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Email - we take it for granted. We use it almost every day. We use it for business, pleasure, fun and work. We use it and abuse it. We say things that are taken the wrong way. We express hate and love, likes and dislikes in our email. We fall in love, fall out of love, send virtual flowers, send postcards, send presents, send protests, send hate mail. We do business and sign contracts on it. We transfer funds with it. We type with it, hate it and love it. We often cannot live without it.

Email is so ingrained in our daily lives, we no longer appreciate its power or possibilities. We use it as if it were an extension of ourselves and actually tend to reveal a lot more about our own minds, hearts and souls then we would ever reveal if we had to sit and write out each and every email with pen and paper. Email is most definitely a powerful tool, if not the most powerful tool in the arsenal of spreading word and popularity about your blog or web-site.

On one other thing about Email. It is FREE. Totally and completely FREE. You don’t even have to an email account with your web account provider. All you need is a few Yahoo or Gmail accounts.

However, there is a BIG caveat here. If you are anything like me, you have come to hate “spam” mail. Garbage mail. Junk mail. Spam email. All of it is crap. All of it steals precious time and clogs up your system. We hate spam. We ignore it. We sift through it to get to our “real” email. And here is the rule of thumb. Email that we want - WE READ.

How do you put email to use for you and your blog and web site?

Well first some things you do NOT do.

• You do not purchase lists off the Internet that are non-targeted lists (even if they are opt-in lists). What is non-targeted? Non-targeted means that you will be sending out millions of emails to people whose inbox and spam box are totally full and crowded with junk as it is. Your email will be between some idiot that is sending out emails promising larger breasts and another offering males a great time in bed with a new and great product combining viagra, cialis and some homespun remedy for a longer, more powerful male organ. Trust me. You do NOT WANT your email stuck there.
• You do not purchase lists off of some fly-by-night company on the Internet, even if they do promise 2.5 million email addresses for $29.99.
• You do not “farm” email addresses off of Internet sites using a program dedicated to this practice.
• You do not offer to purchase or borrow your best friend’s or lovers email address list (in most cases not in all!).

What you can do:

• You create a guest book on your blog or an email opt-in list. You save each and every one of those emails as if they were GOLD. For these things all you need to do is Google for them. Bravenet is one of the largest, most respected and offers an incredible amount of FREE utilities for this purpose. You do not need to be a techie to use this stuff.
• You ask everyone you know (including the grocer and butcher) to get on your list! (NO! I will not get up enough courage to ask that beautiful woman next door for her email address. I can’t even get enough gumption to say “Hello” to her. sheesh…)
• You consistently and constantly put out emails to your membership but you do not badger them. Once a week is really enough, unless you have this incredibly special announcement to make or deal to offer. You ask them to forward these emails as well.
• On your web-site you allow people to decide how often they want an email from you. Blogs do not have this capability and it would be incredibly difficult to build it in without using a third party extension. (Again companies like Bravenet are the answer here.)
• Your email is professional, straightforward, and if possible offered in both HTML and plain text.
• Your email address - the email address where your membership email is coming from - is memorable, even if you are using gmail. I have for instance my own domain email for my stuff, and I use a gmail address for my blog which is the name of my blog. That address is simply cobwebsofthemind which associates in the persons mind with my blog. It is also good advertising and a way for someone to remember your blog even if they forget the url. Which is unique enough for here. On my web sites, for instance it is all xxxxx@mywebsite.com. Then when the recipient wades through tons of email they know immediately your email is something they want and they will read it. So for the Hair blog their address would be something with the word “hair” in it or better yet “silkybeautifulyounghair”!

Why is Email so important?

It is an excellent question, despite the fact that some techies may snicker at such a simple question. The answer is easy, yet can get incredibly complicated. The great thing about email that a person wants is that it gets at least skimmed. It keeps you in touch and lets the person that signed up know that the web-site is active and doing things. The other “more important part” of email is that little “forward” option. If Sally seems something that she may think Jane and Bill want, she is going to forward the email with a couple of clicks. Viral. It gets spread. People get to know about it. NEWS SPREADS. And with email it can spread like wildfire! Do not ever underestimate this. You may send out 100 emails from your site, and on the 101’st for no specific reason you can discern suddenly the hits go up. Suddenly the “word” is spreading. Never give up on the email option.

Don’t overuse it either. Don’t badger. Don’t spam. Don’t do your best friend a favor by sending out emails to your list for them. (I would, of course, send out a 100 emails to my list for a date with the lady next door!) Seriously, your email list is your gold. Your ace in the hole. Don’t abuse it!

