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Something Very Del.icio.us

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:16:27 GMT

Social Bookmarking

RSS Feeds & Readers

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:14:24 GMT

A year and-a-half ago I heard Rick Klau of Feedburner say on the eMarketing Talk Show podcast, "RSS Feed technology is the most significant thing to happen to the Internet since the browser." That was followed by hearing someone else say something about RSS Feed Readers being like TIVO for the Internet. Well, since I'm intrigued by new advances in technology, and found we can't live without TIVO...bring on this RSS Feed stuff!

What are RSS Feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. I like simple, don't you? In a nutshell, an RSS Feed is a little button or link of text on a web page, blog, podcast or any other form of content on the Internet. Clicking on the RSS link allows you to subscribe to that content and bring it in to your feed reader. Similar to the way TIVO lets you set up a Season Pass and record all future new episodes of a program - and then of course watch them when you want, RSS Feeds allow you to select the content you want to come to you (like TIVO's Now Playing List) via a Feed Reader. Anytime new content is generated from your selected source, it will automatically be fed to you in one central place.

We're all familiar with bookmarking a web page in our favorites. The problem with bookmarking is you have to first go find it in your favorites, and second, you then need to click on the link and go to each one of your favorites to see if there's anything new. With subscribing to RSS content feeds, you only have to go to your Feed Reader to see all of the Feeds you subscribe to - the ones with new content are normally in bold text. It's like subscribing to your favorite magazine. Instead of going to the store to see if a new edition is on the rack, you only need to subscribe to have the publisher mail it out to you each time a new edition comes out.

Getting Started Step One: Set up a Feed Reader

Enough talk. Try this. First select a Feed Reader you want to use. I use Bloglines which seems to be one of the most popular Feed Readers available. But, there are other web-based readers like the Google Reader or NewsGator - which are all free! Also, most of the modern browsers, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera have Feed Reader capability built in. Once you've selected and setup the Feed Reader you want to use, it's time to pull in some content from your favorite sites.

Step Two: Subscribe to some RSS Feeds

How you find content you want to subscribe to is similar to how you find websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. on the web - through a search engine - or via direct access with your browser. Just look for the orange RSS feed icon, or something similar that indicates you can subscribe to the content. One of my favorite blogs is published by Seth Godin. Seth provides a button in the left column under RSS Feeds that says "Subscribe" and looks like this: When you click on that button you will be able to select from a list of popular feed readers.

Obviously, you can subscribe to as many RSS Feed content sites as you want to. You can categorize your feeds in folders on your reader like: Websites, Blogs, Podcasts. Or, you can choose to do it by subject matter: Travel, News, Sports, Entertainment. The options are unlimited. You can now be in control of the content you want to come to you. And, here's another great benefit: the only content that can come to you is content you subscribe to. Feed Readers via RSS is a Spam Free type of service! No one else can send junk into your Feed Reader, and you don't have to share your email address to subscribe!

RSS Feeds can bring you traffic

One final thought. Can you see how having fresh content on your site with an RSS Feed that visitors can subscribe to can bring repeat traffic to your site? Not just any traffic. But traffic from visitors that are interested in what you've got to say or offer!

Here's some additional resources on RSS Feeds & Readers:

View 3min, 43sec video that explains these two steps: RSS in Plain English

View 1min, 15sec video that explains how to subscribe to an RSS Feed in Bloglines

How to Create an RSS Feed for Your Website Step-by-Step

(Excellent overview and resource but gets a little technical)

SiteProNews Article on The Basics of RSS Feeds

My RSS Del.icio.us tags (see article below on How Stuff Works)

Creating Powerful Copy

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:12:13 GMT

So, your business needs a website. Or maybe you have a website but realize you need to freshen it up some. Now what? What are you going to write about? More importantly, how are you going to write it? Does writing for the web or email marketing differ from writing for print or marketing collateral? As we would say in Minnesota, “ya sure you betcha!”

I recently attended a Webinar where one of the presenters said to "get to the point within the first couple of words" of your content. Why? Because people are busy. Their time is valuable. They are looking for specific things, and you've got about 5 seconds when they land on your page, or open up your eNewsletter to engage them. Here are some tips and principles for writing powerful content that gets to the point – and gets your message across.

