conect.com

Number one rule of blogging: Blogs are NOT Twitter! Nobody cares what you ate for breakfast, nobody wants to hear your pithy quips.

I have just been brought back down to Earth by this very relevant observation found at : http://www.thecommunityarchitect.com/

It is interesting to see how Twitter has formed the basis for this rule. I would probably not put it at Number one but it is a critical rule. It stung me because I have allowed myself to drift off topic here and even worse have directly contradicted my own recommendations from the very first blog.

There were of course good reasons ‘at the time’. But in hindsight they were irrelevancies and diversions from the real purpose.

So, stung into action, I have deleted the offending items and offer my humble apologies to those few who visit here from time to time.

A friend sent me a Youtube video offering some ‘no-bull’ insights into how to get your site ranked so that it appears on the first page of Google.  An interesting piece of commentary from someone who has a lot of experience at it.

One of the things he has done is put up a couple of PDFs of Google ‘Best Practice’ For your convenience, you will find them
here (Aussieweb Best Practice)

The reason that I posted this is to try out a theory about how everyday users access web sites using Google. One thing I have noticed is that there are an awful lot of people who don’t know what the address bar is and who think that the only way to access a site is to type it into Google search. At first this strange behaviour puzzled me, but I quickly found that it was often faster to do that than try and get the URL in, even for short site addresses, such as conect.com

Occasional readers will realise that I don’t post often. This is due to the influence of a comedy show that I watched as a child called ‘Mr Ed’. Those who have seen it will understand. To all the rest, I suggest you consider the latest Telstra ad aimed at reviving interest in the (failed?) Trading Post (online) and wonder if it is an original idea?

Tell ‘em their dreamin’

If there is a result or some interesting feedback this topic might go further.

Years ago I saw a sign that has stuck in my mind since:

“A business with no advertising has no business.”

Most businesses start with great enthusiasm. Often this enthusiasm becomes replaced by routine.  Regularly, even very good businesses just slide into oblivion. Have you noticed at the Shopping Centre how businesses turnover? Last years great jeans store is this years shoe shop. Even more likely, the last vacant jeans shop is replaced by a completely new jeans store with a new owner. This happens regularly. What is often missed in this process is that the emergence of a ‘new’ store represents a very strong form of Advertising. We are all attracted by the ‘new’.

 ”A business with no advertising has no business.”

 Perhaps you are still not convinced. You are doing OK and have been in business a few years now.  You definitely have ‘a business’.  Well, perhaps, but are you simply ’self-employed’?  To borrow a phrase ’self-employment is the opiate of the businessperson’. Self-employment is an occupation, not a business. A business has to contain a dynamic that gives it a separate form and opportunity for growth regardless of you.

You can develop your true potential in business. First, you need to understand what it is that you supply. The answer could start with:  I add value to the lives of my customers by….

Once you have that finished, the next task is to complete:  My web site does this by….

All of the successful business operators that I have been involved with could answer those two questions. Often, I come acrosss businesses that know what they are about but have no idea of how their web site should deliver. The confusion exists that somehow just having a web site is enough, as if it is a complete form of advertising solution of itself. Some consider that their web site will be a success through it’s technology.  A good place to start is to consider what a new customer will look for when visiting your site. New customers are the most expensive acquisition for most businesses. So after you have gained one, the next stage is to ask what should existing customers get from your web presence?

Recently, I encountered a new Business Web Site that had these issues sorted out, and two others that did not. The growing business has developed a niche market sector and gone out to deliver service at a level not previously available. The launch was supported by a moderately successful Adwords campaign. The sales result was clear but not great. Using analytics from that campaign, the issues that are getting in the way have been identified. Improvements are being made and more advertising can proceed.

The other businesses had developed their sites in isolation.  One made no new Advertising effort at all and the other embarked on a very big SEO effort. Result: nothing much. Apart from a short traffic peak as the operators eagerly traversed their own work, the sites remained unvisited by the public to which they were addressed.

Advertising: Nil. Business result: Nil.

That message again: “A business with no advertising has no business.”

Oops! I trusted Microsoft again and look where it has got me!

Yes folks, I decided to accept the auto-update from Microsoft to go to IE7. Three hours later I am finally using it. But, only if I select RUN and start iexplore from the command prompt. Seems I am not alone there, looking at some other posts.  There is no IE on the Start menu or the Programs Menu. So, for all intents and purposes, installing IE7 has meant that it is gone for good. Is that what they meant when they said it was improved?

