Monthly Archives: July 2010

Waking up at different times isn’t good

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I have the attention span of a gnat. My mind’s already gone off track and is thinking about another post I need to write.

Routine is vital when you’re running a business.

Advertise in a magazine once and you’ve wasted your money. Whether you realise it or not, your brain only notices adverts that it has seen more than 10 or so times before.

You need to advertise regularly before people notice and call. You need to vary it too – use the Internet, write a blog, send a newsletter. You need people to notice your business.

It’s about combined marketing.

When we started sending the PolkaSpots Monthly newsletter, we had only a few subscribers. A day later, no-one had called. We didn’t panic. Next month, we had a few more subscribers and on the same date it went out again. Nothing happened, no-one called.

Over a year later, much of our business now comes from these newsletters. People have received them every month, religiously. I called a lead last week and introduced myself again. He responded, “Of course I remember you Simon, I get your newsletter every month”. The conversation was easy from there.

If you’re thinking of sending a newsletter, think about the time you can commit to it. If you can’t guarantee that you can send one every week / month for the next 12 months, save your energy and don’t bother.

Stitch and sow

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Starting a new business is exciting. Choosing a name is one of the best bits and most people get this wrong. Myself included – just look at PolkaSpots Wi-Fi.

An acquaintance of mine has just gone through such a process and she’s got it quite wrong.

A little history

Bravely and heroically, she’s started a new business from scratch and two weeks ago I saw her first marketing materials. Beautifully designed, interesting and with a unique style – I was impressed.

What’s happened

Things didn’t go well, a third party told me over coffee. “No-one really turned up for the mother / child workshop.” Despite reading the flyers, I had no idea it was for mother AND child. No where on the marketing materials had I seen this – it might have been there, but hopelessly, I’d missed it.

She’d forgotten a clear message and worst of all, I can’t even remember the name of the business. I even went down to check it out earlier and it’s gone already!

Choosing your name

My advice in these busy times is to choose something that’s both memorable and relevant. One of the newest PolkaSpots subsidiaries is called Public Wi-Fi. This is dull but what people are searching for online and so, with time, it will appear at the top. It’s also simple – difficult to forget when you’re looking for a public Wi-Fi Hotspot isn’t it.

Understanding Google Pagerank

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Pagerank is Google’s score of a particular page on your website. Every website has a score out of ten.

They use an equation that takes all of the inbound and internal links about your site to calculate it. When it came into existence, the formula was:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

Don’t worry about this right now.

Basically, the higher the score, the more popular your website is. Right now, this site has a Pagerank (PR) of zero because it’s only a month or so old. There are virtually no sites linking to it either. We’ll see where it is in one month.

PolkaSpots.com however has a Pagerank of 4, which is quite good.

Pagerank is important but not essential for a site to appear high in the Google listings. I had a site a few years ago that had zero PR but was at the top of the list.

(Also, the jump from a PR or 4 – 5 is greater than the jump from 3 – 4.)

Google.com unsurprisingly, has a PR of 10.

How do you find your Pagerank?

The best way is to use the Google Toolbar for Firefox. However, there are loads of websites that will show you.

I am not the Internet

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I took my clothes, squeezed into some swimming shorts and jumped into the pool with 32 triathletes. We swam for two hours and afterwards, we moaned about cramp.

7 or more years ago in a London pub, I was running out of things to say to someone I’d met. I asked what he did – he told me he was a window cleaner. Turns out he was one of the head honchos at Deutsche Bank. He didn’t want to be defined by his career.

These relationships are fragile. Our occupation shouldn’t dictate who we are. I am not the Internet.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my work but I love other things in my life too. It’s these things that make me who I am too.

Take your clothes off

Life in the West often revolves around pubs, bars and restaurants. Last year, I started training for a triathlon and joined a swimming club, running club and started cycling 150km on the weekends.

On Thursday evenings, I spend two hours in the pool, surrounded by fellow ‘enthusiasts’ in lycra, rubber hats and nose clips. We swim more than 3km in total. At the end, we moan about cramp, sore shoulders, the next race, why we’re not getting faster, injuries and training.

