The depth of vision expressed in Bill Gates’s “Content is King” article from 1996 is truly incredible, and reaffirms my notion that “There’s Nothing New Under the Sun” when it comes to human behavior.

How this relates to Online Marketing is a theme I’ve personally been developing in courses and seminars for the past 5 years (See: http://kpis.co/2012/02/11/what-do-you-know-about-the-first-50-years-of-internet-history and http://kpis.co/2011/10/24/3-things-to-know-for-your-website-to-succeed).

Bill was wise to use the ascent of televised-media to predict how the web would evolve, even though by 1996 this was probably a realization that was beginning to be obvious to quite a few people:

By 1996 the web was already 6 years old, & mainstream enough for Time magazine to dedicate a cover to Marc Andreessen – co-founder of Netscape

Personally I believe the next-to-nil production and syndication costs, coupled with the obvious benefits of being a publisher, were, and will continue to be, the most important factors to the incredible ballooning of online content.

What I feel Bill may have missed in his prediction relates to the actual quality of the content, and what kinds of content would become popular (I bet he never dreamt it would be dogs riding skateboards…).

In hindsight it was probably obvious – the realization that “Panem et Circenses” are what the thronging masses really want was already old when the Roman empire was young…
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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oninnovation/4996229285

These past few days I was working on a presentation that tells the story of:

The Internet’s first +50 years 

We don’t normally think about it, but most of us, despite being everyday benefactors of the bounty this technology generates, know precious little about the amazing story of how it came to be.

Don’t believe me? Test yourself:

…afterwards you might wanna browse the presentation below…

What the Hell is the Internet anyway?

Hopefully you did better on that little quiz than I did the first time I encountered most of those questions while preparing this. At any rate you’ll find the correct answers, and the stories behind them, in the following presentation:

If you enjoyed my presentation I’d appreciate it if you’d “Like”, share, comment, and otherwise help spread the word.

Referenced Websites:

1993:

• whitehouse.gov
• un.org

• yahoo.com
• amazon.com

What next? >>> HOMEWORK!

• Worksheet 1: http://kuku.nu/websitegoalsheet
• Worksheet 2: http://kuku.nu/WebsitePlanner

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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasotraspaso/4444291348

2011 was a meaningful year for me. It’s the year Thailand matured from being where I live, into being my home. It’s also the year my father passed away.

Significant events in their own right, together they led me to think about my life, and the impact I wish to have on my adopted home. Being Jewish naturally I found myself thinking about he traditions and values of my people, which is when I remembered a treatise on charity written by Rabbi Maimonides*, one of the greatest Jewish scholars to have ever lived:

“The highest level of charity is to strengthen the name of another until he no longer needs mercy”

It’s the same idea embodied in the parable about teaching a man how to fish instead of giving him one, and in this spirit I decided to launch a

Free** Web Marketing Class

I’ll be running a free, English language, Online Marketing Class for BNI members, business owners and entrepreneurs.

• When: The course will run every 2nd Thursday, starting on the 26th of January,
  from 10:00-12:00am.
• Where: at the S31 Hotel on the 22nd floor (location map here).

The class will be based on a paid 6 week course I used to teach at the Jerusalem Business Development Center - a government backed non-profit organization for supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs. The room has place for about 20 people so to guarantee your seat you must pre-register:

Our 1st lesson will be based on my workshop “3 Things to Know for Your Website to Succeed“. A full syllabus will be handed out in the class.

As always comments, questions, etc. are very appreciated, also feel free to share this with your friends and associates.

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* Maimonides, or “The Rambam” as he is known to Jews (הרמב”ם - it’s the acronym of his name – Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon), was not only the foremost Jewish scholar of his time, but also a traveler, philosopher, and one of the most important doctors of his age. His skill as a physician was so widely known that he was appointed Court Physician to the great Saladin. He was a true renaissance man 200 years before his time. With Jewish sages as a rule, the moment someone has their own acronym, you know you’re dealing with the big league…

**  A donation hat will be passed around. All monies collected will be donated to the Camillian Home in loving memory of my father. Think of it as “Merit Making” : )

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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/1535619818

One of the questions I’ve been repeatedly asked by clients is:

“What details should I provide on my website’s product pages?”

The short answer is: All of them!

