The This is Broken Blog has been around for a few years, but I have only just come across it as a result of seeing the short speech by Seth Godin at the 2006 Good Experience Live Conference (GEL 2006). In this speech Seth explores some real life examples of customer experience and how businesses do things to break the customer relationship.
As well as being a really entertaining speech, it certainly made me think about what I might be doing to damage customer relationships - The video is about 20 minutes - but it might save you thousands of dollars.
Seth Godin at Gel 2006 (Good Experience Live Conference)
Incidentally if you want to see other speeches from GEL 2006 (or 2005 or EuroGEL 2006) you can find them all on the GEL Web site
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
What is Web 2.0?
I have written a lot on this blog about Web 2.0 - but this short video animation entitled Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology is the best explanation I have seen - it is less than 5 minutes - so watch and enjoy.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
LinkedIn - Now becoming a really useful network
I have been using the LinkedIn network for a couple of years now but to be honest it has never really been my favourite on-line network because it really didn't contain much in the way of networking tools - but that is all changing.
If you want to look for a job in IT, or promote yourself to prospective head hunters, or look for joint venture partners in a software project there is no doubt that LinkedIn really works. There are some very high profile success stories like Scott Rafer who contacted Eric Marcoullier one of the founders of MyBlogLog with an idea for the development of the product, got appointed as CEO and has just picked up a very nice fortune when the business was acquired by Yahoo last month.
But things are happening at LinkedIn to make the network more interactive in particular the new Answers feature which enables you to ask any question and get responses from the LinkedIn network - very useful if you want some opinions on a product or service or if you want to undertake some research - but most importantly it is getting members of the linked in network interacting where it had been fairly static.
The real value of LinkedIn is in helping members find out who their network knows and getting introduced. I have just 330 members in my network - but they know nearly 150,000 people. However even getting people I know who are on LinkedIn to connect never been very user friendly. If you click on my profile in the right side panel it is not easy to see how to link to me and you need to then go find my email address to send the invite all of which means you may not bother. However yesterday Marketing Hipster Cord Silverstein pointed me to a very neat widget created by Andy Beard - the LinkeIn Fast button
Just Click to Connect
Get your own LinkedIn Fast
Update: As you can see this neat widget is no more. LinkedIn objected and Andy removed it (actually I think it probably does still work - but LinkedIn want it stopped. So if you want to link to me on LinkedIn my email address is rikki at gendershift dot com (just to stop the spammers though I think most of them have my email address already)
I have also noticed that more an more of my network contacts are joining LinkedIn - I recently connected up with a number of trans community leaders from Press for Change and that has promoted some better communications and the possibility of some joint venture work. So I am suddenly taking a much bigger interest in LinkedIn and my network is growing very quickly.
If you are not a member I do recommend joining and linking up with me - you may be surprised who you meet, and if you need some tips on putting together your LinkedIn Profile here are some great ideas from top blogger Guy Kawasaki.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
If you want to look for a job in IT, or promote yourself to prospective head hunters, or look for joint venture partners in a software project there is no doubt that LinkedIn really works. There are some very high profile success stories like Scott Rafer who contacted Eric Marcoullier one of the founders of MyBlogLog with an idea for the development of the product, got appointed as CEO and has just picked up a very nice fortune when the business was acquired by Yahoo last month.
But things are happening at LinkedIn to make the network more interactive in particular the new Answers feature which enables you to ask any question and get responses from the LinkedIn network - very useful if you want some opinions on a product or service or if you want to undertake some research - but most importantly it is getting members of the linked in network interacting where it had been fairly static.
The real value of LinkedIn is in helping members find out who their network knows and getting introduced. I have just 330 members in my network - but they know nearly 150,000 people. However even getting people I know who are on LinkedIn to connect never been very user friendly. If you click on my profile in the right side panel it is not easy to see how to link to me and you need to then go find my email address to send the invite all of which means you may not bother. However yesterday Marketing Hipster Cord Silverstein pointed me to a very neat widget created by Andy Beard - the LinkeIn Fast button
Just Click to Connect
Get your own LinkedIn Fast
Update: As you can see this neat widget is no more. LinkedIn objected and Andy removed it (actually I think it probably does still work - but LinkedIn want it stopped. So if you want to link to me on LinkedIn my email address is rikki at gendershift dot com (just to stop the spammers though I think most of them have my email address already)
I have also noticed that more an more of my network contacts are joining LinkedIn - I recently connected up with a number of trans community leaders from Press for Change and that has promoted some better communications and the possibility of some joint venture work. So I am suddenly taking a much bigger interest in LinkedIn and my network is growing very quickly.
If you are not a member I do recommend joining and linking up with me - you may be surprised who you meet, and if you need some tips on putting together your LinkedIn Profile here are some great ideas from top blogger Guy Kawasaki.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Develop an Eye and an Ear for Humour and Stories
Apart from feeling ghastly with the tail end of a persistent flu bug, I have had a brilliant day today attending a workshop for professional speakers on humour and storytelling. Excellent material and some great ideas for making my own keynote presentations more effective. Also on the same subject I recently discovered John Kindes excellent Humor Power blog which is packed with ideas to add more humour into your presentations.
There is always a danger dissecting humour - it's like trying to explain a joke - the more you try to explain it the less funny it is. However it seems to me that when you are delivering funny material you need to have worked it so much that it's no longer funny to you in order to deliver it. I came across a very funny post the other day (funny to me anyway) from Bug on the Joys of Boys, which were a number of humorous observations on life from the perspective of a mother. I say mother - although interestingly there were no clear markers in the text - I just know this was written by a woman. However the point is that I would not be able to deliver that material right now - I laughed so much it hurt and even now if I try to tell some of them to people I start to laugh uncontrollably and can't deliver the punch lines.
The seminar today was a great mix of tips for finding and developing humour and stories and some excellent examples but the important message for speakers was that humour is not about jokes - it's about observing the humour in life around us. I remember walking down Piccadilly in London one day and saw an A-board for an opticians that read "Eyes Tested - While you Wait."
One of the great lessons I learned about speaking is that it doesn't matter where you speak or who you speak to - this is show business. The audience wants us to entertain them - and if you, as a small business owner, want people to remember your speech and come and do business with you, adding in some humour to your presentations is definitely going to help to achieve that goal.
My big lesson today was about remembering to LOOK and LISTEN - Observe the humour around me - and then WRITE IT DOWN immediately. It's a good tip for any business - keep your eyes and ears open for anything funny related to your products or the needs you satisfy and write it down. Start collecting stories about the way your clients use your products, and don't be scared of the things that go wrong. Self deprecating humour is the best and sometimes the greatest product innovations are the result of a disaster - Post-it notes were the result of a failed experiment to develop a super bonding agent.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
There is always a danger dissecting humour - it's like trying to explain a joke - the more you try to explain it the less funny it is. However it seems to me that when you are delivering funny material you need to have worked it so much that it's no longer funny to you in order to deliver it. I came across a very funny post the other day (funny to me anyway) from Bug on the Joys of Boys, which were a number of humorous observations on life from the perspective of a mother. I say mother - although interestingly there were no clear markers in the text - I just know this was written by a woman. However the point is that I would not be able to deliver that material right now - I laughed so much it hurt and even now if I try to tell some of them to people I start to laugh uncontrollably and can't deliver the punch lines.
The seminar today was a great mix of tips for finding and developing humour and stories and some excellent examples but the important message for speakers was that humour is not about jokes - it's about observing the humour in life around us. I remember walking down Piccadilly in London one day and saw an A-board for an opticians that read "Eyes Tested - While you Wait."
One of the great lessons I learned about speaking is that it doesn't matter where you speak or who you speak to - this is show business. The audience wants us to entertain them - and if you, as a small business owner, want people to remember your speech and come and do business with you, adding in some humour to your presentations is definitely going to help to achieve that goal.
