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ToddleSMS offers a Community Alert SMS Texting Service to allow you to communicate quickly and cheaply to people in your community. Community Alert SMS is proving very effective by having real time events such as robberies and suspicious activity, sent out via text message to community alert groups.

How it works
Once your group signs up to the ToddleSMS Community Alert Texting Service, you can submit the list of all your users and their numbers onto our system. We create your groups and assign a caller id that will appear on the phone when your text arrives. Most Community Alert Groups have one centralized phone which local people ring to report suspicious activity in their area. This information is then shared with local Gardai. If the Gardai deem that this information is of interest, then a text is immediately sent out to all people that have signed up to the Group Community Alert Scheme.

The Cost
ToddleSMS charge a flat fee of 2.2 cents per SMS sent regardless of what network you send the SMS message to.

How can I signup
If your local Community Alert Group is interested in signing up for ToddleSMS or even looking for information on how to setup a Community Alert SMS Group then please do not hesitate to contact us on info@toddle.com or 053 9102499 and we will only be too happy to discuss the options available to you.

As part of the Toddle Email marketing service, we have recently introduced a complementary product to the market named ToddleSMS. Like our email template solution, ToddleSMS is all about simplicity – We make it simple for you to send out SMS messages to your group of subscribers. Our product is aimed at Soccer Clubs, GAA Teams, Community Alert Schemes, Small Groups, Schools etc.

We offer a flat fee, pay as you go credit service – You purchase credits from us and each SMS you send costs a credit regardless of what network you send it to. We also allow you to setup as many groups as you wish.

So the cost – For a limited period of time we are offering a flat fee of 2.2 cents per SMS sent. This is the cheapest service currently available in Ireland.

Interested in talking to us – visit www.toddlesms.com or send an email to info@toddle.com

*ToddleSMS is currently only available in Republic of Ireland

Toddle is delighted today to receive confirmation that we have been accepted onto the Rackspace Startup Programme. The Rackspace Startup Programme offers startups world-class hosting on the world’s first open cloud. Rackspace is one of the most respected Cloud hosting companies in the world and Toddle is delighted to be associated and powered by Rackspace.

About Rackspace
Rackspace was started 14 years ago by three college kids looking to build a company that many could rely on. A couple iterations later and Rackspace has grown into an international, publicly traded company powering more than 200,000 customers worldwide. Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a portfolio of products including Public and Private Cloud, Dedicated Hosting and Hybrid. Rackspace ‘Open Cloud’ is built on the open-source OpenStack framework, founded by Rackspace and NASA in 2010, and today including over 800 organizations and 6,000 developers around the world. Rackspace haven’t forgotten their roots and remain committed to helping entrepreneurs drive the next generation of businesses.

What this means for Toddle
Been accepted onto this program means that we are now able to offer our customers a world class server setup which should speed up or web page load time considerably. On top of this, Rackspace will offer Toddle mentorship to help grow our business. They will also work on our brand to help Toddle get up to speed on the latest ad greatest ways to get us noticed on the market. The best thing Rackspace can offer us though is the promise to keep all our servers online so we can focus on building the Toddle Application

After getting yet another email today with an SEO Proposal For High Ranking or Proposal to YourSite.com i suddenly realised these are a bunch of people telling me they have an interest and a business in SEO and link building.

That sounds like a target market for my new SEO book :)
So I set up a few auto replies in gmail to automatically send out this reply email newsletter outlining where they can grab a copy.
I will report on this experiment in a few weeks.

Perhaps there is money to be made from spammers!
Want to try it? Grab a copy of my email, replace links with amazon affiliate links and see if you can make money too…. evil laugh…

50 monster ideas to get MORE website links & customers This book is designed to provide more actionable items per $ than a typical marketing book. - Do you need to get your website to the top of Google? - Is your marketing budget being cut but you still need to bring more customers to your website? - Do you wish you had a straight forward list of the most effective ways to get first in the search listings? In this book learn proven ideas to build the profile of businesses big and small all over the world. Buy Kindle 9.95$   Buy Paperback 9.95$

This is a practical guide, well written, witty and most of all useful! Actual useful examples of how things work. ~ Eoin Bara, V7.ie   This is an excellent read for a beginner starting up their own website and trying to drive traffic and boost their SEO rankings. Even the more seasoned website owner/SEO consultant can find some new and useful ideas in this book. ~ Ross Mulcahy, Ebow digital marketing agency   Nice, easy to read guide that doesn’t bombard you with terminology and phrases and instead just covers the facts and shows you how to get on with building links and driving traffic. ~ Donal Cahalane, smallbusinessrebels.com/     Your marketing level Whether you are new to online marketing or a veteran you will find ideas you can use and implement in your next campaign.   Proven ideas & strategies Each idea and strategy listed in the book has been used by the leading marketing and SEO experts in the world.   BONUS: Resources & files Access & download exclusive scripts, images and files we use ourselves in link building campaigns. Ready to use for your own marketing.

Let’s be honest here.
Despite what the marketing experts tell us. Some of us cannot write. Not a Newyork best seller nor a sick note for the boss. Putting interesting words together into a coherent attractive whole has never been a core skill.

