Lots of businesses do not have any strategy at all, or they get 'sold' something that sounds good only to find out that it really doesn't suit their needs.

In my experience you need to just do a few things to get you moving in the right direction!

• know what you want to achieve
• know how you will recognize that you've achieved it
• make sure the solution you implement supports your business goals / objectives
• set clear timeframes and responsibilities and hold people accountable and make sure they have the resources to achieve it (don't set them up for failure and them blame them)

Seems reasonable!

You would be surprised how often these simple things are overlooked. Are you overlooking them now in your business?

Contact us to help you get the best outcome possible for you business.

One of my mentors James Schramko is consistently achieving double digit success with his online sales techniques. He is a recognised leader in the internet business community in this area.

In March 2010 James is running one of his limited seminars for you and a partner (not necessarily your spouse) here in Sydney. If you are interstate or overseas, it's well worth the visit. If you can't make it then one alternative is to join his online forum, where I am also a member and have been for sometime, and engage with the community there.

If you want to know how to achieve significant success online this is the right place to start.

The thing that sold me on James in the first place is that's he's genuine. Not trying to sell you something all the time. He gives and gives and gives and then gives some more. The workshop is a great environment for people who currently aren't familiar with internet marketing techniques through to more experience marketers looking for a boost. I'll let James talk to you more about this. Just click on the picture above and he can tell you in his own words.

Firstly, what is social bookmarking?

To be successful on the internet, people, customers, prospects, have to be able to find you. To find you they often use a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing to look for the "thing" they are interested in. To be found on the first page of a search engine is vitally important as most people, actually more than 95% of people never look at more than the first 3 pages of results. Some of the popular social bookmarking sites are Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. 

How is this relevant to social bookmarking?

Well, in short if you have provided items of value, like an article, a book, a video and put it on the internet then the more references there are to that piece of content the better. The social book marking sites, and there's more than 150 of them, create a link back to your article. The search engines love to see this link, they give you credit for having all these links to your content, and presto you climb up the list of results in the search engines. We want our business to be as high up on this list of results as possible, preferably the first page. This isn't an article about search engines or SEO but it is very relevant.

Lets look at this in a bit more detail.

Social bookmarking is a way of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs online.  You might have the best product in the world, but if you can’t generate the traffic you’ve just got a nice website on your hands with no customers.  Even if you have a loyal mailing list you will still need to constantly update this by attracting new online visitors.  

There are many options for making connections on social bookmarking sites.  To find the best you need to take your time and surf around.  Once you have researched the best start to set up some social bookmarking accounts that you can use regularly.  

StumbleUpon is one of the most popular of the social bookmarking sites which is both powerful and easy to use. First you need to create an account and then create a toolbar interface.  All that’s left to do is click on the Thumbs Up icon (which is found on your browser after you install the StumbleUpon tool) in order to recommend a website.  This can be done for any websites you own and you can also ask your friends to give you the Thumbs Up.  In addition to these ratings you can also add comments about your website.  

Can you Digg it?  Sounds like a line from a 70s song, but it is actually a very popular social bookmarking site. Digg works very much like StumbleUpon in that users are allowed to push up the ratings for a particular site so that it reaches the front page.  If you can make it to the front page you will be presenting yourself to thousands of potential visitors and more and more people will start hitting your site to see what you are all about.  

To assist you in publishing your information out onto the web there are a number of services available to you. There are both free and paid services and those listed here are the free services. They require a bit of effort from your business to maintain but the effort pays off over time. You will need to register yourself or your business to each of the social sites you want to be profiled on. This can take a little time at the beginning, though once done you don't have to worry about again.

• Clipmarks markets itself as “scissors for web pages.”  This site lets you submit items that are transmitted to the Internet – including to an iPhone and to Facebook.  It provides a one stop shop and can save a lot of time.
• You can sign up with services like OnlyWire to get similiar capability to Clipmarks. OnlyWire has a free and a paid option. 
• Another option is to use a site called Socialmarker. Using your social site accounts it steps your through the creation process of entries in each of these sites. You would repeat this process for each new piece of information that you want to promote out onto the internet.  
• Alternatively you can use ping.fm to connect to all your social media accounts. 

Some of these services provide a small application for your browser. Just install one or more of these plugins for your browser. These "plugins" allow you to carry out a multitude of functions such as clicking once to submit your item to many sites in one go.  In order for this to work, you will need to join any social bookmarking sites you want to use.  

You will need to ensure that visitors to your site know how they can rate your site.  It is not possible to bribe or reward them for bookmarking your site.  This is the social bookmarking equivalent to stuffing the ballot box.  

You can publish links to bookmarking sites as a gentle and polite reminder to your visitors.  Don’t be coy about submitting any updated information to these networks yourself.  You will just need to ensure that you do it in such a way that it doesn’t appear as spam.  If you tell people what you have got and where they can find it there is a good chance they will pass this information on to others.

