Wislounge – Page 8 – Thoughts and opinions on web development

Get Your Readers to Participate in Your Business Blog

July 27, 2010 By noemi

So you got convinced that your business needs its own blog, and you created one. You may have been at it for some time now, and yet you are not getting enough reader participation to suit you. Is there any way you can tweak things in order to get people to interact more? Here are three simple things that you can do to get results.

Initiate the interaction.

When writing posts, occasionally throw in a question at the end – something that will get responses from your readers. Your questions may vary depending on what you want to hear from your readers, but the basic idea is that you start the ball rolling. Needless to say, when people start leaving their comments, make sure that you respond in a timely manner. You can also invite them to ask their own questions, the answers to which could actually serve as material for future blog posts.

Hold a debate.

I got this idea from Robyn-Dale Samuda’s post over at BloggingPro. While he says that he rarely sees this technique used, it can be a way to spark the interest of your readers. By choosing a hot topic relevant to your business and wording your post so that it is clear to them that you want to hear what they think about the topic, you can get people to voice out their opinions.

Make it easy for readers to keep track of the comments.

It can be tedious to keep checking one blog post if someone has replied to a comment you’ve left earlier. Instead of expecting your readers to do this, look for a plug-in that will allow readers to subscribe to comments with a click of the mouse. This way, they will receive notifications in their Inbox.

What are your tried and tested methods of encouraging readers to participate in your blog?

Is it Okay to Start a Business During Recession

November 20, 2009 By J. Angelo Racoma

It’s the big “R” word. Since the prime mortgage bubble (among other bubbles) burst middle of last year, a lot of businesses have been feeling the crunch. It’s not only small businesses and entrepreneurs who have been on the losing end. Even large corporations have been filing for bankruptcy. Big industries, like the American auto industry, had to be helped with massive bailout schemes.

Is it then a good time to start a business during recession?

The answer is a definite maybe. This is not necessarily the best time to be taking risky investments. However, if you plan your business just right, then you might be in for a successful venture. Here’s why.

It’s a buyer’s market. These days, the market is favoring buyers, and not sellers. In my experience trying to sell homes for a few friends, we’ve always had to contend with buyers’ offers. Because everyone else is selling cheaply these days (with the financial crunch), competition is tough.

Therefore, if you’re planning to start a business, you can expect good deals on assets, equipment and other things that a business may need (be it hardware or software). People are letting go of properties easy, and these are ripe for the picking.

Everything is cheaper. Related to the first point, many thing are cheaper in times of recession. Not only are buildings, assets and other products cheaper, even services are cheaper. Because a lot of people are being given the pink slip at work, many will be starting to freelance. Some would also agree to take jobs at lower rates than their previous ones.

If you’re planning to start a business, it might make sense to start now, while labor is cheap.

It’s the same with investing with stocks. Common sense might tell you not to buy shares of stock while prices are dropping. But long-term investors actually prefer to buy stocks while prices fall, because they consider the long-run average cost to be more important than the short-run returns. A lower long-run average cost, compared to a higher return (say, when you sell shares once the prices are back up) will give you some yield.

There’s no way than up. It’s a matter of perspective. When things are looking down, you should expect them to improve one time or another. If you start a business with a booming market, you might be facing tough competition from other people who have the same idea. But if you’re starting a business during a recession, then everyone else is thinking of survival or even subsistence–therefore, no one is really too keen on spending money to start up a a business and compete with you.

This is a maybe rather than a definite yes because this business strategy is not always applicable in all industries and instances. If you have extra money to burn, then by all means go for it. But if you expect banks to lend you money, then watch out for tough times–credit is expensive these days. But if you have a business plan that won’t involve much external investment, and if you can bootstrap your way into profitability, then starting a new business can be a worthwhile activity even with a recession.

The Case Against Monetization

October 26, 2009 By J. Angelo Racoma

Empty billboard You’ve probably heard it one time or another. Monetize this … Monetize that … Monetize everything. In this cutthroat world of Internet businesses, web applications, new media networks and the like, everyone wants a cut of the pie–whether it’s in the form of advertising, subscriptions, commissions, or even sponsorships.

About four or five years back, I realized that the Internet was big business. And so I dropped everything I had going on: launched several blogs, joined ad networks, and looked for sponsors. After some time, I quit my day job and focused solely on making income from online sources.

But it’s not as simple as that. Most people would think that running a money-making website is easy as pie. Well, in some cases it probably is. If you have a great domain, steady traffic, and good products to sell, you can perhaps make it big on affiliate commissions. However, this might not always be sustainable.

For the rest of us, though, successfully monetizing a site requires time, focus, effort, and a lot of marketing. You would often see your revenues trickle in a few dollars (or cents!) at a time, until you reach that tipping point when your cashflow would be enough for the site to support itself.

