business info & tools

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Writing efficiently saves money

Published 14 September, 2011 | By TashWord

Using the fewest words possible to communicate the message simply is my writing ideal, and I have been known to edit many documents to be well under 50% of their original length. One example that comes to mind is a 75 A4 page text-only disclosure document I converted into 24 A5 pages with pictures!

So I found it very interesting to read a report from Ron Denholm about the costs of inefficient writing.

In summary, Ron shows than reducing document size (through more concise content) by 34% in a business setting can save businesses $153 per document in reading time for a team of 100 (that adds up to $3,060 saved over 20 documents – scary amount!)

Next time you write a report, will you edit out the wasted words to be more efficient?

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged costs, inefficient, report, writing | 2 Comments

Judging spam comments

Published 12 September, 2011 | By TashWord

Having just deleted another batch of spam from my blog, I thought I’d share how obvious some of it is – and how you can avoid your comments being filtered out as spam.

Flattery is common “this is the best blog”, “you write so well man” and “you must be an expert on this” are some recent examples in my spam folder. Genuine compliments are a good strategy, fake flattery is likely to get your comment deleted quickly
Sounding impressed but never giving any specifics is also a common spam technique so they can use the same message in many blog posts. “I’ve been searching for this information” and “I was just discussing this topic the other day with my cousin” have been in my comments innumerable times; a genuine message would be specific and relevant, such as “I needed to know about clear communications” or “Some friends and I were just discussing keywords“
there is a discrepancy between the name, email address and URL usually means it is spam. If your name is Mary why wouldn’t your email address be mary@ or m.smith@? However, if the domain of email and URL disagree, I refuse to click on the link or accept the comment. So to get comments accepted, be honest and transparent.
multiple links will be picked up by spam filters, but even the inclusion of one link in a comment makes me wary unless I know the person commenting. I look carefully at any comment with a link and decide if it looks safe enough to try the link myself – I certainly won’t accept a link without checking its content. Sometimes I will accept the comment but disable the link first, and I don’t think I’ve ever added a link in a comment I’ve left elsewhere unless they have the ‘latest blog post’ facility provided.
really poor English is often a give away, too – and the ones that are obviously nonsense made up of part sentences should need no explanation. Poor writing of course is not 100% proof of spam so I do read these comments to assess if they are genuine or not. My tip is to make your comments read well to avoid being thought spam and to give your comment more credibility and weight.

Do you have any other tips for spotting spam comments for what they are?

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged avoid, blog, comments, spam | 3 Comments

Hard stuff pays off

Published 5 September, 2011 | By TashWord

I really liked this comment by Hugh MacLeod:

Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.

Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.

The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.

Ownership of your content is important, but I particularly liked the acknowledgement that sometimes you have to accept the harder option as it is likely to produce the greater rewards. Sure it s easy to have a static website, fill your blog with others’ content, or post self-promoting or vacuous content on Twitter, but a quality blog will give much better long term results.

Do you think the hard stuff generally pays off more in the long term? Have you ever consciously chosen to do then are stuff to reap the reward unlikely to come from the easier option?

Posted in bit off track, blogging, business info & tools, social media | Tagged blog, content, hard, pays off | Leave a comment

Social media is not all good

Published 1 September, 2011 | By TashWord

Like it or not, social media is here and is a major part of our society.

I think it is important that we all have some understanding of social media so we can make informed choices about participating or not.

Unlike some, I don’t think every business MUST be on social media to survive or thrive. Although it is becoming more important as more people expect it.

Mark Schaefer recently posted about social media sewage… and hope. He lists a number of the negatives social media (including blogging) has brought with it – I totally agree that leaving heaps of spam comments in a blog, disreputable SEO approaches and practices, and stealing people’s content are unacceptable behaviours and I don’t understand how people can live with such actions.

I haven’t had Marks ‘hope’ experience but I still believe in sharing information and believe social media has a part to play in my business.

Social media is just one form of marketing

It got me thinking that perhaps some business people need to hear that it’s ok to not be on social media, that it isn’t the cure to all business woes nor is it perfect.