My big lesson today was about remembering to LOOK and LISTEN - Observe the humour around me - and then WRITE IT DOWN immediately. It's a good tip for any business - keep your eyes and ears open for anything funny related to your products or the needs you satisfy and write it down. Start collecting stories about the way your clients use your products, and don't be scared of the things that go wrong. Self deprecating humour is the best and sometimes the greatest product innovations are the result of a disaster - Post-it notes were the result of a failed experiment to develop a super bonding agent.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Google Reader is changing the way I Blog.
It is now 12 days since I switched to using Google Reader in which time you can see I have 58 blog subscriptions, have read over 1000 posts, starred 54 and shared 27. That took surprising little time and I thought I would share how using Google reader is changing the way I read and write blog posts.
First a few comments on how I am using the tools in Google reader.
I have set up a number of folders and tags that enable me to organise the subscriptions. Folders and tags are pretty much the same - except that I keep Folders specifically to organise the blog subscriptions by topic area and Tags to record individual posts I want to be able to refer back to. I was initially relying on the Star feature for this - but this quickly becomes unmanageable. When I come back to interesting posts I usually want to look at a specific subject area and so it is much easier to organise interesting posts with Tags than Stars.
When viewing the posts I either click on All Posts or select a specific Folder if I just want to review one topic. I have found the best way to read is to start at the bottom of the list of recent posts and press K to move up to the next. Once read it stays in the list until I refresh the page - then it is unlikely that I will ever see it again. You can start at the top and press J to move down but I found that unless I clear all posts I end up with unread posts getting older and older.
My sense of timeliness has also changed radically - when you get 100 posts a day - a week is a long time so I have noticed that I tend to scan more quickly though older posts when I subscribe to a new blog. I have also noticed how much more aware I have become of the interaction going on between bloggers. These are the main things I have noticed about the way I read posts that are changing the way I blog.
- I seldom follow through on a partial feed. If all that is available on the post is a heading and a few lines, it has to be pretty compelling for me not to press K. Denise from the Blog Squad posted a poll a few days ago on this and I see that currently nearly 65% are in favour of full feeds.
- The same is true of posts that rely on me following a link to get the information. I find I need a reason to to take the time to follow the link - I want to read a Blogger's commentary then follow through because it sounds interesting.
- FeedBurner's FeedFlare has suddenly become much more important because it allows me to place tools for social bookmarking at the foot of the feed - so they appear in the reader - most stuff from my blog never reaches the feed.
- I take about 2 seconds to decide whether to read or move on - so if the post is confusing and I can't see the message quickly - it's gone. The Title, the first paragraph and subheads are critical to draw a reader in and this is basic journalistic practice but I still forget.
- I am starting to add more links in my blog posts because I don't see any of the links around the post - at the same time I find lots of links in a post discourages me from reading it - needs a fine balance.
- Making comments is not so easy because the comments link is not included in the feed - so I have to make a point of going to a post on the blog to comment as a result I am not tending not to make as many comments.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Sunday, January 21, 2007
People should need a licence to use PowerPoint
I do a lot of voluntary work in my local community and as a result I attend a lot of "presentations" and "workshops" presented by senior executives in public, private and voluntary sector organisations and there seems to be common feature with the presenters. They all use PowerPoint but have never learned how to use PowerPoint.
Most of these senior executives spend a great deal of their time communicating with a variety of stakeholders and community representatives, yet seem never to have spent a much time learning how to communicate. Having looked a number of job specifications for these senior posts however I can confirm that in every case "Excellent communication skills" is there as an essential requirement. I think the problem is that the interviewers for these posts are not good communicators so they set the bar of "excellence" very low.
Let me give you an example of how bad it gets. This is the wording on the first slide of a workshop I attended last week. (I have changed the names and departments to avoid adding further embarrassment)
Inevitably the presentation was difficult to follow - because we were all trying to follow 33 slides packed with words and half way through I started asking questions and the meeting finally came to life. Unfortunately after a long and very interesting question and answer session they insisted on finishing the slides.
When I ask people why they use slides the most common answer is "I want to make sure I cover everything - and with out the slides I may forget". My response is "If you are having a problem remembering what to say, it's likely that the audience is going to have more trouble trying to remember it."
I think most presenters would be better off simply setting the scene and letting people ask questions - at least that way the audience get to hear what they came for. There is no justification whatsoever for slides full of bullet points - they destroy the presentation, make the presenter sound stilted, undermine any chance of building rapport and finally they make lousy handouts. So often the PowerPoint slides are the speakers notes or even worse their script and the speaker becomes the narrator to a boring slide presentation
Here is my advice.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Most of these senior executives spend a great deal of their time communicating with a variety of stakeholders and community representatives, yet seem never to have spent a much time learning how to communicate. Having looked a number of job specifications for these senior posts however I can confirm that in every case "Excellent communication skills" is there as an essential requirement. I think the problem is that the interviewers for these posts are not good communicators so they set the bar of "excellence" very low.
Let me give you an example of how bad it gets. This is the wording on the first slide of a workshop I attended last week. (I have changed the names and departments to avoid adding further embarrassment)
Some Introductions
- My name is John Smith, a senior officer with the City Council's Important Developments Department. I will give a short presentation.
- This is my colleague James Brown who will help with any questions you may have and with the workshop that will follow the presentation.
- You have probably met Jenny Jones and Peter Green of the Voluntary Council who are here to assist us all.
Inevitably the presentation was difficult to follow - because we were all trying to follow 33 slides packed with words and half way through I started asking questions and the meeting finally came to life. Unfortunately after a long and very interesting question and answer session they insisted on finishing the slides.
When I ask people why they use slides the most common answer is "I want to make sure I cover everything - and with out the slides I may forget". My response is "If you are having a problem remembering what to say, it's likely that the audience is going to have more trouble trying to remember it."
I think most presenters would be better off simply setting the scene and letting people ask questions - at least that way the audience get to hear what they came for. There is no justification whatsoever for slides full of bullet points - they destroy the presentation, make the presenter sound stilted, undermine any chance of building rapport and finally they make lousy handouts. So often the PowerPoint slides are the speakers notes or even worse their script and the speaker becomes the narrator to a boring slide presentation
Here is my advice.
- Write down your speech objective and how you will measure that it has been successfully achieved.
- Write your speech (and I don't mean write it out - I mean write your notes and structure - see my PEPP Talk recommendations for that)
- Add in a couple of questions to ask the audience to get them into the habit if interacting.
- Ask yourself - How would slides help this presentation? Be honest and then IF they are necessary, make sure you produce a professional looking presentation (hint - it takes time)
- Create a useful standalone handout that helps you to achieve your speech objective
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Switching to Google Reader
One of the important lessons I am learning about blogging is that get readers to your blog you have to read and comment on other blogs. I have mentioned in previous posts a few tools I started using over Christmas to start interacting with other bloggers and the net result of using these tools is that I now subscribe to about 50 Blogs. That is a lot of information to sort in order to find the nuggets I need.
If you are subscribing to a few blogs then simply using the live links feature in FireFox or IE7 should serve you well - but if you plan to be come a serious blogger you are going to find you need a much better solution. Until now I have relied on Sage, an in browser add on to FireFox which has done the job well, but since the increase in blogs over Christmas it has become a bit of a pain.
I have been looking at on-line readers as an alternative and have played with Bloglines on an off for a couple of years but never really gelled with it and I had stumbled upon Google Reader sometime last year but having played with it for a while decided it was not for me. Oh I set up an account and subscribed to all my blogs on both to help my search engine presence, but as a usable tools neither were anywhere near as useful as Sage.
