The death of the newsletter

I’m glad I didn’t invest too much in online newsletter delivery. Why, because the writing is on the wall for that medium, for me at least. I’m now following a number of Blogs. I follow blogs because I like what the authors have to say, their thought process stimulates my own, the content is relevant to me and I can choose when and where I want to read them. This gives the information power to me. My reader of choice (currently) is Google Reader. This tool keeps all my blogs together and lets me know at a glance if there have been any updates. If you are in business and want to keep your customers engaged start thinking now about how you want to communicate and give them the choice of how they may want to engage with you. Blogs are your newsletters; a searchable and archived receptacle of information, Twitter is your random conversation, thoughts that come and go. Facebook is your diary and LinkedIn is your professional network of business cards and contacts. This is just the tip of the proverbial Web 2.0 iceberg, and until Google takes over the information world, the choice is still yours.

I’m a Twitter convert

It’s taken a whole week but I have gone from, “I don’t see the point” to “convert”. Twitter is definitely a great resource for the web savvy business marketers. It is real time connectivity with a massive audience.  Twitter is a micro blogging platform which allows you to publish short messages of less than 140 characters through different mediums like IM, cellphones and the web.  
It’s easy to use and simple in its concept so there is little barrier to entry. Don’t get caught up in the hedonistic chase for who has the most followers, use it as a tool and work it at your own pace.
Check out this Blog by Michael Stelzner, he says How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business in plain English.

My profile on Twitter is craignetworker so if you are new to this follow me (Twitter Jargon) and we can learn how to make this effective together

Is social media any of our business.

“Social Media” is the current buzzword in the online marketing industry. Just because it’s online, a virtual offering, we must not ignore it and hope it goes away. Reality is a little more frightening, it is real people using social networking that are hungry for information now, and if you are not “in their space” you risk not just being left behind, but trampled by your more social media aware competitors.
The good news is that it’s not too late. We are all learning what’s hot and what’s not in this massive global community, and we can learn much from each others wins and inevitable flops. After all - that is the very essence of what social networking is about, sharing your life, your thoughts, hopes and dreams with everyone.
I’m comfortable with the web, its been a significant part of my life for a number of years, but my learning curve in how to engage in this emerging medium is going to be an ongoing process, which of course I will continue to share with you.
The most talked about social networking tools are Twitter, Linkedin, facebook and of course mediums like this - Blogs. They are not without their frustrations, I’ll mention more on my challenges with LinkedIn in a later posting.
An illustration of the power of the blog and its short message cousin Twitter is demonstrated by social commentator extraordinaire Stephen Fry. He currently has, as of today, 338,970 followers on his twitter page. He keeps his followers up to date with his movements, thoughts and actions using short posts called “Tweets”. He now has 338,989 followers, 19 more in the time it took me to write this sentence. Currently he is on a small island in the Philippines with a dose of sunburn. He is regularly getting people asking him to promote their causes to his large “instant” readership. Naturally he links his website from his twitter page and from there you can access his blog. On his blog he records in some detail his dilemma with this. He states he has to take care for several reasons including that he can’t keep up with requests and he would, and has, crashed many servers as his “Retweet” suggestion is followed on mass by thousands.
What a dilemma we are in, our technology is barely keeping pace with our demand, it’s been quite a journey since Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 patent of the telephone.
If you want to know more about how to apply these Social Media tools to your own business practice we invite you to register your interest in participating in our webinar series.

YouTube and the Kiwi

You must have heard of YouTube. The concept was simple, allowing people to upload video content and share it with the world. Founded and launched in 2005, it was purchased only a year after its launch by Google Inc.
It’s both entertaining and informative. Many organisations use it to post educational material or to promote the use of their products or services. Like many things it does have its dark side so you have to take care to understand what you are viewing and its true intent. Clever marketers have cottoned on to its audience reach and used it in most creative ways.
Remember Lonely Girl or in her cyber guise “LonleyGirl15”. She created a cult following and her notoriety exploded when she was outed as a hoax, her video blog nothing but a scripted act, shock horror!!
From a marketing perspective it was brilliant. Her series received more than 110 million combined views and more press than you could shake a stick at. From a kiwi perspective we laid claim to the actress Jessica Rose as raised in New Zealand, we love a good story regardless of its ending.
Combining another Kiwi (the bird) and YouTube brings me to one of my favourite clips. The animated story about a Kiwi that wanted to fly. Whether this is a metaphor on the good old Kiwi ingenuity and entrepreneurialism, or just a good tale - you be the judge.

New rules – new winners

I picked up a book at the library yesterday written by Seth Godin called “Small is the new big”. It so happens that I also follow his blog, a recommendation from another visionary and my business associate Russell Holland. A highly recommended read, the blog that is, I haven’t read the book yet so I can’t comment on that - though it seems to be as thought provoking as his daily commentary. The first chapter of the book is titled “new rules, new winners”, It didn’t surprise me that the first page reads “Blogs Matter – If you want to grow, you’ll need to touch the information-hungry, idea-sharing people who read (and write) them.”
What did surprise me is the book was released in 2006. Seth is a pioneer and a visionary, the rest of us have a lot of catching up to do.

Skype turns Yellow

I’ve been a fan of Skype for a few years now. It’s been around long enough that I shouldn’t have to explain what it is. If you do want to know more check out the Skype website.

I downloaded their version 4 recently (for PC), and its claim of improved audio was on the mark, very impressive. Its great for the face to face video chat, a thing of science fiction fantasy only a decade ago or having a group of you engage in a conference discussion.

In todays NZ Herald the Yellow Pages have taken a step forward by introducing Skype to their listings, and as part of the introduction making it free to connect to a landline. Internet to internet connections via Skype are free anyway but there is a 4cent per minute charge normally for Skype to landline calls. 

Well done Yellow, not only have you got us eating out of trees you now have us talking through our computers.

Pingar down under

Well done Peter and Jacqui on the news in the NZ Herald today about your Pingar product. They are living proof you can take on global project successfully even if you live at the bottom of the world. Pingar is a search engine with a difference, rather than just providing you with a link to online documents or content it goes inside the document, finds the content relating to the query, aggregates that content, extracts it, and pastes it into a dynamic PDF document which is created on the fly. A product that I am sure will prove invaluable to a large cross section of business, education and information analysts. This is a global initiative with Peter being based in Tauranga but having opened a research and development office in Swansea, Wales, adding to its sales and marketing office in London and a research presence in Bangalor, India.

We are proud to know Peter and Jaqs as friends, and I admire their tenacity to keep their business global and their lives down under.