But seriously…

A more elaborate answer is that works well with clients that have existing sales experience is:

Be sure to include all the details you list when making successful pitches in face-to-face sales situations.  

Here are some ideas:

• Product category
• Product name – Include keywords
• Description – Detailed, KEYWORD RICH
• Product image – Ideally no smaller than 250px * 250px
• Additional images – Filenames also serve SEO purposes

Electronics and hardware

For electric goods and hardware you might also consider:

• Technical information
• Product Testimonials and Reviews
• Warranty details
• Support details

Beauty, health and wellness

Beauty, health and wellness products can list:

• Benefits
• Usage, dosage and application
• Ingredients
• Packaging and delivery (some items require discretion)

Luxury goods

Luxury items typically would list:

• Audience
• Usage tips
• Pricing info
• Product options: Color, finish, size, etc

Money making/saving extras

Additional details that can greatly increase your income:

• Up-sell/Cross-sell opportunities
• Translated description

Soliciting customer reviews and tags is a great low-effort way to generate additional unique content for your product pages. The benefits of collecting user feedback on every product obviously far exceed the realm of ecommerce…

Long term benefits

In the long run investing in your product descriptions generates additional benefits that are less obvious initially. Benefits you’re more likely to enjoy include:

• Increased conversions and sales
• Better likelihood to have decent search ranking
• Ready for product listing enhancements such as ecommerce videos

As many of you may already know, I’m a proud member of BNI* United Bangkok – The city’s fastest growing English speaking business networking chapter in the city:

* – If you’re unfamiliar with BNI see the end of this post for more info

On the 12th of January 2012 we’ll be celebrating our 1st Birthday Party and you’re cordially invited.

What’s Planned:

• Networking Reception
• Recognition of Networking leaders for 2011
• Dinner buffet (wine and beer included)

When:

• January 12th, 2012, 7pm

Where:

• Le Meridien Suriwong, 40/5 Surawong Road,Bangrak
• Map:

View Larger Map

What you can expect

This is more than just a party, it’s your opportunity to meet and connect with some of Bangkok’s best connected business owners & entrepreneurs, and kickstart your prosperity this year with some new business contacts and leads.

For more information about the event see: http://bniunitedbkk.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/777.

RSVP

Please, before the 4th of January 201, RSVP your attendance here, or via email to susanna@sawadee-travel.com.

I’m looking forward to welcoming you…

Can’t make it? No worries!

If you’re unable to attend this event, you’re still welcome to visit our regular weekly morning meeting and breakfast. For more info, see: http://bniunitedbkk.wordpress.com/where-we-meet

Best Regards,
Mike Darnell

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PS – What is BNI?

BNI – (Business Network International) – is the world’s largest Business Referral Network with over 133’000 members in 49 countries and business passed last year of over 87 billion Thai Baht.

BNI prides itself on being different to other Networking Groups for the following reasons:

• It follows a structured meeting style focusing on the business growth of each of its members
• It offers members education on General Business Practice, Leadership Skills, Networking Skills, etc.

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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianglanz/1094844245/

Magento = open source ecommerce

Magento is one of the most powerful and robust open source ecommerce platforms available to online vendors. We love it for it’s smart feature set, robustness, and intuitive interface. It’s our “platform of choice” when building ecommerce websites for our clients, and its ongoing development is pretty much guaranteed now that it has been purchased by Paypal.

This post is dedicated to helping you edit your products using Magento’s Product Management screens

Start by logging in

Usually your login URL will be something like this: http://YourShopName.com/index.php/admin

You should be seeing a screen like this:

Magento's admin login panel

Enter your user-name and password as required

Dismiss Messages

Magento often flashes welcoming system messages directly after you access the back-end interface. Simply dismiss this:

Dismiss welcoming messages

Catalog Management

Go to “Catalog>Manage Products“:

Access Magento products' management

Product Management Tabs

Magento offers detailed control over every aspect of your product listings via the detailed “Product Management” page:

Product Management General tab

General Tab

1. Top menu – This is where you’ll find all the major editing commands: Reset, Delete, Duplicate, etc. Don’t forget to “Save” your work, otherwise your edits will not be registered by the system…
2. Detail Editor – Enter all the details for each of your product’s attributes here.
3. Description - Governs product page display text. See the screenshot below to get a better grasp of back-end/front-end  relation
4. Short Description - Governs display text in aggregate pages like Categories and Search results
5. Status - Controls front-end display
6. URL Key - Selecting a meaningful URL Key will assist your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts
7. Detail Tabs - Enable access to more product attributes

Magento's Meta Information tab

Product Categories Tab

Product category selection is point-and-click simple with Magento’s Product Categories tab:

Product Category screen

Magento Backend to Frontend mapping

The following images give an indication of how information entered in Magento’s back-end is rendered on the front-end customer facing website:

Need more?

