This week I chat with Brendon Sinclair from Tailored Web Consulting about the 5 biggest mistakes in business.
Brendon is an experienced web / marketing guru having run his own business Tailored Consulting for many years. He is also a public speaker, author and one of my mentors so I was stoked to have him on the show.
Whether he comes back will depend on how many subscribers I lose as a result of his appearance ha.
or Download the file or visit iTunes.
Shouts / News
Check out the Informly iPhone app.
The 5 biggest mistakes in business
1. Not doing what you love (or not loving being in business)
2. Not having a business model
3. Not marketing or doing poor marketing
4. Saying “Yes” to everything/everyone
5. Letting negativity get you down
6. Not managing expectations well (under promise, over deliver)
Mentions
List of people potentially offended
Tech tips
- Feedburner for counting RSS subscribers and allowing people to subscribe via email
- Feedsmith plugin for redirecting your inbuilt WordPress feed URL to the feedburner URL
- RSS footer plugin for adding an anchor text backlink to your RSS feed.
List of some RSS Directories
- http://boingboing.net
- http://www.icerocket.com
- http://www.rssbuffet.com
- http://blogdigger.com
- http://jordomedia.com
- http://feedagg.com
- http://syndic8.com
- http://feedsee.com
Full transcription
Dan: Do you have any questions?
Brendan: Why is the sky blue?
Dan: Why is the sky blue?
Brendan: Yeah. My kids come up with that one when I’m out. You got any question. Yeah, Dad, why is the sky blue?
Dan: It’s not, have a look.
Brendan: [Laughing] Yeah, it’s gray. Yeah you smart ass its, gray.
Dan: Web Domination is brought to you by My Start Up Webcontroller. My app shows you a simple one page live report on all of your important business information. It talks to your favorite services like Analytics, Mailchimp, Xero and more and centralizes the important info on one page accessible by mobile or the web. The basic plan is free. Feel free to check out Webcontroller.com/podcast. For more info, that be the app or about the show.
Dan: Hey guys, welcome to the show, on today’s show I’m really excited about today’s show. I’ve got Brandon Sinclair, who’s a bit of a local identity in Australia when it comes to web design or marketing business in general, he’s a public speaker, author and all around good bloke. It’s pretty exciting interview. I basically asked him to offend as many people as possible and he pretty much succeeded in doing that. No, I’m just kidding, no I didn’t say that to him, but he succeeded in doing that nonetheless.
This week I’ve got a bit of news. I’ve released to a new IPhone app called “Informly” and this is just a little app I’m working on, it’s like a dashboard for small business that shows you a bunch of reports from different systems. If you use Mailchimp, Zero, or Google analytics, PayPal that kind of thing, it gives you a chart from each of those systems so you don’t have to log into several places and we’ve been working on an IPhone app which is free and it’s just been accepted into the app store. Feel free to check that out, Inform.ly and let me know what you think.
If you hang around at the end of the show, I’m going to be in the tech tip section talking about RSS and I’ve got a few tips for what it is, how to use Feedburner and a few other tools and one little SEO tip relating to RSS as well. OK, let’s get into the main interview.
Dan: OK, so Brendan welcome to the show
Brendan: Thank you very much Dan. Thanks for having me, great to be here or there, or wherever we both are.
Dan: Today we are going to have a chat about the five biggest mistakes in business and how not to be a loser.
Brendan: Yes, we certainly are, got quite a bit to say don’t you worry about that.
Dan: All right, so do you want to kick things off. What’s the first mistake and is this the most common mistake.
Brendan: Yea, well, I don’t know whether it’s the most common, I know it probably is, but through necessity. The biggest mistake I see is people not doing what they love. That’s in my mind is insane because what it boils down to is that passion always wins in business. If you don’t love what you’re doing, what the hell are you doing it for is probably the first thing you say, but if you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re not going to hang on to business. I’ll tell you why, because business is bloody hard, and if you don’t love with a passion what you’re doing, you are not going to hang on, you’re not going to persevere, you’re not going to get through the tough times, and you’re not going to be there when the good times come, because perseverance always wins. It’s not a case of the best person winning because, there’s… we’ve all seen in the global financial crisis at the moment, that good operators go under, but the goal is who can hang on, hang on, hang on. They’re the guys that love their business so much that they couldn’t bear to be away from it all to see it fail, so they’ll put their ass into it to do whatever it takes to continue that business, they’ll persevere and they’ll be there at the end to see that business become a success.
