This article touches on these issues and more and is meant to provide the new Twitter user or someone considering its use with the information they need to get started and fully benefit from it. Please feel free to bookmark this or forward the link to friends and co-workers that you’d like to see on Twitter. I will update this article as additional input is received from readers.

Do you have tips and tricks to add to this? Write to me by email.

Twitter is a service that friends, family, and co–workers can use to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you doing?”

While blogs post fairly lengthy articles on all types of topics, Twitter posts are conveniently limited in size to just 140 characters, which happens to be the maximum number of characters allowed in an SMS text message sent to a cell phone. This cap on posting size forces users to be brief and concise in what they’re posting and makes it far easier for those reading the posts to quickly scan posts for relevance and interest.

Some Twitterers post the status of what they’re doing throughout the day, but many post to share “finds” - URLs to useful articles they’ve found, sites they think friends or colleagues would benefit from, queries and more. If the internet allows for a global exchange of information, think of Twitter as an exchange of information in easily digestible, bite-sized chunks, and only from those whom you choose to receive it.

On Twitter there are “Followers” - those people who have an interest in what you personally are doing and what you have to say. On Twitter, each user also has a “Following” list - those people who you personally are interested in following or receiving personal updates from.

In layman’s terms, think of your “Followers” similar to what “Friends” are on Facebook. When someone clicks a button to follow you, they are opting-in to receive your 140-character posts to Twitter. In turn, when you yourself click the follow button, you’re opting in to the other person’s updates (their “Twitter Feed”).

Silly Grown-Up, Twitter’s for Kids!

Surprisingly…no, it’s not. I introduced it to my 17-year-old daughter who text messages over 2,000 messages per month and uses MySpace daily and she did not really “get it” at all. My sense is that the user-base on Twitter tends to skew to the 30+ crowd and be far more academic than the average teen who spews mind-numbing pablum via a MySpace account or text messages with friends. So if you’re worried that you’re too old for Twitter, think again.

Mobile Options

When you follow another individual on Twitter, that person’s posts appear on your Twitter web page. In fact, all the posts of all the folks you are following comprise the Twitter feed that appears on your Twitter page. You can “read” your Twitter feed a number of different ways, via the Web login of your own page, via a third party software application like TWhirl or Twitterific, via Instant Messenger or via SMS text messages sent to your mobile phone.

When you click the button to follow someone, you’ll see the option to turn on or off Device Updates. When Device Updates are on, that person’s “Tweets” (140-character posts) will be sent to your cell phone as text messages. (In the Settings area of your Twitter account, you can also change the notification vehicle - either text messages to your phone or sent to an instant messenger account as you prefer)

The mobile option is particularly worth mentioning here because it is an easy way for new users of Twitter to get overwhelmed. I follow hundreds of people, but I only have Device Updates turned on for a handful of them. Unless you have an unlimited text message plan with your cell phone provider, and unless you want your phone going off every minute, it’s generally a good idea to divide your “Following” list into two circles: an inner circle and a larger outer circle. The inner circle might be a handful of people - family and close friends - whom you want to receive real-time Tweets from and be able to interact with. (You can reply to SMS tweets via SMS and you can also post to your own Twitter feed via SMS). Your outer circle might be “everyone else”, and you would monitor it as you have time via your Twitter web access, while setting Device Updates to occur only for those in your inner circle.

More mobile options

If you’re an avid mobile user, Twitter has a mobile version of the service that can be accessed via any WAP browser at m.twitter.com. Other options include apps specifically designed for the iPhone, such as the ThinCloud client, and a whole host of other applications to explore other than the default, which is SMS messages to your cell phone.

What should my Twitter user name be?

In general, it can be anything that is not already taken by another user. When you create an account, Twitter kindly lets you know that a name is or is not available for use. Here are some suggestions:

• If you own a brand, grab the name to that brand as a Twitter user account so that competitors cannot, even if you don’t intend on using it currently. You may at some point want to use it and you certainly don’t want a competitor to get on Twitter pretending to be a representative of your company. Once a username is gone it is gone, just like a domain name.
• Each Twitter account can only be linked to a single and unique email address, so if you want more than one Twitter account, you must find a way of using a different email address, such as by creating a secondary Gmail account for it or using a unique email alias from your existing domain.
• Perhaps the best username is going to be as simple as your First Name and Last Name, largely for branding purposes. For example, while I initially started using “Boettiger” (my last name) as my username, I quickly created a new account at “AdamBoettiger” for name recognition and personal branding purposes. People tend to give much more credence to what you have to say if you use your real name than some “handle” like “BeefEater364″ or a company name.

After you create a free account on Twitter, you’ll be able to provide the web address to your Twitter page to friends, family and co-workers, who in turn will be able to click a button on your page that will allow them to “Follow” your update stream. If you wish, you can start including it in your email signature when you participate in discussions on discussion lists or participate in bulletin board discussions - both great ways to generate a wider following.

So…Why should I use Twitter? Isn’t it just like AIM and all the other things that interrupt my life?

Actually…no.

You choose how to read Twitter. With something like AIM there is no choice. You’re live and interruptable, unless you move your setting to Away or Sleep.

You don’t have to turn on SMS or IM notifications on Twitter. By default, when you follow someone, these notifications are turned off and must be manually turned on by you. At the very basic level of usage, you’d follow a handful of people and maybe log into your Twitter page once a day or once a week to read their “Tweets” (posts).

But there are more efficient and effective ways of reading/monitoring your Twitter-Feed than the web page Twitter provides. One of the most effective is via RSS. At the bottom of your Twitter page is a link you can add to your favorite RSS feed reader that will allow you to read the feed of all those you follow conveniently via RSS.

As a side-note, one of the most effective strategies I’ve used has been to add an RSS feed for the Twitter stream from my page, then select the 10 most critical people I follow and add their streams as RSS feeds to my reader. This way I never miss anything, but I can still read at my own leisure without being interrupted.

Why would a person want to use Twitter?

I can’t speak for the million plus users they have, but personally I find it quite interesting to see who other people are turning to for information and who they are influenced by. For example, say I follow the Global Brand Manager for NIKE. Because I work in the advertising industry myself, I think it would be pretty interesting to see who they follow. Who do they turn to for news, ideas and influence? Whose opinion do they find invaluable? Who do they pay attention to?

With Twitter, you can view that individual’s page, click on their “Following” link and see the entire list of who they are following. If you’re not already following them, you’ll see a Follow button you can click on, so in theory I could follow the exact same individuals who that Global Brand Manager finds so critical and interesting. And I do. With many people. Movers and shakers. People who add value to my life.

Really that’s just one reason and one method of using Twitter - to see who is influencing the influencers. Who does Jeff Bezos follow? Who do the major players in your own industry follow and what are they reading that is so interesting that they continue to follow these folks?

Another reason I find Twitter particularly useful is that it is short bursts of content that I can easily and quickly scan. It forces people to be brief. As opposed to long blog articles which are often time-consuming for me to read. No, I won’t get the same level of information from a 140-character Tweet as I would a full article, but really it’s not about that. With a 140-character post, it’s about whether I want to read further via the link or not.

If I want it to be, it can also be instantaneous. There are a handful of folks I have notifications turned on for and I’ve gotten notice of some great and timely headlines that way, specific to my industry. I also find it particularly convenient to be able to send a text message from my cell phone and have it be posted to my own Twitter feed.

Another way folks find value in Twitter is as an instant source of feedback or resource identification. I have over 500 followers - those who monitor my posts. If I need a suggestion for a vendor to use or have a problem I need help with, the odds are that one or more of those 500 will be online and be able to offer ideas or referrals.

Yet another way folks find value in Twitter is in meeting new people who share similar interests or who work in the same industry. I’ve found that in general, people are quite approachable on Twitter and I’ve escalated several discussions to email and telephone and even in-person meetings, all from meeting them initially on Twitter!

Where and how do I find people to follow?

As I mentioned above, perhaps the best way is to start with one or two people, visit their Twitter pages and see who they are following. Much like with RSS or email newsletters, most new Twitter users start following way too many users and then later on pare down to only those who interest them or provide value to their lives.

Another great place to find folks to follow is Twitter Packs, an open-source wiki directory of Twitter user broken down by category and interest. There’s a section on New Media, Marketing, Social Media and more.

You’ll also see more and more folks adding the URL to their Twitter page to their email signature. All you need to do is click on that link and click the Follow button after logging into your account to add them / follow them.

