What are the three mistakes they made? And are you guilty of any of them?

1. Sending too many emails

Once you have built a newsletter or mailing list, it’s really easy to bang out a new email every day or two. Why not blanket all those customers with information on what you have to sell, or remind them two or three (or more) times about an upcoming sale or a product you have on special?

Unless each email is carefully written, compelling, and useful, customers will quickly tire of seeing your name in their inboxes. First they will quit opening your emails. Then they will start to delete them unread, or set a filter to drop them into a junk folder automatically. In the worst case, they’ll start pushing the SPAM button when they see yet another “Come to my big sale on Saturday!!!!” from you. And too many SPAM markings, as you know, will cause problems with your email service provider.

Don’t annoy your customers. Send no more than once per week. Make sure that each email is informative and individually written (no copy and paste from last week’s broadcast). Most of all, make sure that each email provides some incentive for your customer to open and read it — information on new products, perhaps a free project they can create or a coupon good for a limited time. Make your newsletters something they look forward to instead of rolling eyes and hitting “delete.”

2. Sending the wrong emails

Late last year I joined a particular professional organization which offered a private membership site with information not available to the public. There were other benefits, such as monthly teleclasses and a print magazine. Joining this organization automatically put me on the “send regular updates” mailing list, and they did a good job of it — informative, timely emails, not too frequent, well-written and interesting.

Then, in midsummer…. The Mistake.

Perhaps this group purchased a list from somewhere else, or perhaps they compiled a list of prominent names interested in their particular topic. They made the unforgivable mistake of not checking this new list against their current subscriber list.

I began getting frequent solicitations to join the same organization of which I was already a member. Each succeeding email offered a better deal for joining, until the final one that offered a year’s membership at approximately half of what I had paid.

Up until that point, I had been reading the solicitations with a mixed sense of annoyance and amusement — how long will this mistake continue? When are they going to cross-check their lists?

With that final email, though, the amusement vanished. I unsubscribed to the regular membership list, I deleted the membership bookmark from my favorites, and I vowed never to darken their doors again. Mine was only one response to their marketing snafu — how many others did as I did and refused to consider renewing?

Cross-check your mailing lists before you start to solicit new customers, especially if you are going to offer deep secret discounts that will make your current customers feel as though they’ve been taken advantage of.

3. Take care in setting up surveys

In another mailing list, which sends informative and interesting technological news updates biweekly, I received a request to fill out a survey to help them decide audience interest and future editorial direction. I was willing to do that, so I clicked through and started the survey.

I’m v. intrigued by structures people create for time, & how & why. Searching for the “right fit” for me. Fascinated by what works for others.

Since I’ve been working with new structures myself, I started to answer her and quickly realized it was either a blog post or about 73 Twitter posts all strung together.

“Structures” is the wrong word, I think

I tried working with Charlie Gilkey’s productivity planners. I downloaded them, I amended them, I dinked around with them. The fit just wasn’t there. It took me a while to see this truth:

Charlie marches. I prefer to dance.

Both have rhythm. Both get you from one point to another. But mine is intended to be more fluid while still working within an overall context. Think: marching band formation vs jazz improv. Music in both cases, movement in both cases, same end results, different process.

The main thing I took from his approach was the utter necessity of long-range planning. For client work this is not quite as critical, but I’ve been flailing for most of a year on several of my own projects simply because I never had time to work on them. The key:

Schedule my own projects just like any other job.

Follow me and I’ll outline what I do.

Quarterly

This is really sketchy, a very broad overview. I divide a sheet of paper into thirds and put the name of each upcoming month at the top. Then I write down big goals: Big things I know are coming due, like a website that must be completed and launched in November. I’m currently working on a book, and I want to have [can't talk about it yet] finished in October. If I know I am taking time off or have family obligations such as the winter holidays, I put those down to make sure I reserve time for them.

Last Day of Each Month

Look ahead to the coming month. What do I know needs to be done? If a client has asked for time for website updates and newsletter “late in the month,” I’ll write that down. How much time? We’ll dance to those notes when the music plays… right now I am just making a list.

I start with the list divided into three sections:

– Client work. Here I write down everything that I know that needs to be done within the coming month. No deadlines, no scheduling, no juggling — just write it down. There’s probably much more than can be accomplished this month. That’s ok – just write it down.

