Internet musings — Page 2 — Barbara Saul and what she gets up to most days!

Keeping an eye on the youngsters

It is so easy to keep doing what you’re doing, isn’t it?

This morning I was listening to the radio and a piece about teenagers online, that many of them go to YouTube as their first port of call. Now I know this already, having a son who spends hours watching his favourite Yogscasts and other such screencasts. So why have I not allowed that to nudge my business brain to more seriously consider video beyond the screencast tutorials for the Blogmistress? More than this I shy away from but just how wrong might that be with the rising market’s apparent enjoyment of video rather than reading. Shame on me for not allocating time to researching if this is more than a teenage phase.

While working on an infographic (which I love and understand why they are popular – succinct and simple) for the JDI club I wanted to know more about the latest social media favourites and as well as the obvious I noted an apparent revival in Myspace and that Instagram is more popular than I considered. So that’s more training for me this week, understanding the whats and whys.

What’s my point? That all of us who use this wondrous web for our businesses need to refresh our view of things more often, even putting something into the schedule for such – it is important if we want to tap into the online market, essential. This should be easier for me as I’m suggesting what you all should be considering and just scheduling draft blog posts without also scheduling the time to understand and actually write them is my bad (see me – getting all hip 😉 ) and I will do better.

The Internet continues to offer us the most valuable access to our market, arguably (?) the most powerful tool for those of us who sell services or anything non-geographically limited. And we know how it evolves, so we must listen and watch and learn – frequently.

photo credit: colmmcsky via photopin cc

Everything changes – work with it

One of the latest changes that has some business owners and social media marketers up in arms is Facebook changing the way it shows content to those who’ve liked a business page. “They’ve moved the goal posts” they cry. The result of the change is that we have to work a little harder to be seen by our audience, our “likers” – or we can pay for the privilege.

Each time an essential aspect of online marketing changes the way they provide their free services, people complain. People who perhaps expect rather too much for free and consider that everything on the Internet should be free. Such an attitude is understandable to a degree – so much is still and has been free to view and any portal or service that starts to charge is met with outrage. We really do need to appreciate the resource that goes into the wondrous facilities we enjoy.

For the social media playgrounds at our disposal, some of us know that if we keep going with sensible, relevant online activity the changes are more likely to be a good thing. It’s a shame that those who think they know better won’t stop and pay attention long enough to reap the rewards of experience. But I digress…

You can only control the aspects that you own, to paraphrase my friend, Nikki Pilkington (we did have a chuckle yesterday about this). Everything changes, evolves – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ – all of it. You can harness the available power if you offer what they consider to be good stuff for their users – fresh, relevant content, usefulness, interest – whatever enhances and enables them to provide what we expect of them. Think about it – when we use Google to search for something we want the most useful and relevant links for our search – if our website/page can provide that we must make it simple for Google to know and show this. When we’re catching up with online friends on Facebook, we do not want to be bombarded with all the business pages we’ve Liked, but would perhaps (arguably?) like to choose those we see in our feed. Or indeed when we see actual adverts, we’re more likely to click on those of very targeted interest to us.

So when you, as a business person who wants to reach as many relevant customers as possible online, consider just what is going to work you do need to keep in mind that things change. This scares many but do the right things and you’ll reap the rewards.

On the Facebook matter, there are ways to increase your visibility – basically you ask those who Like your page to select to see your updates – which really is fair enough. Nikki has outlined just how to do this here. But you have to actually do something – too many people expect an awful lot for doing very little. Marketing online is more and more about getting out of it what you put in (and of course knowing what to put in and where, the strategy), and not simple about having a well-optimised site.

photo credit: patriziasoliani via photopin cc

Friday Rant: Enough with the Negative…

Am I the only one to get annoyed at negative blog post and article headlines?

What Not To Do…
Why Your …. is Failing
The Ten Don’ts of …

You get the idea and have seen plenty yourself, I’m sure. Such titles put me off, they annoy me, and they do not persuade me to read the actual content. I may be missing out on some great information but I’m not encouraged to give the author my attention.

Aren’t more of us likely to react better to positive headlines, perhaps more:

How to Succeed at …
Ten things to do to…
and one I spotted recently “Are your fees high enough?” instead of “Are your fees too low” (hat tip to Mark Lee for that one)

Is it just me? What do you think? Do you take much notice of an article’s title? Are you put off by negatives or irritated by positives, perhaps?

Babs

photo credit: AngSocialMed via photopin cc

Klout Spouting or “Should I bother with Klout?”

As it is kind of my job to know what works and what does not, I did join Klout to see what all the fuss was about, some time ago. And rapidly realised it was not a system reliably informing anyone of anything, quite frankly.

It’s nonsense. And anyone that considers your worth by your Klout score is really not looking at things sensibly – so do you want to work with or for them?

For instance – I have a Klout score of 57 at time of writing. A reasonable score, I imagine, but one based on what exactly? Recently I have tweeted and blogged less than usual. I may have a few thousand Twitter followers, but how many of those are active? And of the 20 topics Klout considers me influential about, I’d say over half really are utter tosh.

If I can be considered Klout-worthy based on my public online activity, then it really is nonsense. I don’t deserve it of late – an example that it really does not work as I think it’s supposed to.

A fine idea that doesn’t actually work beyond a bit of self-preening vanity for those with nothing better to do.

Move along to something more useful – nothing to see here…

Or do you think differently? Share, tell us what we’re missing.

This is the first in a series of “Should I bother with…” posts – to give you a no-flannel response when you consider the many social media playthings/tools.

Babs

The answer is out there!

You can tap in to solutions to just about any question or problem.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Well it’s easy to forget that when you get an error code on your computer or Mac, or do not know how to find certain files on your PC, or just about anything, really – you are not the first person to have that problem. In fact there are likely to have been thousands of people with the same problem. And what some of them will have done, when they’ve resolved their issue, is put it online – into a forum (geeks especially can be very friendly and helpful people).

So if you get an error such as “The Group Policy Client Service has failed….Access denied” – if you can get online somehow, search for exactly that and find out how others have fixed this, you may

Or if you cannot work out how to upload files from your Mac to your website – a search will result in pages of others’ experiences, and quite possibly a solution that can work for you.

So the next time you get an error message or want to know how to do something, ask Google!