Oh, yes and I could not re-install IE6 because the install program complained that a ‘later version’ was present, even after I had uninstalled IE7. You would have thought that Microsoft could get the install of their only successful Internet product right. But, hey, that just might be the problem here. When was the last time Microsoft actually built a success, instead of Buying or emulating something? I don’t recall, but have fond memories of DOS5. Now that was a leap forward.

Another curious feature is that the ‘runonce’ to configure IE7 loads pages using my default browser which is Firefox and can’t interact with the IE settings that it is supposed to be live updating.

On the positive side, the interface is a bit cleaner. Reminds me a bit of Opera. Surely not ……….

No doubt the bugs will be ironed out with some auto-update, some time in the future, surely, probably, perhaps, maybe. Maybe not.

One thing that happens is that you will feel under pressure to produce new content. Many bloggers fall into the trap of trying to write something new every day. That’s fine  if your topic allows for it. For example commentary on the day’s TV, financial markets or perhaps your daily life. However, daily entries need to offer some new insight to benefit your audience.

If you are intending to write about yourself, keep in mind that you have no idea who is reading. Personal information can lead to Identity Theft. If you go on holiday for a month but have told the whole world all about where you live, the physical security of your property might be put at risk.

Not everything in life has equal meaning. A 500 word analysis of the 2007 Federal election results is useful, whereas, 20 words expressing your love or dismay of the 2007 winner of Australian Idol is enough to get the point across.

A useful approach is to create your Blog content on two levels. Firstly, a series of forward planned topics written in advance, put aside for a day or so, then reviewed and edited before going live. This technique is the way most successful book authors work. When you put aside your work for a few days, returning to it gives fresh insight, closer to how the reader will perceive it. Your content will still be ‘fresh’ but tighter. Secondly, write short and sweet responses to things that just crop up and feel very fresh in your mind.

This was not going to be the first topic but the events of starting this Blog changed my mind. The technical process itself is very simple. All you need to do is access your Web Site management panel ( Cpanel is the most common) and select which of the available Blog products you want to use. You will find the Blog options listed under ‘Fantastico’ in your Cpanel.

Be careful about selecting where to install. If you place the Blog in the root directory, it will automatically make the Blog your Home Page and overwrite your index.php file if you have one. Make sure first that you make a full backup of your web site before installing anything. I download backups to my office PC as the copy of your web site on your own hard disk is really the only version that you ‘own’, everything else can disappear without warning.

I suggest you start your Blogs life by testing in a subdirectory so that you can try out the features before you go ‘live’. Write real content during your testing as otherwise you are wasting valuable time and might also lose momentum. Reworking stuff is a chore. One thing that I found useful was writing in Word so that I got spellcheck and also had an offline copy to fall back upon.

Which product to use is probably not important. They are all more alike than different. Originally I started with ‘Nucleus’. I chose it because it has the smallest install size and usually that is a sign of good design. It worked well for most functions but the default search was not working properly, so I gave it away rather than work out why. Life is too short to be bothered with sorting out software issues. The appearance of your site can be changed on the fly by loading a template written by someone else or uniquely by you. Template development is technically challenging for most people not working professionally with computers. However, getting acess to good quality free templates is easy. Personally, I like simplicity and will probably stick to the Wordpress default.

Having switched over to Wordpress, I find the interface less techy which is probably why it is so popular. However, it works best using Internet Explorer and produces some strange results under Opera, which is my preferred Browser. No doubt in a years time I will wish that I had stuck with Nucleus because it does seem a bit tighter. Anything that gives different results in different browsers is a bit of concern.

However, selecting your Blog software (CMS - content management software) is not likely to be the greatest challenge involved.
The real issues are

1. what are you going to Blog about,
2. can you keep generating fresh content; and
3. will anyone find your Blog and read it?

These are all challenges that we share in common. For myself, I will concentrate on technical and useability topics that I encounter in consulting work, try not to write just for the sake of it and trust in the relevance of the content to find an audience.

To finish off, I should point out that if you don’t have a web site already, you can use free Blog publishers who make their money out of advertising to you and your readers. Just search for ‘free blog’ in Google.