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Pinterest Invitation
Have You Received Your Pinterest Invitation?
Have you received your Pinterest invitation and, if so, are you going to accept it? If you are in any doubt as to whether to accept your Pinterest invitation then here are a few figures you may wish to chew over.
Pinterest registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December 2011 alone, up from 1.6 million in September 2011. According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic, Pinterest is driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined. Additionally, TechCrunch reports that Pinterest now has 11.7 million active monthly users, thus crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history. It also reports that Pinterest users now spend so much time sharing their favorite images that now only Facebook and Tumblr have more social media time on site than Pinterest. If these figures aren’t compelling enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that in January 2012, the number of visitors on Pinterest had reached almost a third of those visiting Twitter and also that Pinterest’s rate of website traffic referral was close to that of Twitter.
The seasoned online ratings assessor Alexa is declaring that Pinterest has a global traffic ranking of 57 and in the USA alone ranks it at 19. This puts it ahead of well established major websites including CNN, MediaFire, AOL, ESPN and WordPress, to name a few.
The well known social media commentator Jason Falls reports in Entrepreneur that Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail deal site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.
These figures and reports illustrate the dramatic rise of a fledgling site which The Wall Street Journal declares isn’t even sure how it is going to make money, quoting board member Jeremy Levine’s statement that “Pinterest’s monetization strategy isn’t in the oven and it’s not even off the baking table. We have one hundred ideas but no execution as of yet.”
Another issue with using Pinterest is that of copyright when uploading images. The Boston Business Journal, for example, stopped using Pinterest one day after setting up its account there after realizing that it could be sued for images it uploaded to the site.
Attempting to explain the growth of Pinterest and the reasons why a Pinterest invitation is usually eagerly snapped
up, Anthony Wing Kosner in an article in Forbes Magazine explains:
1) It’s a Fun Experience: There are lots of ways to consume content curated by other people, but Pinterest is a much more enjoyable—and lean back— experience than, for instance, Facebook or even Flickr. Many users describe paging through grids of sympathetically grouped pictures addicting. The fact that there is still room for new entries in the field suggests that despite their huge popularity, social networking sites have not created great content experiences.
2) It’s Easy: Pinterest’s bookmarklet makes quick work of responding to things you see online, which turns passive viewing into active curation.* It’s simultaneously a way to share and a way to remember what you’ve seen and liked.
3) It’s About Discovery, Not Search: As pointed out earlier on TechCrunch, we go to Google or Amazon, keywords in hand, when we know what we are looking for. But how we discover things we want in the first place is still wide open. Pinterest promises to be a one-stop-shop for anything we might want to discover (at least visually).
Additionally, Anthony Wing Kosner goes on to say:
The Content is the Navigation: Again, unlike Facebook, Pinterest has a lot less visible plumbing making it all work. Without the chrome, the ads and the news ticker you’re left just navigating a lot of beautiful pictures.
It’s About Interests, Not Friends: Instead of the emphasis on who you know that has been the backbone of social networks, Pinterest is all about what you like. Shared interests are only one aspect of friendship—we don’t necessarily pick our friends because of their curation skills. Ironically, the pinboards help you get to stuff that interests you quicker by sidestepping your actual friends.
It Creates Persistent Content: Unlike Facebook and Twitter that create fleeting timeline streams of content, Pinterest’s pinboards stay put. This is great for sharing and collaborating on image collections with other people, but particularly valuable to creatives or brands with something to sell.
Time will tell whether Pinterest will be the next mega social media success story and whether it’s success will endure, but for the moment the urge to grab a Pinterest invitation amongst social media users seems to be proving irresistible.
Let’s hear whether you’ve taken up your Pinterest invitation yet or intend to when you receive one or whether you intend not to because you’re dismissing Pinterest as an irrelevant sideshow and a bubble that is waiting to burst. We would love to hear what you have to say in the Comments box below.
