No matter where you are with your site/blog, you’ve probably got some questions.

This week, get them answered.

Whether you’re struggling with the concept of how to accomplish something on your site, or the actual “how to” to get it done, bring your questions to this call.

Register below. You’ll have an opportunity to ask your questions ahead of time, just in case they require a little research on my part. (Yeah, it’s a hold-over from the years I was a Girl Scout…always be prepared.)

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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On Friday, November 13th, I’m holding a special teleclass that I’d really like you to be a part of, one way or another.

But first, a little background… (this is long, but important…)

The Summer That Just Won’t Quit

This past summer was a really trying one for me and mine. One of the events that occurred involved my now 16-year-old son and his girlfriend. Long, long story short, she ran away from home because she was being sexually molested by her step-father and verbally and emotionally abused by her mother. She is 15. She wanted to live with us. For all the obvious (and many not-so-obvious) reasons, that was not an option.

In one of those I’m-so-freakin’-proud-of-my-child-I’m-going-to-burst moments that make all the trials of motherhood SOOOO worth it, my son said to me, “Mom…I know what we can do. Safe Place came to our school last year and told us about their program. All we have to do is take her to Quik Trip (a convenience store in our neighborhood) because they have the Safe Place sign in their window. We just take her there and they’ll call Youth Services to come and pick her up and take her to the Youth Shelter and from there she can get the help she needs.”

So, that’s what we did.

The fine people at Quik Trip fed us, gave us free drinks and kept us hidden in their back office while we waited for Youth Services to arrive. When the van arrived, it was hard to let her go. We were all three crying, because we were scared for her, but we all three knew this was better than being on the street and homeless. You know what my son said to me in the car on the way home? “Thanks, Mom. This is the first time in a long time that I won’t have to worry about her being safe.” That broke my heart.

She lasted two weeks at the shelter before she ran away. Where’d she run? To us. Begged me to let her live with us, but I had to take her back to the shelter. I took her shopping, bought her toiletries and clothes since the only ones she had were the ones she went in wearing, and we all went to our favorite diner for dinner before we took her back. They had to physically remove her from my car while my son, daughter and I looked on, all four of us sobbing. We all got a personal lesson that day in how sometimes doing the right thing just sucks.

We thought everything was going to be ok for her when we got word that she’d been placed in foster care. She called us in late August to let us know where she was and that she was ok. But apparently, there were problems at the foster home, because she ran again in mid-September and spent nearly a month on the streets of Tulsa…alone.

Two weeks ago, we had the police at our door for the umpteenth time asking if we were harboring a runaway, and while we were talking to the officers, another patrol car pulled up in front of the house with her in the front seat. Finally, her grandmother stepped forward and petitioned for custody. That hearing is the first week of November. We hope this is good news for her…

Meanwhile, In Kansas City

Did you know that November is National Runaway Prevention Month? I didn’t, until Tracy told me the other day when she was telling me about her son, Ty, and the Boy Scout merit badge he was finishing up. (For those of you who don’t know, Tracy is my friend and fabulous assistant. She and her family live in Kansas City.)

Ty was creating a video about homeless kids in the Kansas City area, which morphed into the troop’s service project for November. In doing the research for his video, and because of Tracy’s connections being a CASA advocate (a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children), they hooked up with Jeff Matascik, a violence prevention specialist for Synergy Services who also heads up planning for One Homeless Night, a community-wide “sleep-out” that gives young people a glimpse of what it’s like to be homeless.

Boy Scout Troop #603 will be spending the night out in the cold on Friday, November 13th, and Ty is looking for people to sponsor him. Tracy asked me if I would be willing, and I said, “Oh…I’ll go you one better than that…!! Let me call you back.”

The Teachable Moments

You see, one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in my life is to be ok with what I’m able to do versus what I want to do, because I’m a “fixer”. God help you – don’t hand me a problem that you don’t want solved, because if it strikes that “fix-it” chord in me, I might mow you down in my effort to “help” you. It’s a character flaw of mine, I realize…I get tunnel-vision about some stuff…particularly kids, animals and social injustices of all kinds.

So, I consciously practice doing what I can, with what I have, where I’m at.

Can I fix my son’s girlfriend’s situation? No.

Can I wipe out homelessness in my city, much less my country or the world? No.

So, what can I do with what I have, where I’m at?

I can create a win-win-win-win-win situation by asking my good friend, Marty Marsh, to let me (and you, too!) pick his brain on the topic of Offline Marketing for Online Success on a special teleclass to be held the morning of One Homeless Night (Friday, November 13th.)

