Year: 2007

Online Business :: We are not alone

Running an online business can sometimes feel very lonely. There you are sat at your PC trying to market and sell your products and services without anyone to speak to other than the cat. One well known psychological fact is that performance is boosted when we are in social situations

Blogging :: Shock news from Microsoft on blogging

Yesterday say the Blogging 4 Business conference in London where Microsoft executive, Darren Strange, revealed some shocking news about the company. He announced that Microsoft has no policy on blogging for its staff. People who work for Microsoft are allowed to blog away happily. This is stunning news, considering several

Online Business :: How much is your web site a “business”?

Yesterday, I was in the midst of a speech when a member of the audience shot their hand up, apparently to ask a question. I paused, smiled and invited the member of the audience to speak. “You’re not talking about the Internet at all,” he said. “What you are really

Internet Psychology :: The impact of the Internet on your home life

We now have more computers per household than bicycles. Apparently, there are an average of 2.6 computers in each home. The result is we are spending more time attached to our PCs than we are to each other. And that is certain to have several impacts on our lives –

Online Business :: You can’t do it on your own

Running an online business can be tremendously lonely. Many people I meet who are trying to make money online are doing it on their own. Even in the corporate world the people who are organising their company’s online activities are comparatively lonely – very few people in big business understand

Blogging

Killer Web Content

I received an email yesterday from a contact who had pondered long and hard about business success, online and offline. She had come to the conclusion that the “secret” to success was the ability to produce “killer” copy – text that absolutely persuades and convinces people that you are right,

Online Business :: Be like a circus performer

Yesterday I went to the circus with my son, Elliot. It was the famous “Billy Smart’s Circus” – the one I remember from my own childhood. Elliot sat transfixed, mouth open wide, as the first act arrived – a group of men and women who climbed like monkeys up huge

Blogging :: How often should you post?

As you’ll know I haven’t written anything here for the past four days. A combination of lots of work, a computer network breakdown and a busy social life all conspired against me. And it’s shown – my rankings as revealed by Alexa have dropped. Every time I stop blogging, my

Internet Marketing :: Don’t Waste Your Time With Search Engines

Every meeting I go to I find people with tales of woe about their attempts to get to the top of Google. Some people have paid thousands to get there; they have been promised high level rankings by SEO companies. Often such companies can achieve success, at other times they

Internet Psychology :: Are you addicted to the Internet?

Like almost anything else in life, it’s clearly possible to become addicted to the Internet. If you find that you are spending hours in front of your PC screen, when there are other things to be done that get ignored, there’s a danger of addiction. However, new research from the

Internet Marketing :: What would help you make progress?

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Edinburgh between sessions at a meeting and I’ve been wondering what do people really need to help them make progress in marketing their business online. Is it lack of knowledge? Is it technical ability? Is it lack of time to put things into

Blogging :: You can make serious money from blogs

Yesterday, a relative “novice” to the Internet saw me at a conference and grabbed me. “I must tell you something exciting about blogging,” he said. At one of the breaks, he came up to me full of smiles and said, “you’re right about blogging, it does make money”. Here’s his

Internet Marketing :: Ask your readers

We all sometimes work a bit in the dark when marketing on the Internet. Unlike high street retailers, we rarely get a chance to meet our customers and discuss things with them. Online we behave differently to the way we do in a shop, so when selling material online you

Internet Marketing :: What we can learn from “Red Nose Day”

Happy Red Nose Day. Here in the UK today sees the culmination of two years of planning and fund raising for the latest “Comic Relief – Red Nose Day“. The event is a major television fund raiser, led by Britain’s comedians and comic actors. The idea behind it is to

Search Engines :: People are beginning to prefer social networks

New evidence that search engines are losing their importance has been published today in New Media Age. It now seems that retailers get more of their traffic from social networking sites, rather than some search engines. Even though Google dominates in terms of traffic for some retailers, other search engines

Internet Marketing :: Offline marketing is essential

More evidence has come my way today of the immense value of “offline marketing” for anyone running an online business. If you read much of the Internet marketing “mantra” you’ll be told about how to use emails, how to place adverts in ezines, how to get yourself mentioned in blogs

Internet Marketing :: More on relationships

You’ll know from this blog that I reckon that building relationships with your clients, either online or offline, is essential for your Internet business. Many business people use networking to help establish and build relationships, but often I find that many people are not using networking effectively. So, if you

Internet Marketing :: It’s all about relationships

What makes the world go around? Yes, I know the answer is gravity, but I mean the human world. What makes everything “tick”? Consider, for a moment, the fact that we can fly anywhere we like these days. We can turn up at an airport, check in and be on