Adapt Change or Die – In Memory of Kodak
I have no wish to intrude on either private grief or very public grief in the case of Kodak but I’m indebted to my good friend Harlan Kilstein for his thoughts on their demise and thought they’d be worth sharing as the fate of Kodak has a big lesson for all of us. Harlan purchased his first Kodak camera – a Brownie – at the time of the New York World’s fair in 1964. He remembers visiting the Kodak exhibit as a little kid and being blown away by what he saw.
Here is what he had to say in a recent message to me:
Kodak was HUMONGOUS. Could it get any bigger or better?
They made cameras, film, paper, chemicals, and much more.
They took photography to new levels.
They endowed schools of the arts.
Working for Kodak was a dream for many. Because once you were in with Kodak, you were set for life.
In case you didn’t know it, Kodak declared bankruptcy this week.
The unthinkable happened.
And it happened because the world went digital and Kodak refused to believe it was happening.
Kodak went on with its regularly scheduled business of manufacturing film, cameras for film, paper and chemicals and ignored the digital revolution.
They kept thinking:
This is just a fad.
People want to take their pictures into the drug store and wait a week for them to be ready.
People don’t want to be able to edit their own photos, share them with their friends, or be able to view their pictures instantly.
Guess what Kodak….
You were wrong.
Too late, as the death knell started to toll Kodak woke up and said:
“Wait! We get it. People want digital cameras! And digital printers! And they want to take video too!”
But it was too late.
The giant filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and the future will tell whether or not there is a role for Kodak in the future.
But it’s a powerful lesson for all of us.
Adapt Change or Die.
As humans, we tend to like things as they are.
We don’t invite change.
One of my favorite quotes is “the only one who likes change is a wet baby.”
But if you want to survive…
If you want to thrive….
You have to WELCOME CHANGE.
Don’t be like Kodak and think people are going to embrace the past.
Most people don’t want to live life in a museum.
Be flexible.
Be innovative.
Offer value.
Be the best you can be.
How very true. As another friend of mine once said: “You either move with the times or you quickly find yourself being against everything.” A lot of us like things to stay the way they are but you’ll soon find out (without advocating change just for the sake of it) that you can’t afford that mentality if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, especially in today’s fast-moving online world.
Don’t forget to share your own thoughts on this subject in the Comments box below:
How Video Marketing Can Help Your Business (An Interview With Gabriel Valo)
Have you considered accelerating the reach of your business by using video marketing?
Even the most camera-shy person can have a beautiful and powerful sales and marketing video for their business, without busting their budget. Not only can you have beautiful and powerful sales and marketing videos for your business, you should have them or else you are wasting the quickest and most effective way to promote your business. Don’t take my word for it, take that of Gabriel Valo, one of the World’s most passionate advocates of video marketing. Gabriel is based in Singapore and has built a big name for himself when it comes to video marketing, particularly but not exclusively, in Australia. You can listen to my interview with Gabriel in full by clicking the icon below:
Alternatively you may wish to listen to the interview in three edited sections for much quicker downloads (please allow just over 30 seconds for each download):
My Video Marketing Interview With Gabriel Valo – Part 1
My Video Marketing Interview With Gabriel Valo – Part 2
My Video Marketing Interview With Gabriel Valo – Part 3
So what’s your take on video marketing? Have you considered giving it a try. Maybe you already use video marketing. Do share your experiences, either positive or negative, by responding in the Comments box below. In the meantime, Gabriel is offering a FREE consultation offer for the first 100 respondents to contact him after listening to the audio.
If you want to take advantage of Gabriel’s great FREE consultation offer for the first 100 respondents you can contact him now via his business address: Gabriel@goneviralmarketing.com.au. He’ll be delighted to hear from you!
Any other business owners seeking an interview with me are very welcome to contact me via one of my social media platforms accessible from this page.