• Marty and I get a win because we get to be part of the solution, even if we can’t solve the whole problem.
• You get a win because you get to learn some marketing tips and tricks from someone who really knows what he’s doing and doesn’t go for all that yucky, hip-slick-and-cool hype we see so much of online, all for a just a small donation to sponsor Ty, Tracy’s son.
• Ty gets a win because he’ll have more sponsors and that’ll (hopefully) make freezing his booty off that night a little more worth it.
• Synergy Services gets a win because they’ll get support from outside the Kansas City area in meeting their goal of raising $80,000.
• And most importantly, the homeless kids in Kansas City get a win because some people they’ll probably never meet in their lives (us) are giving a little bit that will actually help them a lot.

I believe in the collective power of one.

Click here to see Ty’s video and join us on this special teleclass. (If you can’t come to the call live, register anyway – we’ll send you the recording!)

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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HTML Email

Plain Text Email

Whether to send HTML or plain text emails depends on whom you ask. Lots of marketers advise against using HTML emails, citing lower email deliverability rates with HTML, yet according to AWeber, use of HTML email has risen 25.47% in the last year.

Hmmm…what gives?

I have not conducted any kind of formal study, but I can tell you why I like HTML:

1. HTML emails are prettier. I like pretty and easy on the eyes.

2. Speaking of easy on the eyes, I think HTML emails are easier to read.

3. HTML emails allow me to “brand” my emails consistent with my website. (Take into consideration I can – and have – created my own custom email templates to match my sites. You might not be able to do that without my help, but you sure can put your logo in there, and use your color scheme.)

4. HTML lets me track clicks. That means I can see how effective my emails are and how many people click the links I provide in them. VERY valuable information.

5. HTML allows you to use bold, italics and other simple formatting to call attention to important information.

On the other hand…

Here are a few good reasons to use plain text:

1. Some people prefer plain text. (gasp! Not everyone is like me?? LOL)

2. SPAM filters don’t like emails that are HTML-only. The thinking is that only spammers would take the lazy route and not include a plain text version. (More on this in a minute.)

3. More and more people are using mobile devices to read email, and not all devices handle HTML all that gracefully.

4. Sometimes plain text is just more appropriate. A good example is when you’re sending frequent, short update-type emails. Using HTML in some of these types of scenarios is a little overkill.

5. Some people set their email programs to read everything as plain text, whether it comes that way, or not. If you’re sending HTML only, they’re going to get an email full of HTML code strewn everywhere. Not nice.

Oy. Decisions…decisions….

So, how ’bout a happy medium? How ’bout you do both? Most major mailing list services (my favorite AWeber, included) provide a way to do exactly that. On the receiving end, whichever the recipient prefers – that’s the version they’ll get. A little extra work on your part, yes…but your subscribers are worth it.

And one last thing? You don’t have to use a fancy HTML template to send an HTML email. For example, AWeber’s HTML email window looks and feels much like Microsoft Word. (As an aside, did you know that all Word docs are HTML? Yup.) Anyway – you can create both HTML and plain text versions of your emails very easily with most mailing list services.

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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So, even in the age of blogging and RSS, we’ve established we still need our mailing lists. Most everybody thinks the double opt-in process for mailing lists is a pain. (Double opt-in is when your subscribers have to enter their name and email address first, and then click a link in a confirmation email to confirm that they really want to be on that list.) I’ll admit – sometimes I get whiney and start to agree. But no matter how much a pain you think double opt-in is, you don’t want to build mailing lists without it. Here are 3 reasons I use and recommend double opt-in, anyway.

1. No Fakin’ It – For You or (and more importantly) Anyone Else

No, you can’t just sit down and add all the people in your address book to your mailing list and be done with it. But, guess what? Neither can anyone else.

So what? Here’s what: With all the trouble we have getting email through SPAM filters these days and the work we put into getting our messages read when they do make it through, our mailing lists are a pretty darn important business asset, don’t you think?

As you know, there are some sneaky, underhanded, even malicious idiots online who entertain themselves making trouble for those of us legitimately using the Internet for business. One of the easiest ways to make life miserable for a legitimate business owner is to get their mailing list account shut down for spamming.

How can they do that? By subscribing a bunch of email addresses to your list so that when you send something to that list, lots of people mark your message as SPAM and you get your account shut down because of all the complaints. Oh, and some of these jerks have programs that do this for them, so they’re not even working too hard while making trouble for you. But they can’t do this to you if your lists are double opt-in lists.