– Blog post topics. I plan on three posts per week and I write down possible topics for those. I’m currently posting something business-related here at this blog on Mondays; something art-related at Pisces Moon on Wednesdays, and a small photo essay at my personal blog on Fridays. (I reserve the right to add bits and pieces off schedule, like Don’t Kick Its Ass here last Friday and a silly sign on the personal blog on Sunday. I do not schedule the bit and pieces — they just happen when they want to.)

- Personal projects. What do I want/need to accomplish this month to keep the project on track? Again, this is an overview, not a step-by-step breakdown.

Each Sunday

I choose Sunday because it is the beginning of the calendar week and because I generally have time to think and plan. If another day works better for you, that’s fine — I’d make sure it happened the same day each week, though.

On Sunday I select what I will do during the coming week. What deadlines are looming? Put those down. List the three blog posts that need to be written for the week. For personal projects, now is the time to start breaking down the tasks: “Outline Chapter 2; research [this and that]; rough draft, xxxx words.”

On my weekly list I also write down other things that need to be done: Are there doctor appointments this week? Repairmen scheduled? Birthdays to be remembered? Social people might also need to note dinner out with friends, or anything else that falls under the “to be remembered” umbrella.

Daily

This is my “last thing before bed” ritual. I keep a notebook, one page per day, with only this day’s tasks on it. I go through today’s list and mark off what I accomplished. If an emergency came up — say a client called because her shopping cart wasn’t calculating shipping weights properly and I had to spend two hours tracking that down — I make note of it and scratch it through. This helps me remember why some of the other tasks might not have gotten done.

Then I look toward tomorrow. If anything remains from today, I write it down for tomorrow. Here’s where the improv arises:

Don’t add today’s leftovers to a full day for tomorrow.

I have learned that, for me, the sane way is to schedule only what feels like a half-day’s worth of work. There are always interruptions. There are always problems that need to be handled. I make it a point to put a maximum of three times three tasks on any day’s list:

– no more than three client items

– no more than three personal project items

– no more than three blog-related things.

In practice, there is usually only one blog-related thing on a single day’s list, but giving myself the rule of three puts that framework around it without being too rigid. I can also, almost always, finish more than three client items and still have room for three personal project items. Again, putting down three times three feels like building a safe boundary for the dance — enough, not too much, with room to improvise as the music changes throughout the day.

Now I have a guideline for the day. I can close the book and sleep, knowing that tomorrow I can wake and stretch, eat and meditate/exercise/shower, and start my “what” and “when” without a rigid schedule or keeping track of chunks of tomato. There are no timers. There is no ass-kicking. There is only music and fluid movement within my boundaries of what-to-do-today, within the larger circles of this week and this month and onward through the year.

I never liked tubas anyway.

How would your relationship with time be different if you swam in it, letting it support you like water? Moved through it, with it, danced in it? How would your day be different if it weren’t a foe to be conquered but a partner in creating something beautiful?

Just for today, don’t kick Friday’s ass. Ask it to dance with you and see how much you accomplish.

Then leave me a comment and let me know. Maybe we can start a gentler meme about time and productivity.

First, make sure you know who you are trying to reach. If you are a local business with a physical location such as a restaurant, you probably want to reach customers who live within a certain area. If your business is less location-dependent — for instance, if you sell goods by mail order or offer services online — then your target should be defined by those who could benefit from your products or services and not so much where they live.

But how do you let them know where to find you, especially when you have little or no advertising budget?

You do have a blog, right?

If not, go now and set one up. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I’ll wait. Two free, easy places to get started are Blogger and WordPress.com . I’d suggest starting with WordPress if you can, for reasons which will become obvious later.

Fill in your short bio on the About page. If you have a website, link to your site. If you have a physical store, put your address, phone number, and hours of operation there. If you only sell online, at least post your city, state/province and country. Time zone is nice too. Make it easy for people to find you and know when they are likely to be able to reach someone.

Now you have a blog, but what do you write?

1. Write an interview with someone interesting.

If you own a restaurant, talk to a local farmer who provides some of the raw materials for your dishes. What about the florist who creates table settings for you? A potter who makes one-of-a-kind tableware?

If you are an artist, talk to the owner of a local gallery or independent art supply store. Make it clear that you are interested in their outlook on the local art scene, not on getting your foot in the door for your own advancement. Use your interview to help promote their business and they’ll remember your name for sure.

If you are a service provider, find someone in an affiliated business who is not a direct competitor. If you offer web design services, perhaps you could find someone who specializes in logos and graphic design or copywriting services. Make a pitch to interview and write about each other so that each of you will get a visibility boost.

