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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
Second Life as a Second Business?
Over at Web Worker Daily there’s a great article about Dana Jones and her business Second Mirage on the uber-popular online game Second Life.
If you haven’t visited the Second Life website yet, be warned, it’s terribly addictive and after two “real life” days I still hadn’t figured out how to make “Linden dollars” beyond mopping a floor. If you know me, you know that mopping a floor is really not where I’m at in my life, virtual or not!
You can be anything from a fairy to a punk-rocker, a human to a frog. It’s garnered so much attention that Mercedez Benz has gotten involved, you can see a commercial HERE for the new C-Class.
I think this may be a perfect example of how business and entertainment online have lines that are so blurred that you can barely tell one from another. The most interesting part? People don’t seem to mind so much. The launch party (some of which was recorded and put on YouTube as well) was well attended and enjoyed by all those who attended.
Back to the business aspect. People are realizing that you can make real money online, but it takes a lot of coding experience to be able to turn around a product in enough time to make the service worthwhile as a second business. Even Dana on Second Life took on a commission for 18,000 Linden Dollars, which is approximately $63 US dollars. It took her a week to complete the project.
I don’t know about you but that is one serious labor of love to work for a week, part time, and make $63. But if she’s working on becoming an expert (and it sounds like that’s happening) what happens when you have multiple stores and start taking on employees? Do these online businesses have business plans? Should they?
I’m tempted to go back online and begin teaching business planning basics to Second Life business owners instead of mopping the floors or sleeping in a magic pool to make a few Linden Dollars a night.
It would make for an interesting second job.
Oh Andy! I’m Jealous!
There is a great review of Seth Godin’s new book The Dip over at Andy’s blog. He explains what The Dip is, how it can affect you…and as an added bonus, there is a link to a mindmap that basically gives a summary of the whole book.
You may not know this but I live about 20 miles away from Mr. Wibbels. He met Seth Godin at an event in downtown Chicago on the 22nd of this month. I know this because:
a) There’s a picture of them together on Andy’s blog.
b) I stared at the registration page to attend the event for three days.
You see, Seth Godin is my hero. Ok, I don’t know if he’s kind to the elderly or if he gently lets spiders out of the house or just squishes him…so I’ll be more specific and say he’s my business hero. (Even though I’m pretty sure he’s a really nice guy, too.) But when I thought about going, and wanting to make a good impression and say something witty and smart and not knowing what the layout was or if I’d even have a chance to talk to him…
I got a little woozy.
Then I got a little nervous.
So I’d walk away from the computer and think it over again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I’m getting so much better at networking. I have fun, it’s a good time, I get clients. Now I have to get over that "I’m not special" feeling I occasionally have. No matter how much I know my business, no matter how strong my background and skills are…when faced with the prospect of meeting someone that I consider to be a very important business person – I choked.
I’m not just whining here, people! This is a business lesson!
If your networking skills are sub par – work on them. You don’t want to miss the chance to meet your hero when the opportunity arises because you were scared. The worst part is that you know you have no logical reason to be scared. You have a good service you’re offering, you are smart and capable and started your own business! You are amazing!
People WANT to meet you. They NEED your services. You are doing them a disservice if you don’t let them know about it. Be secure in your skills (or, if you’re not good at what you’re selling…change your services…then be secure…)
And go buy a copy of one of Seth’s books. I’m a fan of Small is the New Big. He is the absolute go-to-guy when it comes to relationship marketing and permission marketing, which is something everyone needs to do more of.
It’s not about getting a vague message out to as many people as possible. It’s about touching one person at a time, getting one client at a time, getting one referral at a time. This method grows exponentially, where just spreading yourself everywhere…gets you nowhere.
PWN – First Fridays
Location: K. Humecki & Associates
Blog on your site, or blog elsewhere…does it matter?
The answer: It depends.
How fun, right? It depends. You want to know if the answer is the right one for your company, so let’s cover both angles and see which is better for you.