The New Look Twitter
Those of you who are active Twitter users will by now be aware that there is a new look to Twitter. The new look Twitter has an appearance that looks closer to Facebook than the old style Twitter’s text only format. Even before users sign in, they are presently with a glossy image which paves the way for a new more “picture-heavy” appearance to the site itself. Further tabs have also been added to the menu for users.
The new look Twitter has new navigation tabs on the top left of the page. These include a discovery tab, letting users tap into search results based on their personal interests, a home tab, and a connect tab. To the top right, after the Search option, is a new Tweet button and a more simplified way of embedding users’ photos and videos. Just like Facebook’s new timeline, everything is served up in columns.
Clicking the “Me” tab will reveal a much more expansive profile page where your followers can tweet directly to you and view your lists, favourites, followers and photos, almost in the style of a Facebook personal profile page.
In fact many critics are accusing Twitter of “having done a Facebook”. One such critic, but not the only one is Pluggedin.co.uk, a technology news, advice and reviews site operated in association with Comet, Stuff, T3, Tech Radar and What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision, where an article posted on 9th December argues:
Twitter has gone and done a Facebook on us by updating and dramatically changing the look and feel of the website.
So far there has not been the barrage of whining and moaning that comes with every tiny change Facebook makes to its interface.
This is probably because the new-look Twitter is an improvement on the old design, and the new features add to the experience. As Twitter aims to attract more people and businesses to the site, they have gone for simplicity and aesthetics.
Twitter currently has around 100 million active users. Not bad, but when you see that Facebook is closing in on the billion-user mark, it is no wonder that Twitter wants more followers.
So gone are the cluttered pages and dark design, replaced by a sleek, simple design that is much more light and airy.
Old-hands may be a little put off by the rearranging of the homepage, but the navigation is basically the same. And where it might have taken a couple of sessions to get used to how Twitter works, noobs will now be able to pick it up much quicker.
And the homepage now has a much larger space for viewing Tweets, presumably to make the most of embedded pictures and videos.
This feature is also on the Me page (formerly your profile page), and lets you view content in a much more straightforward way.
Another interesting new feature is the Discover tab. This is basically the ‘Activity’ function version 2.0, and will show you a stream of Tweets and content that Twitter thinks match your interests. Rest of Article
It’s argued that these changes will make Twitter more accessible and that it will become a real challenger to Facebook, but that is a very big call with Facebook’s near 1 billion users dwarfing Twitter’s approximately 100 million active users. The main attraction of Twitter, namely the speed at which anything can be posted is unaffected, but like anywhere else, substantial change brings with it the risk of alienating existing users. Not every account has been uploaded to the new style Twitter, and some accounts seem to fluctuate between the old style and the new look Twitter, but the changes are due to roll out to all accounts in the coming weeks.
So if you are an existing Twitter user, will the changes put you off using Twitter, encourage you, or make no difference? If you don’t use Twitter will these changes encourage you to become a user. Do let us know by making use of the comments box.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Take On Social Media (Keynote @ RE/MAX Annual Convention 2011)
Gary Vaynerchuk‘s take on social media: “Everybody gets on Facebook & Twitter and starts pushing. You are trying to close too fast and need to relax.”
If you don’t know Gary Vaynerchuk, he has over 908,000 followers on Twitter, 72,500 Facebook Fans and 106,000 Google Plus account holders have included him in their Google+ Circles. (Just click the above image of Gary to view & listen)
This keynote is well worth the hour it will take to watch it. You can always leave it on in the background while you’re working if you must, but make sure you let his messages sink in, especially his take on traditional marketing like Yellow Pages. It’s also very entertaining! When it comes to social media, Gary Vaynerchuk knows what he is talking about!
As always, I’d be pleased to receive and respond to comments.
E-Mail Organization – Organising Your E-Mails
Have you mastered the essential skill of organising your e-mails?
If you are like me, I suspect that every day you get hammered by 100’s of emails from other Internet Marketers. You probably dismiss most of those emails as junk, but do you realise that some of them will be really helpful? Perhaps you do but you feel overwhelmed by how can you make effective use of them? Indeed, regardless of their value, how can you stay organized and know exactly how or what action to take?