1. Be relevant to your target audience. To be successful, the communication on your website or in your email must appeal to your audience and be rich in the information they are looking for. People are not looking to get e-mail; they're looking to get "me-mail!" Show your readers that you understand their problem and can relate to their needs. Next, give them some benefits and articulate your solution. Let them know that their search could be over. Then, talk about the features and unique value propositions you have to offer. Finally, include a Call-to-Action letting them know how to take the next step.

2. Be concise and condense your content. Less is more for writing powerful content. Again, you've got to know your audience and the level and amount of content they need. I have always struggled with wordiness. Once I start writing it’s hard to stop. But we have to understand that our readers are scanners. They won't read long sentences and paragraphs - no matter how elegant! So here are some tips for shortening up your content:

Write in the Inverted Pyramid style - put the most interesting and important content first
Limit your sentences to 15-20 words
Condense paragraphs to 40-70 words
Keep your page content to around 500 total words*

*Note: Studies have shown that short copy does not always outperform long copy. See the related article:

"Does Short Copy Always Outperform Long?"

It's a good idea to try and write in the range of what can be viewed on a web page - without excessive scrolling. If it's an eNewsletter, you may want to provide a summary with a link to "learn more." The link takes your visitor to your website to read the full article, or to view supplemental information.

When finished, read your article out loud - see how it sounds. Michelle Howe, writing in “Turn Browsers into Buyers” says, “You want your message to be professional, but not formal. Write in a conversational style that is warm and friendly, but not chatty. Make your writing real by trying to write more like you speak.” I like to set it aside when I think I'm done, go do something else, come back and give it another read. Sometimes you'll add to or tweak your content. Other times you'll come back and think, "that's gotta go!"

3. Make your content easy to read. You want your important points to stand out. And, you want to create a scan-able architecture using a variety of elements and styling. Consider using these techniques:

Keep Headlines / Subject Lines short and sweet - 50 characters or less – maximum of 8 words
Use ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists in your content
Bold important phrases
Change font color
Use 10pt or greater non-serif fonts like Arial, Helvetica or Verdana
Don't underline text unless it's anchor or link text
Avoid the use of italics because they're harder to read on a computer screen
Provide plenty of “white space” – it makes copy easier to read and gives our eyes a rest from the flicker effect from our computer screen

See my 10 tips for writing effective subject lines

Practice these tips for creating powerful content and your readership will take notice. Measure your progress through monitoring tracking and traffic reports. Constant Contact Email Marketing tracks such things as Open Rates, Click-Throughs and Forwards. When you see these key metrics increasing you know you're doing something right! Your web server or analytics reports can show you the amount of time visitors spend on your site, what pages they navigate to and where they exit from. These can be extremely valuable in measuring the effectiveness of your content and web pages to engage your target audience.

WSI Wiki Works has solutions for creating powerful website and email content. Contact us today for a content consultation!

How to Add a Favicon

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:07:00 GMT

This month, I want to tell you about a cool way you can put your logo in front of your website visitors' eyeballs when the look at their browser's address bar when your web pages load. Like this:

That little icon is called a Favicon. While it takes a little technical know-how to generate it and get it implemented on your web pages, it's well worth the effort. It gives your site a professional and classy touch - don't you think?

Here are the steps:

Create a .gif of your logo 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high
Generate your Favicon into the required .ico format - Click Here for a utility to do that
You will then download the favicon.ico file to your computer
Upload the favicon.ico image to the same directory as your web page files on your web server
Add the following HTML tag inside the and section of each page of your website you want the Favicon to appear:

You do need to have FTP access to your web server, and you need to know how to access the HTML of your web pages. Let me know if I can be of any assistance.

By the way, for those who are curious about looking up how more stuff works - try this website: http://www.howstuffworks.com

Optimizing Website Content

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:04:23 GMT

Before we can talk about website content, we need to define "Internet Marketing". I think of it in terms of the strategies, tools and tactics we implement in order to make our websites more visible to our target market. Let's face it; the Internet is a medium that is quite clearly becoming more focused on non-intrusive forms of getting connected. We use Internet Search Engines to find things WE are interested in looking up. We respond to stimulus that is relevant and compelling - to OUR needs. We hate being bombarded by Spam and Pop-ups that interrupt us and make us hit the delete key or the close window button.

