Syndicating Your Content Online
Show Notes: November 21, 2012

Twitter, New Media Tools [ 15:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9)

In this episode you’ll learn how to incorporate new media tools into your Twitter Marketing Roadmap.

Previous Episodes

Episode One, Is Twitter for You?
Episode Two, How @thewic Uses Twitter
Episode Three, Tips on Setting Up Your Account
Episode Four, Old-school Marketing and Principles on Twitter

Syndicating Your Content Online
Show Notes: November 14, 2011

Listen live at 3pm PT

This is an on-going series on Twitter. Previous episodes include:

Episode One: Is Twitter for You?
Episode Two: How @thewic Uses Twitter
Episode Three: Tips on Setting Up Your Account

In this episode you’ll hear about using old-school marketing strategies on Twitter as the first part of creating your Twitter Marketing Roadmap.

Syndicating Your Content Online
Show Notes: August 29, 2011

Listen live at 3pm PT

This is the final week on article marketing. I’ll be sharing a list of the top article directories. After the show you’ll find the links here.

This is the eighth episode of an ongoing series on Article Marketing.

Previous episodes include:
Why Write Articles?
What is an Article?
Basic Rules of Grammar for Articles
3 Tips to Getting Started
Different Types of Articles
What To Write About
Maximizing Your Resource Box

Syndicating Your Content Online
Show Notes: August 19, 2011

Maximize Your Resource Box [ 15:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (6)

In this episode you’ll learn more about an article’s resource box and how to use it to drive more traffic to your website.

This is the seventh episode of an ongoing series on Article Marketing.

Previous episodes include:
Why Write Articles?
What is an Article?
Basic Rules of Grammar for Articles
3 Tips to Getting Started
Different Types of Articles
What To Write About

Spam! No one likes spam. No one wants more spam in their inbox. No one wants to be know as a “spammer”, especially to their Internet Service Provider (ISP).

So, what is spam?

According to the Bureau of Consumer Protection, spam is:

“If the message contains only commercial content, its primary purpose is commercial and it must comply with the requirements of CAM-SPAM.”

Your email must comply with the following in order to be viewed as compliant.

“1. Don’t use false or misleading header information.
Your email address, the reply address and your domain and business name must be accurate.

2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

3. Identify the message as an ad.
The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.

4. Tell recipients where you’re located.
Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you.
Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.

6. Honor opt-out requests promptly.
Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.
The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.”

So how do you violate the CanSpam Act?

Let’s say I attend a networking event that allows me to place my business cards on a common “networking table.” You come along and pick up my card, go back to your office, and add me to your email database. Since we didn’t meet, you don’t have any reasonable expectation that I would be interested in receiving your emails.

Most small business owners start out by putting email addresses into their Outlook, or desktop email program. If that’s how you are handling your email contacts, you MUST include your address and a visible method of opting out of your emails. It can be as simple as telling your recipient that they may unsubscribe at any time by replying with unsubscribe in the subject line. The trouble with this is that many small business owners don’t want to hurt your feelings by asking to be taken off your list. An easier way for them to deal with this is to hit the “Report Spam” button. If you get too many complaints your ISP could severely reduce your ability to send email.

The other problem is something like this. This actually happened to me. I met someone at a networking event. They put me on their email list. They actually had an opt-out method I used to unsubscribe. However, the person who put me into the email database wasn’t the person who received my unsubscribe. I was continually put back into the database, as my card was continually picked up at networking events. You must honor the request of those who wish to unsubscribe to your email list.

Lastly, if you are using Outlook or something like it to handle your email list, don’t CC everyone on your list. Send the email to yourself and BCC the recipients. If all those copied on the email can see all the other addresses your chances of seeing a “Report Spam” action taken on your email increase dramatically.

The long and short of it is, you need a service that is recognized as an industry standard in email delivery, like Constant Contact or Get Response. These services are compliant with the CanSpam act  and can handle a growing email list.

I used to belong to a women’s networking group that had a list of approximately 800 women. The list had to be broken down into lists of no more than 50 and each list sent separately. After the sixth go ’round with the lists of 50, the ISP shut down our ability to send out any further emails. It took a lot of time and patience to get them to give back email access.

These services run around $15 to $18 a month to start. They allow you to collect email addresses through a form on your website or social media site. Of course you’ll want to offer an incentive for people to opt-in, but that’s another blog post…

I was asked this week to review an affiliate program where you sell access to a “Lead Generation” software that uses search results to “harvest and extract content” from targeted websites. The software then takes that information and puts it into a “comma separated value” document you can open in Excel and manipulate. For an additional charge you can use their robocall phone system, which I assume makes those calls we all love to receive from no one we know.

So what’s the problem with this? It depends on your values as to whether you would want to use a tool like this.

When I program websites, I go to great lengths to make sure the email address of my client is not put on the site that makes it easy for software like I’ve just described to “harvest” (and that’s a word you don’t want to use with your Constant Contact or GetResponse representative) email addresses. Usually, if you want your email on the site, I’d program it this way: debra (at) syndicatingyourcontent (dot) com. This method delivers the email to you, but makes it impossible for the software to recognize this as an email address.

