending an attachment.

It’s not just safer — it’s also good 21st century “netiquette”.

Why is this practice more courteous than sending a big attachment?

1. Sending huge attachments chews up email server bandwidth. A huge file can block or delay urgent business email from getting through. Using a service like www.filemail.com converts your big attachment into a tiny link that I can click at my convenience.

2. Friends often want to send me huge “funny” videos and photos. I often don’t have time to view these “right away” — preferring to answer business emails first. When you upload your file to www.filemail.com — (or point to the same video at www.youtube.com for that matter!) — I get to experience your rich content when I have more time.

Thanks for understanding.

What do you think?

Will this work?

Will it end email attachment abuse?

Or will my email confuse and frighten Aunt Sally?

photo credit: kweezy mcG

What’s SPF? When you hear “SPF” you might be thinking “Sun Protection Factor”. (Especially now that it’s spring!)

But last week, I set up SPF email protection for two clients.

When it comes to the internet, SPF stands for “Sender Policy Framework“.

What’s SPF do?

Basically, it tries to keep you from getting burned by email spoofers!

In a brief, SPF — or Sender Policy Framework — helps to cut down on “From Line” spamming. Its aim is to stop the havoc spammers wreak when they decide to put YOUR email address in the “From Line” of their spam.

Last week, one of my clients started to get swamped with “bounces” and “undelivered” emails. A spammer decided to use his email address in the from line. Aggravating!

Fortunately, my client did not have a catchall account — so we shut down the one, lone email account in question for a day, and asked clients to use an alternate email address that we set up until we resolved the situation.

Next, we set up SPF for his mail server using the open SPF Wizard — to help prevent any further email spoofing. Then, we re-opened his email account.

It’s only been 4 days — but both clients have reported a significant reduction in spam since we implemented SPF email protection.

So far, so good…

But how does SPF perform for the long term?

It didn’t take long to set up the SPF setting — a half hour for two clients.

Was it worth the time?

For every piece of legitimate email you receive, how many pieces of spam do you  filter?

Sadly, the  spam/legitimate ratio is frequently +1. And growing.

Sigh.

That’s why I was surprised to see that a few small business folks I hold in high regard still have catchall email enabled at their servers.

Catchall email is a terrible idea. When spammers find out you have a catchall email account (and it usually doesn’t take very long), you can expect an exponential increase in spam. And of course, catchall email account settings can dramatically decrease your efficiency and productivity.

Nonetheless, my colleagues defended their catchall email practice, erroneously believing it a) helps reduce spam and b) increases efficiency! Here are two examples of the flawed thinking behind catchall accounts:

1. “Well, when I sign up for various online accounts, I have to give them an email address. So if I sign up for a Google account, say, I tell ‘em I’m google @ mydomain.com . Or facebook @ mydomain.com. Or whatever. I have zillions of email names. That way, I know if I start getting spam at one of the names, then that’s the company that sold my domain name. I’ll know that they are a bad business, and I’ll block their emails, and report them as spammers.”
2. “And when I create all kinds of email names, I’m more efficient. I set up my inbox to automatically file every piece of email that comes in by email name into different inbox folders.”

Oi. What misconceptions! Let’s clear ‘em up….

1. “From Line” spam is a scourge. When spammers find a “catchall” server, they couldn’t be more delighted. They’ll put any old name at the front part of the email — with a @yourdomain.com ending — so that your catchall server receives all the bounces that jack up server load and bandwidth. If it goes up too high, your host may just shut you down! Further, using a catchall means that you’ll also get all the spam complaints! You can watch your online reputation erode as your server gets blacklisted. Over time, many of your legitimate emails won’t make it through to your clients. And of course, spammers LOVE to use brand names like “Google” and “Facebook” in the “from line” email account — it makes them appear legit! So if you think using brand names as the first part of your email address name will “prove” that companies are selling your email addresses — guess again!
2. More email addresses = much less efficient. There are much, much better ways to organize your email inbox than by “From line”. How about setting up client folders — so that when your clients email you (use their server addresses as the filter), their emails go into that folder? Or set up a Bacn folder, so that Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and other social media updates and requests can be dealt with at a more convenient time? And of course, a catchall account pretty much insures that you’re creating a negative online reputation and creating an atmosphere where spam can multiply exponentially — so there’s nothing “efficient” or “productive” about this practice.

If you’re serious about protecting your online reputation and increasing productivity, re-think your catchall email policy.

Don’t embed YouTube videos (or any other multimedia) into blog posts.

1. Instead, take a screen shot of an engaging frame of the video.
2. Link to the site that hosts it.
3. Ask your readers to watch it at YouTube (or SlideShare or whatever.)

