Some twits just don’t get it
Some people just don’t get the idea behind Twitter and their Direct Selling (no, it’s not Direct Marketing, it’s selling!) makes me want to scream. I’m scanning through my messages and am wondering what people are thinking about when they send me this stuff.
Listen, I don’t want to make $4,000 per month with Twitter by hacking off the whole Twitter community, I don’t want a 1,000 new followers by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, and I don’t want any free gifts, free reports, free webinars or free courses. While I’m at it, I don’t want my Twitter feed bombarded and stuffed with spam either.
Selling through Twitter is, I’d suggest, like selling anywhere else: People buy from people, not from some faceless avatar that you’ve never met and unlikely to trust. So, for those seeking to use Twitter as a sales tool, try applying some thought behind what you’re doing before you get going. For those spammers that bombard me dozens of times a day, you are wasting your time with me. I will never ever buy anything from you unless I know you first.
5 Things to do online this Xmas
The Christmas break is a great time to take stock of life in general and to try and learn a few new things with less time pressure that usual. Here’s a handful of things to try online:
1. Google yourself, your friends and your exes!
With an estimated 20 billion web pages in its index, the chances are that there’ll be a reference to someone you know listed in Google. If there’s not a specific reference you yourself, you may well have a namesake living somewhere else in the world. If there is, drop them a note, they’ll more than likely be pleased, or at least curious, to hear from you. You can extend your search to friends, work colleagues, old school mates and even exes, you’ll be amazed what you can find out!
2. Get Flickr’ing.
Most people now own, or have access to, a digital camera (nearly all mobiles have one these days) and have thousands of digital images clogging up their computers’ hard-drive. One of the joys of photography is sharing your photos and memories and flick.com is a great place to do it – and it’s free!
You can create your own online albums, upload images to them and then share them with the world. Guests who view your photos can also comment on them and you can get some great feedback on what’s great about your pics and how they can be improved.
If you fancy yourself as a critic, you can also comment on other people’s photos. Flickr.com has an estimated 4billion photos that should keep even the harshest critic busy for a few days.
3. Get a new Notebook.
We’re not talking about a new laptop here but referring to a great online service that helps wean you off post-it pads and start using a digital version instead. www.evernote.com lets you post notes, pictures, videos, screen-shots, web-pages and just about anything else you can think of to an online site that allows you to retrieve your notes wherever you have internet access, including your mobile. And it’s free!
The concept of saving ‘post-it’ notes online takes a little thinking about but once you’re over that, you’ll ever go back. You can organise notes into different notebooks – home, work, projects, hobbies etc and tag them (e.g. articles, shopping, technology) for easy searching, retrieval and amending. If you have mobile Internet access, try the mobile application, it’s great for capturing your notes and thoughts while on the go.
4. Entertain yourself with Youtube.
We’ve all spent hours over Christmas watching reruns and boring TV but with Youtube there’s no longer any need nor reason to get bored. There are more hours of entertainment uploaded to Youtube every day than the movie industry produces in a year. You can watch everything from the latest X-factor contestant to an explanation of how a rocket engine works, and you can watch it when you choose to watch it. So if there’s nothing that grabs your attention on the TV, power up you PC and have a surf around Youtube. You will be amazed as to what people will film themselves doing!
As a bit of fun, if you reply to this post with your favourite Youtube clip I’ll share it here (subject to editorial review). One of my favourites to make you smile is below..
5. Check out the sales.
Shopping online has always been about bargain hunting so, for the sales this January, don’t get up early and camp outside in the pouring cold rain; log-on early, grab yourself a nice cup of coffee, turn on your pc and surf in the warmth and comfort of your own home.
‘Etailers’ (online retailers) know that people want to enjoy the sales online and often provide early notices for their registered customers. Get registered for advance notices and get a lead on the other bargain hunters.
So, instead of getting bored with TV and relatives, get online an have some fun. Let me know any great sites or services you come across.
Nadolig Llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda.
Will you be my friend?
Since we were apes, we have always had a strong desire to belong to social groups and to network (communicate) with others. Throughout our existence we have grouped ourselves into specific groups and communities with other, like-mined, people for support and to share experiences.
