Why Foursquare Could Be Huge
29 Jan2010
In the social media world, Foursquare has been a hot topic of discussion lately, as well as something of a lightning rod. People seem to either totally love it or totally hate it, with little middle ground.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Foursquare is a location-based app that runs on smartphones like the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry. Unlike some other location-based apps like Yelp that are primarily about reviews and finding specific kinds of businesses you might like based on where you’re at, Foursquare is more of a game (and I don’t mean this in a bad way). You can add friends to your list, and then when you visit businesses or locations, you “check in” and notify your Foursquare friends and/or Twitter & Facebook.
Connecting with friends is nothing new, but the Foursquare designers were pretty brilliant in that they made the whole app essentially a contest. Whoever checks in the most at a particular location becomes the recognized “mayor,” which, depending on the place, might give you some benefits. For example, some bars and restaurants give away free drinks or food to the mayor. This gives people a reason to compete to become the mayor of that spot.
You also get points for checking in, so you can compete with your friends to see who goes out the most and does the most exciting stuff, and you can also unlock some fun “badges” based on where you’ve checked in and how often. For example, I was pretty surprised and amused when I unlocked the “Bender” badge during a trip to Las Vegas recently for going out 4 nights in a row. There are lots of fun badges they’ve recently added, related to stuff like karaoke, what night you’re going out, if there are members of the opposite sex there, etc.
The Bender badge
It’s this aspect of fun that I think really sets Foursquare apart from other location-based apps and gives it serious potential to go viral. Many previous apps have focused on usefulness and the connection-making aspect of locations, but honestly, think about how many people just engage with the Internet or their smartphone for pure, goofy fun. It’s like people using potentially meaningful connectors like Facebook or Twitter to play Farmville or spread celebrity gossip at the speed of the Interwebs.
Fun Competition
Foursquare made a genius move by not ignoring people’s inherent competitiveness and desire to show off a little bit. I have to admit, I was pretty stoked when I became mayor of two pretty popular hangouts while in Vegas, especially since I don’t go out much at home! A little part of me will be disappointed when I get knocked off by a new mayor, even though I had to put almost no effort into getting that “position.”
Laziness
This is another key benefit of Foursquare- it takes almost no effort. I love using Yelp to try to find restaurants, but I’ve written exactly 0 reviews on it in the couple of years I’ve been using it. I’m a total leech. However, with Foursquare I can spend literally 2 seconds checking in when I get to a restaurant, and still get all of the enjoyment out of it.
Their very short “tips” people can write about places are a cool perk, too, since they’re minimal effort for a decent return. I’ve liked reading my friends’ tips about places I check in, even though they’re usually just one sentence.
Worthwhile Business Tie-ins
As I mentioned earlier, one of the coolest opportunities with Foursquare, and one which is underused so far, is the ability for businesses to reward Foursquare users and mayors. By offering coupons to people who check in at their location, or special perks for the mayor, brick-and-mortar businesses have a great opportunity to build some buzz around their business and create some loyal customers on the cheap. They also get their business name and location posted on Twitter & Facebook if people broadcast when they check in there, which could give them a big boost if the user has influence amongst their friends.
If I owned a bar, restaurant, or coffee shop, you can bet I’d be all over Foursquare. This interplay between users and business, in a way that is welcomed by the users, represents a great opportunity for growth and adoption. It’s still possible that other location-based apps like Gowalla and Loopt could overtake Foursquare in this space, but they’ve laid a great groundwork for it to really take off in 2010. I know I’ll be playing.
PS- If you want to be my friend on Foursquare, feel free to add me.
Update: Just a couple of days after writing this, I saw this NY Times article about how Foursquare is partnering with the Bravo TV channel to allow Bravo’s show personalities to give their tips and to-dos, let Foursquare users unlock unique badges, get coupons, and more. Could this be the push that takes Foursquare into the mainstream?
- In: Social Media
- Tags: apps, blackberry, droid, foursquare, friends, game, iphone, local marketing, location, yelp
Business is a Game- Try to Have Some Fun
16 Dec2009
Photo courtesy of Zzubnik
A few days ago, I got Chris Brogan’s email newsletter, where he talked about games we play as kids being preparation for skills we’ll need as adults. The examples he gave, like tag and hide-and-seek, were for more primitive skills like hunting and, well, hiding.
It got me thinking, though, about how many of the games that we start out playing as kids but continue to enjoy as adults utilize the same skills that help us in the business world.
