By Steve Tingiris

Article originally posted at http://www.findandconvert.com/old-school-approach-social-networking/

The enthusem community is officially launched!

 Visit http://support.enthusem.com/ to check it out for tech support, faqs, demos, system updates, known issues, add a feature request and tips & tricks. We're constantly working on building this section out and welcome your feedback and comments!

Enthusem makes sending personalized PRINTED greeting cards as easy as sending an email and you can learn everything you need to know to get the most out of the system in less than 30 minutes! This training session will cover:

AppVita, "Discovers web apps that just make life easier" and today they discovered Enthusem! We were very excited to see that we received 5 stars.

"On the front page of the Enthusem site is the claim “greeting cards reinvented.” That’s a tall claim, especially with so many e-card sites available on the web. But Enthusem is not a traditional web-based greeting card site, where you send a greeting card to someone’s email address. Instead, Enthusem is a web-based app that sends physical greeting cards to a person’s postal mail address."

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Genius Idea: Enthusem places a digital twist on the classic greeting card. Unlike e-cards, enthusem actually has a physical greeting card that it prints and sends to whoever you want - friends, family, coworkers, etc. The card can be designed with custom language, photos, and images. It even comes in a nifty translucent envelope so that the recipient is immediately interested.

That’s not where Enthusem’s strength lies, though. Enthusem includes the ability to add a digital component to the card, using a URL and a pickup code, which the recipient can type in online to see a custom video, read an extended note, or listen to a meaningful mp3 that you uploaded. The intent is to catch the eye and the attention of the recipient more than a simple email or e-card could do...

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Is the goal of your online social networking efforts to grow your business? If so, at some point your followers, friends or fans will need to know you as more than just another one of their many online “peeps.” The challenge is the average person is bombarded daily by electronic messages from literally hundreds of people who are part of their ever growing online network of contacts.

Now, I’m no Guy Kawasaki – not by a long shot. But even still I recently counted over 173 electronic messages that I received in a single day. Even worse, I only counted emails, text messages, twitter DMs and replies, Facebook messages and Linkedin group communications. Beyond that there are blog replies, voice mails and various messages from other online networks that I’m a part of. Now, again, I’m no Guy Kawasaki and chances are you aren’t either. However, I’m betting you’re facing the same barrage of online communications. Am I right? Consider it for a second. How many electronic messages do you get a day?

Now let me ask another question. How many personal messages do you get via postal mail? You remember postal mail right? It’s the printed stuff that’s sent with a stamp. Now for the purposes of my question I’m talking about truly personal postal mail. Communications that were written and sent by a person you know or know of – database driven direct mail with your name on it doesn’t count. How many of those are you going to have to sift through today? I’m sure you got as many personal postal messages as you did online ones right? <sarcasm>  No? OK than, how many pieces of personal postal mail did you receive this month or this year?

Just in case it’s not totally obvious where I’m going with this I’ll spell it out for you in this paragraph. The average person today gets less than a dozen (yea that’s 12) personal postal messages in an ENTIRE YEAR. By contrast, the average person gets dozens, and in many cases hundreds of electronic messages DAILY. If your hope is that you’ll be able to truly capture the attention and differentiate yourself with another electronic message (and you’re not Guy Kawasaki) the odds are stacked against you in a big way. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to make a personal connection with an electronic message. However, if you got a personal printed note mailed to you from one of your Twitter followers is there any chance that might stand out more so than say a Twitter direct message? Of course it would because it’s rare and unique.

Now, this isn’t just a theory. I’ve been sending thank you cards and printed notes to contacts I’ve made online for some time and the response has been nothing short of astounding. How astounding? Well, when I take the time to send a truly personal message better than 60% of the recipients respond. Also, for the record, the first time I mail someone it’s usually just after I’ve connected with them online for the first time.  So, initially these aren’t close contacts. For example, I’ll commonly send an “I’m following you on Twitter” card to people that I follow on Twitter that I’d like to connect with off-line.

I suppose if everyone starts doing what I’m doing my postal messages may not work as well in the future. But for now, using personal postal mail to communicate with online contacts is extremely effective and MUST be considered if you’re serious about your social networking strategy.