eKnowWaytions

aw…wait for it…SOME other guy!

Juli 22nd, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

We know them all. Those internet superheroes. Doesn‘t really matter in what area. SEO, Social Media…you name it. There are always people that are the ,superstars‘ since they have a gazillion followers on twitter, fans & friends on facebook or subscribers on their blog.

How to shovel your own grave

Most of those (mostly self called) internet super stars / heroes tend to loose ground when becoming famous. They tend to hang out with other superheroes and forget where they came from. They usually stop talking to you and me – which is quite understandable since A LOT of people try to talk them into whatever….or are begging for something. BUT when you only talk to people like you, you forget what others are doing and saying – or inventing. Great ideas not only come from heroes. Usually it is the everyday guy with a great idea who becomes a real hero….think about that.

Lame duck

Why I am talking about this? Well….like most of you I am following some of those superstars. On twitter or their blogs. And I am seeing some change on there. A lot of them are not up to date. They post stuff and retweet each other on a regular basis but mostly with 2 – 4 weeks delay compared to freaks and addicts like you and me. Especially in the social media industry (since this is a big part of my life) I see this happening a lot.

Online, Baby

Funny thing about this: Since you became a superstar through social media, you should know how crucial it is to be up to date. Of course you can not follow everything all the time (but isn‘t this why you are a superstar? a hero needs to bring sacrifices to be – well to stay – a hero). Many think ‘yeah, I made it’ and begin to lose strength & power.

Sporting Example

In most sports there is the saying „becoming champion is hard, staying champion a million times harder“. In boxing there is also the saying ‘they never come back’. Champions, when beaten once, usually do not come back since it is to hard to recover from the fall from the top.

So dear superstars, think about this on your next party amongst yourselves….compared to boxing it is quite easy to dethrone somebody online. It’s just one single click.

Posted in Featured Articles, Social Media | No Comments »

If I ruled the world – wait…I do!

Juli 20th, 2010 by Sascha received 1 Comment »

And of course you can do too!

So this going to be a little philosophic but in the end we will come back to the internet / online thing. So wait for it or…don’t.

Actually this post is about doing, whining, living and changing. I usually don’t quote a lot of other people, but I’ll start with one of my favorite quotes ever. By the incredible Walt Disney:

“If you can dream it, you can do it”

Remember this one. It’s the important catch phrase of today.

We are the world
Who do you think of when thinking about the world? Who is responsible for changes? Sure…Barack Obama…other head of states? That’s way to abstract….so who’s deciding? Your parents? Your bosses?

A lot of us tend to think ‘it’s not me who changes things, it’s the others..’ or ‘what can I do?’. And that’s exactly where we should start to change something.

Real life example
Imagine this: You have a 9 – 5 job. Everything is ok. Not awesome, but could be worse. Going to work every day. Some people like that, some don’t. If you’re one of the guys who like that: perfect! If you’re one of the guys who don’t like it and dream of living at beaches, going backpacking and exploring the world…well…do it! As we all know by now: If you can dream it, you can do it.

And yes, that is not a metaphor or some strange story. That’s real life. And no, it is not the story of some famous internet guru or whatever…it is the story of…wait…me.

I had an 9 to 5 job, just quit it, am about to head to Spain in order to work as freelancing online marketing consultant and will leave for Thailand in September in order to teach at a college over there. Why? ’cause I wanted to. I needed a change. And there are two possibilites when you feel the need for a change: Whine and change something, don’t change something -> but then you don’t have any right to whine.

So what does this have to do with online / internet stuff?

It’s kinda obvious, don’t you think? Thx to the internet it is quite easy to change your life or at least to get inspired by others and make plans on how to change something. Surf sites, check out travel blogs, blogs where people talk about how they live their life. I don’t say you should copy any of those – but for getting inspiration the world wide web is a perfect place.

You can go your own way

Becoming a copycat of someone who already changed his live is, of course, not what ones aim should be. It’s always about yourself. What are your strength? What do you want to do? How can you achieve it?

