Posts

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How to Add Our RSS Feed to Your News Reader

I’ve had a few blog visitors ask this question recently and want to share with you a few ways and ideas on RSS news feed readers.

First, you can access our feed by clicking the orange icon in your browser’s tool far near the “Home” button. When you click the feed, you will see that we have several RSS feeds you can subscribe to. Select one from the drop down and click. A new page will open which shows the address of our RSS news feed and also the content of the news feed. Depending on your RSS news feed reader you will add the address into it directly. Just grab the address from the address bar.

If you use IE 8, when you click the RSS news feed link, you can click subscribe right on the page and then access our news feed without even coming to our blog site. You access your subscribed feeds from a place near the IE 8 browser favorites bar.

If you want to start using RSS feeds but don’t know a good RSS news feed reader, I would recommend www.My.MSN.com. I used to love www.My.Live.com but it has been retired. To add our feed to www.My.MSN.com, you will need to set up an account (it is free) and then click “add content” near the top of your new account page. Then pasted in  my RSS feed address in the box subscribe to feed.

I read about 40 news feeds daily using www.My.MSN.com and am able to read the first paragraph or so from within the reader and can click in to read the full article if I want. Using a news feed reader I can scan volumes of content from sites that I monitor and then read only what I want very quickly. RSS news feed readers allow you to review a lot of content in a very short period of time.

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Are E-Newsletters Dead?

Nope they are not! Although e-newsletters are more difficult to deliver to the end user than they used to be, they are certainly not dead. In fact for me, many of my clients come to me from my own e-newsletter. I typically will hear, “I’ve been getting your e-newsletter for a while, and now I need xyz and thought to call you.”

I do a monthly e-newsletter and try to keep what I blog about separate from my newsletter so that there is real value to someone subscribing to it. I do not want the two vehicles to be the same. I use my e-newsletter sometimes to flesh out a point or topic in more detail than I do in a blog post.

Yes, it does take time and effort to create a newsletter but with now over 1,200 subscribers it is a wonderful vehicle to keep in touch with past clients, current clients, and prospects. One of my clients, who was a top long term care insurance client, told me that you need to keep your name in front of a client at a minimum of four times a year to continue to build business with them.

Additionally, it is typically less costly to work your existing client base to increase your sales than to bring in a new clients. I feel that it is important to have a mix of both approaches; always reaching out to new clients and making sure that older and existing clients know what you have to offer and of any new services you add.

I tell customers who do an e-newsletter to make sure you offer value. There is no faster way to be blocked from inboxes if all you do is talk about yourself. If you offer value in regards to tips, information that your audience really wants to know, and soft sell your services in a winning way you will grow your subscriber base.

Even if you don’t have an e-newsletter right now, I strongly recommend that you update your privacy policy on your website to cover that you will keep email addresses if a prospect contacts you and you will use it for your own marketing. I also recommend capturing email addresses of current and new customers. This way if at a point in the future you want to do an e-newsletter you are building your own list. The days of being able to buy an email address list and being able to use that to springboard your own e-newsletter are long gone.

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Is Earthlink Blocking Your Emails?

I’ve recently had a problem with Earthlink and Mindspring blocking emails from my main domain to certain clients. It is problematic and annoying. Here’s what I have done to resolve the problem.

1. First, always make sure you are reviewing your junk mail folder as typically bounces and non-deliveries of emails will be sent here. If you don’t routinely check this file, you will never know if your email has been bounced back to you.

2. If you do find that your emails are regularly (more than several times) is being bounced back with a blocked mail message from Earthlink, then you need to take action. For me the first thing I did was to correspond with those clients using a different email account like my Gmail or MSN account until the problem was resolved. I then replied to one of the blocked email messages and Earthlink sent me instructions on how to resolve the problem.

3. I have to get the IP address of my mail server from my web host. Sometimes you can find this IP address in your domain records under the MX listing. If you don’t see it there, ask your web host.

4. Then using the syntax Earthlink wants in the subject line, send an email to Earthlink asking them to whitelist your IP address.

I found that they had not blocked my IP address as they confirmed that it was not on their blocked list and told me that it was most likely an intermittent problem.

It is a pain to have to go through this hassle, but if it had been blocked, this would have effectively resolved the problem or advised me of a bigger issue that needed more attention like my web host being a spammer haven with a whole block of IP addresses blocked. If you find that this would be the case, it would be a good reason to change web hosts immediately.

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WordPress – Ready to Go Checklist

So you’ve decided to start a blog. That’s great, I feel that blogging is one of the best ways to build “web authority” for search engines and improve your “web visibility”. I personally prefer an installation of WordPress installed under your own domain name, but what else should you do to make sure that your blog gets started on the right foot?

1. Make sure you link to your new blog from your main website. I like it best when you incorporate links to your blog in your main website navigation. If you can’t do that, create a button to go to your blog and position it prominently on every page or incorporate a link to your blog in your website footer.

2. Make sure you link your blog to your website. This is usually done in WordPress by creating a Blogroll. Typically I will include links to the main website, the contact page, and other important pages in the main website in the Blogroll. I do not typically link to outside sites in the WordPress blog roll. Additionally I like to position the Blogroll near the top of the column where it resides. Remember this is the navigation to your main website and you want to feed visitors there.

3. Make sure to enable your Blogroll and archive links on all pages of your blog. Don’t defeat this important navigation by installing this important feature on just the home page. All separate blog pages, archive, and tag pages should include these navigation elements.

4. Add items to your sidebars to make it easy for users to find what they need on your blog. Make sure to enable important features on all your blog pages such as archives, recent posts, recent comments, calendar of posts, and tagcloud. You can check out my own left and right blog sidebars to see what I personally consider important and where these items should be placed.

5. Use plug-ins to make your blog effective and easy to maintain. I always use the SEO All in One Pack plug-in. Additionally some of my favorites are: the Google sitemap creator, WordPress database backup, and Feedburner implementation. Additionally don’t forget to install Google Analytics or your web tracking script in your blog template.

If you follow my checklist above, and review all new plug-in configuration options you will be ready to go. Got a question, just click comments below and let me know and I’ll try to respond to each one.