After a Long Hiatus

One of the problems with running a small technology business is that after you have spent all day advising everyone else on their strategy you fall pretty much flat on your face with your own personal branding strategy.

I started this blog and grabbed this domain name to 'take control' of my own personal brand which was a great start.

But like so many of my client's I then failed to do anything with it.

Call it technical exhaustion, call it laziness or call it so flat chat running the my business.

There has also been the traumatic loss of several family members this year too. All these are good excuses for not looking after my personal brand, but at the end of the day (what a cliche) I need to get back on the horse again so to speak.

I like so many people online have multiple persona's, I have my company person (enflexion), my sub brand persona's (webin4, Flower Store In a Box), I have my personal persona to my friends and family and I have my professional persona which is kind of a mix of all the others.

It's hard to have all of those persona's, I tweet personally and professionally as I do with Facebook as well, although these days I manage my professional social media needs through the fantastic Hootsuite.

So I am going to re build my personal brand again and blogging will be back again! I think for the time being I will link my primary enflexion twitter account here as well because that's where my personal and professional brands meet (or at least the one that I want to promote as y personal brand).

Epic Failure of Website Compatibility

I can't believe that a large company would actually make a website that is not compatible with all web browsers.

It really is not that hard!

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Crowdsouring Logo Design

The new logo design for webin4.com has been chosen and the new site design is well underway.

I was pretty suprised by the general calibre of the logo designs, out of the several hundred we received the majority of the entries were excellent.

Some where a bit amateurish but I would highly recommend using 99Designs to run a logo competition for something like this.

Logo Design for Webin4.com

We are currently doing a rebranding and simplification of our webin4.com website and we are using 99 Designs to 'crowd source' the logo design.

See our entries so far for our logo design competition

This will be the third redo since the site started last year and we are using the feedback from customers to do so.

It's a long process to get a website like this right and properly off the ground.

The design finishes next week and we are really excited by the designs so far!

It's really hard both explaining what you want for a logo let alone choosing a logo from the designs. Generally for clients we just get given a logo and we design around it or for it, but having our own logo designed is a far more challenging experience.

Quoted in Business Technology Article

A few months back I was quoted in a business article about Google and yahoos offer for 'free' credit towards online Ads and what I thought of this both from my own business and my clients.

I am strongly for online advertising on Google for many of our client's businesses.

For example one of our primary markets Florists have huge success in online advertising for their websites with Google Adwords and I strongly recommend these clients use these marketing channels.

Flowers have an immediacy need, someone needs to send flowers for an event, birthday, wedding, funeral etc they turn to Google type in 'flowers delivered sydney'.

This potential customer then has a very high likelihood of completing the transaction on the website provided the site looks good (works obviously) and the price is right.

The same thing with plumbers, electricians etc, people have a need specific right now need, and Search Engine Advertising is great for that.

But things like websites (that we sell) there is less of an immediate need, sure we do get clients from searching the web and doing web searches for eCommerce Packages etc, but when you have to bid 20 / 30 / 40 dollars a click through for some of the popular keywords you place some serious thought into how much the actual customer acquisition will cost you.

We have also had a multi faceted marketing strategy:

• Advertising;
• Referrals
• Cold & warm calling;
• Direct Marketing;
• eMail Newsletters; and
• Search Engine Optimisation.

If I was selling something with an immediacy need I would be more prone to using Paid Google Advertising, however I would not seriously consider using Yahoo for the same, as there is just not the same traffic from the site.

By the same token though if you are going after huge awareness and customer acquisition phase and you have cash flow, the PPC and Google Adwords will do wonders for your business.

Read the article here

Giving Away Free Stuff to Small Business

One of the really interesting aspects of working with small business is their resistance to technology.

A recent blog entry I read suggested that this resistance is due to two factors:

• The Upfront Costs
  
• Inability to see the ROI on the costs
  

In the same article (which is American figures) it suggests that 70% of SMBs don't even have websites which is a truly sad indictment on SMBs in my opinion.

But I can see the point of the article, the high perceived cost of entry for a small business to get a website and the technical mumbo jumbo are huge barriers to actually getting a website.

The technology model that is suggested for small businesses is low cost of entry and higher subscription costs. We see it all the time in printers, where a brand new excellent colour laser printer may only cost $400, but the printer cartridges can cost up to $600 for a full set after the initial trial cartridges have been used.

In the software business this is in effect the Software As A Service SAAS model, where you use software online and pay virtually no up front cost only a subscription based on your usage.

We sell our services and products in effect as a SAAS, with Webin4.com being a truly virtual product, although we charge an upfront fee to get your website done but at a significant discount to the normal costs charged by bespoke designers.

The problem with technology for SMBs is it's complex, expensive and has for years over promised and under delivered.

Whilst I believe that a company without a website is truly archaic, even if the site is just a small group of pages with a mission statement and contact details. I can understand why small companies haven't taken the plunge yet.

Web 2.0 was all about democratizing the web and making it easier for people to contribute online and OWN the process.

I am not so sure about offering 'free' upfront websites with subscription costs, but it's an interesting model nonetheless.

Maybe in time I will change my mind though...