2. Review a book, a speaker, or a public event related to your business.

As a restaurant owner, you probably won’t want to do undercover critiques of your competitors, but you could go to a food trade show and talk about what you find there. What about food trends? Do you see a number of sushi restaurants opening in your area, and what does that say about the local dining out scene?

Artists can review new tools of the trade or new books about art. Have you tried out a new technique lately? Did it work for you, or not? Why? Is there a special exhibition or event at your art museum that might provide an interesting post?

3. Sponsor a giveaway.

Do this one after your blog has been active for a month or so. The giveaway can be fairly small, such as “Mention this offer when you come into our store and get 10% off any purchase!” A restaurant could offer a free dessert with mention of the blog. A service provider could offer a free half-hour phone consultation, or set up an “Ask the Expert” teleclass for potential clients to phone in with questions on a particular subject. Ask everyone to tell at least one friend about your giveaway.

 
What ideas have worked for you?

Leave a comment telling one thing that has helped to raise your business profile, and you’ll be eligible to win a copy of Little Black Book of Connections: 6.5 Assets for Networking Your Way to Rich Relationships by Jeffrey Gitomer.

To check on the ownership of your domain name, go to Domain Tools and type the domain name into the search box. You will see the registration information of record, as in this example.

You or your business should always be listed at the top as Registrant. It’s perfectly ok if the hosting company is listed under Administrative or Technical Contact — the Registrant is the actual owner and the one who controls what happens to the name. The Billing Contact should be the person or entity that actually pays the domain renewal fees each year. This might be you or it might be your hosting company. Either is fine.

Many hosting companies offer a “free” domain name as part of your hosting package, but there can be a catch.

Now look at this WhoIs information. This is a real domain registration, a domain name that is the name of a real quilt artist. I’ve changed it here to “FamousQuilter.com” for the sake of anonymity.

This artist signed up for web hosting from a large hosting provider which offers a free domain name included with the cost of their inexpensive shared webhosting. After some period of time she became dissatisfied with the hosting account and changed hosts, only to realize that the original hosting company owned her domain name. Her own personal name, and they owned it. Nor would they consider releasing it to her for any amount of money.

She eventually registered “FamousQuilter.net” and set up her new website under that name, but the first hosting company still controls the .com version. Legal recourse is possible but very expensive; the artist must first file a legal trademark for her own name and then, if trademark protection is granted, file a dispute with ICANN concerning the improper use of her trademark. These two actions would cost a minimum of $2,500 and could require several years for resolution.

Note well the annotations I’ve circled in red: “Client Update Prohibited” and “Client Transfer Prohibited.” The artist has no control over her own personal name, and she can’t do anything about it without legal action and much expense.

Not all webhosting companies will hold your domain name hostage.

Many web hosts will offer to register a domain name in your name as a service or as part of a webhosting package. With some hosts, transferring your name to your own account is easy if you later decide to change web hosts; with others it’s a bit more hassle. However, if your name is listed as Registrant, you have final control over the account. And if someone else is managing your domain name(s), you generally don’t need to worry about renewals and other behind-the-scenes minutiae. It’s included in your monthly or annual hosting fees.

Make sure that your webhost offers registration in your own name if you choose to register through them.

How much does a domain name cost, if you register it yourself?

Domain name registrars are permitted to set their own rates by ICANN, the international entity which oversees all domain name registrations worldwide. Here is a sampling of current registration costs for .com domain name from several major companies (all rates are for one year; discounts often available for multi-year registrations):

- GoDaddy $10.69
- DotEarth $25.00
- EnomCentral.com $34.00
- Network Solutions $34.99
- Register.com $35.00

Note that rates for all registrars are increasing on July 1 of 2010, by order of ICANN.

How much is your business name — and your personal name as an artist — worth? Make sure that, whoever registers your domain name, you are listed as the owner/Registrant.

Don’t make a costly mistake in order to save a few dollars at the beginning.

A talented writer and artist created a long, detailed blog postabout creating stamps for decorating fabric. Many people praised it and several asked her to release it in e-book form so they could download and keep a copy. Agreeing that it was a terrific idea, she published it as a Kindle book available from Amazon. She immediately found herself in the midst of a storm of controversy.