In the spirit of this article there's a button just below that says "Share / Save". Go on, click and and social bookmark this article and see how it works.

Festive Season Greetings

It’s the middle of the festive season once more and it marks another year of activity and achievement. The year behind us is just that – behind. Let’s learn all the good things and put them to great use in 2010 to give it the promise it deserves.

Remember to tell those that mean so much to you how you feel. Do it openly and freely without any expectations. It is after all – about communication.

So from all of us at The KIX Group the best of Seasons Greetings and Great Expectations for a fantastic 2010.

There are so many approaches to your business web site. Many business have spent a lot of money developing a wonderful looking site. For anyone finding it – the WOW effect is going to get them. If your objective was to get the WOW happening then great…your achieved your goal. There aren’t many business with such a clear goal achieved on he net.

For the remaining businesses not falling into this category, there has to be an alternate approach.

Some questions to ponder:

• If my web site is going to do more for my business…then what do I want it to do?
• What are the different types of web sites?
  • an electronic version of my current product and company information
  • an existing customer support area, which operates 24*7
  • a way to interest potential new customers to learn about the products, services and solutions I offer and be able to get their information so I can follow them up
  • be able to take orders and potentially have the solution delivered with as little handling, overhead as possible.

There’s no reason you can’t do all those actions…is there? Apart from time and cost!

No matter what your selection(s) above, you, the manager  / business owner has to be sure of one fundamental thing. “Is what I am doing going to dovetail with my over all business strategy”. Your site is just another arm of your business and has to live just as any other part, like sales or support. It’s going to take time, effort and investment. Done correctly it can make money, save money, or just make it a better to deal with you and your organization.

Now that you have made the decision to proceed with the project to develop something appropriate for your business, there are just 10000 more questions (kidding – only 9000) to go.

It’s time to take action – we can work this process through with you as we have done with others before you.

Sign up to our regular mail out with up to the minute information on the latest techniques for doing business on the web.

All your channels to market are a mechanism for you to communicate with the world. We will help you facilitate this communication appropriately.

I had been making some calls and put it back in my pocket. I heard it give the message received beep and retrieved it only to find a totally blank response. Almost like a teenager on a Sunday morning. I tried all the things known to man and Apple Support to resurrect it, without any luck.

Taking it to the Apple Genius bar on the Monday, initially nothing, then please make an appointment with one of our techs. So with appointment made I left and returned.

In the meantime as I couldn’t be without my phone I put my SIM card into my slightly older phone, my Nokia N95. It’s a great phone, but seriously, after using my iPhone for 12 months it was like going back in time. Sure it did it’s stuff well, made calls, had the GPS, could send and receive all manner of messages, but the interface was just, well, clunky. So after being a Nokia advocate for such a long time I knew I had been converted.

Back to my iPhone. At the Genius Bar in the Apple Store, the guy there was very helpful. Checked this and that, ran some diagnostics, and actually got a glimmer from the device. I felt there was hope. He thought it might be a faulty connection to the screen or the screen itself was failing. It was only when he opened it up to reseat the connection did he find the real cause. The connector was indeed not seated correctly, but for the past 12 months or so it had been burning the logicboard (motherboard) and it was slowly frying itself.

Outcome: I was given a brand new device.

Thoughts: If I hadn’t had my extended warranty then I probably wouldn’t have even gone to the Genius Bar. To then find out it was a faulty unit all along made me think, would have the unit been replaced so quickly without the Extended Warranty. Probably not without a fight as the 12 month warranty was just passed.

I am happy with the outcome, two iPhones as I had already gone and upgrade to the 3Gs as I didn’t think my 3G would be fixable and I couldn’t live with my N95.

Yes the iPhone is a great bit of kit, but more than that “it’s my preferred tool of trade”.

If you had the choice between buying from a company that did embrace the change and was doing something about versus a company doing nothing, would that impact your buying decision?

I had a poll running to answer this question. Of the respondents, 30% said it would make a difference and interestingly 70% of those were women.

We all need to take a stand to improve our business and our planet.

Tim Purcell

At the recent official Finnish Independence Day celebrations held at Parliament House in Sydney on Dec 4 2008, Tim Purcell was invested as a Knight, 1st Class in the Order of the White Rose of Finland. The award given by the President of the Republic of Finland, Ms Tarja Halonen, and presented on her behalf by the Ambassador of Finland to Australia, Mr Glen Lindholm, was made in recognition of the significant efforts in fostering stronger business and government organisation relationships between Finland and Australia.

In particular in 2007 during a visit by the Finnish President, Purcell and his team, organised and held an Innovation Summit. The contacts made in this summit between the leaders of the groups attending has led to a strengthening of relationships and ongoing interactions. At the time Purcell was the Chairman of the Finland Australia Chamber of Commerce and on the Board of Directors of the European Australian Business Council.

Purcell remarked “…it was a team effort and I am glad this Innovation Summit event was such a success. I am humbled to receive this award…