Crowdsourcing - What is It?
I read an incredibly interesting and inspirational book recently about crowdsourcing. Written by Jeff Howe, the Editor of Wired magazine, it is full of case studies of how crowdsourcing is breaking down traditional corporate structures and ways of working, producing innovative ways of developing products, building communities, engaging with customers and more. Essentially new ways of doing business.
If you haven’t heard of crowd sourcing before, it’s time you took a look at it. You can see below a quick intro from Jeff Howe as to what it’s all about, but this is an avenue I am going to be exploring in the near future. Exciting and interesting stuff that’s for sure.
Tag:Internet Marketing social media Technology
Google for Small Business
Just came across this video on YouTube where Reachd.com interviews Matt Cutts from Google.
There’s some really interesting stuff about WordPress, SEO, sitemaps and what small businesses can achieve for free with things like Google Maps or Google Webmaster Central. For estate agents / realtors you might like to hear about Google Base.
A great piece of advice is that if you’re adding video or audio to your site, for extra SEO cred, make sure you add a transcript! Anyway, watch the video, take some notes and enjoy.
Blogging Value
In the past year or two there’s been plenty of talk about the value of blogging for business, with plenty of positive and negative sentiment. My own opinion, not biased at all by the fact that I write a couple of blogs, is that they’re fantastic for businesses.
Why do I think this, well a couple of reasons off the top of my head:
- blogs open up a manageable two way dialogue with customers, creating an open relationship and possibly even community,
- blogs are quick and easy to setup and present a cheap way for small businesses to develop a web presence,
- blogs are great for search engine optimisation i.e. improving your search rankings and attracting traffic,
- blogs provide a creative outlet for your employees to show the human side of your business,
- blogs are great public relations tools where you get to control the message.
But it seems I’m not the only one who thinks this. A recent article on Startups.co.uk also supports the value of blogs, referencing case studies like Stormhoek Wines - check out their guide to blogging - and a handful of others.
I had intended to post the link up here but for the life of me I can’t find it, but why not check out www.startups.co.uk anyway, it’s full of very useful advice for entrepreneurs.
If you’re new to blogging or want to find out more, why not come along to the London Bloggers Meetup for some inspiration! Or instead just get started with a blog at www.wordpress.org.
Tag:blogging Internet MarketingDo You Bacn?
We all know about the issue of spamming. Every single email address in the world is spammed at some stage, whether it’s with adverts for Viagra, or for a bigger phallus, or to buy a Harvard MBA. They’re nothing new. But it seems there’s a new kid in town, a slightly less irritating email, not quite spam, but not quite regular email either. If it hasn’t already hit your inbox, it soon will. It’s bacn!
So what is this I hear you say? The best way to explain is to watch this video below from the founders of the bacn community.
If you don’t have the time to watch the clip, then essentially it’s all those emails you receive that aren’t spam, but that you simply don’t have the time to read anyway. For example Facebook or Twitter notifications, e-newsletters, or even blog feed subscriptions. These emails can basically clog up your inbox but, unlike spam, you’re responsible for requesting these emails.
As an internet marketer or blogger then, what can you do to stop bacning people?
First of all make sure you don’t email your list too frequently. This is not only important for getting your message across, but also for reducing unsubscribes and spam complaints. The ideal frequency will vary depending on your niche and the best way to measure this is to test some different frequencies and measure the impact on your results and subscriber numbers.
Secondly, manage your RSS feeds better. I don’t know if this is possible with Feedburner but set it up for weekly updates rather than daily. This way subscribers will receive more stories/posts in one email, rather than an email for every post.
A third idea is to check out the bacn community forum for more ideas.
Feel free to share your bacning experiences in the comments.
Tag:Internet Marketing-
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