Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

Hey everyone, welcome back! A new year, new possibilities – I’m excited!

I wanted to lead off this year with something I noticed while I was on break. It’s about the claims you make as a business about your product. More specifically, the ability to back them up.

My example comes from a drive I was on, where I passed through a small grove of shops. In the same town, there were two bakeries both with shingles out that proclaimed their pies “the best in the world”. What are the chances? The world is a big place, and here we have not one, but two stores virtually next to each other proclaiming their product to be the best.

Now, obviously this is hyperbole on the part of the bakery, but it illustrates an important point when making claims about your products – particulalry when your business exists online.  Read more...

For my penultimate post this year, I’ve been inspired by something Chris Brogan published yesterday on his blog about The Visible Media Maker. It’s a great post about being a personality while sharing stories.

One of my main goals for 2010 with Online Business Adviser is to make it more personal. When I say personal, I’m talking about injecting not only the blog, but also my social footprint with more information that is specific to me as a person in an effort to start more conversations.

In looking to achieve the goal, I’ve outlined 7 things that I believe are beneficial to any online business owner who wants to be more personal and build their brand. Some of these I have been doing all along, and some I am yet to do, but all are activities that should be a sooner rather than later project.  Read more...

If you are one of the many businesses that have decided to create an online sales channel, there is a good chance that you are already operating a bricks and mortar business. If you do, you need to make sure that your online experience extends your business and doesn’t just duplicate it.

Think about it - the experience of a physical store is pretty basic. Products are lined on shelves, register at the front. People come in, browse around, perhaps buy something and then leave.  Read more...

To call this post “What’s In a Name?” would have been too easy. But to answer the question – lots. A bad name can negatively affect

My "collector's item"

perception of your product even if the product itself is good.

Just ask Kraft. By way of context, particularly for my international readers, over the last 6 months Kraft has been looking for a name for their new type of Vegemite. Vegemite is a yeast extract spread that is thick, dark brown and has a tar like consistency. It’s fantastic on toast and has been and Australian icon since it’s creation in 1922. Back in June Kraft released a new version, mixed with cream cheese to make it easier to spread, and has sat on shelves with a label reading “name me”. After a public competition to pick the new name, they settled on iSnack 2.0. The backlash from the Australian public was incredible, and only days after (but not before rebranding 500,000 jars), they announced plans to dump the new name and open up a public vote on 6 of the more “tame” suggestions.  Read more...

Every Saturday morning I take my son to his swimming lessons, which is truly one of the highlights of my week. My wife has deemed these weekend classes “dad soup”, because it seems this is the day when all the fathers are around to jump in the pool. Last weekend, I bumped into an old colleague who I had not seen in several years. We were Facebook “friends”, but in typical fashion, never really interacted much aside from the casual status “thumbs up”.

It was clear from the way the conversation went that he had been following what I was doing through my activity on Facebook. This gave us new things to talk about, particularly given I had done some work in his area of speciality, and it also led to the discussion of some potential contract work.

This is a great example of the intersection of social and real world networking, and the tremendous value of the latter.  Read more...