Whooah Biz

I found this presentation short sharp and simple about how to sell something. It takes about 2 minutes of your time, but a lot more in thinking about it afterwards.

Was it good for you ?

It all looked rosy back at the beginning of 2007. The long awaited Vista was hitting the shelf’s along with office 2007. Companies all over the world accepted that they would be upgrading, that was the plan. Microsoft’s dominance of the software market was truly supreme. The success of the past 15 years had brought Microsoft to the very top. Could it go wrong with so much money and design excellence? Nobody was talking about the possibility.
There were signs though. Google clearly had plans for the office market on the internet, they saw the future. They realised that there was a large market out there that just wanted to be able to use a computer without any installation problems or blue screens. Google realized the plans that they could solve these problems by hosting the applications themselves. It was totally different business model. The key to any successful product is that it does what is says on the box. Microsoft did it just about if you did not mind investing a couple days of your time and employing technician to set it up. Google went better, and not just a little bit.

It was the simple things first that I noticed. There spell checker was really poor not only did it not recognise certain words in office 2007 but the application was slow. It was so big that you needed at least gigabyte of memory to run it and even then it was bulky. If I wanted the spelling for a word I would Google it. If I wanted calculator I could Google it. If I wanted a currency exchange figures, yes I would Google it. Google worked first time.

I have been long term fan of MS outlook too, but recently I have stepped over to Gmail. Following so many of my colleagues, the product just works. Vista is much the same experience after having used it for almost 2 years, it does not impress me. Fundamentally it does not really do anything else that XP did, at least for office user. But it does use a lot more resources to do it, 4 times more processing power, memory, and hard disk space.

Kinks in Microsoft’s armoury are starting to show and big company related history is repeating its self. What do you think?

I came across a really interesting interview today with Reputation management expert Andy Beal which summed up simply how to make the most of online social media. I do not think I could say it better. It has so many benefits establishing a social media policy.

“When a company creates an interactive online profile, it’s effectively telling its stakeholders -customers, investors, employees, etc- that it cares about the community and wants to be a part of the conversation. When an online reputation crisis hits, companies that have an social media profile are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt and more likely to be able to respond quickly, within that channel.

I advise my clients to look for the “centres of influence.” Where are their stakeholders hanging-out online? When you understand the types of social media your stakeholders are using -maybe they prefer blogs over forums -you’ll increase your chances of successfully engaging them.”

Social media channels that you may find useful for establishing a thriving social network, depending on your market and your niche, include:

FaceBook

MySpace

Twitter

Plurk

FriendFeed

Linkedkin

What networks would you add to this? Which ones do you enjoy the most?

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 answere to some queastions I Posted here

I tried Googeling this one but unfortunately Google did not seem to have any relevant information, so I am going to have to answer the question myself.

I might be quite possibly asking the wrong the question, as the Internet does provide some very reasonable places to advertise. In fact is it advertising that is keeping the Internet going? I estimate ninety percent of sites are being paid for by advertising.

Arranging online advertising feels like a personal experience and it is time intensive. Once upon a time you could just choose a sports magazine, pay a few grand and have an advertisement made up and you were done. Is that so on the Internet? yes and no.

While it is clear that online advertising is increasing twofold every year as we spend more time behind our PC’s than in front of the TVs, it is not clear what the best place to spend those dollars is. Google has ad words its enormously successful advertising program. Microsoft has its less successful one too. There are hundreds of affiliate network sites, not forgetting Facebook, that wants to make a profit too this year.

If money is less of an objective you can pretty much contact any site; I am sure with the right smile your banner could be up there at a reasonable cost. With so much choice who do you choose? This is really where expertise comes in.  A seasoned professional who knows your market will be able to track down the sites that will be suitable for your adverts negotiate the right deal.

Now is a good time to buy advertising on the Internet with most companies offering very good deals due to the immense competition. Who would you advertise with?

The last couple of days I have been looking at buying some online advertising for www.workconnexions.com I came across a wonderful niche that specialises in making miniature engines for enthusiasts.

Sponsorship was offered on the site at, so I contact the site owner and got this reply back.

“Pages for various craftsmen can be sponsored in exchange for a donation to the foundation. At this time we request a $100 (US) donation for 5 years of sponsorship on a craftsman’s page of your choice. Since many of the sponsors now shown there have been given free placement in order to get the page going in its early stages, you can request to sponsor any page even if it is already sponsored. If that person or business has not paid for the sponsorship, your request will take precedence. Please provide a 2nd choice in case your first choice is not available”

It appears to be a reasonable offer above and I am thinking about buy banner space. Than just this morning chatting with Owen.  He pointed out that Seth Godin has brought a mass of banner advertising and managed to make less than his cost in return. Which made me think too. If Seth can not sell it, who can.

Well appears that there is a growing marketing for advertising on Face book and that a number of companies are making a nice return.  I hope for Facebooks sake that is true or we may all have a problem.

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.

Sit comfortably, take a deep breath and relax. What is a rather an ambiguous blog post title and is meant to be taken both ways. You can kill your blog by the posts you put on it or you can do the reverse. This blog post is about how to make your blog posts work for you in a given time allotment.        

A couple of days ago I thought seriously about making Whooah.biz a private blog. My blog is very much a sort of a development to try out new ideas that I will then use on www.WorkConneXions.com or for clients. Waking up on a Sunday morning I read some of the weeks past posts and noticed a few too many errors. There are number reasons for this. My brain works faster than my hands can type. I may suffer from a form of dyslexia. What every the reason the blog posts were not of a sufficient quality to be published. As I thought about this, and talked it over on twitter and with friends, I realised that I was not the only one and that you do not need a degree in journalism or English to make a contribution to blogsphere.

As Sherrilynne from www.Strivepr.com pointed out, nothing leaves the office without being proof read by someone else. My brother Sebastian who is starting work at local law firm www.dc.co.im said that he prints everything out as you just cannot see the mistakes on a computer screen. That is enough justification for all blog writers to contemplate how you are publishing something.  If it is for yourself then fine, but if you are going to share it with blogsphere, how are you going to know if you are achieving what you have set out to do?

Below is step plan that endeavours to insure success in this field:

1.      To write you need to concentrate. To concentrate you need to be relaxed. However you do that is up to you. Whether it is a breath of fresh air or taking a deep breath. Make sure you do it.

2.      There are lots of blog post out there that talk about the writing of a blog post, how you should repeat the theme in the last  paragraph etc. Fundamentally a blog post can be anything that you want as long as it achieves your goals. My approach is too give it a start, a middle and an end and to make sure that it has a meaning and relevance. There is no easy way to do this but the more you do it the easier and better it becomes like anything else. How will we insure that it achieves your goals? By reading below.

3.      Check your blog post, checking it may sound simple but if there is one thing in life that you can not do enough of it is checking. Here are some of my suggestions, you may want to apply one or two of these in any given situation.

A.     Save the blog post in different form than you have written it. So if you have written it in Word than save it as text file and proof read it.

B.     The great thing with computers is that you can increase the size of the text. Why make it hard to read, increase it.

C.     Studies have shown that MS Sans Serif in grey on a white background is the easiest font for the brain to read. Of course one shoe does not fit all so you may have to experiment a bit.

D.     Ask a colleague or a friend to proof read it. This often helps with total comprehension of the piece.

E.      Take a break and check it much later when the brain has forgotten what you have written and you can see it with fresh eye

F.      Print it out, there is nothing like sitting somewhere else and checking it on a different media form

G.     Employ the services of document proofing company. Like this one http://www.betteredit.com/

That’s about all that I can think of for now. With these controls in place either you will succeed or you will find out that you and your friends are not very good at english.