Business Toolbox: How to Standardize Your E-mail Signature

E-mail is the workhorse of communication for your business. It’s likely to be your first point of personal contact with prospective customers as well as your go-to vehicle for conducting day-to-day conversations with existing clients. As a result, your e-mail signature is an important – but all too often overlooked – extension of your brand. Just as you wouldn’t mail a letter or a proposal printed on any old paper stock, you should give equal consideration to creating and implementing a standardized corporate e-mail signature. However, this is where things get a little tricky. While your e-mail signature serves as your electronic business card, it doesn’t play by the same rules of branding that govern your stationery, website design or even participation in social media networks. Here are five common misconceptions that can lead you astray when crafting your signature:

1. If I’m going to represent my brand, I must include my logo.

According to conventional thinking, your company’s brand and logo are one and the same. However, as counterintuitive as it might seem, it is best not to include your logo in your e-mail signature. Why? Because it is difficult to control how images are interpreted and displayed by different e-mail clients. Most e-mail applications either store images as attachments or block them, resulting in a broken image. Therefore, if you construct your signature around a logo, and that image frequently is not displayed, it compromises the consistency and professionalism that you are trying to achieve. The best, most universally replicable alternative is to integrate your corporate colors in your signature, albeit with restraint. For example, you might choose to display your company name in one of your corporate colors, which will make it the most prominent element while also employing one of the primary elements of your visual brand.

2. Personality, personality, personality...it’s all about personality, right?

In marketing, yes. On Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you’ll never get anywhere without personality. However, when it comes to e-mail, make sure your messages are friendly and personable, but keep your signature strictly professional. The one and only purpose of an e-mail signature is to let the recipient know who sent the message and provide a way for them to get in touch with you. You might think it’s fun to include your favorite quotation in every e-mail, but in doing so, you run the risk of unknowingly offending a client or prospect. And never include any non-company-related information in your corporate e-mail signature. Not a link to your personal blog, not the URL of your side-project website, not your Facebook, Twitter or Skype details. That’s only asking for trouble.

3. It’s important to make a lasting impression.

The only impression you want your e-mail signature to make is professionalism. If your clients remember your signature and not the point of your message, there’s a problem. Don’t give into the temptation to experiment with large, bold or multi-colored text. Don’t try to use the typeface from your logo; more often than not, it won’t be displayed properly by the recipient’s e-mail client. Stick with simple, plain, web-safe fonts in the same size as the body of your message, and you can’t go wrong. Returning to the example of mailing a letter or a proposal, there’s a reason you would never print your correspondence on multi-colored florescent paper. Like your letterhead, your signature should reflect the legitimacy and gravity of your business-related communication. It should never compete with your message or in any way distract from the information you need to convey.

4. I need to make sure that my clients can reach me by any and every means necessary.

There’s no question that great customer service is a key competitive edge in today’s marketplace. And it’s understandable why giving your clients your direct office line, 800 number, cell phone, fax number, IM handle, mailing address and LinkedIn profile would seem to convey that you are accessible at their convenience through any number of channels. However, a much better way to serve your clients is to provide the one method of contact through which they can almost always reach you. Most of the time, this will be a phone number (pick one: work or mobile). Then, rather than having to sift through a dozen different means of communication to identify the one they need or play guessing games about which one will connect them to you in the most expedient manner, it will be right there for them to find at a glance. As a rule, there’s no need to include your fax number or your mailing address in your e-mail signature. In the unlikely event that your client needs to send you something by fax or mail, you can either include this information in the body of your message, or they can jump over to your website, where these details should always be readily available.

5. I want to drive traffic to my blog / encourage people to follow me on Twitter / promote a limited-time offer.

These are all great marketing objectives. However, you must always keep in mind that e-mail is, first and foremost, a platform for communication between one human being and another. You wouldn’t wrap up a phone conversation with your client by asking them to be your friend on Facebook, and you wouldn’t conclude a sales meeting by making a blatant plug for your blog. Your e-mails aren’t billboards for your marketing message du jour; always keep it personal and professional. Including your website URL in your signature is a good way to indirectly promote your business, its presence on various social media networks and targeted marketing efforts without cluttering up your e-mail messages. If your customer or prospect clicks through to your site, they should be presented with all of these options – most likely before they ever leave the cover page.

