When your 11 year old son creates his first iPhone app, you know there is no excuse not to build your own. The advantage I (may?) have over my son is 20 years of marketing experience. So, I should be able to make money from this iPhone app, right? Here’s the plan to monetize, market, and promote my first iPhone app.

How to build your First iPhone or Android app

Before you start… spend some time researching best practices before defining your Business Plan for building iPhone and Android apps. For example, as Apple does not support Adobe Flash do make sure your designer creates animation that works or can be exported to different systems.

Depending on how you build your mobile application, you can use the same material to create an application that works on both the Apple iPhone and the Google powered Android.

Why do I need to know this?

You want to get the best return on your investment.

• Instead of building a mobile app that is limited to an iPhone develop the materials so you can export them to other platforms.
• Create the source materials, for example, images, in formats that work on both systems.
• Develop the app so that you can also use parts of it for your website and/or blog. Use screens and animations from the app to build short movies – to market on YouTube – and for lead generation on your site.

In other words, before starting the development process, scope out where and how you can use the content to increase your reach.

The last thing you want to do is build an app…. and then have to build more material for your blog. YouTube account, and media kit.

Making Money From iPhone & Android apps

The app I’m building is about education. It’s designed to teach business folks how to speak 100 Chinese phrases they can use in business meetings in China.

There are – at least – five ways we can monetize it.

1. Free – create sufficient interest in the product so that others download it for free. You can make money once you get enough traffic from the online advertising. So advertising is where you plan to make the money. The attraction here is that there is no upfront costs. The downside is that it’s not easy to get the critical mass to justify this approach.
2. Paid – if the product get good reviews (more on that later) and is recognized as ‘best in class’ in its respective category, then you can explore charging. The default is usually .99 cents at least on the ITunes marketplace.
3. Subscription – This means that you charge customers a recurring fee, for example, every month, for using the product. This works very well for certain business models. Education is one of these, which is why we’re focussing here.
4. Add-ons – The Angry Birds app has sold 10 million copies at .99 cents each. One way they’ve increased their sales has been by offering other add-ons, usually for .99 cents that give you more skills or powers in the game. This is an effective way to offer a product at a low price and then tempt customers with other products as they use the game more.
5. Physical Products – You can further expand your sales efforts by developing offline products. For example, the Angry Birds will soon be available as a board game. We’ll be selling the Chinese education materials as ebooks and flashcards you can print out.

Market your iPhone & Android apps

Next week, we’ll look into this a little more but for now, here are some ideas:

Get Reviews

• Team up with a set of like-minded bloggers.
• Send them free copies of your application
• Ask them to review the application and send a link back to your site.
• Encourage friends to comment on the reviews (positively of course) and generate as much excitement as possible.

Pre Launch

Before you launch the product:

• Use your blog to discuss what you plan to do with the application.
• Ask your readers for ideas on how you can build the application. They idea is to get them involved in the brain storming process and then share the excitement with them
• Continue this process for at least one month.
• Start to use the same strategy on Twitter, Facebook and other channels. For example, you could ‘seed’ questions on LinkedIn to generate curiosity.
• Share screenshots on the prototype app with your readers. Again, ask for more feedback.
• Connect with others who’ve develop similar (but not competing apps) and ask for advice. Remember to thank these folks (repeatedly) when you launch the product and in post launch blog posts.
• Thank everyone who responds by email.
• Give special discounts to early buyers. Use this to get referrals, which is critical for getting more credibility. See John Jantsch’s book, The Referral Engine, on how to do this right.

Product Launch

When you launch the product:

• Countdown to the product launch on Twitter and your blog.
• Develop a Twitter Plan.
• Choose your keywords wisely.
• Share this Twitter Plan with your affiliates and business friends.
• Get your friends to send out the same message on Twitter the same day. It has to be the same day. Use the same message and send folks to the correct landing page.
• Generate as much buzz as possible for 2-3 days. Drop everything else and focus on this.
• Write a series of blog posts that discuss the new product. Schedule these in quick succession.
• Get your network to leave as many comments as possible.
• Do the Retweets and Facebook likes to drive more traffic to the blog.
• Where appropriate, send folks to the Apple ITunes store or to eJunkie if you’re selling it online. We plan to use eJunkie.
• Thank everyone!

Post Launch

The final step is to:

• Automate the sales process so you can move to the next projects.
• Fix any errors that were encountered by customers when using the product.
• Reply to everyone who helped you get there.
• Share more on Twitter on how well the product launch went well. This is where you give as much credit as possible to your network. Don’t forget to spread the message on their Facebook pages as well.
• Use Google Analytics to examine the sales and landing pages. Creates goals in GA and observe these very closely.
• Begin to look at the feedback and see what type of products you can upsell. You’ll only know this once the product goes live and you engage with customers.
• Return to all the LinkedIn groups and remind folks of the product, thank them for their help and ‘share’ the sales page where they can see the end result.

Next Steps

Building a successful IPhone/Android application involves more than developing the product itself. Most folks focus too much on the app and overlook the marketing plan.

This means that they end up with a wonderful product but never find the customers. They also don’t build the network is critical to generate the necessary buzz and, more critically, gets your product in front of their customers.

Those are five ways to make money with an app. What else would you add?

I don’t know about you but I don’t look for new business ideas in garden centers. Interesting for two reasons. First: I associate garden centers with functional activities (not creative ones). Secondly:  I had a fixed idea on where to find creative inspiration. On both counts I was wrong.

Why New Business Ideas Are Everywhere

You can develop products (not sure about services) in R&D departments and then try to launch them but something is missing… people.

The seeds for new business ideas are found where you find people.

• The idea for the walkman was made when a Sony designer saw teenagers skating on the boardwalk and wondered how could they listen to their radios.
• The idea for designer watches – think Swatch – was to connect customers love of jewelry with the opportunity to collect the entire range. No one bought a swatch because it kept better time than other watches.
• The idea for perfume arose to mask the stench from the aristocracy who didn’t bathe. It wasn’t the done thing so they lashed on oddles of perfume instead.

New business can be generated:

• By looking for twists on existing products: think boots and dogs and you get booties for pampered Chihuahuas. What’s the next animal you could design clothes for? Hats for dogs? Bracelets for kittens?
• By making it more exclusive the other similar products: think the IPad which is very limited compared to laptops but, due to its high price point, makes it very exclusive.
• By looking for ways to frighten customers into feeling the product is a necessity: how many parents have bought mobile phones to keep in touch with their kids ‘just in case’ something happened.

How to Find New Business Ideas

You’ve read that innovation is key to creating great new products, right?

The dilemma is that it’s hard to pull new ideas out of thin air.

My experience is that new killer products are usually an ‘incremental’ improvement of an existing product, usually with a nice marketing twist.