How can I get the most out of Twitter?

I’ve found I get more out of Twitter if I have more followers. But the age-old question is: “How do I get more people to follow me?”

Be interesting about what you post. Be colorful. Be yourself. Whatever you do, don’t post ads for your business and don’t just post links to your blog articles. That’s boring. Share your thoughts. Be spontaneous. But don’t post “too” often or folks who have notifications turned on will be overwhelmed and “Un-Follow” you. A handful per day is just about right. One per week is too few.

Twitter advertises itself as answering the question, “What are you doing?”. Really for some folks that can be quite boring. I’ve found a good mix is for me to post some of the interesting things I’m doing, but not the mundane ones, and add a sprinkle of article suggestions I think others may benefit from and resources I find. If you’re perceived as adding value to someone else’s life, they will not only follow you, they will tell others to follow you too.

How should I promote my business on Twitter?

• I’ve found that individuals on Twitter tend to be more attracted to people/individuals, rather than business entities or companies. So while if you are H&R Block, it’s okay that you have “HRBlock” as your username, but in general Twitter is thus far more about individual one-on-one relationships and not one-to-business relationships.
• People are interested in what you are doing as a person, not necessarily what your business is doing. One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make in trying to do social media marketing (SMM) is that they assume that people find interest in what their business is doing. That’s incredibly boring and presumptuous.
• The way to reach people is to connect with people on a peer-to-peer basis. If they so happen to work for a company, hey great. They can talk about your company. Far more people will be interested in learning about your thoughts as an individual than they will be to hear that your company just got an award for being best of class in what you do. It’s about adding value to the lives of others, not about promoting your business. Businesses realize benefit from these peer-to-peer connections as a side benefit, icing on the cake, not as the cake itself.
• If you work for a company, your CEO should be the one posting to Twitter. But, they must be colorful and interesting. If your CEO is just not, then they must be trained or you should consider someone in your company who is more wired, more colorful, more interesting and who “gets it”.
• Serial entrepreneur and CEO of search engine Mahalo.com, Jason Calacanis has said that company CEOs should spend as much as 20-30% of their time blogging and/or establishing a following on Twitter. He claims that next to Google, Twitter posts are the number TWO source of organic traffic (visitors) to his search engine Mahalo. That’s huge. He also claims that any CEO who doesn’t blog should be fired. A bit strong, but it speaks volumes about the importance of blogging and Tweeting to a company’s brand awareness.

Using Twitter to monitor your brand/business/company

There is an excellent article with links to a few solutions that you can use if you’d like to dig a bit deeper into Twitter - stats, hot topics, trends, etc.

Here’s another article with more links that will be of use to PR and marketing professionals, with even more tools.

Finally, here’s a list of Twitter syntax commands that, if sent as direct messages to your cell phone via SMS, will be quite useful. Perhaps most useful of all syntax commands is the “track” command, which allows you to be alerted the moment your name or your company’s name is mentioned by anyone using Twitter. Here’s how it’s used:

Say we wanted to monitor for any discussions taking place on Twitter that mentioned the company “Comcast”. Perhaps we are Comcast’s VP Customer Service and we want to know when folks are discussing us and what’s being said - quite useful!

From your mobile phone, send a text message to 40404 and in the body of the message put the following text string:

track comcast

That’s it. You’ll get a confirmation message back from Twitter and then anytime any Twitter user mentions that name in discussion, you’ll be alerted via SMS text message to your phone.

To undo a track command, simply resend the same track command to that number and it will turn the alert off. It might be a wise idea, for example, to use this feature to monitor both your name and your company’s name or clients’ names on Twitter.

CEO of Twitter explains his vision for Twitter

 
Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo.

Where do I sign up?

Click here to set up your own Twitter account. If you already have one, click here to Follow me on Twitter. It’s a free service.

The great thing about Twitter is that if someone doesn’t interest you after a while, just Un-Follow them. It’s that simple and that easy.

Help make this article better!

Send feedback, additions, corrections to: adam [AT] adamboettiger [DOT] com

Frequently Asked Questions

Coming soon. Ask by email: adam [AT] adamboettiger [DOT] com

Additional Resources

PC software: TWhirl

Mac software: Twitterific

About the Author

Adam Boettiger is a digital marketing expert with a passion for helping people connect, learn and excel in the digital space. For over 12 years he’s helped Fortune 500 companies, ad agencies, small businesses and startups reach customers online, grow their online presence and more. His consulting site is located at http://www.adamboettiger.com/ and he can be reached by email at adam AT adamboettiger DOT com.

1. Use a good RSS reader. I use Google Reader.

2. Rather than create a folder for each topic you’re interested in to organize your feeds, create just four folders:

DAILY - Feeds that you need to monitor every day as part of your daily routine

WEEKLY - Feeds that you need to monitor weekly or check on the weekend

MONTHLY - Feeds that you need to read when you have time end of month

SANDBOX - New feeds that you subscribe to but are unsure yet of their value or folder above

The first three folders are fairly self-explanatory. You arrive at the coffee shop for your morning dose of caffeine and simply click the DAILY folder and read. Simple. Elegant. On the weekend or on Friday, you click the WEEKLY folder and read.

SANDBOX is an interesting concept and one that you should find quite useful. If you haven’t figured it out by now, not everything on the web or in blogs is going to be interesting or relevant to you. Duh, right?

When you find new feeds, all new feeds go into the SANDBOX. Watch them for two weeks. If after two weeks the majority of posts are not relevant to what you’re doing or interested in, drop the feed. This strategy will help you keep your other folders fairly uncluttered.

The Sandbox idea is a particularly useful one as it not only gives you a trial period during which the feed must “prove itself” worth of your attention, but also a period of time in which you can gauge the flow/volume of the feed and ultimately determine whether it warrants daily, weekly or monthly reading.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow me on Twitter by clicking here.

Adam Boettiger (adam AT adamboettiger DOT com)

Simply Digital,

Adam

Adam Boettiger is a digital marketing expert with a passion for helping people connect, learn and excel in the digital space. For over 12 years he’s helped Fortune 500 companies, ad agencies, small businesses and startups reach customers online, grow their online presence and more. His consulting site is located at http://www.adamboettiger.com/ and he can be reached by email at adam AT adamboettiger DOT com.

The web has (unfortunately) made it so much easier for me to buy on impulse. Especially that damned Amazon.com and their one-click shopping, recommending things I might like, etc. I don’t even have to leave my home anymore to get the latest iPhone, gadget, bestseller or other item that I don’t really need, right now, but that I want.

It’s a simple habit really, but one that you all should try for a month or two, and it goes something like this:

As you surf the web, browse a retail store or look at magazines, if you see something you want, jot down the name, price and location of the product and assign a date to it that is today plus one month (30 days).

For example, if you’re reading Wired Magazine or MacWorld, and you see an ad for something, tear out the page, use a marker to jot down a date that is one month from today on the ad, and then toss the ad into a manila folder labeled “To Buy”. Set a tickler in Outlook, Google Calendar or (my personal favorite, iwantsandy.com), to revisit the folder weekly.

The general idea of your new habit is that if you still want something, need it and have the money to buy it after a full month has passed, then you can buy it. And only then. Most times I’ve found that after a month of thinking about it, I’ve either found something better, newer or lost interest in it, thus saving myself a ton of money and buyers remorse in the process by using this principle of Delayed Gratification.

If you’re an electronic person like me, I keep a single Note in my BlackBerry Curve called “To Buy”. In that note I have very simple listings by date. If I’m in the Apple Store and see a new item I think I absolutely must have, instead of buying it on impulse I now simply pull out my BlackBerry and enter a date one month from today, with the item name, price and store location.

It drives the salespeople nuts because I don’t buy anything on that visit, and it does require quite a bit of discipline, but long-term it is a great habit to incorporate into your life.

If a web item, I may list the URL where I can get it later on or how to find it in Google. I do this all without taking out my wallet. Alternatively, you could use a small notebook, like a Pocket Moleskine or your PDA or other smartphone. I find it particularly useful to use my BlackBerry because I always have it with me.

Then if I have a good month or want to reward myself, I just pop open that note, look at the items that have dates that are today or older and those are the things I can consider treating myself to. Nothing else. It’s a good system but requires some discipline.

One thing it’s done for me is to keep me from spending money on things I don’t have money for and things I may not want in a month or so. It’s forced me to look more closely at how and where I spend my hard-earned cash; and for someone like me who is an early adopter of gadgets and technology, it has really helped.