And here is where one tip I took out of Randy Pausch’ last lecture comes into action: Aim for small goals. Define goals (wait, didn’t we just discuss this earlier? In my post about efficiency? Right! See how this follows us in every aspect of life?) and make them reachable. It’s not reasonable to aim for something like “being an austronaut” when you have to wear huge glasses. Aiming for “becoming weightless” sounds way more reasonable…

Same with the location-/ travel-thing. “Being away. Somewhere cool” is not enough. Make plans. What can you do to go away? “Teaching in Thailand for 6 months” – that’s a real plan. See where this is going? Real plans, that can be achieved. “Being a soccer pro” might be a good aim for a seven year old, but not for a 26 year old who is not playing in a soccer team at all.

Don’t stop dreaming

If you think by now I want you to stop dreaming, you are completely wrong. Dream big guys, dream big. If possible: Even bigger! But make sure that your big dreams can be achieved with small steps. Waiting for the lucky punch or the one world record jump might take to much time. The secret in achieving what you dream about is a mixture of dreaming and actually doing. And yeah, I know what I am talking about. I’ve been a dreamer for quite a long time or even the most time. Taking actions needs balls (yeah ladies, you know what I mean) because taking action can also lead to failure. This is where people start to stutter. Dreaming is easy, doing not because we (humans) are afraid to fail. And we always see reasons why we shouldn’t try, why it might be to hard to try…rules, laws, money-issues…But to quote Randy Pausch once more:

The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.

So if there is a brick wall in front of you….it is your chance to show how badly you want something. That is what makes the difference between a dreamer and somebody who lives his dream.

Ah and if you are expecting a tip about how to overcome brick walls, here is one: Define goals, make plans how small steps could bring you closer to overcome these walls…sí, se puede.

The cheesy end

Listen & remember Walt Disney.

Posted in Featured Articles, Online Marketing, Social Media, all, personal development | 1 Comment »

world cup rules

Juli 8th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

I guess many of you did the same during world cup. Setting up a site related somehow to the topic of soccer or World Cup 2010 in South Africa and seeing what happens. Trying to get some traffic, sell stuff etc. So did I. To be honest, this groundshaking idea came to my mind 3 hours before the first match of World Cup 2010. Lets just blame my current work for this. To much to do ;-) But nevertheless I tried to set up a site. Since there was not really time for good linkbuilding and similar stuff I decided to give it a go without active linkbuilding. I decided to just grab a keyword domain and let it flow.

Trendy stuff

So I went of to google trends, checked for some search phrases and found some interesting ones. So there it was. Three keywords with two of them being quite obvious ;-) No active linkbuilding, as mentioned before but some decent content on it. Information about current matches, a blog, twitter & affiliate stuff.

No links, no visits

The first week was pretty sad. Almost no visits. But well…no inbound links, no visits. Thx to my SEO job I, of course, tried to do my SEO homework. And In week 2 it seemed to work out. The first few visits where there. 5-6 tweets a day led to 50 followers in week 1 and some retweets. Twitter was in week 1 traffic source #1. Same in week 2.

As time goes by

traffic development world cup site

After 2.5 weeks I recognized a decent increase of visitors. After checking the stats I saw that most of them came via google search. Great. I was in. So it took about 2.5 weeks to place me site decently within the SERPs in order to gain some traffic.

I do not own the SERPs or even would say I did everything right. I simply thought it would be a nice test to see how fast a keyword-domain will enter the index when set-up completely new without having major links pointing to it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Distractiooooon. Wait what?

Besides leading to some traffic & sales the World Cup does also bring some negative aspects with it. Millions of dollars, new workplaces, parties….so what’s the negative point you may ask. Well it is pretty simple. It is – woah goaaaaaal! – distraction!

Speaking from my point of view the World Cup leads to a lot of distraction. Even though if there are no current matches happening, you always feel a slight tension…waiting for the next match, discussing the last one and so on. This can really lead to losses in work capacity.

