Posts filed under 'Marketing'
Are you giving your blog readers partial feeds?
There is nothing wrong with delivering partial feeds. The main benefit is it ensures people will visit your site to read the complete posts and therefore be exposed to your advertising or messages. In addition, they may benefit from seeing other content that they wouldn’t see if they just read your feed.
The issue that prompted this post is that two blogs (this one and this one) I came across this month offer partial post feeds only.
I read blogs using Thunderbird. In the content window, all I see is a partial post that just ends. There is no ellipsis. There is no link to read on. It just ends. For a couple days, I just thought it was sloppy writing and then I realised that the posts were incomplete. So, in order for me to read the complete post I have to open up the headers bar in my reader and click on the permalink which opens my browser to the complete post. This takes me way out of flow. I generally read most blog posts fairly quickly and I don’t read all of them unless they look interesting or valuable.
It is bad enough that I have to go to the site at all, but why do you make me have to work for it? Why can you not place a link at the end of the post fragment to tell me to “read on”.
Three Solutions
Here are a three possible solutions for the need to deliver partial feeds:
- Include a link at the end of the excerpt to the permalink.
- Monetize the feeds by adding inline ads.
- Include special offers, links to related posts and products at the end of your syndicated posts.
Great Content Will Deliver Site Visits
Send whole feeds and don’t worry about site visits. If your posts are compelling, I will happily visit your site. Examples of this are StevePavlina.com or ProBlogger.net. Both of these blogs run full-post feeds and I often visit their sites, not because they force me, but because the content is so good I want to read more.
Tell me what you think?
Tags: blog, DesignByFire, problogger.net, Slow Leadership, stevepavlina.com, Thunderbird
July 10th, 2006
I came up with the idea that I should really convert my whole website company website to sit on WordPress as a content manager and blogging system.
Continue Reading June 27th, 2006
In the last couple of days I seem to be reading more and more about the pitfalls of business. Jim Logan at BizInformer has yet another take on mistakes a business can make in his four part series, The Four Biggest Mistakes Businesses Unwittingly Make to Limit Their Growth and Success. I found this series starting with #3 Offering Prospective Customers Little to Beleive In.
I truly beleive this point cannot be stated strongly enough for businesses who hope to use their website as a vehicle for delivering or increasing profits.
Too many website owners expect too much unwarrented trust or don’t consider the development of trust of any measure. In the real world people make judgments on all sorts of factors and those that go to building trust far outweigh many others, including some that are on the list of Jim offers in his post. Degrees mean little by themselves, testimonials; the same. It is the careful and thoughtful connections between all the items in his list that can make the difference.
April 12th, 2006
A late breaking addendum to my last post from John Jantsch. He writes that Your Marketing Stinks and It’s Your Fault . I find this one particularly interesting as most of the small business owners — who comprise my main market — don’t see this fact ever — until it is too late.
April 11th, 2006
I have been reading 37Signals new eBook Getting Real in which they talk about the problems with large committees and project teams etc. in development. It really came clear to me tonight when I read Seth’s post on That iPod Video which lead me to the iPod Observer story that Microsoft Confirms it Originated iPod Box Parody Video.
The iPod Observer Story cites a Microsoft spokesman, Tom Pilla as confirming they commissioned the video, “…to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging…”
In Getting Real, the 37signals team talk about developing faster applications and better interfaces and working through each process by being smaller and not having to cater to every VP or Chief “Insert Title Here” in the organization. Obviously Steve Jobs gets this and Microsoft acknowledges their design-by-organization methodology is flawed but still need to get there.
Small teams are always better than committees.
I will keep posting until I get through this terrific eBook.
PS: A minor irritation is that it is not available in print and I am loathe to print it out as inkjet cartridges are not cheap.
March 14th, 2006