Author Archives ⇒ Brandon Hann

List Building – Bounce Handling

· Brandon Hann

If you send an email to someone based on an email address they gave you some time ago, but this time you receive a bounce-back message, it’s usually because that person has changed their email address or their inbox is full. When you’re running a business and a successful mailing list, you don’t want to have bounced emails.

Some mail servers are configured to delete all bounced mail automatically, but you don’t want to do that. In fact, you want to know about every bounced email your system gets because this gives you an opportunity to rectify the situation. In most cases, there’s nothing much you can do. If someone changed their email address and didn’t provide you with the new one, all you can do is prune your list accordingly.

However, this is exactly what you want to do. You don’t want to maintain a working email list with hundreds of dead emails in there because all you end up doing is wasting valuable system resources.

Bounce handling

If you’re using a proper email provider, bounce handling will usually be handled automatically, but if it’s not, it’s important to check your email lists for email address that are no longer valid or accepting your email. If you don’t, you can be marked as a spammer and this is not good.

Being labeled a spammer will not only tarnish your professional and/or personal image, but you can affect your webhost, ISP and email service provider!

<< Back to Email Service Provider (ESP) Forward to Delivery Rates >>

List Building – ESP

· Brandon Hann

ESP stands for Email Service Provider and it can mean the difference between a successful email manager with proper, spam-free email marketing campaigns and the “stuff” you send. It’s hard to comprehend paying for an external email service when you clearly have email access as part of your webhosting service.

However, the difference is that ESPs allow you to create and manage that email much better. As an example, if your website offers visitors the ability to sign up to a newsletter, you might have these emails being stored in a simple database and then extracted to Outlook. You probably then create a newsletter or some other content and blast off an email to all your contacts.

The problem with this is that these days there are tons and tons of spam being sent all over the world, so the element of trust is important. What this means is that you have less of a chance of your messages actually getting to your visitors when sending email from your own Internet connection.

Benefits

  • Ability to create templates for sending to contacts and/or the use of pre-made templates
  • A subscriber list, which is uploaded by the user for distributing messages. This may be enhanced with custom fields in order to hold additional information for each subscriber for filtering and targeted messaging purposes
  • A send engine, which allows users to distribute their message to the subscribers
  • Updating of the subscriber list to suppress those requesting to be unsubscribed
  • Statistical reviews of each email sent to measure the success rate of the campaigns
  • Testing of templates for compatibility with email applications
  • Spam testing to gauge the score of the email against known factors that will place the template at risk of being blocked
  • The ability to send both html and plain text formats to improve delivery success rates (known as Multi-Part MIME)

To get you on the right track, I’ll recommend the provider that I use. They’re called Aweber and their pricing is cheaper than some of the other services I’ve found out there, like MailChimp.

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Twitter Announces Advertising

· Brandon Hann

For the first time since Twitter showed up on the web scene 4 years ago, they have announced advertising over their network. Companies already use Twitter to promote their products and services, but they face one fundamental problem–they have to have followers to get their message out.

This problem has now been solved by the use of Promoted Tweets that will appear at the top of search results very similar to that of Google’s AdWords program. Tuesday is the day that an initial rollout of 10 advertisers containing the likes of Starbucks and Best Buy will provide Twitter users with the first ads. However, these ads will only be visible to 2-10% of users for the time being. I’m not sure if these users will be chosen randomly or if it’ll be based on account usage, amount of followers, etc.

Twitter has long been slightly opposed to the whole advertising thing, suggesting that ‘ads could irritate users’, but the reality is that venture capital doesn’t last forever and if we expect Twitter to stay free, they have to make money somehow. Twitter says that in time, these ads may start appearing in the stream of posts that users see when they log in.

There is some good in all this; businesses will now have the ability to promote their offerings without having to first promote themselves to get followers. As a user, you no longer need to actually read any tweets for promotions and whatnot–just login to the site and click on every ad you want!

And just what kind of ads can we expect to see in all this? In the beginning, I’m sure all will be fine and dandy, but what happens once all the affiliates or spammers (is there a difference?) get on? Will we be faced with another over-saturated market of useless products and ebooks? I sure hope Twitter can get this one right. Who knows…maybe they’ll set the new bar for how advertising is done online.

