All posts tagged Website

Personal Branding Tips & YourName.com

I often speak about Personal Branding , Personal Development and how we can use Digital Tools to assist both those areas.

The most important asset to any individual looking to raise their brand online, is a Personal Website.
It is the forefront of you online, the home of your image and the gateway to opportunity.

Therefore if you are in the position where you are thinking of getting yourself a professional website, you should be considering some of these questions:

  • Who do i get to build my Website or do i try do it myself?
  • What platform do i use to build the site?
  • Are there any layout templates or do i have to get one coded?
  • Where do i get the Hosting for my site?

Then you will ask yourself the all important question:

  • Damn, what name do i even give my site that best suits the image i want to portray?

Choosing a name for your personal Website is like naming your first born, (ok, i’m speculating here but it’s important). You may think your name isn’t very catchy or you may want to go with an alias.


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Are Mashable Spreading Themselves Thin?

Mashable; ‘The Social Media Guide’, the monstrous mash-up blog that opened up the world of Social Media at the helm of Scottish born Pete Cashmore. The site quickly became the leading new media website in the world due to it being the most comprehensive and active Social Media News site of recent years.

As it has expanded in size, recruiting more and more writers from different journalistic backgrounds, it has made a transition into wider areas of Digital Technology where the competition is greater and the audience is larger.

Formally known as ‘The Social Media Guide’… Now that the slogan is no longer present on the site, what kind of site are Mashable now?

The Opportunity

Cashmore can see the opportunity with the amount of press and traffic his site receives daily. Therefore, maybe it should be leaping into reporting on all things digital/technical.
But could this transition be more of an innovative move by Cashmore; knowing that Social Media is losing the ‘what is social media’ factor that made his baby ever so popular in the first place?

Facebook recently achieved a landmark milestone in digital history, by reaching 500 million users. Funny, considering it was only a year ago that we were still trying to prove that Social Media wasn’t a fad.

The Transition

Mashable’s new 2010 re-design has dropped the tagline ‘The Social Media Guide’ and opened up it’s news wings to expand into all areas of digital technology.
It had been reporting on most new technology news since launch but had always put a social media spin on it.
Only recently, has it decided to devote a large portion of it’s articles to technology without the social fluff.

With all businesses, as you expand into other areas, you face more and more competition. Where you may dominate your specific niche (in this case Social Media); if you decide to focus on multiple areas, such as Web Technology, Mobile and Business for example, you will find yourself not only taking away the USP of your site, but also confusing your core market (which in this case im not too sure what that is for Mashable).

The Stats Never Lie

I tweeted about this exact topic recently and the response i received was interesting. A few replies highlighted that while the engagement on Mashable is low in comparison with their ‘share factor’, the point was raised that most people would rather share an article and discuss with their own network than comment directly within the article itself.

I guess that makes sense, and no-one can argue with their analytics, as it’s plain to see that Mashable receive some pretty dominating numbers.

However, as the place to visit for all new media information, wouldn’t you expect at least 0.01% of their 3 million daily page views to translate into more than their average of 16 comments per post?

Each of Mashable’s articles receive the best part of 1000 Twitter Retweets and the Facebook share’s are somewhat lower. For every 1000+ shares, we see an average of 16 comments, which to me indicates, that while we love to recycle content and share knowledge with our networks (for whatever ego boosting illusion of intelligence we want to create), as ‘Social Medium’s’, we chose to not pay much attention to the source.

Sharing Doesn’t Always Mean Caring

I’d love to investigate into this further and really challenge the concept of sharing articles and how does it really coincide with the definitive definitions of Social Media (if there is a definitive) or at least acknowledge that sharing doesn’t always go hand in hand with ‘engagement and interaction’.

If the King Kong site of Social Media is happy to knock out relentless articles daily and keep it’s followers sharing the content, but not directly engaging; in my opinion (and that’s all this is) Mashable is losing a severe amount of brand equity, as the amount of time their average reader actually spends on the site would be minimal.

The Reality

Mashable is a force, that is obvious. It’s writers know their stuff and while some of their articles are completely pointless the majority are informative and relevant.

But ask yourself this; when you visit Mashable what do you expect to find?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but do we really want to visit Mashable and see the same iPhone article that can be found on Tech Crunch, Engadget or Gizmodo?

Do we want to find Money and Finance information that we could see more comprehensively on Money Saving Expert? Do we want to watch the latest movie trailers in their Entertainment section?

Mashable is the site that made Social Media easy for people to understand and keep track of as it grew and grew.

Personally, while it’s great to be ‘that one site’ that tries to report on EVERYTHING going on in new media, at the same time, there is a huge area of confusion for the consumer.

Pete Cashmore explains in his interviews that Mashable started as a ‘mash-up’ of content on the Internet. Yet it’s tagline was Social Media and it became famous for being the Social Media Guide, not for being a source of all things digital.

I doubt Mashable will care whether it’s network interact on their website or share the content without thinking. As a business they are successful and no doubt their traffic brings ridiculous revenue; but it’s only a matter of time before the masses realise Mashable’s content isn’t as revolutionary as it used to be and people will get bored of retweeting the same recycled content.

Note:

If you are one of the thousands of people that Retweet Mashable’s article’s but don’t have an opinion.
Please stop. The whole world of Twitter is following Mashable and we all see their feed.
At least be creative and voice an opinion for sharing.

First impressions: The importance of a website

Client: “Hi, would you be able us out with a Digital Strategy for our business?”
Me: “Yeah that sounds great. Send me some links so i can check out your online presence.”
Client: “We don’t have a website but we use a Facebook Fan Page and YouTube channel to market.”

So you run a business or plan on starting a business in 2010 and do not have a website; i suggest you take 10 steps back and re-evaluate where exactly you consider your market to spend the majority of their time.

If your audience is over 60 years old and you are starting a Poker Club for the elderly, then maybe yes you should create a direct marketing campaign at a selective group of old people’s homes and push the online campaign to the side.

However, if you believe that there is a large proportion of your audience using the Web; how can you expect people to buy into your brand if you don’t even buy into your brand yourself?

The Lowdown

The first consultation i will advise on when clients enquire about Digital Strategy involves their website. A Digital Strategy is the plan of action in driving more users and traffic to a source where you can sell or promote a product.

If i ever click on a link and it takes me to a Facebook Fan Page; like the majority of users, i will glance for a few seconds, then proceed to check my own Facebook Profile and begin chatting with my network about Eastenders or Hollyoaks… NOT ABOUT YOUR BRAND!