Yes it is hard to build up momentum on social media sites, but just because it is difficult to get going it is still imperative that you give it a go.

There really is no excuse for not getting involved

It is quick and easy to create a page that can be viewed by millions of people. And you control your own destiny, the more time and effort you put in the more fans you will acquire.

Every day you avoid getting involved is a day wasted…

“How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” – Seth Godin

So let’s hit the ground running and ensure you dedicate some of your time to social media pages each week. You can use this time to tweak the look and feel of the page, interact with clients and potential clients, and if you have the time (or a sudden burst of inspiration!) collate a few ideas for future posts and comments.

Connecting with your audience

Enhance your posts with images, not just any old image but a relevant one preferably! Don’t be afraid to add text, if it is not clear what the image is trying to convey then add a few words. Even if you are repeating what you have said in your post, it is better to make it obvious from the get-go as people are naturally drawn to the images first rather than the text.

Don't let readers invent their own meaning - Annotate any ambiguous images

Another benefit is that your social media page can act as a forum where you interact with your clients. It is clear that just having a page gives you some degree of credibility, if your company name doesn’t appear in a search people are obviously going to wonder why.

Free publicity

Some people argue that social media is the cheapest form of marketing; however it can only be used as marketing tool if someone is putting the effort in to create and maintain a great page!

Team this with the services Nouri.sh offer to really exploit these great tools. Your pages can easily be turned in to RSS feeds and in turn these feeds can be used to produce a newsletter. You will be surprised how many people would love to receive a newsletter summarising all your posts rather than logging on to the social media sites every day.

In recent weeks we’ve received many requests for Featured Nourish newsletters. This month we were delighted to learn the exciting story of Underground Book Reviews and could not wait to share it with you.

Amy, one of the writers answered a few questions to show how they are using Nourish for their email newsletter. Here is how it has been adding value by engaging their readers:

Why did you want a newsletter in the first place? Why did you choose Nourish?
I started Underground Book Reviews last August with three other writers, hoping to help new authors gain exposure and get credit for their hard work. We offer a review and interview every week, and highlight undiscovered and up-and-coming authors. The website has gained a lot of interest in the writing community, and also appeals to adventurous readers and anyone looking for a good read that isn’t mainstream. As we grew, we began to worry that we would lose subscribers due to too many posts.

I use Feedburner, however it sends our subscribers an email every time we do a blog post. With an average of three posts a week, I worried about cluttering subscribers’ inboxes. I started looking at different possibilities, and found that most of the websites that offered a weekly newsletter required payment.

How easy was it to get going with Nourish?
I didn’t have a problem at all! The layout is user-friendly for my purposes. It worked seamlessly with my Feedburner feed. When I addressed Nourish with questions, they immediately responded and were very helpful. It’s rare to find a free online service with such great customer support.

Would you recommend us to friends/ colleagues?
Absolutely! If I had known about Nourish I would have put it on the blog as soon as I started it.

How much has your web traffic increased thanks to Nourish? Do you see any change in figures already?
Traffic has stayed steady, but our subscribers have increased. We usually gain one or two subscribers a week: in the first week we started with Nourish, we gained ten! Many more switched from our daily email option, to the weekly newsletter through Nourish.

How do you intend to promote your newsletter to increase subscribers?
The blog tends to do a pretty good job of self-promotion. With every new book we review, or author we interview, we gain subscribers. If we continue to produce quality work, we expect the blog to grow on its own. However, we’re greedy for more exposure, so we occasionally do promotions with other websites and offer book-related deals to our subscribers. We recently started a series which we call the “Emerging Author Series” in which we bring an aspiring author to the blog as a guest. After the interview or guest post, we ask our subscribers to vote to read a sample of their work. This gives the writer much-needed exposure, and encourages subscription to our blog.

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I’m completely satisfied with the quality here, and the customer service is outstanding. You won’t be losing me any time soon!

Visit Underground Book Reviews to read more.

Offering nice prizes or inviting subscribers to vote is a fantastic way to engage your audience and identify which topics generate more interest.

With any paid level plan, Nourish allows you to create as many different campaigns as you need and segment your subscribers in a way to deliver the most meaningful content to each group. Nourish campaign statistics and integration with Google Analytics provide you with insights into what works well for your newsletter and which aspects you can improve.

I hope you enjoyed today’s story. Let me know how you use Nourish by emailing me at my[at]Nourish. Sharing examples with others is beneficial for your newsletter.

– Remember, I am here to help you get the best out of your Nourish newsletter. Reach out to me if you have questions or suggestions.

Stay creative!
Mariana

Nourish is great for your Social Media strategy

Our customers know it, but we thought you may also want to know just how powerful Nourish really is when it comes to engaging an audience.

You know your business best, however one thing we wanted to make sure you have is a great eNewsletter. We have been developing Nourish as the eNewsletter solution that will empower you to differentiate in your Social Media strategy. Your ‘unfair advantage’.

Here is how…

Nearly all news sources on the web use RSS. How many of your readers familiar with RSS? Who knows?… But the good thing is that almost all of them are familiar with email. So this is where comes Nourish helping you to share your content in the format familiar to your readers.

Unlike other tools Nourish only lets you generate emails from an RSS feed. You can use a single or a combination of RSS feeds to streamline valuable and engaging content to your readers. Different feeds can be used for different campaigns, and even different template can be used for each of your newsletters. For example you can communicate with your clients using a different tone to how you communicate with your suppliers.

Nourish is easy to set up and intuitive. It makes managing a large list of subscribers effortless. The opt-out process, as well as subscribing/unsubscribing to individual campaigns is completely automated. Nourish can take the hassle of you managing any number of subscribers, starting from a personal blog to a large company newsletter.

Only those who have run multiple campaigns know how overwhelming that can be. If you aim to target multiple audiences or promote different products, Nourish has a great deal to offer you. It allows you to run multiple campaigns for segmenting your subscribers. Delivering the most relevant content to each group of your readers can boost your open and click through rates and reduce unsubscribers. Plus you have subscribers’ statistics at hand any time to validate the relevancy in the course of your campaigns to their audience.

Nourish allows you to manage multiple campaigns in one single account. Each campaign you create represents a different newsletter. Nice and simple! Unlike any other service Nourish does not limit the number of campaigns you can have.

We know how important it is for B2B organizations for example to segment their subscribers by industry sector. Your campaigns, and the content you deliver with each may vary on (for example) customer demographics, or by set products or services. Or perhaps you may need to have a more ‘independent’ newsletter featuring content from multiple sources.

It’s also easy to create a form for your website to add subscribers to one or more of your campaigns. We have developed a WordPress plugin called Nouri.sh Newsletter that makes this a simple 2 step process.

With the automated scheduling you are sure that your email campaigns go out at regular intervals, without logging in or any manual intervention from your side. Just set and forget!

And my favourite one: your readers like cool custom templates. Your Nourish emails can have your unique branding for a professional look of your campaigns. We can help with that too, just send your brand ideas to: my [at] nouri.sh

Unlike other similar services, Nourish will not force you to upgrade after a trial. Come join us for free today and keep it free as long as you wish!

Plus one: make sure you invite all your friends and contacts too. We’ll make sure they will also get it for free!

In doing our bit for social media, we’ve created profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, where we plan to discuss new features as well as providing tips and tricks.

Please join us…

• Become a Nourish fan on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter
• Get LinkedIn with us & Please leave us a testimonial

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