Behind Glass Walls

I thought I might share some of the methods I’ve found for promoting my blog. This was prompted by reading this article by Jason Van Dyke. I’ve had experience in setting up other blogs, and through that I’ve found some useful tools and ways of doing things.One point to make is that promoting yourself and promoting you blog can be two very different things, depending on how you want to promote yourself.

I’ve tried to order these by priority – the number one suggestion below I’ve found to be better at driving traffic than later suggestions.

1. What’s a blog without content? This is the number 1 way to get visitors to your site, and to keep people interested. Without regular, original, interesting/useful (for your audience) content, other suggestions here aren’t going to help much. It also helps to use words that represent what your site is about, and links to other quality websites. This tells search engines (and readers!) that you’re actively involved.
2. Use your site’s URL when you comment, and comment often. I used to just surf around reading things, and never really had the inclination to comment. Now that I know a bit more about my particular areas of interest, I’m more willing to comment. This is also an opportunity to show search engines that your website is actually known/linked by other sites.
3. Use the webmaster tools search engines make available. These tools offer ways to submit you sitemap, so search engines can more easily crawl the entire site. They also let oyu know about any errors encountered on your website. If you are using wordpress, there’s a plugin that can do the work for you.
   • Google
   • Yahoo
   • Bing
4. Link to your website or blog from your accounts on web apps. Many allow you to enter one or two urls as your home pages. Make use of them.
5. When you have a new post, don’t be afraid of letting people know about it. Do this sparingly, as not everyone likes to have individual posts ‘spammed’ at them.

That’s the way I promote my blog. I hope that helps a bit.

Promoting myself is another matter. I prefer to simply put my name to things, and let people find them. I don’t want to force myself onto people – if they like the content, they’ll know who it’s by.

Socialmedia.biz has a summary of a presentation Stephen Jagger gave all about how he’s converted his businesses to use a wide range of web apps and online tools. It is a rather extreme example – hosting everything in the cloud, or removing the need for office space are probably not options for many companies. For small, active businesses though, these are some really useful ideas and discussions.

The base of the services is hosted Google Mail, plus Talk, Voice and Sites.Yammer and Skype are used for internal and client communication. It seems he has quite firm grip on how the services work and what they are best used for. The tools fit well into observations of what gives good results when exploring social tools and collaborative attitudes for business. Andrew McAfee‘s SLATES is the major guide in this area, along with some additions from Dion Hinchcliffe which cover the atmosphere required to allow the tools to function effectively.

I do have some questions about how open and sharing the businesses are. It seems that the tools are viewed more as promotion aids than enabling client feedback. This may not be true, but it is difficult to find a mention of how the Enterprise 2.0 tools and strategy involved the round trip from employee to client and back.

In any case, this case study ties well with this bnet feature: putting Web 2.0 to work. For a more traditional company, the four steps outlined in that article are quite helpful.

1. Begin by using a web 2.0 tool to address a current need. This could involve test-driving a free web-based app or installing an add-on for current software.
2. Any new movement needs support. Many employees just want to do their work and get home, but for those that like to experiment (I’m in this bunch – I always like looking under the hood), this is the perfect opportunity to help shape the direction of a project.
3. Experimentation is the key – many services and software are very cheap or free, so why not test a whole range of offerings.
4. “Decisions about which Web 2.0 tools to use within your company should be made centrally, but the question of how to use them should be left to individuals, says Harvard’s McAfee.”

This feature set is certainly worth a look.

Well, I think everything that needs to be said about Twitter has been said.

You’ve got beginner’s guides galore.

Then you have advanced guides coming out of your ears (not literally, I hope).

There’s a bunch of apps for every platform under the sun. And you can make your own using their API.

I find Twitter very useful to keep up to date with friends. It’s kind of a “they use it a lot, so I will too to keep up with what’s going on” thing. It’s also good fun to discuss random things, like TV shows, the weather or copyright. Kind of like being able to text message a whole bunch of people, and never have to worry about the cost!

