Video Fridays #24 – Catching Up

Seth Godin has a great blog post on how to catch up if your company (or agency) has not embraced technology as a means for communication. It’s not too late!

One of the points he makes includes using bulk email tools and he mentions MailChimp specifically. Email marketing through tools such as MailChimp can be a low-cost communication tool that you should be using. A few advantages of using a bulk email marketing software tool versus your MS Outlook account includes more formatting options, better list management, and less occurrence of your email landing in a spam folder, thus placing your domain on a blacklist. Many of these companies have a nonprofit discount that isn’t listed on their website.

Here’s a video on how to integrate MailChimp into your social media tools.

Other major bulk email marketing companies, in no order, include:

MailChimp
Mad Mimi
Bronto
Verticle Response
Constant Contact
iContact

And a comparison chart of ten of the top email marketing tool features can be found here.

If you already use one or more of these tools, tell us which ones and your impressions of them in our comment section.

Why I Tweet and other items…

WSJ
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a great story today on Twitter and how it indicates leadership. The story also explains how Twitter allows anyone to follow you (although you may block them) versus Facebook in which only your friends may follow you.

Zappos
The story also mentions a blog post by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com. Tony wrote an insightful post on the important role that Twitter has played in his company’s ability to connect with his customers. Tony is considered an innovator in the field of customer service and his use of Twitter is evidence of it.

How do you think it could benefit you reaching out to your customers?

Email and Social Networking
In other news, Read Write Web reports that Social Networking is now more popular that email. Their story includes this nice chart

from http://www.ReadWriteWeb.com

Now there is a different view point about email still being an important tool. It can drive people to your website and your social media efforts. Amy Sample Ward posts on her web site regarding a webinar series on stepping up your email marketing.

Arc Chapters on Twitter
Finally I want to give a hat tip to two arc chapters that have active Twitter accounts –

• The Arc of Albany in Albany, GA @AlbanyARC
• The Arc of Hamilton County, OH (Cincinnati) @TheARChc