Video and Blogs and RSS Feeds -
Oh My!
Brad Simon
This article first appeared in Bench Magazine http://www.BenchMagazine.com
Part 3
Blogs
Next you need some place on the Internet to put the video and for that you need a blog. You could up-load it to a free video website like YouTube, but I don’t recommend it for this purpose. YouTube will play your video along with other ads, which you have no control over the content of, and direct your customers off to other videos. There are times that you will want to use YouTube and I will cover that in another article, but for now, suffice it to say that this is a video you want to play where the customer will turn all their attention to your jewelry and business, without any outside distractions.
A blog is a Web Log and a Vlog is simply a Video Blog. If you don’t already have a blog for your business we have information on what blogs are, how to set one up, and which blog platform to use in the resource section of our website http://www.Internet4Jewelers.com/resources
E-Mail & RSS Feeds
Finally once your video is online and playing you need to let your customers know about it. Other than sitting around and hoping your customers will stumble across your video there are two ways to do this: e-mail feeds and RSS feeds.
An e-mail feed is a program that monitors your blog and whenever you up-load a new post or video it will automatically send out an e-mail alert to all your customers who have subscribed to the feed. Feed Blitz is the most popular e-mail feed program. There is a free version however it adds advertising to your e-mail and doesn’t look very professional. The paid version costs only a few dollars a month. The fee is based on the number of subscribers you have. There are different settings for when the e-mails go out. You can set it to send an e-mail as soon as you post to your blog, send it during the night so they receive it first thing in the morning, or at certain intervals during the week so your customers will receive an e-mail the same time each week regardless of when you made the post.
RSS feed stands for Real Simple Syndication. An RSS feed program will take your post and syndicate it across the Internet. You customers can subscribe to receive a notice on their home page just like a news story from the AP newswire or CNN. Feed Burner is one of the easiest RSS feed services to use.
Internet 4 Jewelers has more detailed information on this and other ways to use the Internet to keep in touch with your customers and find new customers for your store on their website at: http://www.Internet4Jewelers.com
This article first appeared in Bench Magazine http://www.BenchMagazine.com
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