Webmastering Tools

Updated November 11, 2008

Today's webmaster is faced with many challenges: time management, e-mail management, maintaining fresh content, taking care of ecommerce web hosting services, etc.

Webmasters are the 'go-to' guys and girls for everything, usually. The business owner, the marketing staff, the human resources department, the press and public relations, the investor relations, and almost every department in the company or business go to this one person(s).

And everybody wants things their way for their job to function - that is what they think.

We get e-mails everyday from webmasters asking what they should do to be successful.

The following are some of my suggestions.

These are based on my experiences only, so some techniques discussed below might not work for everyone.

Remember, most things are trial and error.

1. Deal With E-mail...Quickly

Responding to e-mail should always be number one on your list of things to do. If you put it off for too long, it might seem overwhelming. The best way to deal with it is to use e-mail filters or sort your e-mail into different categories. For example:

Personal (E-mail from friends and family)
Web Site Submissions (Things that your web site visitors might want to contribute to the site)
Business Inquires (People asking for work from you)
Newsletters (Newsletters/e-zines that you receive)
Important (Things that must get accomplished TODAY)
Miscellaneous (E-mails that don't fit into any other category)

Now, you must prioritize each category and respond (if necessary) to all of the e-mails.

Important
Business Inquiries
Web Site Submissions
Miscellaneous
Personal
Newsletters

You may prefer to put the personal e-mails first. As I said above, arrange these categories how you see fit.

2. Keep The Content of Your Web Site Fresh

Visitors of web sites seem to be very demanding at times. They always want fresh content. They don't want to read yesterday's news...they want this minute's news. A way to do this is to subscribe to a news service such as Moreover.. Moreover is a fairly new service that basically works in the following manner

You sign up for what news feeds you want and how you want them displayed.
You paste HTML code into your web site that pulls the news headlines off of Moreover's servers.
Your visitors see the headlines as links and then click to read the full story.
Your web site's visitors will keep coming back to see new headlines. This means more traffic to your site. Which means that advertising space is more valuable. Which means that you will make more money

There are many other services that provide free news feeds as well as other types of free syndicated content. E-mail me for the links to these services' web sites.

3. Use Autoresponders to Your Advantage

Most of us have used an autoresponder at one point or another in our Internet adventures. For those of you who haven't, you send a blank e-mail to a specific address and you receive a response within a couple minutes that is a pre-formatted message. Some examples for using an autoresponder are:

Train somebody on a certain topic that you are familiar with.
"Buyers remorse" letter - when somebody makes a large purchase, they go through a time of whether they should have bought the product or not. Use an autoresponder to tell somebody that the decision to buy the product was a good one and that they shouldn't worry about wasting money.
Advertising Follow-up - If you sell advertising on your web site, send a letter to an advertiser asking them what the results of their campaign were good. Ask them to send you testimonials or suggestions to make the advertising more worthwhile.

You can get an autoresponder at several places for free including:
     http://www.biz-reply.com
     http://www.sendfree.com (Highly Recommended)
     http://www.autorespond.com
     http://www.getresponse.com
     http://www.smartautoresponder.com

Most web hosting companies offer free autoresponders as well. Contact your host and ask them. (This is usually a better alternative because there is no extra advertising in your response message and it looks more professional with the @yourcompany.com address.)

4. Create a Newsletter/E-zine

Studies have shown that newsletters or e-zines often cause repeat traffic. Often this is because:

People might forget about your web site or company, but then they receive a mailing from you with valuable information.
E-zines are more current than a web site could be, so people rely on a newsletter to keep them informed of the latest headlines.

Publishing an e-zine might seem complicated and time consuming at first, but they really aren't that hard. I publish a weekly e-zine entitled "The Guided Webmaster". It is rewarding (after the first issue is published) to add "Publisher and Editor" to one's list of titles.

The hard part about publishing and/or editing an e-zine is finding a topic that you have enough things to talk about and are interested in. For example, you wouldn't want to publish an e-zine about beetles if your passion is cars. Write about what you know and love.

5. Time Management

Managing your time can seem like a daunting task, but it really isn't that hard. Why manage your time I hear you asking? Well, there are several reasons:

If you have a newsletter to publish, you must get it out on time. Readers start to expect things at a certain time, and if they aren't there, they may lose trust in you.
If you are working for a client, they might want their web site done by a certain date for a reason. Again, they might lose trust in you and not recommend you to other people if they are disappointed.

You do not want to gain a bad reputation online. I know that a friend of mine was working on a web site for a client once, and didn't finish it until four weeks after the client asked for it to be completed. That client probably would have given my friend a lot of attention, but because the project was so late, he didn't.

Now onto how to organize your time to avoid what happened to my friend...

Get a day planner or Palm Pilot and make a list of everything you want to have done and when you would like it done. Be as specific as possible. Don't just put "Work on web site." Put "Change Tip of the Month." This way, when you look at what you have to do later on, you will know what to do. Plus, this way you won't get carried away doing things that aren't extremely important. Then number the items for today in order of importance. Start accomplishing your tasks.

To sum everything Up...

All in all, you should do what works for you. If one of the things above doesn't work for you, try another approach. If that doesn't work, try another one. There is no right or wrong way to do things, it is all trial and error.

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