So here are some reasons against using social media which you can weigh up against the advantages when making your decision.

it takes time and patience. You’re unlikely to see more sales or leads in the short term, and it takes time to put up some content (especially if you put thought into it and try adding value to your community)
you open yourself up to more spam, malware and virus exposure, scam invitations and other undesirable people
if your audience isn’t interested in social media, your efforts will go to waste – be sure to only use media your audience uses
if you just want to advertise, rather than share information and build relationships, your presence on social media is probably a waste of everyone’s time
social media gives you the opportunity to speak your mind and get on your soapbox. Great for people wanting to exercise their freedom of speech, not always so good for a business spokesperson – if you can’t moderate your words to suit your business brand, social media may be a little risky
social media is about communication – if you aren’t interested in having a two-way conversation, a static website may be more your style
the message you write is critical to your social media success so if writing and communicating your thoughts is a challenge, consider your social media strategy carefully – short tweets may work better than long blog posts, a ghost writer could help with blogging and videos for You Tube may be your best option

If you are already using social media, have you thought about how it is benefiting you compared to what it is costing you? Is it doing the job you ‘hired’ it for, another job or is it just costing you?

Follow @TashWord

* Image courtesy of 123rf

Posted in business info & tools, social media | Tagged brand, seo, social media, spam, time | 4 Comments

Something old made new leads to success

Published 30 August, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you have some old products or services ‘gathering dust’ in your business? Maybe it’s a product or service that is doing well but has more potential than is currently being used.

Have you thought about refreshing these things into something new?

New ways to present old content and ideas

Sit and brainstorm all possible uses of your product or service (including all potential problems it could solve) – go outside the box and don’t just think of the obvious things it was designed for.

Warfarin was originally developed as a pesticide to get rid of rats and mice but has long been used as an anti-coagulant in heart patients.

Patsy Sherman was inventing a compound to protect equipment from aviation fuel and discovered it would repel stains – she invented Scotchguard.

Dr Pemberton’s nerve tonic and headache restorative, French Wine Coca, was adjusted during prohibition in the US. The new syrup was mixed with soda water to drink and became popular under the name and logo Pemberton’s bookkeeper developed that day – coca-cola.

By finding new uses of a product or service you can open new markets and perhaps open new avenues. Even if you don’t find anything marketable, you may find a new marketing idea or just get some creative inspiration (some new blog posts or articles, new product ideas, a different production method, etc)

So how big a list can you brainstorm for your older lines?

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged brainstorm, markets, new, refresh | Leave a comment

Working on goals

Published 28 August, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you have some big goals that you’re struggling with?

I just read a great blog post about goals – well, Julien specifically wrote about the goal of reading a book a week but I like some of his points for general goal following.

Side track – a goal of reading a book a week is great, especially if reading is not something that comes naturally to you. I admit my biggest issue with reading a book a week is that I love long books and with 4 kids, one a week is a challenge! With literacy week here this week, though, maybe it’s a challenge you may want to consider…

The best points Julien made about reaching goals…

break it down into reasonable steps so it’s less overwhelming. For instance, based on books of 250 – 300 words, read 40 pages a day to reach 52 books a year. To get 100 blog or facebook subscribers in 6 months, aim for 4 a week. To finish the Tour de France, start riding your bike for an hour a day and build it up to 6 hours a day!
set up a routine – it’s much easier to follow steps when they are habit and you don’t have to think about it
keep up to date or ahead – letting yourself fall behind (especially early on in a goal) can be disheartening and makes it less likely to be achieved. Don’t accept excuses – do build up some credit to cover issues later.
Cheat a little occasionally to stay on track and interested. Surprised by that one? By cheat a little I don’t mean lie to yourself but just take the easy option occasionally. So if you’re reading is falling behind a book a week, deliberately choose a short book you can finish off fast. If training for the Tour, ride your exercise bike instead of hitting the streets in a storm. Building a blog readership – post a really short post or a summary of old posts instead of sweating a long post. Cheating like this is much better than stopping your actions altogether.
You don’t have to be linear all the time. It depends on your goal, but sometimes allow yourself to go a – b – c- f – e – d- t- g- h- k instead of following a straight line. This will keep you moving if one step hits a delay and can provide some variety if you’re loosing momentum and interest.
What does this mean in a practical sense? Going back to our earlier examples, if you can’t get into book 4, put it aside while you read books 5 and 6; instead of riding an hour uphill every day put in the occasional day of two hours on the flat; skip a post on your blog and submit a guest post somewhere else.