Then today I came across Robert Scoble's blog where there was a discussion about Google Reader recommending it to manage 29,000 posts in 30 days. Well that got my attention. Clearly I was not alone in my early view of Goole Reader because it has been significantly upgraded and I am very impressed - infact I am now in the process of switching over immediately. As seems to be typical with Google however they have not made a song and dance about the changes - in fact I keep discovering new products or upgraded products that were launched without any comment.
There are actually a few reasons for the switch and the most important was the need to change from a reader that is PC based to one that is web based. I use one PC most of the time - but increasingly I am finding my self using my laptop or working on a PC in another office. As some new plans for 2007 move into place it is inevitable that I will increasingly be needing to access by blog subscriptions from a variety of PCs.
The second reason is the shear volume of information I now need to manage with increasingly number of subscriptions which Sage is not good at because it essentially deals with each blog separately as does Bloglines. Google Reader allows me to manage blogs much more intuitively by tags and by folders (I can put a blog into more than one folder) and by setting the reader to display only unread blogs I am not cluttered with the ones I have read.
The third reason is a really neat tool in Google reader - Sharing. I can highlight specific posts in two ways - First I can star them so that they are easy to find again, but I can also share them. Sharing the post places it into a personal RSS feed on Google reader that I can then syndicate to my blogs, web sites or anywhere else that I want to promote my shared posts (which can include some of my own posts of course).
Rikki's Shared Blog Posts
One further advantage to Google reader is that everything in the Google stable seems to be being linked up where it can be and I am using more and more Google tools. I have just started using Google Calender which is really great - can't get access to Google Mail yet - but I gather then are some links happening there to Google Reader.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
If you are subscribing to a few blogs then simply using the live links feature in FireFox or IE7 should serve you well - but if you plan to be come a serious blogger you are going to find you need a much better solution. Until now I have relied on Sage, an in browser add on to FireFox which has done the job well, but since the increase in blogs over Christmas it has become a bit of a pain.
I have been looking at on-line readers as an alternative and have played with Bloglines on an off for a couple of years but never really gelled with it and I had stumbled upon Google Reader sometime last year but having played with it for a while decided it was not for me. Oh I set up an account and subscribed to all my blogs on both to help my search engine presence, but as a usable tools neither were anywhere near as useful as Sage.
Then today I came across Robert Scoble's blog where there was a discussion about Google Reader recommending it to manage 29,000 posts in 30 days. Well that got my attention. Clearly I was not alone in my early view of Goole Reader because it has been significantly upgraded and I am very impressed - infact I am now in the process of switching over immediately. As seems to be typical with Google however they have not made a song and dance about the changes - in fact I keep discovering new products or upgraded products that were launched without any comment.
There are actually a few reasons for the switch and the most important was the need to change from a reader that is PC based to one that is web based. I use one PC most of the time - but increasingly I am finding my self using my laptop or working on a PC in another office. As some new plans for 2007 move into place it is inevitable that I will increasingly be needing to access by blog subscriptions from a variety of PCs.
The second reason is the shear volume of information I now need to manage with increasingly number of subscriptions which Sage is not good at because it essentially deals with each blog separately as does Bloglines. Google Reader allows me to manage blogs much more intuitively by tags and by folders (I can put a blog into more than one folder) and by setting the reader to display only unread blogs I am not cluttered with the ones I have read.
The third reason is a really neat tool in Google reader - Sharing. I can highlight specific posts in two ways - First I can star them so that they are easy to find again, but I can also share them. Sharing the post places it into a personal RSS feed on Google reader that I can then syndicate to my blogs, web sites or anywhere else that I want to promote my shared posts (which can include some of my own posts of course).
Rikki's Shared Blog Posts
One further advantage to Google reader is that everything in the Google stable seems to be being linked up where it can be and I am using more and more Google tools. I have just started using Google Calender which is really great - can't get access to Google Mail yet - but I gather then are some links happening there to Google Reader.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Monday, January 01, 2007
Upgrading to New Blogger - Huge Task but Worth it
Happy New Year
I hope the new years revelries have not left you worse for the wear and if you are now considering your New Years' Resolutions I have a free gift that may help - no string - just pop along to Expect More From 2007 and download the eBook full of tips for being more successful from nearly 60 top professional speakers from around the world. My article is on Page 33. Feel free to send a copy to friends if you wish.
Now if you have visited my blog before you will I hope notice the complete new look and feel which I managed to complete late last night - actually it was early this morning - I know spending New Years Eve upgrading a blog is sad - but at least I am not sporting a mother of all hangovers this morning.
A week ago I mentioned Charlemagne Stavanger's Custom Templates blog which has provided me with two great three column blogger templates that I though would take me a couple of days to install as part of my Blogger upgrade - I was wrong - It has kept be very busy for most of the past week - actually installing the templates only takes a couple of minutes - populating the templates is a different matter.
I am sure there must me thousands of Bloggers dreading the fact that they will eventually need to upgrade to New Blogger which is why I thought it might be helpful if I blog some of my experiences from this past week. In fact upgrading to New Blogger is very easy - just a few seconds but that retains your old template. The challenge is moving to a New Blogger Template and Layouts because all your hacks and modifications, those that you can remember installing, have to be reinstalled and in many cases the previous code no longer works. Because this was going to be a huge learning curve I decided to leave this blog to last as it involved the most work.
First I converted my Personal Blog which was fairly basic with few modifications, using the standard new blogger template. Then I started adding page elements that I had not been using but were on this blog which helped me to learn more about how the page elements worked. Along the way I kept discovering new add-ons like MyBogLog and TheGoodBlogs so it was a fascinating learning curve.
Probably the most important discovery or realisation for me was that using Feedblitz or FeedBurner I could provide a means for visitors to subscribe to my blogs by email. This has been a godsend - I really have a problem with newsletters. I launched one in September 2005 and have still not managed to get issue 2 out yet - they are so time consuming. Yet I love Blogging. The only downside to blogs was that so few people understand about feeds or what to do with them. IE7 is going to help but now I can replace my attempts at developing an ezine with blogs.
By now I had also discovered the three column templates but was very uncomfortable about tackling this blog with such a huge change, especially as I was finding more neat add-ons. So I decided to get to work on my GenderShift blog which I have been meaning to start for a while. Having completed that I was even more nervous about this blog, when I read a comment somewhere on Beautiful Beta, a blog dedicated to hacks and mods for new Blogger, suggesting working on a test blog first. Such an obvious thing to do. Duhhh!
So that was yesterdays task - reconstruct this blog on a test site and then copy the completed template over here job done - NO! I don't know why but the widgets simply would not transfer - I am sure there was something I needed to have done but I really do not - (I did expand the widgets before copying) So I finally copied all the page elements one by one and it seems to have worked - I am sure there is probably some extraneous code somewhere - but it ain't broke so I am leaving it.
Just one final point. If you use a test template - or want to transfer lists of links between blogs I strongly recommend that you use the HTML widget and not the Links Widget. The Links widget is very basic and you cannot add attributes like "target" or "title" If you have even a basic understanding of HTML you will be frustrated by the links widget especially when you have to copy links between blogs they have to be set up again one at a time. With the HTML widget you can simply copy and paste the lot.
Well I'm proud of my new look blogs, excited by all the new tools and tips I am learning by being part of the blogosphere, pleased that I can drop my newsletter plans and stick to blogging and inspired to keep up regular posting to make the huge effort of the last two weeks worth while.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
I hope the new years revelries have not left you worse for the wear and if you are now considering your New Years' Resolutions I have a free gift that may help - no string - just pop along to Expect More From 2007 and download the eBook full of tips for being more successful from nearly 60 top professional speakers from around the world. My article is on Page 33. Feel free to send a copy to friends if you wish.
Now if you have visited my blog before you will I hope notice the complete new look and feel which I managed to complete late last night - actually it was early this morning - I know spending New Years Eve upgrading a blog is sad - but at least I am not sporting a mother of all hangovers this morning.