I’m thinking of games like Monopoly, which requires skills like risk analysis, recognizing opportunities, cooperation with competitors, and a lot more. Chess is another obvious example, since it requires thinking many moves ahead, trying to anticipate your competition’s moves, and patience.
The funny thing is that even though these types of games aren’t nearly as overtly fun as kids’ games like tag and hide-and-seek, we still get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of them. But if you sat someone down at work and said, “I’m going to have you do an exercise in risk analysis and patience,” do you think they’d be excited about it? Probably not, unless they’re some kind of masochist.
This idea got me thinking that we should start trying to recognize the challenging and rewarding parts of our work, especially when they reflect aspects of games I enjoy. This seems pretty doable, whether you’re working for yourself or somebody else. If you can get excited about kicking ass at an ultimately meaningless game like Monopoly, why wouldn’t you get excited about equally kicking ass at a much higher-stakes game like your business?
One important but empowering difference between business and the kinds of games we like to play for fun is that business doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. If you’re not familiar with the term, it basically just means that one person wins, one person loses.
For me, zero-sum games are a paradox, because I’m uber-competitive while at the same time prone to feeling guilty about winning. So I get pissed if I lose while giving it my all, but I also won’t play to the best of my ability if I feel like I have an unfair advantage or think the other person isn’t having fun.
The beauty of the game of business is that if done right, everybody can win. You end up happy with getting paid, your customer ends up happy with getting something of value, and maybe even the world at large gets improved a little bit by your knowledge or product.
In my mind, it’s pretty cool that you can have all the enjoyment of challenging your brain to find ways to succeed, without having to worry about the crappiness of someone losing. Time to get out there and have some fun!
Don’t Let Your Business Be Hold Music
1 Dec2009
The Man, the Myth, the (Crappy) Legend
Today I called my doctor’s office to make an appointment and had the distinct displeasure of being put on hold for close to 10 minutes. As is usually the case, for the entire wait I was subjected to godawful “smooth jazz” that made me want to hang up and switch doctors.
While being aurally assaulted by this tripe, I thought to myself, “Who actually likes this crap, and why is it on nearly every phone system in the US?” The more I thought about it, I started thinking that music like smooth jazz or Muzak are probably chosen less because lots of people like them, and more because they don’t overtly offend people (me excluded, apparently).
Unfortunately, many people run their businesses and personal brands with this latter mindset. We’ve become so afraid of offending anyone and possibly losing their business that we water our personalities down and try to keep things “plain vanilla” so we can be everything for everyone.
With the sheer amount of competition out there, this strategy just doesn’t work anymore. To stand out from the crowd, especially in online venues where people don’t know you personally, you’ve got to stand for something, even if that means offending or losing some of your potential market.
Smart marketers like Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz know this, and by being authentic and taking risks, they’re able to build passionate followings and get raving fans who line up to work with like-minded people. This doesn’t mean being deliberately offensive for shock value, it just means not being afraid to challenge convention or rock the boat.
Because let’s face it- there may be some people out there who actually like smooth jazz a little bit. The fact that Kenny G ever sold an album attests to this fact. But are they as passionately into smooth jazz (or other kinds of hold music) as much as sad teens are into emo, or Scandinavians are into death metal? I really doubt it, because hold music is specifically chosen to not take chances or be risky. That also means it’s totally interchangeable and forgettable. The same can’t be said for music that takes risks and makes its fans feel like they’re part of something special.
If you want your business to avoid being hold music, be willing to say some things that might turn some people off, or make it clear that you’re not the right provider for some customers. It’s OK, really. I’m probably never going to buy a country album, but not having my business doesn’t stop country artists from being ridiculously successful. If you’re willing to be authentic and focus your efforts on your tribe, not the masses, you’ll start building your fan base and making the right people like you a lot quicker than if you’re just out to not offend anybody.
If you run a blog that has lots of pages or categories (for example, if you blog on a lot of different subjects), you may run across a situation where there are so many categories listed in your navigation that it can “break” your theme by causing your navbar to wrap around.
Usually this isn’t the end of the world, but you also want your theme to look its best and not distract readers by looking broken.
For a number of reasons, you may also just want a particular category or page to be hidden from viewers, such as specific landing pages that you want to drive visitors to from advertising or special promotions.
One easy way to accomplish this in WordPress is to exclude these items from any menus that call for them.