I have something to tell you. It doesn’t matter.

Sheepstealer Clothing is a small sports clothing brand in Ireland. It is a personal project where I get to have fun designing t-shirts for passionate fans. It has become my playground to try out different types of marketing. But I have a small issue. I do not know enough about the sport to write about it.
The sport(s) in question are unique to Ireland. Gaelic football, Hurling and Handball. (Read here for a great American perspective of Hurling). It is fast, skilful and great fun to watch with a crowd. I am simply not a sporty person.

What do you do when you cannot write about your market? What I did with sheepstealers is use one of my own core skills. I drew it.
The important thing about content is that it is interesting and adds value for a reader.
I took existing information on the sport and created new interesting visuals around it.
Great, funny quotes from the sport, a guide to the game of hurling or combining other crossover interests.
Infographics are a prime example of this technique. They take existing information, statistics and other data and create a new visual representation of it to help the reader better understand.

The result is new content, updated often, of interest to the market and very sharable. The added bonus is this content now appears in Google image search as well and can be posted on sites like flickr. And it all came about because I couldn’t write.

You can’t write.
So what other skills do you have that can add new value to existing content?

Our super cute Toddle mascot landed in our office today. I have to say we love his little hat in time for the autumn. Want your company logo transformed into a cool knitted version? Check out fiverr.com

This post was originally a guest post on Bloggertone.com

Email newsletters offer one of the highest returns on investment in online marketing, second only to search marketing. But it only works when you do it right.
Assuming you have interested subscribers; the following are the key parts of an email newsletter guaranteed to bring you success.

1. Subject line
Your very first point of contact. Use this to tempt the reader to open the mail.
I add the company name to every subject line to build trust over time. Readers learn that if the mail is from Sheepstealers then there will be something inside they will enjoy or find interesting.

2. Preview
This text will appear in the preview pane of the email client when it arrives to the inbox. It should add to the subject line and provide more reasons to open the newsletter.

3. Main offer
A clear offer with a strong call to action. A reader should be in no doubt what to do next and why. Fancy fonts will need to be images so make sure you have text and links that work when images are turned off.

4. Sell stuff.
Don’t forget your ultimate goal is to sell your products or service.

5. Being useful
Subscribers would get turned off pretty fast if every mail was about me. I always add content I know would be of use to a subscriber. It increases the chance of them opening again next month.

6. Expand the conversation
People love sharing good links and information online. With an army of subscribers loving your updates, make it easy for them to tell others and chat back to you.

7. Reminder
A personal touch to let them know you are human and a simple reminder of where they signed up can drastically reduce the number who unsubscribe. But if they want to go let them.

8. Short & Sweet
I like keeping my newsletters short and easy to scan. If I have a long article I split it into a snappy taster for the newsletter and a read more link going to the blog.

That’s all! If you start applying these points to your email marketing campaigns you will see your open and click through rates start to rise.

Disclosure: Sheepstealer GAA T-Shirts is a product from Spoiltchild. This email does not currently exist and was produced for this post.

Find out more about Dot Conf here. Click the video below to play. You will need flash to view.

You have a blog, email newsletter, facebook page and twitter account. Now what?
You got yourself set up. You are blogging weekly and sending links out via email, Facebook and twitter but you are starting to feel like you are talking to yourself. In fact looking at your follower numbers you are talking to yourself.
Here are 5 steps to start building an audience. One for each working day of the week.

Monday: Find people to follow on twitter.
There are a few ways to do this effectively.

1. Use http://tweepz.com/ to search for a keyword in a users profile. Example “Director of Marketing”.
2. Nearly every conference these days have their own hash tag to people can link and follow proceedings throughout the day. For example everyone tweeting from and discussing the Advertising Technology conference AdTech uses the tag #Adtech. Search the #Adtech keyword at http://search.twitter.com and it returns all the people who tweeted during the conference.
   Find out what conferences related to your business and find out the hash tag.
3. Find a leading commentator in your area of interest. Look at who they follow and who follows them. A tool such as http://tweepi.com can help with this.
4. Check out the twitter directory http://wefollow.com/ or search http://followerwonk.com/ to find people in your market and start following. Don’t forget to add yourself so others can follow you.

The following Monday use a tool like http://tweepi.com to follow everyone who is following you and you are not following back.
Unfollow everyone who did not follow you back last week to leave room for you to follow new people this week.

Tuesday: Post exclusive content on your Facebook page.
Tell people on your blog, twitter and email to go over and check it out and respond.

Wednesday: Ask a question on your blog and ask people to comment.
Tell people on the blog, Facebook and Twitter you are sending out your newsletter soon and they need to be subscribed to get it.

Thursday: Retweet others.
Comment on their Facebook page. Leave a comment on their blog post or write a longer blog post to reply to their points. They are more likely to follow you back.

Friday: Tell everyone on Facebook, Twitter and your email to check out this weeks blog posts.

Every Day:
Check for people talking to you and reply.
Search for keywords in your industry on twitter search and Google alerts and add your 2c.
Tell everyone about any new content or news you publish.

Photo by Anirudh Koul