Best practices for a professional e-mail signature

Follow these tried-and-true guidelines to ensure your e-mail signature is polished, professional and customer-friendly:

• Focus on providing only the most essential information about who you are and how you can be reached in an effective and unobtrusive way.
• Limit your signature to four lines (the accepted standard), with a maximum of 72 characters per line to optimize how it is displayed in different e-mail applications. Combine different types of information on one line by using pipes (|) to separate the text.
• Typically, you should include only your name, job title, company, primary method of contact and corporate web address. Don't repeat your e-mail address in your signature.
• Write out the URL for your company website rather than using hyperlinked text.
• Create different signatures for different purposes. For example, you might have one version for e-mails you send to vendors that includes your office line and another for client correspondence that provides your cell number.
• Always add a signature to replies, but include fewer details. For example, whereas your primary e-mail signature would most likely include your name, position, company name, contact information and web address, your reply signature might provide only your name, primary form of contact and web URL.
• Don’t include a legal disclaimer unless required to do so. The best practice is not to transmit confidential information in plain text in e-mails because that information could easily be extracted or forwarded.
• Use a signature delimiter to create visual separation between your signature and the body of your e-mail. The standard protocol recognized by most e-mail clients is two hyphens followed by a space and a line break (-- ).
• Don't use HTML formatting, as it can interfere with how your signature is displayed in some e-mail clients.
• Simple, plain text in the same size as the body of your e-mail is best. Employ bold or colored text very sparingly for emphasis, and use only your corporate colors.
• Don't use an image as your signature, and avoid including images in your signature.
• Be sure to test your signature in as many different e-mail clients as you can (including web-based applications like Gmail). Don't forget to also check how your signature looks when forwarded to ensure that all lines wrap correctly.

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Writer’s Block Be Gone! 9 Sources to Mine for Endless Blogging Ideas

“Content is king!” is the chief mantra of today’s marketing. And in the king’s service, many a business has begun blogging with fervor, only to have those efforts languish a few weeks or months later as the novelty wears off before the long-term benefits kick in. The challenge facing any business blogger is not only to produce top-quality content that people will love and share but also to establish a regular rhythm of publishing new content over time in order to build a following and develop a community around the brand. Perhaps you’re a sole proprietor – and therefore a solo blogger – juggling too many responsibilities and too little time. Or maybe you’ve been handed the torch of managing your company’s blog, and you have no clue where to begin. Perhaps you’ve been blogging for your company for some time now and are starting to feel the well of inspiration running dry. Wherever you currently stand on the blogging spectrum, don’t give up. Great content ideas are all around you; you just have to know where to look to find them.

Here are nine reliable sources you can always turn to whenever you need inspiration for that next great post:

1. Your company documents

In the course of doing business, your company cranks out tons of documents. While many of these might seem boring or commonplace, there are seeds of inspiration to be found if you look hard enough. Has someone from your company recently given a presentation at a conference or hosted a webinar? Find a way to mold the content into article form, and embed a video or audio recording (if available) for those who’d prefer to watch or listen rather than read. Has your company published an ebook or whitepaper? You’re in luck! Take that content and break it down into bite-sized snippets for near-ready-made posts. Even the most mundane documents can yield surprising gems. Your company’s annual report, for example, probably highlights the past year’s major accomplishments. Seek out the individuals responsible and interview them about the process of reaching those milestones. Ask them to share lessons learned along the way and advice that would be helpful to others (without giving away any trade secrets, of course). Transcribe your sessions and – just like that – you can check another blog post off your list.

2. Your coworkers

Every person within your organization brings a unique set of skills, experience, interests and expertise to the table. Tap into that brain trust to keep your blog humming with an interesting and diverse array of content. Recruit your coworkers to write posts inspired by their own particular strengths and areas of expertise. Different minds think differently, so you’ll likely discover that they’ll explore ideas that might never have occurred to you. Plus – as a bonus – having many voices and perspectives represented on your company’s blog will only make it that much more useful and appealing to readers.

