Welcome to another edition of Sites Weekly.
In this week’s edition, you will find links to articles about the following:
- Content. Understanding the subscriber’s perception of your email
- Design. 4 reasons why copywriters and graphic designers should collaborate
- Technology. The rise of voice technologies means new opportunities for podcasting
- Strategy. Five questions to answer before creating an online course
- Bonus. Why every business needs entrepreneurs
But first …
Last week on Sites
Building an email list remains the preeminent way to build an audience asset that you own and can access whenever and however you choose. Which is why the choice you make for an email marketing service provider is an important one. In this lesson, I provide three questions that will help guide you toward making the correct choice.
Listen: [39] 3Q for Picking the Right Email Marketing Service
Picking the right email marketing service provider can be a challenge — unless you know what to look for.
Listen: [40] The 5 Things You Must Know When Selecting an Email Provider
And now, on to this week’s links …
Content: Understanding the subscriber’s perception of your email
Everyone who performs email marketing — which I hope is every single person reading this! — has spent a lot of time analyzing their emails and hoping that the structure, tone, and content are such that maximum ROI will be delivered.
But here’s a simple question that should seem obvious, but may not be …
Have you ever looked at your emails from your subscribers’ perspectives?
You should. Because you may find that the messages you are trying to communicate aren’t actually being communicated, or that instructions you thought were simple have complications you didn’t expect.
This infographic presents a number of specific areas to investigate.
Design: 4 reasons why copywriters and graphic designers should collaborate
I’ve mentioned in this newsletter and on episodes of Site Success that content is design, and vice versa.
This article lays out several reasons why bringing content and design together can be beneficial — both for the audience, and for the people involved in creating and designing the content.
Two of the most important decisions you will make about your WordPress website are your theme and your hosting. Wouldn’t it be great if they worked together to make your website more powerful?
Now they can.
Discover why over 213,675 website owners trust StudioPress.
Technology: The rise of voice technologies means new opportunities for podcasting
As a veteran podcaster, this headline caught my eye. And both of the services that are described in the post are worth checking out.
First, it’s Podible, which is basically Pandora for podcasts. You should certainly check it out from a podcaster consumer perspective, if you find that model interesting. But more importantly, if you produce podcasts, you should sign up to make sure that your shows are available through Podible.
Second, the article discusses VoxSnap, a new service that essentially does what I did for the first season of the Site Success podcast: it turns blog posts into audio episodes.
But it’s not automated text-to-voice; voice actors do the reading. The concept is obviously proven. It will be interesting to see if this business model takes off.
And here is another new voice-based tool worth considering, although the headline of this article seems awfully hyperbolic: The Untapped Social Network With 10x the Potential of Twitter.
Strategy: Five questions to answer before creating an online course
Are you considering adding an online course to your free or paid content mix? If so, it’s worth your time to peruse these five questions from Mark Schaefer before you make your final decision and start putting your course content together.
And I’m glad he starts off with the most urgent question … because I think it’s the one we’re all a little afraid to address in our haste and enthusiasm to jump aboard the online course train:
“So the first checkpoint is … how many people would have to sign up for you to break-even on this venture? What is the value of your time devoted to creating this content versus some other professional activity?”
Bonus article: Why every business needs entrepreneurs
If you are reading this email, then you probably consider yourself an entrepreneur. Maybe you’re building a business of one, but you’re still an entrepreneur.
But do you have a proper entrepreneurial mindset? And do you know what to look for to hire others who do? And do you bring an entrepreneurial mindset to your other projects, which you may not be in charge of?
This short blog post explains why you should.
So …
Which of the ideas in these posts will you put to good use immediately?
I’ll be back with a new edition next week.
Keep building.