Newsletters-Then and Now

11 years ago or so, my first Internet job involved a weekly newsletter. This took a serious amount of time each week.

People would email me and ask to be added to the newsletter mailing list. I added their names manually into the address group. I would write the newsletter. Then send it. That is when the fun would start. Email would bounce-back. People would email me and ask why they got my newsletter. Many wouldn’t be nice about it. They would ask why they weren’t dropped when I had obviously seen their message on a message board saying they were leaving the community. Then there were more adds, drops, and it was time to send out another one.

Of course there were also people who would write to me asking me to send it to their daughter, cousin, as a “surprise” because they needed to read my newsletter. Explaining to them that I couldn’t do that, never fun.

1. Writing the newsletter-wonderful, wonderful experience.

2. Mailing it: not so much

Times have changed a great deal. I try not to subscribe to any newsletters by email. I read most everything in my aggregator and love it. The rest of the world is slow to come to love aggregators and some people just never will. Email marketing works. It works well. If it didn’t work well, you wouldn’t get that stack of email. As a blogger, you may be reluctant to start sending out email newsletters with your blog content. You imagine all the problems. But, if you go look at Zookoda-you will see that you avoid all the problems of email newsletters and you will get all the benefits.

Non-aggregator people will get your information fast, professionally in the place where they want it-their email. Subscribers will visit your site because an email came to tell them personally to check out your new content. Whether you are just tired of copying and pasting your blog post into email so Aunt Edna knows about your family or you are ready to take your blog to a more professional level with expanded reach-Zookoda has the hassle free (and free to use) tools you need.

I am pretty impressed, even though not many new tools knock my socks off and what could be new and exciting about newsletters after all this time? Well…this…and I truly liked it better than similar tools I have seen and used.

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Secure Networks!

I spent part of my day taking a class on website security management. A good portion of this class was about networks, how they work, the dangers and ways to avoid compromising your network. Very heady stuff! There is a lot of stuff to think about and consider when working on building a secure network. I don't even fool myself that this class that makes my head spin a little bit (while at the same time, I do love the class...I like knowing how things work) will make me a security expert. Then oddly enough, I come home to find myself wandering Cisco. (coincidences are everywhere in my life)

That is why there are places like Cisco that help organizations build secure networking solutions. They have ways to help secure against all the things we have learned about so far. The big thing for me is helping the user of the network stay compliant with security policies. Some of the solutions help ensure that compliance. Then there are ways to help prevent denial of service attacks that can shut you down and keep the very people you WANT accessing your network from being able to access it. If you have a network in your business, you should definitely think about network safety (even if you have all sorts of IT geeky people working on it day and night). You also should look into solutions that keep your network secure all the time and integrate it with all aspects of your business. If you are going to shrug it off...go take a look at the case studies.

This post has been sponsored by Cisco.