As to business use of Twitter, I see a few things that need to be addressed.

1. Twitter is not a broadcast medium. It is two-way. If you aren’t going to respond, don’t bother posting.
2. Post useful things. This will depend very much on the business’s audience.
3. Keep it relevant to the business. The personal stuff can go on a personal account.
4. You might not want to use Twitter to troubleshoot, but people will complain, and people will ask questions you can’t answer. Be ready to find out.
5. Investigate the use of complimentary websites (get satisfaction, for example).
6. Finally, treat everyone as your peer. Twitter puts the biggest company and the shyest child on equal footing.

There are many other takes on this.

There are a huge number of web applications, and more arrive all the time. Some of the ones I use on a regular basis:

• Google’s apps. I use these a lot. I know it’s not a god idea to put all your eggs in one basket, but Google’s Gmail, Calendar, Reader and Documents all work very well, and are more useful to me than some of the alternatives.
• I’m a developer, and the Internet has plenty of opportunities for free, open source software. Some of the better locations for finding software projects to tinker with are sourceforge, freshmeat, ohloh , launchpad and codeplex. Codeproject is not really an open source software host, it has many articles and examples on all sorts of programming languages and platforms.
• As to social networking, everyone knows the top couple – Facebook and MySpace. I’m quite partial to LinkedIn - it is a business-focussed network, which is very useful for professional networking.

I’ve found a few new ones recently that are quite good.

• Hunch is a decision helper – you choose you preference in a range of areas, and based on previous choices it gives you it’s Hunch.
• bit.ly is a url shortening service, one of the many built from the rise of Twitter. It takes things slightly further, offering analytics of the clicks.
• Youtube may be the most popular video hosting site, but there are other that take a more focussed approach. Vimeo is another video hosting site, dedicated to more polished and semi-professional videos.
• Geni is a genealogy website – a private family tree, that others in your family can add to as well.
• last.fm is a great place to find new music. (Pandora would be good too, if it was available in Australia). The last.fm scrobbler is a handy way to teach the site about the music you like.
• Whirlpool, while maybe not a web app in itself, is a great Australian-centric community for discussing all things phone and Internet related  (It has a very good wizard to help you find an ISP).
• And we can’t forget twitter, the top micro-blogging platform. I use it mostly to keep up with friends, and occasionally to post about something interesting I found.

If you know of a web app that does something cool, I’d love to hear about it.

Blogging to me is not something that’s done to simply see how many people you can get commenting or visiting.  Although, it is also much more satisfying when people find your content interesting enough to comment and visit regularly. My view on blogging is that  it needs to be something related to your own interests, and it should be something for yourself. A record of sorts. An online journal, if that comparision hasn’t been done to death. If other find it interesting, all the better, but that is not the main goal. Of course, this is my view, I know there are as many reasons and methods of blogging as there are bloggers.

So, that’s my view, how about what the web has to say about guides to blogging?

Lifehack has a guide for newbies. The main points from here are:

• keeping posts short,
• accommodating skimmers,
• figure out a way to keep up the blogging,
• and promote yourself and your site through links and comments on other blogs or forums

The purpose of a blog could be anything. You could comment on the politico-economic environment, post funny pictures, record productivity and tech tips,  or let your clients know what your company is up to. The possibilities are limited only by server up-time, you time, and the time it takes to think up things to say.

There are some issues with blogging.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some tips on how to blog anonymously, if your topic requires it. The main point is to be extremely wary of any identifying information. Even if you don’t mind your identity associated with your blog, there are some things that should never be done. Like publishing your email address, for example.

In future posts I’m going to discuss other forms of blogging – namely how companies are approaching it (embracing it more and more everyday), and the mixture of blogging, Instant Messaging and SMS – yep, Twitter.

