When you look back at some of the work you have done, whether it be in the office, drawing, photography, writing, or poetry, you will probably have a rough idea in your mind what was your better work and what was not. The question is, are you correct?

Firstly this is a bit of an unfair question, as people produce things for many reasons. If you are producing something purely for yourself for example, then what you think is your best work is correct. However, putting that aside for a moment assume you are putting your work “out there”. Assume you do care what the general public, your friends and family think of your work. Would they agree with what is good and what is not?

My friend Matt is a keen (and dare I say “rather good”) photographer. He has embarked on “Project 365″ which, for those of you not in the know, is a project whereby he takes at least one photo every day for a year, and publishes it on Flickr.

I tend to look at the daily photo every day, and sometimes there are a few. The other day he posted 3 photos of paragliders (he does that too, dontcha know!). I immediately said I love one of them, the second is pretty good albeit a bit “normal”, and not as keen on the last one (hey, he asked for honest critique!).  The thing we laughed about is my opinion was the EXACT opposite of his. While he understood my opinion, his take on it was different.

Who was right and who was wrong? Hard to say really, having just 2 opinions, it will be interesting to see your comments on what you think of the 3 candidates.

paraglider 1

paraglider 2

paraglider 3

My point over and above finding out which photo is best, is more to make the point that if you have produced some work that you are questioning “putting out there”, because you think you have done better, do it anyway, or at least get a second opinion.

Some of our best work is often something we did not think much of at the time.

A week ago I decided that I was going to try every piece of technology I came across on the Internet. Not become an expert in it, but at least try it out and report my findings. Today I decided to install Entrecard, a viral marketing “widget”.

First of all let me say there is a LOT of disagreement about Entrecard, it’s value to your website, general misuse, and the concept of “drop and run”. Before I go into these I will explain a bit about what it is.

Entrecard is a system whereby you create a 125×125 pixel advert for your site and “drop” it on other sites that have the Entrecard widget. If the owner of the site likes your advert they will approve it, and usually in turn will visit your site and may “drop” a card on you. This process is repeated over and over until you have approved lots of adverts. These adverts are displayed on your Entrecard widget on your website and a queued up and shown in turn.

The Good

The good thing about Entrecard is people do end up visiting sites they would not have usually visited.

Because the owner has to approve the banner you can assume the advert is at lease vaguely relevant. This is not always the case but more oftem than not it is.

You will get an increase in visitors to your site once you start to use Entrecard, and if you use it according to the guidelines (a lot of dropping) then you should gain a good amount of visitors. The value of these is debatable, and will be discussed further down.

The Bad

Here’s where it starts to get messy. There is a lot of negativity thrown at Entrecard and there are various reasons why.

Firstly, 99% of people who visit your site from an Entrecard link will be Entrecard advertisers. They will load your page, drop their card, and they will be gone within 5 seconds. They will probably not even glance at your posts. The problem with this is twofold. Firstly it takes up needless bandwidth and secondly if you have monetized your site, a visit without any clicks will hit your earnings.

Website success is often judged on visitors per day. Using Entrecard will undoubtedly increase the traffic on your site, but if these people never read the posts and never comment then your statistics are skewed. In my mind the success of a website needs to be judged by genuine visitors per day (not Entrecard) and subscribers to news feeds/newsletters.

The Ugly

More importantly than the above points is the fact that it is seen by many as amateurish and people who otherwise would take your message seriously will see you at attention seeking and unprofessional. For this reason I am unsure if I will keep it on this site.

So, what do you think?

I have only just added the feature to my site, so at present I am unsure how it will work out. From what I have heard you need to put in a lot of effort dropping cards here there and everywhere. I am unwilling to do that.

The reason I am unwilling is I am not going to drop a card on someone if I am not genuinely interested in participating on their site. I think it is rude and defeats the object of networks in general. I know a few people with Entrecards and I will drop on them, but I will also read their posts and comment on them.

For this reason I am unsure if Entrecard will work for me. I will give it a little while to bed in, see how it affects the stats, and will post an update once I have some findings to report.

I have had this in mind to write about for a few weeks now, but have only just sat to turn my thoughts into a post.

Do you remember as a child, learning to ride a bike? I’ll bet you fell off a few times, I know I did! I kept on falling off and I kept on getting up, dusting myself off (and pulling myself out of the rose bush!) and getting back on again. I did this more times than I care to remember, but one day I suddenly found I could ride a bike!

This is an experience most of us have had in our lives and can relate to. The endless confidence and willpower of a small child is something we can learn from. There was nobody on this planet that could’ve told me I could not ride that bike. Come hell or high water I was going to ride it. I was going to ride it well and I was going to ride it FAST!

