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business, Generate

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

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Every wondered where you can get a complete list web 2.0 performing companies. http://www.socialtext.net has put together such a list here

On the other side of coin Business Blog Wire have done 5 Reasons Why Your Business Blog Should Help the Poor

Both give an excellent perspective on business development.

Accenture particular sums up social media very well with this excerpt.

“A weblog is an online, semi-personal journal offering the opinion and commentary of the authors. Our blogs feature thought leadership on a wide range of business issues, with a particular focus on helping companies achieve high performance. Here you’ll also find blogs about emerging technologies and career experiences from select employees. The opinions of the writers do not necessarily reflect the position of Accenture on these subjects.”

Consultancy, Social Media Sites

Questions about Social and Business Media

I asked these questions a couple of months ago, and today I posted the last answer. Enjoy.

How effective is social media?

Answer here:http://tinyurl.com/5cdt2y

How long is it going to be around?

Answer here: http://tinyurl.com/3o989x

How much does it cost in relation to other media forms?

Answer here: http://tinyurl.com/5znakl

What is the biggest growing age group?

Answer here:http://tinyurl.com/4lmpk5

What can it do for my company?

Answer here: http://tinyurl.com/4d3veg

What can it do for me as a director? Can I do it my self?

Answer here: http://tinyurl.com/3kk325

business, development, E-Commerce, ideas, money, Relationship

Content Is No Longer King, It Is Who You Know Offline

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I have been thinking for a while how to differentiate ones self from the super competitive internet market. The closely held maxim that content is king deserves to be re-examined.

I have recently been doing a lot of research and study into Law. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the amount of information on the internet relating the subject is more than sufficient. In this academic study where there is little commercial interest and expertise in generating Law content, I found the internet has more than enough sources.

My bet is that if you created a website which is well written and has truly informative content, you may have already missed the boat. This is purely in regards to search engine traffic and becoming an authoritative source on the internet.

Go any to any search engine and type in these words; blogging, How to blog, biz development, I would be very surprised if any blogger came on the first page except possibly A listers, or a blog that has been around for some considerable time.

There is no hard or fast solution here, first it is important to get to the facts.

It is no longer possible with millions of pages being created on the internet for Google to index yours at the top.

We must ask ourselves some questions:

If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

My own suggestion is that we possibly have to start moving to a more local applied use of blogging and use of information on the internet.

For example, small offline groups/communities in your particular area brought online by people they know. It is so much more interesting when you have met the person. You may than be able to gauge your audience and ultimately interact much better. So in my case it would a sales/business development that I would find and bring it online. Connecting to local people.

Thoughts?

Ask a Question, Generate, work connexions

Answer: What Can Social Media Do For Me As A Director?

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This is the last blog in a series of questions that I asked back in August here:

You can choose to ignore social media, many people do. Old networks are still in place. If you are university professor or an expert in a particular field than why bother. If you have more than enough work too, you could argue that you have no need. While it is true very few deals are closed on the internet. There is one problem, with more and more people using the internet for locating information. They may well ask the queastion, where are you?

The world is changing and ways of doing business are changing too. Already we are starting to see the disappearance of regular telephone lines as more and more information gets assimilate into internet protocols. Media is is not the same anymore, TV and Newspapers are all seeking to do more business online. One thing is clear while the message may be the same, the medium is different.

Social media is quicker, more intense, and direct. Like any company that trains and prepares it staff there are advantages to be had. You can choose to ignore and ban the use of Social Media in the work place or you can train your staff in how to make the best use of it.

Some ideas worth considering are:

Ask your staff what sites they use/like? – These could be the places where you should be advertising, or maybe have an online presence.

Encourage participation after having set guidelines –Your Company is as good as its employees, if they interact online than it can be used as effectively as free publicity.

Encourage employees to share their experiences – Gives insight into the company.

Managers as bloggers – Open up a different form of communication in managing departments. Want to find out more. Here is the fictional account of what Social Media manager does, read it here:

Here is a good example of how social media has helped one business in the travel industry Mark Hayward sums up his answer to how social media has helped business by the following below:

How do I think social media can help (really) small businesses? Pretty much the same way social media can assist large business and mega-corporations:

  • promotion
  • networking
  • branding
  • as catalyst for collaboration

What other ones would you include here?

brand, development

Microsoft Has Lost Its Way

It all looked rosy back at the beginning of 2007. The long awaited Vista was hitting the shelf’s along with office 2007. Companies all over the world accepted that they would be upgrading, that was the plan. Microsoft’s dominance of the software market was truly supreme. The success of the past 15 years had brought Microsoft to the very top. Could it go wrong with so much money and design excellence? Nobody was talking about the possibility.
There were signs though. Google clearly had plans for the office market on the internet, they saw the future. They realised that there was a large market out there that just wanted to be able to use a computer without any installation problems or blue screens. Google realized the plans that they could solve these problems by hosting the applications themselves. It was totally different business model. The key to any successful product is that it does what is says on the box. Microsoft did it just about if you did not mind investing a couple days of your time and employing technician to set it up. Google went better, and not just a little bit.

It was the simple things first that I noticed. There spell checker was really poor not only did it not recognise certain words in office 2007 but the application was slow. It was so big that you needed at least gigabyte of memory to run it and even then it was bulky. If I wanted the spelling for a word I would Google it. If I wanted calculator I could Google it. If I wanted a currency exchange figures, yes I would Google it. Google worked first time.

I have been long term fan of MS outlook too, but recently I have stepped over to Gmail. Following so many of my colleagues, the product just works. Vista is much the same experience after having used it for almost 2 years, it does not impress me. Fundamentally it does not really do anything else that XP did, at least for office user. But it does use a lot more resources to do it, 4 times more processing power, memory, and hard disk space.

Kinks in Microsoft’s armoury are starting to show and big company related history is repeating its self. What do you think?

Consultancy, E-Commerce, ideas, money, work

Wall Street Just Does Not understand Social Media

Kick off your shoes and throw your ties away, forgot rock and roll social media is where it is at.

“oleil-Media Metrics analyst Laura Martin cut her rating on Google to “Hold” from “Buy” and slashed her price target to $350 from $580…saying the company’s practice of giving 10 percent of profits to charity and giving employees one day a week to work on pet projects should end amid the current economic climate.”

We do rate the best Pilgrim Marketing is on our resource list on www.Wcx.me and it is not for nothing. This is a great discovery blog post about Social media right here.

business, Consultancy, Relationship

Question: How To Present SMO Services

Question: I am planning to present SMO services as a separate service of our company. Can any you tell me ways to market it. It would be a big favour if anyone can reply me in a descriptive manner. I would also like to get the list of major SMO service provider along with some case studies.

Answer:

First you will need to answer some of the questions below, than we can draw up a detailed plan for your company/organisation including listings, cost structure, time line etc.

Questions:
The seize of the company
What is your budget?
Any current Internet SMO policies
Any current use of advertising medium
What do you want to achieve/Goal?

After you have answered these questions just contact me here: leo at wcx dot me