Now that’s probably my first one. Do what you love. What’s the use to spend your entire life doing something that you either despise or are lukewarm about, got a big lead to a very boring and bloody life.
Dan: [Laughing] True. I think on this one, this is something that I think you better be its, when people say to do what you love or do what your passionate about, is it… how do you tell the difference between doing something that’s a hobby… I love surfing, but I don’t feel that I need to go out and start a surfing business. Is it enough to just love being in business?
Brendan: Oh yeah, for sure, because I reckon all businesses is exactly the same. Whether you’re selling surf boards or whether you’re a web developer or whether your selling iPods or whether you’re a landscape gardener or whether you’re a plastic surgeon. Every single one of us doing exactly the same thing and all we all do which is all exactly the same, is we just find solutions for people’s problems. Business people aren’t surf board sellers, or web developers or landscapers, they’re just problem solvers. I’ve been trying to drum this one into people for a thousand years, but no one ever listens, well no one ever listens, they listened, I just don’t get it all or maybe I’m just speaking crap. It’s just such a fundamental thing. All your business is the entire time is taking care of problems. Let’s say I’m doing web development for people, I’m not really designing a website, what I’m trying to do is provide a solution to their problem. Their problem is inevitably that they haven’t got enough money in their business..
Dan: Yeah.
Brendan: .. and that’s the problem. I’ll show them how to make more money in their business, so you get their business, that’s what I do. If you’re selling surf boards and, at the beach there on Burleigh Heads on the gold coast, you’re not selling surf boards, you’re selling the feeling that that person gets when they’re riding the surf board. If you’re a landscape gardener, you’re not selling plants, you’re selling the solution to the problem, the problem is that they’ve got an ugly garden and they want something prettier. We all do exactly the same. It’s enough to love business, just regardless of really what that business is, obviously it’s better if you love the business and love your particular niche.
Dan: I wonder if that’s where some people fall down in that they might be pursuing what they are doing because they love whatever their particular niche is, but maybe they just don’t love business.
Brendan: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. You hear that all the time with people who, “Oh my god, you’re a wonderful cook you should open a restaurant.” Nope, the restaurant would go under in about 10 minutes later. That makes me sad, people who do that. Business is bloody hard, if you haven’t got a business bent, then it’s just the obstacles can be insurmountable and despite your love for cooking or your love for food, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be good at running a restaurant. It’s a whole different ball game. That’s a great point mate.
Dan: Yeah, I think even it could go the other way. It probably in a lot of cases gets to the point where you hate what you do.
Brendan: Yeah, oh yeah. No drama at all.
Dan: All right, so what’s Number two?
Brendan: Number two is not having a business model. I’m big on this one because in business I’m a absolute clan, I know nothing. I see having a sustainable business model as more important than any skill you bring to the business. If you’ve got the right business model, it doesn’t matter what your skill set is, because your business model will enable you to get those other skills that you actually need. When I first got into business, I’ve been in business fourteen, fifteen years now, I always thought the term business model was a bit of a wankers term, a bit of a pretentious kind of, term that management guru’s crap on about to make the rest of us feel stupid. It took me years to get my head around what they mean by business model and it may, essential in my business now, I do a lot of web development, a lot of marketing stuff.
In my business model, to make it sustainable, is to have as much passive income as I can possibly get and to leverage every single client that comes into the business. If we do a website for somebody, at the end of the day it’s going to be about 10% of the revenue we generate from that person. Because our business model is to provide ongoing services from search engine optimization to good leg words management to, content management, to social media consulting, whatever it happens to be. The business model has to be right.
Now the fact that, see with the web development, I have no idea how to design websites, I say this to people, I have no idea how to design websites, I can’t program, I can’t do any of that, but my business model is such that I’ve identified all of those things and I just get people in to provide the solutions to those problems. The business model, for us, is everything and the business model should be an integral part of people planning out their business and ensuring that they’ve got a) a sustainable business and I’ve got no idea what b) was going to be, but I will try to make something up there on the spot. [Laughing]
Dan: When I think when you mention that, I think of that saying, “Oh I will probably stuff it up,” but it’s something along the lines of, “Good marketing will never improve bad economics,” or something like that. In that, if whatever your business model is, if there’s not enough margin or not enough recurring revenue or whatever it is about your business model to start with, then you’re never going to be in the position to go and get other people to do the work or invest in marketing because the economics are bad.