There are exceptions, of course. It’s hard to think of what precluded the web browser, but the concept of the PC, for example, had been around for decades.

So, how do you find new business ideas?

Here’s a suggested approach:

1. Visit your local garden center.
2. Select some products that you can experiment with.
3. Examine the product and see where you can add one new feature that would improve the product design.
4. Then see how you could position this so it would appeal to the current buyers or
5. How you could position it so new customers would be attracted.

If you don’t have the time or budge to do this, here’s an alternative, especially if you’re selling services.

• Visit your local shopping center.
• Wander around one of the shops and observe how the staff interact with customers.
• Identify three ways staff could assist customers. I bet you’ll identify at least five.

If you develop this habit of observation, especially where customers and staff interact, you’ll see many areas where services could be improved, customers could be up-sold more products, and business process could be refined.

Most folks see the flaws in the system – complaining why checkout lines are so slow – but never ask the obvious question. Why? And then see how the process can be improved.

It’s all about ‘looking for clues’ that identify the gaps and then finding practical solutions.

The Motivation For Changing Perception

What I learnt is that creativity is everywhere if you take the effort to find it.

Or, to flip it around, if you place yourself in the shoes of the product designer, then the most mundane activities can be immensely rewarding. Instead of being stuck in the local DIY center, you can see it as a ‘shopping expedition’ for new ideas.

If the idea of starting a business appeals to you or – are was the case with me – you feel frustrated in your current job and want to setup a new business (but not sure where), then start developing the habit of looking at existing business ideas and seeing where they could be improved.

Sometimes, it’s very simple. For example, I was looking for a new mobile phone last week. All I wanted was an inexpensive phone to make calls with web surfing thrown in.

What phone did they try to sell me? Yes, the most expensive. Their strategy was to go for bust with each customer.

Rather than trying to sell me ‘any’ phone and get me into their sales database (and all the upsells down the line) they lost me within five minutes. Forever.

A little tweaking with their sales strategy would have made a huge difference.

More customers = More sales.

But not everyone gets it. And that’s the opportunity for you.

From Business Idea to Business Plan

The idea of starting a new business – and writing a business plan – is pretty intimidating for most of us. Where I went wrong was assuming it would be more than I could handle. So, I avoided it until my mid-30s. My mistake.

Once I started, and armed myself with the best business planning tools on the market, what had seemed impossible slowly began to bear fruit. And that’s where business ideas morph into successful business plans. It’s an iterative process. Every effort takes you one step closer.

Where do you find inspiration for new business ideas? And where do others go wrong?

Ever read an annual report from Warren Buffet. Try it. Easy, isn’t it? Few successful business-people write so clearly. There is no pretension, no haughty references to obscure allusions and no strange acronyms. It’s all there in black and white. Here’s what Buffet had to say about other business writers, though,

“For more than forty years, I’ve studied the documents that public companies file. Too often, I’ve been unable to decipher just what is being said or, worse yet, had to conclude that nothing was being said. If corporate lawyers and their clients follow the advice in this handbook, my life is going to become much easier.

In the late 90s, I found the Plain Language writing technique almost by accident. It’s also called Plain English, by the way. I was reading a lot about Warren Buffet a few years back and came across a nice, short document he wrote for the SEC. These are the folks who submit legal and business document to Wall Street when going on the stock exchanges. Buffet writes like he speaks. Direct, immediate and without pretension.

Audience Analysis worksheets.

From the handbook:

There are several possible explanations as to why I and others sometimes stumble over an accounting note or indenture description. Maybe we simply don’t have the technical knowledge to grasp what the writer wishes to convey. Or perhaps the writer doesn’t understand what he or she is talking about. In some cases, moreover, I suspect that a less-than scrupulous issuer doesn’t want us to understand a subject it feels legally obligated to touch upon. “

He adds that “Perhaps the most common problem, however, is that a well-intentioned and informed writer simply fails to get the message across to an intelligent, interested reader. In that case, stilted jargon and complex constructions are usually the villains.”

It’s a great read and you can download it here www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf in PDF.

Write Business Proposals in clear English

So, with this in mind, I wrote this short guide to help you write Business Proposals in clear English. It explains how to prepare an business documents that readers can digest in one reading. That’s the acid test. They shouldn’t have to read them twice and three times to get the meaning. It also covers how to use Plain Language writing techniques to win more business, accelerate your tender process, and encourage staff to contribute to the overall tender process.

1. Start Early

Developing a Plain English document takes time – the first time!. For your first Plain English proposal, allow extra time to write, edit, and revise. Add more time than you would expect to your usual schedule if possible. The next time it’s easier.

2. Study the principles of Plain English

Remember: you want your request for proposal to be understood in one reading. This means you need to:

• Identify your target audience i.e. Government departments.
• Consider what they need to know.
• Consider the technical terms they may, or may not, know.
• Develop plain English writing guidelines for your staff.
• Think about how to organize and format your Proposal.

3. Promote Plain English amongst your Staff

Once you’ve seen the benefits of plain English compared with other writing styles, you can promote its values to your own staff and senior management. You need to get your staff onside so that they will begin writing in this style. Likewise, you also need to convince your managers of its values and possibly funding for a training program. Explain to both camps how they will benefit. Outline a high-level roadmap with timelines for the overall program.

4. Contact an experienced proposal writer

The first time you write a plain English proposal, you may find it time-consuming and more difficult than you thought. If this is the case, you’re on the right track! Everything worthwhile is difficult the first time round – soon you will get the hang of it.

You can also approach a writing consultant, especially someone who has a proven track record of writing good, clear English.

5. Review previous Proposals and see where you can improve

Before you start writing, consider the following:

• Literacy level. What level of education is required to understand the Proposal? Use the Fog Index to test your proposal’s readability.
• Clarity. What parts of the Proposal are hard to understand? Are the sentences too long and complex? Does it use technical terms and acronyms that the target audience will not understand?
• Organization. How easy can you find relevant information? Would the Proposal be clearer if you reordered the main sections and possibly the sub-sections within it? Does the table of contents and index need sharpening? Are there too many/too few levels of information in the TOC.
• Repetition. Is the same information repeated in several sections? Does it have any real benefit?
• Headings. Should the headings be re-written in the form of questions that each section answers?
• Format. Do you need to add more bullet-point lists? Put keywords in bold? Use more white space?

6. Create an outline to help readers find information faster

One very effective writing style is to write headings as questions,which each section answers. If you include sub-sections, use a numbered outline format (e.g. 1.2, 1.3) for the section headings. This helps the reader find the main sections quickly and see the relationship among subsections.

7. Write the RFP, section by section, using plain language techniques

If some sections are hard to write, read them aloud and see where they are difficult to understand. Go through the document section by section.