A week ago I mentioned Charlemagne Stavanger's Custom Templates blog which has provided me with two great three column blogger templates that I though would take me a couple of days to install as part of my Blogger upgrade - I was wrong - It has kept be very busy for most of the past week - actually installing the templates only takes a couple of minutes - populating the templates is a different matter.
I am sure there must me thousands of Bloggers dreading the fact that they will eventually need to upgrade to New Blogger which is why I thought it might be helpful if I blog some of my experiences from this past week. In fact upgrading to New Blogger is very easy - just a few seconds but that retains your old template. The challenge is moving to a New Blogger Template and Layouts because all your hacks and modifications, those that you can remember installing, have to be reinstalled and in many cases the previous code no longer works. Because this was going to be a huge learning curve I decided to leave this blog to last as it involved the most work.
First I converted my Personal Blog which was fairly basic with few modifications, using the standard new blogger template. Then I started adding page elements that I had not been using but were on this blog which helped me to learn more about how the page elements worked. Along the way I kept discovering new add-ons like MyBogLog and TheGoodBlogs so it was a fascinating learning curve.
Probably the most important discovery or realisation for me was that using Feedblitz or FeedBurner I could provide a means for visitors to subscribe to my blogs by email. This has been a godsend - I really have a problem with newsletters. I launched one in September 2005 and have still not managed to get issue 2 out yet - they are so time consuming. Yet I love Blogging. The only downside to blogs was that so few people understand about feeds or what to do with them. IE7 is going to help but now I can replace my attempts at developing an ezine with blogs.
By now I had also discovered the three column templates but was very uncomfortable about tackling this blog with such a huge change, especially as I was finding more neat add-ons. So I decided to get to work on my GenderShift blog which I have been meaning to start for a while. Having completed that I was even more nervous about this blog, when I read a comment somewhere on Beautiful Beta, a blog dedicated to hacks and mods for new Blogger, suggesting working on a test blog first. Such an obvious thing to do. Duhhh!
So that was yesterdays task - reconstruct this blog on a test site and then copy the completed template over here job done - NO! I don't know why but the widgets simply would not transfer - I am sure there was something I needed to have done but I really do not - (I did expand the widgets before copying) So I finally copied all the page elements one by one and it seems to have worked - I am sure there is probably some extraneous code somewhere - but it ain't broke so I am leaving it.
Just one final point. If you use a test template - or want to transfer lists of links between blogs I strongly recommend that you use the HTML widget and not the Links Widget. The Links widget is very basic and you cannot add attributes like "target" or "title" If you have even a basic understanding of HTML you will be frustrated by the links widget especially when you have to copy links between blogs they have to be set up again one at a time. With the HTML widget you can simply copy and paste the lot.
Well I'm proud of my new look blogs, excited by all the new tools and tips I am learning by being part of the blogosphere, pleased that I can drop my newsletter plans and stick to blogging and inspired to keep up regular posting to make the huge effort of the last two weeks worth while.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Blogging is Slowing Down? I am Just Getting Started.
It is interesting to notice that whilst I have been, in a fashion, blogging for 2 years now, I have not really understood the whole idea of the Blogosphere and the sense of community that exists between bloggers. I have MyBlogLog largely to thank for the change because despite having registered my blog on a variety of blog directories, until I joined MyBlogLog I didn't really get into any communications with other bloggers.
One reason I have started spending a lot of time working on learning how to promote my own blogs better is because I am in the process of setting up a new social enterprise with the goal of helping people in the voluntary and community sector and small business owners to use blogging and other Web 2.0 tools. I recently discovered when introducing blogging as a promoting tool on a course that most people in my home city of Hull over 30 don't even know what a blog is. Oh they have heard the term on the TV or from their kids - but just don't get what blogging is all about at all.
Then a couple of days ago I read a post on Build a Better Blog about the Gartner research suggesting that blogging may plateau in 2007 because there are now 200,000 ex bloggers, and that things will slow down. Strange I thought - everyone I speak to has not even figured it out yet - but the early adopters are already looking for the next big/new thing.
The reality is I think that, certainly in the UK, Blogging has only just started. A few months ago David Cameron the young leader of the Conservative Party launched a video blog because he understands that to reach the 18-30 voters he has to use this technology, but he is well ahead of the game. IE7 has only just started to make people aware of the idea of subscribing to blogs and although I have been using it for a year I have only just recognised the significance of FeedBlitz in allowing people to subscribe to blogs by email. The hardest thing I find to explain to technophobes is RSS and feed aggregators and I saw some statistics suggesting that less than 20% of people understand it.
Finally I have just come across the great idea from Mack Collier at Viral Garden for helping to give some air time to good "Z-List" blogs that deserve a mention and at the same time lift our rankings in Technorati. It's an easy idea - Copy the list of blogs below - and add a few that you love to the list. Lots of grateful bloggers will come along to read your blog and you should see your traffic increase. If you want to know more about the idea - pop over to Viral Garden for the latest update.
I have added a few blogs I have come to like a lot over the past week - especially Charlemagne Stavanger's Custom Templates which has provided me with two great three column blogger templates that will keep me very busy upgrading from old blogger to new over the next couple of days.
Custom Templates
Blogging to Fame
Small Business Branding
Build a Better Blog
Creative Think
Soloride
Movie Marketing Madness
Blog Till You Drop!
Get Shouty!
One Reader at a Time
Critical Fluff
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New Millenium PR
Pardon My French
Troy Worman's Blog
The Instigator Blog
AENDirect
Diva Marketing
Marketing Hipster
The Marketing Minute
Funny Business
The Frager Factor
Mindblob
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That's Great Marketing!
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
darrenbarefoot.com
Two Hat Marketing
The Engaging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew's Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
Conversation Agent
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett's Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Jeremy Latham’s Blog
SMogger Social Media Blog
Masey.com
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
One reason I have started spending a lot of time working on learning how to promote my own blogs better is because I am in the process of setting up a new social enterprise with the goal of helping people in the voluntary and community sector and small business owners to use blogging and other Web 2.0 tools. I recently discovered when introducing blogging as a promoting tool on a course that most people in my home city of Hull over 30 don't even know what a blog is. Oh they have heard the term on the TV or from their kids - but just don't get what blogging is all about at all.
Then a couple of days ago I read a post on Build a Better Blog about the Gartner research suggesting that blogging may plateau in 2007 because there are now 200,000 ex bloggers, and that things will slow down. Strange I thought - everyone I speak to has not even figured it out yet - but the early adopters are already looking for the next big/new thing.
The reality is I think that, certainly in the UK, Blogging has only just started. A few months ago David Cameron the young leader of the Conservative Party launched a video blog because he understands that to reach the 18-30 voters he has to use this technology, but he is well ahead of the game. IE7 has only just started to make people aware of the idea of subscribing to blogs and although I have been using it for a year I have only just recognised the significance of FeedBlitz in allowing people to subscribe to blogs by email. The hardest thing I find to explain to technophobes is RSS and feed aggregators and I saw some statistics suggesting that less than 20% of people understand it.
Finally I have just come across the great idea from Mack Collier at Viral Garden for helping to give some air time to good "Z-List" blogs that deserve a mention and at the same time lift our rankings in Technorati. It's an easy idea - Copy the list of blogs below - and add a few that you love to the list. Lots of grateful bloggers will come along to read your blog and you should see your traffic increase. If you want to know more about the idea - pop over to Viral Garden for the latest update.
I have added a few blogs I have come to like a lot over the past week - especially Charlemagne Stavanger's Custom Templates which has provided me with two great three column blogger templates that will keep me very busy upgrading from old blogger to new over the next couple of days.
Custom Templates
Blogging to Fame
Small Business Branding
Build a Better Blog
Creative Think
Soloride
Movie Marketing Madness
Blog Till You Drop!
Get Shouty!