The best part is that no-one has ever asked me what I do and yet, I still consider them friends. For two hours, work is not part of our lives.

Put your trunks on, get in the pool, do something different and change your life forever. Try something new, you might like it.

Use the tools and publish everyday.

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I wrote this blog from a garden centre, somewhere in Shropshire on Wednesday afternoon. I’m killing a few minutes between a site visit and a 250km drive back to West London. The perfect place to write a blog – no distractions, coffee and some ice cream :)

These days, my time is always limited. In the office, I’m constantly bombarded by questions, emails and phone calls. Everyone needs some space to write something interesting.

Amazingly, I’m not always near an Internet connection despite being the proud owner of polkaspots.com! And yet, I publish a blog everyday…

By using all the tools you have, you can easily write half a dozen blogs in one go and then publish them automatically over a week or more. New blogging software does this at the click of a button.

This means your readers still get their daily digest despite the fact that you’re half-way up a mountain or on a beach. It also means you can relax a bit more.

It also means, you can come back and check your blog before it goes out for typos. If you feel like writing, sit down and write.

Wordpress makes it simple to publish your blogs in advance

You hold your horses and I’ll hold your hand

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Sometimes you need someone to cut through the Internet jargon.

When launching a new site or marketing an older one, it’s easy to get lost. You’re sitting in front of a twenty something techie with a beard. He (or she) is not making sense.

I speak to people on a daily basis about their websites, blogs, shops. Common complaints include: ”Every time I ask my designer to make a change, he charges me £50.” Or, “my designer won’t answer my calls anymore – what do I do?”

There are two sides to every story. When you request a change, do you know what you’re actually asking for? Most of the time you think it’s about ten minutes work. It rarely is, and a good designer should make something hugely complicated appear very simple. On the other hand, working with designers can be a nightmare. They know best, every time. No matter what you say to them, they won’t budge. Often they’re right, but you’re the client and they need to converse with you about it.

It’s rare that I ever design a website from scratch these days but I still help write code or tweak things. I love it. Most of my mornings are now spent discussing changes with a client and then proposing them to the designer. Or, telling the client what they’re going to do and making sure the designer actually does them :)

People that listen tend to get results. Use an intermediary, like me.

Controlling bloggers block

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Everyone’s mind goes blank when they sit down to write something. It happens to me but I’ve learned how to control it. It’s easy:

Get a diary or a notebook. Or a program like Things for the Mac.

Every time you get an idea for a post, write it down. The next time you find yourself in the perfect place to blog, you won’t get irritated that you have nothing to write about.

Find your blog’s identity

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In a couple of other posts, I’ve mentioned that my blog’s moved around more times than it should have.

When it started on blogger.com, I was writing about the PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Service but we already had a blog over there, so I was always a bit lost.

Over time, my blog was neglected and my posts weren’t doing anything for me or PolkaSpots.

Last November I found myself in the middle of the Zambian bush. I was there to help Link.net.zm install their PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspots. My accomodation was a little, sparse, wooden house. I had a lot of time to think and write and without realising, my posts flooded out.

When I read the blog back, there are typos and spelling mistakes, but I don’t care because they came from the heart and the posts were real. I had something to talk about and the time to write.

If you want to write a good blog, don’t just type for the sake of it or because you think it will help. It won’t.

What is a blog?

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I’m sitting at my desk when a friend came to ask for some PolkaSpots Internet Vouchers.

Before long we were talking and I asked him if he read my blog. What’s a blog he responded?

I’ve made a mistake writing simonmorley.co.uk: I haven’t started at the beginning.

A blog is a place where people can express themselves online. According to Wikipedia, blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject. Historically they were called Web Logs.

They started out as bland little affairs with some text and maybe a few pictures. Nowadays, entire websites are built around them and include podcasts, videos, photos, forums and everything else you can imagine.

Anyone can write one and there’s loads of software you can use. Most of it’s ridiculously simple. I use WordPress – it took me ten minutes to install and twenty minutes to configure.

You can now subscribe to receive blog entries by email. You can subscribe to mine here.