Author: Graham Jones

Web sites don’t matter if you are trying to sell

Internet marketers are keen on establishing online brands. Some of them spend a great deal of time, money and effort in building their “mission control” web sites which are central to their brand. However, results from a survey of 115,000 people (an impressive number) suggests that this strategy could be

How not to get readers for your blog

Readers of Business Week magazine have been told this week that blogging is dead. And who told them that? An executive from Google – and not just any executive either. According to the product manager for Blogger, Eric Case, blogging is vanishing. Now hang on a minute…what did he say…blogging

Online success denied to modern firms

Business executives speak a different language to the rest of the world. Indeed, in recent years there has been a whole new development of words that sound highly impressive but actually say nothing. You can be in an business meeting these days where heads nod sagely as people talk about

Adverts online will become supremely personal

Television viewers in the UK may have noticed something strange last night. One of the most popular television programmes for the past 25 years is clearly becoming much less important to the nation. The programme is the weekly chat show “Parkinson”, hosted by Michael Parkinson. In a much publicised move

Get more shoppers by targeting women

Women do the bulk of shopping. Study after study reveals that, in general, men dislike shopping. Even when men go shopping for things they say they like, such as cars, research shows that in most cases the purchasing decision is actually made by a woman. Many web sites that offer

Productivity reduced by social networking

Productivity can be reduced by social networking according to some businesses. Indeed, many companies now ban their staff from connecting to MySpace or Facebook, for instance. Some companies have even arranged for their firewalls to prevent these sites from loading. This is all borne out of the notion that social

Respond to communication changes or lose out

Sofia Rubenstein is a 17-year-old high school student in Washington DC who is in a lot of trouble. She is having to work unpaid in her father’s store to pay off the $1,100 bill she ran up by texting her friends on her mobile phone. During one month she sent

Lazy internet marketers will not make money

Internet marketers appear to think that all they need is a product and a web site and “hey presto” the money will start rolling in. Well, it doesn’t work like that. Just like any other business, Internet marketing requires careful planning, constant attention and testing. Nowhere is the “lazy” approach

How to create more blogs to gain more money

Bloggers the world over are trying to cash in on blogging. They want to “monetize” their blogs with advertising or affiliate products so they can sit back and see the cash roll in. However, few bloggers are actually earning serious cash from their endeavours. One of the reasons for this

Online advertising pays you quickly

There is an old saying about advertising that only half of it actually produces any results, you just don’t know which half. Many businesses don’t bother advertising because it is costly, difficult to analyse without significant research and doesn’t always bring in returns. However, many online businesses would not exist

Companies cannot lie any more

Executives in some businesses have, in the past, been ‘economical with the truth’ – to say the least. Years ago the holiday industry in the UK was famous for publishing details of hotels that didn’t actually exist. They would then take the booking, transport the holidaymaker to the destination and

Internet shopping report draws wrong conclusions

Internet shoppers are spending more money than ever before and the trend is upwards, says a new report on online retailing. However, the report concludes that the future for Internet retailers is one of gentle growth, rather than the substantial rise in online shopping we have seen in recent years.

Future of social networking looks bleak

Social networkers have taken over the Internet – or so it would seem. Everywhere you look these days there’s something about social networking. It’s the latest online “fad” and in its current form, it will not last. Currently, Internet marketers see social networking sites as vital to their business. Nearly

Many web site readers are Internet virgins

Researchers at Pew Internet, the organisation that is studying the impact of the Internet on our daily life, have discovered that only a few people are what you might call active users of technology. According to their research report, 49% of people are what they call “few tech assets” people.

Internet marketers certain to gain from major search engine study

German researchers have conducted a massive study that will enable Internet marketers to gain higher search engine positioning. The research was conducted by Sistrix, a search engine optimisation company, and it looked at 10,000 different random keywords. The company analysed the top 100 Google ranked pages for each of those

How to use blogging in five unusual ways

Bloggers tend to use blogging technology in one way – to write down their thoughts, ideas and information in an accessible format. However, blogging technology provides your business with so much more that it seems a shame to waste its capabilities. So here are five alternative suggestions for the ways

Online businesses that succeed aren’t always the best

Online business owners sometimes complain that their competitors are gaining more custom, yet their products and services are not as good. Indeed, that’s not a complaint restricted to online businesses. At a networking lunch the other day one business owner was complaining that his competition seemed to get more attention,

Future of work destroyed by European legislators

Futurists are convinced that the future of employment is in “portfolio” careers, with people hopping from job to job. Add to that a huge increase in self employment over the past decade and you can see that the future of work is based on individuals, rather than corporations. Indeed, I