Blog & Free Advice
Volume Consultants vs. Quality Consultants
I came across a great post today that relates nicely to the way clients base their decisions on who to hire for a piece of work. As context, often Work Industries competes with larger web consultants. Those larger consultants often have large portfolios of work and big, brand-name clients. They have in-house teams dedicated to specific compentencies: design, development, content, information architecture, public relations, marketing. Some of them (the consultancies and their teams) do great...
Web Strategy for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
Shane Schick writes in the Globe and Mail today that Small businesses need online savvy for success. I read the article and liked it. Profiled is a product I’ve been keeping an eye of for a few months now, Shopify, a simple way for anyone to set up an e-commerce storefront, display a product catalogue and take credit card payments. That’s a great product niche and in the private beta I...
How the Influencer 50 Doesn’t Teach You to Fish
Over at the Marqui blog Tara reports back on an Influencer 50 report Marqui commissioned to tell them what groups exerted the most influence over the buying decision of their target market. The results: Industry Analysts: 22% Journalists: 18% Vendors: 18% Online/Blogs: 16% Individuals: 10% Consultants: 6% Forums: 4% Good news for those of us out here peddling blogs and web strategy consulting. Hey, the web matters to people and influences their decisions! But that’s no surprise, is it? One...
Skype Makes Long-Distances Tolls Obsolete*
*For a limited time, to a limited geography, for people with the free Skype software installed on their computer and audio in and audio out device(s) equiped Skype announced today that its SkypeOut service is going free for all calls in North America until December 31, 2006. So for the next seven months, until the end of the year, anyone using the Skype VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software dials for free in Canada and the...
CollectiveX: How to lose customers and frustrate people
Today I came across CollectiveX, a site for managing a group of people on the web. Interesting, I thought to myself. That’s pretty much what I’ve been looking for for a client who wants to manage their board members, various committees and all their associated meetings through a web interface. It sounds good, it sounds perfect. I went through the CollectiveX tour and was impressed. Slick interface, simple to use and...
Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
I came across a strong post today from the E-Valuation of Information Systems blog about the vital difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Especially helpful to me were the compare / contrast columns of words associated with effectiveness and efficiency. I love lists like this and I use them as shorthand for recognizing the modes people operate in. So when you’re talking about your business, do you talk about what you do or how you...
Harebrained Idea #2: Make Words from your Phone Number
Recently I went through the rigamarole of buying a cell phone for the first time. Yes, there was pain. But now I like my handy little connected toy. In the sales process I had the opportunity to choose my phone number. The sales rep turned the screen on her terminal to show me the search function for the system and we scrolled through numbers looking for one that we thought would be easy to remember....
How Steriod Use is like Search-Engine Spam
One of the hazards of working from a home office is receiving telephone marketing. For instance, Jacob Krause from ReMax called today to tell me all about the hot real estate market in my (nameless) area. Except, he didn’t. I mean he didn’t call and he didn’t tell me anything. When I picked up the phone a recording of his voice played from an automatic phone dialler. Oh my...
Living Rivers Trust Announced
Yesterday I attended the announcement of the Living Rivers Trust Fund, where BC Premier Gordon Campbell announced a tripling of the fund to $14-million. The story seems to have totally missed all local news outlets, with the except of the lamentable paywall at the Vancouver Sun, so here’s the story and some photos I took of the event. The Fraser River Park played host to the event held on a day when wind...