RSS is Really Simple Syndication.  Effectively, it is a way to publish your content to be consumed by other vehicles (such as RSS readers, or services which use your RSS feed).

Why should you care?  Well, because with the power of RSS and MailChimp, you can pretty much automate your email list administration and delivery!

One of the vehicles which drove marketing in the last 10 years is email distribution.

One of the biggest problems with the Internet these days is a glut of email.

However; just like direct mail, there will always be those who prefer this marketing vehicle to receive your information.  It does not take much to automate this process (nor much money) and the value of a qualified email list is almost equivalent to money in the bank.

Check out MailChimp, you will find one of their services will pull a RSS feed from your website and aggregate the information into an email and send it to your list.

So, if you stay the course by publishing 2 to 3 times a week you can effectively “email” this content to your list once a week automatically.  You don’t have to setup new software, you don’t have to dream up new content.

The cost?  You can try it out Free for less than 500 names (and they will put a MailChimp plug (not horrible) in the bottom of the email).  For less than 2,500 names you will be charged $30.00 a month.  See the website for other rates.

One nice feature is that you pay by the names, not the quantity of emails.  So if you have 2,000 names and you mail 4 times a month you are still only charged $30.00.

Okay, Susie can’t do everything for you, you will be required to manage her upon occasions and here is one such occasion.

If you are not aware, ‘Susie’ is what we call our Artificial Sales Person who manages some of our web efforts for us.

Effectively, ‘she’ receives your post, and will display it on the website according to your schedule.  Also, Susie automatically rebuilds your Sitemap.xml, will notify Google, Bing and Yahoo (through Bing) that you have new content and make sure the search engines are able to see all of the relevant pages on your website.  Will handle backing up your Content Management Database (and email you the file) and also help pull together an email newsletter setup (when connected with Chimpmail).

However, she is not omnipotent.  When some of the supporting functionality you install (plug-in’s in this example) have updates, you will need to update them manually.

It is not a big effort, usually it takes less than 1 minute to update a plugin and we can ALL be thankful when an author updates their code. (This is another excellent reason to support authors).

I suggest you schedule 10 minutes maybe once a week to login to the authoring side of your website and take a look to see if any Plugins need updates.  If you have some which need updates, you will see the quantity next to the Menu selection (see example above).

Simply click on Plugins menu selection and locate the Plugin which has a message under the name notifying you of an update.  It will often start with “There is a new version of (insert Plugin name here) Version X.XX details here or Upgrade Automatically”.  If you are backed up, you can simply click the “Upgrade Automatically” option and in about 30 seconds, your plugin has been upgraded to the latest version!

If you have the automatic database backup working, it often takes you minutes to help Susie be on the latest upgrade and you are off to the next task in your day!

Now that I have shown you what to look for, I am off to upgrade my Plugin! (Which, in my case, is Contact Form 7).

Have a great day!

Mike

I am presently in a clients office waiting on him to get here. I realize that it is not the best situation, I have plenty of other tasks.

Well, I am typing this post on my smart-phone (iPhone for me) and I am going to send the post and load it to my website.

All websites are built with something, after using everything from HTML, .asp, .aspx, DotNetNuke and Joomla, I have been most impressed with WordPress.

Why?

Ease of install, ease of use, literally over a million websites (well tested), updated constantly, great 3rd party support, wonderful templating system, great search engine integration options and RSS and ATOM protocol features.  Basically, everything I need to create an automated website with conversation (social) opportunities already built in.

So, exactly the foundation and support we need to give our companies the tools to move ahead with web marketing and web sales efforts, while enhancing our ability to do this on our own terms.  For instance, from my phone!

With that thought, I am going to close this post and allow our ‘Susie’ to go tell Google and Bing about my new content, and update my Twitter feed.

Have a great day!

Two out of the top 10 articles this week on Fox News website is on hobbypreneurs. Turning your hobby into a business.

Typically, one of the areas these new entrpreneurs have to create for their businesses are a compelling website, content, and marketing.

I believe that there are many things a new business person needs to handle, these items mentioned are just one of hundreds!

That is why I feel that with their own Susie, hobbypreneurs can get so much more done, and enjoy the process.

I started this post at the car wash a little while ago.  I was reading on my iPhone and came across the mention of hobbypreneurs and thought ‘huh, these guys are in for a small struggle, they could use Susie, too.’

So when I post this article, what my Susie going to do for me?  Well, she is going to post the comment to Twitter and Facebook.  She is going to create a Sitemap.xml page on my website and update Google and Bing (Yahoo) which control 85% of the Search market about the new content on the website.

She is also going to automatically save a copy of my database tonight and email it to me, so that I don’t loose any of these posts.

Actually, that isn’t all she is going to do, it is just the top-line!

If you would like to know how to ‘hire’ your own Susie, just catch me on Twitter (SimpleStepsIT) or join the newsletter.

Regards,

Mike

manderle@SimpleStepsIT.com

Skype: MikeAnderle

Your website is just a tool with one purpose, increase income.

Many people talk about new ideas, new paradigms, new technologies which are going to turn everything upside down.

Maybe.

However, what if the “upside down” causes you to fall?

Your web marketing tools should be invisible to you. The idea is to create a process which fits your daily activities and offers you methods to reach your clients efficiently, effectively and easily.

If you are fighting getting content on your website, updating social sites and getting your email marketing done, you are using in-your-face technologies.

These technologies are stopping you from doing more for your clients, for your business and for yourself.

Sign up for my newsletter, and you will learn how technology can in fact, be invisible.

As a note, I wrote this content from my iPhone, while eating lunch running an errand as the thought hit me. My salesperson (my website) automatically notified Google and Bing (which runs Yahoo search) of the updates, and updated my Twitter account with a link back to the website.

All before I got back from my errands… Talk about efficiency!