The Internet has allowed social networking activities to evolve on a scale that even 20 years ago was unimaginable. Social network service providers, like Facebook, allow new groups to form and evolve on a global scale within minutes. You can now join special interest groups that share experiences on growing, say, minature tomatoes or a general group that links school-friends or family members.
Other popular sites that you may have heard about include MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, YouTube, Friends Reunited and, of course, Twitter. All these cater for slightly different groups, ages and needs but they all have one thing in common; they provide a service that allows anyone to keep in touch with, and grow, their own network of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances.
Although the main growth in the use of these sites is by the young and early adopters who generally accept, and are very comfortable with, these technologies, there is a growing acceptance by the older generation who have been introduced to the technology through Friends Reunited (now with an estimated 21 million members!).
People tend join social networking sites for all kind of reasons:
As personal time becomes even more scarce, they are a great way to keep in touch with your friends, especially as friend-networks are now geographically diverse. The days are long gone when the friends you grew up with still live in the same village as you – even I have childhood friends that are now spread-out all over the world. Social Network sites make keeping in touch really easy and fun.
Many businesses use social networking sites to keep in touch with their employees, suppliers, sub-contractors and even customers.
Teenagers use a multitude of new media technologies, including social networking sites, to keep in touch with their friends. Bebo and MySpace are favourites with this age group and features that include photo-albums and polls make these sites interactive, great fun and very addictive.
As well as the social aspects of these sites, they also provide more serious applications; special interest groups and politicians use them to spread the word, gain support and get feedback on their opinions and policies and businesses are using them as powerful marketing tools – although beware, as negative views spread more quickly than positive ones!
Another type of social network site that has grown massively since their advent is the online dating community. Virtual dating with the goal of finding your perfect partner has evolved from being a sleazy pastime to a serious business. An estimated 1 in 12 newlyweds in the UK initially met online and the fastest growing sector is those aged 50 and up. We usually only hear of the more unusual stories but there are thousands of new relationships starting every day around the world thanks to social networking sites. With the Internet changing so much of our lives, why should the human heart be exempt?
Looking forward, the ever reducing cost of getting online with mobile devices, the explosion in availability of rich content such as music and video, coupled with our ever increasing fascination with technology, will make social networking sites an ever more important point of contact with our chosen social group; with whom we will be able to share experiences, like watch a film, as well as just keeping in touch.
Has the way we make and retain friends changed forever? Hopefully not, but keeping in touch with them certainly has.
Have you, or your, business used social networking site to help communicate with your network in an innovative way?
(article originally written for out-and-out-living magazine, June 2008)
What’s all this fuss about Google Wave?
My Google wave invite came through the other day so I’ve signed up and now want to get working with it. Problem is, not many people have this great little tool and they can’t understand what the fuss is all about. So, if you don’t have Google Wave yet, here’s why you should get yourself an invite…
Yell.com: Not the future of local search
Yell.com are one of THE big names, everywhere, which is why I was suprised to read the other day about their financial difficulties (and tweeted about it).
Yell.com are seeking to refinance £3.8billion (that’s £3,800,000,000!) and, at the same time, are looking to raise a further £660m (that’s another £660,000,000 ) from its investors.
For most business owners these figures are incomprehensibly large.
At its simplest level Yell.com provide directory services to businesses and generates revenue through advertising. That’s a simple enough concept for most of us to grasp and makes one wonder why, therefore, Yell.com are in such difficulty.
The simples answer is, of course, The Internet and the shift in consumer habits in relation to local search ( I do, however, accept that there are some complex issues behind the current difficult financial situation)
Personally, I can’t remember the last time i looked at the Yellow Pages so I took a quick straw-poll of my friends to see what they thought. Not one could remember the last time they used Yellow pages (nor yell.com for that matter) to find a local product or service over using The Internet. Not one could remember the last time they dusted off their copy of Yellow Pages and tried to find their local drain unblocking service, removals company or dentist.
And there’s the rub: More and more frequently, consumers are turning to the Internet as their first point of call for local search and, with some 90% of the UK market, Google will be the main deliverer of results for those searches.
As businesses catch onto this situation and turn to direct, online, niche search, they will benefit from reduced advertising costs and improved conversions. Where though does that leave Yell.com, its debt and investors?
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