Technology can increase productivity and foster creativity. Explore some ideas that can help you take maximum advantage of the Internet and IT to improve your business.
There are few blogs that I subscribe to and read regularly. But some individuals are worth listening to and share insights that are very much worth my time as a businessman. An example is Seth Godin's Blog (which is a permanent link in the right column on this page).
Seth is a guru of marketing in the best sense of the word. He seems to understand motivation to action based on perception. He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week.
Yesterday (9/11/07), for example, Seth posted 3 short articles. All seemed to be on-target to me and worth pointing out to business owners and managers. Dip your toe into Godin's mind with the Big Ideas article. My guess is that you will want to hear more from him.
It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 1018 bytes) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That is more information than in the previous 5,000 years. Zowie!
Michael Wesch, cultural anthropology professor at Kansas State, shares some insight here. This 4½ minute video traces the trajectory of the Internet and how this explosion of data will be organized (the video is not really fuzzy after you click on it).
The surprise answer is: “You (all of us) will organize all this data.”
Web 2.0 allows me to include the above video from YouTube delivered as content on this page. Google, Yahoo, Flickr and MySpace are all examples of this custom service.
These digital personal assistants locate information of interest that you specify and deliver the information directly to you. Thanks to the FeedBlitz widget, you can subscribe to this blog and receive an email when new content is added (see the sidebar on the right). It becomes a useful feature that I don’t need to code or maintain.
The upside: We are less likely to be buried in unwanted information (spam).
The downside: We won’t see important new ideas because we didn’t know to ask. Information may get confused with wisdom if our sources are restricted to our own biases.
The challenge: To leverage technology in our personal and business lives to broaden our opportunities rather than to restrict them.
A couple of inches of snow in Portland stops all movement. Even my best macho couldn't coax my Honda up the hill early this morning.
When grounded, it always seems like a good time to get organized. One popular way to organize data is by adding tags. We all wish we had done that from the beginning when we took the first of thousands of digital photographs (Where is that picture of Uncle Bob we took a couple of years ago?).
Technorati and flickr have built significant businesses accumulating tags from millions of blog posts and photographs.
Google Mail lets you "Label" your email messages to make them findable later in a virtual folder.
And now, the EasyStreet Business Blog compiles all the tags from each post so you can have a better idea what this blog is talking about. Scroll down this page and you will see the new "Tag Cloud" addition in the right column. Bigger means more.
It's another way to help you find what you're looking for. Click on one.
Let me know what you think. If you didn't find what you were looking for, maybe we need to talk about it.
This is the book I wish I had a year ago when I first started the EasyStreet Business Blog.
DL Byron and Steve Broback are experienced bloggers and business blogging consultants who have condensed their practical advice into a friendly 180 page book.
Byron and Steve demonstrate how businesses are blogging and how you can use blogging technology to converse with your customers to build your brand and sell your products. One of their clients is Boeing who is achieving much positive attention from their InFlightHQ.com blog.
They observe that Google loves blogs because of their up-to-date content and accessible structure. And readers likewise find blogs relevant and personal in a way that creates conversations.
Blogging is economical and easy for small businesses. Mike Landfair of Landfair Furniture in Portland, Oregon credits his www.LandfairFurniture.blogspot.com blog: "In an economy that still seems a little slow, our traffic to our main store has increased, and sales are up a healthy percentage over last year."
I am lucky. EasyStreet allows me the freedom to host this blog and follow where it leads in service to our customers. With nearly a year of experience to compare with the advice in this book and with continuing input from you, my growing community of readers, this blog will grow stronger and more useful.
Publish & Prosper - Blogging for your Business DL Byron & Steve Broback ISBN: 0321395387 $21.99 US
After you read the book, share your thoughts here.
Over the past two decades, we have been fascinated with the ability to recreate electronically what we used to do on paper. Then print it out again to paper. With the advent of email and the Internet, communication has become more instant and less nuanced. Add cell phones and PDAs to the mix and we're never alone.
In today's New York Times, there was an article on Web Sites Set Up to Celebrate Life Recall Lives Lost (you need to register on the Times site, but well worth it. The NY Times website is excellent). Of the more than 74 million personal blogs hosted at MySpace.com, it is no surprise that some of their subscribers have died, leaving their personal blog behind.
Friends of the deceased are saying goodbye, offering condolences, and even continuing the relationship through these personal blogs. Families are learning more about their departed children. One example in the article is about a girl you likely heard about last week if you live in the Portland/Vancouver area:
… a 17-year-old from Vancouver, Wash., named Anna Svidersky was stabbed to death while working at a McDonald's there. As word of the crime spread among her extended network of friends on MySpace, her page was filled with posts from distraught friends and affected strangers. A separate page set up by Ms. Svidersky's friends after her death received about 1,200 comments in its first three days.
It may be that we are now incorporating technology in a way that is redefining who we are, both as individuals and as businesses. Last week at the InnoTech conference, the session on Why Blogs Matter for Business presented by Ryan Buchanan, CEO of eROI, was standing-room only. His PowerPoint Presentation is worth a look.
Technorati Tags: MySpace, Business Blogs
April 27th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in General, Blogs| Enter a comment »
Listen to this post [0:57m]: 