From distraction to attraction

What to do to fight this? Let your people watch it! Create World Cup rooms (rooms where you put on some TV sets, table soccers, coke & beer) or something like this. This will lead to some extra hours off – but you staff will stay in your company (won’t be ‘ill’), will spend time together (teambuilding!) and spend more quality time on real work since they know they can watch World Cup at work and do not have to worry about missing something.

Win Win Win

As you can see, the World Cup can lead to more than one win situation if you allow it to. Gain visitors, enhance teambuilding and improve your image. These are only three very obvious points of more that can increase your Return On Being Cool (ROBC). So don’t hate the players or the game. Make the best of it and enjoy every second of it.

Tags: blogging, personal development, traffic, work, world cup
Posted in Featured Articles, Online Marketing, Social Media, all, personal development | No Comments »

Difference between me & you: efficiency

Juni 21st, 2010 by Sascha received 1 Comment »

We know it all. We’re surfing the web and see some guys who seem to publish new posts, books, sites or other work all the time. How can they do all this stuff at a time? Especially when ‘outsourcing’ might not be a reasonable answer? How are they doing it? Do they have more time? 48 hour days? No hobbies? Nope. Most time those guys even seem to have awesome spare time, right? So what’s the magic behind it? The answer is to simple. And actually it is not even a mystery.

Our closest friend: Distraction

Honestly…how does it look like when your online? You might think ‘man today I’ll do this and that….write a new post or set up a new site..’. You have plans in your mind. You thought about it during breakfast or even during the night. And now you’re going online. Now you will do what you thought about. Now you….hang around ebay, facebook, amazon or pornhub. And don’t tell me it’s not that way. I know it is.That’s the way it is for most users. Oh and if you’re not on one of those sites I mentioned, you’re checking mails. Or twitter. Right? Yep, thought so.

Define why you’re online

If you’re supposing I’m going to rant about facebook, pornXX, twitter and other time wasters you’re pretty wrong. It’s important to be on such sites from time to time. It’s relaxing. Relaxing 2.0 in some way. So have fun, chill, relax and take it easy. Let’s waste time, chasing surfing sites.

BUT don’t let it be your main occupation. Define why you are online and do what you made yourself your assignment for your time online. When you managed what you wanted to do, enjoy yourself while wasting time again. Or maybe you even turn of the computer. Even better. But whatever! Do what needs to be done. First things first! And our first thing is our defined goal.

You don’t have to set goals like ‘I’ll write 3 posts, set up 2 sites and…’. Sometimes it’s enough to aim at something like ‘get the new blog post started’. Most of the time you will, when having started, go on further than you expected. You simply need to get it started. And hell yeah I know that sounds old fashioned and uncool. But it helps. Believe me. Define your small little goals. Time spots in which you won’t use facebook, chat or check emails. Afterwards you will enjoy it even more.

As time goes by

There’s one thing in life we can’t get back. Time. I’m not quite sure who I am quoting with this – if it’s not an actual quote, what I doubt, please adress it to me – it’s so right. Being someone who spents / has to spent a lot of time online I really know how little time most people use to do real important stuff. A lot of time is, like mentioned before, just wasted. While wasting it we tend to think ‘that’s not to much time. I will start in 15 minutes. Or in 30. That’s ok…’ NO, It’s not ok! It’s your time! You won’t get it back. It’s gone. Forever.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is totally ok to relax – I already mentioned it before. Sometimes it is even crucial to do nothing. But if you’re doing nothing, enjoy it! Make the best out of it and don’t pretend to do something online while you’re actually doing nothing. That’s not fair to you, to your friends – to your time!

