I’ve said it before and it bears repeating. We’re in a constant battle for attention. One of the reasons we blog in the first place is to get our message out. The problem today is that the attention span of the reader has become so very short and new information is bombarding them from all angles at an ever increasing pace.
As a bonus, I’m going to show you how to turn off notifications from sites that you ‘accidentally’ signed up for.
Oh wait! Are you still here? đ
I love memes and as soon as I saw this one come across my feed reader I had to write about it.
That’s So Fetch!
We’ve all seen the latest popups that ask you if you would like to either share your location or allow notifications.
SHARE YOUR LOCATION?
To be fair, the sharing of location is more of a public service.
Example: when I was looking for a new lawn mower on the home depot site, by allowing them to know my location, I could easily see what was in stock at my local store.
Yes I could just enter my zipcode manually, but allowing them to see my location works a whole lot easier (as long as I’m not using my VPN) – and that’s the point of all of this – we want to make whatever experience we’re creating for our readers the best we can. If we do, they’ll stay longer and come back more often.
ALLOW NOTIFICATIONS?
Holy crap! How did this ever become a thing, right?
When we click the accept button we’re allowing our browser to bookmark a website and when that website publishes a new post, our browser will let us know. That might be really good if you need to stay current with something important. This is called a PUSH Notification. The site PUSHES the content out to you as it happens. Unfortunately, that new push of content might happen while I’m giving a presentation, or trying to get this post written. I have little control over when or where it happens.
Once again, as content creators, we’re all starving to capture your attention and this is one way to get our content in front of the eyes of the people we want. Personally I think this is a horrible way to do it but yes there are plugins that you can add to your site that do this.
Me? I subscribe to hundreds of sites via my Feed Reader. I currently use https://feedly.com and it pulls in new content from all of these locations to one location automatically through the magic of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). So when I’m ready to go read your stuff, I don’t need to go to your site, I already have it all in one place. This is called PULL and it’s essentially the opposite of PUSH. I’m deciding when and where I want to get these. Can you see the difference?
Sidenote: It cracks me up that half of the popups have the “decline” button on the left while the others have it on the right and yes, I’ve clicked too fast and accidentally allowed notifications. Yup, they got me! How about you?
A BETTER WAY
The problem with feed readers is that you aren’t using them. Heck, that’s why Google killed off the best free feed reader out there (their own). Just not enough interest in it. But you still use email right?
So my better way of getting you to read my content is my newsletter. It’s PULL so it’s there when you want. My newsletter goes out on Wednesdays if I have new content on my site since the last issue. It’s run via MailChimp and for the record, the paid version is great but I’m using the free version.
Not on my newsletter list yet?
Get My Newsletter
All I need is your email
Remember, you’ll get at the very most just one small email once a week. My newsletter is just a hint at what the post is about – not the whole post so you can decide if you want to read it, or skip it. Not everything I write is going to be interesting for you.
You can also unsubscribe at any time and you know what? I won’t even be mad.
(ok, I might shed a very very small tear but a beer or two later and we’re all good!)
HOW TO TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS:
As promised. I’ll assume you are using Chrome as your browser, right? Here’s a simple link that’ll take you right to the place you can edit your settings chrome://settings/content/notifications
Using Firefox? You probably don’t know what I’m talking about as Notifications are probably being blocked by default for you. You can use FF and have notifications work too if you like but I’ll let you figure out how to do that.
Mike Mueller
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and wants a really small one). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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