The bad news: This tip requires changing the PHP code on your blog a bit. The good news: It’s a really easy change and can be fixed quickly if there’s any problem. Don’t worry, this only takes a few minutes and is very, very easy.
The same advice applies whether you’re working on pages, categories, or even posts, so I’ll just address pages for simplicity’s sake.
Prep Work
The first thing you’ll need to do is get the item numbers of the pages or categories. If you’re relatively new to WordPress, every category, page, and post gets an item ID number assigned to it in addition to the name you give it. To exclude these items, we need to reference those numbers.
To find the item ID, click on Edit->Pages in the left menu of your WordPress Admin. Hover your mouse over the name of the page you want to exclude, and down at the bottom of your browser window, you should see a full URL. At the very end of the URL, you’ll see “&post=###.” This number is the item ID for your page or category.
Here’s an example of what you should see:
So in this case, the page ID is 2351 (even though it says post).
How to Hack the Code
Now that we’ve got the item ID, we can make the actual changes that will hide the page.
The first thing you’ll need to do is determine what part of your theme is displaying the navigation you want to change. Most likely (though it all depends on your WordPress theme), it’ll be header.php or a sidebar.php. Go to Appearance->Editor. Now, under Templates on the right side of the page, click on the PHP file where you think the navigation resides.
Now you’ll look for the part of the code that references your menu. Usually designers will use well-named “div ids” to try to make the code obvious, like <div id=”navbar”>. Under this div id, you should see a line of code that looks somewhat similar to:
<?php wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&depth=3′); ?>
The main thing you’re looking for is the wp_list_pages part. If you’re working on categories, this will say wp_list_categories.
After whatever the final “&thing=#” statement in that line, attach “&exclude=#” with # being your page or category ID number. So from our example code and item ID above, we would end up with:
<?php wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&depth=3&exclude=2351‘); ?> (Bold is just for emphasis here, it’s not actually used in the code)
If you have multiple pages you want to exclude, just put a comma in between each, such as “&exclude=2351,504,276″. This will hide all of these from your menu.
Once you add in your exclusions, just click Update File and you’ll be good to go! Refresh your page and you should see the items gone from your menu. Depending on your web host, it may take a few minutes for your changes to update to your cache- I’ve had problems with slow refreshing using GoDaddy in the past.
I hope that helps you with your theme! Please leave any questions or other methods you know of in the comments section.
- In: Wordpress Tips
- Tags: categories, exclusion, hacks, pages, php
When you’re starting a new blog, one of the first things you want to do is let the Interweb know about your great content. Besides submitting a Google Sitemap, which I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the easiest ways to get the word out and start getting your site crawled is to “ping” Update Services like blog directories, news sites, and search portals like Google and Yahoo to let them know about your new content.
WordPress will do this for you automatically whenever you write a new post, but by default WordPress only “pings” one Update Service to let it know about your new posts. This service, pingomatic.com, will alert a bunch of other sites, but why stop there?
There’s no harm in pinging as many sites as possible, so one of the first things I do when I start a new blog is put in a huge honkin’ list of Update Services to alert to my new content.Whenever I start a new blog, between using a Google Sitemap and pinging Update Services, I can usually start getting my articles indexed in Google search results (and ranked pretty well) within a couple of days of going live.
Here’s a text file with all of the Update Services I ping:
To add these sites to your WordPress blog, go to Settings->Writing. In the Update Services box, just copy and paste everything out of the text file into that box, then click Save Changes. Voila! You’re pinging your updates all over the place now!
Note: I’m aware that some of the update services listed may now be defunct, but like I said earlier, it won’t hurt anything if you’re pinging non-existent services.
If you know of any other services that people should ping that I’m missing, please leave a comment and let us know!
You've got this- now what?
If you’ve finally taken the plunge and gotten your first self-hosted WordPress blog installed, figuring out exactly what to do next can be a bit daunting. Obviously, you want to start writing and posting as quickly as you can so you don’t just have the Hello, World post on your site, but there are a few steps you should take first to put your new WordPress blog on the road to success. Please note that while some of these tips may work on wordpress.com (free) blogs, this article is about self-hosted Wordpress.org blogs.
1. Change Your Permalinks Structure
No matter what the topic of your blog may be, one of the things you’re inevitably going to want is some traffic. Everyone knows that search engines are one of the best ways to drive traffic. Fortunately, WordPress is one of the best tools out there for getting noticed and indexed quickly by search engines. Google loves WordPress blogs, no doubt about it.
