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review | android | samsung agalaxy gio

How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day

Remember the ecommerce commercial that showed a small group hovering around a computer as they launched their new website? They cheered when the first order notification came through, and again with the second… and then freaked out as the order blips became a relentless torrent.

That’s what Adam Schwartz, CEO of Articulate, said it felt like last Wednesday when we launched their new Rapid E-Learning Blog. The blog attracted 6,312 subscribers in the 24-hour period following the launch promotion, and now has over 8,500 and counting less than a week later.

Existing businesses have incredibly valuable assets that others do not—customer and prospect lists. That being said, telling your existing customers about your new blog full of press release content and expecting them to come running is a recipe for mediocrity. If you don’t have an existing list, you can create an offer that is attractive to social media news site users and your results will be similar.

Articulate is one of the few companies I’ve continued to work with outside of my own projects in the last year, and Adam gave the green light to share the strategy we implemented. Here’s what we did, step-by-step.

1. Positioning: Articulate sells software that allows users to develop flash-based e-learning and training courses based on PowerPoint, which has become known as rapid e-learning due to the ease of use of the tools. The goal for the blog is to provide valuable content related to rapid e-learning development (outside of the software) and to establish 15-year e-learning veteran and Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann as an authority in the field.
   
   
   In other words, the blog is designed not to sell software directly, but to offer value to existing and prospective customers of Articulate. The halo effect of Tom’s tips over time can do nothing but enhance the Articulate brand as the definitive leader in the rapid e-learning space.
2. Cornerstone Content: Before the blog was made public, Tom developed some greatfoundational content in the form of a 7-part series called Rapid E-Learning 101 and a 5-part series called 5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning. A first-time visitor to the blog has plenty of well-organized and targeted content to dive into, which also acts as a motivator to get on board as a subscriber.
3. Incentive: The next step was a free ebook that became the focus of the launch promotion. Tom put together the Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro, which focused on the business end of e-learning, and I added a bit of editorial input. This content is unique and valuable to corporate instructional designers because it helps them see what the true role of e-learning and training is within the larger business context. The strategies in the book allow training staff to create courses that provide a true return on investment, and are also perceived as valuable to upper management and the learners themselves.
4. Launch Email: I wrote a brief email formatted in HTML with a nice graphical representation of the ebook. This 72-word email was not designed to sell the subscription, but to sell the click through to the landing page, and was sent to a house list of both customers and people who had downloaded a free trial of Articulate software. The initial response briefly crashed the dedicated server that houses only the new blog.
5. Landing Page: The landing page consists of an ebook graphic positioned just as in the email, a brief intro, 8 bullet points related to the content of the ebook, a statement that lets the reader know they are subscribing to the blog, a call to action, an email form, and a “no spam” statement.
6. Delivery: The email subscription is powered by Feedburner’s email service, so new blog posts are automatically sent to subscribers. The ebook is delivered via the WP RSS Sticky plugin thatChris Garrett also uses. This means that people who subscribe via feed reader will also receive the free ebook.
7. Start Blogging: The launch went very well, and Tom is now perfectly positioned to become the preeminent voice in the growing rapid e-learning space. Mission accomplished, but now the real work begins. Once you’re perceived as an authority, you have a responsibility to continue to deliver, and I have no doubts that Tom is up for it.

No Customer or Prospect List?

The above is an excellent game plan for any existing business to enhance their market position with valuable content delivered via blog. But if you don’t have an existing customer or prospect email list, substitute in a social media site like Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, Netscape or some of the other small niche sites as your launch pad. The key is to offer something that people really want, surround it with other valuable, targeted content, and then continue to deliver over time to maintain and grow your subscriber base.

P.S. For those scoring at home, the promotional email drew a 10% click through ratio, which was fairly strong given that the prospect portion of the opt-in list did not require email validation to download the free software trial (in other words, there was likely a lot of junk on the list). The conversion rate on the landing page opt-in was right at 54%.

Install LAMP in CentOS VPS Machine

Okay, this time we will try to build LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP/Perl) together in one machine. Assumed that we had VPS with minimum requirement. At least, 1Gb disk space, multiprocessor, and 256Mb RAM. Thats all are minimum requirement for running this system well...

