2006 May | flyte blog: small business web marketing blog

Archive for May, 2006

Bloglet Signs Off

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

For a number of you who subscribe via email to flyte: web marketing strategies for small business, this email may look drastically different.

Early on in my blogging career I added a Bloglet email subscription box to our blog, allowing visitors to get my new posts via email. However, the service has always been spotty. Several times I’ve had to log into my account and reset it after I realized I hadn’t been receiving my email feed for about a week.

More recently we switched the subscription box on our blog over to AWeber which allows us to send out HTML versions of our blog posts. As a design firm, I much prefer the ability to brand our posts.

If you don’t have an AWeber account, two other blog-to-email solutions include Feedblitz and Feedburner. Feedblitz even offers a Bloglet-to-Feedblitz converter, which allows you to automatically add your Bloglet subscribers to Feedblitz without annoying them with another confirmation email.

Unfortunately, as I just discovered, AWeber automatically sends your Bloglet email subscriber a confirmation message even though they’ve already confirmed their subscription, reducing the changes your subscribers will continue to receive your emails. Thanks a lot, AWeber!

According to a new post on Bloglet’s home page, they plan on phasing out the service in the next few weeks. So, if you have a blog and offer Bloglet as a subscription solution, you’ll need to move those subscribers onto another platform, pronto.

Unless you have an AWeber account, I’d recommend Feedblitz or Feedburner. The nice thing about Feedblitz is the ability to brand the email feed with your own design if you go with the Pro account. If you’re looking for someone to create a branded template, feel free to contact flyte. We’ve done that for a number of clients, including ourselves.

Rich Brooks
Maine Business Blogger

Tags: Bloglet | Feedblitz | Feedburner | AWeber

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, flyte news, Web Marketing | 4 Comments »

Rich Brooks on Ever Changing Technology

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

Last night I appeared on a recurring segment called iNews on a story called What to Do With Ever Changing Technology. The segment appeared on channel 6 here in Portland and channel 2 up in Bangor, both NBC affiliates.

The stations posted the video to their Web sites. In an ironic twist, I wasn’t able to open it on my new Intel Mac, which was featured in the segment. However, I was able to see it this morning on our PC.

Update: I was finally able to see it on my Mac by directly visiting this link. Your mileage may vary. It took a long time for the video to come up, so fix your self a cup of tea. Another time it didn’t come up at all.

If you want to turn it into a drinking game, take a drink every time they call me "Brooks" and chug anytime they call my company "flyte media."

Rich Brooks
My Friends Call Me Rich

Tags: Technology | Planned Obsolescence

Posted in flyte news | No Comments »

Business Blogs: An Utter Waste of Time?

Monday, May 15th, 2006

If you’ve been reading this business blog for a while, you know my answer is an unmitigated "no!"

However, that is the take by well-respected copywriter Bob Bly. Mike Sigers of Simplenomics (and a regular flyte blog commenter) takes Bob to task in a post entitled Bob Bly is Wrong About Blogs.

While not everybody agrees on the value of a business blog, I did find some of Bob’s quotes surprising, such as:

I have yet to find a single marketer who says that a business blog has gotten him a positive ROI, or return on investment.

Let me start by raising my own hand, then.

Just like any business venture, not every blog is going to have a positive ROI. However, if you think back to the late ’90′s, how many Web sites were making money? Most were expenses, not investments.

Also, most of Bob’s comments seem to be targeted at personal blogs, although I’m sure there are plenty of so-called business blogs that "are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a particular topic of interest to the author."

Of course, Bob does have his own blog and is listed as a contributor on Business Blog Consulting, where I also blog. (However, I couldn’t find any posts of his at BBC. Not sure if this is because he doesn’t have any or because our search isn’t working properly.)

However, if I made my living by crafting copy that
makes people take a desired action, I’d probably be looking at the
democratization of copy via blogging as the end of Western civilization
as well. I wonder if classical painters had the same reaction when they saw the first modern art painting hanging in a gallery or museum.

Rich Brooks
Business Blogger

Tags: Bob Bly | Simplenomics

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Marketing | 12 Comments »

Sex and Closet Organization

Monday, May 15th, 2006

I met a lot of great people at the NAPO annual conference a couple months back, but two of the most engaging were Lori and Claire of Sort It Out, a professional organization company out of St. Louis.

They came to my seminar on How to Plan, Build and Promote a Business Blog and got really excited about the possibilities of writing a blog. Although we’ve just started working with them, I happened to check their blog today and saw a great post titled, Is Cleaning Your Closet Better Than Sex?

“The National Association of Professional Organizers Web site cites a survey taken by the Ikea furniture company in 2001 that inexplicably asserted that 31 percent of respondents got more satisfaction from cleaning a closet than having sex.”