One Reader at a Time
Critical Fluff
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New Millenium PR
Pardon My French
Troy Worman's Blog
The Instigator Blog
AENDirect
Diva Marketing
Marketing Hipster
The Marketing Minute
Funny Business
The Frager Factor
Mindblob
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That's Great Marketing!
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
darrenbarefoot.com
Two Hat Marketing
The Engaging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew's Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
Conversation Agent
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett's Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly
Jeremy Latham’s Blog
SMogger Social Media Blog
Masey.com
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Some Brilliant Tools to Promote a Blog
I set this blog up nearly 2 years ago and to be honest I have not really done much to promote it - in fact I have often struggled to keep posting regularly - but as I am about to start trying to help people in Hull learn how to blog - I have been spending a little more time researching this and have discovered a huge amount help available resulting in me spending much of this week exploring and installing some new tools on my blog.
First if you are looking for ideas to promote your blog there is one site I was referred to someone in the Everywoman network. I have only just started working through Yaro Starak's Blog Traffic School Pre-Launch Blog which is packed with ideas to get traffic to your blog. After following just couple of tips and already I can already see the results.
First you may have noticed the widget in the sidebar listing the last five people who read my blog. I was so impressed when I saw that one someone's blog I just had to investigate and discovered MyBlogLog.com which I can totally recommend. If you have a blog get over there right away and sign up. MyBlogLog is a Blog community - a chance to search and find other blogs of interest and by reading other blogs make yourself known to other bloggers, many of whom will in turn come and read yours - Traffic to my blog as more than doubled this week and I get that brilliant widget on the side bar shown me who has visited. All of a sudden instead of being alone blogger - I feel part of a community - real people are reading my blog wow!!
Next you will also see another addition to the side bar called GoodBlogs. That widget displays details of other blogs and in return my blog gets displayed on other blogs - This week already that has resulted in 10 visits and in addition 15 people who visited my blog have visited blogs I have promoted - nice synergy.
Then I was visiting John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing Blog - which if you are reading this blog is one you should also visit - and running my cursor over a link, a preview of the page leapt out at me. Wow - "How did he do that?" I thought and off I went to Snap to pick up that tool. If you want to see it in action simply point your cursor at any link on this page.
Finally I visited the blog of a professional speaker friend David McQueen and noticed two things on his side panel - First field allowing visitors to subscribe to an email notification if the blog is updated - and second lots of tags (called labels) which were all linked to his various posts - Wow - "How did he do that?"
Well the first I discovered is a site called FeedBlitz - which I have already signed up and added to my Personal Blog - I will be adding it here but the addition of Tags I discovered is a new feature in the latest version of Blogger and that is going to take a bit of work to install - I have already started and again that is already included in my Personal Blog and will be here over Christmas.
What it means is that customising your blog is now much much easier and as it is out of Beta is not going to give you any technical problems. So if you are looking for something to do to get away from the Christmas chaos - there is enough here to keep you busy for the rest for the week.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
First if you are looking for ideas to promote your blog there is one site I was referred to someone in the Everywoman network. I have only just started working through Yaro Starak's Blog Traffic School Pre-Launch Blog which is packed with ideas to get traffic to your blog. After following just couple of tips and already I can already see the results.
First you may have noticed the widget in the sidebar listing the last five people who read my blog. I was so impressed when I saw that one someone's blog I just had to investigate and discovered MyBlogLog.com which I can totally recommend. If you have a blog get over there right away and sign up. MyBlogLog is a Blog community - a chance to search and find other blogs of interest and by reading other blogs make yourself known to other bloggers, many of whom will in turn come and read yours - Traffic to my blog as more than doubled this week and I get that brilliant widget on the side bar shown me who has visited. All of a sudden instead of being alone blogger - I feel part of a community - real people are reading my blog wow!!
Next you will also see another addition to the side bar called GoodBlogs. That widget displays details of other blogs and in return my blog gets displayed on other blogs - This week already that has resulted in 10 visits and in addition 15 people who visited my blog have visited blogs I have promoted - nice synergy.
Then I was visiting John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing Blog - which if you are reading this blog is one you should also visit - and running my cursor over a link, a preview of the page leapt out at me. Wow - "How did he do that?" I thought and off I went to Snap to pick up that tool. If you want to see it in action simply point your cursor at any link on this page.
Finally I visited the blog of a professional speaker friend David McQueen and noticed two things on his side panel - First field allowing visitors to subscribe to an email notification if the blog is updated - and second lots of tags (called labels) which were all linked to his various posts - Wow - "How did he do that?"
Well the first I discovered is a site called FeedBlitz - which I have already signed up and added to my Personal Blog - I will be adding it here but the addition of Tags I discovered is a new feature in the latest version of Blogger and that is going to take a bit of work to install - I have already started and again that is already included in my Personal Blog and will be here over Christmas.
What it means is that customising your blog is now much much easier and as it is out of Beta is not going to give you any technical problems. So if you are looking for something to do to get away from the Christmas chaos - there is enough here to keep you busy for the rest for the week.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Friday, December 01, 2006
Internet Explorer 7 looks set to change the world
I stopped using internet explorer nearly 2 years ago when I discovered tabbed browsing and live bookmarks in Firefox. On the occasions when I have had to revert to IE it has been like travelling back in time. Of course IE still dominates the browser market even if that is because most people don't make a choice so much as use the browser that is available.
However I have to say that IE7 is a massive improvement and in some ways seems to have even jumped ahead of Firefox particularly in look and feel although I still prefer the scope in Firefox to add extensions. What is important in IE7 is the fact that subscription to live feeds is built into the browser and whilst this will be lost on most people - in a few years this development will I predict have been responsible for accelerating a major transformation in the use of the web.
I have recently discovered that a significant majority of the community certainly in Hull, do not even know what a blog is let alone how to add an RSS or live feed into a feed reader, so the new IE7 feature that enables users to subscribe to feeds will take a while to become common practice. But the fact that it is there and so easy to use is going to mean that people will start subscribing to blogs without even knowing what they are doing.
In IE7 the new menu is entirely visual including the international feed icon - a small orange symbol like this:
The default for this image is greyed out - however if you visit a page that contains a live feed, such as a blog - the image turns orange and clicking on it will enable you to "subscribe." What that means is that the page is added to a new favourites list, called Feeds, where every time the page is updated, you will be notified. This is important with web sites that provide regularly updated information such as news sites and blogs.
The problems with SPAM means that most of us are increasingly reluctant to sign up for newsletters and even if we do spam filters tend to junk them. Blogs are a far better way to manage newsletters because the recipient has full control. We decide when to read and a good feed reader enables us to quickly scan the articles in a feed to determine which are worth reading. I have about 30 subscriptions which I check every week or so. I have a file in my email folder containing over 10,000 unread newsletters that I doubt will ever be read and when I have time I will unsubscribe from them. If I want to unsubscribe from a blog of course it is as simple matter of deleting it from my list.
Over the next year or so, two things will happen - More and more people will understand the value of blogs and start writing them - More and more people will learn about subscribing to feeds and start using them. The net effect will be that newsletters will become less and less used. The growth of blogs as a primary communication tool has been waiting for this development from Microsoft. If you have not yet downloaded IE7 you can do so from www.microsoft.com although I understand that if you have automatic upgrades enabled you should soon be notified that IE7 is available, and it is certainly one upgrade I strongly recommend you download soon.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
However I have to say that IE7 is a massive improvement and in some ways seems to have even jumped ahead of Firefox particularly in look and feel although I still prefer the scope in Firefox to add extensions. What is important in IE7 is the fact that subscription to live feeds is built into the browser and whilst this will be lost on most people - in a few years this development will I predict have been responsible for accelerating a major transformation in the use of the web.
