You’ve got the killer idea, you have the marketing sorted and you may even have launched your site, but what do you do now to keep ahead of the competition? Bricks and Mortar businesses utilize a number of cognitive tools, mostly working documents contained in a business plan, to help them asses’ success and plan for the future. In this series of articles I am going to introduce a number of aspects used in e-commerce as well as real world businesses which are shown to improve business effectiveness.
There are many different types of business plan used, from very simple documents to highly complex ones using econometric and accounting data, there is no right way to produce a business plan, but there are many different tips and tools. This series will cover many of the more common tools, and introduce a few proforma spreadsheets which will help with planning the next steps for your business. It will include;
SWOT Analysis
Mission Statements, Aims and Goals and Benchmark measures
The Balanced Scorecard
Cash flow Analysis
Key Personnel Models
Competition Analysis, based on Porters Five Forces.
Whilst none of these aspects deals significantly with SEO or content development (Please see my series of articles on Strategic Content Development) They are all important aspects of business planning, and especially with the level of competition in all niches of the net, it has never been more important for a webmaster to be aware of all of the tools available to help grow a business.
Writing a business plan need not take an enormous amount of time, and they have huge benefits to the webmaster, containing many of the common sense aspect of the business as well as goals and measures of success in one document means that one can easily develop a direction for a business and measure how far the business has come, and how far it still has to go.
The first part of the business plan should be a one page introduction which includes the following information
The Name of the Business
The Niche of the Website and a List of SEO Keywords along with a short estimation of the size of the potential niche
The Names of the Main competition, their page rank and any other pertinent data
This should not be over long and is a single sheet reminder of who what and how you do the things you do.
After learning how to use Twitter..
Twitter has many applications for the Business User (web based or otherwise) and the following are just some examples
Feedback
Does your website appeal to people, is it easy to use, does it get the message across effectively. Ask people, if you have a following on Twitter, you can ask people to appraise your site, generating traffic, and who knows, if they like it they may come back.
Networking
The platform is a perfect way to connect with a network of peers as well as potential users, sharing ideas and product news/business tips and tricks. It’s fast and effective and basically free.
An Intranet
If you work with others, separated by distance and connected by computer, Twitter provides a connectivity tool similar to a local intranet. It’s easy and free to use. This especially useful for webmasters as they are often dealing with a number of people who are only connected by the internet.
Branding
The most important aspect to modern marketing is the Brand; it is used excessively in internet based business to establish new sites/products in a niche to users. Whilst it is difficult to establish a brand, it is often even more difficult to communicate that brand effectively to a wide enough audience. Twitter allows a free medium for communicating the brand of your company to interested users. (see my article here for tips on Branding)
An Office Tool
Schedule meetings, arrange diaries and manage time with twitter. If you find yourself using Twitter on a regular basis then why not use it as an all in one tool for organizing yourself. It is possible to utilize the application to manage all aspects of your working day.
However you use Twitter, you will find that it is an effective application which can benefit many aspects of your business.
The Wide Wide World of Blogging, Roman Circus or Italian Renaissance?
Bloggers are at extremes highly competitive and secretive, and cooperative and sharing. Indeed the dichotomy between the different attitudes to blogging are becoming polarised in the two extremes. Are bloggers the equivalent of gladiators in the roman arena, or are they the intellectual equivalent of the great renaissance artists and philosophers who believed in sharing and developing ideas together?
It is true that the internet offers a media for instantaneously sharing and discussing all things under the sun, but at times we are jealous and petty about the trading of ideas, calls of plagiarism and I was here first, are becoming more prevalent in the blogging community. Whilst we all want to have an opinion on a subject the very real phenomena of plagiarism is on the increase, and many lazy bloggers are utilising it to build up content. There are those, however, and I count myself amongst them proudly, who believe that there is nothing new under the sun, and that all we can offer is our own unique perspective. I take ideas from other blogs, some ideas I generate spontaneously, only to discover at some point in the future that another had already written, almost identical, articles to mine. Plagiarism is being drowned in a vast sea of people who are getting online and blogging.
Can we ever be truly original? I don’t think so, or at least only in very specialist and advanced studies, say physics or pure mathematics, and the number of people being truly original in those fields are few and far between. What we are doing, by posting our thoughts, or tips and tricks is acting as an editor to the collective unconscious. We are refining, polishing and representing ideas and thoughts which exist in the minds of millions of others. I believe that the blog is the single most important cultural invention since the printing press for the dissemination of ideas and information. We are participating in the modern renaissance, and every effort should be made by all responsible members of our community to remain free from censor and hindrance.
