Interacting with your Contacts – start a mini-community
April 7th, 2008 by Heather MaloneyEmail is a one-way conversation which is definitely far better than no conversation at all! However, if you can move it towards a two-way conversation, then it becomes an even more powerful relationship building tool. Linking through to a blog is a very simple and cost effective way of achieving a two-way conversation.
Here is a quick step-by-step guide on how to setup a free WordPress blog and link to it from your eNudge emails. You may need some help from your web developer for the WordPress installation step, but that shouldn’t take them more than an hour or so, with a little more time if you need them to configure it and create a customised blog banner for you.
- Download the WordPress blog software from http://wordpress.org/ and install it on your webserver following the Famous 5 Minute Install provided by WordPress (if you have no idea what this means, best to get your Web Developer to carry out this step for you).
- After going through the installation, WordPress will have generated an Admin username and password for you to get into the administration section of your new blog. Go to the admin page which will most probably be located at: http://www.yourwebsite.com.au/blog/wp-admin and login using the admin username and password.
- Go to the WordPress dashboard, and click on Write Post. From this screen you can create your first blog entry. WordPress allows you to enter text and format it with a basic text editing tool. Then save your post, allocating it to an appropriate category.
- In the WordPress dashboard you can control all of the settings the govern the way your blog operates including who can post comments, and whether these are moderated or not.
- Linking to your blog in your eNudge email is then simply a matter of providing a link to the “root page” of your blog, which will most likely be: http://www.yourwebsite.com.au/blog – this is the link to the Contact Point blog for instance: https://blog.contactpoint.com.au/
Providing a link to your blog from within your eNudge emails will allow people to read something in your email or your website, and then post their own comments. Other visitors reading these comments can then comment on the comments, and a conversation takes place amongst your readers, potentially creating a mini-community.
So, now’s your chance! Was this short guide interesting / useful? Post your comment and see how easy it will be for your readers to contribute and start a conversation and a mini-community in YOUR blog.
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April 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Interesting article! I see it as being very effective in getting others to visit your website that may otherwise not do so. Often we only look for things that we think we need and miss out on other great opportunities and this is another way to make more people aware of our businesses.
Word of mouth or email is the best tool for promoting ones business and this appears to be a very effective way of doing so.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Linking through to a blog is definitely a very powerful marketing tool – and much more so than through one-way email traffic. Blogging is one of the newest media tools to market you and your business as it facilitates conversations, i.e. authentic, responsive, individual voices and in so doing builds a connection between people (and thereby creates an online community). As a result of the internets two-way, many-to-many nature it should remain a more effective medium than newspapers, radio and tv and become an ever increasing way to communicate with others on topics of similar interest. In our business, we have recognised the power of this tool and others which provide an edge in today’s ever increasing competitive world.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:37 am
I have had a lot of automated tools dropping spurious posts onto my blog replies, so I guess that’s a downside of using blogs. On the other hand I have measured traffic coming back to my blog from emails. People will actually refer back.
Also, in my emails I can link to specific topics like How to stop fights about money. So the clients who click on this link http://glenthegoalsguy.com/?p=100 are most likely going to be intereseted in that specific topic, even if the rest of the web site is not of interest.
Also, by using widgets, I have set up affiliate ads and google ads, so WordPress is very flexible in that respect.