Write the first draft of key sections first, and then work on the inside sections. Once you’ve written these, refine the text by editing each section tightly. However, make sure your text does not become too cold and dry. Write as if you were speaking to a colleague whom you respect; this often helps control the tone of the document.

8. Review and Revise

Once you’ve finished the first draft, get it reviewed internally by colleagues who can add value to the review process. Don’t choose colleagues who are too close to the Proposal, as they will not see errors. Instead, get a neutral reviewer if possible. After getting the feedback, make the required edits.

If possible, ask volunteers from the target population to review the draft Proposal. Ask them if they can locate information easily. When interviewing ask open questions and you will get a better response.

Avoid closed questions, such as, is this a great RFP? Most will say Yes, just to please you – and make you go away!

Ask how much they could read in one sitting. Again, revise as needed.

9. Create an easy-to-read format

Format the document to make it easy to read and attractive in presentation. If you have time, prepare a template that can be re-used for all future RFP’s. This will reduce the time spend on preparing the document.

• Leave a blank line between paragraphs
• Use bulleted lists
• Highlight main points with bold and italics
• Use boxes for examples
• Use white space generously
• Include margins of at least one inch all around the page
• Use two (2) columns to increase readability, if practical

Use several different type sizes for headings. In many documents, the headings are in San Serif font (i.e. Verdana) and the body is in a Serif font (e.g. Times New Roman). Use a contrast in style to add emphasis.

10. Get feedback – and share it

Lastly, see if the Proposal works! Ask the external reviewers how they felt using the ‘new’ plain English Proposal. Get feedback from personnel involved in the review process and collate it for distribution.

• Did they find that the plain English Proposal made a better application?
• Was it easier to write the application, and what made the most difference?
• What worked and what needs more refinement.

Summarize what you learned and share this information with colleagues. Encourage them to try writing plain English Proposals.

Track Your Proposal Wins

Keep a record of all the Proposals written in plain English and see if their success rate is higher than the previous styles of writing. There are more great writing resources are at: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the popular Business Planning Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com. Follow him on Twitter @ivanwalsh

PS: The Audience Analysis Template is here.

Post by Ivan Walsh. Follow me on Twitter.

Working in China means more business writing and less technical writing, especially proposal development, web marketing case studies and white papers. As a few of the folks I hang out with on LinkedIn are also moving into business writing, I thought I’d add a few tips for business writing. While there is some overlap with technical writing, it does require a different mindset, for example, to understand the emotional drivers that persuade customers to accept or reject business proposals.

37 Tips to Increase Your Business Writing Productivity

This article on business writing reminds us that our sales, marketing, business, and proposal development does not stand alone. It is part of a larger process that involves planning, research, writing, editing, proofing, submission and acceptance.

This list gives 37 ways to improve your next proposal. Scroll through it and tell me what I missed.

1. Show that your response is logical and organized
2. Make the information easy to find. Cross reference against the Request For Proposal
3. Include a table of contents for proposals over 10 pages in length
4. Ensure that your Proposal is in compliance with the RFP
5. Arrange material in order of priority to the reader
6. Arrange everything in the order that’s most important to the client
7. Arrange the response in accordance with their requirements
8. Number pages and sections consecutively; do not re-number each section
9. Use headings that make sense to your readers. See Audience Analysis template.
10. Each section title should stresses the main benefits
11. Each section title should help readers orient themselves
12. If possible, express the key point of the section in the headline, or immediately after it.
13. Highlight important points
14. You can emphasize the most positive points by using bold, underlining, different fonts, spacing, titles, bullets and summaries
15. Sell the Message.It needs to have an emotional element. This is not a technical document. You need to hit the pain points.
16. Respond completely. Don’t skip anything.
17. Answer every question in the RFP. Failure to respond correctly to the RFP may disqualify your proposal. The client put these questions in for a reason, and expect an answer.
18. Avoid banal headings and titles
19. Rather than say “Development Section,” say “Ten Ways to Improve Your Processes”
20. Use action verbs in heads, especially verbs that stress a benefit for the client
21. Avoid boilerplate
22. Don’t recycle resumes and corporate profiles from previous proposals; modify them in accordance for the proposal at hand. Using old, tired resumes will be perceived by the reader, and will count against you when they can making the final judgments.
23. Avoid hype, padding and other self-congratulatory drivel. Remember that the proposal is a legal document that becomes part of the contract if you win
24. Support your recommendations
25. By giving specific details and quantifying the benefits whenever possible
26. Don’t just say that you will comply with a requirement — say how we’ll do so
27. Don’t attack competitors. Refer to rival products if you must.
28. Point out the weaknesses of alternative solutions.
29. Use a strong closing statement
30. Ask for their business; tell the reader exactly what you want him or her to do
31. Remind the reader of the benefits of taking action
32. Avoid business cliché’s
33. Avoid hackneyed openings and closings that clients have read a thousand times. Avoid “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for considering the enclosed . . .” Get to the point: “Here is your proposal.” Avoid “If you have any questions, please feel free to call.” That closing has been done to death, so avoid it and write something more genuine.
34. Make your proposal easy to understand
35. Use the same terms and jargon that appear in the RFP. Don’t try to impress the client with your own special brand of buzzwords or TLA (three-letter acronyms)
36. Use simple, direct language
37. Close your business documents on a high note. Don’t be too humble. A little confidence never hurt!

What did I miss?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh is a left-handed technical writer who writes business proposals for clients. He also gives business writing tips for smart people at Klariti

Would you take $740 if I gave it to you? Most people would say Yes. My Google AdSense check came today. It’s for 548.65 euros, about $740 dollars. I get this check every month; payments range from $700 (low) to $1200 (highest). But, I’ve decided to stop using Google Adsense. Here’s why.

Google Adsense is Not a Business Strategy

I’ve decided to phase out Adsense for different reasons. Here’s the background:

• When I started my online business, I had no products. Google Adsense was the simplest option. It acted as an interim solution until I had my own products.
• But it does work. I took this course from this guy and learnt how to really use Google Adsense. It paid for itself many times over.
• Earnings rose from $3 per month to over $1200 at its peak.

So, why stop? Here’s the problem.

What is Google Adsense? Well, it is not a Business Strategy. It’s a deluxe affiliate program. And a very good one but…

• Strategy – My long-term aim is to develop my own suite of digital products and earn from these. I want greater control.
• Ownership – I have no control of Adsense. If it disappears tomorrow (unlikely, but I’ve been bitten before) all my efforts is wasted. In the meantime, I could have developed or explored other options.
• Competition – While Adsense does very well, split testing with other products has shown that some of these earn as much, if not more.
• Customers – they have little interest in the ads and do their best to ignore them. Many complain that it’s irritating and/or visual pollution.
• Traffic – strangely enough, split testing pages with and without ads made little difference traffic wise. BUT, it reduced the number of comments on the site. When I removed the ads, the interaction improved, resulting in visitors staying longer. Banner Ads and other in-page adverts irritate users; I’ve never met a customer who asked me to put ads on a site.

