When recently reading the Forbes list of the top 25 Web Celebrities posted in December 2007, it was interesting to see a Hollywood gossip columnist being number one. Perez Hilton, real name, Mario Lavandeira, has an amazing statistic that 91% of his traffic is returning visitors…
But to me the most interesting story is not of number one but of number twenty…
Ryan Block, the editor of the AOL-owned consumer tech blog Engadget managed to knock a whopping $4 Billion off of Apple’s market capitalization with just one post!
As the story goes, Engadget published info received from an Apple employee saying the soon to be released Iphone and the new Leopard operating system would be delayed. Between the time that it was posted and the time it was proved to be a hoax Apple’s stock plummeted!
As the story goes, Engadget published an internal Apple email from a trusted source that said that the Apple Iphone and the Leopard Operating System was to be delayed… Between the time it was posted and the time it was proved to be a hoax Apple stock plummeted. The stock did recover but still left Apple down $1.25 billion in capitalisation.
So, whats the moral of the story? Verify your sources before you post… It just might cost someone their job.
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The world is growing fast and the need for information, knowledge that you need to know, is increasing exponentially. Where can you get this information? Where or how can you be educated continually, on a higher level.
We are quickly outstripping the knowledge we have learnt or the experience we have gained through traditional education. In this new, dynamic world there needs to be new, dynamic education. This no longer stops at university at the age of 25. Soon there will be not enough universities to cope with the demand for learning without a finish line.
With the world becoming more dynamic there is a growing demand for education. The world is changing at such a rate there are very few people who will stay in one profession all through their careers. With this quest for knowledge there is a lot that we can’t be thought now as we don’t know what we will need later on in life as our careers change.
This is going to lead to an increase in higher education for an older generation. This is currently not being addressed in today’s education sphere. There will not be resources available to build new campuses as the demand will far outstrip the supply.
Thankfully this is where tools such as the internet and collaborative learning can come into play. The Open educational resource movement (OER) which started in 2001 with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative is a prime example of this. Today it provides open access to both undergraduate and graduate-level information and modules covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum.
Now with the advent of Web 2.0 there is potential for not only sharing and linking of information, but there is sharing and linking of people. There is scope for distribution of information in a way never dreamt of before.
“Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups.”
The focus is now no longer on what we are learning but how we are learning it and whom we are learning it with.
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So, we’ve all heard the lines at some stage in our business career;
“How can I see the results? How do I know if it is actually working?”
It is the age old story of getting measurable results and getting them in a timely manner to see if your strategy or campaign is working, to see if your money has been well spent. In the past it was a difficult process that took a lot of time and money. Today it is a little quicker and cheaper.
There are some really useful tools now available to enable you to measure your success online and possibly to tie it in to your sales or marketing strategy so they can become more results based. There are some really useful sites to watch to see what the trends are in your area and when and where people are searching for what.
So what if you want to see how your online campaign is going and you want to see if all the traffic you have been receiving has been turned into an increase in sales? How can you get information on the amount of traffic and when it is at its peak? How can you tell when there is the most traffic through your site so you know when to launch your new product? When it is best to post a blog so it reaches your readers when they have time to read it?
It is now a relatively easy task to go to Google trends or alexa.com to see just what has been happening with your site and how many people have been visiting. It is then a relatively easy task to link your info from there to any marketing reports and sales figures you might have and you will be able to see if your online campaign has worked… And if it has turned into sales or just interest…
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There will be a screening of Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn speaking on mindfulness at the Labia on Orange on Sunday 24 February at 6:15 pm. What’s more is that it will be a double bill, there will be one screening of the Mind and Life Conference and one of Mindfulness in Medicine.
Dr Kabat-Zinn is renowned for bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and of society. His two books: Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (Delta, 1991), and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1994) were bestsellers
Dr Kabat-Zinn is the founder of Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the former Executive Director of the school.
He will be touring South Africa in May 2008 hosted by the Institute for Mindfulness South Africa and the UCT Graduate Business School
It will be introduced by Dr Simon Whitesman, the Director for Mindfulness South Africa.
Bookings at the Labia on Orange : Tel 021 424 5927
The cost is R40 and there will be Flagstone wine and snacks provided.
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It seems social networking has been going niche for quite some time now and it stands to reason, it is logical that people have had masses of friends and now they want exclusivity. The latest niche market to adopt social marketing appears to be the exclusive area of MBA graduates.