• Product management – Official Magento Wiki - http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/3_-_store_setup_and_management/catalog/adding-a-new-product
• Using Magento’s import Export tool: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/3_-_store_setup_and_management/import_export/export_tool

Video and Mobile Web are Converging

It doesn’t take a painstaking study to realize that Web Video consumption and Mobile Internet adoption are closely related. Being a child of the 70s I was recently quite impressed to learn that we’re  now spending more time reading our phones that we do newspapers and magazines.

Reading - Newspapers and Magazines vs. Mobile phones - Stats

Simply go on the public transport system closest to where you live and check out what people are doing

Mobile Web usage on public transport in Asia

Scenes like the one above are a commonplace occurrence in pretty much any urban setting on the face of the planet

Everywhere where they have electricity that is... | Credit: Earth at Night NASA

The Argument 1 – We prefer Video content

Given the choice we all prefer viewing video content over static images and text. Just look at Youtube’s Alexa ranking:

Youtube 3rd on Alexa on the 14th Dec 2011

From the above it’s arguable that we love web video only slightly less than we do our social  content, but let’s not forget that nearly 60,000,000 of Facebook’s 750,000,000 users were spending  time viewing videos there too.

…When they weren’t busy doing other stuff:

Sad how true this is...

The point is this:

Mobile’s are making the web more accessible to more people every day.
This new audience will be increasing video views at least in proportion to it’s comparative size.

The Argument 2 – Video is ideal for mobile consumption

Check out that image above again – See all those kids in the train?

Given decent download speeds, which do you think they’d rather be doing?

My bet is this poll will come out with video viewing in a strong lead.

Mobile form factors are badly suited to consuming text content:

1. The small screen size allows for display of only a limited amount of text at any given time, and must have a scroll mechanism for anything above two sentences.
2. Reading in the conditions the mobile web is often accessed is far from a pleasant experience, with movement and jostling causing eye fatigue at accelerated rates.

What this means for you?
Plan Video Content for Mobile Campaigns  

Group buying site Ensogo has a QR code based billboard campaign running in Bangkok

• 3 Things You Need to Know for Your Website to Succeed
• Viral Videos – Are they good for you?
• A Founder’s interview with Richard Buckley from Honk Kong based startup PureMetalCards.com
• From our partners: Case Study – Product Videos Boost Jewlery Conversions by 247%
• Christmas Party!!!

3 Things You Need to Know for Your Website to Succeed

Originally given as a seminar at one of Mrs Pacharee (Nui) Pantoomano’s monthly BNOW events, this FREE, do-it-yourself online workshop is a smart place to begin planning your next online venture…
Read more: http://kpis.co/2011/10/24/3-things-to-know-for-your-website-to-succeed

Viral Videos – Are they good for YOU?

The “buzz” surrounding online marketing videos, and people’s expectations of what video should be able to do for their businesses is rather narrowly focused on Viral Videos. But is it justified?
Read more: http://kpis.co/2011/11/17/viral-videos-are-they-good-for-you

Interview with Richard Buckley from Honk Kong based startup PureMetalCards.com

When most people think of startup culture and innovative online businesses they usually associate them with Silicon Valley, MIT, and other North American tech hubs. I met Richard Buckley to hear about his unique metal business card startup, and his reasons for basing it in Hong Kong…
Read more (my debut publication on Technorati): http://technorati.com/business/small-business/article/new-hong-kong-based-startup-enables1

Product Videos Boost Jewlery Conversions by 247%

Everybody pretty much agrees that having videos on your website is a good thing. The problem is finding reliable resources capable of quantifying just how much of a “Good Thing” they are…
Read more: http://blog.treepodia.com/2011/11/product-videos-boost-jewlery-conversions-by-247-case-study

Join BNI United, Univesal & Inspire as well as BNOW for a movie star themed Christmas PARTY!