Today, more and more businesses are developing Internet Marketing strategies recognizing we've moved to a market driven more by consumers than the push of interruption marketers. To become more visible and attractive to their target audience, business websites are becoming more interactive. They are blogging, producing videos and podcasts; they are engaging their audience with web widget and social media marketing. They're offering webinars via email marketing to interested subscribers, and they're writing articles, white papers and eBooks and making them available for FREE on their websites! Plus, they're writing compelling and interesting content!

Of all the strategies and things we can do to become attractive and more visible to our prospects, the holy grail of Internet marketing is to optimize your website's content. If you don't get your website content right you can forget about being found on the Internet. Gillian Meier of Blue Magnet, an Internet Marketing and Training company in South Africa writes, "an essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing."

Optimizing our website's content means:

Having text on our web pages that is relevant to our audience's interests
Minimizing or eliminating the use of flash and other technologies that Search Engines can't index, and that irritate us humans to no end! (audio or video that automatically plays when a page loads)
Incorporating relevant keywords in our headings, anchor text and content
Writing for both the human reader and the Search Engines
Pages with easy navigation for visitors and that Search Engines can index
Information architecture that is clean and uncluttered with plenty of white space with the important information above the fold
Writing robot friendly text: H1 and H2 Tags, Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Optimization
Investing in professionally written website content - by a web content copywriter

Optimizing website content is also referred to as "Offline Optimization". It involves all the things you can do within your website itself to get noticed by the Search Engines and engaged with your site visitors. Online Optimization is all of the things you can do outside of your website to draw attention or to drive traffic to your site. It includes such activities as submitting your site to general and industry related directories, getting inbound links from other quality sites and making sure you are being indexed by all leading Search Engines.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, don't neglect the impact of optimized content to the success of your Internet marketing efforts. "The number one reason a website fails is because of poorly written content" (Michelle Howe, "Turn Browsers into Buyers").

How to Pick a Domain Name

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:01:06 GMT

Are you thinking about building a new website - or launching a new company, service or product line but don't know how to go about it? We typically start by brainstorming a list of names. We hope to stumble upon something as clever, catchy and successful as "Google", or "Coca-Cola." We gravitate to names that are intensely personal or meaningful - to us. But, will it have meaning to the niche market we hope to attract?

Harry Beckwith wrote a book called, "The Invisible Touch." In it he outlines what he calls, "The Four Keys to Modern Marketing." Key #2: Brand. Here's a list of some concepts we can think about when it comes time to picking a name, a brand:

A brand does not merely attract clients, it convinces clients that they got just what the brand promised.
What attractive and desirable qualities should my brand embody?
Choose a name that is unique, sensory, creative and outstanding (e.g. Red Pepper).
Look for a name that makes the prospect, not you, sound important.
The more commonplace you sound, the less interest you will attract.
Say your name out loud, and listen very carefully.
Keep your name short - eleven letters or four syllables max.

One more thing to add to Mr. Beckwith's discussion: Look for a name you'd like to see at the top of the search engine results. Learn to think like your ideal customer thinks. What's important to them? What are their needs? What are they looking for? Have keyword research done that will show you how effective your name can potentially be in being visible in the Search Engine results, AND your target market. Now, your domain name alone won't bring you to the top, but it's a great starting point from which to build everything else upon: Title and Description Tags, Web Content, File Names, etc.

I recently completed some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training. One short statement in the course stood out with respect to the site URL: "Include the keywords (that your target market is searching for) in the URL, short and meaningful." Think about making your URL part of, or the same as your company name, your brand. And, as we learn from Mr. Beckwith: Make it your domain. Own it. Be it.

Constant Contact Email Campaign Archive

greg@wsiwikiworks.com — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:57:36 GMT

Are you curious about how stuff works? Interested in how best to leverage and get the most out of the tools, applications and solutions that are out there? If so, you may find this feature useful.

This month, I want to tell you about a very cool and cost effective feature Constant Contact has recently added to their email marketing service called, Email Campaign Archive. For just $5 more a month you can add this service to your email marketing program. Email Campaign Archive allows you to essentially save a copy of your published eNewsletters, Announcements, Press Releases - or whatever you send out from Constant Contact, and archive them on a page you can integrate in with your website!

With a little effort in customizing the look and feel of your archive menu page, you can have it look like it's part of your website's design. To see an example of this, click on the link below which will take you to a page on a website I created for a community service organization:

Click to view an example Email Campaign Archive solution integrated with an organization's website.

Email Campaign Archive is a great way to give your communications a longer life and make them available long after their initial release.