Collette Symanowitz realised this market when she graduated from her MBA last year. So she started MBAconnect “a community website for MBA graduates and current MBA students at business schools throughout South Africa”. The network is for graduates and students who not only want to keep in touch with other graduates but who also want to place their profile, network as well as debate with other graduates.
MBAconnect responds to the demands of the business schools, their students and their graduates as a whole. Many MBA schools cater only for their graduates but where MBAconnect is different is that it caters for MBA’a all over the country and from various schools.
It will be a meeting place for job hunters and job seekers of a similar caliber. A virtual ‘trade show’ of MBA’s and job opportunities for them. With MBA’s usually in higher earning brackets it is easier to monetize their value and this will be a great help in attracting advertising revenue to the site.
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So you might have heard of STORMHOEK wines and their amazingly successful campaign to use social networking to market their wines… But what you might not have heard of is the collapse of Orbital Wines and how it is going to affect the wine making industry in SA.
So the big news is that after weeks of negotiations with banks, Stormhoek have com up with a brilliant idea to try and save jobs in the industry.
The campaign is called the Own a vine, Save a job campaign and it is a brilliant example of micro financing used to the benefit of the people.
Ever a group to embrace new trends They are using their old friend social networks to spread the word of this campaign and we hope it catches on. Let’s raise awareness of this initiative and get the sponsor’s rolling in.
It is R2000 to own a vine and with this “You will get a certificate with a photograph of your vine and your name, plus a bottle of wine made from the crop of the vineyard block containing your vine.”. What is more is that you will get your money back when the current debt to the suppliers is repaid. So you are really loaning them the money…
All of the money raised will go to repaying the Orbital debts to South African grape-growing, wine making and support services
Stormhoek has supplied many a case for free to the community, so isn’t time the community gave a little help (and a little money) and gave back to those in need.
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So being relatively new to the blogosphere I have been wondering what it is that makes a blog successful? What is it that gets one blogger 500 hits and another 50? I think it all boils down to Attention Economics and how we can maintain people’s interest.
After doing a fair amount of research on the rating sites such as Muti and Afrigator I have come up with a short list of what it is that a lot of the top blogs have in common.
1 : Pictures - it seems we are an image driven culture… we enjoy looking at pictures. It also helps that they are topical, funny or interesting. (or in the case of the enigmatic Bolton Deventer, of boobs) If you can have a great pic it often brings interest to your post and could even lessen the impact of poor writing.
2 : Links - If you link your blog to other sites and blogs it increases your hits and makes more people aware of your writing. It also helps by giving credit to other writers or just acknowledging them.
3 : Topical and targeted - Your blog must be topical and if possible targeted at a specific market. There is no point targeting your post on Orchids at a Techie.
4 : Structure - lists, short sentences, bold words and sub-headers can be used to break up the inevitably longer post. A large amount of info often scares away potential viewers unless it specifically interests them.
5 : Time - If you post your blog or time-stamp it to be posted at a certain time (when people first get to work or just when they are taking lunch) so it gets people when they have the most time to read.
As this is a list-in-progress I would greatly appreciate feedback as to what has worked for you. Hopefully in the near future I might be able to publish a more concise list of what works and what doesn’t.
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No longer is it about what or how much you know. With the amount of information available on the Internet and the advent of social networking you don’t have to be an expert anymore. Well, kind of…
In short, it is not so much about what you know but more about who you know that knows what you need to know. No longer do you have to suffer from knowledge overload, rather have an encyclopedia of contacts…
For example: If you want to know about Nuclear power you no longer have to go to a library and research it. You can either Google it or you can search your network of friends to see if you know anyone or if anyone you know knows anyone who is an expert on nuclear power. There you have it, yet another use for social networking, maybe your boss will let you back on Facebook after all.
There are many social networking sites such as NING and FACEBOOK and especially Linkedin around that can help you connect to people who might know a lot more about a subject than you do. You might be able to find the information you know in a open source area if you are lucky.
Clearly it is definitely advantageous to have first-hand knowledge of a subject as it would stop you having to trawl the internet of your networks for a contact. But it is no longer imperative to be the ‘man in the know’.
So maybe it is worth investing in your social networking skills as they might help you to become the person in the know. The least that will happen is you might meet some interesting people and make a few friends.
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