The word ‘Autoresponders’ has been used more and more over the last few months and pretty much all of us have now experienced them even if you don’t yet realise it. 

But just what is an autoresponder and why should you think about using one in your business? 

Well, let me explain. 

The simplest form of an autoresponder is when you send a message to someone and you immediately receive an email back that tells you that person is out of office. This email will have been sent automatically (no human response was required) and it will have responded to you – hence the name autoresponder. 

You will have also probably seen an autoresponder if you’ve purchased products off of a website. Take Amazon for example or Ebay. If you’ve purchased something from Amazon or made a bid on Ebay, the chances are high that you will have immediately received an email from the company confirming your purchase or your bid.  

And you may have seen autoresponders at work if you’ve subscribed to a newsletter from a website. In most cases now, you will have immediately receive an email from the company concerned welcoming you to the website with a copy of the newsletter. 

Now, trust me when I say that a human is not sitting there at all times of the day or night responding to messages that come in from a website or order confirmations – these emails are sent automatically from you by a computer programme that has been specifically written for this purpose. 

But, why should you care? What has this got to do with your business? 

Now (hopefully) you’ve got your head around what an autoresponder is, I want you just to think for a minute about the power of autoresponders and how they can help your business. 

Imagine that while you’re on holiday, a potential customer visits your website.

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As a teen entrepreneur coach, I work with young entrepreneurs who are often bootstrapping when they start out. They are searching for simple ways to build a presence online to compliment whatever they are doing in the offline space. Even though they are often technologically savvy, when starting a business, marketing a business online can be information overload. So these are the simple steps I share with them so that they can get started. And they can use supplementary resources, advanced programs and tools and fee based 3rd party applications to build on this foundation as they acquire more knowledge, visibility and money.

1. Name It and Claim It. When you decide to build an online presence pick a topic that centers on a theme and try to make sure everything you set up from your social networking sites to your blog, somehow ties back to that theme. It helps to build greater brand awareness. The more niche or specialized the theme, the easier it will be for your target customer and the media to find you vs. you trying to find them. Express your unique voice as it will make you more memorable i.e. Relationship Marketing Expert, Mari Smith, always wears turquoise in her videos, online avatars and at conferences so she can be easily recognized….not to mention she is a 6′ blonde =) When creating a name for your blog or user name, try to think of an all encompassing term that someone might use to search for your site or blog.

2. Choose Your Platform. Think about the behaviors of your customers or do a survey (www.surveymonkey.com) to find out what online tools they are using. The places where your customer are spending their time are the places you need to be active. You don’t need to register for a lot of sites or the latest and the greatest. Register for one or two sites.

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Wordpress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target for hackers and spammers. Basic prophylactic measures, or condoms for WordPress STDs, need not be complicated or expensive.

Those involved in hacking WordPress usually want to use the sites as concealed (cloaked) link farms. Its rare that actual damage is done to your site, and often the site owner remains blissfully unaware that there’s been any interference. Some of the link injection systems are extremely sophisticated! Testing for enemy action can be as simple as opening your site and choosing View / Source and reading through the content of the <Head> section down to, and including, the <BODY> tag. The link injections I’ve seen are usually immediately after <BODY>. Is there a long string of HTML code containing links to dozens of sites you know nothing about? If there is, you’ve been violated, and have a WordPress STD (Security Terminated Deficiency)!

This article is not about fixing security violations. Its about simple prophylactic measures most “non-technician” site owners take. This is not slick and professional security strategy, and there are some who will scoff at using  “security by obscurity” as a primary tactic. However, even on a tight budget, the following 12 zero-dollar steps can and should be taken to minimise the possibility of attack.

1 - Always Use the Current Version
Why anyone would persist with an older version is beyond me. Upgrading has always been easy enough, and recent versions reduce the pain to a button click!

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Have you ever longed for people to knock on your door wanting to do business with you? Um – doesn’t often happen does it?  

Actually that’s not quite true. There is a way to get people knocking at your door, but it doesn’t just happen by itself. You need to influence this. And how you do that is to build relationships with people so that they perceive you as an expert and know, like and trust your approach. 

That sounds so easy doesn’t it? Well, I know it’s not. One of the best ways to help people to perceive you in this way though is to write articles.  

Articles are great for loads of things. They’re great for building your reputation as an expert in your field and they have the added advantage that once you’ve written one article, you can then use it in tons of places.  

Some ideas of where you can use your articles include in your newsletter, in other people’s newsletter, post them on-line to build your presence on the internet and on social networks, send them to the press, include them in a book, put them on your blog, send them out to your clients and contacts as useful information or you could swap your article in exchange for people’s contact details on your website. 

Just in the last few months, articles that I’ve written have been included in three books (two are still being published, but one is on the bookshelves as we speak), got me several clients and I’ve also been ask to speak in several places too. How much free publicity is that? 

I’m not telling you this to boast – I’m telling you this so that you can realise that writing articles is a powerful marketing tool that can really help you pitch yourself as an expert in your field. After all, do you think your clients would rather work with an expert? Yes, of course they would! 

