Simple.ology

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Simple.ology

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Make every contact matter

When communicating with an existing or potential customer it is critical to make the most of that contact. There is a sushi restaurant that I saw a few months ago on their website advertised an all-you-can-eat special on Monday nights. I saw yesterday that it was no longer there so I tried calling and got a voice mail and then sent an email. The email was replied to the next day with the following, "Thank you for inquiring about our all you can eat Monday. We stopped offering this a year ago, but we hope to still have your business."

First of all, if they stopped offering it a year ago it shouldn't have been on the website a few months ago. Second, they still hope for my business but give no reason I should give them the business. They should maybe offer me a special to come in and try or tell me about why they are the best when competing with a sushi house on every corner.

Hope with no action will not bring the business in. Every business these days has competition and you need to give your customers or prospects a reason to do business with you... not just hope.

Chris Brogan-Become a Valued Twitter User : [chrisbrogan.com]

Chris Brogan has started an interesting conversation on how can we use Twitter to be more useful.

Become a Valued Twitter User : [chrisbrogan.com]

Google Phone

The Google phone rumors are in full force. Seth Godin has a very interesting take on how it may be used for marketing.

Seth's Blog: Yellow Pages in your Pocket

Information Arbitrage: Can Facebook Become THE Uber App? Yes.

Information Arbitrage: Can Facebook Become THE Uber App? Yes.

Some more thoughts on the topic from Information Arbitrage. A long read but worth it. One key point is the idea that there should be multiple settings so you can use one plaform for your different level or relationships. I would like to see that being something that the user can define.

Boycott Planned through Facebook

The Church of the Customer has a post that talks about how a UK bank boycott was organized by students on Facebook. While there may be those out there who question whether Facebook is a serious networking tool, this shows that Facebook can certainly be a tool for customers and employees to gather.

The Cluetrain Manifesto talks about how "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy." The new tools of social networking takes that to a whole new level. Our customers and employees can gather and spread the word so much easier. With tools like Twitter people can share their experiences as they are happening.

While some may question the use of these networks to meet new contacts, business should certainly be using them to keep in check with their current customers.

A few more thoughts on the battle

A couple more thoughts have come to me regarding this topic of the battle of the social networks. One is that Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn is an investor in Facebook so it seems that he sees the need for both.

The other thought is that in the brick and mortar world we make connections in our social world, whether in church, country club, civic organizations, etc... why wouldn't we do the same in the virtual world.

Interesting times ahead.

Battle of the Social Networks

There seems to be a "Battle of the Social Networks" going on out there in cyberspace. The heavyweight battle being fought between LinkedIn and Facebook and people wanting to know which one to put there time into and who will come out the victor. I have profiles on both sites and connect to people via both sites. The question of which one will come out ahead is way to early to tell. LinkedIn has always been positioned as business networking and making connections through the people you know. Facebook started out only for college kids but then opened up to everyone.

These are some of the questions and challenges out there that eventually may or may not be decided:

• Does there need to be a champion? Can't we have multiple networks that may serve slightly different purposes?
• There are a lot of rules that need to be defined in terms of who we connect with.
• Relationships are a vague thing these days even in the physical world. We merge a lot between our social and business worlds. A big question is who do we connect to? What is a friend in the online world.
• A big difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is the Facebook platform. Facebook is allowing developers to build apps to run on it's platform. Now LinkedIn probably doesn't need the ability to throw food at people there are certainly business related purposes to these functions such as allowing a Twitter feed, a RSS feed from your blog, or your profile on Shelfari to share your business library.
  
• Social Networks need to create multiple levels of friendships and relationships. You should be able to limit in greater detail who can see what.
• No business person should allow drunk photos of themselves on any website:) Need to keep in mind that whatever you put out there even if just to your "friends" can get around.

The social networking world will continue to grow and evolve and in the end it may be neither Facebook or LinkedIn. In the meantime, I will continue to work with and learn from both.

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Netflix

Netflix has decided to start using telephone customer service agents based in Oregon instead of online customer service. They have actually eliminated online customer service, quite an interesting step for a web based company. Will be interesting to see if more companies go this route but it is refreshing to see an investment in customer service instead of only looking at how to reduce it.

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Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. The focus of my articles will be on business strategy, sales, customer service, and leadership. As you can see from the side of the page there are many options to get in touch with me and I hope that you will.