So, while it’s more work for you in some scenarios, double opt-in ensures that only people who really want to be on your list actually get on your list. Your mailing list is a valuable business asset…using double opt-in makes sure the knotheads of the world can’t mess with it.

2. If There’s a Problem, There’s a Clue

When you use double opt-in, people know to expect a confirmation email to be coming their way. If one doesn’t show up, they know there’s a problem somewhere. The most likely scenario is they had a typo in their email address when they signed up, so when they don’t get the confirmation email, they know to go back and try again.

If you use single opt-in and they have a typo in their email address, they’ll be off and doing other things, thinking they’ve subscribed to your mailing list when they really haven’t. You’ll have no way to get in touch with them because the typo will prevent any emails you send from reaching them. They’ll likely never know they messed up their email address, and just might conclude your mailing list is dead, anyway. Oh well.

3. The Responsiveness of Your List is Much Better

Now, this is a philosophical argument in favor of double opt-in. If it’s harder (meaning it takes more attention and a couple extra clicks) to get on your mailing list, that means that it’s likely only those who really want to be on your list will get on it, right? I mean, those just barely interested won’t work that hard.

When it comes time to send messages to your list, a much higher percentage of the people on your list are going to be inclined to open and read the message because they had to work a little harder to get on the list to begin with. I consistently have better than 70% open rates on my mailings and about half of my mailings have open rates in excess of 100% – meaning people are opening them more than once! (Must be some good stuff in my messages, eh?)

I don’t know about you, but I’d far rather have a list of 100 people who pay attention to me and what I send out, than a list of thousands who largely ignore me.

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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If you’ve been building a business online for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve heard, “The money is in the list.” And back before blogs arrived on the scene, it was not only true, but pretty darn clear. We did everything we could to encourage people to subscribe to our newsletter mailing lists, and we diligently produced newsletters to stay in contact with those subscribers.

But now we have blogs and we publish new content on a regular basis. People can subscribe to our RSS feeds and receive those content updates automatically through a feed reader or via email. Does that mean we don’t need our newsletters anymore?

I think we do need our newsletter mailing lists, but maybe now that we have more options where staying in contact with our subscribers is concerned (not to mention different types of subscribers!), we should become a little more strategic about how we do things.

First, it might be helpful to explore the main difference between an opt-in mailing list and an RSS subscriber list: how you get the message delivered.

With an opt-in mailing list, you send them an email. With an RSS list, you publish a new blog post. Sending an email directly to their inbox is more private than a new blog post published for all the world to see on your blog. That is an important distinction, because you might need to send a message that is either not for public eyes, or you might just not want to muck up your blog, for whatever reason. Being able to get messages through to the people who are interested in what you’re doing without the “public-ness” of blog posts can come in quite handy.

Second, it might be time to rethink what goes in your newsletter.

I’ve seen a lot of newsletters in my day, and many of them used to have several sections to them, one of which was usually an article of some sort. My own newsletter used to be like that. Well, I don’t know about you, but it didn’t take long for me to find myself in a quandary – do I put the article on my blog, or do I save it for my newsletter? I think my blog is a much better use of my articles than my newsletter. More people get to see them and I get SEO benefits for my site from them. So what’s left in my newsletter? Announcements, special offers, all that stuff I don’t want to publish on my site, for whatever reason. You know…news. (Gasp!)

Third, it might be good to know who your subscribers are.

In my case, I have about 4 times the number of RSS subscribers as I have opt-in list subscribers. That’s on purpose, on my part. I also have about 2 times the number of visitors to my site as I have RSS subscribers. Said another way, about half the people who visit my blog become RSS subscribers (and more than half of those subscribe through a feed reader, not through email.) About 1/8th the number of people who visit my site have opted in on a mailing list. (You get a free e-book when you do that.) Then about half that number of people are on a private, invitation-only mailing list I have for clients.

Here’s a picture of how I see these different groups from a relationship-with-me perspective.

It’s not that my RSS subscribers don’t love me, it’s just that the nature of the relationship we have is a little looser because of how they’re subscribed. Because they haven’t opted in to a mailing list, they don’t get any of the “private information” I send out but don’t publish on my blog. So, they don’t know as much as my opt-in subscribers do. That’s even more true of my client mailing list as compared to my other opt-in lists. They get the low-down on just about everything going on with me. My relationship with my clients is pretty tight.

If I didn’t have an opt-in mailing list service, I wouldn’t be able to maintain these closer relationships with my clients, and that just wouldn’t do…at least not for me. I’m very relationship-driven, and I derive a great deal of pleasure from the relationships I build in my business, and I just wouldn’t be happy in business without them.

