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Thread: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

  1. #1
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    How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    Walking on new ground for me here. I need to find out what's the best way of people staying up to date with events posted on a website. I'm asking mainly for my father who has his own Tango business - Tango South. Currently, when adds new content or publishes a newsletter, he emails every member - well over a hundred. And whilst that works, it's cumbersome and of course, the record is only in the sent items and only really applicable if people pick their email up.

    So is there any other easy way to do it? I've suggested he gets some blog up and running. I've just launched mine and am experimenting with RSS feeds, live bookmarks, etc. If anyone wants to try, let me know (my blog). But is that a good way of doing it?

    Ideally, a simple way people can "subscribe" to and then automatically get an update pushed to them (email or other) as soon as something new pops up.

    Other question: for those of you with iphones or blackberries, is there an easy update notification scheme that works with those portable devices? I guess text messaging is a possibility, but this surely can be quite expensive?

    I'm still confusing my RSS feeds from my atom feeds

    Thanks in advance.
    Last edited by tfboy; 04-05-2009 at 11:10 AM.

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    Did you miss the .co.uk off that URL?

    How is he sending out that hundred emails? Not manually I hope? You get some very good mailing list software or services that will bulk send to your subscribers. I would look into that.

    I'm not a huge RSS fan, for example I don't have an RSS reader on my PC or Windows Mobile phone. There are no feeds set up in Outlook, or Opera either.

    I really dont see the point in getting too complicated for that kind of business. I wouldn't have thought his customer base would really care. It's not Engadget of Slashdot he's running with perhaps a couple of dozen updates in a day. And his readers aren't going to be 14 - 30 (ish) tech heads.

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    are you using a cms for the site?

    You could use the twitter api to automatically post updates to your twitter account, for example having news titles/links.

    Also you may be able to use the facebook stream api to post status updates to facebook, not had a chance to look into using it yet though.

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    Quote Originally Posted by Funkstar View Post
    Did you miss the .co.uk off that URL?

    How is he sending out that hundred emails? Not manually I hope? You get some very good mailing list software or services that will bulk send to your subscribers. I would look into that.

    I'm not a huge RSS fan, for example I don't have an RSS reader on my PC or Windows Mobile phone. There are no feeds set up in Outlook, or Opera either.

    I really dont see the point in getting too complicated for that kind of business. I wouldn't have thought his customer base would really care. It's not Engadget of Slashdot he's running with perhaps a couple of dozen updates in a day. And his readers aren't going to be 14 - 30 (ish) tech heads.
    Thanks for the URL pointer, Funkstar. Fixed now.

    At the moment, he's sending one email using a distribution list. Using Thunderbird. It's not difficult and it works OK. It's just that it's a two-step process. 1) update website, 2) tell everone via email it's been updated.

    The need for streamlining it is because there can be some urgent updates. For example, when we had the snow, he had to cancel a venue. Some people received the info in time, others didn't. Of course you can end up calling people or texting them to let them know, but I was just wondering if there's a more efficient, automated way of doing it.

    You'd be surprised how many under-30s do Tango so there probably is a need to cater for the techheads The frequency of updates varies from maybe once a week to once a day.

    Quote Originally Posted by cougarslam View Post
    are you using a cms for the site?

    You could use the twitter api to automatically post updates to your twitter account, for example having news titles/links.

    Also you may be able to use the facebook stream api to post status updates to facebook, not had a chance to look into using it yet though.
    No cms, Cougarslam. I'd like to keep the process or modification of the website simple so he can manage it. The actual site is simple html done in dreamweaver IIRC. That's why I was referring to a blog or something else so the interfacing and clever stuff behind the scenes is already implemented.

    Will take a look at twitter.

    Thanks

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    Hmm. I've been playing around with the blog notion but can't seem to be able to do something that I thought would be really simple.

    I put up a new post on the blog. Every subscriber receives an instant email of that post.

    It seems this isn't possible I've had a look at feedburner, but from what I understand, it's only a daily summary of new posts and therefore not immediate. I can specify a two-hour window when these updates are delivered, but that's it. It's not immediate.

    There's this PingShot which claims to speed things up, but I must have misunderstood that or it doesn't work.

    How bloody hard can they make it ?!?

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    What blog software are you using?

    There may be an ad-on that email a subscriber list directly through your own hosting account.

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    www.blogger.com

    I've added the email subscription widget, put my email addy in, received the confirmation email and all that.

    In feedburner, I can see that my email address is listed as an active subscriber. But in the "Delivery Options", you have to specify a two-hour daily window.



    Now there's this PingShot thingy.



    But I don't think that's related. Enabling it doesn't appear to provide emails any quicker.

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    Re: How to keep people updated of new stuff? RSS?

    I'd certainly go with Twitter/Facebook. You can even get a Twitter widget to chuck on the website, and it's far easier to write 140 (?) characters than it is to force yourself to write a blog. That way, any interested people can just follow you on Twitter, and also you have the full record on their servers!

    I follow several companies do this quite well. Examples include @ClubTomTom (TomTom), @overheardatmoo (Moo.com) and @netdreams (Netdreams web design company).

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