To get the most out of WordPress SEO, though, the first thing you’ll want to do is change the default URL structure of your posts. Initially, WordPress just lists the post number in the URL instead of the post title. For SEO purposes, you want your keywords in the URL whenever possible. To change the default setup to something Google will like:
- Go to Settings->Permalinks. If your blog’s content is time-sensitive (like commentary on news or your life), select Day and Name or Month and Name. It doesn’t really matter which of these you select. However, if your blog is going to provide content that’s not particularly time-sensitive (like WordPress tips or marketing advice), you should consider choosing Custom Structure and entering in: /%category%/%postname%/. This includes your category in the URL, which can give you some added SEO benefit of having more keywords in there. This method isn’t necessary for everybody, but can be very helpful if SEO is extremely important to you.
2. Install Some Plugins
Plugins are a WordPress user’s best friend. There are so many amazing and useful plugins that I couldn’t possibly list them all here, but there are a few that I immediately install on every blog I run.
- Akismet- Turn it on as soon as you can (which requires an API key from a Wordpress.com account). It’s amazing how quickly spammers will find your blog, so the sooner you get spam protection in place, the better.
- All in One SEO Pack- This plugin lets you fine-tune some aspects of WordPress SEO, letting you get even more out of the already impressive SEO benefits of WordPress. You can control important information and page name structure all the way down to the individual post level.
- Google XML Sitemap- Submitting a sitemap to Google is one of the best ways to quickly get indexed and let Google know what’s on your site. This plugin does that for you automatically, including updating Google with a new version every time you post. If you don’t have any incoming links to your site yet that Google can use to find you, this plugin can be a lifesaver.
- Google Analytics For WordPress- No matter what kind of blog you’re running, you should get a free account at Google Analytics and start keeping track of how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re coming from, and a lot more. There are a bunch of plugins like this, but basically you just need something that will easily insert your Analytics tracking code into your blog so you can use Analytics. Google Analyticator is another good option.
- Some Kind of Social Bookmarking Plugin- Make sure your readers can share your content with other people! There are a ton of these plugins available, including ShareThis, Add to Any, Sociable, Sexy Bookmarks, and many more. Check out a few different ones and see which one has the look and options you like.
3. Edit the About Page
One thing I’ve noticed after launching a number of blogs is that as soon as you start getting traffic, people will start clicking through to your About page to learn more about who’s writing the site. This is especially the case early on, when you don’t have a lot of other content they can read to get to know you. Besides talking about yourself or what the site will eventually be, I recommend giving people a way to contact you that won’t generate a ton of spam. Whatever you do, don’t put a clickable email address on the page, unless you’re interested in buying some generic drugs.
One option that works well and looks professional, but takes a bit of time to configure, is using a forms plugin like Cforms or Contact Form 7. They can be a bit confusing to set up at first, but will look great on your site and give you a lot more functionality than just receiving plain emails from readers.
4. Start Watching Your Traffic
No matter what kind of blog you’re running, get a free account at Google Analytics and start keeping track of how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re coming from, and a lot more. There are a bunch of plugins that can do this, but basically you just need something that will easily insert your Analytics tracking code into your blog so you can use Analytics. Two of my favorites are Google Analytics For WordPress and Google Analyticator.
5. Time to Get a New Theme
As exciting as the default WordPress theme is (just kidding), you should find a new theme for your blog as quickly as you can. I would really recommend doing this before you create any content, since you don’t really want to bring people to a site that looks like the WordPress default. You might be taken for a spam blogger if it looks like you have a site with content but no personality.
Depending on whether you’re willing to spend money on your blog right away, you’ll need to decide whether to use one of the thousands of free themes available (just another great benefit of WordPress) or shell out some cash for a paid theme. While there are many great free themes, paid themes have several benefits that at least make them worth considering.
For one, since not nearly as many people pay for themes, your blog will immediately have less look-alikes out there than if you’re using a free one. You’ll also likely get support from the developer if you have problems with the theme, and are more likely to get updates to the theme that reflect improvements and updates to WordPress. Most of the really great paid themes I’ve seen are less than $100, so you still wouldn’t be spending nearly as much as you would on traditional website design.
For free themes, the sheer selection can be overwhelming. Some good places to start looking are WPHacks, TopWPThemes, and one of my personal favorites, Smashing Magazine. Some professional designers also offer a few free themes in among their paid ones, like WooThemes.