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Brands and marketers are rapidly leaving the orbit of “paid media” dominance and entering the gravitational pull of the age of “earned” and “social media.” But, first, a definition, compliments of Wikipedia:
Earned media (free media) refers to favorable publicity garnered via efforts other than advertising, as opposed to paid media, which refers to publicity gained through advertising. Earned media often refers specifically to publicity gained through editorial influence, whereas social media refers to publicity gained through grassroots action, particularly on the Internet.

Brands that want to generate “coverage” in a world where professional and consumer-generated media live side-by-side, they either must “earn” it (PR) or stimulate a conversation (social) based on action, in-action or mis-actions (mistakes). Traditionally, earned media coverage was largely facilitated through public relations campaigns - professional editors assigned stories to journalists who wrote about something “newsworthy.”

While that process is still at work in an ever-expanding media universe, today products and (customer) services that delight consumers by exceeding, or failing, to exceed their expectations earn voluminous word-of-mouth (social media) coverage from armies of bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers, who magnify the brand message virally.

While earned media has been around since the first campfires, the Internet and social media networks make it much easier to earn media for a brand, product, or oneself. But earning digital media doesn’t mean it’s free. Instead of paying for media placements (advertising), marketers pay for the time and resources of people who will investigate what’s being said about your brand and then engage on your behalf. These can be employees, contractors, agencies, etc.

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“Hey, come take a look at this storm system. It’s enormous.” – Hideki, Japanese astronaut, The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Lots of people missed the big news of the Beijing Olympics.  It wasn’t that Mark Phelps won 8 gold medals.  It wasn’t that the U.S. edged out China on the total number of medals.  It wasn’t the hundreds of personal tragedies and triumphs.  Some of the competitors undoubtedly felt like Laura Chapman … “I know you always thought I took the competition too seriously … you were right. It was all for nothing.”  The big news was that nothing happened.  Sure The Chinese government and China’s CCTV was afraid.  NBC was afraid.  AT&T was afraid.  BBC was afraid.  Microsoft was afraid (they had a lot riding on Silverlight’s success).  Limelight and Akamai were afraid.  Afraid the video pipes of the world would collapse. 

Didn’t happen!

The estimated 1.3 billion worldwide Internet users were more than four times the number of potential users that tried to access Mark Cuban’s broadcast.com “airing” of Victoria’s Secret show a decade ago. 

The Games Begin

This online video challenge streamed more than 2200 hours of live competition in 25 sports.  More than 112 video streams were often available at one time.  All told 336 streams could have been sent out simultaneously.  The content was available to 77 countries.  The great thing was online viewers around the globe didn’t have to watch NBC’s version of the Olympics.  Use your search engine, type in Beijing (or 2008) Olympics + country name and BAM!

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“This show as prerecorded earlier, because it didn’t make much sense to prerecord it later.” – Gary Owens, announcer – Rowan & Martin Laugh-In (’68-’73)

The writers’ strike was all about giving their members a “fairer” proportion of the growing volume of online content.  Since it appeared to be a prolonged affair Tellywood focused a lot of attention and money on indie films at Sundance.  At the same time more than a few analysts wondered aloud if there might be a mass migration from TV to online videos and folks would be less than enthused in returning to the family room set.

On a recent dive trip to Kona we met a couple who said they were part of the second wave of hippies to Santa Fe and were writers / artists / videographers.  We asked if they had shown the work at any of the growing number of film festivals around the globe.  The videographer part of the duo said no but he had been turned down by a lot of them.   Then he added that in the past few months he had had a lot of interest in his work from both Tellywood and online outlets.  In fact five had been sold … two to Tellywood, three to online firms.  It made us wonder or as Laugh-In’s Arte Johnson would say, “Veerrry eenteresting…”

In markets such as the U.S., homes have more TV sets and DVD players than broadband access.  It may be growing but if it weren’t for our wireless card in Kona we’d have been stuck with dial-up (don’t even ask!). 

Screen Differences

A number of folks like to say convergence is taking place and soon we’ll be three-screen households.  Maybe yours but not ours!  They’re different.  They’re viewed differently.

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Television production used to be pretty straight forward.  You had HUGE, HEAVY cameras three people pushed around.  In the control room you had sliders and BAM! magically the signal went over the air. At home you turned on the set.  Had dinner (families ate together then) and a half-hour later the tube was lit and you watched the Sid Caesar or Lone Ranger show.  It was so cool.

For years we all went to the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show and the behemoths of the industry dominated the floor.  Big, sexy, expensive cameras.  Big, gorgeous, expensive control panels. TV sets, big/bigger, gorgeous, expensive. Then the cable and satellite folks emerged with “a better TV experience.”   Once you got tired of over-the-air only shows in they “offered” you 50-100 fantastic channels for $100 a month.  Suddenly our wife could watch HGTV, daughter could watch the gut-buster infomercial, and son could watch Telemundo (he’s practicing Spanish and the skirts are short).  According to Nielsen we started watching more TV - 4 hours, 34 minutes a day in 2006-07.  Not bad for the producers, network, cable operators, advertisers. Nielsen found:

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