Time Management

The next word for your bingo is one of my favorite buzzwords. It sounds sooooo uncool but is so crucial in today’s cool and hip web 2.0 society. Time Management is for me bascially the act of – tada – managing your time. Correctly. There are easy ways and more complicated ways of doing it. Some lives are easier to manage than others. But Time Management itself is crucial to all of those. If you’re the guy who simply needs pen & paper to keep track of his schedule – perfect! If you’re like me and you’re having ideas and thoughts and stuff going around your head all the time, this might not be enough. But thanks to the wonderful world of information technology, that’s not a big problem at all. There are some little helpers that support us. There are Applications for your notebook, for your smartphone or even for your iPod. The only thing that really has to come from you: The first step. The decission to give it a chance.

What really helped me in terms of time management was a lecture by Randy Pausch. Some of you might know him, some of you might know that I really liked his way and therefore dedicated a site of this blog to his quotes. Doesn’t matter. If you are interested in time management, give his words a go. It will be worth it in most cases. Promise.

Time Management lecture by Randy Pausch of Carnegie Melon University:

uncool is the new cool

I know a lot of people (including me) who considered time management as uncool. ‘I can do it offhand. Don’t worry’. And yeah, most of the time it works out offhand. But is it the right way in which it works out? Wouldn’t it be way cooler to work things out in less time, to work more things out in the time you use or even to have more time for some spare time work out? Yeah. Here we come back to where we started. Manage your time, define clear rules for yourself, not for others. Take your time, do what has to be done and enjoy your time. That’s no kinda magic and so cool!

Tags: efficiency, Online Marketing, personal development, Social Media
Posted in Featured Articles, Online Marketing, Social Media, all, personal development | 1 Comment »

the secret…of good blog posts

Juni 13th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

Since I just heard Chris Brogan talking about ‘how to become a better writer’ the other day, I thought I might add my 2 cents to this topic.

Copy & Paste – but better

One of his tipps was to listen to other blogs or read current discussions. This is a statement I can support only partly. Reading some stuff is important, sure. You want to keep up with everything that happens in your business or area of interest. But it is really important to listen to the other bloggers what they are saying or discussing in order to pick it up and write about it by yourself? Sure it’s important to listen and to take part in conversations and discussions. But if there is a topic covered in a blog and I want to add my 2 cents I simply comment on the article and watch the conversation take place…there is no need for me to write about it in my own blog…

Well I do get the idea of Chris: When seeing what others are saying, you might get an idea to write about something similar what might lead to blog posts that gain some decent traffic since you’ll write about a current topic. BUT is this really your aim? Or should this be your aim? In my oppinion a blogger’s aim should be to deliver good content. About stuff that really means a lot to him. Working in the online marketing business I pretty much know, that a lot of people are creating content in order to gain traffic and not in order to provide people with great input – but I’m not quite sure whether it’s a good idea to give tips to people that suggest they should handle blogging this way.

My way

As usual I won’t tell you that this is the ONLY way to go. That’s just my way. The way I figured out to work for me pretty well. So I simply tell you something about it and you decide whether it’s a good way or maybe a dead end.

You might have realized that I changed my blogging style some months ago. I really like my ‘new’ way of blogging. I really enjoy writing again and do have a lot of ideas for topics I want to cover in the feature. Actually there are about 23 posts waiting to be finalized and published. So it pretty much works *yeah*

Getting rid

of not everything – but A LOT. Especially getting read of a lot of blogs in your feedreader. Honestly, how much blogs do you have in your reader? 50? 100? 150?? I had over 200 blogs in my feedreader ’cause I thought I might miss something ‘important’. And reading them day by day (even if I just scrolled through) made me really tired. Furthermore I really lost interest in reading blogs and did not have fun surfing through my different feedreader categories since most categories contained the same content over and over again. If you are honest, you will realize that most of the ‘important’ blogs cover the same topics – just in different styles. So why reading it all???

When I had enough of this exhausting ‘mass reading’ I decided I have to kick a lot of blogs out of my reader. Now there are 25 left – and it’s still to much. I will continue kicking some out when I’m finished with this post. ‘Cause man, that’s web 2.0 – you don’t have to chase the news or important issues…they will find you. That’s one of the coolest advantages of the so called web 2.0. Facebook and other Social Networks (don’t forget Google) will help you to keep up to date.

