We're going to do a quick lesson on e-mailing-list etiquette. Mailing lists are a great way to keep in touch with your clients, connections and possible synergy partners. However, readers should be able to equally opt-in or opt-out. They should have some kind of connection to you so that your newsletters remain relevant.

Note: a connection to you does not mean that they handed you their business card once at a happy hour after you talked to them for five minutes. That's spam. I'm all about connecting, getting to know you and possibly getting business from you. But you are never earning my business if all the sudden one week later I'm on some random mailing list. The problem is, I might even like your product/service, I might have considered a business relationship with you... but when you cross the line into spam, I'm not going to support you. In fact, I refuse to do any business with spammers.

So what's the classy way to handle adding people to your email list? If you think someone could benefit from your monthly newsletter when you meet them, ASK. Its not hard. Just say, "Hey, would you mind if I added you to my mailing list? After our chat I really think its something you'd enjoy." (But only if it is. If you just talked about the weather, you probably need to get to know them a little better.) Or later, send them an email and ask. We handily call this permission-based marketing.

Be respectful. Don't spam.

I realized after attending the Microsoft SparkStart event that I often repeat the same advice over and over again, just with a new angle. So instead of doing that today, I'm going to point you to posts I wrote over the last year that still make sense right now! Believe it or not, the social media game hasn't changed that much in a year. In fact, marketing as a whole hasn't changed that much, we just use a different medium.

So here are some posts that might be relevant for you today:

Why Social Media is important:

• Social Media: Personal Touch in a Virtual World
• The Business of Social Media

The Facts:

• Facebook: Making the Rest of Us Look Bad
• Tools for your Belt: Demographics & Surveys

The Etiquette:

• Top 5 Ineffective Social Media Accounts
• Social Media Compared to Offline Networking

A lot of the truths of marketing still exist in the digital age. Are there any principles you use over and over again in your own marketing (online or off)?