It doesn’t matter if the person is someone you like or not, you can learn just as much from bad marketing as you can from good marketing. You can often see what’s wrong as soon as you open their e-mails, eg the one’s who can’t even be bothered to address you by name or the one’s which always try to sell a different affiliate product.
If for some reason you can’t stand getting someone’s emails and it ruins your day, then unsubscribe from them and move on!
What I’d recommend however, is that you take an hour or so to go through the past week of emails. Create folders for the Internet Marketers that interest you (good and bad) and start indexing all of their emails everyday inside their folder.
It’s important to note that you want to keep track of the bad marketers too – not just the ones you like.
“Patrick, how do I know who is a bad marketer?”
If you’re brand spanking new to Internet Marketing you might not know, but that’s OK. Whoever annoys you the most in their emails is usually doing something wrong and is not a good marketer. Therefore they probably can’t help you at this time, but that doesn’t mean they won’t in the future which is why it’s still worth saving their emails.
So why do we do this?
The secret is not to watch what they are marketing to you, but HOW they market to you.
That one sentence is one to remember. It could be one that changes everything.
Studying the way other Internet Marketers market to you will open up another world to you. That transparency will set you free and save you years off your learning curve.
In order for you to grow your business more rapidly, you need to be studying Internet Marketing as an art. This means studying what the other top Internet Marketers are doing. Why re-invent the wheel? All you need to know about making money is already right there, being marketed to you!
There is so much information to consume that is readily available. Most of that information you will find through your
emails. I mean let’s be honest here.. I can almost bet you most of the stuff you have learned has been through another marketer recommending you to check out a piece of information via an email?
Sure you can Google your life away but doesn’t that suck? Isn’t it time consuming….so most of you will rely on the call to action that is made inside your inbox. The information you’ve subscribed to.
This is why you must be organized with your email inbox by indexing the good from the bad.
This might seem pretty elementary but most people don’t even do this, so they stay stuck in the mud, spinning their wheels.
Do likewise with webinars. Some do get taken down quickly, but others are not. Assemble them by their author or subject and you will soon have a library of valuable training material to refer to and act upon, often almost as good as the course that the webinar host is seeking to market to you for a hefty fee! If you simply leave them in your inbox, they will quickly get lost and be forgotten and wasted.
If you’re still sceptical, you’ll also find that by trying this exercise, it will get you more focused and organized, allowing you to take the precise action that can make a difference.
I therefore urge you to get in the mindset of studying marketing campaigns. Precise action will allow you to consume more information, index good from bad and then grow from each. The end result will then be that you’ll make more money, and faster!
Facebook vs Google Plus: Writing Off Google+ Could Be A Big Mistake
Many commentators have enjoyed describing the arrival of Google Plus as a Facebook vs Google Plus battle. Reports in recent weeks suggest that Google Plus numbers are stagnating and that users are now drifting back to Facebook. This has led some commentators to pronounce that Facebook has won the battle, but is this actually the case? An alternative view that’s starting to gain ground argues that writing off Google+ could be a big mistake and that Google’s strategy with Google Plus has been misread. Far from competing with Facebook over user numbers, Google may in fact be pursuing a completely different approach but one designed to ensure their ultimate hegemony. For Google numbers of users could be less important than attracting the lion’s share of online advertising and overall user activity, and that Google holds the aces needed to achieve this. One of the more informative posts taking this view was posted on VentureBeat.com by Jolie O’Dell.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Internet’s frothy enthusiasm over Google+ has dried into proclamations of its imminent death.
Social media experts and bloggers who were one month ago hailing the fledgling service as the second coming of Christ are now calling it a graveyard and a ghost town.
But from where Google executive Bradley Horowitz sits, in an office on the Google campus in Mountain View, the vista isn’t nearly so dire.
“I don’t blame the pundits,” he says, “they’re not privy to our long-term strategies.”