Okay lets now discuss Email and some “real” examples:

When someone arrives at a blog, unlike a web site, there is no need to “register” or “sign in”. Thus it is much harder to get an individual to “sign-up” for a feed from your blog or to be on your email list. You have less than 7 seconds (that is not a typo, 7 seconds) to interest the person, which includes loading of your page. So use it well. Remember, OFFER WHAT THEY WANT - NOT WHAT YOU WANT. If you cannot do that than perhaps numbers is not what you need. Just the pleasure of having your own blog.

Send out a thank you IMMEDIATELY. You can use an auto-responder, or lacking that, have a template in your email draft box, and once a day check for new sign-ups and send out a thank you SEPARATELY to each one. No CC’s or BCC’s. Bad, BAD idea.

If you have a web site that requires registration, make sure you send out a thank you automatically. Make sure you explain again what the site is about with your URL at least twice in the page. Make it nice. Make it simple. Make it good. Market yourself and your web site and your product.

When you send out emails to your entire list you have many options. You can make them yourself, or go to a place like Vertical Response which takes all the hard work from you. Vertical Response is good, but not free. There are others in the market, reputable good sites who can help you along. But if you serious about marketing bear this in mind if you email list grows too large or unwieldy.

Whenever I send out an email from any one of my web sites the hits on that web site go up immediately and for the next 24 hours. By the way, it is important to understand, that your email will have a shelf-life of 24 hours on a good day. This means that if the member does not respond, visit, or otherwise act on the email within 24 hours, it probably just won’t happen. Don’t sweat it though. There is always the next email, and the next and the next…

One of the best and free ways to make your blog work for you is to use feedblitz. This takes care of subscribers and RSS feeds. It works for the most part and is good. Use it on your blog.

In summary, Email is a tool that should be used to the maximum but not abused or overused. Used and manipulated correctly it can increase your members and keep those who did sign up coming back. Loyal membership is your key to Viral marketing.

Copyright © 2006 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)
Ted W. Gross’s very popular blog, Cobwebs Of The Mind contains daily updated posts and articles on technology and writing. He also owns Amor Enterprises which maintains Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works.

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I submit this article in this series, with more than a bit of trepidation. This discusses article submissions, and I am submitting it to ezinearticles. The question is do I fluff it up or be honest? Sometimes brutally honest. I will go for the honesty. We are dealing with positive and negative factors in all aspects, and this means the article submission process as well.

Okay we now know about content, keywords, tags, categories, bots, back-links, hot-links, a bit about the psychology and have an inkling to what viral technology and systems are. Before we get to the nitty-gritty technological stuff, (yes, you do have to know that as well and it is really fascinating at times), we are going to discuss tools to make your blog more well known and your URL all that more important and hit by those inquiring eyeballs.

I choose to start with the Article Submission process as it does incorporate almost everything we discussed until this moment in time. Like all the tools and possibilities discussed on here, keep in mind that Article Submission is only ONE possibility, and may not be for you. It is work, and sometimes a great deal of it, even if you are a writer, and it also takes a keen eye and watching the market.

One point I wish to make at the outset, that will probably upset a lot of Article Submission site owners and possibly members. Lately, article submission sites are getting very picky with what articles they will take and not take. For some really good reasons, and some let us say some “not-so-good” reasons. If you are an author or writer, like I am, and have published, then you cannot approach article submission in the same way you approach writing your book or novel or short story. I have never had an article turned down due to any such reasons, but Article Submission sites are NOT publishers as authors know them, are NOT literary agents, are NOT literary minded. And you should NEVER submit your literary work to them as you loose first publication rights immediately not to mention the possibility of it getting ripped off. Do not confuse articles with actual literary works.

Articles are just that. Articles that you write, almost about any subject under the sun with a plus for you, which we will get into. And this is not the Pulitzer Prize stuff either. Do not be upset or take to heart any article submission site that thinks they now are “real” publishers or think they can determine what is a good piece of literary writing and what is not. (Some of the lesser known ones are doing that now.) For the most part the articles presented at article submission sites are written with an eye to presenting an idea or opinion or knowledge and to get the URL’s into the resource box so the author can drum up business for his web site. This is legitimate and why article submission sites are so successful. It is indeed why I use article submission sites. However, article submission sites serve a purpose in the game of symbiotic internet relationships. Just don’t think when you are writing an article, that this is something you are going to present to your literary agent.

Remember as well, what is of interest to you, may not be of interest to the masses. (The tired, the poor, the downtrodden, the bored - they too make up the internet and they too surf!). I am going to, like usual, give a real life example, before getting into the nitty-gritty of article submission sites.

I usually post articles at Ezinearticles.com. They work hard at the business of article submissions, as they should, because they make a great deal of money from it (I will explain how as well). Ezinearticles does lead the market as well where according to Alexa.com it is ranked as of the date of this posting at 622, which means they are the 622 most popular site on the Internet. That people, translates into MILLIONS of page views a day! Powerful influence. (We will discuss Alexa and Google Page Rank in another article.)

