Tips for best e-newsletter practice

E-mail newsletters are about more than making customers aware of events. You need to personalize them and send them out on a regular basis in order to make them feel genuine and to keep them from making it to the SPAM folder. Use intriguing headlines, but short headlines, and put the most important information "above the fold." Provide features and stories, how-to's, anything that isn't just boring events. Give readers a reason to open the email, and give them an even better reason to read the email and click on its links.

Harmony Wheeler would like to share a passage from Breaking the Fifth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century "If you're really committed to building a relationship with your patrons, you've got to send them engaging, relevant, and timely information that will grab their attention and bring them closer to your organization. You're going to need to think beyond the common practice of sending "e-mail blasts" that go out at the last minute to drive ticket sales"

Successful businesses use social networking sites, study finds

From the Boston Herald:

A new study from the University of Massachusetts’ Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research finds that the top thriving companies nationwide are rapidly turning to social networking sites, relying on them as a marketing tool that is no longer considered a nuisance — but a virtue — in the workplace.

Read more at the Boston Herald.

Newspapers are not dying: Washington Post finds new way to gain revenue

The Washington Post has opened its own Facebook marketing management service called SocialCode. The service offers to manage fan pages, Facebook ads, and more.

A few things to think about:

• Newspapers are not dying. News is changing mediums, but there will always be a need for reliable information, and papers like the Post are finding new ways to make money. So, while you may not want to focus all your efforts on pitching press releases to newspapers, don't write them off entirely. You can pitch to a particular writer, just like you would pitch to a specific blogger.
• There are more and more of these companies showing up. If you don't have the resources to manage your own Facebook strategies, perhaps you should consider using one.
• If enough businesses are offering these management services, there's obviously something worth using on Facebook. Why don't you give it a try?

Do you use Facebook to market your business or product? How do you take advantage of management services or of Facebook in general?

Read more about the new service on Inside Facebook.

Interacting with Your Public: Disney Memories and User-Generated Content on Facebook

Many news outlets have made themselves more successful by pursuing and allowing citizen journalism. It seems Disney Resorts has had a similar idea. The company has created a Facebook page design specially for Disney fans to share their Disney parks memories in the form of text, photos and videos.

Called "Disney Memories," the application gives the average everyday person the opportunity to feel in charge, to feel special, to feel, as Mickey Mouse would put it, like they're in the "happiest place on earth."