Business Online Podcast: Your Resource for Online Tools and Software

013 – Free App – Chrome Browser

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:35:54 +0000

This week’s free tool is a web browser that is super speedy and has tons of added functionality. Check it out at google.com/chrome

Download This Episode

012 – Free Mac App – CloudApp

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:31:07 +0000

This week’s tool is a free app for the Mac. Listen to the show for all the details of what this app can do for you. Or you can go to getcloudapp.com

Download This Episode

011 – Free Service – Mint

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:25:29 +0000

This week’s free service is a website that allows me to track all of my spending for my business. This can also be used as a personal finance tool as well. Check out mint.com for more details.

Download This Episode

010 – Free Service – Tungle.me

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 25 May 2011 12:27:13 +0000

Today I talk about a free service called tungle.me. It’s an online scheduling tool that syncs with your calendar.

Download this Episode

009 – What’s So Great About Skype?

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:02:05 +0000

Skype is one of the best communication tools that every business needs. This is a free tool and will allow you to talk to anyone in the world for free as long as they have Skype. If not, it will only cost $0.023 per call.

Download This Episode

008 – The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Email List

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:12:09 +0000

Building a high-quality, responsive mailing list is hard work. It takes more than just slapping a few thousand email addresses into your database and then blasting out offers. If that was all you had to do, everybody would have one. Truth is, acquiring addresses is just part of the process. You must also recognize that you have a relationship with the person behind each of your addresses. When you manage that relationship well, that address will become a more valuable part of your list, strengthening it in the process.

Effective email list building has these key components:
1. Where and how you acquire the email addresses
2. How you welcome each new email subscriber
3. How you manage the relationship after the email opt-in

Each component needs to be managed correctly in order to increase both the subscriber’s value to your business and your email program and your value to your subscriber.

Where and How to Acquire Email Addresses
Believe it or not, this is actually the easiest part of email list building. Although there are many tips and strategies for list building, there’s really just one overarching principle:

Never add an email address to your database unless you have the owner’s explicit permission to do so.

This is the fundamental rule of permission email marketing. Violate it and you risk violating the U.S. CAN-SPAM law regulating commercial email, a host of proven email-marketing best practices, and perhaps most importantly, your customer’s trust. Without that, your database will eventually become nothing but a graveyard of dead email addresses.

Here is a sample list of strategies for collecting email addresses, both online and offline:

Online:
Provide the opportunity to sign up for your email by posting a link to your registration page at every place where you meet your customers: for example, on every page of your Web site, and in each transactional or customer-support email.

Use paid search to reach higher positions in the search engines and post the link to your email sign-up page prominently on the landing page.

Investigate alliances with similar or complementary businesses in which you promote your partner’s program to your list, and vice versa.

Offer a relevant incentive, such as an email-only discount, free shipping, link to white papers or reports.

If you rent a mailing list to solicit business or subscriptions, make sure the email comes from the list owner and only goes to recipients that are clearly marked OK for receiving third-party emails.

Offline:
Ask for email addresses from everyone who visits your business, on-site and at trade shows; instruct telephone sales and customer-support workers to ask for addresses where appropriate.

Publish the link and a short benefit statement in all printed material: on bags, flyers, store signs, customer-feedback forms and satisfaction surveys, in ads and catalogs; provide registration blanks through the store.

How You Welcome Each New Email Subscriber
Remember the days when email was so fresh and new that you opened every single message you got just to see what was in it? No, neither do we. You have to work hard to persuade subscribers that they can trust your email messages and will find it worth their time to open them.

The email welcome actually begins right at your Web site’s registration or preference page, where you explain your content, frequency, benefits and the like so that subscribers know what they can expect from you. A good email welcome program has these elements:

An easy-to-navigate email opt-in page that asks for just enough information to get the relationship going without asking for too much. Four fields are enough to start: email address, first name, last name and format preference (HTML or text). Below this, add optional forms to solicit clearly relevant details: frequency, demographics, interests or preferences.

A thank-you page that loads immediately afterwards. This confirms both the information the subscriber just handed over and any steps needed to complete the opt-in such as replying to a confirmation email, thanks for the opt-in, repeats or expands on the benefits of subscribing and provides a link to a more detailed preference page.

A welcome package (labeled as such in the subject line) that repeats the subscriber’s opt-in data, provides more detail on subscription benefits, links to the preference page to encourage more detailed information, and can also include a sample or current e-newsletter or offer, any special subscriber-only offers or reports and any email incentives the subscriber could have used to sign up. Never send an incentive until you have gotten the email address confirmed via the confirmation email.

How You Manage the Relationship After Email Opt-In
Okay, now you have the email address. You might think your work here is done, but it’s really just beginning.

What you do with the address will in large part determine whether your subscriber sticks with you over the long haul, opens and responds to your email messages and updates their information with you as the relationship evolves.

Watch your email list statistics carefully to look for trends in bounces, unsubscribes and inactivity, especially as you expand your program and add new lists or subdivided your master list into stand-alone segments.

Stay in touch by occasionally emailing special offers or other material, or survey or preferences-update invitations.