Independence Day

Besides becoming more relaxed and winning your surfing-fun back, you even will become more independent since you won’t think ‘oh no, mike just covered topic A, I have to write something about it too…’ – you will simply write what matters to you. And man, that’s good! That’s why your readers will read your blog. Because of what you have to say! So celebrate this day. Your independence day. It’ll save your ass on the long run…

Win some, lose some

When talking about reader you should be aware that you will lose some (the ones that subscribed to you because they subscribed to all blogs in your niche) – but I promisse you will win some to. And the newly won readers read your blog because of you. This means they are more loyal and will keep on reading or even recomending your blog.

Secret tip: Surrounding

This might sound a little odd but the surrounding can be pretty important too. In my former job I had a very very ugly and uncomfortable office. And even if I had time at work, I wasn’t able to produce good posts for my blogs. Why? I didn’t feel comfortable and when you’re not feeling comfortable you can’t let it ‘flow’. Sounds a little strange, but believe me, it’s really important to feel good while writing.

Right now it is 2 a.m. in the morning, I am lying on my sofa, surrounded by candles with the window open & listening to some relaxing ‘surf music’. This is for me the perfect way to relax and to let my thoughts flow. Of course it’s not always the same surrounding that get’s me into my writing mood. There are a lot of different situations that can be right. You simply have to figure out what is best for you. If you did, you will see it really helps.

Bottom line

You will have read about 1.000 words when this post is finished. So what can you take with you? If we’re honest, nothing spectacular and nothing new. But hey, sometimes it’s not the new things that bring us to another level. It’s how we use the things we already know. So let’s sum it up: Get rid of all the ‘just another news’ blogs, get into the right mood with the right atmosphere and, one last thing, do not push it to much. Blog posts come when thinking about a specific topic. If you don’t feel the need to write, don’t force yourself to do so. Force blogposts sound crappy and almost every user will realize that you didn’t meant what you where saying. So take your time!

And now…shut down your PC, grab a Vuvuzela and enjoy the World Cup 2010 in South Africa!

Tags: blogging
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media, all | No Comments »

Case Study: Starting a small offline business supp...

Juni 9th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

So folks. This is gonna be a hands on post. I am not saying that this is the ‘way’. But this is how we gonna do it. Friends of mine just asked me for a little help in the area of (online) marketing, branding & development, etc. Of course I said yes and I think that’s gonna be interesting to cover from the beginning. Obviously I will not reveal the real names or what exactly they are doing, but I will report as much information as possible (with their approval).

The posts regarding this case study will all be tagged with ‘case study’ so you can find them easily if you want to check back on older posts in the future. Since this is the first time I cover such work on here, I might forget something to mention or even do not think about stuff that is crucial to you. So please do not hesitate to comment and tell what we are missing. We gladly appreciate any kind of help.

Oh and if you are to lazy to check back for this series of posts…don’t worry, I’ll post a recap after everything is done. Just for you! ;-)

Initial situation

Friends of mine are about to start a offline business. They will offer a service that can’t be sold or done online but of course they know that it is important to have a good website and to promote yourself online. They do not have a heck of money, so the focus will be on not expensive activities. Our primary goal will be to gain a good place within the designated area in order to be heads up with some players that are already on the market.

First things first

We just spoke about it very briefly and settled a meeting next week. I asked them to think about what they can imagine, what’s their vision and if there are any best practices known so far. Furthermore I told them I will prepare a little ‘check list’ for our first meeting which will guide us through some initial questions. After those questions are being answered a first plan and first steps might become a little clearer.

What I definitely have to mention again is that online / viral marketing needs, even if it sounds cool, a lot of planning. I don’t think that they are the kind of lazy people who think that the internet does everything by itself, but – speaking from experience – most people tend to think online marketing is just some quick shoot from the hip. Even people who work within the business and own agencies. I’ve heard & seen it all.