There’s plenty more you can do to make your site great, but if you spend an hour or two getting these pieces in place first, you’ll be way ahead of the game. What are your first steps or shortcuts you take when setting up a WordPress blog? Any important plugins I missed? Leave a comment!
- In: Wordpress Tips
- Tags: beginner, design, first steps, permalinks, plugins, themes, wordpress
One of the best things about attending a conference like BlogWorld is that you get exposed to some amazing people you might never encounter otherwise, and learn about interesting sites, companies, and tools from the people who are already using them successfully. With that in mind, this post aims to share some of the cool resources and ideas I discovered this year, in the hopes that you’ll get something great out of them too.
People You Should Listen To
I’ll be listing everyone’s Twitter profile, since that’s usually the easiest way to connect with them, and I didn’t meet anyone there who wasn’t active on Twitter. If you’re at all interested in marketing and aren’t already, get on Twitter. Seriously.
Amber Naslund- Made some great points about managing corporate brand identity on social networks, and gave one of the most useful talks of BlogWorld on “Managing Your Social Media Time.” This talk was a real eye-opener for me (especially in my day job), and was a great example of how social media can be no-nonsense and results-oriented. You can check out the slideshow from her talk here, though without her talking you don’t get the full effect.
Margaret Francis- Really impressed me on the brand management panel as well. She obviously knows her stuff and had a lot to contribute.
Laura Fitton- Gave an extremely inspirational keynote about why you should recognize that you’re awesome and stop hiding it from other people. Her talk was a perfect way to kick off the event. Funny, entertaining, and has “been there, done that” herself.
Erika Neapoletano- Never actually met her in person at BlogWorld, but have been following her and reading her blog since then, and she’s got some hilarious and refreshing thoughts on marketing and writing. Well worth following.
Nathan Hangen- Nathan is a great writer, and teaches people the right way to get the most out of Twitter and their other Internet marketing efforts. He’s also a really nice guy, to boot!
Sites and Tools You Should Use
Social Mention- Like Google Alerts, but for social media. With Google Alerts becoming less useful and less accurate all the time, this is a great option for research and tracking.
NetVibes- Like iGoogle or other homepage tools, but on steroids. Follow a crazy variety of sources that are important to you on one page. It’s a great tool for listening in to conversations on the web.
Klout- A great tool for measuring your influence on Twitter, and seeing how your activity and influence stacks up against other people in your network.
Del.icio.us- Many of you are probably already using this, but if not, get an account now. Besides having totally portable bookmarks that don’t clutter up your browser, there’s the social bookmarking aspect. You can discover great new sites all the time, and help others do the same. One of the best information-gathering and discovery tools out there.
Slideshare- Share your slide presentations online, and check out those by people you find interesting. You can get some amazing free content from shows you didn’t attend, if you follow people who are presenting at shows.
Stuff You Should Read
The Awesomeness Manifesto- A treatise on why being awesome is more important than being innovative. Even if you think there’s nothing new under the sun (a topic I plan to write about soon) there’s still room to be awesome and make a big impact on the world.
279 Days to Overnight Success- Written by Chris Guillebeau (who I’d like for his name, if for no other reason), it talks about the hard work required to become an “overnight success” and how you can create your own success story.
Marketing Advice Worth Remembering
On social media for your business (from Amber Naslund’s session): You can’t possibly be everywhere at once, so pick 2 or 3 social media tools and stick to those. Ideally, they should be where your potential clients/customers are. Don’t bother chasing the bleeding edge of tech tools, go where people are already having conversations. The Top 5 tools where people are having conversations are: Forums & boards, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and blogs. Your audience may only use 1 or 2 of those, so do some research to find out which are being actively used and which to not bother with.
On the size of your audience: Don’t worry so much about how many followers or subscribers you have- worry about how those people engage with you. When you share something with them, do they take action, or are your efforts falling on deaf ears? Who cares if you have 5,000 followers on Twitter if nobody’s actually listening to you? It’s better to get real results from a small but dedicated audience than to have a huge following that doesn’t do anything for you.
