Author: Damian Davila

Ideas and concepts from Damian Davila, Ecuatoriano thriving in Hawaii. Pro marketer and blogger. Find him at @idaconcpts on Twitter.

Google+ Continues Attempts to Start Major Trends in the Social World

google+ google plus major trends

Google+, the social media product of the search behemoth Google, has made several changes recently in an effort to court new users and to continue developing the product as a key social tool. Some of the most recent developments include the interface overhaul, which has received a lot of criticism for the large amounts of white space left on the screen. There has been speculation that Google could potentially announce a product that will end up filling that space on users’ screens. Other changes include additions to the navigation bars and the ability to drag and drop links to other areas of the platform.

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How to Build an Email List

how to collect emails

After learning know how to select an email marketing provider, it is important to establish how you are going to build email lists for your campaigns.

From this eMarketer data from 2005 and 2008, you can see that people are comfortable with receiving emails that they have registered with. Even though they may not read it right away, they will still save those emails for review at a later time.

Hence, it is important to learn how to build an email list for your campaigns. Here are 4 ways how to do it.

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How to Name an Image for SEO Purposes

how to name image fileWhen optimizing your site for SEO purposes there are several considerations to take into account. One that is often overlooked is the importance of optimizing the naming conventions of your site’s images.

Here is a guide how to achieve this.

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The (Forgotten) Power of Email

forgotten power of email

When working with business both in Hawaii and around the world, clients are often interested in jumping into social media. The conversation usually starts with a social media channel and how they can jump into it (e.g. “My friends told me about Facebook and they think it is the best way for me to reach potential customers. How can I get started?). Clients arrive with a correct answer to the wrong question. They are starting with the solution instead of focusing on the problem at hand.

During the first meeting with a client, the first step that we take is to forget about their preselected social media channel and analyze what is the challenge or objective that they want to tackle. After taking this step back and concentrating on strategy, I surprise my clients in making a recommendation for email. Here are a couple reasons why.

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Create a Mail Merge from Existing Excel List

letter from excel list

Creating a Mail Merge from an existing list, especially when that list is being imported from Excel, is really quite an easy task.

So easy, even Santa could do it.

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Overview of Twitter Ads [Prices, Screenshots, Terms]

twitter with american express

Small businesses based in the United States now have the chance to take their Twitter marketing efforts to a new level. Starting in late March 2012, Twitter introduced a new advertising offering that makes it simple for companies of any size to grow their businesses using Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products.

Twitter partnered with American Express to make it easy for small business owners to advertise on Twitter. American Express Cardmembers and merchants based in the U.S. were invited to try this new advertising solution before anyone else, and American Express gave $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 eligible businesses to sign up.

idaconcpts.com is one of those 10,000 and it just received its invitation on 05/21/12:

you're invited to twitter ads
You're invited to Twitter Ads email.

Here is an overview of Twitter Ads for small business owners.
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How to Use Mail Merge Lists in Word

mail merge word

I don’t know about you, but many a time I have opened up a new Word document only to be met with the old familiar feeling of intimidation. There are so many fantastic features that seem to be hidden away in an endless array of tool bars and drop down menus.

This intimidation surely has no place. Microsoft has done a wonderful job of making all features of their Office products rather user friendly. My first attempt at completing a mail merge was timid and slow as I familiarized myself with the process and its features. Once familiarized however, this process has become second nature.

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How to Use the Mail Merge Feature in Word

how to use mail mergeThe Microsoft Mail Merge feature and I have a love-hate relationship. About twelve years ago, while I was employed as an intern for a consular service, I was asked to draft a letter that was to be mailed to five hundred people. I was given a list of addresses on a sheet of paper and asked to print the letters and envelopes after drafting them in a Word document and send them on their way. I was given two days to complete this task along with the excessive amount of other work I was to keep up on simultaneously.

I spent hours typing out each address and copying and pasting the content of the letter into each document prior to sending the envelopes and letters to print. Imagine the anger I felt when upon completing the project with little time to spare, my boss pointed out that I could have used the Excel version of the address list and the mail merge feature to have completed the task in a fraction of the time.

So you see, I love the mail merge feature for its ability to simplify my life immensely, but I hate it for not having introduced itself sooner.

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