Whooah Biz

I’m Still waiting….

I did what you told me..

I sent the email to 10 people like you said.

I’m still waiting for that miracle to happen.

To all my friends who in the last year sent me best ‘wishes’, chain letters, ‘angel’ letters or other promises of good luck if I forwarded something,

NONE OF THAT Stuff WORKED!

For the remainder of 2008, could you please just send money, gin, chocolate, movie tickets or petrol vouchers and airline tickets instead?

Thank you!

I was out about this weekend and was asked on more than one occasion why I blog. I blog for a number reasons. Some personal and some professional.

On the professional side:

1. It demonstrates expertise knowledge and expertise in chosen skill year.

2. Increases Google page ranking and key words with relevant fresh content.

3. As a sales marketing tool, to build references through comments and the online community for consultancy work.

4. Generate income through paid advertising.

On the Personal side:

1. As a personal development log

2. to give help and give something back to people trying to understand and use this technology

3. For personal enjoyment of developing writing and pr skills

Chris Brogan is highly accomplished writer and blogger he had this advice to say about blogging in different media spheres.

1. If your goal is to be an entertainment or news blog, be very clear that it’s that and not a “fun” blog. Consider splitting off your personal or fun blog.
2. If your blog is to be your business, treat it like that. Get into stats. Get into building audience. Get into delivering something unique. Don’t straddle back and forth on this.
3. If the goal is to be a great community resource, mix your blogging time with time spent reaching out to the community you propose to serve. If that’s an offline opportunity, like something local, be there. Be active. Be a connector.
4. If you’re going to be a professional about your blog, carve out the time to do it right. Never, ever, ever post a “sorry I haven’t posted lately” blog post again. Ever.
5. Up the ante on delivering original material. Get outside the echo chamber. Writing a me-too blog isn’t the way to build your blog to the levels you seek to attain.
6. It’s okay to use a personal voice. In fact, there’s no point blogging if you’re going to write like a cold robot. But keep personal and useful in balance.
7. If you are attempting to do real business via your blog, look for ways to convert readers into customers.
8. If it’s just an ad revenue business, compete, and be honest about that. Compete with others in your space for audience, value, and better deals. My point in this regard is that going halfway into the water doesn’t make you less wet.
9. If your blog is the premier source of information for nonprofits, for photographers, for whatever, then be sure you’re scouring news feeds and finding information outside the blogosphere to keep that relationship informed.
10. Make a point of engaging your community often in the comments section, on their blogs, on the other social networks where you cross paths.

chrisbrogan, 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level, Sep 2008

Lots of sites have gone through a redesign process this autumn. None more so than Mashable, and they are also hosting a debate over the new design of Facebook. It appears to have been done without users consent apparently. The bigger story is that with more than 100 million users, it means that 60 million – according to Facebook’s own numbers – still haven’t even tried the new site heading into its rollout. While one can accept the necessity for product development I am not sure if they have got it right. With a larger percentage of their users being female. Is it really necessary to make this change? Possible you run the risk of alienating your biggest market. If it isn’t broke than why fix it? What are you thoughts about the user interfaces and which are your favourite?

Catch the story here:

http://mashable.com/2008/09/10/new-facebook-launches-2/

This is one answer to a bunch of questions that I posted here on social media, more answers to follow to that post in the future.

First the easiest way to answer this question; How effective is Social Media? is to demonstrate it:

Go to Google and type in: How effective is social media?

Google doing what it does best comes back with a nice varied selection of articles. From the good side to the bad side and the ugly of course.

On the good side you have

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research recently met experts in the field to discuss how effective social media is in a recession

Article here:

On the bad Side:

Social media “struggling for effective metrics” Just what is success and how do you measure it click here for the article

And the ugly:

Leon Apel makes a case that all the time and effort may not be worth it:

Article here:

There are many other results on the page that are worth looking at, this is just my selection.

I posted the same question in this forum: http://workconnexions.com/node/35#comment-153

In hard times people get a little bit more creative about making money. As there is less money to go around one wants to insure that what one has can go a long way. One might be tempted to visit markets and a sell some products or maybe open an online shop. As Owen, a friend of mine, pointed out that online businesses or websites tend to be seen as a cheap option. no rent, no expensive layout costs, staff recruitment cost. Is that so?

It is common misconception that online stores are cheap and easy. It can be best be summoned up by you get what you pay/put in. For example Ebay provides excellent e-commerce facilities. The only down side with it is the cost. All our clients that use that service are trying unsuccessfully to get away from it. They are tired of Ebay taking their percentage. Unfortunately building up customer trust on there own website is proving difficult. But that need not be the case with  the right planning and investment.

