Big news: I am reintroducing a no-cost newsletter. I had up to four per month from May 1997 until the end of last year, and I realized a few things in these months of not doing it:
1. I missed it.
2. Not enough of you wanted to pay, and the amount of work I was doing to support the members and subscribers was just as much as it had been before I went to a paid model, but the revenue that would have compensated me wasn’t there.
3. Doing a newsletter offers benefits not only to you, but also to me–and I was not receiving those benefits.
4. There is no way I’m going back to four newsletters a month. If I am going to make a newsletter work, it has to be simple to do and not nearly as time-consuming.
So…instead of having three marketing and business newsletters every month plus one for the consumer market, I’m simplifying and consolidating. I will do a single marketing newsletter every month, called Clean and Green Marketing. If you subscribed to Frugal Marketing Tips, Positive Power of Principled Profit, or Book Marketing Tip of the Month, your subscription is automatically transferred over (that’s why you’re receiving this). Frugal Fun Tips, my consumer publication, will not be brought back–but you can find a lifetime’s worth of frugal fun ideas in my $8.50 e-book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist.
The articles will be shorter, and there will be fewer of them. Each regular issue (published between the 5th and 10th of every month) will have at least one of the following:
A practical, hands-on marketing tip
Profile of a Green/ethical company
“Think piece” on trends in business and marketing
Review of a book or other resource worth knowing about
My guess is that most issues will have one, maybe two main articles. I’m starting this incarnation with two.
You’ll also get the usual side features: my upcoming speeches (both live and virtual), new content on the website, and offers from friends and colleagues who want to help you. Once in a while, I’ll probably update you on what media have covered me or on new special projects I’m working on.
Going down to one regular issue a month does mean that you may get additional mailings from me when there’s a time-sensitive opportunity I don’t want you to miss. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of extra times a month, and many months there won’t be any at all. But if there’s something that could help you but would be stale by the next issue, I want you to know about it.
May I Send You the New Subscriber Bonuses?
New subscribers to the Clean & Green Marketing list get several bonuses–and I want to make sure you can get the bonuses, too!
Seven Tips to Gain Marketing Traction as a Green Guerrilla (this is some stuff you won’t see elsewhere). This brief Special Report will immediately get you thinking differently about marketing…and the monthly newsletter will provide actionable tips, reviews of resources, and profiles of companies doing it right.
Also, Seven Weeks to a Greener Business: Once a week for seven weeks, you’ll get a one-page press release, covering (in order):
- Green printing (eight specific steps)
- Saving energy (six steps)
- Reducing waste (ten ideas)
- Conserving water (five ideas)
- Green transportation (six steps)
- Deep-Green measures (six steps)
- Effective Green marketing (six ideas)
Sign up here to get your bonuses: http://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/clean-green-marketing
We Beat the Mountain: Clean & Green Spotlight, August 2010
Some companies are just discovering that taking sustainability measures actually increases profits, and therefore they may as well join the gang. Other companies have sustainability as a core value; it’s built into their DNA. And some, like this moth’s Spotlight business, are designed from the ground up to move us toward sustainability; it’s the reason they’re in business in the first place..
We Beat the Mountain is a company formed specifically to create markets for recycled products and thus reduce the “mountain” of trash piling up at landfills. Thus, the rather odd-sounding name actually does make sense.
Click here to continue reading.
Another Recommended Book: Growing America by David A. Kidd
Growing America: The Story of a Grassroots Activist, A Call for Renewed Civic Action, by David A. Kidd, “The Tree Man”
If you think one person can’t make a difference in the world read this book. David A. Kidd is personally responsible for reforesting his Ohio county; he organized a massive community effort that planted three million trees over a ten-year period, involving thousands of people in the process.
Click here to continue reading.
Great Resources: Friends Who Want to Help
Market Me Tweet
If you follow me on Twitter, you might notice that for the last couple of weeks, most of my Tweets don’t come from TweetDeck anymore. Instead, they’re from an application called “ShelHorowitzGreen&EthicalMarketing.” What magic strings did I pull to set that up? None whatsoever, and I can’t program anything more complicated than a QuicKeys macro so you can bet I didn’t write the code for this.