Here’s why I quit embedding: many of my RSS subscribers request email updates instead of online feedreader updates.

Video embeds are slow to download on most email servers. (They slow down the blog, too!)

Try linking out instead of embedding in. This approach is kinder to your customers. It’s “pull” instead of “push”. 

And “not embedding” makes a blog load faster, too! 

Here’s a seven-second example of how it might look to link instead of embed:

Click on the image (yes, it’s a steamrolled tuba), and it takes you to the 7-second video. Push to play…

Simple. Fast. No email problems. No embed issues.

What’s not to like?

If you have an active blog, there might be a much easier way to stay in touch with your customers than writing and delivering e-newsletters.

For starters: Why not put a double-opt-in email script for your blog feed into the sidebar of your blog? That way, when you add a new post to your blog, your subscribers will get your blog content via email. This is often much easier than email newsletter production — especially for folks who blog regularly.

I invite you to subscribe to my blog. If you want to see how this email- subscription thing works, I invite you to email-subscribe to this very blog, right here, right now! Here’s how:

• Enter your email address in my sidebar subscription form. Click the “Subscribe” Button.
• In minutes, you will get an email from “confirmations@emailenfuego.net”.
• This email will ask you if you really want to subscribe — click the link, and you will get regular email updates from me — no more than one per day.

This subscription method is called “double opt-in” — and protects us both from “bad guys” who wreak internet havoc by entering in your email address so that you email you don’t want –and I get flooded with spam complaints. If you don’t want email from me, don’t click the emailenfuego.net link, and you won’t get any. Simple, easy, powerful, automatic protection — for both of us.

Go ahead and subscribe now – and if you don’t like my blog content and want to unsubscribe — you can always do that in one click at the bottom of each email that you receive from me. But you’ll like what you get — little, bite-sized internet marketing morsels that can help grow your online business!

My email subscription box is in my sidebar, at the upper right side of my blog. Thanks for subscribing!

“Should my company do an e-newsletter?”

I cannot count how many times small business clients & prospects have asked me this question! Mostly, clients ask me this after they receive a sales pitch from an email delivery company that promises to handle their list management and design for the low, low price of — oh, say $20 a month or so.

“Wow!” thinks my client. “For only $20 a month, I get to reach my clients! What an internet marketing bargain!”

Not so fast. Twenty bucks is just for starters…

Before you get into the e-newsletter production and sending business, there are at least 3 things you should know:

1. An e-newsletter is a commitment. If you are going to “do an e-newsletter”, be prepared to commit to writing extremely (and I mean extremely) interesting, newsworthy, and relevant content that your clients will be absolutely THRILLED to receive in their email in-boxes. My recommendation to clients: before you plunk down $20 for a technical solution, try WRITING at least 7 fascinating newsletters with top-notch offers. If you don’t have time to write seven, at least plunk down the money for a great writer to draft your seven ideas first. If you can commit to 7 compelling content ideas that actually make it to the screen — and aren’t merely “nice ideas that are in your head that will get written down somehow, someday…” — then you’re demonstrating the kind of commitment it takes to make an e-newsletter program successful.

2. Content is king. Yes, most of the $20-a-month email delivery companies do a fantastic job of list management and keeping you CAN-SPAM compliant. And many companies offer decent design templates that can make email newsletters look polished and professional. But never forget — the most important part of that e-newsletter is your content. The offer is everything. And a $20-a-month email delivery company cannot write your content for you! Before you lay down a dime for an e-news delivery service: write the content first. Trust me, this is an eye-opener. If you can’t write the content, hire a writer. Now! And here’s a helpful hint: if you have an abandoned blog that you started with enthusiasm — but couldn’t find anything to write about after a few weeks — what makes you think your e-newsletter writing campaign will be any different?

3. Inbox overload. We’re all on in-box overload right now. You’ve heard of spam — but company e-newsletters are more like bacn. Bacn is the email you’ve subscribed to — but you often don’t read it. Face it: unless you’ve got the time or inclination to read company emails — you let them pile up in your inbox. Sometimes you delete them before you get around to reading them. Inbox overload is why great written content is absolutely your first priority when starting a company e-newsletter program. If you don’t start your e-newsletter with really, truly riveting news — your email newsletter will never make a significant impact. And that’s why making the commitment to at least 7 is important — because if your enews doesn’t get read — at least you made a “from line” and “subject line” impression before you were dumped into the trash.

Twenty bucks a month is cheap. But be warned – the time and craft and attention it takes to run a successful enewsletter program can be substantial. I cannot count how many times a client has told me that they started a newsletter program…only to abandon it because writing the newsletter was a significant (and I mean huge) time-suck.