Here are a few very simple strategies for building a responsive list:

Create a Free (High Value) Special Report, eBook, Audio or Video Series
Create an Irresistible Offer for Your Product
Integrate your List Management Opt-In Box and prominently display on your website and Facebook Fan Page
Design an Inviting “Welcome” message with links to download your product
Write a 5-7 part series of follow-up messages if possible
Encourage your current subscribers to share your Irresistible Offer with their Email List & Social Networks
Promote your Free Offer everywhere that you can – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ning, Email Signatures, Article Bio, TV, Radio, Speaking, Post Cards, etc

It really is just that simple! Find out what they want and give it to them. Once they are on you list, you can sell them other solutions that solves their problems or fulfills their desires.

Here are 3 recommendations for managing your subscriber list and follow up messages:

AWeber
Constant Contact
MailChimp

Download this Episode

007 – Top 12 Tools for Small Business Owners

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:53:07 +0000

Today I am going to talk about the top 12 tools every small business owner needs as they start their own business.

1.) Google Suite – Google Mail, Calendar, & Docs – Free
- Can be added to any web hosting package
- Everything is online, you have access everywhere
- Mail – Great search ability, always find your messages
- Calendar – always available, you can share with others
- Docs – Store documents in the cloud, always have access

2.) Google Voice – Free
- Have a record of each voicemail
- You don’t have to give out your personal cell phone number
- You can create a local number
- Never have to enter a pin number again
- Speech to text transcription

3.) DropBox – Free
- Online storage
- Free 200mb to begin
- Use the link on the resources page and get an additional 250mb
- 100% backed up and encrypted
- You have access to these files anywhere in the world.

For the rest, please listen to episode.

Download This Episode

006 – 15 Reasons Your Business Should Be Using Twitter

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:44:08 +0000

So what is twitter? According to Wikipedia:
- Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length

If you run a small business and aren’t using Twitter, I have to ask, why not? It seems that just about everyone else on the planet with access to the web or a cell phone is.

Twitter seems to be following the same pattern that blogs did. First a few, and just for personal use – (please!) Then a lot more and an expansion of uses. And then a belated awakening by businesses that something is happening over there and it might be worth getting in on it.

Your small business should be using Twitter because:
1. Creating a Brand.
2. Touching Base with Customers.
3. Getting Feedback from Customers.
4. Marketing for Free.
5. Building Links and Traffic.
6. Posting up Deals, Coupons and News.
7. Keeping an Eye on Competition.
8. Networking.
9. Finding Prospects.
10. Twitter is Fast.
11. It’s Free.
12. It’s Easy.
13. It’s a Conversation Starter.
14. It’s a News Source.
15. It’s a Virtual Customer Service Center.

Listen to the show for more detailed information.

Download Episode

005 – Don’t Lose Your Data

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:29:07 +0000

I have a friend who claims that your data isn’t truly safe unless it is in three places.

There are three types of backup
- On Site
- Off Site
- Cloud Storage

Listen in as I describe the differences between the three.

Also, if you need links to some of the resources mentioned on the podcast you can find them here.

Call to Action:
Leave a comment below to share how you backup your valuable content digital content

Download Episode

004 – .com or .org?

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:27:28 +0000

The distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org can cause some confusion for people. Let’s clear it up. WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on WordPress, the Open Source blogging software. WordPress.com utilizes the same WordPress software which you can download at WordPress.org. With WordPress.com the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of by the team at Automattic. With WordPress.org you need to install the software on your own server or with a 3rd party provider.

Let’s go into a more indepth look at each.

First lets start with wordpress.com
For those who don’t know how to create a blog, WordPress.com is a good place to start. WordPress.com is easier for the novice blogger to set up and start using, but WordPress.com does have limitations that can limit a blogger’s potential to earn money blogging.

WordPress.com Benefits
* It’s free and much easier to setup
* Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc
* Your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
* Your posts are backed up automatically
* You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags
* You can find like-minded bloggers using tag and friend surfer
* Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi

WordPress.com Cons
* We provide 100+ themes (and adding more every day) which you can modify and edit the CSS, but you cannot run a custom theme*
* You can’t hack the PHP code behind your blog*
* You can’t upload plugins
* You can’t use Google Adwords
* You do not own your domain name
* Your site will look less professional, with something.wordpress.com as your url

WordPress.org is free blogging software. With WordPress.org, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP source code. WordPress.org is the home of this software. Anyone can download the software for free but it must be installed on a web server before it will work. Web servers are generally not free. Hosting your own WordPress software can be fun and rewarding; it also places full responsibility on the blogger. If you mismanage your web server, you can lose your entire blog.

WordPress.org Benefits
* Ability to upload themes
* Ability to upload plugins
* Great community
* Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
* Edit plugins and themes
* You can run eCommerce Sites
* You can set up your own forum
* You have FTP access to your site

WordPress.org Cons
* You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month, or thousands of dollars per month for a high traffic site
* Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
* You’re responsible for stopping spam
* You have to handle backups
* You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out
* If you get a huge spike in traffic (like Digg or Slashdot) your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup

Download this Episode

003 – What’s the Hype with WordPress?

