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Information Overload – Causes and Symptoms

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

communication A Sunday edition of the Times carries more information than the average nineteenth century citizen accessed his entire life. Information used to be as precious as diamonds. And now? Well it’s so plentiful that most of it ends up being overlooked, ignored or thrown away like rubbish.

As of February 2007, there were over 108 million distinct websites and increasing, as of October 2008 there were 183 million (I couldn’t find any stats for 2009). That’s a lot of information and it’s growing daily. This doesn’t really include real time social media data like facebook and twitter as well.

When and how does it happen?
Information overload occurs when we receive more info than our brain can process. Even if it is good information, too much of a good thing just is not good anymore. Doesn’t matter if you’re an info addict, information overload affects us all.

So what’s the effect of info overload?
This amount of data so which we are open to carries a cost. It’s physical, mental and financial.

There are 3 ways in which people respond: They become overwhelmed and shut down, they labour over whether they’re making the right decisions or they just ignore you and move on. Is that what your readers, visitors and potential customers are doing right now, moving on?

People aren’t looking for more (information). It’s relief or escape from all the pressure of more is what they’re looking for. Are you causing pressure or giving relief?

What are the overload symptoms?

Productivity Loss. People can easily get lost in the details. We waste time focusing on unimportant information and lose sight of the goal and purpose.

Mind Clutter. The noise created by media and other sources of information clutters our minds and takes away from our inner peace.

Lack of Time. We all have the same limited amount of time in a day. Instead of wasting time filtering through information, We’d rather spend the time on bringing more enjoyment and fulfilment into our life.

Lack of Personal Reflection. We find that if we are constantly consuming information, then we forget to connect with ourselves (and others).

Stress & Anxiety. Information inflow makes us feel like we have more tasks to fill our lives than we have time for. Often, we might suddenly feel nervous without understanding why. Every piece of information demands our time. Even if we ignore it, a part of us saw that data and recorded it within our subconscious.

Here’s the crux. Too much info will lose you customers and affect your profits, I can’t put it any clearer that that can I?

So how to make sure we don’t overload?
Well in the next blog post we’ll look at just that so make sure you come back to find out. Don’t miss out and subscribe to our blog RSS feed or twitter feed to get notifications of our new blog posts.

Your comments are really welcome, please leave them below.

Posted in Web Marketing, communication | 2 Comments »

Social Networking and Business Success

Friday, November 6th, 2009

If you haven’t read our article ‘Social Networking and Business Image’ then it may be a good time to read it as we cover the first two ‘musts’ when you decide to embark on social networking. There are 100’s of sites to get involved in but you may eventually decide to stick to just one site because it suits your business and works for you so our guide covers them all in a general non-subjective way.

Business success can be achieved if you approach social networking in a certain way and following on from our last article we have written some further tested points to follow.

Cutting Costs Through Social Networking
We have already established that social networking can offer up more leads in return for our time and our willingness to appear less formal than perhaps we do in a face-to-face environment. Social networking sites have been established to connect us and they are free, plus you can receive instant feedback on your products.

You may eventually decide to stick to just one site because it suits your business and works for you so our guide covers them all in a general non-subjective way. However try a few sites and find that final one where there are good quantities of like-minded people, people that are passionate and want to socialise in your area of business and you will build a following that you can market to, for free.

Through all of this, remember to say who you are – anonymity is no longer a good idea, why would you hide your true identity if your business is a trustworthy one? Build trust and you will build loyalty.

No Direct Sell
The whole idea of getting into social networking is not to promote your business but to raise awareness in an indirect way, give it personality and ultimately build your business success. This is done by interaction, engagement and getting conversations going. The wrong idea would be to sign up to, say, Twitter and start hard selling your products. Firstly this does not say much for your business ethic so, as we mentioned in our last article, try to remain a little laid back that you would usually – people do expect less formality. Secondly it tells your followers that you have your blinkers on and perhaps are not interested in them and that’s a good way to turn people off.

Try a bit of humour, you are there to network not sell and there is a big difference. Once you have a good group of followers that are interested in you and your industry you can throw in some subtle messages regarding the product or service you are looking to sell. Again we are talking about trust and loyalty so interacting with people and engaging them in a quick bit of chat will tell them you are aware of them and are not simply connecting to sell them something, they will feel a little more comfortable with you and your business this way.