Brendan: I’ll give you a great example of a business model that can be improved. Let’s go with a restaurant. We’ve got clients who own restaurants and go just great, but you can always, always do better. I’ve had this conversation with them on numerous occasions. If I walk into a restaurant and spend a heap on food and then give a big tip at the end of the night, so I spend a heap on food, heap on drink, and a big tip at the end of the night, I am way, way more valuable than the other guy who walks in has a Caesar salad, has a mineral water, doesn’t leave a tip and then walks back out of there. I am their perfect sort of customer. Their business model should have revolve around, getting a) identifying who their best customers are and b) potential income didn’t come from that customer.
I have never ever been to a restaurant where they’ve got my contact details or they’ve contacted me after or they’ve offered me any sort of incentive to come back again, which is absolutely insane. Because any restaurant is going to have a top 100 customers, for examples, and I don’t guarantee just 99.9% of restaurants would not know who those top 100 people would be.
Can you imagine how much more profitable a restaurant would be if they identify their top 100 customers and marketed to them on a regular basis to get them to come in more often? Because a) the food, wine bill is going to be so, so much more, and if they are big tippers as well, it’s basically free money.
Dan: Yeah, why don’t they do it? Is it a cultural thing, or is it just not what you do?
Brendan: I don’t know, I think they just stupid.
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: Well they are. They’re too stupid in their own business to get out of the way and do what they should do. I mean the other classic one is flowers. You know me Dan, I’m a romantic guy.
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: I’m always buying flowers for my wife; birthdays, honeymoon, anniversaries, just because she’s beautiful, just because I’m so lucky to be married to her.
Dan: Is she going to be listening to this? [Laughing]
Brendan: She’s probably listening to this in a surprise to no one. I’ll go down the local flower shop, I’ll spend $50.00 on a bunch of flowers for our wedding anniversary. I’ll go down on her birthday, I’ll spend $50.00 on her birthday. I’ll go down at other times and buy her $50.00 just for being a wonderful wife. Now why the hell do I go to different florists all the time? It’s because no one gives a rats ass. Now, if I had a florist, it’s just so obvious, if I had a florist and Brendan Sinclair walked in and said, “I want to buy some flowers for my wife, it’s our wedding anniversary, and write this on the card,” or I ring up and say my wedding anniversary, write this on the card.
They’ve got your name, they’ve got your address and they’ve got your phone number, why wouldn’t they have a simple database where maybe someone from the florist rings up… my wedding anniversary is February the fourth, and my wife who will be listening to this, see I remember doll. Why don’t they ring up on February second and say, “Hey Brendan, last year you spent $50.00 on beautiful roses, we’ve got some gorgeous red roses in right now, would you like us to send some to your wife for your wedding anniversary on February the fourth.” Because they know all this stuff, they know when her birthday is, they know when our wedding anniversary is, all that stuff.
No they don’t do it. The cost of a phone call, for the cost of being smart enough to put together a database of all your customers, who should be ongoing buyers, they miss out on thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of business. I don’t get it, it just does my head in, that stuff.
Dan: It’s kind of off topic, but sometimes when I go buy things in retail shops I just think, why on earth would anyone buy anything from a physical retail store. The experience online, in some cases, is so much better that these guys who sell stuff in physical stores need to get so much smarter about how they interact with customers or else people just aren’t going to go there anymore.
Brendan: That’s because they have had it too easy for too long. Now online comes along and has got so many more advantages over it, price being obviously the major one in a lot of factors. Because they don’t have the overheads and all of the sudden, “Oh god, we’re in trouble here.” They see [inaudible 00:14:14] all you say and do is piss, bitch and moan that online should be charged GST or taxes wherever they happened to be from. They don’t actually do anything about creating the store about their business, about marketing their business, about providing a better offering, about ringing people up two days before their anniversary and saying, “Do you want to buy some more flowers?” They don’t do anything like that, because online business seem so much more innovative and their leaving offline business for dust.
Dan: Yeah.
Brendan: That’s not it.
Dan: All right, so what’s Number three, and remember I’ve got a swear jar so you have to pay me $10.00 if you swear.
Brendan: [Laughing] Oh shit!
Dan: Shit’s not a swear word.
Brendan: Number three, is kind of tied in to number two there, which is not marketing. Of the amount of businesses I see, and I deal with hundreds of businesses during the year, but that don’t actually do anything, or they’ll do something like, my favorite of course is the yellow pages. They’ll take an ad in the yellow pages, because they always have. They don’t do anything, and even if they do, do something, they don’t actually measure it.
