{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} What a fantastic day it was yesterday when Kate and Will got married - sorry I mean their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The media quickly ran out of adjectives - superb, brilliant, perfect, amazing, stunning - they were all used up before the wedding ceremony itself. Even if you don't like weddings, if you are an ardent republican and you can't abide gushing sentimentality you can't have escaped the news that yesterday was rather special. I live just two miles from the Middleton family, so our area was already besieged by the media - dozens of satellite trucks lined a local road. But in spite of all the media attention, what made the day really special was the family party arranged on the recreation ground at our local village hall. There were 900 people there and the atmosphere was brilliant. Although their Royal Highnesses probably had a wonderful day too, everyone locally had a fantastic time as well - because the day gave us all an excuse to get together and simply enjoy each other's company. And therein lies the reason why everyone in the Mall had a great day, as well as those in streets up and down the land - it was a social experience. It is a solid reminder that if your web presence is a social one for your business, more people will enjoy it. Simply having a rather flat, non-social website, or not taking part in social activity online is rather like have a distant, non-engaging Royal Family - something that Will and Kate seem determined to change.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: Should we strive for perfection online? This is an interesting question, bearing in mind the "perfect day" the Royal Wedding turned out to be. Indeed, as Prince William and Prince Harry emerged from Clarence House yesterday morning my wife looked at the "running order" printed in the newspaper to discover they were due to leave for the Abbey at precisely 10.38. She looked at the clock and said "goodness it IS exactly 10.38". There is no doubt that in terms of pageantry and occasions, we "put on a good show". It was just perfect yesterday; not a glitch or problem - at least not as far as we were aware. There had been several rehearsals, of course, and meticulous planning amongst many different organisations. And running through all those meetings, no doubt, was the high sense of "production values" that exists within the British Establishment. With 2bn people watching nothing could go wrong. But I bet it did. Something, somewhere must have gone wrong. But it is the way it is handled that is the key issue. So, even though the planners for such events strive for perfection, they know that achieving it is next to impossible, so they doubtless plan for what to do when things go wrong to avoid it looking like there has been a mistake. This is an important concept to think about when sorting out your online presence. Many people strive for perfection online, waiting and waiting until everything is totally, 100% perfect. I met a company owner recently who did not have a website for his firm because it "wasn't finished". He needed to polish it, until it was perfect. But he had been doing that polishing for two years. How much online business had he lost in that time? How much offline business had he lost because those people he was selling to could not check out his website? Striving for perfection probably cost him more in loss of income than having a static, rather poor, and unfinished website would have done. Here's the thing: your online presence or your website should be viewed as always unfinished. It is always a work in progress. Striving for perfection in such a situation is a mug's game. But rather like the Royal Family what you should aim for is as good as you can achieve, but have in place systems to overcome any difficulty. For instance, last week I emailed some people with some material that contained a link to a page within my website. The problem was, my link was incorrect, meaning that people could not find the information. But at the time I emailed them the link WAS correct. So I was "perfect". In the meantime, however, an add-on to my website "improved" the links - thereby making the link I had issued wrong. The way out of that was to create a redirect so that the wrong link in the email goes to the right one. In other words it appears perfect, when it isn't. Minor things like this will happen - you change one thing on your website and it affects something else. Imagining that you can avoid such difficulties is living in an unreal world. What if the Princes were not ready to leave at 10.38...? Well, their driver would have altered his speed so that they arrived at the Abbey exactly on time. Result? An error would not have been noticeable, even though some flunky would have been pacing up and down shouting "where are they?". So, don't try to be perfect online. Simply do your best - but be sure to have in place a system that can avoid or smooth over errors. If I didn't already have in place a "redirect" method on my website, I wouldn't seem "perfect" to all those people clicking on the incorrect link. The trick is to work out what can go wrong with your online presence, put in place systems for dealing with those things and then try to avoid them happening. But if they do, you'll be ready for it. If only that businessman I met had not tried to have a perfect website - but a useable one that could be fixed when errors arose - then he may well have more money in the bank now.
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Always have a backup...! Twice in the past week I have been giving talks where some kind of backup system was needed. Firstly I was running a small workshop where I planned to use a flipchart to make part of the session more interactive. Sure enough, the company did have a flipchart in their meeting room. Sadly they had no pens to write on it with..! Luckily I had my computerised flipchart with me called Papershow (see: http://uklik.me/paper-show). This allows you to write on a pad of paper and for the results to be seen via a projector on a screen. The second problem this week arose at another event when the projector I was provided with simply would not show my PowerPoint slides effectively. It was a rather old projector and could not get the resolution right to show PowerPoint. Luckily I use "SlideRocket" (see: http://www.sliderocket.com) which lets you create and store presentations (even import them from PowerPoint) and then show them via the web. It has fantastic creativity tools but also makes your presentations completely portable. I discovered that the very same slides the projector could not cope with via PowerPoint it could handle when they were presented via SlideRocket. Twice in a week, having an alternative method was vital to me...! What alternatives do you have for all of your tasks?
THIS WEEK'S "MUST BUY": Liquid Thinking (and not being perfect)
To find out more about this book visit: http://uklik.me/liquidthinking
AND FINALLY: From this week's blog... Andrew Marr may get more out of today than he thinks TV presenter Andrew Marr may well be reading the newspapers today with added interest. In case you missed it – he had an extra-marital affair and then went and got one of the controversial “super injunctions” to prevent people from publishing any information about it. Read More About why providing lots to read is good for your business: http://uklik.me/kjgV6V
Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web:
grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} Affiliate Links: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links providing me with a small commission when you purchase the item. However, I only use affiliate links for products which I personally value. |
