Guerrilla Insight for Authors: 1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign

1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

Teleseminars with Ellen Britt: Audio File Posted
If you missed the Blogging and Beyond show last Thursday, Denise has just posted it on the site. We interviewed Ellen Britt of Marketing Qi about her tremendous success with teleseminars and how you can use this low cost tool...

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

Readers Online Finish Content More Than Print Readers
People actually do read content online, and new research is busting an old myth. This study is found on Editor and Publisher.com, by way of Bryan Eisenberg of Grokdotcom.com. In a surprise finding, online readers finish news stories more often...

Things To Do In NYC After a Conference
There is a bronze mural on the side wall of the fire station at Ground Zero dedicated to the fallen heroes and those left standing. I couldn't help but shed a few tears; it's an eery feeling to remember the...

Podcasting for Business
Blogging and Beyond: Episode 11How to Use Podcasts and Webinars to Grow Your Businesswith guest expert Debra Simpson, Magic in Words Debra had some great ideas for using audio and podcasting in your business. With 65 million mp3 players out...

Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information?
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site. No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising.

I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:

[Travis-Smith-Computer:~] nep% whois spacesindoorsandout.com

Whois Server Version 2.0 Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC. Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com Name Server: DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET Name Server: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited EPP Status: clientRenewProhibited EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited Updated Date: 30-Nov-2006 Creation Date: 28-Jan-2004 Expiration Date: 28-Jan-2007 >>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:43:00 EST <<< Registrant: Spaces Indoors & Out Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM Domain servers in listed order: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET

For complete domain details go to: http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM

It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.

While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

On Writing: Stephen King's Advice Extended for the Web
Here's a nugget gleaned from 37 Signals' Signal vs Noise blog about writing advice given by master story teller Stephen King in his book On Writing: Formula for success: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%... I'm one of those...

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

Beyond Writing: Use Your Voice with Podcasts
Sometimes writing isn't enough. As a writer, you probably like to read information. But here's a clue: not everyone's a reader. There is a huge audience of people out there who like listening to podcasts. In fact, there's 65 million...

Mobile Edge Comes Through

I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.

I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.

Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.

Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.

When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.

I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.

My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.

Thanks, Lewis!

Web 2.0 Empty Marketing Term?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)

From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you?

Some Fundamental Friday Video

This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.

Social Media: Why You Should Pay Attention to This
Here's our weekly heads up for the Blogging and Beyond Internet radio show over at VoiceAmerica. If the term Social Media and Web 2.0 has you scratching your head, then don't miss this show. Click here to listen to the...

So long, farewell, and thanks!

Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.

Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.

Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!

My “Blogging Software is Revolutionary” Rant

On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.

The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!

Not Just for Blogs

I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.

I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.

As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.

That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.

Then along comes blogging software.

What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.

And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.

As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.

Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.

Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)

Thomas Paul Fine Art
http://www.tpaulfineart.com
Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon
http://www.rejuvenile.com
Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com
Mani’s Bakery
http://www.manisbakery.com

Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.

But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.

Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.

Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:

publishing interface
admin and setup stuff
templates

I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.

For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:

Edit the blog preferences
Set up custom fields
Put in a sample post
Set up categories

Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.

And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.

Voila!

The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

Study Shows Blogs Increase Media Attention for Companies

A Cymfony/Porter Novelli study reports that “the majority of companies surveyed (76%) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s).”

Guerrilla Insight for Authors

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign

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