My two cents

It may seem like I’m completely against all this and most of you might wonder why considering I run a website about how to make a profitable business online, but I’m really not–if it’s done right. What I am against is when legitimate ads are washed out by spammers and thousands of the exact same affiliate links because it causes users to become “blind” to ads and overall, it creates a horrible experience.

But I’m openminded…let’s see what Twitter’s got before we start judging!

Web 2.0 – Hash Marks

· Brandon Hann

If you don’t know what a hash mark is, it’s the ‘#’ on your phone or SHIFT+3 on your keyboard. You may also call it a pound sign. Right about now, you might be asking what does this little symbol have to do with websites! I’m glad you asked because I’m here to tell you.

#?

This is a more advanced article regarding the usage of the hash symbol as a means to reduce duplicate content for the search engines. As mentioned much earlier, you never want to have duplicate content. This not only means copying content from other websites, but providing duplicate links from within your own site.

Let say for example you we interested in tracking ad results so you created three different ad links all pointing back to your site. Maybe the first ad was from Facebook, the second was from MySpace and the third was from Google AdWords. For tracking purposes, you would have setup three different URLs so you can see which ad generated the most traffic. These URLs might look something like this:

Homepage (Style 1)

Homepage (Style 1)

Homepage (Style 1)

These links by themselves are not causing any problems, but when a search engine begins indexing your website, it’s going to find and index all 3 separately. The problem is that all of these links point to the same exact page. If the search engine views these 3 different links pointing to the same page, it’s very likely that your site could be penalized for duplicate content.

Another problem this creates is that it spreads any link juice you might have over all 3 links even though they are still pointing to the exact same page! You don’t want this!!

To solve this, you would replace the “?” with a “#” to make the URLs appear like this:

Homepage (Style 1)

Homepage (Style 1)

Homepage (Style 1)

Search engines will stop at the hash, thus making your 3 links appear only as 1! Confused yet?? I don’t pretend to be the expert on this matter and therefore, for further reading, check out this page all about URL referrers.

My two cents

I recommend that you decide up front how the links to your website will be organized. Besides the information on this page, there’s a whole slew of problems that can arise from improperly linked webpages. It’s important that once you have a link structure in place, you stick with it and don’t change it.

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Web 2.0 – Fan Pages

· Brandon Hann

Fan pages can be any general webpage that is created by yourself or someone else who’s a fan of your site/business, but it this case, we’re talking about Facebook fan pages. I was searching for a straight-up comparison between fan pages and group pages only expecting to find limited information, but I found a blog post over at Search Engine Journal that gave me what I was looking for.

What is a fan page?

Facebook has two options for promoting and networking people with your business, website or blog. You can create a group which is basically a discussion page while pages are like Facebook profiles, but for an entire company. Even if you’re just a one-person show, you might still want to create your own Facebook page. This way, you can still have your personal profile and not have to mix in your business.

The breakdown

This is the informational breakdown chart as found on Search Engine Journal:

Key Feature Facebook Page Facebook Group
“Ugly” URLs No Yes
Hosting a discussion Yes Yes
Discussion wall, and discussion forum Yes Yes
Extra applications added Yes No
Messaging to all members Yes (via updates) Yes (via PMs)
Visitor statistics Yes (“Page insights”) No
Video and photo public exchange Yes Yes
“Related” event creation and invitation Yes No
Promotion with social ads Yes No

My two cents

As I mentioned earlier, setting up a Facebook fan page creates the same functionality as a standard Facebook page, but with the added bonus of being separate from your personal profile. In my case, I decided that I’d operate two blogs–one for my self and one for my business venture. Since this site was automatically posting my new articles to my personal Facebook profile, I can now move them over to the fan page I created and have my personal blog post to my actual profile. Make sense?!

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Web 2.0 – Groups

· Brandon Hann

Online groups are just as important and functional as groups in real life. They allow people that share common interests to network with each other and share information, opinions and ideas. Finding a group is easy and it’s something that you should always consider when you’re looking for a competitive edge in business.

What are groups?

Lets say you’re in the business of building websites and you’re having a little trouble finding clients or maybe you feel a little stuck with some of your skills and you need a little help. You could go it alone and spend countless hours scouring the Internet for all the resources you need, but imagine if you belonged to a group other other web designers and maybe a few web hosting providers?

You would now have access to countless amounts of free tools and help from people all over the world!