This is where the shop comparison comes in. If you would spend ten thousand pounds setting up out high street retail shop, you will need to spend at least that on an internet retail business to make it successful. There are few shortcuts that really work. If you want to create a successful business you will need to either spend the money to employ somebody to set it up for you in the way that create positive sales, or you will have to spend the time yourself. If you thing that just buying a domain name and putting some e-commerce software purchased for a couple of hundred bucks is going to create an online business, I have news for you. It ain’t going to happen. Pity you may say, but the good news is that with the right tick sheet you can solve many of the problems.

Before you’ll begin you may want to think about the following:

Customer registration and account management, News letter signup, Automatic email confirmation, Search feature, Secure user login, User behaviour statistics, Varied Payment options, Email to a friend

Or maybe not, How about this:

1)Target Audience:
Who is your website directed at? Other businesses, older people, all age groups? It is important to understand who you are talking to and what goals you have for the site.

2) Number of Pages:
Do you know the number and types of pages and how they relate to each other? You don’t need to know the exact details but try and think about what types of pages you should have.

3) Content:
This means the text inside the pages and it is the most important part of the website. The rest of the site builds what we call in the industry rapport, but the contents are what sell your product or services. In fact if your site looked horrible but had great content it could still be successful, but not the other way around.

4) Design:
Do you know what colors you would like or the type of graphic contents? Do you have logos ready to be used? Your site can be graphic heavy as we say or it can be clean and sparse. It is your choice and is very much a personal decision. If you don’t know what you want, you can surf the internet and find some sites you like.

5) Images:
Do you have all the pictures for the site and are they in a digital format?

6) Forms:
These pages are the ones that collect information from your visitors and then send you this information as an email. You can contact us to discuss your options. We will guide you through the process, one step at a time.

When you have considered this you will then need to discuss with an expert in this field who can help you and guide you through this market.

Advertisement: At Wcx we know social media and online business, we know what works and what does not. We have the expertise and contacts to create a site that will fulfil your Gaols. Take a look at www.WorkConneXions.com or our company Site www.wcx.me for more information.

As a web entrepreneur I do believe there are limitations to closing deals over the internet. For example you can do the research get your back ground information, but closing the deal of any significant amount they going to want face to face contact. So you need to adjust your plan accordingly. Make your contacts where you can jump in the car and visit them.

I posted the above on the following Forum thread here

This is the second part of the internet Marketing plan, from here:

http://whooah.biz/2008/08/is-your-blogbusiness-getting-noticed-your-internet-plan

In the months 4 to 6 you will have to think about the following:

Links

• Using www.linkpopularity.com follow the links for popular sites similar to yours and submit pages from your site to those sites as suggested links.

Discussion groups

• Research the most active discussion boards in your area for sales, and other relevant topics and visit the top half dozen or dozen once a week to participate.
• Subscribe to two new discussion lists and participate regularly on favourite lists in a way that helps promote the newly released products.

 
Web site and infrastructure

• Add excerpts or long explanatory copy for products and services that don’t yet have that.
• Make changes in the wording of key pages to attract traffic on relevant keywords that I have totally missed.
• Check outbound links for accuracy and remove dead links.
• Change or add to the sample makeovers/upgrades at my site.

Marketing Plan Months 6 - 9

Search engines

• Continue to monitor the amount of daily traffic, which search engines are sending you visitors and which keyword phrases are bringing people to your site.
• Register new pages or features in the free search engines and directories.
• Research appropriate keywords for promoting new products, services or informational pages.

 
Publicity

• Distribute at least one press release this month designed to produce more web site traffic and more Marketing Minute subscribers, customized for each of the target niches.
• Distribute at least one press release tied to sales or marketing information form the company.
• Brainstorm with other professionals on ideas that can be implemented.

Direct mail

• Send Marketing postcards to old, not-used-in-two-years mailing list.

Product development

• Create two more audiotapes based on feedback from distributors
• Lay out and prepare for printing the anthology of your site
• Create and polish viral marketing tool and post at my Web site.

 
Posting content

• Convert this month’s press releases into articles and post at free content sites.
• Post your Marketing articles at free content sites.

 
Links

• Follow the links for intriguing sites I’ve recently come across and submit pages from my site to those sites as suggested links.

 
Discussion groups

• Visit the top half dozen or dozen discussion boards once a week to participate.
• Subscribe to two new discussion lists and participate regularly on my favorite lists in a way that helps promote my newly released products and services. Web site and infrastructure
• Complete and launch a new blog type web site on related topic.
• Offer services and inter link to the new web site.
• Consider design or technical improvements to boost site’s perceived professionalism.

Summary

The outline above covers a nine month periods where effectively one would begin again and re-apply the plan in one form another. May be by bring a niche information site online to help drive sales or by working together with partners/distributors.

One notable point with this blog post is that there is no cost attached. How much time would it require to implement a plan like this depends. A basic rule of thumb can be applied. The more time spent on carrying out the related tasks the more effective the results. To reasonable implement this plan one would be looking at 2 – 3 days (16 -24 hours) per a week for the duration of the plan.