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:16:26 +0000

You no longer have to shell out thousands of dollars to establish your business online.

As a WordPress developer, I have been telling anybody and everybody that, when it comes to building your first small business website, WordPress is the only way to go and of course this is a biased opinion. Today in this episode, I am going to lay out exactly why WordPress works for so many business owners

WordPress is used on Million of websites world wide, which should be a good enough reason for you to learn. WordPress is highly rated by so many successful small business owners, for multiple reasons. Here are just a few of some example sites that use WordPress as their website software

* Wakeforest University
* The University of Maine
* Kobe Bryant, personal site
* Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-a
* Coach Mike Krzyzewski
* Andy Roddick
* Techcrunch

If you are new to WordPress and looking for reasons to use WordPress as a CMS (content management system)in your new website, let me give you some.

But first, let me give you the formal definition of WordPress, from Wikipedia. WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS), often used as a blog publishing application, powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. Used by over 12% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular CMS in use today. Others you may have heard of are Joomla, Drupal and Blogger.

Here are the main discussion points found in this episode:

WordPress is the Most User-Friendly CMS in its Class
Great Content Management System
Themes Support
Standards Compliant
SEO Friendly
Large community Support
It’s Completely Open Source
It’s Free
WordPress Has a Thriving Development Community
E-Commerce Solutions are Available for Any Sized Business
WordPress is SEO Friendly and Easy to Optimize

Conclusion:
There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. WordPress is open source and many of the features you’ll need have more than likely already been built for you. The cost of implementation is very low and you won’t have to spend thousands of dollars to make the platform SEO-friendly or scalable. Professional WordPress experts can provide you with the tools you need to get your brand powered by the most popular open source CMS available. If you have any questions about what WordPress is capable of, let us know and we’ll do our best to help you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Now that you have chosen to use WordPress as you will have to decide whether to use WordPress.com or WordPress.org for your site. And we will discuss this information in the next episode of Business Online Podcast.

Download Episode

002 – Subscribing to Content

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:10:46 +0000

Today we will discuss subscribing to podcast and also blogs.

Let’s start by talking about Podcasts. There are four ways that you can get and listen to podcasts

iTunes:

- This is the easiest (in my opinion) solution

- In order to use this solution, you have to download the latest version of iTunes.

- It’s a free for windows and mac

- You can find it at www.apple.com/itunes

- With iTunes you can manage your subscriptions and all of your music

- Find the podcast you would like to listen to in iTunes and click subscribe

- Most podcast producers also have links on their sites that you can click to begin syncing

- There is a setting in iTunes that will automatically check for new episodes.

- By default, it is set to every hour.

- If you leave iTunes open and running, your computer will always have the most updated episodes

- Now that you have your podcasts in iTunes, now you can listen to them

- You can select the one you want and click play at the top

- Or you can sync an Apple mp3 player to iTunes

- iPhone, iPad, iPod. Any or all

- Once you have listened to new episodes, iTunes will delete old episodes so you won’t have to manage all your content

RSS Readers:

- You can subscribe to content via an RSS ready.

- RSS stands for really simple syndication.

- It’s like an email box for content.

- You can start by going to: www.google.com/reader

- Some podcasters will have this available while some will not.

- Once a new item comes into your reader, then you can listen to it on your computer

Listening Online:

- This one is fairly straight and simple.

- You go to the podcasters website and click on the play button

- As long as you have an internet connection that will work

- You also have to remember to go and look for new shows.

- Most podcasters will release shows on the same day each week, but you can’t always bank on that.

- You might was some time always checking a site for new content.

Download and listen computer:

- This one is like listening online, but you download the content and then play it when you are ready.

- The one downfall with this option is that you have manage all of the episodes

You don’t just have to subscribe to audio content online. You can also subscribe to content on people post on their blogs. You can do this one of three ways.

Going to Site Everyday:

- The first way is that you can go to the site each and everyday.

- Be sure you don’t forget

- Takes up a little bit more time than some of the other options

Email Notifications:

- On most sites you can subscribe to email notifications

- You will get an email every time more content is created

- If you don’t want to clutter up your inbox you can always filter these into a separate folder until you have a chance to read them

- You will never miss a post

- And most of the time you will get the post as soon as it is published

- You won’t miss out on special offers etc.

RSS:

- Very similar to email notifications

- You will never miss a post

- And most of the time you will get the post as soon as it is published

- You won’t miss out on special offers etc.

- But you have to remember to open your RSS reader.

If you have a question that you would like to be answered on an upcoming show, call the Listener Feedback Hotline at 740-666-HTML. You can call any time of day. It will go straight to voicemail and will not disturb me one bit. You can also contact me from the Business Online Podcast at BusinessOnlinePodcast.com.

Download the Show

001 – Introduction

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:01:14 +0000

In this episode I introduce myself to you for the first time and tell you why I started this podcast.

Download Audio File

Slider Image #1

Dustin@HartzlerDM.com (Dustin R. Hartzler | Online Tools Specialist) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:07:15 +0000