Some readers felt that she had no right to charge for the information that she had previously given away for free. One even went so far as to say that she now felt morally justified in “stealing” the material by copying and printing off the blog post. Others howled because they did not own a Kindle and thought they would have to buy a $250 reader device to download the book. Others howled because the Kindle is black-and-white only and the photographs that accompanied the article were in color. It’s also not possible to print from the Kindle, so the reader has no opportunity to create a hard copy for future reference.

Her readers were probably expecting a PDF ebook. Amazon ebooks are very easy to create and publish – just upload an HTML-encoded file (in which format the blog post already existed). Links remain links within the Kindle file. Creating a PDF ebook requires a bit more expertise from the author but would probably be worth it to the readers.

The author’s failure here lay in not educating her audience prior to releasing her product for sale. Kindle software which supports color images is available for PC/Mac, iPad, and iPhone, free from Amazon. No reading device is required. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem you can print from the Kindle software either.)

Until this little whirlwind occurred, I was not aware of the Amazon Kindle option for publishing ebooks. Creating both a Kindle version and a PDF version that could be sold directly seems to me to be a great pair of options for producing and distributing information products. Do both!

What about the free-vs-pay controversy?

Of course the author is entitled to charge for her work. The Amazon ebook sells for $2.99 and her royalty is about $1.00 per copy. Hardly highway robbery.

My suggestion would have been, once there was obvious interest in the information, to create both a PDF and the Kindle e-book, add a post to the blog about how to purchase them, and then take down the original post.

Those who howled about “no right to charge for it” would of course still howl. Most readers, I think, would have been very happy to pay a small amount to have it formatted and ready to print out without having to copy and paste from quirky blog software.

All it takes is a little education.

Daily:

1. Check and delete spam comments; approve any non-spam caught by mistake. Akismet can be set to delete spam comments after 14 days, but it’s easier to check when you have 20 or 30 to glance through instead of 250.

2. Check for new users that appear suspicious. Certain spammers target WordPress installations where new users may register without approval, in the hope that new users will be allowed posting privileges. If so, they can add spam posts dated far in the past so that they don’t show up in your list of recent posts, and hope you won’t notice them.

The best way to combat this: If you want to allow users to register on your blog, look at Settings -> General and be sure that the New User Default Role is set to Subscriber. Subscribers can read and comment but cannot make new posts.

If you start getting many suspicious user registrations and don’t want to manually check them all, take a look at the SABRE plugin. SABRE has a number of ways to check whether new registrations are being performed by humans or bots, and it’s very good at weeding out and denying the bots. I use it on all my own blogs and recommend it to all my clients.

3. Check for any plugins that need to be updated. You will see a notification in your Dashboard if this is the case. It should be easy to upgrade them; just click on the link that says “Upgrade automatically.”

Frequently:

1. Back up your database. I generally do this weekly, but if your webhost provides only weekly site backups and you have a very active site, you might prefer to do this daily or every other day.

The easiest way to back up your database is to install the WP-db-Backup plugin and set it to email you a copy at whatever frequency you choose. I then set my email program to automatically move the newest email into an archive folder. I keep the most recent one and delete the earlier versions.

Weekly:

1. Check your log files for 404 errors. These mean that someone tried to visit a page on your site, or perhaps look at an image, and couldn’t find it. If you’ve moved the page – say you published it in a category called “Art” and later changed it to “Architecture” so that the permalink changed – you can set up a redirect so that anyone trying to access the old page will be automatically whisked to the new one.

There’s a plugin for that, of course, and it’s called (oddly enough) Redirection.

If you want to just keep tabs on 404 errors, try JH 404 Logger .

2. Download a backup of your site files, which will include your theme – and more importantly – your uploaded images, videos, and other media. If you are short on disk space, just download the wp-content/themes/(name of theme you are using) and wp-content/uploads folders. Again, you need keep only the most recent copy and may delete or archive previous versions.

Once a month:

1. If you are on shared hosting and have a cap on your storage and bandwidth usage, you may want to keep tabs on your monthly usage. Some hosts will notify you when you reach 80% or more of your allotted bandwidth for the month, while others will just suspend without warning accounts that exceed their capacity. If you are consistently using most of your bandwidth each month, it might be time to consider upgrading to a more spacious account.

To check your bandwidth usage, you can go to your control panel — there is usually a link where you can check it. There is also a plugin that works with Google Analytics and can be set to show basic Analytics statistics right inside your WordPress Dashboard. This one is called Google Analytics for WordPress and has the potential to be very valuable if you need to keep track of a number of stats on your site.

