Tips and Tricks Latest Post

---

Create An Email Newsletter That Makes Readers Want to Return to Your Blog Posted: 06 Nov 2011 02:06 AM PST Email newsletters are a great way to boost traffic to your blog posts and grow a loyal readership. However, you better do email newsletters the right way or you risk having the recipients hit the unsubscribe button without looking back. There is a lot to creating excellent email newsletters and big companies who send them out have teams of writers, designers, marketers and computer programmers collaborating on the newsletter. This can be overwhelming for the one man or one woman blogger, but there are some tried and true methods you can use to quickly create email newsletters that make readers want to return to your blog. Make It Look Professional By Using a Template Unless you're a coding ninja, save your time and sanity by using an email newsletter template. There are several free sources for these templates including MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and PatternHead. There are so many templates with so many different color, layout and theme choices that there is no need to personally customize and design your own newsletter in most cases. Plus, using a template ensures your newsletter will look professional and without misplaced lines of code, which is the most important factor. Make It Look Not Like Spam There are a couple key ways to make sure your emails don't look like spam. First, only send an email newsletter when you really have something important to say. You never want to bombard your readers with meaningless emails and even if you think you have important things to say in daily emails, you still should send emails at most once every few days. Secondly, make it easy for a user to unsubscribe. Spam artists are notorious for not allowing users to unsubscribe or burying that option deep in an email where it's hard to find. Although, this may sound tempting, mimicking spammers will only serve to decrease your readership. Email Marketing 101: Getting Readers From Their Inbox To Your Blog Marketing is a highly refined skill and it's what will get readers to click on the links in your email newsletter that will take them over to your blog. While you can earn advanced degrees in fields of marketing, here are some of the basics of email marketing to get you started: Don't give out all your information in the newsletter, give snippets: If you send out a nice long email with some great content and helpful information your readers will appreciate it and may thank you, but they have no reason to visit your blog again. Rather, display several information "teasers" that when clicked, takes your reader to the full article on your blog. Make your headlines and teasers outrageously interesting: Headlines and teasers are only a few words to a few sentences long at most. You only have a small window to grab a reader's attention so you must make the most of it. Spend time crafting teasers that your reader's can't ignore. Some common teaser formats that work include any numbered lists, "top" or "best rated" lists or negatives, such as "the worst (product names) you should avoid." These formats tend to spark interest most of the time, but anything that really relates to your readers on a substantial level or anything that's truly creative will result in clicks to your blog. Use awesome clickable images: Pictures really are worth a thousand words sometimes. A great didactic, creative or humorous image can result in more return readers to your blog than you'd probably expect. Filling your newsletter with a few well-placed images and your readers are guaranteed to pay more attention to your email. However, do not use too many images, since users without the highest internet speeds will dislike this and do not rely on images alone, since some of your emails will undoubtedly be flagged as junk mail. These images will not load unless a user un-flags the email. In this scenario your headlines and teasers will be the end all be all of your newsletter. When all else fails give your readers incentive: Nothing encourages return readership to your blog like giving something away for free or offering something at a steep discount. Put forth a sense of urgency by saying the first "X" number of readers to visit after receiving this email can claim their free "ABC" product. Track Visits After Sending Out Email Newsletters to Learn Your Readers Pay careful attention to spikes in visitors shortly after you send out email newsletters. Inevitably, some letters will gain more visitors than others. Realizing which topics your niche readership favors the most will allow you to cater to them in the future, ensuring long term success for your blog. About the Author: Jessica Drew is a freelance writer who blogs about a variety of technology related topics including web development and design, mobile computing and internet providers in my area.

You are subscribed to email updates from Tips and Tricks To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Jkwebtalks

---

Disable or Enable USB Disk Access in Windows Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:21 PM PDT For several reasons, you may want to prevent inserting pen drives or any USB drive into your computer, for example to prevent copying content from your computer or to prevent execution of malware, which may come into the system through the USB drives. If you are looking for an easy solution for controlling access to removable drives, here is how you can do all that with Wenovo USB Disks Access Manager for Windows. Wenovo USB Disks Access Manager is a freeware, portable tool and offers three... Read rest of this article at JkWebtalks.com

You are subscribed to email updates from Jkwebtalks To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

OS X Daily: Yes, iPhone Changes Automatically for Daylight Savings Time

---

• Yes, iPhone Changes Automatically for Daylight Savings Time
• Sync iTunes to Android in Mac OS X with WinAmp
• Show Photos By Location on iPhone
• Rare 50 Minute Interview with Steve Jobs from 1990 [Video]
• Mac Setups: Back Porch Music Studio with a MacBook Pro 15″ & iPad 2