In the days past, web groups were all important for your business to gain that slight advantage and it was hard to find them, but today, groups have kind of taking on a new image.

Social networking has arrived and services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Groups and Xing are providing a hybrid experience that incorporates everyday communications and updates with actual business-networking building tools.

Group websites

I have compiled a small list of websites that offer network building tools, user groups and more. This section was not expected to be very large considering the majority of this information will be available later when I begin discussing social networking, but here’s a small list of popular sites.

  • LinkedIn – LinkedIn uses a simple premise–connect with former and current colleagues and friends. Once you start building your connections in turn, you gain access to their connections and so forth. The more people you can connect with, the more networking you can do.
  • Xing – Xing takes global networking to a new level. They boast over 8 million professionals using their services for managing business contacts. You can even search for new employees for your business, advertise with other companies and use your profile to draw attention to your company.
  • Facebook – Although Facebook is mainly a social networking site, it does allow you to create a group for your business. This allows you to promote your services and get your name out there, but in comparison, I’d rather create a fan page. See my next topic for more information.
  • Google Groups – This is yet one more service from Google that’s less hyped and promoted compared to everything else they do, but it’s a great tool anyway. You can find a group for just about anything you could want. From what I noticed, the majority of people are using Google Groups to provide tech support and help, but it can still be used as a viable networking site.

Of course, there are plenty more out there, but the general idea is to connect yourself and your website with others in related fields. Before you know it, other people will be linking directly to your site and this will help increase your traffic!

<< Back to Comments Forward to Fan Pages >>

Web 2.0 – Comments

· Brandon Hann

This is more for the bloggers out there, but it also applies to any website that provides a way for visitors to comment on your content or in response to other comments. In keeping with the concept of visitor interactivity, the purpose of providing comment space is to engage your visitors. When they feel like they’re more a part of your site, you will get better response to your offerings.

As you have seen on my website, almost every page and post has a place to put comments in regards to the content on that page. I say “almost” because there’s no need to have comments on static pages like contacts and so forth. Anyway, it would seem that having a comments section is a no-brainer and what else would need to be said about them?!

Well, I have a bit of advice for you. A lot of blogs that run comment sections do not properly utilize this great tool. How many times have you ever left a comment on someone’s website and you kind of felt like your opinions were being tossed in a black hole? If this is happening, what’s the point of posting a comment? Here’s some DOs and DON’Ts for your comments section:

DOs

  • DO allow visitors to comment. What this means is don’t force people to register just to put a comment on your site. Sometimes people just want to add their two cents and the last thing they need is another username and password to remember.
  • DO respond to as many comments as you can, especially the ones with questions, duh! Your visitor wants to feel like they’ve been heard and even though they might get some responses from other users, it’s much more meaningful coming from the site owner (or at least the author of the content).
  • DO remove the “rel=nofollow” link attribute from the website address listed on the comment. I advise this because I feel that if someone is taking the time to make a comment after reading your content, let them have a free backlink. Again, don’t worry about the spammers–you can get rid of them with other techniques.
  • DO install anti-spam protection. It’s true, once your site picks up traffic, all the spammers in the world will descend upon your site like it’s made of gold, but you can stop this by using simple anti-spam plugins.
  • DO return comments if people have related blogs. This shows that you’ve taking your time to view your visitor’s websites and it might even allow you to get your site a backlink.

DON’Ts

  • DON’T hide your comments. Some blogs hide comments, therefore making users click somewhere to drop the comments down. Of course this might be helpful if you have hundreds of comments on a single page, but generally, you want to ensure that comments are a part of your content.
  • DON’T delete negative comments. If you prune your comments so that your content always shines, you’re fooling yourself. Let people say what they want. Isn’t that the reason why you started blogging in the first place? It’ll create a well-rounded experience for everybody if they know they have can open dialog on your site.
  • DON’T ignore people. Some people leave comments to ask you questions or make requests. The moment you start ignoring people because you feel above them is when you will lose your traffic. Keep reminding yourself that these people don’t need to come to your site.
  • DON’T allow spam. Some blogs don’t have checks in place to either look for spam or at least moderate all comments for approval so a lot of spam gets through. This doesn’t just affect your site. Spam being on your site can also affect every site you link to and those webmasters will not like that!
  • DON’T disable comments altogether because you’re afraid of people’s reactions to your site. The purpose of the Internet is to share information and teach people. Maybe someone can show you a thing or two in return.

