I’ve received quite a few questions already from my great techpatio.com readers, asking me how I get that message to appear at the bottom of my posts that (per default) says: “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!”.
I changed mine a bit, so that it now says:
The plugin is called: What Would Seth Godin Do, or WWSGD for short.
First let’s have a quick look at who this Seth Godin guy is…
Who’s Seth Godin?
Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an online promotion specialist and Internet SEO guru who advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site – he’s the inspiration behind the WWSGD plugin, which this article is about.
Seth runs a blog where he posts great marketing tips every now and then as well as some short posts that will help you get past obstacles, like his recent post on Traction and friction, a blog post that gets the message out in just 183 words.
Seth also writes books on marketing. I haven’t read any of his books yet, but I just ordered two of them from Amazon. The two I ordered are marked in bold below, these are the books I believe bloggers/Internet Marketeers might be able to benefit from (I also wanted to get the one in italic, but Amazon couldn’t deliver it to my country):
- Small Is The New Big:
and 183 Other Riffs, Rants and Remarkable Business Ideas - Permission Marketing:
Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers - All Marketers Are Liars:
The Power Of Telling Authentic Stories In A Low-Trust World - Tribes:
We Need You To Lead Us - Meatball Sundae:
Is Your Marketing Out Of Sync? - The Dip:
A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (And When To Stick) - The Big Moo:
Stop Trying To Be Perfect And Start Being Remarkable - Purple Cow:
Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable - Free Prize Inside:
The Next Big Marketing Idea - Survival Is Not Enough:
Why Smart Companies Abandon Worry And Embrace Change - The Big Red Fez:
How To Make Any Web Site Better - Unleashing The Ideavirus
Now that we’ve covered what Seth Godin is good at, let’s move on to what “his” WordPress plugin does…
What Does WWSGD Do?
As mentioned, this plugin makes a text box appear at the bottom of posts. You can also have it appear at the top of your posts, without having to touch the coding of your theme, it’s just a matter of selecting your preferences within the plugin’s settings. Or you can place it wherever you like, if you do a little bit of coding in your theme files, it’s very easy though.
You can also set it up so that it only displays to the first, say, 3 times a visitor comes to your site. After then, he might already have subscribed to your feed or you might not want to bug him about it again. In that case, after 3 visits that is, you can display a different message. I don’t currently use that feature as I’m not sure what to write, but you could display a message something like “Welcome back, have you subscribed to my RSS feed yet?”, I guess. For now I simply don’t display a message to returning visitors.
That’s pretty much all it does. But it’s effective!
Why Do I Need WWSGD?
It’s an easy and unobtrusive way to remind your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed for future updates and hopefully turn them into loyal readers, which is great!
The plugin is simple and extremely easy to set up, you’re up and running in a matter of minutes (if not faster).
At setup, the plugin will display it’s message at the top of blog posts – that’s probably where you’ve seen it the most, if you often read blogs. I would suggest, however, to put it at the bottom of your post. Look at it like this: If a reader comes to your site, what are the chances that he will want to subscribe before he gets to read your content? After reading your content – and if he liked it – he should be more interested in subscribing, than when he first arrived.
Alternatives To WWSGD
There’s at least one other alternative to the WWSGD plugin that I’ve seen so far, it’s the WP Greet Box plugin. It’s more advanced and offers more settings, so if you’re into that stuff, you should check it out. If you just want something easy to use and setup in a jiffy, be sure to check out WWSGD.
I first learned about the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin from Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick as part of their Become A Blogger program – a program which I can highly recommend to you, if you’re a blogger wanting to get an edge in the blogosphere and learn how to monetize your site.
Seth Godin: Sliced Bread & Other Marketing Delights
I strongly suggest that you end off this article by watching this video from Seth Godin where he speaks at TED on how to cut through the clutter and leave an impression on people. Nothing is groundbreaking in what he says but it’s motivating and inspirational. Pop some corn and sit back comfortable – I’m sure you will not regret spending 19 minutes watching this video!
I have seen this plugin around before, but I ended up finding it after installing the other WordPress Plugin that you mentioned WP_Greet Box.
Seems like both of them get the job done.
.-= Extreme John´s last blog ..Sunday Smash Business Tips, Blogging Tips and SEO Tips =-.
They sure do – so as long as you’re happy with your choice 🙂
This plugin actually destroys the search engine rankings as have noted by many bloggers. Try to get rid of this.
.-= BlogrPro´s last blog ..Domain Registrars – A new threat to your domain name! =-.
The only thing I could possibly think of where this plugin or similar could have an effect on search engine rankings, is if:
1) You set it to display the message at the top of the post (which is default though, but I recommend putting it at the bottom).
2) You do not have a meta description in your post.
3) Google for some reason doesn’t think that your content is “worth” displaying as the excerpt below your search engine listing and displays the first part of it (the “If you’re new here…”-text, which I think is highly unlikely).