The older we get it seems we lose this confidence. Reality gets in the way, perhaps. There are so many barriers to entry in various things in life, and so many people out there just waiting to put us down, tell us we are not good enough that it is easy to lose the confidence in ourselves. If we could think back to the lesson of riding the bike I think we could learn a lot from it.

Of course there are certain unattainable things in life, we are not going to fly without assistance, for example (although I did once try… believe me it doesn’t work, and it hurts!). However, most things in life are attainable and the difference between those who make it and those who don’t is down to a number of factors, most notably skill, luck, confidence and the ability to keep trying.

When you look at the most successful people in life you will find that most of them did not succeed first time. Sir Richard Branson for example, one of the most charismatic and successful businessmen of my time did not get where he is today without a few setbacks.

When he first wanted to buy his private (Necker) island he did not have enough money for the £3M island, he tried to buy it nonetheless (for £200,000) and failed and was evicted from the island. He kept positive and eventually bought the island (with caveats) for less than he had originally tabled, £180,000 in total. The point is, he kept positive, got back on the bike and got what he wanted.

The point of this post is sometimes we do things and appear to be getting nowhere, whether it is not getting promotions in work, not making enough money, or writing blog posts that nobody reads. The lesson is always get back on the bike, keep going, believe in yourself and before you know it you will achieve what you set out to!

One thing that infuriates me nowadays is the reliance on email. Every day I see people emailing each other to try and resolve issues, playing email tennis, when picking up the phone would resolve issues in half the time.

I am the first to admit email has it’s uses. It is great for keeping track of what has been said and it’s great for conducting a conversation amongst several people, but for quick fixes it is not always the best option.

Regularly I see situations where a particular problem has not been resolved. I ask the person responsible what the delay is and the answer is more than often “I am waiting for an email from x”. I find myself having to count to ten before asking them “why the can’t just pick up the phone and speak to the other person?”. More often than not the problem could be resolved in the time it takes to type out the next email, yet for some reason some people are compelled to resolve things by email.

Maybe I am just “old school” but I come from a background of support roles (amongst other things) and reams of emails was usually a sign of an analyst lacking in confidence in their own ability. Personally I mostly found it was better to pick up the phone, get the facts and fix the problem. Calls could be resolved in minutes rather than days.

It seems to me in this day and age that people are more and more unwilling to speak to others, to interact and to “cut to the chase”. I think it would be an interesting experiment (but not necessarily practical) to do without emails for a week and to keep in touch with people on a verbal level. One thing that I am certain of, a lot of issues would probably be resolved quicker!

I am forum administrator for a car enthusiast site, a role I have been in for a little over a year now. As admin I guess I take a little more notice of what happens on this forum and it has been an interesting case study on human behaviour.

What never ceases to amaze me is the way some people conduct themselves when they can hide behind their computer screen. I must say the vast majority of people on the forum are sincere, kind, helpful people, but every now and again someone decides to go on the rampage, attacking all and sundry in their wake.

I liken a forum to a dinner party at someone’s house. If there is someone there you don’t like you don’t join in their conversation, or at the very least don’t address them direct. On a forum the attitude seems different. All of a sudden the angry person has a right to speak, not just in turn but on their soap box, and everybody must listen. If anyone disagrees then that is a personal attack on them and grounds for immediate verbal (textual?) assault!

I have seen this time upon time on various forums, on various subjects, and it does seem the same wherever you go. People who no doubt in normal everyday life would probably never say boo to a goose somehow seem to gain confidence and a lot of agression. Is it that they have something to make up for in life? Why are they this angry?

I can only assume these people are not like this usually, as it seems so common that if they were you would see it in the office, in restaurants, in the bank and on the street. Maybe I just live in a good neighborhood, but it doesn’t seem all that common.

Sometimes things do escalate, but on a well moderated forum these things get dealt with fairly quickly and fairly well, but the question still arises, where do these people come from, and why are they so angry?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

I have posted before about the decision to design around the Wordpress interface, but I thought I would elaborate a little and explain the business case for using it as a back-end.

I started out in web design the same way a lot of designers, using Dreamweaver. I then progressed to hand coding and producing standards compliant sites that I could be proud of. The problem is, customers fall into two categories:

1. Those who are happy with their site to sit there, day in day out, looking the same and with the same content.
2. Those who want a dynamic site, they want to nurture it and want to update it.

The problem is both these types of customer have their own similarities and differences.

Allow me to explain…

If you ask both types of customer what they want from their site, out of the top 5 in their list I would imagine 9 times out of 10 you will find “Highly ranked on Google”.