The secret is Market Me Tweet, a nifty little program that lets you create an application, in Twitter’s eyes, just by copying a few lines of code once. It takes maybe ten minutes to set up, and after that, all your Tweets carry your own brand. You just post them, using an implication interface for both Twitter and Facebook very similar to TweetDeck (though, I confess, not quite as elegant). In my case, with my goal of becoming nationally and internationally known as a go-to commentator for green business issues, the ability to reinforce that with every Tweet is very powerful—especially now that Google is indexing Tweets. If you figure you might use Twitter for the next ten years,a lifetime membership will cost you twelve bucks a year. If you purchase any advertising at all, you’ know how ridiculously cheap that is. But if that’s too much to convince you, go get the first month for $15 and see how you like it. Tammy Fennel, head of the company, offers a 30-day money-back guarantee anyhow, so you have nothing to lose.
GoShort URL
You might also notice that some of the URLs I use in this newsletter and on my various social media sites point back to one of my own domains, ShelHorowitz.com. As an example, if you hover your cursor over the link for Market Me Tweet, you’ll see that the actual link is http://shelhorowitz.com/go/MktMTweet. This has a number of advantages: First of all, it provides “link juice” to me instead of some other site, and makes my site a good deal more important in Google’s eyes. Especially if my posts get retweeted or copied to a resource blog, or one of my social media pages—but probably even if they get harvested by a yucky spammy splogger site.
Second, it’s a built in URL shortener, much more convenient to use than monstrosities like blog post URLs. As an example, my most recent blog post as I write this has this lovely and convenient URL (NOT!): http://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/faked-photos-no-end-to-bps-stupidity/2010/08/02/
And third, it makes it much harder for anyone to hijack any affiliate URLs I happen to use (and yes, both of these resources are affiliate links). Yes, it’s a common practice for unscrupulous marketers to knock out someone else’s affiliate code and substitute their own. (Can you say Eeeeeew?)
Finally, it’s written by Will Bontrager, whom I’ve known online for about 15 years and always found to be a person of great integrity as well as a skilled programmer. He’s done a ton of great utilities over the years.
Want to get your own? Conveniently enough, it’s at http://shelhorowitz.com/go/GoShort
Help Dr. Mani Help Child Heart Patients in India
My Indian friend Dr. Mani is not only a successful Internet marketer, but also a famous pediatric heart surgeon. A large percentage of his Internet income goes to fund surgery for kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get this life-saving surgery. He’s just released a new version of his Think, Write, Retire, a very nice guide to infoproduct marketing online. His official launch starts August 15, but I’m jumping the gun since I won’t have an issue then–and you don’t have to wait to get the $123.85in incentives.
Hear and Meet Shel, August 2010
Click here to access all the links for more information about these events.
* Friday, August 6, 1:35 pm ET/10:30 a.m. PT (and Arizona time, which is where Hollis is), Hollis Chapman interviews me over Blog Talk Radio on Green Guerrilla Marketing, 30 minutes.
* Friday, August 6, 4 pm ET/1 pm PT, Maureen Kedes from Vertex PR interviews me, also on Green marketing.
* Friday, August 20 ,1-1:25 p.m., “Reaching the Green Consumer.” Boston GreenFest (the entire event takes place August 19-21, 2010). One of the cool things about this event will be a display of cars that traveled 100 miles (from Greenfield, MA, near me) on a single gallon of gas.
* Tuesday, September 7, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT, Lillian Brummet interviews me on Conscious Discussions Radio (646) 478-4758
* Monday, September 20, live interview for CreateChatter.tv 9 pm ET/6 pm PT
* Tuesday, September 21, Ronda Del Boccio (The Story Lady) interviews me about Green marketing (90 minutes). Noon ET/9 a.m. PT. Listen in by calling 646-478-0823 (it will be featured for a week).
* Monday, September 27, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT: Sandy Lawrence interviews me on the creating book marketing strategies we used for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.
* Wednesday. September 29 at 5pm ET/2 pm PT, Dave Mathison from Be The Media interviews me about green guerrilla marketing (postponed from July).
* October 2, I’m speaking at the second annual Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York City
* October 12 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT: My third annual presentation to the MUSE Online Writers Conference. This time, Selling a Self-Published Book to a Traditional Publisher
* October 13, I’ll be interviewed again for the Guerrilla Marketing Association’s weekly calls–this time by Alexandru Israil from Romania, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
Shel Horowitz
Accurate Writing & More, 16 Barstow Lane , Hadley, MA 01035, United States