Since I am working in Online Marketing I consider it a very important part of the marketing mix. Actually I consider it, in most cases, the most important part of it. But I do not make the mistake to think that my friends will focus to much on it. As mentioned before, their budget is low and they are just about to start. So we won’t be doing any earth shaking or ground breaking stuff. It’s gonna start very basic – coronated with some good & surprising viral / buzz ideas. Hopefully ;-)

Checklist

These will be the questions I will run them through in order to get a first impression and to get the planning going. Usually a lot of questions just come up when talking to clients / colleagues but I hope this list is going to be a good starting point.

General stuff

Why are you doing it? (what made you think you can do this? why do you WANT to do this?)
What do you bring to the table? (skills? studies? what makes you special in this selected area?)
What’s your vision? (be a little dreamer…what do you want it to be?)

Technical stuff

What’s your CMS?
What techniques do you use? (Flash, php, html, whatever..)
What should it look like? (what do you want to have on the page? movies, pics, polls…? maybe there are other techniques for it…)
Where do you host your site? Do you have access to all your files? If not, who has?
Who does it? (Do you have a programmer? Designer? Or ist it all DIY?)

Marketing stuff

What’s your USP? Whate makes you stand out? What can you do better than the others who are already in this segment?
What’s your USP? (yep, again!)
What’s your budget?
How much time are you willing to invest?
What do you have to offer? Attractive stuff? Specials?
Do you want interaction? (of course you want!!!)
Do you have experience using stuff like twitter & facebook? (checking if there is a understanding of how social media ‘works’)
Any ideas so far? (e.g. most people know Adwords.. – checking if there is already some knowledge)
CI ideas? (what makes sense, any ideas already?)
What’s the name of the business? ;-)
Any fixed dates? Events? Kick Off?
What’s your USP?

Planning Stuff

schedule (‘deadlines’ for whatever?)
running through all questions and check whether all are answered
determine next steps

I hope these questions will help us figuring out what we want & can do in order to boost their small biz. I will post an update after our next meeting and when decisions are made. So don’t forget to check back and to cross fingers!

Tags: case study, Online Marketing
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media, all | No Comments »

meshed up | meshed#2 recap

Juni 6th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

Yep, just another conference recap. For those of you who are not interested in one more social media conference: feel free to skip and check back for the next post ;-)

meshed#2 – organisation

Since I work for the agency who hosted meshed#2 I won’t talk much about the organisation and stuff like this ’cause this won’t sound objective. Just some quick words. I think the organisation was pretty good and everything went well. Almost no technical issues and – besides the missing twitterwall – a really cool way of showing presentation and live camera footage on the big screen. Everybody I talked to liked it and said it was ‘one of the best conferences’ they attended. So good job, I think.

blah blah blah*

*awesome lyrics originally by Ke$ha (or something like that). And since I learned by Erik Qualman that it’s cool to start with a catchy song, let’s do it this way:

And now close your eyes and count to 100. Or to 50 or to 10. Whatever. Do you remember anything important from the video? Right…

Same thing with Erik Qualman’s presentation. American style at it’s best. Nice guy, tall, always smiling and talking all the same stuff over and over again with no real valuable content. Actually I didn’t know Erik Qualman before but his CV looks quite impressive. So he’s someone who knows how to handle the business. But the presentation was nothing new and nothing to remember. He showed some cool videos with some nice numbers – but that’s it. American show off style. Might be enough to impress guys outside the biz, but nobody who’s into social media himself.

Back to the future!

Erik had two videos (and one song). I have two videos (but no seperate song – this would be to pretentious)….

Why back in time? Well….especially Augmented Reality looks a bit like future stuff, don’t you think? What Mark A.M. Kramer told us looked a bit from ‘back to the future’ or ‘minority report’. So everybody was listening closely at his talk about AR.

He hit the stage after Eric’s Keynote and pretty much rocked the whole thing. Augmented Reality the good way. Great examples, concepts for the future and a very good way of explaining things. Well done!