The same technique can be used for business ideas. If you’re a person who has 8-10 ideas per day, jot them down using something like Google Notebook with a date that is a month from today. If, after thinking about it for a month, it still warrants exploration and implementation, pursue it. If not, delete it or archive it or set a date three months later to revisit it.

Give it a try for a couple months. If you find the technique useful, forward this URL to a friend or click the link below to share it via Digg.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow me on Twitter by clicking here.

Adam Boettiger (adam AT adamboettiger DOT com)

About the Author

Adam Boettiger is a digital marketing expert with a passion for helping people connect, learn and excel in the digital space. For over 12 years he’s helped Fortune 500 companies, ad agencies, small businesses and startups reach customers online, grow their online presence and more. His consulting site is located at http://www.adamboettiger.com/ and he can be reached by email at adam AT adamboettiger DOT com.

NOTE: This article is being updated with new resources and additional information and will be a living document. Last updated: 27 FEB 2008. If you’d like to be notified when new links or information are added, subscribe to the RSS feed at i-advertising, or click here to pick up the feed in your RSS reader. What’s RSS?

In general there is a plethora of information available online for learning more about Digital Marketing. Before I go into specifics, one thing worth touching on is the importance of professional development. Most people say they simply do not have the time to learn or read or keep up.

The reality is that none of us “has” time. We “make” time for the things that are most important to us. If you have no time for professional reading or learning, then it is because other things are more important to you. Even though the amount of time in our day is finite, we control what we give our attention to.

One easy way to be sure that you make time to learn is to use Outlook or whatever flavor calendaring program you happen to prefer to schedule time with yourself. Understand that if you don’t block out time on your schedule, someone else or something else will.

One great way to ensure that you do make time to learn is to schedule a recurring block of time with yourself on Fridays each week. One hour, two hours or even three hours per week. Block it off, call it “Learning”, “Professional Reading”, “Sharpening the Saw” - whatever.

What you call it is not important. What is important is that you schedule a recurring appointment with yourself and that you keep that commitment to yourself. During this time, turn off your cell phone, close your email program and eliminate interruptions so you can focus on one thing.

The five types of resources I’ll outline here for learning about Digital Marketing are:

• Podcasts
• Sites and Email Newsletters (also called “Ezines”)
• Email Discussion Lists
• RSS feeds
• People

A Word of Caution

One word of caution before we get started. It’s really easy to sign up for a lot of newsletters and RSS feeds and become completely overwhelmed with it. There’s actually a term for this now called “Information Paralysis”, where you have so much stuff you just don’t know where to begin, so you don’t get any of it done. Many of the problems we have with this are actually self-created problems. We don’t need to sign up for 50 newsletters or 500 RSS feeds. Doing so is like trying to drink from a firehose. You just can’t do it.

The best way to get started is to start slow and begin by beginning. If I were to pick one or two to get started with, they would be the sites and newsletters of ClickZ and MediaPost below. And do explore RSS. More information on that below. It is a great tool and superb timesaver. Just understand that if the flow gets to be too much you can stop the madness by unsubscribing or paring down what you’re reviewing. It’s easy to digest too much information when your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

Sites and Email Newsletters

Here are a few good sites with email newsletters that you can subscribe to. Worth mentioning is that your email program has a wonderful filtering system and a folder system that you most likely have already discovered. You can right-click (CTRL-click for Mac users) on your Inbox and Create a New Folder called “READ ME”. As you start to receive email newsletters, you may find yourself quickly becoming overwhelmed with information as your Inbox becomes even more cluttered. One way to fix this is to separate newsletter and “READ ME” email from “real” email (communications). Do this by creating a filter in your email program that reads messages as they arrive and looks for character strings in the TO: address, the FROM: address or the SUBJECT line. Create a filter for each newsletter you subscribe to similar to this:

IF the FROM: field IS (email address of newsletter)
THEN move the message to READ ME folder

After you do this, go into your weekly professional reading appointment that you made with yourself on your calendar and insert a reminder to yourself to check your READ ME folder. If you do this, fewer messages will go into your Inbox and you can have a single place to go to when it comes time to do your weekly professional reading or learning. It’s much easier than letting newsletters sit in your Inbox for a week cluttering it and then trying to find them again when you have time to read them.

Here are some good places to explore for learning about Digital Marketing via Newsletters. Many of these sites will offer newsletters on multiple topics within Digital Marketing, so select the ones you wish to learn more about:

• i-advertising.com - i-advertising blog
• twitter.i-advertising.com - i-advertising twitter feed (what’s Twitter?)
• ClickZ
• Mediapost
• iMediaConnection
• http://www.upstreamhabitat.com/
• eMarketer
• MarketingProfs
• MarketingSherpa
• MarketingVOX
• JackMyers.com
• www.iab.net
• www.conversionchronicles.com
• http://www.conversionchronicles.com/Online_Target_Marketing_Articles.html
• http://www.MarketingExperiments.com
• www.laredogroup.com - read the site, download everything and sign up for the course
• www.upstreamgroup.com
• http://kelseygroup.com/
• http://Screenwerk.com
• http://Searchengineland.com
• http://LocalMobileSearch.net
• http://www.sphinn.com/
• http://www.marketingcharts.com
• http://www.searchengineland.com
• http://www.searchenginewatch.com
• http://www.bnet.com
• Mediabuyerplanner.com
• Adrants.com
• Pewinternet.org
• Paidcontent.org
• Ecommercetimes.com
• HighRankings Advisor
• Bruce Clay Newsletter

Email Discussion ListsAn email discussion list is a virtual community of people who interact by email and share a common interest or theme. There are thousands of email discussion lists on every topic imaginable. There are also a few good ones that focus on Digital Marketing.

• LED Digest

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a fantastic way to stay current on all aspects of any industry or topic. If you do not know what an RSS feed is, I’ve written an article that discusses it in depth here.

After you’ve read the above article about what RSS is and how to use it, here are some RSS feeds that focus on Digital Marketing:

http://www.i-advertising.com/?feed=rss2
http://www.adotas.com/feed/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/adrants
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Adverblog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MitAdvertisingLabFutureOfAdvertisingAndAdvertisingTechnology feed-row
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AdweekBreakingNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Adweek-InteractiveNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Beyondmadisonavenue
http://feeds.clickz.com/clickz
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ducttapemarketing/nRUD
http://www.jaffejuice.com/atom.xml
http://feeds.marketingvox.com/marketingvox/rss
http://www.mediapost.com/omdrss.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ImediaConnectionMediaStrategies

People

People are perhaps the best source of first-hand knowledge about digital marketing. Be sure you have created a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account so you can network with those more experienced than you are. Explore Twitter.

Set a goal to identify and introduce yourself to at least five new people a week. Give them a reason for spending time with you. People are busy. Their attention is an extremely rare and valuable commodity. Create a list of questions and instead of sending them by email and creating yet more work for the other person, consider treating them to a nice lunch at a place of their choosing. Use the phone - it’s faster than email and doesn’t put the burden of drafting a response on the other person.

“Give…then take.”

Start by asking how you can help them. Then do it. Find out what they need or want and give it to them in exchange for their time and attention. Give them a reason for wanting to help you. Respect their time as if it were your own.

Side Note: I’ve been in digital marketing for 14 years now. I’m normally happy to spend small amounts of time helping others. Quid pro quo. If you’d like to connect with me, my information is included below.

Voicemail: 503.946.6450

Email: adam (at) adamboettiger.com

Web: http://www.adamboettiger.com/

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

This article explains what RSS is, how you can benefit from it, how to set up an RSS reader and where to find RSS feeds to read.

“RSS” stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is not a buzzword. It is an acronym. It’s also not new. RSS syndication was first developed in 1999 (version 0.9).

To the layperson or non-technical reader, RSS allows for remote reading of articles from multiples sites (sources), via “feeds” normally aggregated in one convenient location (your RSS reader).

Why is it convenient to read site content in an RSS reader?

Good question. It’s more convenient because it saves you time and in doing so allows you to scan just the headlines of articles, reading only those which interest you. Consider for a moment that you have fifty web sites that you normally browse for news, information, tips and just to stay on top of changes in your industry, job or personal interests.