So what do you think – will these tips help you reach your next big goal? Share your goal here and the impact of these tips, too, if you like.

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged book, cheat, goal, post, read | Leave a comment

Reading resources

Published 26 August, 2011 | By TashWord

I’ve managed to catch up on some newsletter and blog reading in the last few days so I thought I’d share some of the more interesting ones so you can benefit from them, too.

All related to business today, some back-end details (like blog security) and some customer related issues, but all worth a read. In order that I think of them…

How to do yourself out of a thousand bucks – the ethics of business

Social media, trade secrets and why you shouldn’t give a rip about the competition – great message and enjoy the graphic too!

Why perfect is the only acceptable business measure

5 easy tasks to outsource as you grow your business

how to keep your WordPress blog secure

Working at home blog carnival – in particular, I liked the included posts by Eldon and Blogging your passion (and my own of course!)

Customer Service Carnivale

Preparing business for difficult times

Happy reading! If you have any comments on these posts, I’d love to hear them…

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged article, blog, business, communication | Leave a comment

Navigating your website

Published 26 August, 2011 | By TashWord

Part of establishing and managing a site is making sure that the information is easy to find – the design and content are important but with a poor site layout, they are not going to work as well as they should.

In short, navigation is about letting people travel around your site easily to find what they need.

While you may well link to various pages of your site within the content (and I strongly suggest you do!), this is not part of the planned navigation. Navigation is more about menus and major links (such as banners and graphics on landing pages).

For the most effective navigation, it needs to be simple and not offer too many choices so it is worth thinking about what people really want to know when they visit your site and what you want them to know. Once you have refined the key areas, you can put them in as menus and key graphics (either graphics that link to relevant pages or graphics that give the information directly).

Some key data to make easy to find includes:

your contact information
your physical location (especially if you want people to visit you)
delivery information, including costs
hours of operations (if relevant)
what you do (and don’t do in some cases)
prices and related terms (for example are your prices in AUD or euros? do prices include local taxes?)

Don’t be surprised if getting the navigation sorted takes a while – it is important to get right and can involve a number of steps. Once you have a draft navigation planned, I suggest the following actions:

leave it for a a few days and then check if it is simple and effective
test it – think of a question someone might want answered and try finding it through your proposed navigation
ask your web designer and content writer what they think of it – their experience will provide good feedback
get others to test it for you – if they find it confusing or distracting, change it even if it passed all other tests perfectly!

Before you get stressed or give up on your website at this point remember that you can change the navigation later (nothing is set in stone on a website) and good content with lots of informative links will compensate for some navigation weaknesses. You can work with good navigation while you aim for perfection!

This post is part of Word Constructions’ Setting up a website series
1. having a website helps more than you
2. what’s involved in setting up a website?
3. Learn about web hosting
4. Preparing your initial website content
5. Managing website design 101
6. Choosing a web designer
7. Basic web pages

Posted in business info & tools, web content | Tagged easy to find, menu, navigation, simple, website | 2 Comments

Expanding your market

Published 25 August, 2011 | By TashWord

No doubt you’ve heard that it’s a good idea to have a clearly defined market and to keep your prices as high as the value (rather than discounting all the time). It’s good advice.

Susan Oakes, however, gave a suggestion for expanding your offerings to suit a lower price market. Normally, business success doesn’t include going for a cheaper market but Susan’s idea of offering something new and cheaper is sound.

The idea is to make a product or service that either lacks the bells and whistles or is effectively a DIY version, meaning you can sell for less and appeal to a lower budget audience without detracting the price or value of your main product or service.

Want some examples?

For those who don’t want to pay for a professional writer on small tasks, I produced a writing tips eBook. A much cheaper option for small businesses but still getting me a sale – all my eBooks follow a similar concept
if you usually sell water tanks fully installed, maybe offer them for DIY homes as well
wedding photographers used to sell a completed album, possibly in a package with the negatives. Now many offer a disc of images as a cheaper option as well as a full album with the disc
a web designer could set up a series of templates and sell them as a digital product while still doing the more expensive tailored web designs as their main service

Is there a way you could expand your business to include a lower budget client? Think broadly or add your business in the comments and let’s see what ideas others can find for you…

Posted in business info & tools, marketing | Tagged basic, budget, lower price, market | 2 Comments

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