Criteria for phasing out affiliate products

This creates a small dilemma. Do I phase out and/or remove Google Ads?

1. At what point do I phase out an affiliate products?
2. How long do I give an under-performing product before reviewing, pausing and/or removing it from the site?
3. What criteria do I use to judge the performance of a product? Sales is the simplest/crudest indicator but, and this is my concern, if I switch the position of Adsense (i.e. place on the website) with another product, its sales numbers are negatively impacted. And the replacement product often performs better.

How To Use Google Adsense For Maximum Effect

Let’s not thrown out the baby with the bath-water. My current solution has been to:

• Placement - Move the ads to the lower left navigation. This space allows ‘skyscraper’ ads to appear there. These have high clickthru rates, i.e. higher payments. Position = rates.
• Video – This position also allows video ads to appear. Again, these have high click-thru rates.
• User Behavior – Articles that discuss high end products, such as digital cameras benefit from these skyscraper ads. These are rather eye-catching and, it seems, when people scroll to the end of the page, they click on the largest (i.e. easiest) option available. In this case, the skyscraper video ads work very well.

So, for now, we have reached a happy medium. I still use Google Adsense, even if it’s less prominent than previously.

Adsense Highest Performing Ad Sizes

Update: Google published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

I’d recommend the 160×600 wide skyscraper as it doesn’t distract the reader from your main content and sits nicely in the side of the page.

Which brings us back to Business Strategy…

Defining a strategy means choosing the most effective way to run your business. Google Adsense is ideal for those starting an online business – but you need to (and can) aim higher. Ultimately, you want to wean yourself off from low-performing affiliate programs and develop your own products, which of course, you can then market to your own army of affiliates!

See the difference?

Next week, I’ll show you how I’ve started to develop a strategy for a new small business site. It has no Google Adsense and no advertising – 100% digital products. If you’re interested, please bookmark this site and see how it works.

Do you agree with what I’ve done? Would you have done it different? Let me know below.

Friday is my busiest day. Most folks power down and go into weekend mode. Not here! Ask yourself, ‘why do I go down a gear on Friday?’, ‘How does this benefit my career?’ Ok, let’s be honest. We do this because others do it. Right? This is a high-risk way to manage your career. You’re letting others determine how you behave. And it damages your career in many, many ways. Here’s an alternative approach.

How to make Friday your busiest day and reap the rewards

7 Mistakes to avoid:

1. Don’t fill your day with low-impact tasks.
2. Don’t get pulled into fluffy things that you don’t really want to.
3. Don’t do project meetings when you know it will kill your whole morning.
4. Don’t go to long lunches.
5. Don’t leave early.
6. Don’t waste time studying analytics, trends, click-thrus etc… you know what they’ll say, don’t you?
7. Not Saying NO enough.

Do this instead.

You’ll get more success if you:

1. Plan with intention - Use Friday to plan the entire week ahead. Spend at least 2 hours on this. Planning is decision making. When you plan, you make decisions.
2. Get Ready for Monday – planning on Friday lets you hit the ground running on Monday. See the difference? You’re already a step ahead of everyone else.
3. Do Strategic Meetings Only – Book meetings with key contacts on Friday. Most will say Yes. They’re in down mode, so they’re easy to arrange.
4. Find Like-minded people – Connect with people that have the same values as you. Look around the office and ask, ‘who’s killing time v who’s using it’. Link up with those doing it right.
5. Do high impact tasks – disconnect from activities that suck the life out of you, your projects and your enjoyment in life.
6. Share useful information – everyone wants ‘relevant’ information. Select the 5 pieces of useful information you’ve read during the week and circulate these.
7. Authority – Establish yourself as someone who provides ‘useful’ and high value information not just cats doing ninja tricks.
8. Stay late – when everyone is gone, you can get focused and do more work. Global clients will still be up. Call them. Chase them up. Your colleagues won’t. They’re gone, so now is your chance.

What’s going on here?

It’s about behavior.

• It’s how others impact the way you behave and respond.
• To succeed, in the way you want to succeed, you need to observe how others make you behave the way you do.
• Admit it.
• Put a plan in place to create your own blueprint for success.
• Find ways to do this every day.
• See where you fall down, where you can improve and what you’re doing right.
• Keep at it.

Success is like developing a muscle. You have to train it, assess it, and increase it. Luckily, there are no short-cuts. If you persist, you’ll succeed. You have to!

What do you think?

Do you plan to make Friday’s the busiest day? What would change if you did?

Photo Credit puliarfanita

What’s your success ratio with proposals? 25% is average. Very few get 50%. I help government agencies evaluate proposals. Most bids that come across my desk make the same errors, use the same flawed strategies and are never accepted. And the next time, they repeat the same mistake. Here are some ways to avoid this. It’s not painful, it just requires effort.

What does a Proposal Evaluator Do?

My job is to reject your proposal. I fail proposals if they miss a requirement, avoid a clause or get the figures wrong. We received 36 proposals for the last RFP. Some were over 300 pages. The less I have to review, the better.

Tip: make sure the proposals are well-bound. We scribble all over them, book-marking pages, and adding comments. Don’t use cheap papers and poor ring-binders. If they fall apart, I’m not going to re-assemble your document.

• I eliminate proposals that don’t measure up. This means they fail on a technicality, are over budget, don’t agree to the deadline or have omitted to include some document.
• Then I review what’s left and make a short list.
• For me, evaluating a proposal is a process of elimination, not a process of selection. That happens later.
• When you start your proposal, don’t focus on getting selected, instead WRITE A PROPOSAL THAT CANNOT BE ELIMINATED!

Here’s how you can do this:

• Write your proposal so that the evaluator cannot reject it on a technicality.
• Respond to every requirement in the Request For Proposal (RFP). This means you cannot be dis-qualified on the grounds that you were “non-responsive to the RFP.”
• Identify the solution. If it’s a product, name it & give the version number.
• Don’t be vague. State clearly how you will do this. If possible, describe the solution in a single sentience.
• Demonstrate that you have provided this expertise in a similar project.
• Support you claims with case studies, white papers and other reports where you are given credit.
• Provide pen portraits of your team. CVs go in the appendix.
• List the benefits that your solution provides. Cross-reference these against the requirements. Itemize and prioritize each benefit.

Remember, the evaluators are looking for ways to disqualify you.

