Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

The internet is a big place – information coming from everywhere, all the time. To get ahead in your online business, you need to keep up to date. But how do you manage this constant flow of information to make sure you get what you need out of it? There is a process that I work through each day to make sure I extract maximum value from all of the information. Think of these in reverse too – giving your customers these tools make it very easy to find and distribute your content:

Email - This is my start point. It might sound obvious, but the information I want to read every day I get delivered straight to me. A lot of blog sites have the option to subscribe through feedburner, which essentially takes all the new posts from a given period and delivers them in text format to my inbox. I get it on my iPhone which means I can take it with me and access when I want, even when out of range.  Read more...

I think it’s true for everyone that no matter where you have worked, you will come across people within an organisation who are just really, really good at what they do. Certainly for me, having worked across a number of different media companies, I have found people in all sorts of departments (not just mine) who know their stuff inside out and astonish me with their knowledge.

I consider these people as my Fantasy Business Team – the people that if I had was to go into business for myself and had the scale, I would want to recruit and have work with me, because they each bring something special to the table. It’s the kind of team that you think you could accomplish anything with.  Read more...

In the great wide social tapestry, a lot has been written about the appropriation of the word “expert” by people looking to leverage the web for a return.

I’ve mentioned my opinion on these in passing previously, but I got a DM on Twitter that I thought needed its own post to discuss the pitfalls of the word. It was along the lines of “So I Can Be Your Social Media God, check this out” (I’m paraphrasing because I deleted the message and stopped following them), along with the ubiquitous link to their e book. Now, calling themselves a ‘God’ is a pretty extreme (and risky) example but it highlights the point.  Read more...

I’ve had some great feedback regarding my last post of 27 people who I derive value from on Twitter. Some of you left comments on the blog and I received a number of emails as well, and I want to thank all of you for your contribution to the conversation.

One of the themes that came up several times was around innovation, and why I didn’t single out anyone in my list as specifically innovative. I think the important thing to remember here is that the intention of the post was to list people that I derive the most value from. Certainly the list wasn’t exhaustive – there are a great many people that I get a lot from, but these people demonstrate consistent value.  Read more...

While there are some on Twitter who place value on the number of people they have following them, or that they follow, for me Twitter is about extracting the maximum value from a carefully selected group of selected people. Let’s face it, who has the time to trawl through tens of thousands of tweets to find something of interest?

I’m a big believer in getting the most out of your feed and rather than post multiple tweets about who you should follow on “Follow Friday”, I wanted to take the time to list them all and give a snapshot of who they are. When I was looking at this post, I thought of making it “50 people you should follow”. However, in the interests of reading time, and to make it just a little different, I have decided to make it 27 people you should follow. Obviously each niche in the online world will have their own rockstar tweeters, but as far as online business and marketing goes, these are the people whose tweets I derive the most value from (in no particular order).  Read more...