Option A:

• Bookmark all fifty sites in your browser
• Remember to visit each site in the list daily to check for new articles or content
• When you visit each site, click around to read the articles
• Lather, rinse and repeat daily - very time consuming

Option B:

• Visit the sites you go to for information ONCE
• Identify and add the sites’ RSS feeds to your RSS reader
• Visit your RSS reader daily and have content served to you
• Scan and read only new articles posted to the sites you like
• Instead of you visiting fifty sites each day, the sites visit you

What is an “RSS feed”?

An RSS feed is a content stream, in the form of a web address (URL) that, when “subscribed” to in your RSS reader, will cause new content from that site to appear in your reader. RSS feeds are normally identified by an icon (orange square with white markings) or sometimes just a link. Some sites (blogs for the most part) have just one RSS feed that they offer. Others offer the option of picking up an RSS feed for the site’s articles and a second feed if you’d like to read comments about those articles. Still other sites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com may offer ten or more RSS feeds, allowing you to “subscribe” to sections of their site, news categories or topics of interest.

Can’t I just subscribe to a site’s email newsletter?

Yes, you can. But there is a fundamental difference between how email is processed and read and how RSS content is read, making RSS a clear winner over email. RSS is simple, focused and uncluttered. Pure content.
Email

• Newsletters appear in a giant mix of often hundreds (or thousands) of messages that are sitting in your cluttered Inbox.
• Newsletters are not segregated by topic in your Inbox. They come in as they arrive, before or after many other things that you must deal with.
• Email messages and newsletters are mixed together, thus forcing many distractions and less focus.

RSS

• Only content, no messages to reply to or take action on.
• One-way only, inbound to you.
• Easily segregated and organized by topic folders.
• If you want to spend 15 minutes learning about Personal Finance, it’s easy to do with no distractions by just clicking on your Personal Finance folder and focusing on that topic.
• “Scanning” headlines is much easier than trying to figure out the subject lines of email newsletters to gauge whether you’re interested in reading further or not.

What do I need in order to read an RSS feed?

You need an RSS reader. There are software programs you can buy or download and install, but generally one of the best RSS readers is free. All you need to access it is your web browser and a Google Account. If you haven’t set up a Google Reader account already, click here to set up a Google Account. Use ‘Jane.Doe@gmail.com’ or whatever is not already taken.

Once you have a Google Account created, click here to access the Google Reader. You’ll probably want to bookmark it so you can use it easily and regularly.

How to add your first RSS feed

For the purpose of just getting started, we’re going to add the RSS feed from a site called LifeHacker. It’s a pretty good site with lots of useful tips on improving your life if you work in the tech industry or online. So visit the site and just above the search box you’ll see a small link that says RSS. This site is probably not the best example to use. Normally a site’s RSS feed is much more obvious, with an icon or RSS logo link. But this is a pretty good feed to start with so we’ll use it.

Right-click on the link, or if you’re on a Mac, CTRL-click, and copy the link.

Now to to your Google Reader account. Sign into the account and on the left side you’ll see a link that says “Add subscription”. Click that link and then use CTRL-V or CMD-V (Mac) to paste the RSS feed URL from Lifehacker into the subscription box and click “Add”.

That’s it. Wasn’t too hard was it? You’ve just subscribed to your first RSS feed.

Yes, but how do I read it and do I need to do anything?

To read any of your feeds, all you’ll need to do is click the name of the feed in the left side. When you do, the right side will populate with new “posts” from that feed. To “read the feed”, just scroll down the browser window. Alternatively, you can use a keyboard shortcut of “J” for next post or “K” for back, to move quickly down the posts as you scan them. When you’ve reached the last unread post, click the button that says “Mark all as read”. This tells the reader not to display these posts again to you when you login tomorrow. You will only see posts if there has been new content or articles posted since your last visit.

Staying Organized

When people first discover RSS, how easy it is to use, and how much of a timesaver it is, their first tendency is to add hundreds of feeds to their reader. Keep in mind that the time savings you realize by using RSS is negated if you exponentially increase the number of sites that you read each day. Undoubtedly you’ll want to explore a number of different feeds and at some point will realize that you have too many and then you’ll start paring back to just the ones that are the most important to you. We all do it. It’s easy to drown when you’re trying to drink from a fire hose. Just realize that if it gets to be too much that this is a self-created problem. You can always unsubscribe from a feed.

After adding more than a handful of feeds, you’ll quickly want to learn how to create Topic Folders in the Google Reader for groups of feeds like “Personal Finance”, “Job Search”, “News” and whatever else floats your boat.

To create a new folder for a group of feeds, in Google Reader click the link at the bottom of the screen that says “Manage Subscriptions”. On this page you’ll see a list of all the feeds you’re subscribed to. To the right of each feed is a drop-down menu that says “Change Folders”. Click that and choose “New Folder” to create a new folder or select an existing name to move a feed from one folder to another. Grouping your feed helps to stay organized. You may want to create folders like “Must Read”, “When I have time”, “Job Search”, “Personal Finance” and others.

Drinking from the Fire Hose

There is an inherent temptation when one first starts using RSS to add or subscribe to tens if not hundreds of feeds. This is a great way to see what’s out there that you may be interested in, so long as you pare your list down later to only those that truly interest and benefit your life or the work you do for your company/employer. Information overload is commonplace now, but it is possible to learn how to quickly monitor and scan hundreds of RSS feeds to stay current on industry trends, useful articles and more. It is, however, more of an art than a science.

Here’s how IT Bloggeratti Robert Scoble monitors over six hundred RSS feeds daily.

Where can I find more RSS feeds to add?

A post from Keith Ferrazzi’s blog and book by the same name about the power of networking and relationships, “Never Eat Alone”. Pick up the feed at http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/blog/

In general, just look at the sites you visit most often. Especially if they are blogs, chances are, they will offer one or more RSS feeds of their site content. The RSS link is usually a graphical logo or a text link found at the top right of the home page, in the side column or at the very bottom of the page. If you’re looking for specific topics of interest, you might try using Google to find sites that you like and then looking in the footer of the site to see if they offer an RSS feed as indicated by an RSS icon link or text link.

An additional place to look for RSS feeds is: Google Blog Search

Using Tabbed Browsing

Most major browsers now have the feature of tabbed browsing. Use CTRL-T or CMD-T (on a Mac) to have Google Reader open in one tabbed window of the browser and use the other one to locate RSS feeds or visit sites.

An interesting use of RSS

Craigslist has a built-in feature that allows you to either monitor categories as RSS feeds or to create a custom search phrase and monitor it as an RSS feed. For example, say you wanted to monitor new listings for Advertising jobs in Portland, Oregon. You could visit http://portland.craigslist.org/ and click on Jobs > Marketing / PR / Ad. On that page is a listing of jobs in Portland in Marketing, PR and Advertising. At the bottom of the page, in the right corner is an RSS logo graphic with link. Copy that link and add it as a new subscription to Google Reader and every new listing added to that section of Craigslist will be pushed to your RSS reader. No more remembering to check Craiglist for jobs every few days. EVERY new job listing will be waiting for you when you next login to your RSS reader.

Or you could create a custom search in Craigslist to monitor for a specific item.

Say you’re looking for a used iPhone in Portland, Oregon, and rather than search for it daily you’d like to be receive all new listings that have the keyword “iPhone” in them. You go to Craigslist Portland and in the Search Craigslist box on the left side, enter “iPhone”. Select “For Sale” in the dropdown menu and click Search.

This displays a page with all For Sale listings that have “iPhone” in them. At the bottom of the page, in the right corner is an RSS link that, when added as a feed to Google Reader, will send all existing and all future listings for iPhones to your RSS reader.

Tips on reading feeds in Google Reader

1. When reading a feed, rather than scrolling down with your mouse to the next post, try using just the J and K keys on your keyboard to move forward and backward to the next or previous posts.
2. If you see a post you’d like to read later on, at the bottom of the post, click “Add Star” to turn on the yellow star. Later on, to view all the posts you’ve starred, just click the “Starred Items” link at the top left of Google Reader.
3. See a post from a feed that you’d like to share with a friend? At the bottom of the post, just click “Email” to send a link to the post to your friend by email.
4. Want to make sure you’re reading the very latest posts in your feeds? Just click the “Refresh” button to the right of your feed links.
5. In the upper right of Google Reader you’ll see two tabs: Expanded View and List View. In Expanded View, you’ll be able to read full articles right in your reader without having to visit any other site. In List View, you’ll see only the article headline. List View is easier for scanning headlines quickly and processing many postings. I normally leave mine on Expanded View and use J and K to move quickly through the postings, stopping on ones I am interested in.