• Check your proposal once, twice and three times.
• Each time check for a different weakness or error. For example, once for writing errors, then for flaws in the solution and finally in the costs. You can make errors elsewhere but NEVER in the costs.

Conclusion

Write the proposal so that it cannot be eliminated.

Once you have this established, then drill-down into each requirements and respond from the perspective of the reader. Regardless of how good you think your proposal is, if you overlook a technicality, you’re out.

What have I missed? Let me know what you think below.

Guest article by Shannon Suetos from Resource Nation

Starting a business is stressful, we all know that, but did you know that small businesses make up around half of all U.S. private-sector workers, and have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years?  With new businesses popping up more and more, what are these current and new business owners doing to gain the capital backing they need?

5 Alternative Ways to Attain Money for Your Business

The best thing to remember is to get creative.  Banks are not lending like they used to, and businesses still need help from time to time.  It doesn’t matter if you are starting your business, or are currently in business—finding alternative ways to get some cash for your business is something every business owner new and old should know about.

Below are 5 alternative ways to get money for your current or new business.

1. Business cash advance: Similar to a payday advance, these types of loans are much quicker to get than traditional bank loans. It is wise to note that these types of loans are more expensive than traditional loans, but they are becoming more popular. Business cash advances allow business owners to manage their cash flow easier and is a viable way to get money fast, but your company needs to accept credit cards in order to receive
2. Factoring: Factoring can aid business owners by “selling” unpaid invoices to a factoring company in exchange for cash. Most factoring companies will buy your invoices for anywhere from 70-90 percent of the value of your unpaid invoices. After purchasing the unpaid invoice from you, the factoring company will reach the customer who is responsible for the unpaid invoice and collect the full amount owed.
3. Grants: This is a good possibility, but wise to remember many people are now looking at grants who weren’t able to get bank loans. Many are finding this outlet harder to get, but it is still is an applicable option. Instead of looking at the federal level for grants, look to local authorities—this could be a better option for some. If you are a non-profit, there are grants specifically for you to look for as well.
4. Venture Capital: Before contacting venture capitalists about financially backing your business, you should first draw up, or clean up your business plan. Have your goals clearly stated, and back everything up with statistical data to prove how you will be able to pay them back. There are groups out there that are willing to invest, it’s your job to find them and convince them you are worth their investment.
5. Private Investors: A private investor is a great way to get financial backing for small businesses. If your business is geared toward a small niche audience, private investors who are also passionate about the same topic are more willing to give you a chance than a bank would. You can find private investors in many ways. One way is to search online. There are many sites out there to help you get connected with investors who are ready and willing to invest. Sites like prosper.com and findinvestors.com are just two of many. There are also agencies that can help you find a private investor as well.

It doesn’t matter if you are starting a business or need money for your current business, the main point here is to remember banks are not your only option. Getting a little creative in your search for a business loan can really pay off in the end, and it is wise to look at many different options before committing to the one that is right for your company.

Shannon Suetos is a writer based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for Resource Nation, an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing decisions and a comparison service for everything from a debt management program to phone systems.

Did you ever wish you could speak French and read all those great novels? Or maybe Spanish, so you could travel to South America and have more than Buenos Dias? Or Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese.  Most of us never start. It’s too hard. But, if I told you that all you need is 100 words and then you can get by – would you give it at try.

100 Words You Need To Speak Any Language

Here are the 100 words. Try to learn 5 a day. By the end of the month, you’ll have 150.

Give yourself every opportunity to practice. For example, go to an Italian restaurants and practice with the waiter. Tell him you’re learning – most everyone will help.

1. A/an  2. After 3. Again 4. All 5. Almost

6. Also  7. Always  8. And  9. Because  10. Before

11. Big  12. But  13. (I) can  14. (I) come  15. Either/or

16. (I) find  17. First  18. For  19. Friend  20. From

21. (I) go  22. Good  23. Good-bye  24. Happy  25. (I) have

26. He  27. Hello  28. Here  29. How  30. I

31. (I) am  32. If  33. In  34. (I) know  35. Last

36. (I) like  37. Little  38. (I) love  39. (I) make  40. Many

41. One  42. More  43. Most  44. Much  45. My

46. New  47. No  48. Not  49. Now  50. Of

51. Often  52. On  53. One  54. Only  55. Or

56. Other  57. Our  58. Out  59. Over  60. People

61. Place  62. Please  63. Same  64. (I) see  65. She

66. So  67. Some  68. Sometimes  69. Still  70. Such

71. (I) tell  72. Thank you  73. That  74. The  75. Their

76. Them  77. Then  78. There is  79. They  80. Thing

81. (I) think  82. This  83. Time  84. To  85. Under

86. Up  87. Us  88. (I) use  89. Very  90. We

91. What  92. When  93. Where  94. Which  95. Who

96. Why  97. With  98. Yes  99. You  100. Your

There are many reasons to start learning aside from the business opportunities and personal gratification. I’ve started Chinese here in Beijing and am now… about 75% of the way there.

I can order a beer (critical), find a toilet (helpful) and get a taxi. All the small little things. Give it a try. See how far you get. You’d be surprised how easy it is once you start.

What language do you most want to learn?

And after that?

Have you noticed this obsession with speed? Everyone is doing things, real fast. Even failure has to be fast. Fail fast is the new mantra. Christopher S. Penn takes up this point, ‘Ever done this? You see a traffic jam ahead, get off at the next exit, and spend 30 extra minutes on side and back roads to go around the jam… which in reality is only a 10 minute traffic jam? This is the dabbler. This is the person who fails too fast.’ Do you fail too fast?

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Chris Penn discussed the Dunning-Kruger effect where:

• Incompetent people are so limited by their abilities and lack of competence that they don’t realize they’re incompetent.
• Competent are the last to get the memo.
• When it comes to goal-only perspectives… your lack of meta-cognitive awareness about your limitations means that if you give up all the time, if you abandon ship too fast, you will NEVER reach excellence.

Do you see what he’s getting at?

How To Fail Slowly

Here’s my thoughts:

• Speed is sickness.
• I lived in the US for eight years. I felt guilty if I wasn’t doing something, always on the go.
• But some things can’t be rushed, like trust, friendship, and appreciation. You can’t enjoy Mozart in a rush.
• Today I live in China. It’s just as busy. But, here’s the difference. The expectation here is that certain things have to be done slowly.
• Ever been to a dinner with Chinese-business men? There’s a reason it lasts 4 or 5 hours. They want to see who really you are… after you’ve had a few drinks and loosened up.
• Like another person said on Chris Brogan’s site, the golden mean in everything, i.e. balance.

Many people are driving 100 mph down an alleyway. Sometimes it’s good to pause for a moment.

What do you think? Are we failing too fast?

Most people think it’s difficult start a career as a business consultant. I used to think the same in my early 20s when I started in IT.

