"Net - fluence" the power of you, me, them and us.

The internet didn’t just appear one day on everyone’s computer nor did it become the world’s most popular communication tool because one person said it was a good idea or that some company decided to market it as the next big must have item of the decade. No my friends, you, me, them, us and Al Gore made the internet what it is today. Everyone that has an email account, has made a purchase online, used the internet to lookup information or has added text to a website is guilty of Net -fluencing. We have either directly and/or indirectly influence business, organizations, friends, strangers, business and even politics. According to a February 2009 Harvard Business School study “Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network” Our ability to Net - fluence increased as we embrace web 2.0 technologies and online social networks. The study classifies social networking members into groups based on the number of network connections that person had. Users who have limited connection to other members were not influenced by friends’ purchases. (This group represents 48% of the users). However, a positive Net - fluence effect was observed in moderately connected users. These users exhibit “keeping up with the Joneses” behavior. On average, this Net - fluence translates into a 5% increase in revenues. (This group represents 40% of the users). In contrast to this group, highly connected users show a negative effect of contagion. To maintain distinctiveness, these users tend to reduce their purchases of items when they see their friends buying them. This negative social effect reduces the revenue for this group by more than 14%. (This group represents 12% of the users). Essentially, People that don’t have a lot of connections don’t get influenced - no connections / no influence. You don’t need a Harvard degree to understand that. People that have moderate connections show a positive influence – this is the “keeping up with the Joneses” effect and the desire to be part of the norm. People that have a lot of connections show a negative influence –Recommendation are often seen as sponsored ads and the connections see themselves as trend setting non conformist. So the more people that are connect to you, the less likely you will able to sell them on buying a great car, going to a wonderful restaurant or getting that new digital camera. I like my medium size circle of friends. We gladly share experiences, thoughts, questions and more importantly I trust what they say is sincere.

Read more...

Web 2.0 Best Practices

Before we discuss Web 2.0 best practices, we need to look at the basic rules that apply to maintaining a website.
Rule 1 - Your site must be found by your intended audience.
Rule 2 - You must provide intuitive access to relevant information.
Rule 3 - You must figure out how to keep the website profitable.

That’s it: Get people in, give them what they want, and find a way to pay for it.

In making a plan for accomplishing the three basic rules, you will benefit if you understand the importance and advantages of social networking. Fortunately, you don’t have to develop social networking applications or widgets—there are plenty out there—but you will need to develop best practices that will aid you in brand positioning, understanding your users, lead generation, and product/services deployment in order to have success with your website.

Many advances in web technologies, design disciplines and audience adoption make web 2.0 possible. In my next few blogs I will share with you the “best practices” that make a site successful and help position brands.


In making a plan for accomplishing the three basic rules, you will benefit if you understand the importance and advantages of social networking. Fortunately, you don’t have to develop social networking applications or widgets—there are plenty out there—but you will need to develop best practices that will aid you in brand positioning, understanding your users, lead generation, and product/services deployment in order to have success with your website.
Many advances in web technologies, design disciplines and audience adoption make web 2.0 possible. In my next few blogs I will share with you the “best practices” that make a site successful and help position brands.

Let’s start with Security and Governance.

To ensure that you meet the needs of the site contributors, as well as those who consume the content, I recommend the following practices:


Present control and security information up front
Have all content contributors register with a valid email address, provide the contributors with a personal page, encourage them to add a brief bio, add a link on all postings back to the contributor’s personal page (with a photo, if possible), and establish a feedback process for comments and connections.

Identify yourself and your intentions
Clearly identify yourself, your employees and their titles. Don’t interact with people behind a mask because it ticks them off and negates any trust that you may have. Tell the people why you are on the site and why you are contributing to the postings.

Post and respond to both negative and positive postings
Establish areas on your site that are not as heavily promoted to facilitate postings that are not as heavily filtered. Keep in mind that, if all of the postings are positive, your site will be viewed as a marketing site and NOT as a resource.

Provide a comfortable environment
Establish site rules and behaviors, implement processes for monitoring and reporting infractions of the rules, and provide a link to your privacy policy and terms of use on all pages.

I hope that you find this information helpful and that you will contribute some feedback.

Read more...

Does Size Matter?

Some think that the more text on your Web page, the harder it will be for search engines to properly index your site. If you are concerned with page “bloating,” there are a few things that you should consider.

First, there are two categories of Web site text:

• static text is hard coded into the page properties and generally used to define the site/page purpose
• dynamic text, which comes from external sources like databases, site editors (user generated content) and RSS feeds.

If your site only contains static text, then you need to remember the keyword density rule of 5% and evaluate the volume of text being presented to your audience who like to scan copy. I am confident that Google’s spiders can index your content, but the question you need to ask is: Are you overwhelming your visitors?

Allowing your site visitor to decide to read more is a good way to provide a scan-able site for visitors, empowering interested readers, adding depth to your site, and enhancing your site-reporting capabilities.

If your site contains dynamic text, then you still need to remember the keyword density rule of 5% for your static page text. However, you may also need to weave keywords into your dynamic text every so often to ensure that your audience and search engines are clear about the site’s purpose.

A recent YouTube video by Matt Cutts from Google clams that Google can handle indexing large page file size without any problems.

Read more...

Social media the new process of knowledge building

Online communities are destinations where people with common interests can gather to share thoughts, research, comments, consume content and read opinions. Sites that include social media features, such as discussion forums, comment walls, blogs and wikis foster communication and provide today’s site visitors with the ability to not only consume content, but also to contribute to the site /community if they wish to do so.

These online communities mimic the real-life knowledge building process. Just like when buying a car, we start with independent research. Next, we ask others about their experiences or thoughts, and finally, we listen to what the salesperson has to say. Online communities are simply natural extensions of this process—one that we are all comfortable with.

Businesses can no longer ignore the power of the online communities. Social media now enables a powerful, trusted and growing form of online dialogue. Online communities need to be seen as opportunities to build relationships and to allow consumers to share in the process of knowledge building. Businesses need to position themselves as resources to the very people they are looking to attract and allow these consumers to teach them what they want.

Online communities that provide areas for independent research, prospect–consumer–brand communications, customer comments and brand content are laying the groundwork for relationship building and loyalty.

Want numbers?

Two-thirds of the US population will read a blog post at least once a month by 2012. (Research by eMarketer)

65% of people who read blogs do so explicitly to get an opinion. (Research by Synovate)

Conversations are taking place online right now about your company, product and service … with or without you. Consider the cost of ignoring the dialogue.

Read more...