Now, all that said: I write and manage successful e-newsletter campaigns for a number of companies. These campaigns are successful only because the client has made a firm commitment to writing and delivering regular content that their subscribers have enthusiastically elected to receive with a double-opt-in methodology. We’ve put “email newsletter” into their communication calendar. We’ve made a budget for it. We have a writer and an editor working on a firm deadline. We have production and delivery schedules.

Bottom line: a successful  email newsletter program is not an ad-hoc, when-we-get-around-to-it kind of thing. It takes a significant commitment and great content. Consider yourself warned!

Face it: anybody can pay $20/a month for a technical solution. It’s the commitment and content that makes an email newsletter campaign a success.

I have long held that (DST Daylight Saving Time) is nonsense. It does not really help us save any time or energy. Oh, perhaps it did in the age of agriculture or industry, but those days are gone. Now, DST is just an annoying habit that we continue to perform for no good reason.

To make matters worse, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, so that Daylight Saving Time lasts four weeks longer.

Naturally, this may foul up your computer’s time clock. Before the weekend, you might want to make sure you have downloaded and installed all the updates you might need for your computer’s operating system.

For Outlook users, Microsoft provides a special set of instructions and outlines the steps you need to take to prepare yourself and your computer for this nutty time shift.

Any supposed gains in energy that DST generates have probably been lost in wasted productivity and the energy it takes to make all these irritating changes.

Yes, I know I sound like an old cranky-pants. But honestly — you cannot save time.

You can only spend it.

Spend it wisely, and you win.

Frittering it away with meaningless actions is a waste of…well, you know.

Time.

Consider this true story:

I received a W9 form from in the mail yesterday. The accompanying letter asked me to fill out my personal info — you know, name, address….

…and Social Security Number!

The letter asked me to fax the completed form to a fax number I did not know, or to alternately mail the completed form to a PO Box I had never heard of. The letter claimed to be from a company I had been working with for years!

Now, I have had a W9 on file with this company for ages. And there was no name attached to the letter. To me, the letter seemed like a phony.

So I checked my client’s website. No such fax. No such address.

Suspicious, I contacted my client to warn him about a phishing scam involving his company.

But instead, my client told me that the letter was indeed legit. At the request of his accountant, he had set up a special fax and PO box to to handle new W9 requirements.

Now, if my client had posted that bit of information at his site, he would cut down on quite a few phone calls from vendors like me!

The new contact info and new IRS rules were definitely not press release worthy — but they WERE impacting his company (he has thousands of vendors.)

Imagine a vendor blog… By posting an update about the new contact information and new W9 requirements, my client could have quashed vendor fears. A blog post is a terrific way to post necessary, searchable information quickly and easily. And while I might misplace an email from the company or have my spamblocker dismiss it as spam, I can always choose to search a company blog for relevant news items that affect my life and livelihood.

Plus, the new info will enhance his online reputation. It’s not cool to be associated with phishing scams!

It IS cool to be informative and proactive. If you have important company news that affects thousands of people, you might want to post it!

And of course, letting the public know how to get in touch with you just plain makes good marketing sense!

In direct response copywriting, we were taught that the pronoun ”you” is the magic word that brings success.

Use the pronoun “you” PLUS your prospects’ name a couple dozen times in your emails, web pages, and direct marketing letters…. and YOU will be rolling in riches!

Well…. sort of.

“You” is important! But consider this…

Over-personalization has become tired and stale. I’m not impressed anymore when I get an email that uses “Laura” a few times throughout the text.

And that thrill I used to get when I received a piece of junk mail with my name in a big red font face?

Well… the thrill is gone for me.

And I will bet that your enthusiasm for these tired personalization tactics has waned, as well.

After all, manipulating a computer database to use my name repeatedly is not really personal.

In 2006, “You” may be Time’s Person of the Year.

But in 2007, You is dead!

So enter the newest, latest word in direct response copywriting….

The pronoun “I” is in!

In the age of the blog, people want real personality more than fake-personalization.

What makes a blog personal is not being assaulted with an endless attack of “you’s.”

Rather, blog readers need to sense the presence and personality of a real writer with a real personality. The best blogs, the most effective direct response letters and emails — they all come from a real human being.

Not a computer.

Not a committee.

One human being with a real voice and a real personality, writing to another.

Using a computer to splash a prospect’s name all over the page isn’t personal. It doesn’t work very well any more: I do not need to be reminded that I am a real person with a real name. And I don’t like the implied threat that my personal information can be manipulated on a database for some marketer somewhere.

The real personalization comes from one real person, talking to another real person.