Personally, it makes me wonder about the skills and experience of Ikea customers, but that’s fodder for another post.

Rich Brooks
I Can’t Clean the Closet, I Have a Headache

Tags: Sex | Organization

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Client News | No Comments »

The Media Whore Strikes Again

Friday, May 12th, 2006

For those of you (and you know who you are) who can’t get enough of me, I’ll be on TV twice next week. Of course, you’ll have to be able to receive WCSH Channel 6 (or WLBZ Channel 2 in Bangor).

On Monday, May 15th, I’ll be interviewed by Kara Matuszewski on how quickly new technologies become obsolete. ~~I’m not sure if this will air on the 6pm news or the 11pm news or both.~~ Update: Turns out it will be on the 5:30 news.

On Friday, May 19th, I’ll be talking about online mapping services (MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, Google Maps and Google Earth) on evening news program 207 with Rob Caldwell.

Happy Mother’s Day in advance!

Rich Brooks
I Know I’m Excited

Posted in flyte news | 6 Comments »

An Open Letter to Qwest Communications

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Dear Qwest,

I haven’t digested everything from yesterday’s report that our government has been buying our phone records under the argument that "if we don’t, the terrorists will have won" However, I did see that although Verizon, AT&T & BellSouth gladly sold American’s phone records you did not.

I also understand that the NSA strong armed you, questioning your patriotism and threatening that you would get no further business from the government. That must have been very frightening. If the NSA came into my office and demanded client information I hope I would be that strong.

While I’m sure you have your own problems and no one’s perfect, I have to say in an age where more companies see their customer’s personal data as a company asset, I applaud your actions.

Now tell me, when are you going to start servicing companies on the east coast? Would you have one of your reps give me a call?

Rich Brooks
They’re My Phone Records, Damn It!

Posted in Off Topic | No Comments »

Can We Trust Email Anymore?

Thursday, May 11th, 2006

At least twice in the past two weeks I’ve sent off a proposal that never arrived.

Now, whether they were lost in cyberspace, bounced by an ISP that doesn’t send out rejection slips or sit idling in a recipient’s junk folder I’ll probably never know. All that matters is that my prospect believes I didn’t deliver the goods.

With spam filters behaving like angry bouncers this is going to happen more and more. I’m making myself a promise today that any new prospects are going to get a follow up phone call within 24 hours of a proposal going out to ensure that the person knows I’m trying.

Email has become an essential tool for business communication; I can’t imagine running my business without it. However, if we can’t trust that our messages are being delivered, I wonder if we’ll have to find a new (or old) method of communication.

Carrier pigeon, anyone?

Rich Brooks
Sending Solicited Business Emails Only

Tags: Email Filters | Spam Filters

Posted in Business Philosophy, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business | 3 Comments »

Blogging Early Adopters – Does it Help?

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

I was helping someone pitch a story on business blogging today and I wrote the following:

[Business blogging] is definitely a situation where the early adopters will benefit as a blog’s “life-span” is often displayed through archived posts, and older, most established blogs will carry more weight.

Like rings on a tree, it’s easy to see how long a blog’s been around from the "Archives." (Except you don’t need to kill a blog to find out how old it is.)

Personally, I give more credence to a blog that’s been around for a while. If I see someone spouting off and their archive only shows one or two months, I don’t give it too much weight. I even sometimes go looking for some "carbon dating" to see how old a blog is.

Am I alone on this one?

Rich Brooks
Proudly Blogging Since November 2004

Tags: Blog Archives

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Marketing | 10 Comments »

Fishing with Strawberries and Cream

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

"I go fishing up in Maine every summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream; but I find that for some strange reason fish prefer worms. So when I go fishing, I don’t think about what I want. I think about what they want. I don’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangle a worm or a grasshopper in front of the fish and say: "Wouldn’t you like to have that?".

Why not use the same common sense when fishing for men?"

– Dale Carnegie

OK, maybe the language seems a little dated, but this excerpt from How to Win Friends and Influence People is still valid.

As I look over some recent posts on Keyword Research: What Are Your Prospects Searching For? and (coincidentally) Email Marketing: What’s Your Email Bait? as well as some conversations with clients as I help them revise their home page copy, I realize how important this concept is.

People are self-interested as they surf. Your prospects and customers are far more interested in their own needs and problems than yours. If you want to win and keep customers you need to keep their problems and issues first in your mind.

Your Web site copy, your email subject lines, the titles of your articles and white papers all need to be written with your customers’ needs in mind.

Rich Brooks
Worms Are Yucky

Tags: Dale Carnegie

Posted in Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development | No Comments »