• Apache Web Server 2.0
• MySQL Database Serve 5.0
• PHP Scripting Language 5.0
• phpMyAdmin - Web based MySQL Administration Tool
• Webmin - A free web based hosting control panel

Install Apache

Apache is a the most popular Web HTTP server for a Linux servers.

yum install httpd httpd-devel

We might need httpd-devel libraries, to compile and install other modules from the source, just to be on the safer side. /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf - Apache configuration file location

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Install MySQL Database Server

MySQL is widely used open source database server on most linux servers and can very well integrated to PHP and Apache server in Centos/RHEL

yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-devel

If you attempt to type mysql in command prompt, you will be getting this nasty error
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock’
This is because you are not running mysqld daemon before launching the mysql client. The file /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock will be automatically creating upon running the first instance of mysql.
To fix:
First start the mysql daemon, then type mysql

> /etc/init.d/mysqld start
> mysql

Changing MySQL Root Password

By default the root password is empty for mysql database. It is a good idea to change mysql root password to a new one from security point of view.

mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpassword') WHERE user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

once done, check by logging in

> mysql -u root -p
Enter Password: <your new password>

To Create New MySQL User

To create a new mysql user 'guest' with 'all previleges' on database 'demo'

mysql > create database demo
mysql >GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON demo.* TO 'guest'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'guest' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('guest') WHERE user='guest';

Thats it! MySQL is ready! Dont forget to remember the root password as we might be using it with phpmyadmin

Install PHP5 Scripting Language

Installing PHP5 with necessary modules is so easy and can be configured for both apache and mysql environment.

yum install php php-mysql php-common php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-devel php-xml

Dont forget to install php-gd (gd library) is very important if we plan to run captcha scripts in our server and so as other which are dependent on mysql and other functions.
Restart the apache to load php.

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

To test PHP Working or not:

Create a file named /var/www/html/test.php with the following phpinfo() function inside php quotes.

// test.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Then point your browser to http://ip.address/test.php
Thats it! you should see a php configuration file displaying all kind of paths and installed modules.
Closely observe the installed configuration in your server..
* PHP Paths (php.ini path)
* Apache paths and Loaded Modules (mod_security, mod_evasive if installed_
* PHP GD Library
* MySQL paths and other information

Install phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a free web based MySQL database Administration Tool. Without phpMyAdmin it is almost impossible to mysql db operations in the command line. phpMyAdmin has become so convenient and it is absolutely sought by most webmasters to be present along with mysql server.
yum install phpmyadmin
Point your browser to: http://ip.address/phpmyadmin

Common Errors

You might encounter the following errors while configuring phpmyadmin.

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /phpmyadmin/ on this server.

To fix:
Edit the /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf and uncomment the line deny from all

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

<Directory "/usr/share/phpmyadmin">
Order Deny,Allow
# Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

Error
The configuration file now needs a secret passphrase (blowfish_secret)

To fix:

nano /usr/share/phpmyadmin/conf.inc.php

look for a line and enter any password. just dont leave it empty!

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'mydemopass'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

It worked for me using the above methods!
Login the phpmyadmin with mysql root password we changed while installing the mysql database.

Install Webmin

Webmin a free server hosting control panel for linux servers. It is a web based hosting administration tool and can be handy to tweak settings in your server if you are beginner to linux! You can download webmin here. Since webmin cannot be installed using yum, we can download a RPM package and install in our server.

wget <webmin rpm path>
rpm - i webmin-1.410-1.noarch.rpm

That should be a pretty easy installation! Remember webmin uses port 10000 and should not be blocked by firewall.
Point your browser to: http://ip.address:10000
You should see a webmin login. But we dont know the login and password yet! To setup webmin password run the script below...

> /usr/libexec/webmin/changepass.pl /etc/webmin admin <newpasswd>

login with admin username and new webmin password!
To uninstall webmin, just run /etc/webmin/uninstall.sh
Final Steps
We want the apache and mysql to be loaded every boot so we switch them on using chkconfig

> chkconfig httpd on
> chkconfig mysqld on

Okay, you can find my entries in bahasa Indonesia at www.agranetonline.com

What is VPS?

First time in this blog I will discuss about how to setup a VPS machine. Now this VPS is a normal and common to many engineers who really need quick access to their servers.
What is VPS?
VPS is a server that is running on a platform Virtual Layer under a management system of VPS. VPS has fungsu the same with a PC / Server such as the general. It's just thatits location was on Data Center.

What is the OS of the VPS?
For each VPS has a different OS platforms vary, depending of the organizers of theVPS service. we take an example, Linux VPS and Windows VPS. :)
From there some linux OS like CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, ArchLinux, FreeBSD, and so on. While on the windows platform, mostly located in the Windows Server Series.

The advantages of each OS.
- Linux: Powerful, Lightweight, Simple, multiuser; Opensource;
- Windows, GUI, Easy Management, support many applications, unfortunately not free.We must provide a license for Windows Server on our own.

For the next article, we will discuss about the basic setup VPS linux (CentOS)