In the old days you could get away with a nicely designed site and still get ranked well on Google, but in recent years this is just not possible. In order to get right up there you need dynamic content, updates etc. This immediately rules out the first type of customer. I am not saying these types of customer should not be allowed, just that they should be re-educated. Type 1 needs to become type 2.

1. Those who are happy with their site to sit there, day in day out, looking the same and with the same content.
2. Those who want a dynamic site, they want to nurture it and want to update it.

Now if we take a look at the second type of customer, who wants to be involved, wants to be dynamic and wants to nurture their site to success we have the problem of how they go about it.

In the early days they used to email me changes, often these were small and either I would have to take a little time to do it for free or charge them for the change. If I did the latter it used to disuade them from making changes, if I did the former then I would spend a lot of time doing lots of small changes. Not ideal.

Wordpress is a great way to give control back to the customer. It allows them to update the site whenever they like without involving you. It also avoids the cost of making changes, from both your point of view and theirs. This can only be a good thing.

In my experience, once people get used to adding content using the Wordpress back end they often end up getting really “into it” and the site goes from strength to strength. By keeping the content fresh and updating often the site is already half-way to being highly ranked. Of course there is plenty more to do, but fresh content is half the battle.

Once you learn to use Wordpress to design a non-blog site it really comes into it’s own, but I’ll leave that for another day.

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to be sent on a half day course which introduced the concept of motivation and self-help, sponsored by Dale Carnegie. To be honest the course was not great but it did inspire me to seek out more information.

I got hold of the CD’s of Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people” and listened to them on the way to work while in the car (in those days I had an hours drive to work, so it passed the time). Although all the examples were from the USA, mainly the Founder Fathers and past Presidents, he does make some good points. This book was first published in 1936 and has sold more than 15 Million copies worldwide.

I am not going to go into the detail of exactly what is in each section, but here is the rundown (taken from Wikipedia).

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

“Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”
“Give honest and sincere appreciation.”
“Arouse the other person an eager want.”

Six Ways to Make People Like You

“Become genuinely interested in other people.”
“Smile.”
“Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
“Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”
“Talk in the terms of the other man’s interest.”
“Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.”

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

“Avoid arguments.”
“Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never tell someone they are wrong.”
“If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.”
“Begin in a friendly way.”
“Start with questions the other person will answer yes to.”
“Let the other person do the talking.”
“Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.”
“Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.”
“Sympathize with the other person.”
“Appeal to noble motives.”
“Dramatize your ideas.”
“Throw down a challenge.”

Nine Ways to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

“Begin with praise and honest appreciation.”
“Call attention to other people’s mistakes indirectly.”
“Talk about your own mistakes first.”
“Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.”
“Let the other person save face.”
“Praise every improvement.”
“Give them a fine reputation to live up to.”
“Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.”
“Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.”

The audio book is well narrated and the examples (if a little corny at times) do make you think. I must say I am not a big reader, hence I got the audio book, but if you only read one self-help book in your lifetime I can heartily recommend this one.

Over the past few months I have been working on a new way of thinking. There are so many new technologies on the Internet nowadays that I hadn’t tried. It is easy to pass many of them by or dismiss them. I used to be as guilty of that as the next person, but not anymore.

Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, the list is huge. Some of these have been around a while and some are new kids on the block. It is easy to dismiss some of them as gimmicks, useless, or just simply “not your thing”. Until you try these technologies you will never know if they will be useful and you may miss out.

I have been experimenting with several new technologies recently and have found some that I never thought would be useful being integrated into my daily life. A prime example is Twitter. On the face of it this is the same as the “what are you doing now?” section of Facebook, a small piece of information that once updated quickly goes stale and is out of date. Useless? I thought so, until I found that you can hook it up to many other applications, Wordpress for example. Every time I publish a blog post, it updates Twitter. All of a sudden a seemingly useless piece of technology has a use.

I am not going to go on about the benefits of Twitter right now, this post is not about that, it is about taking steps to try out every new thing you come across, you may be surprised what you find. sometimes something only becomes useful when matched with something else, Synergy if you will.

The phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none” comes to mind. Well yes that is true, but in this industry you don’t need to be an expert on everything, you just need to know enough to find out what works for you and how to benefit from the things that you can use. It’s a bit like comparing a motor mechanic to the average driver. You don’t NEED to be able to rebuild the engine to be able to benefit from a car.

There are still things on my list to try, I will let you know how I get on along the way. What I will say is these last few months have opened my eyes and made me see that unless we take steps to deliberately try all these new things, we will pass them by. This industry is hard enough to succeed in, without missing potential opportunities along the way.

