If you are offering Intellectual Incentives, you are offering ideas, tips, hints and full blown tutorials on how to do something (Just as I am in this Blog) Here are some of the things which I have found help with offering this kind of incentive.
Chances are your subject, say how to incentivise your blog, is already covered by many other websites, so it is important that you offer a unique perspective on the subject. I tend to get an idea for a how to article from the net and turn it around, and then provide a link back to an article that gives a step by step guide on the nuts and bolts. I do this because I believe that I am good at providing an Intellectual Framework to a subject, and that if there is a good nuts and bolts ‘How To’ I do not need to regurgitate the topic, I can act as an editor to my readers and simply recommend that site.
If you have a new or virgin topic for a tutorial, it is important that you provide a sound perspective on it. Readers are very unforgiving for erroneous or simply wrong information. Therefore it is highly important to be confident in both writing style and content for your tutorial. Don’t be afraid of spending more time on these than you would ordinarily on a blog as the kudos that comes with a good tutorial will pay you back in spades. You will become a figure of authority in that field to your readership, increasing a feeling of loyalty and an increase in return readership. Read my other thoughts on Similarity of interest in the introduction to this series of blogs here.
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.