I have recently discovered that a significant majority of the community certainly in Hull, do not even know what a blog is let alone how to add an RSS or live feed into a feed reader, so the new IE7 feature that enables users to subscribe to feeds will take a while to become common practice. But the fact that it is there and so easy to use is going to mean that people will start subscribing to blogs without even knowing what they are doing.
In IE7 the new menu is entirely visual including the international feed icon - a small orange symbol like this:
The default for this image is greyed out - however if you visit a page that contains a live feed, such as a blog - the image turns orange and clicking on it will enable you to "subscribe." What that means is that the page is added to a new favourites list, called Feeds, where every time the page is updated, you will be notified. This is important with web sites that provide regularly updated information such as news sites and blogs.
The problems with SPAM means that most of us are increasingly reluctant to sign up for newsletters and even if we do spam filters tend to junk them. Blogs are a far better way to manage newsletters because the recipient has full control. We decide when to read and a good feed reader enables us to quickly scan the articles in a feed to determine which are worth reading. I have about 30 subscriptions which I check every week or so. I have a file in my email folder containing over 10,000 unread newsletters that I doubt will ever be read and when I have time I will unsubscribe from them. If I want to unsubscribe from a blog of course it is as simple matter of deleting it from my list.
Over the next year or so, two things will happen - More and more people will understand the value of blogs and start writing them - More and more people will learn about subscribing to feeds and start using them. The net effect will be that newsletters will become less and less used. The growth of blogs as a primary communication tool has been waiting for this development from Microsoft. If you have not yet downloaded IE7 you can do so from www.microsoft.com although I understand that if you have automatic upgrades enabled you should soon be notified that IE7 is available, and it is certainly one upgrade I strongly recommend you download soon.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Skype - The whole world can talk for free.
I have been using Skype for over a year now and though it took a while to change the habit I am now using SkypeOut regularly to call to land line and mobile phones and what a saving. I have even set up a London number 0208 1235672 for people to call me - which is proving very useful - switches to a free Skype Voicemail account of I am out.
If you are not using Skype it really is something to check out - I spent half an our chatting to a friend in South Africa the other week - no cost - because that was Skype to Skype but I think a lot of people think Skype is all about PC to PC communications - most of my Skype calls now are PC to land line and if you sign up and buy £10 of Skype credit at the moment they are giving away six months free calls to UK landlines - for me an offer too good to miss
If you are not using Skype Check it out - my Skype ID is rikkiarundel but if you look in the sidebar you will also see a button that lets you know if I am on-line - click on that and you can connect me.
Skype - The whole world can talk for free.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
If you are not using Skype it really is something to check out - I spent half an our chatting to a friend in South Africa the other week - no cost - because that was Skype to Skype but I think a lot of people think Skype is all about PC to PC communications - most of my Skype calls now are PC to land line and if you sign up and buy £10 of Skype credit at the moment they are giving away six months free calls to UK landlines - for me an offer too good to miss
If you are not using Skype Check it out - my Skype ID is rikkiarundel but if you look in the sidebar you will also see a button that lets you know if I am on-line - click on that and you can connect me.
Skype - The whole world can talk for free.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Rikki Arundel - PEPPTalk Speaker Showreel
I have started looking at how to use video more effectively both on my web sites and on my blogs. There are so many resources around now to help it is amazing and the great thing is that these resources are free.
There are four main sites where you can upload video and share it with the world.
YouTube
Google
MySpace
Yahoo
Most sites limit the size of the video to 100 Mb - which is about 10 minutes - though if you sign up for a director account on YouTube - you can upload longer video. At this stage I am still exploring, however the good thing I have discovered is that as a speaker I can now embed my showreel video in my blog here as you can see below, on my Professional Speaking Page and on my Speaking and Marketing Tips site. Other sites like The Ecademy and Squidoo have a YouTube embed link. Embeding a video means that it appears directly in the page and plays there - the visitor does not need to click on a link to the hosting site to view it.
In addition I can add the link to all the social bookmark sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia which also help to improve search engine rankings. Video is really taking off on the web and I am about to explore a number of other options available for video email and video and audio auto play on web pages. But one thing is clear - pretty soon most sites are going to be showing video and as a speaker not using it is going to be a real challenge.
My PeppTalk Showreel
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
There are four main sites where you can upload video and share it with the world.
YouTube
MySpace
Yahoo
Most sites limit the size of the video to 100 Mb - which is about 10 minutes - though if you sign up for a director account on YouTube - you can upload longer video. At this stage I am still exploring, however the good thing I have discovered is that as a speaker I can now embed my showreel video in my blog here as you can see below, on my Professional Speaking Page and on my Speaking and Marketing Tips site. Other sites like The Ecademy and Squidoo have a YouTube embed link. Embeding a video means that it appears directly in the page and plays there - the visitor does not need to click on a link to the hosting site to view it.
In addition I can add the link to all the social bookmark sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia which also help to improve search engine rankings. Video is really taking off on the web and I am about to explore a number of other options available for video email and video and audio auto play on web pages. But one thing is clear - pretty soon most sites are going to be showing video and as a speaker not using it is going to be a real challenge.
My PeppTalk Showreel
| 7 minute edited version of Rikki Arundel's PEPPTalk Motivational Speech on how to write and deliver and outstanding speech. Great resource for anyone needing to become a better public speaker, especially relevant to women in business. | |
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Struggling to Use Social Bookmarking as a Marketing Stratregy
I have been using Del.icio.us for quite a while now, initially as an online repository for links I wanted to access when working on other computers and also to share links with friends who have similar interests. Of course I could also see the potential in social bookmarking in increasing popularity by creating back links to my site and recently when I began using Squidoo, a group of us on the Ecademy agreed to bookmark each others lenses to see whether this would have much impact on our ranking. Unfortunately the idea didn't really take off beyond the initial flurry of interest.
One reason was that it is a little time consuming. We each tried to help by posting our lens URLs with the titles, notes and tags on the forum, but posting three or four lenses for each member was going to take too much time and we had no idea what impact it would have. I could also see that, for this to really work it would be necessary to submit to more than one social bookmarking site. I have bookmarklets in my browser toolbars for both Del.icio.us and Yahoo My Web - these bookmarklets automatically add the URL and title of the page - but leave you to manually add notes and tags so it still takes a lot of time and when I started looking at Furl and Blink and .... I had no idea how many there were and there simply is not enough room on my browser for all those bookmarklets.
My Speaking and Marketing Tips site is a Site Build It site - and one advantage of that is the remarkable forum of members who are very knowledgable and post practical solutions to a lot of challenges. One solution that emerged was some code deveeloped for Site Build It owners that would enable us to display "Add to" bookmarklets for nine social bookmarking sites. If you have not used these links they work the same way as bookmarklets in the browser and encourage visitors to save the page. The problem is that even this was not keeping up with the huge growth in sites. And some of them like Technorati and Google are not really social bookmarking sites anyway.
Then I launched my own Article Directory, and got some help from Jodi, a web developer in the USA who I noticed was using a couple of submission sites - Socializer and OnlyWire. There are links to both of these in the side panel - Social Bookmark This Page takes you to Socializer and OnlyWire is just below it.
Socializer works like my "add to links" bookmarklets except that it takes you to a page full of them (nearly 50 and I know there are more). However from there you still have to link to each separately - Great for your visitors who are using one or two sites although to be honest most visitors like me should have browser based bookmarkets for their favourite sites.
OnlyWire on the other hand is a bulk submission site (at present the only one) which will summit the page to 15 social bookmark sites - including all the the leading ones. However it is not without its bugs - two of the links don't work properly and two of the links do weird things with the tags. You can see my reviews of them all here. I am hopefull that OnlyWire will fix the problems and add some missing links like Yahoo My Web soon because this really is a time saving tool. Even with only 11 really working it is as quick to submit to them all as it is to submit to a single site. And don't worry about submitting a link twoce - the site picks that up and updates your information.