I hope you found this useful! If yes, share the web address with everyone in your office and your friends who could benefit.

Related articles you may find useful and relevant to this topic:

• Keeping it simple with RSS

Feedback/Questions/Additions/Corrections?

Reach the author at adam (at) adamboettiger.com or provide your feedback by voicemail at (503) 946-6450.

AKA: “How to Create a Sewage Treatment Facility for Spam”

If you’ve been online any length of time, you probably have an email address or addresses that are receiving spam (bulk, unsolicited, commercial email). This article will outline an inexpensive way to keep spam out of your Inbox (or at least significantly minimize the flow from what it is now). The article is written primarily for internet/email users who receive email through a hosting provider on their own domain name or domains and for those who do not currently own their own domain but are open to the idea and would like to significantly reduce spam in their Inbox.

[Updated 13 OCT 07: A few folks have reached out to me about setting this up for them. I've made it as clear as I can here. If it still does not make sense I will be happy to set this up for you for $50 USD (my time) plus actual costs. Contact me at (503) 946-6450 if interested. -AB]

[Updated 6 OCT 07: In testing this strategy I purposely re-activated one of my old email addresses that is about 10 years old and was getting over 100 spam messages per day when I shut it down. In the past two weeks I've gotten zero spam on it, so I know this really works well. Besides, it's really not necessary to use challenge/response services like SpamArrest that force those who write to you to type in "pretty dog" into a box or look at an image of a squirrel and type in "squirrel" just to prove that they are human. It's actually quite silly when you think about it.]

Executive Summary for Advanced Users

If you are a technical person, you will understand this paragraph and may not need to read further. I’ve added this section to save you time. Basically what I’ve done is to set up a couple of POP accounts on one of my domains, a public one for inbound email and a private one for two-way communications. I have an account at pobox.com and am using their extensive server-side spam filtering to wash inbound email. It is surprisingly robust and allows you to wash mail against all the major SBLs and even block by country of origin.

I use aliases as email addresses and forward inbound mail to the pobox.com account where the washing takes place, then forward it back to my POP accounts as clean email. I check the POPs using IMAP from my iPhone or desktop email client and I get virtually zero spam so I know it works - even on aliases that have been compromised several years ago that used to dump over 100 spam messages/day in my Inbox. Never again.

There. That’s the Cliff Notes version. If the above was Greek to you, read the rest of the article below.

If you do not own your own domain name

[Users who already own a domain and hosting account should skip this portion and read on...]

A domain name is a .com/.net/.org/.info etc. name that you have purchased and is normally mapped or directed to a web hosting account. There are numerous advantages to owning at least one domain name and receiving your email on your own web hosting account as opposed to one of the free services such as Gmail, Yahoo or paying for AOL.

A primary advantage is that as a user you have considerably more control over how your email is received and what you can do to filter it. The cost of owning your own domain name and hosting account is quite minimal, even if you simply wanted to test it for a month or two, and is definitely worth both your time and money. You can get a hosting account for as little as $10-$30/month and buy a sparkling new domain name for around $9.95/year. All told, if you wanted to test the strategy I am outlining here you could do so for a modest investment of between $20 and $40, a very inexpensive sum considering that it may indeed completely solve your spam problem.

Getting a hosting account

For inexpensive hosting, I recommend either Pair Networks or Dreamhost. Both have basic hosting plans that can be purchased and set up within 24 hours. Many plans also include a free domain name registration, thus eliminating the registration fee outlined below. However I still recommend registering your domain via the link below because if you decide to move hosting accounts it is much easier to do so if your registration is not with your hosting provider. You’ll feel quite foolish if you want to move to a new host down the road and you have to get the current hosting provider’s permission to do so because they are also the registrar for your domain.

A web hosting account will give you a certain amount of space to put up web content if you choose to do a web site, but most importantly it will allow you to create POP accounts (mailboxes) and aliases (email forwarders). For the purposes of explanation in this article I will assume the domain you use is SOMEDOMAIN.COM.

Registering a Domain Name

For domain registration, I recommend GoDaddy.com, however there are other domain registrars. Use the search box to find one you like, register it and during the registration process you’ll need to set up custom nameserver entries that direct to your new hosting account. It’s probably a good idea to get a hosting account first so you know which nameserver settings to enter when you register your domain name, but you can also go back and change these entries later on if you wish.

Once you have a hosting account and domain name set up, read on.

If you already own your own domain name and hosting account

In a previous article I described how you can easily create a robust and highly searchable archive of your email. Chances are, if you’re reading this you probably already have a few aliases (email forwarders) and POP accounts (mailboxes) set up. If not, you should be familiar with how to create these on your hosting account and what the difference is.

An email alias simply reroutes/forwards inbound email to another address or mailbox. An example of this is if you had two email addresses, brad@somedomain.com and steve@somedomain.com both forwarding email to a mailbox (POP) called emailbox@somedomain.com. Any email sent to either of the former email addresses would route to the box, which you would then check via your desktop email program and download messages to your computer.

An Overview of Mail-Washing

This strategy involves creating one or more email aliases, forwarding them to a robust, server-side spam filtering service and then forwarding the mail from there back to a POP box on your hosting account. I call this process “Mail-Washing”. You can call it whatever you like. A good analogy - and perhaps a very appropriate one considering the nature of spam and spammers - is to look at this like a sewage treatment facility. You’re routing all your mail, crap and all, to a place that will look for and remove the shit, cleansing your mail before delivering a clean product back to you.

It’s important to realize that no spam filter or filtering process is 100% accurate. What I am about to show you will allow you to set your own server-side spam filters to be very lenient or extremely aggressive, as you wish. You’ll need to experiment with the settings to determine what works best for you.

Step 1: Sign up for a POBox.com account

POBox.com is an email forwarding service that receives email and forwards it. In the process the service also makes available to its users a very robust set of server-side spam filters not found anywhere else. For example, I can control inbound email so I only receive email from senders who originate in the United States, blocking all other countries. Or, I can receive email only originating in Canada and the U.S. Or, I can “scrub” my email against several ISP blacklists of known spammers, rejecting the mail, deleting it before it reaches me or simply tagging it as spam so my desktop email program routes it to the junk folder.

POBox.com offers a free 30-day trial, which will give you ample time to test out this strategy without investing further dollars. After the trial, if you wish to continue with the service, it is only a very affordable $20/year.

Click here to sign up for a test drive now. Suggested account name is “Firstname.Lastname@pobox.com”, but you can choose whatever you wish.

Step 2: Setting up the Sewage Treatment Facility

Any email address you use or give to others should be an alias, that is, a forwarding address rather than an actual mailbox address. For the purposes of this example, I’ll say that we’re setting up a Mail Wash for Barbara Smith.

Barbara has a couple of email addresses that she uses and a couple of mailboxes:

bs@somedomain.com >> forwards to >> private@somedomain.com

Barbara uses this only for two-way “real” email communication, not newsletters, not discussion lists, not software registrations. It is her private email address.

Logging into her pobox.com account (barbara.smith@pobox.com), she clicks on Services and then Edit Addresses and Forwarding.

She routes all email received by barbara.smith@pobox.com to private@somedomain.com.

Then she goes into her hosting provider and changes the email alias bs@somedomain.com so that it forwards to barbara.smith@pobox.com.

Next she goes back into her pobox.com account and turns on the spam filtering, clicking on Services then Edit Spam Protection. Here she explores the options and chooses standard settings or aggressive; or customizes the filters she wants to use.

Now all of Barbara’s private email is received at bs@somedomain.com, then is forwarded through a Mail-Wash account at pobox.com where spam is blocked, rejected, tagged or filtered, then the clean mail is forwarded again to her mailbox (private@somedomain.com).

One sewage treatment facility created, one to go.

Barbara’s second address that she uses is for newsletters, discussion lists, etc. and it’s an email alias called “barbara.smith@somedomain.com”. This alias forwards/maps to a second mailbox called “public@somedomain.com”.

The pobox.com account allows for the creation of more than one forwarding address. Since barbara.smith@pobox.com already forwards to her private mailbox, she needs to create a new one that will forward mail to her public mailbox. So in pobox.com she clicks on Services > Edit addresses and forwarding > Create a new group. And she creates “barbara.smith2@pobox.com” and sets it to forward to “public@somedomain.com” (her public mailbox).

