Business Article Roundup - Dec 23

How Etsy Gambles with Your Livelihood - 5 ways to protect yourself - this is a recent post from blogger Lisa Jacobs, who focuses on handmade and creative businesses.

How to Create a Style Guide for Your Blog - although this is directed to bloggers, there's a lot of information here for developing a consistent brand across many platforms - the information you decide on using her free worksheets can help you when you are creating marketing materials for pinterest, instagram, physical print, or your own website. (She covers aspects deciding how images will look as well as how text will sound.)

How Color Can Make Your Business Successful or Not - basically: color controls 60% of people's initial decisions about a new or unfamiliar brand. The article here is really short. I've linked to it because it has a nice infographic categorizing the emotional feelings associated with each color. (Something to consider when you create a style guide for your business.)

5 Consumer Psychology Hacks - One of my favorites this week.

Build an Email List to Get More Customers - if you don't maintain an email list for marketing, you probably should start. The article talks about why and provides some resources, including a list of email marketing services (not just MailChimp).

Business Article Roundup - Dec 16

Another round of 5 articles for you from around the web. Three of them focus on the logistics of email marketing.

A Million Things to Do? Prioritize by ROI. (And Then Get a Life.) - from The Middle Finger Project, which provides snarky business advice to freelancers. Any article from The Middle Finger Project will have some amount of colorful language, but this article outlines a very useful method for how to organize and prioritize how you spend your time.

10 Ways to Use Gmail Like a Pro - features and plug-ins that can help you use your time more productively.

Making Emails Can-Spam Compliant - In a nutshell: opt-in, unsubscribe, include your postal address in the actual email, keep your email lists up-to-date, use clear subject lines.

How to Use MailChimp to Grow Your Brand - goes over 11 great features and benefits of using MailChimp to send out newsletters or marketing emails to your mailing list.

Sites to List Your Giveaways - Planning a giveaway to drum up some exposure and publicity? This article has been keeping an updated list of places to spread the word since 2010. (Of course, you can always send an email through MailChimp to your mailing list in addition to these sites.)