In retrospect, I should have made more efforts to establish myself as a consultant earlier; the benefits certainly outweigh the downsides. As luck would have it, I was forced into a consultancy role when I lost my 9-5 job. Time to learn to hustling and bring in business. Harvard Business Review refers to it as The Hustle Strategy. More on that later.

3 Types of Business Consultant

Before we start, there are 3 types of consultants:

1. Academic — those with academic achievements, e.g. PhDs, who are brought in to solve/explore/test problems. Their skills match the problem at hand. So you have it or you don’t.
2. Management — those with senior management skills, such as in M&A, legal, international business development and
3. Solutions — this includes the broad spectrum of 9-workers who’ve ‘repositioned’ their skills, want to work for themselves and/or have others working for them. This, I assume, it where you fit in. It’s where most consultants start out.

How to get started as a Business Consultant

The next question is: how do I get started? Here’s one way of approaching it.

1. Focus — identify your top 3 skills (not technologies). Be honest. If someone put a gun to your head and said “what are the three things you do best?”, then you’d say ”what I do best is…”
2. How do you see yourself — write a pen portrait (100 words max) of how you see yourself. So, if you were introducing yourself person to someone at a conference, you’d say “Hi, this is Amanda she,….” Remember, focus on the benefits you offer, not the tools. Tip – Start to visualize the person/consultant you want to become.
3. Role Models — identify 3 business leaders and use them as role models. For me, Richard Branson is a good example, for you it might be someone else. Read everything about these people, soak up how they made it. It’s not in the words of their bio – but the energy, the drive they had. Having a role model gives you a frame of reference, something to use as a compass/anchor.
4. Meet and Greet — Contact 10 people who are in a similar position as yourself. Meet up, for example, on a Saturday afternoon and see how you can help each other. Remember, you’re looking to link up with people for the long haul. Ignore the tire-kickers. Find 1 or 2 decent people that you trust and keep connecting with them.
5. Be the Glue — Define one common goal with these folks and make it happen. For example, aim to run an event, workshop, training course (whatever) by a specific date. You have to have targets, otherwise nothing will happen. It will just be talking shop.
6. Action Plan — doesn’t need to be fancy. List what needs to be done, assign names, and dates.
7. Examine your USP – I know this sounds lame but you have to differentiate yourself from the competition. This is the key. If you become ‘that guy’ who does, for example, Facebook training, Social Media business communications, Proposal development for biotechnology or whatever, then laser focus on this. Your aim is to dominate this one area. You have to become ‘that guy’.
8. Promotion — once you’ve all your ducks lined up, start getting the message out. Write guest articles in blogs, contribute to events, share information on LinkedIn, send free White Papers to people in your target market – do whatever it takes to promote yourself (and your colleagues) so that you become you become ‘that girl’. Girls, when I say ‘that guy’ I mean both guys and girls. You know that, right?
9. Personal branding – get your site, business cards, sharp suit etc in place. People still judge on appearances. If you look successful…
10. Network — Look for places to get out and meet people. People do business with people they meet. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Find fast ways to meet up and find out where it’s happening. Tip – if you’re a single mom, link up with other parents who want to run their own business and take turns minding each other’s kids:  that way you both get one night a week to get out there and network.
11. Stick to the plan — If you keep this up for 3 months, you’ll change your perception of who you are and also by meeting people, you’ll learn new things. While the web is great, the human touch is what counts.
12. Follow the leader — Tom Peters, Chris Brogan, Richard Branson, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ have all helped me in different ways.

Chris Brogan made a very interesting observation recently when he said that he tries to be there ‘before the fire starts’. What he meant was that everyone wants to help (i.e. sell you something) when things go wrong but it’s the people you know before it happened that count. I bet there you’ve been in that similar situation yourself. It’s the people you already know that you trust.

One last thing – the harder you try, the luckier you get. Take it one step at a time. Remember the turtle and the hare. Use everyday opportunities as ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to go.

PS: Started to read this. Impressed so far. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

What’s your first step?

What advice would you give to those who want to start as a Business Consultant? What’s the one mistake they must avoid? What’s the best tip you ever got on starting your own business?

Planning on doing business in China? Doing business in China is not the same as wherever you’re from. If you keep comparing China to your country, however wonderful it is, you won’t enjoy China very much. Take it on its own terms. Here are some tips for doing business in Shanghai.

7 Tips for Business Trips to Shanghai

Here are some tips for doing business in Shanghai.

Macdonalds Shanghai

1. Be punctual – Shanghai people are known for their punctuality, so they’ll expect the same for you. While this is not true in most of Asia, here is to be observed. Try to arrive 10 minutes early.

2. Stay in Pudong – this is to east side of Shanghai and is where most of the high-tech business and government buildings are located. PuXi is the older, more traditional side of Shanghai. So, unless you have business on the west side of the river, stay over here.

Tip – you can take a fantastic underwater train from PuDong to PuXi for around 5 USD. It is an amazing trip with a wonderful light show. You will see ads for it along the Bund.

3. Take care on the Bund – avoid people who come up to you looking for assistance (you’re the tourist right?) or who want to take their photo with you. I know this sounds flattering but it’s just a ruse. Be careful.

4. Business-men Smoke – unlike other countries, many people still smoke in business environments, though it is getting phased out. If you arrange a meeting with a Chinese businessman, don’t take him to a Western restaurant/hotel where he can’t smoke. Find somewhere that he is more comfortable in. otherwise the deal is off before you start.

See also: Global Awareness and Cultural Sensitivity Strategies for Western Technical Communicators

5. Xrays in the Metro – most all metro stations have xray machines to check luggage. Just be careful that your laptop is not damaged going through or that your film etc gets ruined. It’s unlikely but be careful.

6. Wifi – you can get wifi in many coffee shops, especially near Pudong, but you often have to ask for the password to access the network.

7. Travel Card – if you’re staying for more than a week, get a network card. You can use this on the metro, bus and in most taxis. This means you have to carry less cash with you and spend less time standing in queues.

8. Metro City – this is the IT shopping centre (PuXi) and has Best Buy and other western shops on the same street.

9. Learn to Haggle – in most of Asia, it’s expected to do some haggling so don’t take it personal. If they ask for 100, I offer 30. They look horrified, we haggle a bit, and finally settle on about 60.

10. Chop sticks – unless you’re staying at the Hyatt etc, learn to use chop-sticks. Most places don’t have knives and forks. It takes 30 min to learn how to use chopsticks. Ask a local; practise with peanuts. It’s the only way.

11. Expo 2010 – road works are everywhere, so try to stay away from the Bund (PuXi side especially) as this is under heavy re-development.

Remember Shanghai is not Beijing and Beijing is not Hong Kong…

What have I missed?

