Create Your Own Social Network

Looking for the ability to create her own social network my wife stumbled across Ning.

A few hours later she was online with her very own social network just for girl surfers.

So what is Ning and what can It do for you?

Ning allows each and every one of you to create your own, powerful social network. Yes...but does that exactly mean you are asking?

To put this into clear and simple terms. Lets say you love to collect old typewriters and would like to connect with like minded people to share and exchange your knowledge and experience.

Back in the old days you'd form a club, meet once every so often with your fellow members to share your passion. Now a days you simply set up a Ning site which takes you less than 2 hours, meet with fellow members 24/7, accross the globe enabling you to share and connect with thousands of people.

All it takes is for you to sign up and customise the look of your website, to reflect your desired look and feel. Thanks to Nings intuitive set up, users with little web experience can set up their own website.

There are a myriad of powerful features that come inbuilt to your Ning website. Here are just a few with links to further explanations...

• Activity
• Badges
• Blog
• Chat
• Comments
• Events
• Forum
• Groups
• Members
• Messages
• Music
• Notes
• Pages
• Photos
• Premium Services
• Profile Apps
• Profile Questions
• RSS
• Tab Manager
• Text Boxes
• Videos

Once you've set up your Ning site you can either invite friends or/and people from the general public (who find you through search engines) can join your network.

So what are you waiting for - go on - create your own social network!

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing."

The classic example of viral marketing is hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy was simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates who see the message
4. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
5. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward building up pace until the ripple becomes a wave.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work like the simple Hotmail.com strategy. There are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Unique Selling Proposition

What is a Unique Selling Proposition aka USP?

USP’s have traditionally been at the heart and soul of marketing. However the challenge to be 'unique', in the literal definition of the word, can be the source of enormous frustration and wasted effort.

The answer, in terms of business strategy, is to shift focus slightly and think about your ‘differentiation’ or 'value proposition'. That is, why are people going to buy from you when there are 10 other companies (as an example) doing virtually the same thing?

The answer to that question then becomes the core of the message you take to the market. This can then be captured either as a USP, an ESP (emotional selling proposition), or TSP (tribal selling proposition).

Just ask yourself when you define your USP - can I (customer) get that from someone else?
E.g. Lets say Pete has an "Air Conditioning" installation service. His USP is "Professional installation & great customer service". Could I get that somewhere else? Yes - John from South Coast Aircon also has great service and is professional! So it's not the best USP...
Rather Pet should say something like this "2 year warranty with all professional air conditioning installations". Do you think people would choose Pete now over John? Ofcourse - not only is he professional and great with his customers, they also get a 2 year warranty!!! They have nothing to loose and everything to gain!

A few of the most known USP's are:
Nike ... "just do it"
Dove ... "for real women"
Apple ... "think different"
McDonnalds ... "cheap fast food"

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Have You Updated Your Website Recently

Why is it important to keep your website up to date?

The answer is quite simple.

Imagine you're planning to go to Bali for your summer (surf) vacation and you're unsure what the political situation is like in that country.
You do your research online and come across a website that has relevant information about your destination, but the information is dated 2001? Would you trust this information???
Of course not!

The same applies to your website.
If you keep your website updated with the most recent, informative and relevant content then it will not only benefit your customers and readers, but more importantly it will have a positive side effect on your search engine ranking. Your website performs better in the search engine rankings as Google values fresh content and will know that you are looking after your site.

You don't think you have anything worth while updating?

Here are a few areas on your website which can be updated on a regular basis:

1. Events Page. Have you got any events or functions planned in the near future that may be taking place?
2. News Page. Has your business achieved anything your are proud of? Have you participated in any community events?
3. New Products Page. Do you have any new products to present? Have any of your products specifications changed?
4. Testimonials from your customers. Collect and update your customer testimonials and make sure you include your customers name, business name and link to their website.

You do not need to spend ages and ages on updating your site every few days, once a month or so should be sufficient to keep Google and your visitors happy.

If you are adding news to your website on a regular basis, make sure that each item gets its own page. Google will reward you for constantly updating and adding to your website and will reward you accordingly.

What is the standard process for website maintenance/updates?

If you have no access to your website this is what you should do:

Send your web developer an email with clear instructions of what changes you require and where on the website they are to go. Submit all the changes in a word document containing the relevant text and images. This will save your web designer from retyping the text and it minimises errors.
If your update is extensive, your web developer will most likely give you an estimate of time. If it is just a text change, this should be done in no time and your web developer will just perform the update for you.
Once the work has been completed you will receive a notification that the changes have been made. Please go to your website and ensure the changes meet your expectations.

If you would like Tropixel to take care of your website updates and ongoing website maintenance please contact us.

If you have access to the back end of your website you will need to login with your user name and password and navigate to the area where you can update the relevant section of your page. Please get in touch with your web developer if you are unsure how to do so.

If you would like to perform updates to your website on a regular basis but don't have access to it, ask us how we can help you achieve this goal.

Benefits and Pitsfalls of a CMS

First of all what is a Content Management System (CMS) - aka Self Editable Website?

To put it in simple words and to keep it short. A CMS enables the owner/administrator of the website to make updates to the content of his website him self. Some CMS's also give you the ability to change menu's and even the whole look of the website.

Still unsure what I'm talking about? Then read this.

Top 3 Benefits & Pitfalls a CMS

From my 9 year + experience these are the following benefits of a CMS:

1. More cost effective in the long run if updates are performed to the website on a frequent bases (at least once every two weeks)
2. Gives owner/admin of the site 24/7 access to his website from any where in the world
3. Ability for owner/admin to add unlimited amount of pages and menus to the website at no extra expense

That's as far as I would go when it comes to the benefits of a CMS. Here my list pitfalls of a CMS

1. Most CMS's are too complex/generic for the average web inexperienced customer/client.
   The more a user does, the more can go wrong in which case they need to get in touch with their web designer again to fix up what went wrong...defeating the purpose of being able to do it in the first place and end up costing a lot more too
   
2. Create too much additional behind the scene coding, impacting on loading times and search engine results.
3. From a designers point of view, I think CMS's give users too much freedom to be creative. This, more often than not, results in an inconsistent and shabby looking website after a few months.
   Yes I know, everybody likes to be creative and most likely is creative, but maybe their website is not the place to experiment with their creativity! Best left to the design pro's.
   
4. There always comes a point in time when a user hits his limitations with the page layout. The majority of people can't even layout a word document properly so how should they be able to layout a website effectively?
5. Extensive training required to properly understand and use a CMS.
   

I always say, stick to your guns. Make the most of your time and do what you do best and outsource the rest.

CMS's have their place in world of web and when used correctly can be very very powerful, but more often than not I find that customers requesting CMS's aren't actually in NEED of a CMS at all.

There are hundreds of CMS's available of only which I would recommend a hand full.

If you are after a CMS but don't know where to start looking feel free to ask me anytime. I'm happy to point you in the right direction if I can't help you out directly with your needs.