Enabling Email Subscriptions for Your Blog

We get a lot of requests to implement email subscriptions for blogs. It’s rather simple and once you do it once, it’s even easier to replicate on other websites. This article is designed to walk you through it.

First, your blog must output a RSS feed. 99.9% of blogs do, and if your blog does not, then it is time to switch blogging platforms. Figure out what your blog’s RSS URL is and copy it. For example, most RSS URL’s are either yourdomainname.com/rss or yourdomainname.com/feed.

Next, you need to open/have an account with Feedburner.com. Feedburner, which is owned and operated by Google, is the standard for enhancing the capabilities of your RSS feed.

Once you have logged into your Feedburner account, you will need to paste the RSS URL of your blog. For this example, I am using my personal website. (see screenshot below).

The next screen will then ask you to name your RSS feed, which can be anything you want, and name the last portion of your new Feedburner RSS URL (see screenshot below).

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Don't Abuse Your Personal Social Media Brand

by Gary Cope

We all know one. A person on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn who abuses their status as your social media “friend” by inviting you to join Facebook fan pages every other day, sending out 500 Tweets before lunch, or even worse, sharing links to get-rich-quick schemes.

There are a couple of folks that I know in real life (IRL) and am also “friends” with on Facebook and/or Twitter. But lately, they’ve started to annoy me with their endless recommendations for fan pages and shameless self promotion. The whole thing cheapens the overall relationship and damaged their credibility.

One person in particular has become a shill, not a living breathing human being. Often times they promote worthy causes, but when I get several fan page recommendations a week, I start to tune you out.

Perhaps you are well recognized and have an established personal brand - great! Good for you. Don’t cheapen it by treating your social media friends and followers with disrespect.

Be a person. Be real. If all you do is pimp something or send invites to everyone on your friends list, that’s not how social media works. That’s how spammers work. It’s the fastest way to get un-friended and/or un-followed.

Gary Cope has more than 18 years of experience in communications including broadcast and print media, corporate communications, and online marketing. At Business Bullpen, Gary conducts search engine optimization (SEO) audits and implementation; consults with clients regarding their search marketing strategies; and develops social media plans designed to help clients take full advantage of online marketing.

You can follow Gary on Tumblr at garycope.tumblr.com or Twitter at twitter.com/garycope.

Let's TeuxDeux This

I’ve been trying out a new to-do list application named TeuxDeux. My background and most of my experience is in project management, so I’m drawn to evaluating task managers and to-do list applications and techniques. Most apps don’t have me at hello, but it was love at first sight with TeuxDeux. The simplistic UI drew me in.



If you haven’t picked up on this yet, TeuxDeux is a to-do list and not a task manager. Remember The Milk, Google Tasks, your moleskine notebook, sticky pad, or legal pad are its competitors. I like all those options, but never could sustain long term use with any of them for reasons that are more about me than them.

The screenshot above is all that TeuxDeux is, and that’s what is so great about it. Everything is on one screen. You add a task by typing it in within one of the text boxes under a date (the due date). That’s it. To-Do entered. You can drag tasks up and down on each list to set an order or prioritized list. What if you don’t have a due date? No problem! Drop it in the Someday list at the bottom of the screen. When you have completed a task, just click it again and the task will be crossed off, just like on your legal pad. You can also remove the completed task from your list completely with another click. Want to move a task to another date? Drag and drop. So easy! If a task takes more than a few words to describe, you can hover over it to see the complete description. Want to move ahead a day or several days? Just click the arrow on the right side of the page.

The thing I like the most about TeuxDeux (besides the design) is how it responds when a task due today is not completed. TeuxDeux moves the task to the next day’s list. I prefer that over having overdue tasks from dates in the past. A to-do list is one list of many tasks typically to be done over the course of one day. If I don’t get to everything that day, then it should be on the next day’s list and not stuck in the past, right? Why should I care that it is overdue? I only need it on my current list of things to do, so I can get it done the next day. That’s how I operate at least.

If you are in the market for a new way of keeping tabs on your to-dos, check it out TeuxDeux. An iPhone app is coming soon, which should seal the deal for me.