Blog and Website in the same place
This can be accomplished two ways. First, you can use the blog backdrop as the content management system for your website. This is a good idea for very small businesses because it allows for the owner to update regularly without tons of stress. Even for someone that could code a page, if you’re running a blog or updating sites, there’s no shame in making your job easier.
Blog and website in different places, but blog has a masked domain
You set up your blog on typepad.com, wordpress.com, or ihaveanewblog.com – but you set it up so that when someone types www.yourrealdomain.com/blog/ it forwards to ihaveanewblog.com but "covers" the address bar so it says www.yourrealdomain.com/blog/. Google doesn’t know the difference. Google isn’t paying attention to the address bar you’re typing the domain into. What Google (and other search engines) see is that it’s your domain, and therefore the credit for what’s on that page will go to your domain.
Blog and website in different places, with different domain names
Are you trying to become a resource for people? If you are going to put a lot of information on your blog, and plan on having it become a resource with, say, a forum or other avenue for people to connect, a strong case can be made for having it as a separate domain name. www.myblog.com could become a way of solidifying your expert status. Perhaps you could use the blog site to promote speaking engagements and leave your regular website for your services. It all depends on your business goals and where you see your role in your business going.
Regardless of your choice, you need a good infrastructure behind what you’re linking to and where. No broken links, no sites that lead nowhere, and no category labels that don’t describe accurately what’s actually listed under the category. The blog-as-website choice is nice for this because blogs naturally have a good architecture built into them. A homemade, home programmed blog is only as good as the coder you’ve hired to build it, so it’s a case of buyer beware. You also won’t be able to find hundreds of nifty plugins (easy to add bonus features) like you will find for free if you’re using wordpress.org.
In order to determine the best blog/website combination for your company here are three questions that start you on the decision-making path:
In five years…
1) Do you want to be out of your business entirely and have a team running everything for you while you’re on a beach in Maui?
2) Do you want to take on the role of teacher/speaker, but get out of the service/sales aspect of your business?
3) Do you want to happily do whatever it is you do best and have a team on board to assist you do that?
Your goals are the first step in determining where you want your blog to be placed. Goals also determine what other core services you’re going to incorporate in your internet marketing plan. From that core the spokes of your internet marketing will extend…and the outer edge of the wheel will keep them all connected and cohesive. (Yes, I know I just used a wagon wheel analogy. It works!)
If you don’t already know the answers to those three questions, you’re going to want to review your current marketing efforts (answers in mind). Does your current marketing plan drive your business toward the conclusion you’re hoping to achieve?
Lost in Translation?
So I’m networking. In person. Live and unedited.
Wow…this is seriously a new experience for me.
I like my pretty personalized thank-you notes to send out after a meeting, but I’m always wondering if it’s gauche to put my business card in with them since I know the person already has my card from the event.
You see, I don’t try to talk to everyone at an event. Just one or two people that I can really connect with. I don’t have the energy to "work" an entire room. I wouldn’t want to. If you try and talk to everyone you bond with no one.
So now I’m just trying to determine what I want to do after the cards are sent and out. Do I do a follow up email or phone call. For me, it’s not about what the "right" way to follow up is…it’s about having a good plan so I can keep track of who I’ve talked to, who has gotten a card and what the right day to call someone on is.
I’d like to be consistent if at all possible, and then "mix it up" if I happen to be in the mood or it seems appropriate for the situation.
I searched Google (shocking, right?) and found everything from a simple "Follow up with an email" to a ten step process on how to do it.
Ultimately, I bet that as long as your follow up matches your personal style, you’ll be fine.
