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Keep In Touch Newsletter Blog Or RSS

Written by: Omaro Ailoch

Article Overview: Keeping in regular contact with your existing and prospective clients is an important part of running an online business. In doing so it's possible to persuade waverers that they should purchase your product or pay for your service.

Keep In Touch Newsletter Blog Or RSS

Keeping in regular contact with your existing and prospective clients is an important part of running an online business. In doing so it's possible to persuade waverers that they should purchase your product or pay for your service. It is also possible to remind past customers that you exist, the products and services you offer, and any new products or discounts that you are currently running. Many options now exist to aid the website owner in keeping their visitors, customers, and leads updated but which is the best, or is it possible to offer all the options?

Email Newsletters

The email newsletter is the traditional technique of offering regular updates and news to all your leads. Capture their name and email address while they're on site, ensure that they've opted in to receive the information you've provided and you have a powerful list. A list is one of the most effective ways to build a positive client base. You can also sell new products to the same customers, which offers the advantage that you haven't had to pay any more in marketing or advertising costs for that particular sale.

The Blog

The blog was one of the forerunners to what is now billed as web 2.0. Social and interactive websites provide more features to the user and they not only enable you to keep in touch with visitors and leads, but they encourage those same visitors and leads to keep returning to your website, or at least a portion of it. Business blogs have been successfully used as a highly beneficial marketing tool for quite some time.

RSS Feeds

Feeds are often associated with blogs, when they are used to inform subscribers of new posts. Feed readers are installed on most people's desktops through browsers and email clients, as well as standalone feed readers. The advantage with this is that almost as soon as you post information, your subscriber gets a brief run down of that message popping up on their desktop. Because they can subscribe and unsubscribe from various feeds they are more inclined to read a new post, news item, or article as soon as they pop up on screen.

Combining Communication Methods

The most effective website marketing campaign will integrate a number of functions into their website. A newsletter can be used to offer advertising as well as a regular communication with visitors, but you must provide potential users with the option to opt in as well as the possibility to opt out whenever they please. Feeds can be used in conjunction with a blog or can be used to inform subscribers of new articles, news items, and any other media placed on your site. The blog has become one of the most powerful Internet marketing and communication tools available but might be considered high maintenance to some potential users.

Determine What You And Your Customer Wants From Your Communication

The big questions are how often you wish to communicate with your subscribers and what type of information do you intend to provide. Newsletters need a rigid time frame to be at their most effective but can be used to serve advertisements as well as general information. Feeds can be used to provide access to new information as regularly or infrequently as you please, but too many adverts placed directly onto people's desktops will be viewed as being intrusive and users will quickly unsubscribe. The blog requires very regular content but it does enable you to combine marketing, advertising, and communication.

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Article Tags: advertising costs, blog, blogs, desktops, email clients, email newsletter, feed readers, forerunners, interactive websites, marketing tool, prospective clients, quite some time, subscriber, subscribers, website owner



Related Forum Posts
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Hi David, I agree about the Blogosphere. You have a smaller group that Blog, but do so on the premise that they think they should, but have never really considered the purpose of their Blog. Then I think there are a few SEO or Internet Marketing types that see Blogging as just another link building strategy. But the largest group of Bloggers, tend to be people who enjoy writing and discussing their topics of interest. Blogging is good for link building, but the true Blogger is a breed apart from the rest. They want to dialog, to debate, to have feedback and they are very willing to link to other worthwhile conversations that are relevant to their topic. I agree with you. These group of Bloggers obviously are passionate about their writing and together, they create huge conversation trails interactive and travel from Blog to Blog. But the evidence is clear with this group that loves what they write about. With comments enabled on a Blog and having a Blog tuned to a specific purpose you already have the evidence of original Social Media.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - That's great GT! What method did you use to put up the Entrepreneur Blog Network in your Wordpress Blog? We're always looking for the easiest methods to help bloggers who are not techies get involved.
Re: Forums Blog? - [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]Interesting idea Don. In my weekly newsletter I show the most recent forum posts and on the side of every page on the website (not the forums) I also show the most recent entries.[/quote:1yww01zw] The Newsletter update is great for people _already_ signed up to the forums. The Blog would be a teaser for those who are unaware of it entirely. [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]How often would you see the blog being updated?[/quote:1yww01zw] I would say no more frequently than once a week. It would be more an an ad than an interactive forum. Although, that can change. [quote="Evan":1yww01zw]Any other ideas out there on a blog or ways to show the most popular topics?[/quote:1yww01zw] If you really want a big Internet Presence, this is what I have learned works very well: 1/ Website 2/ Blog 3/ MySpace 4/ Press Release 5/ Ads posted on free & paid classified websites 6/ Networking 7/ website submission to search engines You will notice that only 1 out of the 7 requires human contact. The other 6 will begin to create a presence and if the right keywords are used, then people doing searches for those keywords will find many references to this site. Networking helps build your 'real world presence'. I haven't done any aggressive marketing of my site yet the hits just keep on increasing on a monthly basis. I'm on track to be making 20,000 hits (probably more) this year. Not bad for not spending a dime on advertising and being fairly casual about what I do with the site. That's what I have learned thus far online. The more I learn, the more hits grow.
EvanCarmichael.com suggestion - Maybe I missed it but I would like to suggest that a Blog be created to support the Forum. The idea is that in the blog you put in snippets of some of the biggest conversations with a 'read more' link to the forum itself. Setting up the Blog and clipping some conversations onto it wouldn't take very long.
Jen's Blog - Spam protection - Jen, I like the Blog and just posted a comment to one of your articles. From my experience you need to implement some sort of SPAM capture tools. i use them on my Blog and it's been a life saver as I'm getting hit by spam atleast 5 times a day. I use Wordpress and they have plugins like Captcha and SPAM Karma installed.


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