Next she goes into her hosting provider account and creates or modifies the alias “barbara.smith@somedomain.com” and sets it to forward to “barbara.smith2@pobox.com”. Spam settings are already set, so no need to change.

A Visual Summary

Here is a visual summary of what was created:

bs@somedomain.com (private alias)

• Forwards email to barbara.smith@pobox.com
• Which washes the email and forwards it back to
• private@somedomain.com (private mailbox)

barbara.smith@somedomain.com (public alias)

• Forwards email to barbara.smith2@pobox.com
• Which washes the email and forwards it back to
• public@somedomain.com (public mailbox)

Testing

Next she goes into Outlook, Entourage, Eudora, Thunderbird, Mail or whatever email client she uses, and she adds two new POP accounts (or IMAP as you prefer), sends herself a couple of test messages to each alias she set up and then checks/downloads email from the following mailboxes:

private@somedomain.com

public@somedomain.com

Being Mobile

And, because she does not like to be tied down to one place, Barbara tends to like to pop into any computer terminal and check her email via a Gmail account, barbara.smith@gmail.com.

To receive copies of “clean” email via her Gmail account, she logs into her pobox.com account and modifies the pointer addresses that email is forward to. She simply adds a comma and then adds her Gmail address so in addition to forwarding clean email to her POP accounts, a copy of all inbound mail is also forwarded to her Gmail account that she can check from Brazil or Hungary or wherever.

She also read my other article on how to set up an off-site, searchable archive of email, located here.

Summary

I’ve been testing this strategy for a month now, using ten-year old email addresses that normally received over 100 spam messages per day and I get zero spam on these addresses. It works extremely well for me.

I hope you find this useful!

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Q: “Why couldn’t I just forward my email to Gmail and use their spam filtering?”

A: You could, yes. But while the spam filtering with Gmail is quite robust, it is not customizable, meaning that you cannot block by country or turn on and off specific ISP blacklists. The method I describe is far more flexible in terms of options.

Feedback/Questions/Additions/Corrections?

Reach the author at adam (at) adamboettiger.com or provide your feedback by voicemail at (503) 946-6450.

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[Updated with new information: 4 JULY 2008]

• How to migrate email from one Gmail account to another
• Using Google Apps Premier to boost the storage capacity of your email archive

Would it be useful to you to be able to access any email you ever sent or received? What if you could access this power from the palm of your hand via an iPhone or BlackBerry mobile device?

Quite a few folks have asked me how I have my email set up.

I can search an archive of over 75,000 email messages dating back a full two years, all from the palm of my hand via my iPhone while on the train commute into work, at the office, on vacation - anywhere.

Sound useful? You bet it is! It means I no longer need to be an Email Pack Rat, accumulating bits and bytes on my laptop’s hard drive, counting the days until my email database file becomes corrupted or crashes. I run a lean ship these days, despite an inbound flow of over 200 email messages per day.

To see if this is right for you, take the following test in your email program:

You corresponded by email with a woman back in June of this year three times about possibly using her virtual assistant services. You can’t locate her phone number and you don’t really remember her full name, only that her first name was “Kristin”. How long will it take you to find the email message from June that has both her cell phone # and email address, allowing you to touch base with her?

It took me less than 15 seconds on any web browser on any computer. That’s powerful.

I feel comfortable deleting anything and everything from my desktop email program, knowing that if I truly ever need it again, it is only but a few keystrokes away. Having an empty Inbox is like breathing fresh, mountain air for the first time after being stuck in smog for months.

In this article I’ll outline the how and why everyone should at least experiement with an off-site email archive, even if they seldom actually use it. My objective in this strategy is to show you how to:

1. Create a backup of all of your email email (both sent and received, from one or multiple addresses) and to have that backup reside off-site, not specific to any particular machine, external drive or media
2. Provide for a physical separation between “real” email communications (two-way) and publication subscriptions (inbound-only). It was desirable for me to do this because when I travel I find that I may not want to receive or have time to review the majority of email that comes in, particularly if it is a newsletter or discussion list traffic.
3. To provide for the ability to control which email is sent to my mobile device (currently an iPhone as of this writing)
4. To create a highly searchable index of email messages, that does not need to reside on my laptop and take up disk space, but that I can easily access via web browser from any computer, at any location, including a mobile device.

This strategy meets my needs and has done so for some years now. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

NOTE: If you find this article useful, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed for future articles. My next article here will be about an inexpensive way to reduce spam levels to almost zero in your Inbox.

You may also find a companion article useful after reading this one: “How to block spam and prevent spam email from reaching your Inbox by washing your email“.

PS: A few folks have reached out to me about setting this up for them. I’ve made it as clear as I can here. If it still does not make sense I will be happy to set this up for you for $50 USD (my time) plus actual costs. Contact me at (503) 946-6450 if interested.

Adam Boettiger
adam at adamboettiger.com
(503) 946-6450 voicemail
Portland, Oregon

Short Version - Executive Summary

For advanced users, to save you the time of reading this entire article, here’s what I did:

• Created a Gmail account for storage of all email, sent and received
• Created two POP accounts, public and private, on a web hosting account and domain I own
• Created aliases as needed for domains that I own and use and route them respectively to one of the two POPs and copied to the archive account on Gmail
• Created filters and labels and other mods in Gmail to organize and fine-tune the archive so it’s more usable
• Created outbound filters in Outlook to BCC copies of outbound email to the archive account

Long Version - Details

Domains

Depending on your planned use, if you own more than one domain or think that at some point in the coming years you will own more than one domain that you will want to receive email from, it may be worthwhile for you to purchase a “base domain” that all email is routed to, for simplicity purposes.

For example, I own between ten and twenty domains at any given time for various entrepreneurial projects, most with active email addresses that route email to me. Rather than accessing boxes (POP accounts or IMAP) on each, all of them but the base domain are “forwarders” or “aliases”, meaning that they have email addresses that simply route/redirect email to a box on another domain.

The base domain I use is a random three-character domain I picked up some years ago. I never publicize what it is and I never use it online. It is, for all intensive purposes, a “virgin domain”, uncompromised by spammers. The only purpose it serves is to house my base POP accounts/mailboxes. When I set up email in my email client, it is that domain and its mailservers that I use. When I set up a new address on one of my other domains, it is a forwarding address that maps to one of my two base mailboxes on the base domain.

This arrangement serves me well as I can cancel any of my project domains without having to change existing email settings on my email program. For domain acquisition, I use GoDaddy.com, but there are many places to acquire domains.

Hosting

I strongly recommend that anyone who is remotely serious about using email for business pay to have a hosted account outside of their work/employer-provided account. I am currently hosted on a VPS Virtual Private Server at $49/month with Servint. I’ve been really happy with them and been able to reach them by email at any hour, even 1am on a Sunday night, and get a response back within five minutes. They are also quite reachable by phone. This account allows me to host multiple sites and domains and provides for sysadmin level access. A lesser-expensive but good alternative would be a hosted account with Pair Networks. Finally, if you host more than one site or have high traffic and require a larger solution or dedicated server, I recommend Rackspace.com for stellar service and support.

Step 1: Set up a Gmail account for your email archives

Click here and sign up for a free gmail account.

Even if you already have one that you use for sending email, get one solely for the purpose of storing email. Consider this to be your “bucket”, whose only job is to collect email until it becomes full. Mine has 45,000+ messages in it and I’ve only used up half my storage, so it will probably take you a while to come close to needing to open a second account. Years perhaps.

For a username, first check if firstname.lastname@gmail.com is available. i.e. John.Smith@gmail.com. It’s always good to at least own your name. However if someone else has taken it or there are others of you out there with the same name, consider using something like your last name and the word “archives” or if you prefer, “bucket”, like: “smith.archives@gmail.com” or “johnsmith.archives@gmail.com” or “tim.bucket@gmail.com”. This will be your off-site, off-machine storage area that you will search via your mobile device or any computer with a web browser.

In the event that your primary computer is lost, stolen, has a meltdown or burns in a fire, this “bucket” will also be what allows you to simply jog down to the library at a public computer terminal and pick up where you left off, without missing a beat or message, waiting for your new machine to arrive.

Step 2: If you own a mobile device, set a bookmark in your mobile browser

mobile.google.com or google.com/gmail*

*Note: The mobile version of Google Gmail (above left) is not nearly as robust as the full version. If you are using an iPhone, you have a real web browser, none of this WAP crap. Go ahead and bookmark the full version (above, right).