On Wednesday, the 14th of December, we’ll all be getting together for a movie star themed Christmas party at Red Restaurant on Thonglor soi 9. Entrance is 1,000 THB including buffet refreshments and soft drinks. All benefits donated to Camillian Home and Umphang M. School
Read more: http://bniunitedbkk.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/bni-bnow-christmas-starry-fancy-night

A LinkedIn company page enables you to:

1. Better market your company via increased visibility and credibility 
   
2. Publish jobs for fees starting at US$95 for a 30-day posting in Thailand
3. Publish services and request testimonials from clients

Watch out!

How to remove

Incredibly LinkedIn doesn’t allow company page administrators to remove spammy employee submissions from the company via the company page admin panel. The only way to do this is to file a request with LinkedIn support via this URL: https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/rmfcp

What you need

To file your request you’ll need to have a confirmed company email address registered to your LinkedIn account – i.e. to remove someone from Vimi’s page you must have an @vimi.co email address.

You’ll also have to provide the following information:

• The full name of the person
• A screenshot of your Company Page where that person appears
• An explanation of why they should be removed

Removing someone - Form details

LinkedIn will review your request and let you know when the person has been removed, or if they need more information. You’ll be taken to a support ticket page where you can follow the handling progress:

Linkedin Support Ticket

Viral Videos - Is the Hype good for YOU?

Social media ROI is increasingly becoming a topic of interest to Marketing Directors. I recently published my own two cents here – “Social Media KPIs?“ and this post is something of a follow up spawned from the insights gained there, and from my ongoing work with Treepodia following the uses of Online Video for Ecommerce.

Interestingly the “buzz” surrounding online marketing videos, and people’s expectations of what video should be able to do for their businesses is rather narrowly focused on Viral Videos. There are even weekly updated “Greatest Hits” charts dedicated to following them

Viral Videos – The Hype

If you happen to have somehow missed out on the buzz, a word of explanation is in order… Viral Videos are marketing and advertising clips with amusing, shocking, sexy, or silly content that spread virally from one viewer to the next via social sharing (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

The most successful Viral video campaigns have reached millions of online views, driving social media key performance indicators for the commissioning companies through the roof.

It’s important to consider that silly, shocking and sexy don’t necessarily fit every business. The most popular videos on Youtube are mostly of cats and dogs doing crazy crap – very cute but sell nothing…

Are Viral Videos Right For YOU?

Some times it seems like so much attention is given by businesses to the details of creating a viral video, that little or no thought is given to the important things:

Advertising campaigns aren’t a goal unto themselves. They’re a means to an end.

A bazillion hits on Youtube are great only if you can use them to boost SALES

What will make a successful viral video is nearly impossible to predict. I only dare say it seems anything with a puppy, kitten or baby in it has a better chance of making it…

Most of the companies lucky enough to have created a video that “went viral” were one-shot-wonders and never recreated their success.

An SME doesn’t need millions of Youtube views, and if successful, is probably ill equipped to deal with the publicity Tsunami that follows.

OK so no Viral Video – What should we do instead?

What your business needs is to reach targeted audiences and achieve sales conversions in a measurable and consistent fashion. The ability to then recreate this process is infinitely more precious than any singular publicity burst.

For the VAST majority of cases businesses eventually discover time, effort and monies wasted on viral video attempts would have yielded a safer, more predictable, and considerably more LUCRATIVE return on investment, had they been allocated to enhancing the websites shopping catalog with product videos.

Conclusion:

I’m not opposed to occasional creative risk taking.

If you’ve got a great passion to make an easy-to-produce video you feel will be the next big hit and will make you rich overnight in the process – By all means give it a shot, it’ll be worthwhile even if only for the sake of pursuing your dream, but always remember:

Getting a video to go viral is like winning the lottery.
 Have you won many lotteries lately?

You might also want to do yourself a favor and not focus ALL your business’ online marketing budget in this project. The data proving the marketing benefits and positive effect simple product videos will have on your bottom-line is readily available online.

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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/4yas/3492450507