My two cents

Don’t kill your blog by overlooking something as simple and basic as a comments section. Utilize your tools and harness your visitors so they keep coming back more and more. You’ll notice in short time how fast your site can grow by keeping it fresh and allowing people to interact with you.

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Web 2.0 – Forums

· Brandon Hann

If you’re keeping up with my articles, you’re starting to notice a trend about interacting with your users. There are many ways to do it and you can either do them all or specialize in a few. One of the most elaborate (and sometimes difficult) ways to create user interaction is by creating a forum, also known as a message board.

Do not confuse forms with forums! Whereas a ‘form’ allows your users to interact with you, a ‘forum’ allows online, live connections between you and your user as well as the user and other users. I’m pretty sure you have see a message board online somewhere in your travels. Generally, it’s a place where a user posts a question or concern and then other people respond by commenting or answering the question. In no time, a dialog is created and anyone can participate.

Do I need one?

First, the catch-22 with operating a forum is that you need members. Starting out a forum-only website can be a daunting task mainly because people don’t want to waste time posting a question or comment on a member-less website because they will not be getting a response.

The question of whether you need one comes down to your users. Do you offer a product or service that is generating side conversations in your blog comments? Do those same products and services keep getting support questions from users?

The purpose of your forum will define why you need it and the goal is to generate interaction between your users. Let them talk about things, ask questions, explore new ideas and share their own.

Getting started

There are countless software packages out there that offer different forum setups ranging from extremely basic to advanced. Some are free and some cost money, but in general, they’re all very easy to setup.

Originally, I was going to tout vBulletin as the best forum software out there, but I just realized they have created a whole new monster! They have now integrated their very successful forum software into a full-featured CMS software suite and I must tell you, it looks amazing!

Here are my three personal favorites:

  • phpBB – You can’t beat free, right? phpBB is probably the best deal your’re going to get and it’s the best way to get a site built and running without having to fork over a sum of money to do so. Also, if you outgrow this platform, you can always upgrade to something bigger later on.
  • YaBB – Another free title that you can use to test your site and figure out how everything is going to work. There is great community support and it’s a very basic software package.
  • vBulletin – For $285, you not only get a full-featured forum package, but also an entire CMS suite! You can manage all aspects of your site with one program and have all of your features integrated into to one seamless structure. This is by far the best for your money, but may only be of use to larger sites. This is one you would want to upgrade to as your site grows.

To see a more expansive list, check out CMSCritic.

My two cents

Unless you already have a significant userbase or you’re involved in a community that needs organization, you’re going to have a tough time getting a forum off the ground. However, it can be done if you work at it. Like I said before, getting members is really all it takes.

I’d say if you’re serious about getting a blog going or just creating a website to sell your products and services, you might want to invest in vBulletin because it allows you to get a full-featured content site going while offering you the ability to open a message board later. Alternatively, you can start with a small (and free) setup to learn the ropes and then upgrade as time moves on.

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Using digital barcodes on your business cards

· Brandon Hann

I was sitting here the other day thinking about creating business cards for myself and I started thinking of a unique way to provide the same information that every business card offers, but in a way that people are more likely to remember. As I was thinking about this, I was playing with my iPhone and an app called RedLaser. This app allows you to scan the barcode of any product and it automatically searches the Internet for competitive pricing.

Anyway, I thought about how great it would be to have a business card in hand and rather than typing all that information into your phone, you could just scan a simple bar code on the card and have the information sent right to your contacts list.

Photo from NevilleHobson.com

I began a search to see if someone else had a similar idea and I found Neville Hobson’s blog and he had a post a while ago discussing just this topic! Well, without the iPhone app per se…at least in the incarnation I envisioned.

Essentially what he was talking about was that business cards have been a huge part of social interaction in the last some-odd number of years, but they suffer in today’s technological world–and frankly, I couldn’t agree more. When someone offers me a business card, I’m forced to comprehend the information it contains and then write it manually into my phone or other device.

Subconsciously, I also tend to “size-up” the person based on the design of the card. Too much flash and I’m thinking they spend more time on their image than on their business. Too little and maybe they don’t care enough. Now, if someone handed me a business card with bar code on it, this would make me feel like they’re on par with today’s technology. I feel much the same way when someone is able to offer me a v-card for download.