Step 3: Set up Public and Private POP accounts

Your web hosting service control panel should allow you to create POP accounts (mailboxes). Create one that will be used for private email exchanges and a second one for one-way, inbound lists, newsletters, software registrations etc. Suggested configurations are:

private@yourdomain.com
public@yourdomain.com

NOTE: Throughout this article I will refer to “yourdomain.com”. This is a fabricated placeholder for whatever domain you ultimately decide to register and use.

Step 4: Create a private alias that forwards to BOTH your new private mailbox and your new email archive

If your first name is John or Jane, consider the following configuration for creating a private email address:

john@yourdomain.com >> private@yourdomain.com, john.archive@gmail.com
jane@yourdomain.com >> private@yourdomain.com, jane.archive@gmail.com

NOTE: The above illustrates an email forwarding address on the left and the two “boxes” that the address forwards or “maps” to. In the above example inbound email sent to ‘john@yourdomain.com’ will route to both your private mailbox and your Gmail archive box, the idea being that you can delete email at will, without fear that you will need something later on. If you do, all of your email will be available to search in your archive account. Keeping your inbox empty and your email database file small will give you peace of mind and reduce the risk that your email file will become corrupted due to large size.

Step 5: Set up a public email forwarder

In creating a public address to use for subscribing to newsletters and other publications (non-correspondence, inbound-only mail), I chose to use a service called POBox.com. This is an email forwarding service that effectively forwards all inbound mail through their servers to one or multiple boxes or addresses that you specify. The service runs me around $20/year. My rationale for using the service is due to their strong server-side spam filters that allow me to control or block inbound messages by country of origin, scrub against ISP blacklists and more. It is quite a robust service with good filters. I use a pobox.com address as my primary email for inbound-only mail traffic, such as newsletters, email discussion list participation, software registrations and anything that is not 1-on-1 correspondence-related.

Yes! I do realize that Gmail has superb spam filters. The reason I recommend the above forwarding service is because Gmail’s spam filters are not customizable. They are either ON, or they are ON. With a POBox account you’ll have the option of filtering inbound email against all the major DNSBL (blacklists) of the major ISPs in addition to being able to block email by country of origin - things that Gmail simply cannot do.

If your name is John Smith, suggested configuration is as followed:

john.smith@pobox.com >> public@yourdomain.com, john.smith@gmail.com

NOTE: If you choose not to use the POBox.com service, another option would be to create a public forwarding address on your own hosting service. Suggested configuration might be something like this:

john.smith@yourdomain.com >> public@yourdomain.com, john.smith@gmail.com

Step 6: Set up your public and private POP accounts in your email client of choice

Whether you use Entourage, Thunderbird, Mail or Outlook, follow your hosting account instructions and add your public and private mailboxes to your email program. It is beyond the scope of this article for me to describe how to do this and unnecessary as instructions are provided by all hosting providers. If you have difficulty, contact your hosting provider for assistance.

Step 7: Test your new addresses and accounts

Before making suggested modifications to your Gmail account below, you’ll want to test your new addresses to ensure they are working correctly. If you just purchased a new domain name, understand that it can take up to 72 hours for the nameservers to propagate. In English, this means that if you’re using a new domain name and your addresses don’t work, bookmark this page or print it, wait a few days and then try testing them again.

To test your Private Address:

• Use your email program to send a test message to john@yourdomain.com (whatever address you created).
• Check your email a few minutes later and confirm that you received it
• Login to your Gmail archive account. There should also be a copy there.

To test your Public email address:

• Send a test email to John.Smith@pobox.com (or John.Smith@yourdomain.com)
• Check email with your desktop email program to ensure receipt.
• Login to your Gmail archive account and confirm that a copy of it was sent there as well.

Step 8: Gmail Mods

Here are some tips that can help you make the most of your new Gmail archive. Adopt what you wish.

Add “From” addresses to your Gmail account

Make a list of all of the email addresses that you send email FROM and in Gmail Settings area, add these addresses to the account to allow you to send email from those addresses. You’ll be sent a confirmation message from Gmail for each address you add to verify that you are the account holder. Some email discussion lists require that email be sent from the subscribed address, so adding these addresses will allow you to participate in discussions or send email while you are looking at your archives if you need to.

Settings >> Accounts >> Add another email address

For example, you may at some point need to send email from your Gmail archive from either your private or public email addresses, so it makes sense to add: john@somedomain.com as well as john.smith@pobox.com. That way when you send email from your archive account any replies will be sent to your desktop.

Use a filter and a label to organize your list email

There will be times when it will be convenient for you to be able to view all messages sent to your private email address. There may also be times when you want to instantly see all messages from a certain discussion list. You can do this with one click if you set up a filter and use a label in your Gmail archive.

Settings > Filters > Create a new filter > To: john@somedomain.com > Next Step > Skip the inbox (archive it) > Add the label: john@somedomain.com

What you’ve just done is to tell Gmail that all messages that arrive in your Gmail account that are addressed to your private email address, john@somedomain.com, should be automatically archived (not left in the Inbox) and that a label of ‘john@somedomain.com’ should be applied to each.

After you create this filter, on the left side of your account you’ll see a hyperlink ‘john@somedomain.com’. From this point forward, anytime you wish to view only messages sent to your private email address, all you need to do is click the label on the left side. Very cool. And useful.

Another example might be if you received email daily from a discussion list. Let’s say iPhone-L, the iPhone Email Discussion List. Take a look at any message received from the list and note something common about each message. For example, on this particular discussion list, the To: header is always iphone-l@iphone-l.com, and there is always the following in the subject line of each message: [iPhone-L].

Go into your Gmail archive and create a filter for this list:

Settings > Filters > Create a new filter > Subject contains: [iPhone-L] > Skip the inbox (archive immediately) > Add a label > List: iPhone-L

What you’ve just done is to tell Gmail that for every message from this discussion list that arrives in your archive, apply the label ‘List:iPhone-L’ and then archive it. After you create this filter/label combo you’ll see a new hyperlink on the left side of your account (List: iPhone-L). You can effectively do this for any newsletter or discussion list that you may have a need to see only posts from that list at once, with one click. Perhaps you’re in the library or on a business trip overseas and want to read only that list. You can do so from any web browser.

Why ‘List: iPhone-L’ and not just ‘iPhone-L’?

Of course you can label any way you wish. If you preface your lists with ‘List:’, then they will all be grouped together on the left side, thus giving you the appearance of being more organized.

While you’re at it, create a filter and label for ‘john.smith@pobox.com’ so you can have one-click access to all your public messages if you ever want it.

Consider archiving your work email

This is a gray area, but one I feel is worth mentioning.

Say you work at Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company and your work email address is ‘john.smith@dunder-mifflin.com’.

Go into your web hosting account and create a POP/mailbox called ‘work@yourdomain.com’.

Now create an alias/forwarder that routes as follows:

blackberry@somedomain.com >> work@yourdomain.com, john.archive@gmail.com

What you’ve just done is created a third mailbox to physically separate work email from personal email. You’ve also created a forwarding email address that, when sent to, sends a copy of all email to your new mailbox as well as your Gmail archive.

Next go to your IS guru or company system administrator. Tell them that you want to get work email wirelessly on your phone and that you’ve created an alias to do so. Ask them if they can set it up such that in addition to your work computer, any email received at john.smith@dunder-mifflin.com also forward a copy to blackberry@somedomain.com.

If they balk at your request, be prepared to bribe them with caffeine - a $20 gift card to Starbucks works well, as does a six-pack of JOLT Cola. That should buy you about 30 minutes of their time.

If they kindly offer to set up your wireless device to access your account via the company’s exchange server, you can accept it, but I’d politely decline, telling them that you’d rather keep things simple and just have a copy of your mail forwarded to a single address rather than messing with trying to get exchange working on a wireless device.

(Yes, I know there are advantages to having exchange access to email on your blackberry…but that would defeat the purpose of what I am showing you.)

Ultimately they set it up for you. So now all inbound email to your work address is also copied to your own POP account and it’s also forwarded to your new Gmail archive.

Now go into your Gmail account, and create a filter that looks for john.smith@dunder-mifflin.com in the To: header, archives it immediately skipping the inbox, and applies the new label ‘john.smith@dunder-mifflin.com’.