They’re not proactive in their marketing, they don’t do anything to stand out and this is one thing you and I have discussed before. You’ve got to be remarkable in business because otherwise people aren’t going to remember you. You’ve got to provide value to your market with every single interaction they have. It’s just like me on this podcast. You want me, whether you now it or not Dan, you want me to be animated, controversial, mouthy, probably not drop the old swear words here. You want me to stand out and be different and I kind of do stand out and be different because I’m sort of a mouthy, stupid Australian bloke who says what he wants. Now, tons of people don’t like that, but that doesn’t matter because at least they’ll remember me, you see, and they’ll remember your show. You get the added sort of bonus of that as me as your guest.
Dan: Well yeah, I wouldn’t have asked you to be on the show if you were as boring as betched would I?
Brendan: Oh exactly, if I was here going, [monotone] G’day Dan, nice to meet you, da, da, da. That’s not a good for anything.
Dan: It’s worth a little bit of audio editing afterwards
Brendan: [Laughing] Hear the four or five hours of dropping the swear words. All businesses are essentially all the same, so you’ve got to do something to stand out because there’s so much noise out there. We just get bombarded with so many different things. You’ve got to add a personality to your business, you’ve got to somehow resonate with your audience. In marketing, there doesn’t need to be, spending thousands of dollars on advertising these days and that’s the beauty of online stuff. That can be your social media stuff. The thing with the social media stuff that I really like is that it demonstrates to people that they just need to get out and talk to people, they just need to get out and articulate what their business is about. They don’t need to just sit in their little hole and take ends. They need to just talk to people, they don’t need to shove off [inaudible 00:17:32]throat all the time because people are over that. They need to market their business in such a way as to position their business as expert and credible, and nice and caring and loving, all those other things. Not marketing is a huge mistake I see all the time.
Dan: I think, just with that marketing thing. I don’t know how common this is, but I have a feeling that a big part of the problem with marketing is, businesses kind of see it as something to outsource, just something to basically pay someone to do something for them. In the old days you could just take out an ad in the yellow pages and that would be enough and these days people think, “Well, we can just pay for some ads on Google.” A lot of the substance of marketing has to come from the business owner, doesn’t it? What’s really unique about the business, is the person running it in a lot of cases.
Brendan: Yeah, oh absolutely. The marketing needs to be an integral part of the entire business, its management and styles, and marketing and this that and the other occupational health and safety. Marketing should trump all those things because nothing happens until you start marketing. Nothing happens until you get in front of a customer, make them the pitch and sell them whatever you are selling them, whatever that happens to be. Whether its surfboard, or flowers, or plastic surgery, or; I’ve mentioned plastic surgery a couple of times haven’t I.
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: That’s a tough [inaudible 19:03]
Dan: Yeah, it seems to be.
Brendan: Not to mention too, I’d look about 20 years younger, it’s your last hope.
Dan: Or use an older picture, on the share notes. All right, so Number four.
Brendan: Number four, this one I love. I used to do this one and I’m sure many listeners did as well. It’s the biggest, it’s one of the biggest mistakes, in fact the fourth biggest mistake you can make in business, saying yes to every single client. That is a trap for young clients to avoid. We all do it, I know I’ve certainly done it over the years. As you start your business up you must take every bit of business that you possibly can. The thing you’ve got to remember is a lot of clients are complete and utter dickheads.
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: I’m happy to spend the $10 bucks to say that.
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: There are clients out there, some clients out there are just plain, complete nasty and negative and all the rest of that. You’ve got to identify who you work best with, and who’s the best fit for you and whose most profitable for you, not in terms of just money, but in terms of value. I’ve done a lot of work with government organizations and counsels and all the rest of them. It’s easy for me to say this now cause we’ve got plenty of business.
I will never do another job for counsels or government departments. They are a complete pain. I just can’t work with them because I’m not a, “Cross the T’s and dot the I’s kind of guy.” I’m a big loud ideas, just get in and get it done. I’m not going to sit there and write you 100 page report on what we’re going to do.
Dan: Yeah.
Brendan: I’ll give you a fair idea, but we just don’t work like that, and we don’t work very well like that, and so we just don’t do it. Saying no to people is really, really important. Just to offend whoever I haven’t offended anymore, and I’ll just finish off with Al, being this red flag in web development, is if it’s a middle aged woman who hasn’t been in business before, whose husband has made money and said to the mig, “Hey love go and start your own little business.” She wants to start a business, she comes to us, “I’ve got these great ideas. Yes, we’re very successful in business, my husband done this and that,” and we just say no every time because I recon it’s happened to us… I’m a slow learner, its happen to us probably 10 times where they’ve just gone under, owed us money, been a complete nightmare to work with because they’ve got no business understanding and no background.
