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2:35 am
June 9, 2011
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QuoteHey everyone.
Chances are if you are inside of this community, you've taken John's advice to get hooked up with a reliable auto responder service. Whether it's AWeber or Getresponse or any of the other email marketing service that your using, they have probably made the act of placing an optin form on your website quite simple for you.
However, one thing that always seems to be a little sticky for some musicians is how get one of those things on your blog. I know that it was for me.
Putting the auto responder code on a regular webpage is as simple as copy and paste, however on a blog, at first glance it would seem that you have to put one on every post. But there is a much easier way to do this.
DISCLAIMER: What I am about to describe to you works if you are using WordPress.org for your blog. Also if you are not savvy with HTML, you may want to get someone who is, to do this for you.
So what you want to do is after you log into Wordpress, from the dashboard menu you want to scroll down to "Appearance" and select "widgets"
Inside the widgets menu, you can drag any widget you may have from the left and drop it onto the right. From there it will appear in your blog's sidebar.
What you want to do is grab a "text widget" and drag it over to the right. Then you want to edit the test widget.
Assuming you've already copied the code for your opt-in form, what you'll want to do is paste the code inside of the text widget.
Simply click save and then 'visit your blog' to see it live. Like I said, it may not look perfect, so get help with the stylizing of your opt-in box from someone who knows HTML or CSS a little better than you might.
The cool thing to remember here is that even if you mess up, you can always remove the text widget from your sidebar until you can get help making it look right.
Using the sidebar is for this is great because it will appear next to every page of your blog (assuming the sidebar is visible on that page.)
Now there is no need to put an opt-in box on every post because visitors will be able to opt-in just from visiting to read a news update, check your schedule or for whatever reason they may have dropped by.
Go hook it up now!
-Steve
11:48 pm
June 10, 2011
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Ok, I have made myself a squeeze page in Wordpress and have set up the Aweber form in the side bar. But, how do I get the page to display? I select "no parent" and it just seems to get thrown on top of everything and garbles some of the existing text/graphics. When I give it a "parent" it doesn't seem to display at all.
12:36 am
June 7, 2011
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Tim Curry said:
Ok, I have made myself a squeeze page in Wordpress and have set up the Aweber form in the side bar. But, how do I get the page to display? I select "no parent" and it just seems to get thrown on top of everything and garbles some of the existing text/graphics. When I give it a "parent" it doesn't seem to display at all.
Hey Tim,
What do you mean by "get the page to display" exactly? When you publish the page it should display. If it's not, then something is wrong. Do you mean the opt in form, or the page itself? "No parent" just has to do with the category organization. You only really need to worry about that if you want to put category links in your navigation and have "child" categories drop down underneath a "parent".
To get your page to display as the home page you just go into settings, then reading, then set a static page from the drop down list.
But I'm not sure if any of that is what you're asking.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
12:54 am
June 10, 2011
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Thanks John, that did the trick. Now the first page on my website is my squeeze page. So now how do I go about giving new sign ups the free download? Before when I did this, I did it using ReverbNation which is set up for such things. Where should I host the track?
Aweber automatically sends confirmation for the opt in, I tested that on myself. Do you make a follow up e-mail of some sort that contains download link?
1:38 am
June 7, 2011
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Tim Curry said:
Thanks John, that did the trick. Now the first page on my website is my squeeze page. So now how do I go about giving new sign ups the free download? Before when I did this, I did it using ReverbNation which is set up for such things. Where should I host the track?
Aweber automatically sends confirmation for the opt in, I tested that on myself. Do you make a follow up e-mail of some sort that contains download link?
The way I do it is to simply zip the MP3 file and FTP it over to my domain. So the address would be yourdomain.com/filename.zip
Then I set the first autoresponder message to go out immediately after confirmation with the download link in it.
You can also create a download page if you want and set your autoresponder to immediately redirect them to that page when they click the confirmation link. Then with your autoresponder message you can send them to the downlaod page as well, just as a double up/welcome email.
NOTE: You want to make sure that you set at least one follow up message BEFORE you start getting traffic. Otherwise, when you finally do add a follow up message, everyone that was on your list before that follow up message was added will be put on message 999 as a default. This is so that old people on your list don't get added to an autoresponder that is meant for new people, but it can be an unexpected pain. It''s easily fixed, but if you don't know it's happened then many of your subscribers will miss out on your series.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:39 am
June 7, 2011
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Another quick note: The reason I zip it is because if you don't it will auto-play when people click it and most people will not figure out the right click and save, even if you tell them to. At least not when you call it a download link.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
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