Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

On the weekend I caught up with friends for breakfast at a local café. They had turned up earlier than me and already ordered. I sat down and ordered a coffee, and then had a look at the menu. It was from here that an almost comedic service routine started.

I was asked not long after ordering if I’d like to order a meal, which I did. At the same time, my friend ordered another coffee and had it arrive about 5 minutes later. Still no coffee for me. The waitress then came to clear my friend’s plates and asked if we would like anything else. Perhaps my meal, or at the very least my coffee?

So then I got my breakfast. Still sans coffee. After asking yet again for my morning caffeine fix, I was told “we’re really busy”. Not “sorry”, just “we’re really busy”.  Read more...

Those that have been following some of my tweets during the last week will know that I have been searching for a new laptop. On top of this, I’ve also upgraded my broadband, making this a week where I have dealt with my fair share of sales people and customer service reps.

I always enjoy major purchase shopping, because it lets me negotiate and hammer a sales person (metaphorically of course!) until I get the deal I want. I spent time in four different stores negotiating, along with a friend who was also in the market, thinking that the promise of buying two would buy greater leverage.  Read more...

Yesterday I was sifting through ninemsn’s News site, when I was confronted by what you see in the screen grabs on the left (click the thumbnails to see what I mean). This all out advertising blitz consisted of no less that eleven advertising placements, two of which expanded even more when rolled over with the mouse. I’ve had to crop the second screen grab because of its size!

Certainly the clash of brands you see will not make advertisers too happy, as they would have all had a reasonable expectation that their ads were going to cut through. While the side panels do relate to the Codral ads, you wouldn’t know it at a glance, and this becomes even more confusing once the wine ad almost pushes Codral branding off the page all together. I really wanted to call this post “When Advertising Attacks”, but I want to use these examples to illustrate a different point.  Read more...

It seems like a social media frenzy this week in Sydney, with a couple of events bringing together some great minds and great discussion. I spent lunchtime today at an event organised by Beth Etling from The Insight Exchange to hear some interesting strategies from a cross section of different industries.

On the panel today was Kate Leaman of Foster’s Group, Digital and Social Media strategist Con Frantzeskos, Aisha Hillary of SBS and Chris Noble of World Nomads.

Rather than rehash details from each presentation, it is easier to distill them into what I considered the three standout messages and what it means for your online business:  Read more...

If you introduced yourself to someone at a party, how would you do it? How do you give someone you are just meeting an insight into you?

In this era of social networking, something that continually amazes me on Twitter is the way in which some people use their 160 character bio.

One of the biggest trends that I see amongst users is filling it with terms that relate to their niche, without any kind of “I offer”, or “I’m interested in” to preface it. Particularly in my niche I see 160 characters of Social Media, SEO, Affiliate Marketing – all the keywords to their business, jammed in there. It’s a practice akin to keyword stuffing in SEO. Then on the other end of the spectrum are those users who decide cryptic is the way to go, and only use a few words. Then, there are those that just don’t put anything. A  Read more...