If you’re traveling to Shanghai soon and have a question, add it below.

Thom Haller asks on TCW if ‘to be an effective leader, you need to learn how to write well’.

Do You Need to Write Well to Succeed?

Here’s how I see it.

If you can communicate clearly, then there is a greater chance that people will understand what you want to them.

They ‘may’ trust you more – I don’t know.

I worked in Fortune 500 companies, as I’m sure you folks did, but I didn’t necessarily trust the people or the wisdom of their strategies.

But I know what they expected of me and my team—so we did it.

The failing of most senior managers tend to be:

1. Mixed messages
2. Lack of ownership, and
3. Political correctness.

Some have these forced upon them, (i.e. social pressures) while for others it’s just a habit.

Warren Buffet’s annual reports, which are posted on the Berkshire site, are worth looking at.

Simple, easy to read, no waffle.

UPDATE:

Thom asked if I could give some examples.

The last company I worked for brought in a new CEO as we needed to turn things around fast.

Here’s what he did (among other things):

• Every communication you send has the move the task towards completion. In other words, communications (emails, reports, speeches) are to push the task to the next step/person/activity.
• If what you say/do slows the process or (as was the case with my line mgr) obscures what’s happening the he (as the main firefighter) can see what’s going on.
• Specifically he told us to:
• keep team mtgs to less than 20 min – if you can’t solve it by then, escalate. Most people will find a way to find resolution rather than escalate and look incompetent.
• keep one-2-one mtgs to 5 min – e.g. the pm mon mtg with head of dev. All you want to know is a) is it on track 2) can you fix it 3) when will it be fixed. The pms started to interview the team leads for 5 min. in and out. No messing around.
• Make the tech docs shorter. He wanted thin docs. No fluff. He personally reviewed all tech docs. We had his permission to cut out the waffle.
• Use traffic head lights on all status reports, e.g. red for critical etc.
• Status reports were printed out and put on the wall, i.e. everyone saw if your project was on/off schedule.

• Forbid us to use TLAs. Everything had to be worked correctly. Why? TLAs (to him) were short-hand for laziness. This drove people mad but he pushed it repeatedly.

His emails were a series of action points. E.g.

1. Ivan Walsh – tech docs – fri – status

There was no chitchat.

The combination of all this was that people were more direct, immediate and effective. It was a combined effort but it had a v positive effect on the workplace.

After a few months, it felt like we were communicating better.

Also, he praised people who got it right.

You can read the rest of this discussion on The Content Wrangler

What do you think?

Does your team lead, line manager or CEO really need to know how to write well?

Can you give an example of how you’ve seen this work or fail in your organization?

Developing a Capacity Plan is vital if you want to understand how much capacity will be required to support your IT systems and, by extension, the infrastructure that supports it.

Think about it.

If you plan to install a new large-scale solution, for example, IBM WebSphere or SAP, you also need to consider the impact these will have on your existing systems.

1. Capacity Planning & Outsourcing

Another area where Capacity Plan is vital is outsourcing. Say you plan to outsource your Help Desk to a third party firm.

Well, for them to support the system technically (not from a business perspective) they need to prepare a Capacity Plan that details the technical requirements to support this solution.

2. Developing a Capacity Plan strategy

• Assess the current solution and component performance
• Identify constraints that may be imposed on the system
• Use this information to develop the Capacity Plan for component acquisition, configuration, and upgrade.
• Make recommendations on how the Capacity Plan should be maintained, monitored and updated as necessary.

3. Benefits of a Capacity Plan

Developing a Capacity Plan ensures that business and technical requirements can be supported by the infrastructure and application elements of the new solution. In this case, the Help Desk or the IBM back office solution.

4. Management Guidance

The Capacity Plan provides management with:

• Breakdown of the resource capabilities required to operate the solution
• Assessment of current capacities
• Estimates on the resources and services to be upgraded and acquired
• Projection of resource and services capacities that may be required by the solution
• Capacity Planning ensures that there is sufficient processing capacity to run these new applications and for some predetermined time into the future as your business expands.

A well-defined Capacity Plan takes into consideration the likelihood that your business will grow and provides the appropriate estimates so you can develop the systems in line with these projection and also budget accordingly.

5. Capacity Plan Risks

If your company runs out of system processing capacity at some point (for example, due to increased user numbers, higher business volumes), the system’s performance will begin to suffer and you may be faced to upgrade the system (and associated applications) or move to a different more powerful system/server to process these applications.

To ensure that these applications can process the application load at cutover, and for some period of time following this, develop and check your capacity plan.

Capacity Plan Template

The method and results of this study should then be captured in the Capacity Plan document.

By Gerry McGovern

Like all great self-service organizations, Starbucks knows that you should never keep the customer waiting.

The July 2006 like-for-like sales for Starbucks were lower than expected. This was rare for such a high performance company and resulted in an 11 percent decline in the share price after the news was announced.

According to Starbucks’ chief executive, Jim Donald, the reason why sales had not met expectations was because Starbucks was keeping its customers waiting too long. “We believe we are losing some espresso business due to longer than normal wait times in both cafes and drive-thrus during peak morning hours,” he stated.

And what caused this delay? Iced frappuccinos and other cold drinks.

“Customers are embracing these cold blended beverages as a morning staple to a degree that we had not anticipated,” Jim Donald stated. “We have recognized the opportunity to refine and improve our cold beverage station to make drink preparation more efficient and improve service over time but, in retrospect, we did not move aggressively enough.”

People are impatient.

They don’t want to have to wait a second longer than they absolutely have to. That is particularly so when they enter a self-service environment, because a key promise of self-service is that if you do it for yourself you’ll be able to do it faster.

You’re walking down the street. You’re hungry and thirsty. You approach two restaurants. One has a nice menu but it’s waiter-service. The other is self-service. It’s a decision between time, thirst, and taste. You choose self-service. You walk in and you wait.

There is a clock ticking fast in your head. You absolutely expect to be in and out of this place quickly. Because that’s what self-service is about and that’s what your website is about. A website that wastes time loses money.

People may like Starbucks but they hate to wait one second longer than they absolutely have to. A long queue is lost sales.

Self-service is forever married to convenience and speed.

The purpose of usability is to save the customer time. It took longer for Starbucks to prepare cold drinks than hot drinks.

Customers lost patience. Starbucks lost profits. A fast, convenient website gains customers. A poorly designed website loses customers.

I want to buy a new laptop. I used to buy IBM ThinkPads and was really happy with them. Lenovo took over the ThinkPad range.

Last year I went to the Lenovo website. I was a loyal customer.

I wanted to buy from them. The website was awful. I went to a competitor.

