You've already done one of the most important things to ensure that visitors come back. You've committed to updating your website every week. But how do you make sure that your visitors don't forget about you? 1) Really Simple Syndication Make sure that your updates appear on your visitor's home page. RSS (Really Simply Syndication) helps you do this. It works by displaying your latest article headlines on whichever page a visitor desires, and makes the visitor much more aware of updates that are relevant to him. With the plethora of information available on the web, the last thing that you need is users, who found your website useful, forgetting about you. Sites like FeedBurner.com can help you market your RSS feed. 2) Email newsletter A more traditional form of keeping in touch with your visitors is an email newsletter. The first thing that you'll need for this is of course a method of capturing your visitor's email address. You may wish to also ask for additional information such as their location or other contact details. You can either host & operate your own database to capture the information or outsource the email newsletter service to a specialist provider such as Constant Contact which offers a 60 day free trial. 3) Podcast A podcast is one of the newest forms of keeping in touch with your customers. It is an audio or video file that people can either play on their computer or download onto their MP3 / MP4 player such as an iPod. Making a podcast isn't as difficult or expensive as you may think. It just takes a few hours a week. Many podcasters use the excellent free software Audacity, and a show can be recorded on any modern computer with a simple microphone and headphone set attached. Personalisation of your show can be achieved by getting your own theme tune from a website like Mark Blasco's PodcastThemes.com. There are many web hosts specialising in podcasts now such as Audioblog.com, Switchpod.com and Podomatic.com. Remember to use a service like Feedburner.com to market your feed / show. |