The comment may seem snide or passive-aggressive; it’s also true to some extent. To understand Google’s plans for Plus, Horowitz says, you need to listen less and watch more.
“Six months from now, it will become increasingly apparent what we’re doing with Google+,” he says with a measure of opacity. “It will be revealed less in what we say and more in the product launches we reveal week by week.”
Over the past couple of weeks, we have, in fact, been seeing Google+’s social features creep into other Google web products, including Reader and Blogger.
We were clued into the real scope of Google’s plans by Louis Gray, a relatively new employee of the company who is a product marketing manager for Google+. A few weeks ago, Gray gave us a glimpse at the long view: Plus isn’t a social network; it’s Google’s new way of getting you to use all its web products.
Now, Horowitz confirms that conception. As I explain to him the vision that Gray explained earlier to me, he says, “Directionally, the world you’re describing is the world we aspire to. And it will be much better than the current state for our users.”
What is Google+?
Too many pundits and tech bloggers have made the mistake of thinking of Google+ as a Facebook competitor, but it’s absolutely not — at least not as far as Google is concerned.Of course, Google is still in the business of competing with Facebook for ad dollars. That boils down to compiling the best, most actionable data about consumers to sell to advertisers.
And if Plus catches on, Google stands a much better chance of accomplishing that goal, not by orchestrating a Great Migration of users from one social network to another, but by subtly linking all your Google-powered online activity and profiles so advertisers can see a more complete picture of you than Facebook could ever offer.
But that’s just the follow-the-money part of the story of how Google is banking on staying in the black. As far as what you, the average end user, are expected to do to use Google+, there’s a lot less effort involved than you might think.
After all, Google is a company renowned for the massive collective brainpower of its workforce, and no one in that workforce really expected a billion people, give or take, to switch their online lives and relationships to a new destination.
Rather, Google+ is simply a new way of accessing Google’s web search. And Gmail. And Google Maps.
In other words, Google+ is (or soon will be) part of all of those products, rather than a standalone social network of its own.
“We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google,” says Horowitz, “a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product. It’s something that takes time to appreciate, even internally. It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.”
Until the world does catch up, however, Google has to find its own metrics for success. Users are complaining they don’t see enough activity in their circles, that too few people are coming to Plus to hang out and interact.
Then again, if you buy into the idea that Plus isn’t, pardon the pun, a hangout or destination per se, you can accept the idea that Google+ could still be a success without massive amounts of public sharing and user activity. Original article
Could it be then that whilst Facebook may have won a battle, Google Plus will go on to win the war? Whichever view you hold, the longer we as users have a choice the better that must be. Do let us have your point of view.
Google Plus vs Facebook: Has The Battle Been Won?
Google Plus vs Facebook certainly had social media commentators buzzing after the launch of Google Plus in July 2011, but have we arrived at the stage where we can ask “Has The Battle Been Won?” Google Plus launched to a fanfare of high expectations and acclaim but in recent weeks those high expectations have been replaced by prophecies of impending doom. One of the most authoritative articles on this subject has come from the admittedly Facebook centric blog All Facebook. Here is the original article, written by Aidan Hijleh:
Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.
The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.
In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.A Closer Look At The Battle
Google Plus entered the social game at a time when competition was arguably at its fiercest. Facebook was just reported to have an estimated 750 million active users, while both Twitter and LinkedIn were making notable gains of their own.
In order to garner attention, Google would have to give users a different experience, and different is what it strived to be from the very beginning.
Even in its original beta form, Google Plus was equipped with a new friends system in Circles, a discovery engine in Sparks, and a group video chat tool in Hangouts, which recently made its way to the mobile platform.
Apparently all that wasn’t enough, as Facebook went to work with some countering of its own.
In addition to combating Circles with Smart Lists, and answering Hangouts with a Skype-powered video chat feature, Facebook rolled out some huge updates that once again made it the talk of the town.
The majority of the changes involved making the popular social platform more user-friendly, starting with the news feed.