One big advantage of posting to social bookmark sites is that the top sites do have huge amounts of traffic and high page ranks - I have noticed that my links on sites are already turning up in good positions in seach results.
As I wrote this post I became increasingly aware that this might be all goggledygook to many of my friends who still struggle with technology, so I have produced a few pages on the topic on my web site - very much an in evelopment section because the whole topic is developing and I will be producing a Squidoo lens on the subject in few weeks.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
One reason was that it is a little time consuming. We each tried to help by posting our lens URLs with the titles, notes and tags on the forum, but posting three or four lenses for each member was going to take too much time and we had no idea what impact it would have. I could also see that, for this to really work it would be necessary to submit to more than one social bookmarking site. I have bookmarklets in my browser toolbars for both Del.icio.us and Yahoo My Web - these bookmarklets automatically add the URL and title of the page - but leave you to manually add notes and tags so it still takes a lot of time and when I started looking at Furl and Blink and .... I had no idea how many there were and there simply is not enough room on my browser for all those bookmarklets.
My Speaking and Marketing Tips site is a Site Build It site - and one advantage of that is the remarkable forum of members who are very knowledgable and post practical solutions to a lot of challenges. One solution that emerged was some code deveeloped for Site Build It owners that would enable us to display "Add to" bookmarklets for nine social bookmarking sites. If you have not used these links they work the same way as bookmarklets in the browser and encourage visitors to save the page. The problem is that even this was not keeping up with the huge growth in sites. And some of them like Technorati and Google are not really social bookmarking sites anyway.
Then I launched my own Article Directory, and got some help from Jodi, a web developer in the USA who I noticed was using a couple of submission sites - Socializer and OnlyWire. There are links to both of these in the side panel - Social Bookmark This Page takes you to Socializer and OnlyWire is just below it.
01/01/2007 update
Since writing this article I have discovered AdThis which I prefer to Socializer - You will see the AsThis buttons at the foot of this post and in the sidebar for both social bookmarking and feed subscriptions - works the same way but enables me to put a link at the foot of each post.
Socializer works like my "add to links" bookmarklets except that it takes you to a page full of them (nearly 50 and I know there are more). However from there you still have to link to each separately - Great for your visitors who are using one or two sites although to be honest most visitors like me should have browser based bookmarkets for their favourite sites.
OnlyWire on the other hand is a bulk submission site (at present the only one) which will summit the page to 15 social bookmark sites - including all the the leading ones. However it is not without its bugs - two of the links don't work properly and two of the links do weird things with the tags. You can see my reviews of them all here. I am hopefull that OnlyWire will fix the problems and add some missing links like Yahoo My Web soon because this really is a time saving tool. Even with only 11 really working it is as quick to submit to them all as it is to submit to a single site. And don't worry about submitting a link twoce - the site picks that up and updates your information.
One big advantage of posting to social bookmark sites is that the top sites do have huge amounts of traffic and high page ranks - I have noticed that my links on sites are already turning up in good positions in seach results.
As I wrote this post I became increasingly aware that this might be all goggledygook to many of my friends who still struggle with technology, so I have produced a few pages on the topic on my web site - very much an in evelopment section because the whole topic is developing and I will be producing a Squidoo lens on the subject in few weeks.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Performancing - Makes Blogging Easier to Manage
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
I am still exploring what this site can do - but there are two features that have already become indispensible to me
The first is the firefox extention. (If you are still using internet explorer - you should have got the message by not - all the really cool developments on the web are now happening with Firefox) This makes it really easy to publish blogs and comes with a neet and much better WYSIWYG editor than blogger. (not seen the new service yet)
The second tool is the tracking service - do you know how many people, or as I have discovered how few people are actually reading your blog - well just add a line to your template and you can have up to date metrics on all the activities - including how may people are clicking on your adsense links and which of your blog posts are getting the most attention.
Finally the bit I have yet to get to, you get to join blogging community - and either lurk (read all the posts without actually getting involved - thats what I am doing first) or you can post your own blog posts and comments and find out how to make your blog more successful. This site has a Google Page Rank of 7 so posting blogs here is going to do your own site popularity a few favours anyway.
If you are using Firefox - I strongly recommend this site. If you are not using Firefox - trust me - It is free to download and will transform your browsing experience. You may already understand what Web 2.0 is - if not it's all about the evolution of the web from it's information providing phase to a new interactive and collaberative phase. Internet Explorer is a web 1.0 tool - Firefox is web 2.0.
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
I am still exploring what this site can do - but there are two features that have already become indispensible to me
The first is the firefox extention. (If you are still using internet explorer - you should have got the message by not - all the really cool developments on the web are now happening with Firefox) This makes it really easy to publish blogs and comes with a neet and much better WYSIWYG editor than blogger. (not seen the new service yet)
The second tool is the tracking service - do you know how many people, or as I have discovered how few people are actually reading your blog - well just add a line to your template and you can have up to date metrics on all the activities - including how may people are clicking on your adsense links and which of your blog posts are getting the most attention.
Finally the bit I have yet to get to, you get to join blogging community - and either lurk (read all the posts without actually getting involved - thats what I am doing first) or you can post your own blog posts and comments and find out how to make your blog more successful. This site has a Google Page Rank of 7 so posting blogs here is going to do your own site popularity a few favours anyway.
If you are using Firefox - I strongly recommend this site. If you are not using Firefox - trust me - It is free to download and will transform your browsing experience. You may already understand what Web 2.0 is - if not it's all about the evolution of the web from it's information providing phase to a new interactive and collaberative phase. Internet Explorer is a web 1.0 tool - Firefox is web 2.0.
Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The Importance of Long Tail Marketing
I have increasingly been hearing about Long Tail Marketing recently and made a point today to check it out. If this is a term that is unfamiliar to you stay with me. If you know what Long Tail Marketing, is but would like to know more I have added some links and resources to my Small Business Marketing Lens, including an interview with and presentaton by Chis Anderson the editor in Chief whose Article in October 2004 started it all, and a link to his lens.
So what is Long Tail Marketing and why is it so important for Small Businesses.
First there is nothing new about the Long tail. It is a statistical term derived from a distribution scattergram. If we plot numbers of people up the left axis of the graph and number of products along the bottom, the Long Tail is the section with lots of products being purchased by small number of people and is represented by the yellow section of the graph.
Imagine you go into a book store to buy a Harry Potter book - the chances are you will find a copy in most stores. It is in the red section of the graph - "The Head." It is produced in huge quantities and stocked by all leading stores. But what if you wanted a copy of a Spell Book for Wizards and Witches. The chances are you are going to have to find a small specialist shop or search online. Now you are in the Long Tail where products appeal to a small number of specialist buyers.
Large companies have generally not been interested in the long tail because they cannot afford to stock everything and the cost or reaching small numbers of people is uneconomic in tradition business models. But they are waking up because Amazon now achieves more sales in the long tail than it does with the blockbusters. Why? Because it does not have to hold the stock. Either a specialist supplier advertises in the markeplace or Amazon orders the book for you when you buy it.
But more than this - the internet now has over 1 billion users worldwide and search engines make it easier to find a niche product supplier in the long tail than in the head. Type "Marketing" into Google and you are going to get 1.5 billion responses. Search for "marketing for voluntary organisations" and there are about 700 responses. If you are targeting that market the chances of being found are quite high because there is little competition - whereas getting seen at all in the mass market is increasingly difficult for new small businesses.
Large companies simply do not have the resources to deliver to many niche markets so they don't bother, but increasinlgy we as consumers are deciding that we are not prepared to put up with the general mass market products - we want unique, customised, focused products that exactly meet our needs.