How Web 2.0 Affects SEO Strategy
By P.J. Fusco | May 23, 2007
"Web 2.0" was originally coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004. Web 2.0 properties are perceived as harbingers of second-generation Web usage, such as interactive communities and hosted services that facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
"Web 2.0" is also one of the most overused and abused terms on Wall Street, sublimely crafted to reinvigorate investing in online entities that remain rooted in Web 1.0 technologies. Even though much of the machinery behind the Web remains relatively unchanged — just upgraded, versioned, and rebundled — people surfing the Web have changed. Web netizens have progressed beyond solely seeking information to embracing greater levels of interaction, even if it’s virtual.
It’s not enough anymore to deliver goods as promised from an e-commerce site. Merely informing your online audience of breaking news is passé, and amusing visitors with quirky applets is seriously behind the times.
To succeed on the Web today, you must engage your visitors so they return repeatedly. Toward this end, some Web 2.0 platforms could be your site’s savior; others could be its online demise. Either way, much of the discovery depends on your search channel. This is where things get very interesting for those who seek greater visibility.
Some Web 2.0 content management systems, such as blogs and wikis, are primed and relatively optimal for search engine visibility straight out of the box. Google, in particular, seems to adore blogs. Blogs and wikis have essentially replaced outdated forums, third-party product reviews, comments in guest books, and user groups because specific elements inherent to blogs and wikis are naturally search engine optimized. They’re textually rich, extensively interlinked, frequently updated, and rooted in semantic markup.
If you haven’t yet embraced corporate blogging or transformed your glossary of terms into a wiki, your Web site is behind the times. Blogs and wikis can help you expand your search channel to embrace and engage new users, as long as you’re willing to let go of the wheel a bit to allow your prospects, clients, and customers to help drive your online business.
Unfortunately, many so-called Web 2.0 embellishments can choke the life out of your Web site’s search channel. Interactive elements such as AJAX, widgets, Flash, podcasts, and video are inherently inhospitable to search engine spiders, rendering them dazed and confused. If you intend to embrace these Web 2.0 elements for increased conversions, improved usability, and greater customer interaction, be prepared to leverage XML, RSS, mirror sites, and syndication services to keep the search-referred traffic flowing.
To be certain, some search engines have rudimentary means of extracting content and links from a Shockwave Flash file (.swf). Nonetheless, any content or navigation embedded within a Flash file will at best rank poorly compared to a static, HTML-based counterpart and at worst won’t make it into the search engine’s index.
AJAX poses similar problems to spiders as Flash because it too relies heavily on JavaScript. Search engine spiders can’t click, so they can’t execute JavaScript commands. The beauty of AJAX is it can be used to pull data seamlessly into a loaded Web page’s background, sparing users from dreaded levels of click-and-wait ennui. The processing offers a great timesaver for users, but the additional content that’s pulled in via AJAX is virtually invisible to spiders — unless the content was preloaded into the page’s HTML and simply hidden from the user via CSS (define).
Unlike Flash and AJAX, XML and RSS are inherently search engine friendly. That’s because an RSS feed is an XML file, and XML is text rich with semantic markup. The problem lies in the fact that RSS isn’t yet well supported within traditional Web search. It is within certain vertical engines, like Google Blog Search and Technorati. Perhaps Google Universal Search will change the scheme of things a bit.
We actually have RSS to thank for the evolution of pod- and videocasting. It’s the RSS feed with audio or video enclosures that makes a podcast visible to search engine spiders, not the fact that you have audio or video files available for download. If you already produce podcasts, make certain to utilize your MP3 files’ IDv3 tags to incorporate show notes, images, and links to your podcast feeds. Then syndicate your audio and video feeds via multiple venues for optimal Web exposure.
The good news is SEO (define) is evolving to better meet Web 2.0 challenges. Specific SEO tactics exist to expose content trapped in Flash and AJAX, as well as tap into contextually rich audio and video transcripts.
The bad news is the major search engines still can’t cope with these elements without some assistance. So the burden is on us to link disparate SEO tactics into an overreaching SEO strategy specific to our industries and inline with our business goals. As the Web produces new ways to present revitalized content, so too must your SEO strategy evolve.
