The Web

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

Are you a new citizen of the Twitterverse or struggling to get started?  There are a few governing ordinances that you need to have in place to truly become native. Twitter is not the new kid on the block, but it is a vital part of the social marketing mix.

Be a Real Person

The ideal Twitter profile is extremely personable. Just like in the real world, people like talking to people. The follower counts and improved click-through rates tell us so. This also means having your profile as a picture, rather than your business logo.  Unless you are already very well known, it is a hard slog to get traction on Twitter while being an ‘anonymous’ brand profile. 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

Last month, we proudly celebrated the first birthday of our ‘Getting Aussie Business Online’ joint initiative with Google.  With over 30,000 Australian businesses signing up for their free website with MYOB Atlas, we’re proud to help support the move online for many SME’s.

And this week, we’re excited to announce that all MYOB Atlas sites are now mobile ready!

Launching on Tuesday, MYOB Atlas sites are now optimised for mobile, displaying key information such as contact info, a map and opening hours in a mobile friendly format.  They also allow the user to switch to the full website to see all content and additional features.

Why is it so important to ensure your site is ‘mobile friendly’?  We asked MYOB’s Web Developer, Steven Wright to share his knowledge with you all, and some tips to help any business get mobile ready. 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

It took me a while to buy in to the whole Twitter thing. I didn’t really see the point of it. 140 characters to tell a mostly faceless audience about how you ‘just bought a #hamburger’ or how you are ‘sitting on the #toilet thinking about how funny #howIMetYourMother was last night’.

How was this stupid platform in anyway benefiting the progression of mankind?

But one day it dawned on me that there were some pretty switched on people on this thing. And they were all constantly sharing little tidbits of really cool information. So, I jumped on board and became one of the 27% of Twitter users who just watch but don’t participate in the conversation. 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

Life at the pointy end.

Hearing a rising howl about Pinterest, my first thought was, ‘Not another bloody social media fad!’

My second thought was, ‘I ignored Twitter for months, only to find it’s one of the most useful things ever.’

Then, when someone claimed Pinterest generates more leads than Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn COMBINED, I had to take a look.

What is it?

Pinterest is an electronic version of the scrapbook you may have kept as a kid.

‘Pinning’ (scrapbooking) is actually quite calming and … fun. Read more