There you are

Seven quick and easy tasks that will keep your installation of WordPress up to date, safe, and humming along. Happy blogging!

(Puts on hat of Mrs. Spurlock, fifth-grade English teacher)

Grammar counts!

I followed a link this morning to a blog post that looked interesting, on the subject of making your WordPress installation hacker-proof. The first two sentences read:

Today there is more and more security breaches than ever before. Web browsers seems to fall behind faster than they can spell to themselves and this really makes an online business or venture quite hard work.

Web browsers spell to themselves? Who knew?

The entire article was unreadable because of numerous subject-verb number disagreements. Simple homonym problems such as “boarders” when the author meant “borders.” Not to mention the usual suspects of “it’s/its” and “you’re/your.”

I must be fair. Since there was no contact information on the site, I looked up the domain name WhoIs to find out that the site was registered in Sweden. English is obviously not the writer’s first language. On the other hand, if he is writing for an audience who will read in a language not his own, it seems reasonable to have a fluent speaker review and edit the article. This reads like he ran it through Babelfish.

The writer of this blog post failed in his most important task — he did not communicate his ideas clearly. He was so muddly, in fact, that I have made a note not to follow any links to this particular website in the future. It’s just not worth my time to try to puzzle out what he means.

Spelling counts too!

CBS42.com, which really should know better, recently ran a story about former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy and his ongoing battle with the courts over hidden assets.

Attorney for HealthSouth shareholders John Somerville was quoted:

”[The] IRS back in 2003 documented some 300 million dollars worth of property he had and that frankly a lot of it is missing. All the jewelry, 21 carrot diamonds, artwork is missing…”

Although the meaning of the sentence is still clear in this case, the absurdity of the mental image completely stopped this reader’s train of thought.

How many readers are you potentially losing because of unclear writing or poor spelling skills?

I may regret this, but I just signed up with a service called Qwitter.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The correct URL is UseQwitter.com. If you try to go to Qwitter.com, you’ll end up on a soft porn page.

You don’t need to give your password, just your Twitter ID and your email address. Qwitter watches your followers list and sends you an email like this when someone unfollows you:

John Gruber (gruber) stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:

What’s the difference between Arial and Helvetica?

I say I may regret it because it might crush my ego that people don’t like me (sniffle), but on the other hand, it could be good information about who thinks I am boring or offensive (although I’m not nearly as potty-mouthed as some of the bloggers I know. Okay, I’m not really potty-mouthed at all. Don’t want to raise false hopes either). This could help me post more useful information for those who do like what I write.

I’ll report back after I’ve had a chance to collect some data. In the meantime, do you keep track of your followers, or let ‘em fall where they may?

- Check your email account for suspicious activity
- Reset your password NOW
- Don’t use the same password for every login you use.

I’m not going to lecture on why it’s a bad idea to use your first pet’s name as your password. I’m just going to show you one way to choose a secure one that isn’t easily cracked.

If you have other methods, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

What Not to Use

I know it’s more convenient to use an easily-rememberable word as your password, but it’s not a good idea to use a dictionary word because they are easily crackable. Use a password of at least 12 characters, with upper and lower case and numbers. Don’t use your birthday, your social security number, the word “password,” a string of numbers in sequence (like 1234) or in reverse (like 9876), or your name anywhere in the password.

Start by Choosing a Word of 7 or 8 Letters, plus a Date

An example: Let’s say you want to use the word “seahawk” because that was the name of your first yacht and you can remember it. Let’s also say that your mother-in-law’s birthday is June 24. Turn the birthday into 624 and scatter those numbers into the word. Here I’ve used them to separate the two words “sea” and “hawk,” because it will be a little easier to remember.

6sea2hawk4

Mix it Up a Little

Now throw in some capital letters in the third places of the two words (not the first places, because that’s expected and so is more easily crackable):

6seA2haWk4

Change the lowercase e to a 3 because it looks like a backwards E and it keeps “sea” from being a dictionary word:

6s3A2haWk4

Add Characters to Make a Total of 12 or 14

Hm. We only have 10 characters, so add two more letters at the end — maybe your mother’s initials:

6s3AhaWk4JM

There you go. Strong password based on a word and a date that you can remember.

Use Different Trailing Letters for Different Websites

Since it’s never a good idea to use the same password for everything, you could use this same password string with different last two characters for all your sites:

6s3AhaWk4YH forYahoo

6s3AhaWk4GM for GMail

and so forth.

Make it tougher for the bad guys to guess your passwords!