Dan: Is it always an E-commerce store where they think they can just put an E-commerce store online and automatically they’ll start making money?
Brendan: A lot of the time. A lot of the time. We’ve had some dues over the years. It probably is offensive and politically incorrect to tie that section…
Dan: Is it one of the questions you’ve got on your inquiry form?
Brendan: Yea, what I say, I’m a pain in the ass to deal with. If they tick those boxes then we say, “Well I’m afraid we can’t work with you.”
Dan: Just refer them to me. [Laughing]
Brendan: That’s exactly what we do. You’re weird mate. Which brings me to my next story, this is a great one. There’s another web developer on the gold coast in competition to you and I, but he’s complete rubbish, is Josh Arab eye online. Do you know Josh?
Dan: [Laughing] I do know josh yeah, he’ll probably be listening
Brendan: He’ll probably be listening, G’day Josh. He’s a great guy, does fantastic work, fantastic work, but way bit of an ass, that’ll clear up that lawsuit that’s coming. Josh and I will go for the same client. I can’t remember, I think I was a bit more expensive than him. Anyway, he got the client and just about destroyed him. We talked about it for ages that, I’ve got no idea where I was going with this story.. we’re going to have to..
Dan: Did you say no, or did they say no to you?
Brendan: No they said no to me, they went with Josh and just about killed him. The absolute biggest nightmare of a client you could ever imagine and were an enormous drain on him. I guess what I was trying to say was you can’t say yes to everyone. Sometimes a few slip through though.
Dan: Yeah, I think the hardest thing with this is, is when you’re starting out you pretty much have to take on everything or else you’re not going to make enough money.
Brendan: Yeah exactly, and you don’t know at the time, you don’t realize that there’s been tested clients out there who will value you, value the work you do, refer you lots of work. They’re the sort of clients you want. You don’t want the one who is trying to screw you the entire time and all the rest of it. I think as people get more experience in business, they understand that, “Hey, even if this bloke’s a little bit more expensive, he might be better,” so they get the general feeling you’re ok and away you go.
Dan: Yeah.
Brendan: I had a really good testimony the other day from a guy, he said that he went with us, we were something like six times more expensive than the competition. I hope that wasn’t you Dan. He went with us. Him and his dad run the business, great little business, and his dad said to him, “Look, we’ll go with Brendan because if he’s half as good as he thinks he is, we’re going to be OK”.
Dan: [Laughing] Having a bit of confidence doesn’t hurt either.
Brendan: Confidence is fine.
Dan: What’s the fifth one?
Brendan: The fifth one..
Dan: Fifth and final.
Brendan: Fifth and final. Don’t let stuff get you down, don’t let the negativity get you down. You’ve got a bit of a profile online and so have I. The amount of bloody idiots out there who’ll ignore you is just colossal. Though there’s so many people who are happy to throw their two bubs worth in and be completely negative and have a crack at you. If you just get caught up, if you listen to those guys, it just drags you way down and you think well maybe I’m not going at this or whatever. You’ve got to understand that there’s tons of those guys out there and a really…I was actually [inaudible: 00:25:05] I should have made a note where it was. One of the key indicators on if you’re going to do okay in business, is that you don’t give a rats on what other people think about you. That’s a really important one because there’s idiots everywhere. If you can just get in, work on what you believe, and do what you believe in, and disregard the negative people, then that’s fantastic.
Dan: Yeah, but it’s hard to do isn’t it. I think especially when you start out, you kind of don’t understand that whatever it is that your selling, you don’t have to sell it to everybody.
Brendan: Yeah, exactly and you’re so uptight that [inaudible 00:25 42] write a book 10 years ago and had tons of hate mail over stupid things. My favorite one, I think I’ve told you this story before. I was writing this big newsletter and I wrote something about, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: All this hate mail. “Oh, I’m a cat lover and that’s a terrible thing to say.”
Dan: [Laughing]
Brendan: “Oh God, give me a break.” They were American’s so they weren’t very smart.
Dan: [Laughing] Well we don’t have any American listeners.
Brendan: Thank god for that.
Dan: Yeah, only one out of three I guess so far have been from America and he was born in Australia.
Brendan: Our apologies to American listeners.
Dan: [Laughing]Right.