This year I read really great reviews of the ThinkPad T60 and X60. I go back to the Lenovo Ireland website. There’s a graphic on the homepage that has a picture of two laptops, with the heading: “The power of 2 in 1″. I click on the image. This website is soooo slow.

Finally, I arrive at a webpage with the heading: “Lenovo care”, which has nothing to do with selling me a laptop. I want to buy from Lenovo, but this website is making it really hard for me.

Starbucks knows-at a most senior management level-that in a convenience society, convenience is king. How long will it take other senior managers to realize that their websites have a direct impact on their organization’s performance?

About Gerry McGovern

Contact Gerry to develop your next Content Management Solutions at www.gerrymcgovern.com

Justin Premick, Aweber, has the results of an experiment to determine the optimum length for the From line in emails. For those involve in writing, content development and web marketing, the results are interesting.

Typically length is a concern that comes up when discussing subject lines – how many characters you can fit in a subject before your subscribers’ email programs cut it off.

But the same thing applies to your “from” line; if it’s too long, subscribers won’t be able to read all of it while viewing their list of emails.

Observations

• In most webmail programs, it didn’t matter what operating system you were on.
• Hotmail was the exception in that it cuts off the “from” line a couple characters earlier if you’re on a Mac.
• Where the width of the “Sender” column could be adjusted (notably Mozilla Thunderbird), I used the default width. Users can obviously change this and so there’s no way to guarantee that the results of this test will hold true for every user.
• Email clients don’t all necessarily look at character counts for the cutoff; some may cut off after a certain number of pixels.
• Individual recipients may set different settings that cause more or fewer characters to appear in the space provided.

You can read more details of these results at: http://www.aweber.com

Gerry Mcgovern Success on the Web is not about making customers do what you want. It is about helping customers do what they want.

My Lenovo laptop has great battery life. The battery lasts for 650 thousand million years if I don’t turn it on, and for 65 thousand million years if I turn it on dimly lit. In fact, to save me so much battery life, it always starts in dimly lit mode. It’s wonderful. I can’t read anything but I’m saving lots of battery life. So, each time I want to use my Lenovo with battery I have to undim it. It wastes my time and mildly irritates me, but then that’s what great branding experiences are about.

Lenovo is not alone.

I have never ever had a laptop that came anywhere near its battery life claims (and I’ve had many laptops). I simply don’t trust laptop manufacturers to tell me the truth. As far as I’m concerned their advertising statements are akin to me saying that I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, assuming I don’t buy anything.

Are there others like me out there, who are becoming more and more immune to false and deceptive advertising and marketing? I think there are. A friend of mine recently said to me: “You know, this Sensodyne toothpaste actually works. It actually does what it says it does.” And I agreed with him. Sensodyne is a great toothpaste.

You might think I hate branding and marketing. Quite the opposite. I’m willing to be loyal; but you’ve got to earn my loyalty. I love Bose speakers; every speaker I buy is a Bose. I’m loyal to Vodafone because I find their customer service to be excellent.

I stick with Verio for web hosting. The staff at Marriott hotels must get special training, because I have always found them friendly in an unforced way and genuinely helpful. Treat me right, deliver quality at a good price, and I’ll stick with you.

But treat me like a sucker; try to trick and manipulate me and you will get my scorn and contempt. I believe I am part of a new generation of consumers. Think of us as intelligent strangers.

We no longer trust most brands anymore because they don’t deserve our trust. We are the ‘search, compare and verify’ crowd, and our numbers are growing. We are the reason the Web is such a success.

Do you think the Web is such a success because it’s a technology? Do you think it’s a success because it uses HTML? Because you can view it on a computer screen or on a mobile phone? Because it can be wired or wireless?

The Web is a success because it helps us find out more, because it helps us compare, because it gets us in touch with people like us. Because it allows us to share.

We are the Web.

The Web is the customer and the customer is the new organization.  Commercial organizations and governments need to realize that, with the coming of the Web, power has shifted to the organization of intelligent strangers. We’re only in the middle of the beginning of this revolution. It’s very exciting. You can make a buck on the Web by doing right by your customers.

Gerry McGovern

Read more from Gerry at: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Chris Brogan writes: Blogs are not traditional media, and bloggers are not journalists. Unless they are. But it’s not a requirement.

A blog is software. It’s something one puts up on the web to capture information, of whatever type one wants to put on there, and thus, if anyone tells you that you’re doing it wrong, that’s just silly. There aren’t very many wrong ways to do it (legal things like stealing from others might be something you could screw up, but otherwise). And yet.

If you’re going to blog seriously, consider the following:

• Consider the goals and value of your posts. Are you adding to a body of work? Are you blogging to educate, inform, deliver some value?
• Facts do matter. If you’re stating opinions, stress that they’re opinions. If you’re claiming a fact, try to cite it. (I tend to state mostly opinions).
• Remember that defamation is still an issue, potentially legal.
• You can always ask questions BEFORE you blog (novel, I know).
• Brevity matters. I know that I blog about this often. I just see several posts where one has to wade through to try and decipher the salient points (often my own).
• Disclosure is key. If you’re doing something to make money, if you have a business relationship with an organization that you’re writing about, if there’s anything that might potential change the way something is perceived were it be to be measured against what you wrote, consider that.
• Link when you’re mentioning other sites or information that has a link. It’s good manners. It’s the way the Web works. It’s more resources. Linking only to yourself says something about you (and it’s not flattering).
• Review the body of your work every 10 or so posts. Are you improving?
• Review the body of your work every 30 or so posts against the most recent. Are you repeating?
• Review the body of your work against 5 other blogs in your space. Are you an echo?
• Ask yourself WHY you’re posting what you’re posting. Pretend you’re the reader. Is this worth their time?
• What else could you be doing with your blog to add value to your core community?

There are lots of reasons to be blogging: capture your thoughts, share moments, build relationships, establish thought leadership, sell electric toothbrushes, whatever. None of them are especially wrong. But if you’re going to blog with the perspective that you are a professional, give it your best. Your audience deserves it.

About Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events.

Article source: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/if-you-intend-to-blog-seriously/

What did you learn from the last time you failed?

Ted Dziuba believed that raw engineering prowess could make up his lack of business experience. He discusses how his willingness to believe in his own abilities regardless of his other shortcoming blinded him to seeing the inevitably.

He developed a product that really only appealed to the people who build the technology behind it.

FYI : Ted is here: http://teddziuba.com/2009/09/i-read-fred-wilsons-blog.html

Here’s the thing:

1. Arrogant people don’t listen to criticism, they just run themselves into the wall.

2. Incompetent people can ‘usually’ (my italics) be led in the right direction, even though they may execute their way into the dirt.

Arrogance doesn’t listen to reason, it only listens to itself.

So, if an investor asks YOU what I learned from past failures, what will your answer be?