My second highlight, especially in terms of presentation, was Hendrik Speck. I really enjoyed his way of presenting – even if some attendees said he used to many inapropriate comparisons.

The other presentations where solid but did not surprise with something special. But I guess when working within the business, it’s not easy to be surprised.

What I didn’t like – as so often – were some discussions going on online. Some of those typical ‘want to be superstars’ – I guess every country has some of them – tried to put themselves into the spotlight afterwards. But since I think every bit of attention is to much, I simply ignore it over here ;-)

To wrap it up

Most social media conferences do not come up with surprising news. Neither did meshed#2. But compared to other conferences meshed#2 did a good job and provided us with a great networking atmosphere.

If you’re interested in some German recaps simply jump to Lisa or Yasmin.

Tags: conference, meshed#2
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media, all | No Comments »

give & take for god’s sake!

Mai 26th, 2010 by Sascha received 2 Comments »

Eighth Commandment: Practice Giving Rather Than Getting

Whereas I am not that much of a religious guy (I can’t quote every line of the bible) I consider this commandment as pretty cool and important. Not only in religious views but also in everyday life. Online and offline. Unfortunately a lot of ‘onliners’ forget about this commandment (or simply don’t care).

Old World vs. World Wide World

Some years ago Collin Powel, former US Secretary of State, referred to Europe as the ‘old world’. Obviously he was not thinking about online behaviour but I think this would also make sense in this case. As you all now borders do not exist within the world wide web (ok, somehow they do, but they don’t apply in an offline way) and not all europeans act the way I describe it right now, but a lot of them do. Same for ‘new world inhabitants’.

Over here in Europe everything seems to be a battle. If I run a blog about IT-related stuff, I want to be the only one and won’t help others in this segment. All possible readers should read my content. Nothing more, nothing less.

Within the new world it’s more like a give and take thing. Guys like Glen already explained it way better than I could ever do it. So I try to keep it brief. But just think about the world wide web as the wild wild west. And now think about what would be easier. Surviving all alone (Django style) or with the support of others (The Cartwrights). As long as you don’t have coffin like Django you might be more successful with support from Hoss, don’t you think?

Copy & Paste vs. Sharing

A part of the ‘everything is mine’ mentality is the copy & paste attitude. If people see content they like, the often copy it to their blog, tumblelog or whatever and post it in order to gain more audience. People who are used to the ‘give & take’ thing tend to simply ‘share’ interesting stories. ReTweets, Facebook, etc…they simply give credit to the original author. The way it should be. Besides the ethical correctness this has another positive aspect: The author of the original post will become aware and might even thank you for sharing his stuff. First step into helping each other…

Community & Transparency

A lot of people I know keep posting with different nicknames & accounts in all different kind of forums. Usually they don’t use their ‘well known’ nick in order to keep their image of somebody who simply knows everything. I don’t think that that’s a smart move. Being part of the community and not knowing everything but trying to improve ones knowledge (through asking) won’t hurt your reputation. Transparency & not screwing the community is a very important thing. Be honest, don’t try to sell shit and be thankful for the help you receive. That’s a huge part in order to get the ‘magic’ happen.

What to do?

Now that I just ranted about all the bad things happening out there you might ask what to do in order to make the web a better place and yourself a part of the new world. It’s quite simple:

Mention other blogs / ressources if they have content you like
Feature other bloggers if they can provide good content
‘Like’ their stuff on facebook and other social media or bookmarking sites.
Link (and forget the ‘nofollow’ tag – ‘dofollow’ is the way) to good blogs, articles or ressources
Be part of the community. Answer questions, help others without thinking of you ROI 24/7
Be transparent. Show what you know, what you don’t know, what you do & how you do it.

So if you want help from the Cartwrights, be prepared to hand them your helping hand too. It’s going to be worth it. Even though Django had some success rocking the wild wild west all alone – he died the same way. Try to remember that.