A while back ezinearticles.com sent out an email saying that their article entitled “Want to Try on That New Hair Style Before You Get It?” had 108,898 page views! Now if you would have asked me which article would get such page views, I would certainly have NEVER even considered an article about “hair”. And that is only page views on their site! Remember that.

You can only write about what you know, BUT you have to write about what other people WANT TO KNOW. That is a lesson for blogging as well. You must offer something in return for someone spending the minutes reading your blog. Otherwise no one will read it. Period.

The Internet is full of surprises. ONLY because the human condition is full of surprises. Only because it reflects who we are and what our society is like. With all that said - let us explain just how this Article submission process works for you.

Mr. Nor Hair (remember him from our previous articles in this series?) wants to get more free publicity for his site. So he sits down and writes a 750 word article on how to prevent hair loss. Mr. Hair does NOT, I repeat does NOT sell any of his products in the body of the article. This is a big NO-NO, and most article submission sites will refuse to publish an article promoting a product within the body of the article. In other words - Self-Promotion - is NOT allowed within the body of the article. (And this is a very good thing!) Mr. Hair writes about the effects of hair loss on ones self-esteem. He actually spell checks it too! He then goes to an article submission site and becomes a member. All this is for FREE. (Do not ever pay any service or for any program that will submit articles for you! That is just pure malarkey and simply put, if you do, you are a sucker! Remember Article Submissions are Viral, and being so they should be Viral for you as well.)

When he is asked to input his article, he has to adhere to certain guidelines in HTML and text format. He must put in keywords (remember those folks?) and an article summary. He also chooses a category for his article which in this case would be “Hair Care” or “Body Care” or something along those lines. All cool. Then at the bottom is a resource box. That is for you dear author. It is in this box you put your copyright and your URL’s etc. (You can see the resource box and an example at the bottom of the article here.)

Usually you are limited by the amount of URL’s you can put into the box. I use the maximum which is three. Mr. Hair has two. His website and his blog and he inputs them into the box. Voila, he previews and then submits his article on hair loss. In a few hours he gets an email that it was accepted. So far so good. Now what happens?

The article goes up on the site. Now don’t ask me if anyone will read it. Obviously sites with millions of page views a day, someone is reading something. But the plus for Mr. Hair is not from the normative person coming to read his article, even if they do click on his link on the bottom. Nope the big plus comes when a Webmaster or Ezine owner comes to the site, and picks up the article (a fairly easy process), and puts it on their web site for content. Now if you were good students you can see right away what you got.

You now have your article and its text on two other sites at least, and you now have a live back-link INTO your blog! And if an Ezine owner picks this up and send it out to 2500 members of the Ezine, you now have bona fide email links BACK INTO YOUR BLOG. And all the time that article sits on other web sites, it is indexed by the Search Engines, with YOUR URL IN IT! And all the time it sits at the article submission site, people are reading it and picking it up for content for their sites. And that is the name of the game!

What does the Article Submission site get from this? Simple. They have Google Adwords up and people DO click on those adverts. They have affiliates and people DO click on the affiliates and buy. Do you know why? Cause like I wrote in the article on Viral Systems, the people on the site are loyal members. They are getting something for nothing so they return the favor. (We will discuss stats as well in another much later article). All sides win in this symbiotic relationship. Again some real examples:

I wrote a series of 13 articles on RSS technology and put them up here a while back. Lo and Behold one day I discover that there are two web sites wholly devoted to mine and a few other articles on RSS. How did I find this out? I Googled my name and discovered they had picked up these articles and placed them on their site. More back-links for me.

There is no doubt that article submission works. It may not be for you, it may take too much time. It may simply not let you be the author you truly are, as you may have to swallow “pure quality” for article demands. BUT it is a way, and for free, to increase your hits to your blog. Seriously consider it.

Back-links is the name of the game. Search Indexing is the name of the game. And Article Submissions is one way to achieve to it. If you can, use the article submission route for more exposure for your blog.

(Part Six of this series is already published at Ezinearticles.com Viral Systems & Technologies - What Are They?)

Copyright © 2006 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)
Ted W. Gross’s very popular blog, Cobwebs Of The Mind contains daily updated posts and articles on technology and writing. He also owns Amor Enterprises which maintains Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works.

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Okay so now we know all there is to know about content and keywords. Hah! But you did get the basics. It may be a good point to stop and talk about Keywords, Tags, Categories and all that as well. Logically, in progression this should come much later, but because there seems such misunderstandings about Technorati, Del.icio.us and other tagging systems, it may be a good place to put this down.