What would you do if your site disappeared? You may think it is unlikely, but in reality the statistics may shock you.

Here’s some food for thought:

• 40% of Small and Medium Sized Businesses don’t back up their data at all
• 40 - 50% of all backups are not fully recoverable and up to 60% of all backups fail in general

Source: Realty Times

Whoever you host with there are always failure points, whether it is the hard drive in the server (if it is not RAID), the data-centre burning down (it does happen) or just accidental deletion of content. The general rule of thumb is if it can happen, eventually it will.

This may not have been such an issue in the early days of websites where the content was stored on your local hard drive. If the worst happened you simply need to re-upload all your HTML files and away you go. Nowadays a lot of sites are dynamic, containing pages upon pages of dynamic data updated on a regular, often daily basis.

A lot of people use their website to conduct their business, sometimes it is secondary to their main source of income, but increasingly it is becoming the main money spinner. If the site were do disappear so could the business.

Here is another interesting statistic for you:

60% of companies that lose their data close down within 6 months of the disaster

Why am I harping on about this you may ask? Well one thing we are quite particular about at ThinkSynergy is backups. There is a daily backup on the server which is copied to 2 different locations every day. A little over the top? Maybe, but it gives us and our customers peace of mind that if the worst did happen, they would be back up and running very quickly.

What is the backup strategy of your current host? Do they do nightly backups? If the worst did happen and their data-centre burned down, would your site be on their priority list? It is easy to presume these large companies have great disaster recovery, but would you trust them with your business?

If you run your business from your website, or use your website as an income earner it is easy to sit down and put a value on the site being live. Developing a backup strategy is not something that many people get excited about, but it is vitally important. Do you have home contents insurance? I bet you do. It is equally unlikely you will ever have to use it, but you have it anyway, just in case.

If you don’t want to create a strategy yourself at least do some checks and make sure the people you host with have their own in place, it is worth it in the long run and will make sure that the business you have built up is still there next year.

When I cast my mind back to my school days I remember the talk in the playground was often “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. I remember my answer was always “I want to be a pilot”.

As the years went on this became less and less likely, and while I meandered my way through high school, following the course of what I knew best, computers, it became less and less likely. By the time I got into University on a computer course it was next to impossible, and a career in IT was all but inevitable.

As we go further in life we steer ourselves toward what we know best, what we are good at or what we enjoy, gaining qualifications and experience along the way. Sometimes we do this deliberately and sometimes it is unconsciously.

Have you ever woken up and thought “what if?”, “what if I had taken that job?” or “what if I have followed a different university course?”, I certainly have. In so many ways in life we end up with limited choices about what we are and what we can be.

You may think this is a rather negative post so far, and I guess you are right, but where I am going with this is we have a tool available to us that previous generations did not have. A tool that quashes these limits and breaks down the boundaries. The Internet is a great invention. I was lucky enough to be in the generation that saw the birth of the internet. Ever since I first saw it I was hooked. Yahoo, the BBC, Microsoft could all write HTML pages and they could be seen from anywhere in the world, but so could I… All of a sudden the playing field was level, I was as big and powerful as Microsoft.

Obviously it is not as simple as that, but the basic theory is there. I can publish websites, documents, videos online and nobody will stop me and tell me I am not qualified, I don’t have the right grades from school or I don’t have the correct amount of experience. The boundaries are gone, I can do what I want and the only limiting factor is that if what I write is not good enough people will not read it.

How many jobs can you do that? Imagine you want to be a surgeon, you can’t go into a hospital and keep hacking away at people until you get it right, until you become good enough to be respected. If you want to be a pilot you can’t grab the controls on your next trip abroad and say “come on, let’s have a go?”. The internet simply gives you all this opportunity on a plate!

All this is a bit obvious, you may say. Well yes it is, but how many of you reading this now have dabbled in the world of web publishing, with blogs or with personal websites? I imagine a few of you have. I wonder if any of you would think about giving up your day job to become an expert in the field of “the internet” and all it entails. Scary prospect, isn’t it? It is, but at the same time it has a strange appeal to it. It is an open door, one avenue in life that doesn’t have someone stood there judging us, telling us we are not good enough, or that we don’t have the skills to make it.

I liken it to the early days of America, the land of opportunity, where people were rewarded for taking the initiative, for developing themselves and for doing well. It is all too easy to accept the run of the mill life, going to work 9 - 5 and simply existing and paying the bills. The internet is not for everyone, but what I can say is it is THERE for everyone, if you want to use it.

There are not too many jobs on this planet that allow everyone to “have a go” and see how it works out. If you are one of these people “on the fence” like I was, give it a try, you might just surprise yourself.