I should also point out that some people are on all of these lists. They want to get the “inside” information, and they also want to get each update from the site. You’ll have that situation, too.

So, yes, I still need my mailing list, but the content of what I send out has changed since my newsletter days.

When I take the time to write an article, it goes on my blog…period. With opt-in lists in place, I have the option of “reminding” those folks to check out the latest article on the blog by providing a link to it, rather than the whole article, while sharing information that isn’t necessarily appropriate for my blog. This keeps my blog nice and tidy. Nice and tidy is good.

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

Did You Miss WordPress Summer Camp 2009? It's Not Too Late!

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• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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Rewind back to Monday morning. I’m sitting at my computer, coffee in hand, with a deep sense of dread and foreboding about what’s in that inbox I’m looking at.

I know there are emails I need to address. Questions clients have asked. Initial inquiries from prospects wanting to hire me to build their website. Answers to questions I’ve asked. I know they’re in there…I’ve seen them…but I can’t find them now because they’re buried. The little whirly-gig is still spinning as the seemingly endless stream of emails comes in shoving the ones already there further out of sight…out of mind…

Email…my business lives and dies by it. Regardless of the many “systems” I’ve tried to adopt to manage it over the years, it still gets out of hand in the blink of an eye. When that happens, and I know I’m missing things, a good chunk of my energy and effectiveness is siphoned off worrying about it. Let it go on too long, and I’m stressed out before I even start my day. That’s where I found myself, yet again, this past Monday morning. “There’s no way I’m starting the week like this,” I told myself.

While I was sitting there, sipping my coffee, I saw this email pop into my inbox:

Email Triage: Calm Email Stress and Overwhelm in 30 Minutes (or Less)

Holy cow – I couldn’t click it open fast enough! It was from Charlie Gilkey over at Productive Flourishing. I’m a big fan of Charlie’s…I like the way he thinks, I like his perspective on things and most importantly, if Charlie’s got a way for me to calm email stress and overwhelm in 30 minutes or less – you can bet your sweet bippy I’m gettin’ my hands on that! I trust him not to pump sunshine up my skirt – Charlie wouldn’t mess with a stressed out, email-inundated, self-employed, one-woman-show single mom like that.

What is Email Triage?
“Email Triage is a process for sorting through your Inbox and determining what needs to be deleted, what needs to be archived, and, finally, what needs your attention. Just as medical professionals need to determine who needs their attention based upon the severity of their condition, we need to determine what email messages need our attention based on the kind of messages they are.”

What Did I Get with Email Triage?

1. A guided audio program that’s a little over 16 minutes long
2. A 19-page ebook that discusses the process more in-depth
3. A worksheet that lists the steps of Email Triage in a handy 3×5 format

How Much Does Email Triage Cost?

$10 No kidding.

What Were My Results Using Email Triage?
I’m happy to report my inbox went from 723 to 54 emails in the space of 20 minutes. Better than that – I found 3 – count them: THREE! – requests from new clients that I didn’t know I had.

Best $10 bucks I’ve spent in a very long time!

I’ve done email triage once a day since Monday, and my inbox has just 25 emails in it, and I haven’t unsubscribed from anything! It takes about 5 minutes to do now, and I don’t have to worry about what’s lurking in my dang inbox anymore.

So, go on – get Email Triage. Who knows what you’ll find hidden in that inbox of yours?!

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

Did You Miss WordPress Summer Camp 2009? It's Not Too Late!

The gates of camp are re-opened and you get a 25% discount! Check it out by clicking the banner below.

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• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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1. Timing Your Feed’s Email Delivery
2. Tracking Conversions for Email Newsletters: Another Reason I Recommend AWeber
3. 3 Reasons to Use Double Opt-in for Your Mailing Lists (Even If You Think It’s a Pain)
4. HTML or Plain Text Newsletters?
5. The Autoresponder and Your Business

© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

Did You Miss WordPress Summer Camp 2009? It's Not Too Late!

The gates of camp are re-opened and you get a 25% discount! Check it out by clicking the banner below.

Free Download for Subscribers

• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

Did You Miss WordPress Summer Camp 2009? It's Not Too Late!

The gates of camp are re-opened and you get a 25% discount! Check it out by clicking the banner below.

Free Download for Subscribers

• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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© 2002-2009, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

Did You Miss WordPress Summer Camp 2009? It's Not Too Late!

The gates of camp are re-opened and you get a 25% discount! Check it out by clicking the banner below.

Free Download for Subscribers

• WordPress: What's In It For Me?

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