What’s on your radar?

You’re busily going about your work, doing what’s necessary to keep things moving, reacting as things come in.

What can you do to be more take a wider view and be more proactive?

A good start is to get an idea of what’s going to be taking place in your city over the next three to six months – we’re talking conferences, festivals, exhibitions, even concerts.

You will be amazed at the variety and number of events taking place right under your nose.

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Group-buying local deals site fever

Ever since Groupon started making a big noise in the US, and Livingsocial moved into the one-day sale market, similar sites have cropped up around the globe.

How it works

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OK, so you’re remarkable, now what?

Why local business and tourist venues should enable customers to remark about them

We should by now all be aware of the importance of being remarkable, but one thing that’s often missing is making it REALLY easy for people to share that “remarkability” with their friends with the simple act of giving them a free wifi connection.

Mobile devices are getting smarter, more capable, high-speed mobile data is becoming more widespread, but that doesn’t mean businesses are off the hook when it comes to hooking their customers up to a fast, free internet connection (yes, I’m looking at you Hilton, Marriot and any other short-sighted money grubbing hotel that bilks their customers up to $20 a day for internet access). In fact sometimes the free wifi in itself is remarkable enough for a mention.

Given that very few data plans remain unlimited and in many cases a lot of people at a venue may be from out-of-country so have no data plan or desire to rack up huge roaming charges, it’s the very least you can do to be a good host.

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My 10 Base Install WordPress Plugins

There are some plugins that are standout candidates to be rolled into the core of WordPress as ‘canonical’, ‘core’, ‘anointed’ or whatever Automattic end up calling them. I just think of them as essential.

For now you’ll just have to install them manually. These are the plugins that I install into a WordPress site as soon as I set it up, with a little explanation of what it does and why you want it.

To install a plugin, go to the ‘Plugins > Add New’ page in your WordPress Admin area.

WP Supercache
It’s all too easy to go overboard with WordPress plugins but each of them takes time to process a post, slowing down your blog. QP Supercache helps speed things up by storing cached pages. There are some confusing advanced settings and for maximum compatibility I tend to leave it on ‘half-on’ for the WP Touch plugin.

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Who needs social media when you’re too busy being awesome?

Catching up on some blogs this weekend, I found this post about Comcast’s usage of Twitter by Lisa Barone over at Outspoken Media.

Not living in the US I don’t have the opportunity to try Comcast’s service. My overall opinion of the way Comcast use Twitter is that it’s great for the people who get help that way, though it creates a two-tier support system – people savvy enough to turn to @comcastcares get ‘premium hotline’ support. Those who aren’t so connected (if your internet connection is out, you’re probably using your iPhone) are subjected to phone trees and hold music. If the team that use Twitter in some way can generalise problems and drive organisational improvements then I can see the up-side. Otherwise @comcastcares is just an insiders’ priority support channel.

Anyway, to my point. I’ve been in the Czech Republic since 2001. Over that time I’ve used numerous internet providers (cable, ADSL, Wi-Fi), but the one that’s always my first choice if it’s available (a few years ago we even paid to have a building wired up) is UPC‘s cable internet service.

Every year since I moved here their offerings have got faster, when their infrastructure could take it, or cheaper. They’ve driven a stake through the ADSL internet provision business of Telefonica O2 (previously Czech Telecom) by always beating them on price AND quality of service. They were the first ISP here to get rid of FUP limits. They don’t have blanket coverage of the city yet but where they offer service, you’d be crazy to go with anyone else.

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How much is a fan?

I’ve been experimenting with Facebook advertising, with relatively small amounts of money.

One of the surprises is just how inexpensive and precise you can be with your advertising on Facebook. You can really dig deep into demographics that aren’t possible with other forms of advertising.

I set up two campaigns, both as cost-per-click rather than cpm (cost per thousand). Both campaigns were for local businesses in Prague which are primarily targeted at the English-speaking expatriate population of Prague. Geographic targeting isn’t available at city level for the Czech Republic but that’s not particularly important, I was able to use the ‘language’ filter to target people using Facebook in English, which brings the potential audience down to just the people were interested in targeting.

Interesting lessons from using that criterion: choosing English US and English UK is essential. The default language for Facebook is American English, British English having been added later, so many people would never have switched.

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Missing the point about Pepsi’s Before you Score App?

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Lots of vitriol being poured out about Pepsico’s AMP UP Before You Score branded app (see Twitter search results to the left) and this Mashable piece.

Most of the opinion (most of which is just people retweeting) is overwhelmingly negative, but then how many people of these people have actually tried it out?

I did, and this app has its tongue placed very firmly in its cheek. Would a branded app supporting a fairly bland energy drink have got this much coverage or attention if it didn’t pose as misogynistic?

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Back to School

A few weeks ago I sat an exam for the first time in many years. It was the online certification test for Inbound Marketing University, a project driven by Hubspot, providers of a web based software solution that is designed to assist SMEs with, well, inbound marketing. The ‘professors’ of Inbound Marketing are all high level practitioners in their relative fields – it reads like a who’s who of ‘new marketing’ types.

What’s Inbound Marketing anyway?

Inbound Marketing is the antithesis of many elements of traditional marketing – it’s about creating relationships and establishing a presence, making potential customers aware of you in a more natural way than interruptive tactics like TV advertising.

Course overview

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Are comments on blogs too long?

Ever notice how most review sites ask you to sum up your review with a one-liner?

I wish blog comments worked that way – write a comment over 50 words and you have to write a very concise summary. Maybe I’ve become conditioned by the soundbite nature of Twitter, but it seems to me that most comments could be summarised in 10 words or less.

Brevity is the soul of wit

Reading blog posts takes time, often there’s some significant action in the comments too, and reading them can take much longer than the original post.
Some comments are just a ‘yes, I agree’, others have valuable information, often there’s no way to tell, and even skimming a three paragraph comment takes time. Read the rest of this entry »

Case study – the sports bar – part three – summer update

Just a quick update on the website situation

Web traffic is holding steady (even though it’s off-season for their main sports).

Now number 2 result on Google.com (above the local 10-pack) for a search for “Sports Bar Prague”. Beating out sportsbar.cz

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Not performing as well on Google.cz (which Firefox defaults to when you’re in the Czech Republic) because there is no Czech version of the site. Though the Czech language version of the Facebook Fan Page that we set up does make a showing lower down the first page, compensating somewhat.

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