Now when you’re at any web browser, anywhere in the world, and you want to check office email, just log into your gmail archive, click the label link and you’ll see all of it.

Additionally, because you used an ALIAS, and did not take the IS guy up on his offer to set up exchange on your wireless device, you can now add new addresses to forward to or change from a blackberry to an iPhone if you want to, without having to go back and involve the IS guy and spend more money on more gift cards or caffeine bribes.

The last thing to do is set up this third POP account in your desktop email program on your personal computer and/or set it up as an IMAP account on your blackberry or iPhone. This is optional of course, but it assumes that at some point you may want to check your work email while out of the office without having to lug your computer home with you.

Now - with your work email also being stored collectively in your new gmail archive, you have cleared the way for you to effectively become the smartest person in the company. Need to reference that email from months ago about XYZ? Sure! Tap tap tap. Wow that was fast. Now you can feel free to delete at will from your laptop at work, to keep your mail file small, knowing that you can get anything you want to at any time through your archive.

Use filters to keep your Archive Inbox empty automatically

If you do not create this filter, all copies of mail sent to your Gmail archive will build up in the Inbox. You may want to create a filter that takes all inbound email and skips the Inbox, archiving it. When you view your account it will appear to have an empty Inbox. If you want to view messages you’ll either need to search using the search box or click the All Messages link on the left side to view them. Otherwise, even with 45,000 email messages in your archive, the inbox will appear empty.

To keep your archive inbox empty, create a filter in Gmail that looks for the “@” sign in the TO header, then check the box that says “Archive immediately, skipping Inbox”. If you need to see mail later on you can either click one of your labels or you can click the link that says Show All Email.

Why Gmail?

In my opinion, Gmail has the best search interface of any of the web email solutions. Because you set up an off-site archive, you can access it from any computer with a web browser and use Gmail’s Advanced Search feature to search by Label and keyword or subject to quickly find any message you received, dating back to the day that you started your archive. The storage space on Gmail is ample enough such that even the most power email users will find that a single account should last for at least two to three years of archived messages.

“What if I run out of space in my Gmail account?”

Gmail currently has a cap of around 2.9 GB of storage on their free accounts. For power email users that should last about two years or 60,000 email messages, depending of course on message size and attachments. When you get close to your cap Google has the option of upgrading your storage capacity for a fee, starting at $20 per year, which is reasonable. So no need to worry about running out of storage.

Keep in mind, however, that Gmail may have a period of time when they may deactivate your account if there has been no activity in some time. I believe it is nine months. This means that in a few years, should you wish to keep your very old email on accounts that are full, you may need to set a tickler to log into that account at least once every six months to keep it active.

There is a superb service that can help with this. It’s called MyTicklerFile.com and will allow you to set ticklers in the future that will notify you by SMS text message and/or email at future dates and times. Definitely worth exploring!

It’s also a good idea to maintain a list of any gmail accounts, aliases and POP accounts that you have by creating a Word document or Excel sheet and saving it somewhere safe to refer to from time to time as you re-evaluate your email strategy.

How to address the issue of archiving SENT email

The system above allows you to archive every single inbound email message you receive on multiple accounts. This is useful not only in the event that you need to locate something quickly that someone sent to you (if you were on the phone and quickly needed to locate it), but also in the event that your computer is stolen or you experience a hard drive crash. Should this happen your down time will be minimal (all you need do is go to another computer and access your archive via the web and start working again) and no data will have been lost. The system above is also advantageous because it means that you can feel comfortable deleting anything and everything from your email programs that normally store messages on your hard drive. Keeping your email program lean and free of thousands of messages will provide for a faster running program that uses less memory to operate, with less chance files will become corrupted.

However, in many instances you may want to locate a message that you SENT to someone, not just received, perhaps to reforward it to them or follow up on something you sent. Most email clients now have a feature that allows one to BCC an address on all outbound email. In Thunderbird this is shown on the account preferences area. Simply go into the preferences of your email program and enter in your off-site archive address (john.oss@gmail.com) into the BCC area. Once you do this, provided that you do it on all email clients that you use, your archives should then hold a record of all inbound and outbound email, providing for a complete archive that is both highly searchable and not associated with any particular medium or hard drive.

If Outlook is your email program, under Tools you can create a rule that filters OUTBOUND or SENT email messages, such that you can CC yourself. Setting a filter to CC yourself on sent messages and a second filter to look for yourself in the From: header and delete those messages when they come in will allow your Gmail archive to have a full record of both inbound and outbound email. I cannot speak for other email clients. Try them to see if your favorite is able to do this.

Premium Options with Google Apps Premier

Google Apps Premier is the fee-based upgrade now available for those who wish to pay $50 per year for some powerful features not available in the free versions of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and other apps in the suite of G-Products. This link provides a page that compares the feature set between the free and fee-based versions. Where Gmail is concerned, which is the purpose of this article, the primary benefits of using the fee-based account as your Gmail archives are that it provides 25GB of off-site storage for email rather than the initial 5 or 6 that Gmail Free provides.

I personally find tremendous value in using Google Apps Premier and the Gmail client for my own email. It is well-worth the fifty buck investment and quite convenient. More powerful than the free version and no advertisements. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Google Apps Premier through the link above. It does require credit card, but they charge it only if you do not cancel within 30 days.

A word of warning to those of you who do not currently manage your own domain names: You may want to stick with the free version as the Premier version of Google Apps requires the use of a domain name. If you’re somewhat knowledgeable about things Web-related you can probably figure it out, and there are also companies that can help you set it up and redirect MX records; but know that it is more involved than the free version of the suite.

I’ve been running the email archiving strategy I describe in this article now for over two years, with some 90,000 email messages archived in my searchable index. I’m still only at about 60% of my storage cap on the free version of Gmail. However I do have plans when I hit capacity on the free account to pony up for the fee-based version of Google Apps as a long-term archive solution for email.

Migrating Email from One Gmail Account to Another

Once you hit capacity with the free version of Gmail, you’re faced with a problem if you want to move to the Premier version of Google Apps Gmail: How does one migrate 70,000 email messages to a new and larger-capacity account?

Actually, it’s not as difficult at you might think, but it does take some time. Gmail allows you to use POP to import email from other accounts. So what you want to do is something akin to the following:

1. Set up your Google Apps Premier account, ensure the domain and MX records are propagating, test it for receipt of email.
2. Log out of your Premier account and log into your old free Gmail archive account. Under the Settings link, click to turn on POP mail. This allows you to use other applications to access the email in your old archive account via POP.
3. Save your settings and log out. Then log into your Premier apps account again - or perhaps just consider using Firefox 3 as a browser and opening two tabs so you can switch back and forth between the two.
4. Under Settings > Accounts > Get email from other accounts, add your OLD Gmail archive account here.

Once your Premium apps archive account has this information it will begin to import your 70,000+ email messages from your free Gmail account. This will likely take a few days for it to do, but it will happen. There is a fairly good article in the Google Apps blog on how to do this here.

Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s

When upgrading from your free Gmail archive to a larger-capacity fee-based one ($50/year), don’t forget that your new archive email address is different from your old free one. This means that you’ll need to revisit all the filters and aliases that you had been routing email to and change the archive address from the old free account to the new one. The easiest way to do this is to make a list of all of your domains and email aliases used on a piece of paper with a pen and just check them off as you make mods to the aliases/routing.

You are likely moving to a higher-capacity, fee-based Gmail account because your free account has capped out for storage. If this is the case, you may also want to go into your new Premier account and under the new POP you just added that is importing from your old archive, you may want to specify that once it has imported your messages it removes them from your old archive account (remove from the server), rather than leaves copies of the email.

Once all the messages in your old archive account are migrated over, you should have zero messages in the old account. At that point it will be quite easy for you to tell if you’ve remembered to redirect all existing aliases to the new archive account or not. You should only be receiving email at the new archive account and should receive no email at all on your old archive account. If you are still receiving email on the old archive account, track down which alias or account is still forwarding to it and make the adjustment to reroute to the new archives.

Feedback/Questions/Additions/Corrections?

Reach the author at adam (at) adamboettiger.com or provide your feedback by voicemail at (503) 946-6450.

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NOTE: If you find this article useful, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed for future articles. My next article here will be about an inexpensive way to reduce spam levels to almost zero in your Inbox.

You may also find a companion article useful after reading this one: “How to block spam and prevent spam email from reaching your Inbox by washing your email“.

AB