It used to be that you found jobs ads in the newspaper, and set in you hard-copy resume, and waited for a phone call (that might not come). These days, while there are still jobs advertised in newspapers, it just seems so much easier to use the online services. The top players in online position advertisement in Australia are:

• seek
• careerone
• mycareer
• jobsearch

There are also some job sites dedicated to government jobs:

• SmartJobs – QLD Govt jobs
• JobSearch – Aust Govt jobs

A new option has emerged now, in the form of more interactive online tools for networking and building a personal brand. A personal brand, to me, is simply the identity you have for yourself online. In many ways, the best personal brand to have is to just be yourself, and be careful of your behaviour.

One useful resource for using new services to find jobs is rockthejob.com. As they say, it is best to be honest about who you are (to an extent, don’t reveal everything), rather than trying to create  separate identities. The site creates videos featuring interviews with various people knowledgeable in the area of online promotion and job hunting. It certainly is easier to convey a information in a video, but it can be quite superficial information, and requires a suitable environment to view the video (headphones, Flash).

Managing the information about you available online can be very tricky – from people who have the same name, to what others post about you, often you might have little or no control over potentially damaging web sites. One way to overcome this could be to make sure your network includes many different area, so that if something does find it’s way into Google that you don’t like, you have someone you can talk to that has some control over the content.

The key issue is that offline and online identities naturally blur, and it is best to manage your overall appearance, than segment different aspects.

Blogging seems to be the diary of the 21st century. As with many other things, it’s a lot more public than diaries used to be. There are many reasons to blog – I do it to record things I find, so I can reference them later. Hopefully I find and do things that are useful to others as well, but that’s not the core reason.

For this blog, the posts will be centred around Enterprise 2.0 – using social tools and networking within organisations. The idea is that these tools are not only good for personal use – they can offer productivity and information flow advantages to businesses as well.

In this vein, Sacha Chua’s blog is a good example of a very interesting and interested person simply recording thoughts and activities, both personal and business. It makes for some useful insights and information. The blog doesn’t seem to require any extra effort apart from the time to compose it – all the content is drawn from experiences.

There are a huge number of bloggers out there. Here are some that seem to have some insightful thoughts on Enterprise 2.0 and the use of new technologies in business.

Michael

Inspecht, Michael’s consulting business aims to promote the use of social media in organisations. his blog has some thoughtful opinions on the impact of Web 2.0 on business.

Dion Hinchcliffe on Enterprise Web 2.0

An experienced and knowledgable project and technology manager in Alexandria, Virginia, United States.

Scott Gavin

A speaker and entrepreneur in the area of knowledge management, business process innovation and Enterprise 2.0

TechNation Australia

Tech news, reviews and analysis of Internet companies and strategies.

Techdirt

One of the best sites for review and discussion on technology and legal issues from an economic perspective. proscribes innovation over legal intervention.

Well, here we are.  Week 1 of uni has begun, and one of the units I’m taking is INB346 Enterprise 2.0. The idea of the unit is to investigate how new uses of web technologies are affecting businesses, and can be used by businesses to communicate with customers and clients.

I’m a heavy user of web apps, and one of the areas I think needs a lot more consideration is how businesses view and use new tools and opportunities.  While I know and accept that there is bound to be resistance due to the need to use proven tools and established workflows, the increased pace of information flow poses an equally as important consideration.

I’m not a fan of the ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Enterprise 2.0′ terms. It’d be nice to find alternatives, but these terms convey the concepts in a very small space. That said, I’ll make some suggestions as I post more. ‘Communication platform’ for Web 2.0? ‘Equal discussion for business’ for Enterprise 2.0? Not great, but I’ll keep thinking.

Companies can no longer make their own timetables and broadcast a message, and expect customers and clients to go along with it. More and more,  the expectation is that a conversation will take place, with all on an even footing. No more black boxes. No more dividers. Companies don’t have to open up about everything. They might remain behind walls, but they aren’t brick any more – now everyone else can look in as they work behind glass walls.