The news feed has been designed in a manner that presents users with posts that are deemed to be most important to them, opposed to the most recent updates.
According to Facebook Engineering Manager Mark Tonkelowitz, the news feed experience is now like users having their own personal newspaper.
Despite not being embraced by the community as a whole, or at least not at first, the recent changes at Facebook have reclaimed the attention of both the general members and brands who spend their time on the site.
And while Google Plus still has some attributes that enable it to stand out, the lack of activity and return visits is a sign that users are having trouble justifying its worth in comparison to what they already have in Facebook.Last Chance?
Google Plus is not the search giant’s first attempt at social networking.
If you recall, the company launched Google Buzz in 2010, which fizzled out due to a major privacy flaw that accompanied the initial release and the same issue the company faces today — being useful in what can be considered an overly crowded space.
Google Plus definitely has more potential than Buzz, but should it bomb, it could very well be the last shot at ever touching Facebook in the social realm. Original here
Aidan Hijleh’s post in All Facebook appears to argue that the battle has largely been won. For my part I always thought Facebook was far too entrenched to be overturned as the leading social networking site. Not only does it have 800 million users, it also has a vast array of Apps plus a range of Page options for businesses, charities, groups and other communities. Many of these will have invested a considerable amount of time, energy and money in building their Facebook profile plus a range of networking options there. To expect these people and businesses to walk away from that never seemed to add up to me.
Like some other users, I warmly welcomed having the choice of utilising both Facebook and Google Plus but I suspect I’m in a minority who use both actively. For the typical user there isn’t much appeal in duplicating their commitment across both platforms due to inevitable time constraints. A monopoly is never desirable as the temptation to take users for granted will become overwhelming to that monopoly, so I wish the battle to continue for as long as possible. Unless Facebook starts scoring some spectacular own goals however, I can’t see much of an exodus to Google Plus. Despite complaints over issues like the Facebook News Feed algorithms and it’s tendency to give prominence to trivia over serious stories, only a small minority have so far felt strongly enough to abandon Facebook.
An alternative minority view is that Google never intended Google Plus to be a social networking platform or that it was ever intended to overthrow Facebook by instigating a mass exodus from it. Google simply will continue to integrate all of the Google “ecosystem” into Google Plus, such as Google Reader and Youtube so that ultimately all Google-powered online activity and user profiles become integrated so that Google’s position as the leading online advertising option is secured, a further by-product of that being that Facebook could lose it’s appeal and relevance as it becomes dwarfed by the emerging Google beast.
Don’t hesitate to give us your thoughts via the Comments box and/or through your favourite social networking sites.
Social Media For Business
Social Media is transforming the world for business. What is becoming clearer and clearer is that the way that any business either uses or doesn’t use social media can have massive repercussions both in relationships with customers and with staff. Alistair Rennie, the General Manager For Social Business at IBM, gave a thoughtful analysis to this issue in a perceptive article featured recently in Forbes Magazine. He calls this the era of “social business”.
The era of social business is here and it is becoming clear just how transformative it will be.
But many are still asking, “What does social business really mean?”
Companies are increasingly adopting social media technologies, using Facebook to reach out to customers or YouTube to demonstrate new products. These are good first steps, but there is so much more that “social” has to offer. Social media is just one dimension of today’s social business.
Gone are the days of businesses limiting or even entirely restricting employees’ access to the Internet and social media platforms. Today, by combining social networking tools – internally and externally – with sophisticated analytic capabilities, companies are transforming their business processes, building stronger relationships among their employees, customers and business partners and making better decisions, faster. This is what makes a social business – embracing networks of people to create new business value and opportunities.
Leading edge companies, including China Telecom, Nokia and Cemex, understand what it means to embrace social. They recognize that they can’t afford to relegate social technologies to people’s personal lives and have instead implemented social tools and concepts to drive brand awareness and ultimately, their organization’s bottom line.