3. Your customers

If you’re doing your job right, your customers are your blog’s readers. But they can also be an invaluable source of its content as well. After all, who’s better qualified to share creative and practical ideas for how your products or services can be used to make someone’s life (or business) better, easier, richer or more efficient? For example, Evernote regularly features customer interviews on its corporate blog as a way to tout the limitless possibilities its suite of apps offers for personal organization and productivity. Within each post, Evernote includes screen shots from the featured customer to demonstrate the software in action. The firm has even taken this approach one giant leap further, recruiting their best customers as brand ambassadors in areas relative to their particular expertise. For example, they’ve instituted a food blogger as their Home Cooking Ambassador, a workout guru as their Fitness Ambassador and a personal tech expert as their Parenting Ambassador.

4. Studies, surveys and polls

If there’s one thing we’ll never be lacking in today’s information age, it’s data. Every day, new research is being published on any number of topics. Find a recent study that’s relevant to your audience and digest what the results mean for them in practical terms. Do the numbers indicate a shift in trends? If so, how should your readers adapt their approach to stay ahead of the curve? Does the research suggest that the status quo is here to stay? If so, how can your readers respond to make the most of a proven winner?

5. News headlines and pop culture trends

A sure way to spice up any blog post is to find a tie-in to current news headlines and pop culture trends. The trick is to take two seemingly unrelated concepts – such as comedian Louis C.K. and customer service – and create an analogy that brings them together in a way that offers a fresh perspective on a topic that’s been covered countless times before. Whether it’s The Amazing Spider-Man or the Olympics, Tom Cruise or the presidential election, by linking subject matter that may seem either unfamiliar or unoriginal to something very familiar and timely, suddenly your topic – no matter what it is – becomes much more relatable and of the moment to your reader.

6. The calendar

Life – and business even more so – is cyclical. With every year comes tax season, summer vacation, the holiday rush and the lull that follows, a new year and new budgets...you get the idea. Think critically about what types of challenges each season brings for your readers, and write timely posts centered around useful tips and advice to help them through.

7. Your own blog

Just because you’ve written about a certain topic before doesn’t mean it’s off the table now. There’s always more to say or a different angle to explore. Perhaps the original was an entry-level, 101-style post. Now it’s time to delve deeper to help those readers who’ve mastered the basics and are ready to learn more. Perhaps enough time has passed since the previous post that new research has been released on the topic, or industry trends have shifted in a different direction. Revisit the topic and bring your readers up to speed on the latest developments.

8. Other blogs

You never have enough time in the day. Guess what? Neither do your readers. Sometimes the best way to solve both of these problems is not to create new content but to curate the great content that already exists. What does that mean? It means aggregating the best, most useful posts that you’ve found in your travels across the Web into a single post (giving due credit to the original sources, of course). This type of article can be organized either around a central theme (e.g. “Pinterest: 10 Articles to Help You Get Started”) or by timeframe (e.g., a “Week in Review” round-up of your favorite articles from the past seven days). Either way, you’ve done your readers a great service by sparing them the time to cull through all the riffraff to get to the good stuff, and you’ve published another great post that required minimal time and effort to compose.

9. You

We began with one mantra, so let’s finish with another: “Write what you know.” The best source of blogging inspiration will always be your own life experience. Readers engage more with true-to-life stories of obstacles overcome or goals achieved. Generally, if something triggers an emotional response from you – whether it’s excitement, anxiety, frustration or curiosity – you’re likely not the only one who’s encountered this situation or felt this way, which means it’s worth considering how to spin the event into a relevant article for your company’s blog. Also, you can harness personal challenges to put yourself in the shoes of your readers. For example, this article was inspired by my own strategizing process for a new company blog – how would I keep the content flowing when the obvious ran out? Keep in mind, too, that there are certain basic building blocks of life and of business that are universal. Every person who owns a business, for example, has to figure out how to win new customers, what they can do to grow their market share, the best way to manage employees and company resources, etc. If your target readers are business owners and entrepreneurs, any wisdom you have to offer in these areas based on your own personal experience will be appreciated. And don’t be afraid to share your failures as well as your successes; both offer equally valuable lessons for your readers. To make the most of life’s inspirational moments, practice actively paying attention to the events of your day-to-day routines. Keep a running log of content ideas – whether it’s in a physical notebook or just a simple text file that lives on your desktop. As you go through your day, write down every minor annoyance and small victory. Doing so will help train your mind to be aware, and soon you’ll discover that you’re finding blogging inspiration in even the most unexpected places.

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