Understanding the long tail is critical for all small businesses, yet when I am networking I constantly find that people with small businesses are trying to reach everyone. When I ask who are your customers I hear, "everyone." If you try to appeal to everyone - you will lose the niche markets. Small businesses cannot serve everyone - there is a limit to how much business you can manage, so why not become THE supplier to your niche and work the long tail, instead of trying to compete with major corporations in the head.
Do visit my Small Business Marketing Lens on Squidoo for links and information on this important strategy.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
So what is Long Tail Marketing and why is it so important for Small Businesses.
First there is nothing new about the Long tail. It is a statistical term derived from a distribution scattergram. If we plot numbers of people up the left axis of the graph and number of products along the bottom, the Long Tail is the section with lots of products being purchased by small number of people and is represented by the yellow section of the graph.Imagine you go into a book store to buy a Harry Potter book - the chances are you will find a copy in most stores. It is in the red section of the graph - "The Head." It is produced in huge quantities and stocked by all leading stores. But what if you wanted a copy of a Spell Book for Wizards and Witches. The chances are you are going to have to find a small specialist shop or search online. Now you are in the Long Tail where products appeal to a small number of specialist buyers.
Large companies have generally not been interested in the long tail because they cannot afford to stock everything and the cost or reaching small numbers of people is uneconomic in tradition business models. But they are waking up because Amazon now achieves more sales in the long tail than it does with the blockbusters. Why? Because it does not have to hold the stock. Either a specialist supplier advertises in the markeplace or Amazon orders the book for you when you buy it.
But more than this - the internet now has over 1 billion users worldwide and search engines make it easier to find a niche product supplier in the long tail than in the head. Type "Marketing" into Google and you are going to get 1.5 billion responses. Search for "marketing for voluntary organisations" and there are about 700 responses. If you are targeting that market the chances of being found are quite high because there is little competition - whereas getting seen at all in the mass market is increasingly difficult for new small businesses.
Large companies simply do not have the resources to deliver to many niche markets so they don't bother, but increasinlgy we as consumers are deciding that we are not prepared to put up with the general mass market products - we want unique, customised, focused products that exactly meet our needs.
Understanding the long tail is critical for all small businesses, yet when I am networking I constantly find that people with small businesses are trying to reach everyone. When I ask who are your customers I hear, "everyone." If you try to appeal to everyone - you will lose the niche markets. Small businesses cannot serve everyone - there is a limit to how much business you can manage, so why not become THE supplier to your niche and work the long tail, instead of trying to compete with major corporations in the head.
Do visit my Small Business Marketing Lens on Squidoo for links and information on this important strategy.
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Speaking about Transgender History
Well I had some fun yesterday. I have spoken at just about every sort of venue, but yesterday was a new experience - I was speaking at a Shopping Centre, right in the centre of the Princess Quays shopping centre in Hull on a busy Friday morning.
It was not without its challenges I have to say.
First the technology did not work - I don't often use PowerPoint these days mostly because I am trying to teach people how to create great speaches and it takes a considerable skill do that and use PowerPoint. The topic of transgender history lends itself to powerpoint because it is a very visual history, but with the technical problems I had to go on without slides and still managed to hold a very transient audience for 30 minutes.
The event was a Hate Crime awareness event - with lots of dignatories around, so it did not do my reputaiton and personal brand any harm. The other challenge was the awful acoustics in a cavernous indoor shopping centre - I have faced the challenges of Speakers Corner in London and a number of outside events, but this was very different.
I believe that most hate crime and discrimination is caused by ignorance and so I try to tackle this as far as trans people are concerned by raising awareness with an entertaining look at the history of trans people. Reclaiming and publicising our long history is a great way to help people see us in a different light.
I can't give you the speech here but I can give you something the Hull Citizens missed - the visual tour - Please visit this Squidoo lens for a fascinating journey through a very colourful Transgender History
TransHistory - A Colourful Past and Present on Squidoo
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
It was not without its challenges I have to say.
First the technology did not work - I don't often use PowerPoint these days mostly because I am trying to teach people how to create great speaches and it takes a considerable skill do that and use PowerPoint. The topic of transgender history lends itself to powerpoint because it is a very visual history, but with the technical problems I had to go on without slides and still managed to hold a very transient audience for 30 minutes.
The event was a Hate Crime awareness event - with lots of dignatories around, so it did not do my reputaiton and personal brand any harm. The other challenge was the awful acoustics in a cavernous indoor shopping centre - I have faced the challenges of Speakers Corner in London and a number of outside events, but this was very different.
I believe that most hate crime and discrimination is caused by ignorance and so I try to tackle this as far as trans people are concerned by raising awareness with an entertaining look at the history of trans people. Reclaiming and publicising our long history is a great way to help people see us in a different light.
I can't give you the speech here but I can give you something the Hull Citizens missed - the visual tour - Please visit this Squidoo lens for a fascinating journey through a very colourful Transgender History
TransHistory - A Colourful Past and Present on Squidoo
Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog
Friday, August 18, 2006
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
I spend a great deal of my time working with women in business and it is surprising how many still have problems day to day in dealing with men in the office. All too often I see women observing successful men in busines and then making the mistake of trying to replicate their behaviour.
Men and women do business differently - and right now the qualities most needed in business those natural strengths most associated with women. I recieved this article this morning from Monster.com which offers some particulary useful advice for women on how to survive in a male environment and stay true to who you are.
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
Rikki
Free business articles for your Blog or Web site
Men and women do business differently - and right now the qualities most needed in business those natural strengths most associated with women. I recieved this article this morning from Monster.com which offers some particulary useful advice for women on how to survive in a male environment and stay true to who you are.
Jobs for the Girls: Surviving in a Man's World - Monster.co.uk
Rikki
Free business articles for your Blog or Web site
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Squidoo : My Lensmaster Page
What, you might be thinking, is Squidoo?
Squidoo is a free service (in fact you can even earn money with Squidoo) that enables you to create "Lenses" - Views on subjects you are expert in or simply topics you wish to promote. You can use a lens to promote your area of expertise and help establish you as the person to come to. You can be really commercial and use one to promote your business. Or perhaps you have a passion - well you can create a lens to bring together resources and people who share your passion.
Squidoo is not a blog - though you can write items - and you can link your blog and your web site to any or all of your lenses. And yes - you can create as many lenses as you wish. One thing I have discovered is that the more focused the topic on each lens the better. Take a look at the first two lenses I have created - and remember they are still works in progress so do pop back from time to time:
Selling and Marketing to Women
Write and Deliver and Outstanding Speech
But hey - I have only just started exploring this medium so if you want to see what you can do check out this lens from author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin (he has lots - see the link to his other lenses) It gave me some great ideas on how to use this new medium and there are lots of other helpful tips once you find your way around.
What you need (okay, want) to know about Seth Godin
Rikki
Squidoo is a free service (in fact you can even earn money with Squidoo) that enables you to create "Lenses" - Views on subjects you are expert in or simply topics you wish to promote. You can use a lens to promote your area of expertise and help establish you as the person to come to. You can be really commercial and use one to promote your business. Or perhaps you have a passion - well you can create a lens to bring together resources and people who share your passion.
Squidoo is not a blog - though you can write items - and you can link your blog and your web site to any or all of your lenses. And yes - you can create as many lenses as you wish. One thing I have discovered is that the more focused the topic on each lens the better. Take a look at the first two lenses I have created - and remember they are still works in progress so do pop back from time to time:
Selling and Marketing to Women
Write and Deliver and Outstanding Speech
But hey - I have only just started exploring this medium so if you want to see what you can do check out this lens from author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin (he has lots - see the link to his other lenses) It gave me some great ideas on how to use this new medium and there are lots of other helpful tips once you find your way around.
What you need (okay, want) to know about Seth Godin
Rikki
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Articles That Sell
If you write articles to help promote your web site or blog - here is a great blog I have just found that provides lots of useful tips, advice and links - well worth putting in your RSS links.
Articles That Sell
Articles That Sell
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