These articles began because of a thread at Absolute Write called “What Is Your Technorati Rank?” On perusing that thread I realized that many writers were placing their hopes in something that just was not going to happen. More so, they were actually misreading the importance of certain “rankings” and thus ignoring the more important factors.

If you read the previous articles in this series you now hopefully understand “keyword basics”. So we are going to use Technorati for our example.

So along comes techie #1 and says:

“Hey, you know what. Blogs are becoming mainstay business. They are great for people with no knowledge of HTML and you can literally put up a web-site Weblog in minutes. So now they are multiplying over the net faster than rabbits, and the Search Engines are ignoring them for the most part as most of them contain personal musings and ramblings. So why not create a sophisticated search engine for blogs?”

“Great idea,” says techie #2, “a search engine from blogs. And that means anyone who has a blog will want to register with us. But how are we going to build it. Obviously, normative search engine technology is not what we want.”

“You know what?” says techie #1 “we are going to take keywords, call them by a different name and create a closed system!”

And thus Technorati was born.

What essentially goes on in Technorati, is you define what you write with “tags”, Technorati tags. These are keywords, (with a special HTML parameter). Keywords just like you will learn to use in your meta tags. Technorati then in a CLOSED SYSTEM connects all the blogs with the same keywords. Technorati does not look at content to a great extent (to my knowledge), they pay attention to the tags re: keywords that you input. If you do not input keywords they use your keywords in your Blog setup.

Okay this is great for all those people looking for blogs say about hairdressing. So they come to Mr. & Mrs. Hair’s blog because the Hair couple input keywords as Technorati tags. Simple.

Technorati now goes one step further. Technorati rates your blog based upon a few parameters. One of those “important” parameters is how many other people in the Technorati Network (Only those IN the network, or those using Technorati tags) have linked to your blog or a post on it. So by gaining links (there is no concept on Technorati as “bleeding links” as far as I know), you move up in the ladder. But even Technorati also keeps track of how popular your blog is. You can have 200 links into your blog, but if no one visits then your standing will not go up to the top 100.

Okay, that is Technorati. Important for bloggers? Well it is a popular site, and growing. So the answer would be yes. Important for Google, MSN and Yahoo — not on its own…yet there is one critical Caveat.

When someone links to your site in a blog or web site, the href HTML links are in the code. The Search Engines when they read the code with their bots (see how much web lingo you know already!) sees these links. Those get added to the amount of sites linking to you. They are “hot links” or “back links” into your blog or posts in your blog. So linking not only works in the closed world of Technorati tags, but also works in the Wide World of Search Engine placement. Those links are important. Now if you get linked in a very popular blog, that counts for a lot in the world of Search Engine placement. (As we discussed in the previous articles.)

So while it is nice to know your Technorati ranking is going up, what is IMPORTANT is to remember to use their tools of tagging and linking to get others to discover and link to your blog. That gets noticed by the Search Engines. Not immediately to be sure but if you are being hit a great deal and have links to you, sooner rather than later the Search Engines will pick up your blog and your keywords. They will NOT look at the Technorati tags though, they will look at your meta tag keywords and your content. (Oy Vey! so many things to remember)

Del.icio.us and others work on the same concept, though del.icio.us is more centralized and called a “social book-marking service”. Just remember the rule of thumb:

The more sites that link to you and your post, no matter for what reason, the better it is for you and your position in the Search Engines.

Okay now what are Categories? Categories really belong in Wiki format, and this is not the scope or place to discuss Wiki and the technology behind it. I own a new Wiki site, and you are welcome to peruse JewishPedia because on a Wiki site you can view all the code to each article.

Categories in blogs (Wordpress implements them automatically) are a way to search for something. I have Categories in my blog, but this is a code implemented Category Listing in Google’s blogger system, where when you click, the blog does a Google Blog search in my blog for all articles related to that word. And thus it depends on Google’s specific Blog Search Engine (not their regular search engine).

Remember, Google and others have specific Blog search engines. It is important to be on the top in those as well, BUT for mainstream, if you are using a Blog for whatever reason, your goal is to be in the normative search engines as well, and in a good placement there.

So there you have it. Tags = Keywords. Technorati uses them in the closed world of Technorati. The employ linking counts as well. These keywords and links, if done correctly, are also very useful for Search Engine rankings if your blog is popular. deli.ci.ous uses them for “social” blogging.

So don’t give up on Technorati. Just don’t believe it is the golden answer to be good rankings in the Search Engines. It is but one of the myriad of possibilities.

“The more sites that link to you and your post, no matter for what reason, the better it is for you and your position in the Search Engines.”

Copyright © 2006 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)
Ted W. Gross’s very popular blog, Cobwebs Of The Mind contains daily updated posts and articles on technology and writing. He also owns Amor Enterprises which maintains Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works.

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