In a perfect world, business cards would be gone and vcards and iPhone apps like Bump will be the mainstay. But let’s face it…not everyone has an iPhone or even a smartphone and there’s something to be said about the old school business card–it still works.

In fact, people expect them when you’re at a conference or meeting with customers and not having one could mean a loss of business for you. What people don’t expect (at least now anyway) is the ability to copy your information simply by scanning a barcode right off your card.

How do I get this?

It’s easy and cheap to get cards printed, but here’s what you need to get barcode images printed out so you can integrate them into your card design. I wrote a separate post all about Microsoft Tag that goes into much more detail about their service.

  • Know your codes – There are different types of bar codes out there. You’re probably more familiar with the standard barcode you see on everyday products, but these won’t work because they can only store small amounts of data–namely numbers and a few letters. What you need are the kinds that shippers like FedEx and UPS use. The two most common are QR and DataMatrix. Microsoft offers a new color barcode called High Capacity Color Barcode that allows up to 3,500 characters to be displayed per square inch.
  • Get software – You’re going to need software to create the barcodes. If you want to make the Microsoft color tag, simply go to this website. Other barcodes have to be made using barcode software. Do a Google search for some.

Test it out

I created a tag that takes you to my website using the Microsoft Tag site and it only took 3 seconds! First, you need to jump on your mobile phone and visit this website: gettag.mobi. It’ll redirect you to the right software based on your phone. iPhone users: there’s an app for that. Once downloaded, you can load it up and take a snapshot of this picture:

It will automatically take you to my website! Isn’t that crazy?? As you can see, it works right off computer screens, so it’ll work anywhere you can print it–including business cards. To read more, check out my article about how to use Microsoft Tag on your business cards.

UPDATE – November 18th, 2010

I just wanted to update this post to include a picture of the business card I made for myself that includes both the Microsoft tag and a QR barcode on the front. Alongside their functionality, they also look great within the design. Originally, I planned on adding the barcodes to the back of the card, but I figured who looks at the back?! Check it out and let me know what you think!

Brandon Media business card
Brandon Media business card

Microsoft also introduced the ability to create the Microsoft tag in black and white as seen above. More on that over on my article about the Microsoft Tag!

Web 2.0 – Tribe Marketing

· Brandon Hann

Tribe marketing is more of a descriptive title rather than an official name. In a sense, being tribal just means that we as a society take our cues from the group (or tribe) that we most relate to. For example, if you’re close to the entertainment industry, you’re more likely to follow trends that current celebrities are following or creating.

In terms of websites and/or blogs, it’s important to know what tribe you belong to or what tribe you’re creating. For a website example, lets look at my site. The most closely related tribal group I can relate to would be business owners, bloggers, website developers and Internet marketers. What this means is that my content will strike a chord with people in these groups and they’re more likely to respond to my offerings.

What is tribe marketing?

As with any marketing, you want to focus your attention on your niche group(s). Although one of your primary goals is to get as much traffic to your site as possible, what good is a bunch of visitors looking for ways to soup up their hotrods when your site is based on search engine optimization? Your site however, would be of some use to the person running a site about hotrods.

Because people are “tribal” by nature, they are looking to fit in with people who share the same interests and want the same things in life–as well they should be. Your goal is to maximize your site’s potential using these groups of people.

Ways to market

In the next few sections, I’ll be exploring ways to accomplish this goal, but here’s a quick snapshot:

  • Create a forum – Using a forum (message board) allows you to interact with your visitors as well as letting them interact with each other.
  • Blog comments – Allow visitors to comment on your posts to create dialog.
  • Use groups – Use web groups all over the Internet that group similar people together to promote your website to.

If you have passion about your website, you’re probably already doing these things and understand the value of them. Think about it this way: if you went to an online store that sold something you can’t buy anywhere else, how much better would it be if you went to the product page and right alongside the standard description, you got to see other people’s opinions on it, some forum posts about how to customize that product and even a live contact link straight to the owner!

Not only would this make you feel better about the product, but you’re likely to come back and buy other things as well.

My two cents

Utilize the way people communicate and interact with other people. You’d be surprised how much more 100 visitors of targeted traffic is worth compared to 1000 random visitors. Spend your time looking for people that are looking for you and don’t get so caught up with just trying to get your traffic numbers up.

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