The Web

I was driving home last week and noticed a Thai restaurant I hadn’t seen before. Feeling adventurous for dinner that night, we thought we’d try it out and order some take away. I jumped on Google and, to my surprise, the mysterious Thai restaurant could not be found. I tried Google Maps, and again, no result.

At this stage, most customers would have given up and moved on. But on a desperate hunt for a delicious Penang curry, I even went so far as to stalk them on Google Street View. Unfortunately, their phone number wasn’t visible in the window, so we decided to go back to our trusty local. Read more

If you are in business it’s important to spend some time building a great business connection base, but how are you currently doing it?

If you are still networking your way across all of the golf courses throughout the country, and attending as many networking functions as possible in the evenings, there maybe a smarter way to meet new business contacts, and probably more your target market. LinkedIn.

I‘ve written many articles on building your connection base and networking within the groups on LinkedIn in the past, so let’s take a look at a way that you may not have thought about. Read more

What’s your social profile worth? Have you even thought about it? Is it growing in value? When you talk, do people listen?

With social reputation becoming more and more of a relevant form of currency, there are powers at play that are looking to exploit this new medium. In the past, it has all been about celebrity endorsement – getting the star of the day to put their name to a product. As the celebrity space becomes more and more distributed, thought the wonders of the increasingly social internet, a new generation of celebrities with social credibility are sprouting up. Read more

Disclaimer: this post actually isn’t for you. This article is for that one person (or multiple people) you come across online that doesn’t seem to have a filter for what information should or shouldn’t be shared to the public. I urge you to share this with them. It’s for their own good!

A few months ago a friend of mine was having a lot of trouble getting a job. She’d been to university and achieved all the qualifications required to land a great job. She’s very personable and pretty, and can do the job as good as anyone who works in the industry. But application after application she was bombing out for some reason. It was getting her down almost as much as it was baffling her as to why.

So we decided to do a Google search on her name to see what came up. First result – Facebook profile.  Read more

A look at what you may be doing to annoy your connections.

For some reason, when we network online, we really forget how to communicate with the person on the other end of the computer. In fact we forget that there even is a real person on the other end of the computer. Basic real life etiquette flies out of the window as we try and do everything at a trillion miles an hour to get connected, friended, followed and now pinned to as many people as possible.

But slow down, connection collector, relax, and be more meaningful in your approach, and avoid some of the things that I see all too often that really bug me. If you want to develop a business relationship with your connection, don’t get off on the wrong foot. Read more

How do you come up with something new to write about frequently enough to build a successful blog? As blogs become more common, so too does the problem of blogger’s block: that awkward moment when you feel as though you’ve run out of things to say.

Coming up with enough material to write a weekly post is a big challenge for many people – so unless you have a background or passion for writing, be careful about the frequency you commit to. Read more

Ever had your car, house or store broken into?

I’ve recently had the online equivalent. I’ve had someone break into my website causing my email to be disabled and disrupting things for a couple of days and I’m finding myself hacked off by hackers.

And for what end? A cheap thrill? A test run of hacking prowess? Something more sinister? Read more

Between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube, there’s so many social media pies that small business owners feel the pressure to get involved in.  Daily commentary tells us constantly why it’s the best way to reach out to new customers and build relationships with current ones,  and I don’t blame business owners for feeling slightly overwhelmed – after all, you’ve got a business to run in between all those tweets and likes!

And just to add more to your social media to-do list, the newest kid on the social media block is having a moment in the sun, posting some incredible growth figures.  Pinterest, once a niche network loved by brides-to-be has just blown Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined out of the water for referral traffic in January. Read more

There’s a bit of an ‘in’ joke going around the more nerdier circles of online marketing lately that the only ones using Google Plus – Google’s new(ish) social platform – are Google employees and businesses who have no idea what to do with it.

This is an exaggeration, of course, and to dismiss it as a platform which nobody is using would be folly. After all, just a few days ago Google Plus hit the 100 million users mark.

The statement mainly highlights three facts:

1. Google Plus definitely hasn’t got the user numbers of Facebook
2. It hasn’t become the giant killer most predicted it was trying to be (We’ve discussed the Google Plus vs Facebook question here)
3. People signed up purely because it was the new kid on the block. Read more

Happy Super Bowl Monday! (or Sunday, if you’re in the US)

Much like the AFL Grand Final in Australia and the Rugby World Cup Final in New Zealand, the match that stops a nation is currently playing out in lounge rooms and bars across North America.

Last year, a global audience of 111 million people tuned in to watch the Green Bay Packers storm home over the Pittsburgh Steelers, with an estimated 10% of those watching from outside of the US.  (and the preliminary figures for this year indicate that we might be on track to reach the 120 million mark.)

Read more