Creating Clickable Links

Promoting Your Content on Gather

- Using Clickable Links in Emails and Comments -

I receive many emails from folks in Gather Town asking me to read their newest article, or sometimes seeking my feedback on an older article, poem or image. I want to pass along a little of my gathered wisdom about sending out emails to promote your articles on Gather.

First a little email Netiquette:

Everyone in Gather Town wants to attract as many readers as possible to their articles. There are some good tools to help you in your endeavours, gather-mail being one of them. To better reach your intended audience your email should contain the following items:

Always give every email (every email, even emails not promoting an article) a short descriptive title. People tend to open emails that interest them first, and an email title helps create interest in reading the email just as a good title draws people to your article. Additionally, an email without a title may appear suspicious to some recipients.

When sending emails, you should only enter addresses in the "TO:" box when you are sending the email to one person. If you are including a few other close connections that all know each other, you would put the additional addresses in the "CC:" Carbon Copy box.

PLEASE NOTE: When sending to many recipients you should put your address in the To: and ALL OTHER addresses in the "Bcc:" Blind Carbon Copy box. This keeps the recipients from having to scroll through all your connections. Also, some of your connections may object to your spreading their email address around to everyone else. (this applies not only on Gather, but in real-life emailing also) Also, do not over use this promotional tool.

Include a short description or synopsis of the article to help create interest. People can be resistive to just reading any and every article that is sent to them in an email.

When promoting an article in an email, you should always include the article title along with the URL link so people can easily find your article. You can just copy and paste the URL but your email recipients will have to copy and paste the URL into their browser and hit enter and … well, you have asked them to perform several steps to get to your article … It is much better if you create a clickable link in your email for your prospective readers to click on and be taken directly to your article.

You can create a clickable link for emails or comments by using simple html code like the following:

The html code convention is:

<a href="[insert your article url address]"> [insert your article title] </a> 

Note: you do not put the brackets - [ ] - in the code 

I find that the gather-mail does not always handle the QUOTEMARKS - " - very well, so I eliminate them in emails and the gather email application inserts them during the send process.

Here is an example that links to one of my articles:

    <a href="viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976929595">Featured Group Articles</a>

When your recipient opens the email your link will display like this:

Featured Group Articles - 12 March 2007

Clicking on the link will take the email reader directly to your article or image. This saves your prospective readers the hassle of cut & paste. Plus they are much more likely to click your link right then, while it is in front of them and fresh in their mind.

I hope this helps you create more interest in your articles by better utilizing email so as not to irritate your intended audience with mass emails but instead gently inform them of the availability of your article.

Author's Note:  Remember to be selective in using this promotional tool. Not every article you publish on gather is worthy of a mass email to all your connections. Overuse (abuse) of this tool can cause people to avoid reading your emails and the articles you were hoping to promote. Many people tire quickly of being bombarded with emails. 

P.S. I hope you will read my article that I snuck into the html code demonstration. That article promotes the authors whose articles are currently being Featured in the groups I host in Gather Town.  ;-)

        You can find an archive of my Help Topic Articles at MrBill's Help Topics
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