Tags: community
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media, all | 2 Comments »

informational overkill

Mai 18th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

Feedreader, Facebook, ICQ, Twitter, Blogs, Badoo, Orkut, Direct Message, Reply, Buzz, RSS, Fanpages, like, unlike, reply, myspace, netlog….

Great lyrics by Bonaparte (video above):

“You know to much to much to much to much”.

But actually I wouldn’t say you know – but you read to much to much to much to much…

Most of us know this point where everything is simply to much, right? You open up your feedreader, have a look at your twitter stream or your social stream and simply don’t care about the news on there. You can’t imagine what you’ve read 2 hours ago and everything seems to become to much. But you can’t stop consuming news, ’cause you need to know what’s up to date. Vicious Web 2.0 Circle (VWC)?. Kinda, but the cure is quite easy!

close your eyes, give me your hand

do you understand? (small lyrical madness today). But honestly. Close your eyes or at least your notebook, pc, feedreader…just ignore all those messages coming in. It’s the world wide web. They are coming in all the time. Every single minute, every day. YOU CAN NOT READ EVERYTHING. It’s simply impossible and to time consuming. Relax, take it easy!

have a little faith in…

yourself! You are good! You know what’s going on! Otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading some strange online marketing / social media / whatever blog. Little kidding ;-) But please have faith in yourself. Have faith in the sources you picked and in your ability to extract the important from the unimportant. As mentioned above, you can’t read anything. And with your growing social networks the news are getting more and more likely to find us – we don’t need to hunt them down.

chill out!

I know pretty well that it’s not easy to chill out and to relax. completely. When being at home, the Mac / PC always runs, the mail client is open and twitter is there too. When not being at home we have at least our mobile phone to be online. Forget about it! Lay your mobile aside, quit your mail client, take a offline related book or go for a walk, swim, go biking or whatever. and not only for 2 hours or so. take your time. A weekend offline can work miracles.

Getting back on track

You know what my favorite button is when I’m coming back from a weekend offline? At least my favorite button in my feedreader. It’s the ‘mark all as read‘ button. I simply scroll down my ‘all time favorite blogs’ and give it a quick glance. But usually I skip all those blogposts since I simply rely on my network. Great posts that are worth having a look at will be mentioned or shared within my network. I might not get some posts of interesting newcomers or niche blogs, but hey…that’s life.

Tools

I really like tools and applications. But in this case, no way! There are a lot of tools out there who claim to help you manage your information stream. But I think all you need is a feedreader, a good twitter client and brains. Information overkill often comes with tool overkill. So take care and don’t use to many gadgets. It might get time consuming to check all your tools too.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information

Always remember this quote by Oscar Wilde! If you read something it does not always have to be something extraordinary valuable! Give it a try. Go offline for just a few days and do not think you will miss something spectacular or extremly important. We already invented the wheel, fire, notebooks and facebook & google ;) So no worries. You won’t miss the next big thing – I promisse! Time is a valuable thing and should be used wisely. There is no outcome for you in it, if you’re only all the time without really achieving things. When coming back from a weekend offline you will be motivated and full of new ideas.

Tags: information, overkill, time
Posted in Life, Online Marketing, Social Media, all | No Comments »

Yes we can! | Austrian SEO

Mai 18th, 2010 by Sascha received No Comments »

Alright folks this is kinda commercial break. Well actually not really since I don’t get money for posting. So it’s more an announcement:

The first austrian SEO conference is on it’s way. With some pretty cool speakers and a nice location in Salzburg Austria now awakes from it’s sleeping beauty existence and is about to host a noteworthy SEO event.

SEOkomm will take place at 17.11. & 18.11.2010 in Salzburg, Upper Austria.

Already announced speakers are:

Christoph C. Cemper
Marcus Tandler
Jens Fauldrath
Ralph Tegtmeier
Evert Velduijzen
Dominik Wojcik
Pelle Boese

Sounds pretty cool I think. Most of those guys are well known even outside Germany & Austria. So I’m really looking forward to this event and hope to see some of you guys over there in beautiful Salzburg.

Tags: SEO
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

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