While embracing social technologies, these organizations are also creating a new business culture that encourages employees to tap into the expertise of their colleagues and clients, to communicate and share ideas across departments and geographies, and to learn from others to create new products, respond to problems, and build the brand. Theses organizations not only see the power behind social, but they’re actively combining social networking with sophisticated analytics to glean insights from social activity streams and behaviors to find out what they need to do better to drive financial results.
What’s keeping other companies from following their lead? Many executives recognize that social media is powerful, even if they still wonder in the back of their minds whether it’s just a time sink. Yet, even when they decide that there is potential, these execs get hung up on trying to figure how to apply social technologies to their companies, how to engage and empower their employees to participate.
Here’s the trick with social business: Focus on people and culture.
People by nature are social beings. We naturally form networks based on trust and similar interests. With social technology, executives are providing the necessary tools for their employees to easily tap into the creativity, intelligence and community that they crave. They’re now able to reach networks of people inside and outside the company to get work done more efficiently, more creatively, more collaboratively. But will they? Not without trust and encouragement from the top. Just as important as the tools, building trust and encouraging social interactions are essential to driving a social change in the workforce. Creating a social business culture can be the most difficult hurdle to overcome, but it’s also the most important.
Alistair Rennie’s Guest Post in Forbes Magazine highlights how some businesses have both embraced social technology and created a new business culture that encourages employees to tap into the expertise of their colleagues and clients. This contrasts with the suspicions shown by other businesses towards social media, where often an outright ban on staff accessing Facebook and Twitter exists in the workplace or where social media is simply used to trumpet the business’s brand and products without truly engaging either staff or customers. It’s equally true that a lot of employees want to keep their employer at arms length from their social media platforms but then once someone begins posting online they need to realise they can never fully guarantee who they can restrict those views or news to.
Social business is a natural evolution from the mainframe and the PC. Where the mainframe is “work” focused, the PC adds ‘personal’, and social business adds both ‘social’ and strengthened ‘personal’. These three terms ‘work’, ‘personal’ and ‘social’ can also be argued to represent the three dimensions of everyday life, but what is your take on both the article and these views?
The Abundance Of Opportunities For Entrepreneurs
These are exciting times for the genuine entrepreneur. Money making opportunities for entrepreneurs are everywhere, despite what doom-mongers might tell you! Times may well be traumatic for those who simply want a steady job to toil away at or a traditional trade marketed in the traditional ways which no longer work in the modern world but for anyone willing to look beyond that treadmill, there is an abundance of opportunities waiting to be grasped.
The facilities and tools available to the ordinary man or woman, sitting in their own lounge or conservatory are truly mind-blowing. What’s more, they are available for next to nothing.
Take creating a book, for example. Up until just a few years ago, to create a marketable book, you would had to spend thousands on typesetting and printing. If you couldn’t afford to print 5,000 copies – then tough! The unit cost was very high. Today, you can get a book to market fast and for free. Just upload it to Amazon from your laptop in an hour or two and it’s immediately available for the whole world to buy.
This sort of change has been mirrored in just about every sphere of business and has transformed the landscape for any would-be entrepreneur. If you have a particular interest or passion, a domain name and webhosting for your website can be acquired for next to nothing and you can immediately compile or collate articles and information about your interest and monetise it with downloadable reports and affiliate links to related businesses of your choice.
Marketing too is very inexpensive with a vast array of Social Media sites to use and engage with those who are interested in your niche. These people can be easily traced be following relevant discussion threads and freely participating in these discussions. This is a far cry from the days when any business needed premises for customers to visit, employees to man the business and facilities for storing stock.
Information is now instantly available at the touch of a button and choices for everyone now have never been more stark. Either embrace the new era or get left behind. One thing for sure is that waiting for a past era to return is futile. Historically it seldom happens. A long period of uncertainty and disappointment lies ahead for those with a traditional mindset. Those who successfully move with the times and who are always willing to adapt will be the successful entrepreneurs of the Twenty-First Century.