Ethical? You tell me.
Not just me, I actually was asked by someone else, and I asked someone and that person decided to go to the source.
And got no answer. She received a phone call…but no answer to the question.
I know, I know, you want to know what the question was. This is called suspense…just work with me…. *grin*
There was a thing where people signed up to have questions answered at their site. Now there is an ebook that’s going to be published and no one knows if it’s going to be free or for sale.
The person writing the ebook told me she didn’t know if it was free or for sale. That seems odd by itself because who works without knowing the details. But that’s not even my issue.
Ask me how I found out there was going to be an ebook. Come on…ask me!
The person compiling the ebook couldn’t steal my logo off of my website so asked me for a copy. Thank goodness…I may have been represented in a book (WITHOUT being asked for approval) that is intended to make someone else money (either directly by sale of the book or indirectly by linking to the main site that puts out the book) and no one thought to ask me if I wanted to be part of this.
Note: Before you think steal is an overstatement…here’s the conversation
[11:23:58 AM] hi Jennifer
[11:24:17 AM] I am putting together an e-Book of all the Podcasts and Blog hops that _______ did
[11:24:33 AM] I am not able to copy your logo from the blog so wondered if you wanted to send me one to include in the book
[11:24:39 AM] thanks
[11:26:34 AM] Jennifer Gniadecki says: Is the book going to be for sale, or is it a giveaway?
[11:27:01 AM] I’m not sure – you’d have to ask ________
[11:28:09 AM] Jennifer Gniadecki says: Then I can’t release the rights to use my logo or my company name. Sorry, not trying to be rude, but not being asked before being put in a book is kinda weird. I’ll email her as well and let her know I dont’ want to be included. Thanks!! (sorry for the inconvenience)
[11:28:19 AM] no problem
[11:28:22 AM] we can exclude you
[11:28:23 AM] thanks
I don’t know about you, but it sure as heck sounds to me like I was just going to be put into something without being told had she been able to score my logo from my site (thank you wordpress!) Even better I’m being asked for my logo for something that the person compiling it can’t even shed any light on for me. Right on! There’s some wicked business savvy happening there!
Had it been a freebie, and had I been asked (I know, call me crazy for wanting a little ol’ email asking for permission to use my logo in a product) I would have considered it.
But I got no more traffic on the day of the tour than I did any other day on my website. So why should I contribute to something that could potentially make someone else money? In case you’re wondering, below are my stats with the 16th being smack in the middle. You can see that my numbers did not fluctuate greatly. So this is NOT me getting some great benefit and then me getting snippy about paying back a favor. No favor was done.
Maybe I’m overreacting…I’m totally open to suggestions/opinions/etc. on what you think. Is this as unethical as I think it is or am I just being schoolmarm-ish again?
Trimming The Freaks
Andy Wibbels (or for fun you can go to Andy Wibbles – it all gets you to the same place eventually) has a hilarious entry about clients NOT to accept.
It’s hilarious in that "I saw someone do something really embarrassing and I cringed but still laughed" kind of way. Typical (awesome) Andy style.
He’s right, you know, when he says your client description should not be "anyone with money" – it doesn’t work. Whatever you have a passion for and love to do will become torture-and-fire-and-brimstone and all kinds of other bad bad things if you do that.
You have to have a more descriptive approach for your ideal client.
This will vary. Some people may require an IQ over 90, others may want grammatically correct e-mail, other others may want you to never, EVER use little smiley faces made with a colon and an apostrophe.
Whatever the case, you need to know what’s going to drive you insane. 10pm phone calls, relentless IMs and personal conversations may drive you nuts. If they do, do not put up with them. Well, put up with them until you get the electric bill paid, then move ON!
Don’t let a disrespectful client or a rude client ruin your love of business ownership. Move on and make space for a client you will bend over backward for without a second thought.
You deserve it.
Now go, give Andy some love…