Brendan: I guess the down… not the down side, but the thing to be careful of, you’ve got to listen to people who’s opinion you respect and who know a bit about what they’re talking about. There’s a consistent thing that comes through in criticism of what you’re doing. Whether it’s your business, your sales approach, how you do it, or whatever. Listen to those people who matter to me, but everyone else just blow them off and just don’t let them get you down. Because business is hard enough without having some moppet who’s hiding behind the computer screen, and who’s a fourteen year old pimply kid sitting there writing your abusive [inaudible 00:26:57)
Dan: [Laughing] All right, I had a look at the list of the five things before we started recording and I noticed there was a six on there.
Brendan: Well the sixth one, it’s a double one mate. Always over deliver. So you asked me for five and I gave you six, what a guy, how good is this bloke. This last one is managing expectations.
The managing expectations of your customers is a really difficult thing and it’s a really critical thing because your sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. In a service kind of industry like we’re in, so if you and I are going for the same customer, the same client, you want to demonstrate your expertise and you want to get them excited about the project. You want to get them excited about your ability to get them their results, but you can’t offer too much, you can’t promise too much because otherwise if you don’t get to those lusty hearts, then they’re going to be disappointed. If you can keep the expectations low, or lower, and exceed them, that’s a much better way to do it. Then the trouble you have with that is if I promised them one thing and then Dan the great website designer comes in and offers them more, they might go with Dan the great website designer. So that one can be really tricky.
Dan: I guess, in a lot of things, it comes down to dealing with people and I guess working out what their expecting and promising something that’s slightly above that and delivering something that’s a long way above that.
Brendan: Yeah, and it comes down to getting them to trust you. It’s all about demonstrating your expertise, and your credibility and using testimonials, and guarantees to sort of move that along. That’s a really important part of it because you don’t want them… even if you do a fantastic job, you don’t want their expectations to not be met and they’re unhappy even though you’ve done a fantastic job.
Dan: Yeah.
Brendan: It’s a bit of a hard to balanced that one.
Dan: Ok, so this has been really great, I really appreciate you coming on. Just on the off chance that there’s someone listening here you haven’t offended, where can people find you if they want to?
Brendan: [Laughing] I’ll probably be hiding particularly from Americans and..
Dan: Middle aged ladies.
Brendan: Oh god, imagine if you’ve got a middle aged American, who was listening to this, that would be terrible.
Dan: Oh no, that won’t happen.
Brendan: [Laughing]
Dan: Don’t worry about that.
Brendan: [Laughing] My main business website is “Tyrid.com www.tyrid.com, but you can just do a search on Brendan Sinclair, I’m everywhere [Laughing]
Dan: All right, and I’ve been reading your blog, it’s really good. I encourage everyone to check that out. All right. Well thanks again.
Brendan: I agree, as I have actually spoke with a lot of people and got them to compare your blog and mine and they say mine is way, way better.
Dan: [Laughing] Ok, I’ll take your word for it.
In the tech tip section today I’m going to be talking about RSS feeds. There’s a few things you can do with RSS feeds. The first thing I would do is if you want people to subscribe to your blog, is set up FeedBurner and all you have to do, to do that is go to FeedBurner, just go Google FeedBurner, it’s actually owned by Google now. You put in the feed for your blog, if you’re on web press it’ll be your domain forward slash feed. Then FeedBurner will create a different feed URL for you, and if you use that URL for your feeds, then you’ll be able to see who’s subscribing to your feeds. If you don’t do that, then you don’t know who subscribing to your feeds, and you can also use other tools to tap into FeedBurner to report on feed subscribers and that kind of thing.
So that’s the first thing I would do. Then install feed smith plug-in and what that does is re-direct your normal RSS feed through to the FeedBurner one. It’s really simple to set up, you just put in the old feed, actually you don’t even put in the old feed, I think you just put in the new feed and the plug-in does the rest. One other tip I’d give you, is you can get a plug in cord, RSS Footer, and I’ll put that in the show notes. What that does is it adds a footer to your RSS feed so that when someone looks at your posts in an RSS radar, it will have a standard footer at the bottom of it. What you can do with that footer is put a back link to your website with your anchor text, so you don’t have to be mentioning your key words every single episode. After every feed, you’ll automatically have that back link there with the right anchor text and when you add the RSS feed to RSS directories, then all of those directories will have that back link back to your site with your anchor text.
In the show notes, I’ll also include a bunch of RSS directories that we add RSS feeds to when we set up new blogs.
That’s it for this week. I’ll see you next week.
Ok guys thanks for listening. Make sure you check out www.inform.ly/podcast to learn more about the informly act and more about the show. Thanks, and see you next time.
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