And so here comes the case for or against monetization. Most experienced online entrepreneurs would advise people to focus on several things long before we think about monetizing our sites. Some popular words of wisdom I’ve come across include the following:

Brian Clark of Copyblogger would often advise online publishers to focus on writing good headlines. These are the first things that people see when looking at your content, and headlines could be a deciding factor on whether they will read on or not.
Chris Garrett, who used to edit Performancing advises to start slow, but steady. True, while Performancing essentially launched with a bang itself, its editors were mostly considered celebrities already. For the rest of us who are lesser known, then growing one’s site steadily would proably be better.
Problogger Darren Rowse advises to focus on a niche, rather than to spread yourself too thinly. A lot of blog networks have fallen into the trap of launching and running too many blogs about too many topics. Yes, it’s doable, but not always easy, and not always sustainable.

There are a handful of great advice out there, and these range from the very new to the very old. If you notice, my links span one, two or three years back. That’s because online entrepreneurship goes through the same cycles, and the same experiences year in and year out. Now the piece of advice that I would add is this: you shouldn’t be in a hurry to earn.

The best earning blogs, websites and web apps out there probably started out as hobbies, academic research, or something that was intended to scratch an itch, so to speak. Consider Google. Consider YouTube. I know I have a handful of personal blogs that I’ve either sold off or successfully monetized through advertisements. But I try to start clean–without sponsorships, without ads.

I think the best reason for not jumping into the monetization bandwagon too early is the matter of trust and public perception. Think of it this way: when you read a blog that has a clean, fast interface, don’t you prefer it to a blog that’s full of ads popping about here and there? Even if some advertisements are discreet, it still says something about a blog if it were ad and clutter-free. And to me, at least, it’s most especially a turn-off to see a poorly-written and poorly-maintained site that looks too commercial.

This doesn’t mean you should not plan ahead, though. Further down the road, when you’ve achieved your intended readership, traffic level, and authority, you can then start monetizing your site. It could be sponsorships, links, AdSense, or any other means. The important thing is to focus on quality, because that increases the earning potential of your site.

Image credit: flickr/westm

Small Businesses Should Make Better Use of Social Media

October 15, 2009 By J. Angelo Racoma

A recent report by Reuters cites a study conducted for Citibank Small Business that found out majority of small businesses do not use social media for business purposes. According to the survey, 75% of the respondents don’t find social networks and mediums like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as useful in expanding their business networks or generating leads. 86% has responded that they don’t even use information from social mediums as a source for business advice.

I say small businesses stand to gain much from using social media in their day to day operations.

Granted, most small businesses out there are probably brick-and-mortar operations, which have a small sales, manufacturing, service or other activities as its main source of income. Some of these may be home-based or freelance/professional basis. Indeed, many small businesses go on by without the need to engage social mediums on a day to day basis.

But social media can definitely help small businesses expand their network, and do marketing at lightning speeds at dirt cheap costs. Offhand, here are a few benefits of social media that I think small businesses should consider.

Viral marketing

For any business, there’s nothing like a viral marketing campaign done right. Word of mouth, after all, is a very effective tool in the dissemination of information, especially if it’s done among people who are considered to be connectors. The real measure of how effective a small business can do viral marketing is not by the number of people whom you can share information with. Rather, success can be determined by the importance and influence of the people you share this information with. Social media users who are influential and trusted are better at word of mouth marketing, especially if they are within fields of interest relevant to your product or service.

Market research

Not all businesses can afford to hire marketing consultancy firms to determine market trends and do research. The Internet is rich with this information, to some extent. For instance, you can use Google Trends to spot trends in user interest for certain keywords and phrases. You can look for product reviews to find what customers are looking for. You can even search for mentions on Twitter and on blog review sites to find what people are saying about your industry or product.

Custmer relations

In the eyes of a consumer, the best companies are those that are transparent with their dealings with the public. It’s best for any business to build up trust with the consumer base. One of the ways you can do this is by being accessible from all possible channels. Most businesses already have a website. But having a contact form that lets you receive emails might not be enough. If you bring your conversations online–like through a blog, forum or Twitter, then you have a better chance at resolving possible problems even before they happen. If you’re lucky, passionate users might even build interest groups themselves, and it will be the community that does the support for your clients.

Any small business stands to gain a lot with social media. Even if the benefits may not be direct, it’s a matter of extending goodwill and enhancing your presence in an ever growing community of connected individuals. Being active on Facebook, Twitter, in blogging and forums may not necessarily be able to directly result in added sales, revenues and expanded business. But by being connected, you can start building up a network and you can gain the trust of your audience.

image credit: flickr/caseywest