These programs look for the specific code and/or the email format. When they find the code they take it and that’s how you get so much spam. Spam is the reason why we try not to put email addresses, in a recognizable form, on your websites. Instead we use contact forms.

These programs also extract the content from your website. Your content can be used on fake websites that are built for the specific purpose of creating inbound links to the spammers sites and to feed off your keyword rich content. This is called “scraping”, and trust me, it’s not fun when someone scrapes your site and steals your content so they can make money.

Unfortunately I had to deliver the news to my friend that lead generation software used in this manner is not something I would advise anyone to invest in. Using software like this could hurt your business more than support your business. After all, if enough of us hit the “Report Spam” button on your email, your internet service provider (ISP) could stop you from sending email. Is that what you want?

In the next blog post I’ll share with you how you can make sure I don’t hit the “Report Spam” button on your email.

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: March 7, 2011

Where to Sell Our Digital Products [ 14:21 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (14)

In our previous episode, The Digital Products Spoke of Your Social Media Hub, you learned what a digital product is, where to find or create ebooks and what type of rights you can offer in your product. In this episode you’ll learn some tips on where to sell your digital products.

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: February 14, 2011

YouTube, One of Your Social Media Spokes [ 14:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (21)

In a previous episodes we discussed Your Social Media Hub and how WordPress Blogs are the heart of your hub. We talked about the first spoke of your social media hub, Twitter. We add another spoke to your social media hub, LinkedIn in this episode.

In this episode of Syndicating Your Content, we’ll talk about YouTube as another spoke.

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: January 3, 2011

Do You Have a Social Media Hub? [ 14:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (226)

Building your business brand should be one of the main goals you have for your social media marketing plan. What this means is using syndication to place your content on the internet as an extension of your brand, and it’s message. So let’s talk about your social media hub.

The Center of Your Hub – Your Website or Blog

Of course, you know that I advocate your website actually be a WordPress blog, and I can put you into a fully functioning wordpress blog for only $10 a month….but I digress

Your website and blog are the center of your social media hub. This is where you sell your products or services on the web. It’s your online representation of you and your business. People visit your blog, you talk to them through your posts, and or content, and they decide to buy from you because you’ve established a rapport with them.

Your Hub’s Spokes

Think of these as spokes on a wheel, where your blog is the center of the wheel and the spokes are those places where you go and create a second presence, another place where people can find you. This is where social media comes in. Each social media network you join is another place for you to meet new people and connect with friends and clients. Each network is an opportunity for you to build a community. You’re probably using some of them now, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, and others.

Once you’ve created your profiles at your social networking sites, here are some strategies to consider:

1. Build and nurture relationships. When you’re spending time on your social networks, think about ways in which you can build relationships. This can be furthering relationships you’ve already established or forming new. For instance, when I have a new friend on Facebook, I put them into a list so I can look for them frequently, and easily, to see what they are talking about. As often as possible I try to join a conversation they have started, by adding a comment or sharing their information. Don’t underestimate the power of sharing your friend’s links, comments, etc. It’s a tremendous goodwill builder.I use my personal Facebook profile as a way to nurture my existing relationships as well as build new ones. Think of it as expanding your reach.
2. Syndicate your content. Once you have a blog up and running, you’ll want import it into Facebook with the Networked Blogs app so that you can immediately send new blog posts to Facebook. This allows new friends on Facebook to see your post, and click over to your blog to find out more about you. It’s also a social community itself. You can find and follow blogs through Networked Blogs that extend your online community.
3. Make new friends. I add friends in Facebook who I have never met. I may see something they said to one of my friends, or pulled them up through a search that intrigued me, so I send a friend request. When you do invite them to be a friend, make sure to add a personal message letting them know why you’re sending them a friend request. Again, having a common interest or two really helps break the ice. To expand your community, you need to feel comfortable reaching out to new people. Remember that common interests help us form those online relationships a bit easier. You never know who your online friends know. It’s expanding your sphere of influence.
4. Show who you are. Transparency is key to your social media strategy. Keeping in mind that all you post on the internet, stays on the internet, show a little personality in your interactions with others online. Don’t be afraid to talk about your interests, the stories that illustrate your point in a blog post.
5. Share info you think your friends would be interested in. You shouldn’t be broadcasting your marketing message 24/7. Sharing is one of the most expedient ways to create solid relationships. Be seen as someone who thinks of others.

Those are some tips on creating a hub for your social media using your blog’s rss feed to deliver your blog posts to your social networking sites and how you can create and build profitable relationships online.

What do you think? Let me know by commenting!

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: December 13, 2010

What is Content Syndication? [ 15:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18)

In this episode of Syndicating Your Content I shared the definition of content syndication. I likened it to a comic strip cartoonist, who creates a single comic strip and that single strip is sent out to newspapers and magazines all over the world. Or, you could look at the spider web image and imagine that your blog is the center of the web, and your content flows outwards through the web strands.

With blogging and social media, we can share our passionate messages globally, through syndication. How do you syndicate your message? Please feel free to share by commenting.