Yes, iPhone Changes Automatically for Daylight Savings Time Posted: 05 Nov 2011 09:20 PM PDT We’ve received quite a few questions about the iPhone’s clock and if it will update automatically for Daylight Savings Time, the answer is: Yes, the iPhone automatically changes time to be correct with your time zone. So does the iPad, iPod touch, and Mac OS X. You do not need to change the time manually, it will “fall back” on it’s own. Most of the questions about daylight savings relate to past problems and bugs with iOS that caused improper clock adjustments for both the Spring and Fall time changes. The most recent bug occurred with the iPhone earlier in the year, when the clock went the wrong way or didn’t change at all. This was after the year prior had a different issue, where the alarm clock went off an hour later than it was set, and that carried further several days until the clock was manually reset. These issues were resolved with past iOS updates and will not impact iOS 5 users, and there were no reports of issues with time changing in the UK last week. If you’re paranoid you can always set another alarm clock just to be safe, but it’s probably not necessary.

Sync iTunes to Android in Mac OS X with WinAmp Posted: 05 Nov 2011 04:24 PM PDT WinAmp, the longstanding Windows music player, has come to the Mac OS X platform and brings a few great features for Android users, most notably iTunes music syncing and library sharing, and Wi-Fi syncing. This means you can take any existing iTunes playlist and sync it directly to an Android device without having to jump through any other hoops. The app is technically in beta but works well enough to use, with a very light memory and CPU footprint and an attractive enough user interface. If you’re an Android user that owns a Mac (or PC I suppose), this may be the best way to get your iTunes music library onto your Android phone. You can download for free it from WinAmp.com Other than serving as an easy way to sync iTunes to Android, it also makes for a decent desktop music player if you’re averse to iTunes for whatever reason. Not sure how many Mac users go for an Android over an iPhone, but it’s good to know these options are out there. A quick word of caution: if you’re launching WinAmp for the first time you might want to turn your speakers volume down. The app belches out a forced and incredibly loud sound sequence followed by some short dialog about WinAmp and a llama or sheep (seriously, this may be the most obnoxious first application launch in history).

Show Photos By Location on iPhone Posted: 05 Nov 2011 04:02 PM PDT The iPhone and 3G-equipped iPad include a “Places” feature in the Photos app which allow you to see pictures based on geographical location. From the iOS homescreen: Tap on “Photos”, then at the bottom of the Camera Roll tap onto “Places” Scroll and zoom on the Google Map to show pins for specific regions tagged with photos Tap a red pin to see a photo count exclusive to that place, then tap the blue > arrow to see camera roll only for that location This feature is only accurate to use if you have Location Services and geographic tagging enabled for the photos app.

Rare 50 Minute Interview with Steve Jobs from 1990 [Video] Posted: 05 Nov 2011 10:37 AM PDT PBS/NOVA and WGBH Boston have posted a full 50 minute unedited interview with Steve Jobs from the TV miniseries “Machine That Changed The World”. The clip is from 1990 and demonstrates Steve Jobs’ remarkable visionary thinking, covering a wide variety of topics and technologies well before they became parts of our daily lives (keep in mind the internet was practically nonexistent to the general public then). Watch An Interview With Steve Jobs on PBS. See more from NOVA. If you’re having troubles watching the video on PBS, 9to5mac borrowed the WGBH version and uploaded it to YouTube as well. The TV miniseries aired in 1991 and offered an insiders look at the history of computers and the surrounding industry. The episode of Machine That Changed the World show featuring clips of the Jobs interview, in addition to interviews with Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and a variety of other Silicon Valley veterans, is embedded below: Machine That Changed The World Part 3 via Waxy.org If you enjoyed this Steve Jobs interview, don’t miss this one from 1995 too.

Mac Setups: Back Porch Music Studio with a MacBook Pro 15″ & iPad 2 Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:25 AM PDT This reader submitted Mac setup comes from sound designer and musician Richard D, who may have one of the coolest seasonal offices I’ve seen. Ignoring the great view of the woods for a minute, the Apple gear is a MacBook Pro 15″ running Logic Studio alongside an iPad 2, in addition to a Magic Mouse and some other hardware. When the weather accommodates, who wouldn’t want to work outside? Technically this is only halfway outdoors because it’s on a covered porch, but that makes it even more usable because it reduces potential screen glare. Not quite a boat or a motorcycle in the desert, but it’s probably a lot more functional than both of those. Great Mac setup, thanks for sending this in Richard! You can send in your own setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com

You are subscribed to email updates from OS X Daily To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610