On differentiating yourself and your business: No matter what your industry or niche, it’s tough to be the first to talk about the topic. This is true whether you blog about blogging, making money, being a mom, video games, whatever. You need to 1. find an angle or hook that makes your message somewhat unique and 2. let your personality shine through. Give people a reason to want to get to know you and like you. If that turns some people off, that’s OK. It’ll likely attract more people than it drives away… unless you’re just genuinely unlikable 
On not reinventing the wheel: Ben Huh of Failblog gave a great talk about how they’ve grown their site to about 250 million pageviews a month. The most amazing thing, though, is that they’ve done it while hardly doing any internal development. Every aspect of their site uses somebody else’s technology, from their site platform (Wordpress) to their video hosting (YouTube and Viddler), to their intranet (Google Docs) and much more. Almost all of their platform uses free tools, which makes it even more amazing. They realized early on that the likelihood they could build a better tool or piece of software than what someone else came up with is pretty low. Instead, they decided to let others handle the heavy lifting when it comes to the tools, and just stick to providing the content their users want. Stick to what you’re great at, and let others handle the rest.
There was a lot more I learned and other great people I met at the show, but I’ll cover some of those ideas in later posts. Be sure to subscribe if you’d like to hear more!
I normally wouldn’t recommend a video that’s this long to everyone, but if you’re a blogger, you need to see this video.
As someone who runs multiple blogs in addition to having a full-time job, I’ve often wondered how major bloggers can put in all the work required to grow their blogs and get a huge audience. Contrary to popular belief, “if you build it they will come” just isn’t always the case. There’s plenty of other work that goes into being a success and getting a huge audience.
I’m always on the lookout for truly actionable advice from these kinds of bloggers, since a lot of the advice out there is of a theoretical nature, instead of saying, “Here are some specific things I do that have helped my blog succeed.” Fortunately, I ran across this video of Tim Ferriss, author of the hugely popular The 4-Hour Work Week, giving a talk at this year’s San Francisco WordCamp.
Unlike many keynote addresses, he packs a huge amount of useful knowledge into his talk. Even though I know a lot about WordPress, I was still furiously taking notes while watching the video. He casually drops some great info, stats, and resources, so even though it’s long, it’s well worth watching the whole thing.
- In: Blogging
- Tags: advice, four hour work week, tim ferriss, Video, wordpress
Thoughts on BlogWorld 2009
26 Oct2009
This was my second year attending BlogWorld, and looking over my notes to try to piece together some coherent advice for people who couldn’t attend, something quickly became clear to me: there’s no single right way of becoming successful online. However, there was a common piece of advice that was repeated in every session I attended. I’ll get to that in a bit.
For those of you haven’t attended before, the content of BlogWorld covers a wide variety of topics, including monetizing your blog, expanding your online influence in your niche, improving your site’s SEO, and designing a killer theme. There are also many sessions about specific topics in social media and video/podcasting.
When I first attended last year, the sheer amount of new knowledge and techniques being thrown around was pretty mind-blowing. I came out of the event with dozens of pages of notes on sites I needed to check out, services to try, and changes to make to my blogging efforts. This year, I came away with a few good ideas and some great new connections made, but I didn’t feel nearly the same sense of awe at what I’d learned. If you’ve never attended before, though, you must attend at some point. It’s one of the best conferences in any industry, and can do wonders for your business.
I think this lack of new surprises is probably just due to having been in the industry for another year and keeping a much closer eye on resources like Twitter than I did before last year’s event. However, I also think it’s because social media and blogging technologies have matured, and the truly useful tools and services like Twitter (honestly, I swear it is) have continued to grow while other flash-in-the-pan technologies of last year have fallen by the wayside or been relegated to a particular niche. At BlogWorld 2008, people were really excited about some exciting sites or products that just didn’t turn out to be that useful.
At this year’s BlogWorld, I heard plenty of conflicting advice on different panels, like whether to use Twitter for your business or not, whether (and how) to monetize your site, how much content to give away for free, and much more. The funny thing is that listening to each person make their case, I think they were all right in their assessments! It just really depends on how you personally want to do business, and what your goals are. Except in a few really rare cases, it’s probably possible to make any technique work in any niche.
One message that was common to everyone I heard speak, though, was this: You’ve got to seriously care about what you’re doing. If you’re only ever chasing after what you think will make you popular or rich, you’re far more likely to fail. I heard it in Laura Fitton’s great keynote, Ben Huh’s talk on How to Get Huge, and especially on the all-star panel of Internet Marketing for Smart People. Caring isn’t a guarantee of success, but it’ll make it more likely that you’ll be passionate about your business, that you’ll persevere when things don’t go well, and your caring will be appealing and infectious to other people. Your passion, and genuine willingness to form relationships with people in your niche, will go a long way to helping you be a success.
PS- If you were hoping for more details and specifics, I’ll post those separately soon.