Blogging is not enoughSilence covered the room as the question was asked, but slowly one man at the back raised his hand to answer. "Ah good," I said, "someone here has been blogging in their business. Tell us your story please." The middle-aged, balding chap rose to his feet and stumbled out just one sentence: "I tried it once but it didn't work."
Blogging is so 20th Century
Business Week magazine has proclaimed that "blogging is not a business elective, but a prerequisite". In other words, if you want to be in business much longer you need to have a blog. Many companies still think of a blog as some kind of diary, where you post company events like product launches and new services, as they happen, once in a while. But people who "get" blogging realise that it can fundamentally shift a business once a blog becomes central to that firm. Here's what you can do with one blog post. You can bring attention to that post, automatically, on:
You can re-blog it, automatically on things like:
You can automatically bookmark it on:
In other words, with just one blog article you can get massive coverage for your business throughout the web. Without blogging, you have to get all this coverage manually. So, if a blog is central to your business, you increase your visibility significantly - and gain more website traffic as a result. However, all this is old news. This is the kind of thing that the hapless businessman should have been doing when I asked that question about who was blogging; I asked that question two years ago. Clearly, much of business is so far behind what is happening online, they are getting left behind. A blog, as Business Week magazine said, should be central to your business. But they said that almost five years ago, in May 2005. Now, blogging is not enough. You need to do all the things with a blog listed above - you can do it easily with Ping - but you need to do more. You need to think about blogs from a localisation perspective. With geotagging and mobile use now becoming increasingly popular, your blog needs to be locally relevant. It needs to be dynamically changed according to the location of the reader. And even if you are not doing that yet - I admit I'm not - we all need to plan how we are going to do that, because come this time next year it will be the norm. Video consumption online has hit record viewing figures, contributing to the billions of hours of video now being watched online. How much of your blog is video based? And that's to say nothing of the exponential rise in podcast downloads via iTunes and other audio providers. Some businesses are still in the "thinking about" stage of adding a blog. They need to get real. Not only has blogging moved on, companies who made it central to their business have also changed the rules. Bblogging is central to many successful online businesses, it's now also the focus for them of a multimedia content production system. Blogging without localisation, video, audio and a host of other enhancements is so "old hat"; yet, sadly, most businesses are still in the pre-blogging phase (i.e. still stuck in the last 1990s). If you are still thinking about a blog, it's time to wake up and realise that the train left the station several hours ago. 0 CommentsHow to make more money on the internet - forget your websiteWomen have a problem; there I've said it, I've got it out in the open at last - a bit risky for me on International Women's Day, but it's done. Their problem, of course, is men. Men have dominated society for thousands of years, resulting in a bias in thinking. For instance, it is popularly thought that men can navigate and that women can't read maps. The problem, actually, is that society has preferred activities for males which lead to better spatial awareness. Until relatively recently, for instance, women were discouraged from football, a game that requires considerable spatial awareness skills. It's not that women can't read maps, it's just that men have prevented them from gaining the psychological ability to do it
Have a brainwave to boost your website; a theta wave
And that's bad. It's bad because a study on the amount of money we earn shows it is linked to our brain power. Women continue to earn less than men, on average, often for equivalent jobs. These studies suggest that there may be a reason; the male dominated society we live in has been restricting the brains of women. But fear not, women know more than we think they do. They do things which help keep their theta waves active and thereby boost their brains. It's not just spatial awareness that keeps your brain healthy. Relaxation, meditation and learning are all activities which have been shown to boost theta wave production. Go along to any relaxation classes, or meditation rooms and you'll find them full of women. Try looking in at your local adult education centre and the same is true, a preponderance of women. They are busy producing more and more theta waves, boosting their brains, while men carry on working, with little impact on their brain power. We are now witnessing the impact of all this online. Women dominate the social web; only one social site, Digg, has more men than women using it. The others are either split 50-50, or have more women users than men. And where is real money being made online these days? You guessed it, via the social web. Perhaps the theta-induced female brain is more at home online than the male brain? Who knows? What is clear is that there is a potential relationship between generating more theta waves and earning more money, particularly online. So, how can you make more money with your internet presence - especially if you are not female? Well, the first thing is learn to relax more. You can take up meditation as well. And, importantly, learn something. Go to evening classes and take up whatever takes your fancy - pottery, local history, or crochet - it doesn't matter. What is important is that you activate your brain into learning mode. When you learn more, relax more and meditate you will produce more of those theta waves that boost your brain power. In turn, you develop greater clarity of thought, which inevitably means you will be able to solve all those online glitches and difficulties more easily. And that should translate into more money. Often, too many people focus on their website and then can't really identify the issues causing things like poor conversion rates, or lack of traffic. Taking time away from your website, doing things which create all those extra theta waves in your brain could well be the solution. Spatial awareness activities like football, orienteering, or navigating in a car rally will help, but perhaps today of all days men should take a few tips from women by taking up relaxation, meditation and continuous learning. After all, women are increasingly in charge online. If you're a man and you want to catch up. do what women do to their brains. And don't worry you'll lose your map reading skills - there's SatNav these days...! 1 CommentThe Week Ahead: Your Web Business starting 8th March 2010
Perhaps, this week, then it will be worth "giving it a go" and seeing if you can plan in a few mid-day sleeps. You've nothing to lose, other than spending more time Tweeting or Emailing, and you might have a lot to gain in terms of brain power. But what else should your business be doing this week?
