September 7th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
With all the hype surrounding Twitter at the moment, it’s easy for people to overlook some of the other very useful sites out there. Especially if you’re new to business and/or social networking
One I’m determined to start making more use of is LinkedIn. They have this to say about themselves:
LinkedIn has over 46 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful
They have a video on their “about us” page that is a little bit waffly for my liking, but it gives a good idea of what it’s all about.
The key thing for me about LinkedIn is finding out the best way to contact someone I don’t know.
Let’s say I want to speak to someone at BigCo about a potential business deal. I can search LinkedIn for people from BigCo and see if I know someone that knows someone there – and if I do then I can request an introduction. It takes things to the third degree too – so whilst no one I know happens to know anyone at BigCo – they may know someone that does and I can get introduced through that path. Nice.
It does suffer a fatal flaw like Twitter, Facebook, etc in that it shows how many ‘connections’ (replace with ‘friends’, ‘followers’, etc) you have. So some people add connections to as many people as possible, even if they’ve hardly ever dealt with the person, just to inflate their egos and look important. Not much use when it comes to an introduction.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has taken out one of the “premium” paid-for subscriptions from LinkedIn and found it worhtwhile. Their site isn’t doing a great job of selling me onthe benefits of it.
If you’re a web developer looking for a start-up idea, you could take the LinkedIn concept and extend it to include degrees of trust. I started a discussion about this 3 years ago on UKBF. Someone even kindly started working on the maths. I still think it’s a goer.
UKBF is a very good site to get involved with if you’re interested in networking with others in business.
4Networking seems to really be going places, especially with the off-line meetups they organise. I retract my comments from when they first started, calling them “4Not-working” : )
WeCanDoBiz seems to be more slanted towards referals and leads than networking, but still worth checking out.
Ecademy is an odd one. I never got anywhere with it personally and I found it to be full of life coaches, emotional millionaires and people who wear cardigans (nothing against life coaches or cardigan wearers in moderation!) But I know some people who swear by it.
Any other business networking sites that you can recommend?
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Tags: ecademy, linkedin, networking, Twitter, UKBF, wecandobiz
Posted in Small Business, Technology | 8 Comments »
September 2nd, 2009 by Duane Jackson
There was a thread on UKBF recently asking for recommendations on PR companies. Someone suggested the money would be better spent on SEO – a debate ensued over what was best, PR or SEO.
My opinion is that they’re two different things and ideally you should use both (sitting on the fence for a change, basically!)
Andy Barr from 10Yetis then posted his tuppence-worth. 10Yetis is a PR Agency we used for years in the early days of KashFlow and Andy also happens to know enough about SEO to give most people a run for their money (he’ll deny this allegation though as he’s too modest). So when he speaks, I listen. I thought his comments were interesting enough to warrant reproducing here:
Timing could not be better for this thread as we have our second instance of having to pitch for a new client where one of the companies we are pitching against is a SEO company.
At the min I see there are being two types of PR Agency, traditional ones who don’t dabble with online media in any way, and then the new breed of agency who understands online media and have their own “specialists” in various fields.
We were really lucky in that early on in our existence we worked with several clients who really opened our eyes to the value of understanding SEO and how PR can work brilliantly alongside campaigns.
As we progressed as an agency we kept coming up against the SEO conversation time and time again, and how we can prove that we can deliver similar value and returns… and so http://www.ps3pricecompare.co.uk was born!
We set up this site and optimised it as best we could and then the only marketing we gave it was EXCLUSIVELY PR.
We chose PS3’s because it is a saturated market, meaning it would be tough to rank highly for key terms, and also more importantly because the commission levels for a PS3 sale is quite good. :-)
Oh yeah, revenue is based on traditional affiliate model, i.e sale = commission payment.
So, we launched the site with a Press Release about something scandalous (think it was about blokes wanting to play games more than they want to have sexy-time with their better half) and it immediately got coverage, including valuable in bound links.
Within 2 months the site was mid way up page one of google for the term “Cheap PS3″ – a key phrase researched from using Hitwise.
We have continued PR’ing it every 2 months or so and the site is now in the top 6/7 page one of google and more importantly delivering a very health revenue stream that we never really anticipated.
So, nothing other than some on-site SEO from our own knowledge and a good blast of PR to build some valuable authority links.
We now use the site as a good example to show people we know about PR and it has also inspired me to set up a few other sideline sites that are only promoted via PR.
I guess that I am trying to say that I think finding a PR agency that understands and can contribute to your existing SEO activity is what people should be looking for and this does not mean one or the other, SEO’s and PR’s should be working in tandem.
Wise words and something to bear in mind when choosing a PR agency.
Update - The Yetis have written this up in a more polished form on their own blog.
Tags: 10yetis, pr, seo, UKBF
Posted in Small Business | 10 Comments »
June 22nd, 2009 by Duane Jackson
If you’re looking for a new supplier, whether it’s an accountant, a designer or anything else then by far the best route is to ask others you know in business who they’d recommend.
This works fine if you’re asking the person privately. But where it falls down is if you ask them on a public forum, Twitter or any other public network.
I’ve been a member (and moderator) of UK Business Forums for 4 years now and I see the same thing happening again and again. In this example I’ve changed names to protect the guilty parties.
Steve posts asking for someone to recommend a lawyer. Bill is a lawyer who has has been a member of the forum for ages. So lots of other people that know Bill from the forums chip in with their comments about how great he is and that they highly recommend him.
The problem is, these people don’t actually know if Bill is a great lawyer – they’ve never used his services. They just know that Bill seems like a nice guy and he’s been around for a while. They’re also hoping that if they recommend Bill then he’ll recommend them to others to return the favour.
As nice a bloke as Bill is, he’s a useless lawyer. He overcharges and under-delivers and turns out shoddy work. A few people on the forum know this already as they’ve been burnt by Bill in the past. But they don’t post to the thread to say as much – that would be bad netiquette. The same reason why after Steve gets burnt, he doesn’t say anything when he sees Bill being recommended to others in the future.
So if you’re taking recommendations via a forum or social networking site – ask the people doing the recommending if they’ve actualy *used* the services of the person being recommended. Better still, phone some of them up and have a private chat.
This is the same reason I’m not keen on organisations like BNI. If you’re in a BNI chapter you have to bring in referrals for your fellow members. It doesn’t matter that you may not have used their services or know if they’re any good. You still have to bring in referrals each week.
When I recommend someones service it’s because I know they can do a good job. Not because they’re a nice guy or belong to a networking group I go to.
There is a big difference between recommending someone and making referrals to someone. There’s nothing wrong with referring people to a company you can’t vouch for, but make it clear it’s a referral and not a recommendation. It’s your reputation on the line.
Tags: BNI, Twitter, UKBF
Posted in Ramblings, Small Business | 11 Comments »