That’s the same issue as mentioned here:
http://www.bloggingtips.com/2009/10/01/how-plugins-can-hurt-your-search-engine-rankings/
While it may be true that if you do a search for: “site:yoursite.com”, it will display your pages with the “If you’re new here…”-text below if you’re not using meta descriptions, I doubt that is the case in most results as Google will often – if no meta description is available – take an excerpt from your content that contains the keywords searched for.
For example, here I searched for two different keyphrases that both returned the same page from within TechPatio as number one, but the description differs according to my search, like you can see here and here.
So I wouldn’t say that it directly hurts your search engine rankings, but it can affect them if you’re not doing anything to improve your results in the first place 🙂
Or maybe you had something else in mind?
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Learn How To Launch & Make An Income From Membership Sites =-.
Klaus,
That’s a very useful plugin, and I like the way you share with us the creator Seth Godins’ work on this plugin, and his history and presence as an online promotion specialist and Internet SEO guru. That is really helpful, as it seems like there is a lot of help he offers in his books and his blog.
I’ll let you know how I find that video, when I have a little bit more time on my hands. 🙂
Great post as ever, and thank you for an inspiring and insightful read.
.-= Ana´s last blog ..Light in colour =-.
Thanks for your feedback! I don’t think you’re using any similar plugin at Expressive World yet, are you?
Actually the two books from Seth Godin was just shipped from Amazon today, so I’m looking very much forward to reading some more from him.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Learn How To Launch & Make An Income From Membership Sites =-.
Hey Klaus,
No, am not using a similiar plugin as of yet. I forgot to mention, I tested the plugin out last night and was impressed by it, but I decided to take it out. I think I’m going to tweak it to my liking in design when I have a bit more time on my hands, and see from then on. Thanks! 🙂
P.S-I have been really bad (not much time on pc) in putting the word out on a new project which I have just gone in partnership with. It’s a forum targetted at blog users and helping them start up in an honest way. It hasn’t actually started moving yet, but I’d thought I’d mention it to you at least, and get the ball rolling. I think in time we’ll interlace with already established pro-bloggers like yourself and give advice on the forum. It’s all in the beginning phases. I was quite surprised I was offered this lead, but I think with my keen enthusiasm in supporting other bloggers, I couldn’t pass this up and my past experience in forum building/creating/moderating and what nots. Well, without further undo it’s : http://www.scorched-earth.net/blogforum/
Kind Wishes
.-= Ana´s last blog ..Light in colour =-.
Thanks for mentioning your new forum project. You’re probably already aware that starting up a forum takes an extreme amount of work – I’d say even more than a blog, because on a forum you’re dependant on other users in order to get a forum active.
In the beginning you have to put in a lot of effort engaging new users/bloggers to stop by and post every now and then – you might even have to create multiple accounts yourself and have a thread going with your own user accounts, so other users will feel inclined to join in on the discussion. Nobody wants to join a discussion with just 1-2 posts in the past week 🙂
Activity = more activity.
Best of luck with your project – please keep me updated, maybe I can do a short review post about it, help you get some members.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Membership Site: How To Find Out What Your Members Want Before You Launch =-.
Great idea! I would try the plugin and see how it works for my blog. Thanks for the tips Klaus 🙂
.-= Kiran´s last blog ..Say Yes to Change =-.
Thanks for the thorough write-up of WWSGD. I actually came to this post because we are in the throes of deciding between it and WP Greet Box. Not sure which way to go. If you have any updated thoughts (particularly regarding whether or not WWSGD has impacted your stats), I’d love to hear it.
.-= Daniel Noll´s last blog ..From Bangkok to Buenos Aires, For the Love of Public Transport =-.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your comment and question. Well, at this time I have less than 200 subscribers, so it’s hard to say what impact WWSGD (or WP Greet would have) had. A few months ago I did start tracking clicks through the WWSGD plugin but it’s no big deal, I might have received a few more subscribers.
I’m sure though, my niche is probably not the best for RSS subscribers. I get a lot of “hit ‘n’ run” visits here, coming in from Google and once they get what they need, they’re outta here. I think most of my subscribers are other bloggers who also like to network a bit.
But, give either of the plugins a go and see if you can spot a difference in your niche. You could also use them to get people to signup for your newsletter or whatever you’ll be offering.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Funny Pictures: Google Street View Launched In Denmark =-.
Hi,
Could you please explain how you’ve used the WWSGD plugin to generate the textbox you have at the end of your posts. It looks great, but I don’t know how to make mine look like this!
Thanks,
Jason
Hi Jason,
Basically you just have to style it a bit using CSS and HTML, inside the WWSGD plugin settings.
Please tell me which php files in my theme to embed this code into, and then how to get it to display on my homepage. I want to display it on my homepage only, which is not a blog page.
Thanks!
Interesting plugin. I’ll check on it and give it a try. Thanks for the tip, Klaus 🙂 Btw, Seth is one of my faves too!
I just installed this today and I love it already! Your review of it is quite detailed and I’m glad that you took the time to mention the main competitor. I’m going to have to check that out to see how it compares.
Thanks,
Renee