Well, that's it for another week...I'm off to write my next book...! 0 CommentsImprove your website with teamworkJohn Witherow is hard at work today, but luckily most of his work will be done by other people - his team. For John is the long-standing Editor of The Sunday Times and will be beavering away today so that we can get the paper in the morning. Luckily, he doesn't have to write it all himself; we could be waiting several weeks otherwise for him to get it all done. The way The Sunday Times works - even if you don't like its politics or doubt its accuracy - is an important lesson for website owners. Indeed, new research on Wikipedia shows that the collaborative way in which content is produced is, in fact, the best way to go about it.
Working in a team will improve your website content
Strangely, this is the way newspapers work. Different people in the production process have specific writing and editing roles. Reporters merely write the articles. Sub-editors then seek to justify that what has been written is correct and that it fits the space. "Back Bench" editors, as they are called, then re-write and hone the article so that it fits the political viewpoint of the publication. The result is invariably a much better article than even the best reporters can produce. It is a system that goes back centuries and endures today, simply because it works. With Wikipedia it appears that those articles which have been assembled rather on the newspaper production model are those which are the best ones. In other words, quality content comes from teamwork - but, importantly this research tells us - only when team members are assigned specific roles. This is an important consideration for many website owners. Much website content is "home produced", especially in the small business sector. Even if you have a ghost writer, website content rarely goes through much of a review process. Usually what happens is somebody writes it and then someone else approves it. Often that's the same person - even in big business. The consequent quality of what appears online is therefore not as good as it might be. So, assembling a website team - with specifically assigned roles - could well help boost engagement as a result of increased quality. Here's what you could do:
Giving people these specific roles will, according to the University of Arizona research, boost your quality. At the moment you might have a couple of people writing and "approving", but it seems such roles are too generalised. Providing your staff with much more specific roles - just like a newspaper - means your quality will rise. And what do you do if you are on your own? Easy. Use a three-step process:
Even the worst online writers can improve the quality of their work in this way. And just think, you only have to do it for a few hundred words each day - not the 250,000 words (five novels worth) that will appear in tomorrow's Sunday Times..! 0 CommentsThink social, not companyDecision makers in small businesses are much more likely to look for information about your company in social networking sites, than on your own website or blog. That's the significant conclusion you can draw from the Business.com study of how you can engage small business decision makers through social media. This is a significant piece of research of almost 3,000 companies employing from 1 to 99 people, in a broad range of industry sectors. The findings should not be ignored.
Social media is now the most important online activity your business should concentrate on
That's important and should not be passed by lightly. So let's repeat what the study finds. More social media users will go to a social networking site to find out about your business than will look at your own blog. So, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves a question. How much time do we invest in our own websites, compared with our presence on social media? If your website gets most of your attention, it could be time to switch. The Business.com study also found some interesting changes in the way people prefer their information. Although there are differences between sectors, on average the preferred method of gaining information online using social media is...wait for it....webinars and podcasts. That's right; people now prefer to watch presentations online, or to listen to audio recordings than anything else. In spite of all the hype, Twitter was the least preferred method of finding information on a company. So, what areas should you be concentrating on, in order to get your company noticed using social media? Here is the list of methods you should adopt (according to the results of the study) in descending order:
The list varies somewhat from sector to sector - for example, in the Advertising and Marketing industry Twitter moves up the list several places, whilst in the legal sector, taking part in forums becomes second on the list. However, broadly what this study shows is the significance of social media to every business. Having a website is, of course, essential. It gets you people who don't use social media - around 40% of people on average. But the rest of the world is now so focused on the social aspect of the internet, you can no longer afford to ignore it. In fact, this study shows it should be your number one priority. 5 Comments |
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Phew...last week went quickly....! Same for you? Sometimes, though, the week goes so quickly it seems hard to remember what we did in those 168 hours. Perhaps the reason is we are not taking a break mid-afternoon and going to sleep. Yes, 




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