For most SME’s spending money on advertising campaigns will soon, if it hasn’t already, become a complete waste of money as 95% of people don’t take any notice of most advertising. We do believe that businesses are going to be very disadvantaged by not involving themselves in social networking and perhaps getting to know people that may well be their potential customers.

Posted in Social Media, Social Networking, Web Marketing, communication | No Comments »

Social Networking and Your Business Image

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

In traditional terms business networking is about walking around a room full of business men and women, swapping business cards and other wares and talking about what one another’s business works. More recently a wider view of today’s business networking has become focussed more now on social networking (a part of social media) which helps us all to create a good range of business contacts throughout our local, regional, national or even international community. Your business image whilst participating in social networking is of course crucial though don’t discount the traditional methods of networking just yet, they are important too and give your business a face no matter how few people may be attending.

Networking Successfully Online
Social networking in a successful manner is now vital to any small business for many reasons. Conducting yourself properly at an official business event or on a social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, business forums etc can be easy with a little guidance if you are currently unsure of how to present your business in these situations. Essentially these three we’ve mentioned are only the few to be found in the 100’s of the social media phenomenon, being the current major sites we are basing our experience on those but our advice is applicable to most online media of their kind.

We have put together this article and one that follows to help you conduct social networking and promote your business image in a positive way, we hope you can use our advice for your business be it blogs, social media, websites or other resources.

Using Social Networking for Business Relationships
Social networking has given us many trusted business relationships, products and services and with the whole thing exploding at the moment it’s a great time to get involved, your business will thank you in time. So how many active users do you think Facebook has at any one time? Millions, in fact recent figures from whyfacebook.com tells us that there are over 300 million users. Relationships do matter and becoming involved has been proven to give businesses additional exposure, in turn of course bringing new leads and potential customers.

If you have a good social networking manner and compose yourself well on these networking sites, you also give yourself chance to play around with extra marketing projects using some of your contacts as leads. Eventually you may build up such a list of friends and followers that you can select a small section of these to experiment your marketing skills with, promote a new product or simply stay in touch with latest industry news. Should this fail then you can move on to another section of your contacts or try a different marketing approach.

Goals
The aim on these websites is to promote your business in a less polished and less formal way. In fact it’s not even promotion at all. Not everyone wants to learn about how you increased profit by selling frog legs or anything else (!) now people expect to see a more laid back approach and want to know more about you or the people that work for you, so bearing this in mind go and introduce yourself, what your office is up to right now, who kissed the boss at the Christmas disco – or maybe not THAT personal but I hope by now you get the point, mixing more relaxed messages with others about your news or interesting info about the industry can give you the perfect balance – and the perfect amount of followers.

We cover a few more ideas on the next article ‘Social Networking and Business Success’

Posted in Branding, Social Media, Social Networking, Web Marketing | No Comments »

How to Begin E-Marketing Your Business

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Small business marketing isn’t rocket science but still so many businesses don’t get involved with emarketing for varying reasons. Most are possibly put off with the costs involved in hiring an expert however marketing your business properly can bring real results both the way of sales and gaining recognition for your brand and some of it can be done free of charge, all you need is a little time.

First things first you have something to sell, be it a product or service, so tell people about it. The easiest form of free marketing is to start by adding yourself and your company to some niche directory websites and joining online forums getting involved in the conversations and even becoming a tweeter on Twitter (see our Twitter articles and social media introduction) or start blogging.

You must remember to not sell directly on social networking sites, firstly become part of the community and be helpful, answer other peoples questions and reply to tweets plus comment on other peoples blogs – all within your relevant industry – and ask your own then later you can begin mixing in your message and mentioning your products. Writing a press release and launching it in amongst your other messages ensures that you are not simply joining a community to sell but you are there to ‘network’ and promote indirectly. Below are a few ideas for you.

Optimise Your Website
Quite frankly if your site is not properly optimised for search engines (norfolk seo experts) then you don’t have much chance of gaining visitors from search engines to your website but it’s easily rectified, even just setting up a new page and concentrating on a main keyword can help if you don’t want to go over the whole site. You will find a top keyword by using a free keyword tool such as the google Adwords tool to get some great ideas. Ensure you set up simple items like meta tags, title tag and decent content on the page (or pages) you choose to work on.

Write a Press Release for Emarketing Media
Try writing a press release and ensure you add it onto any press release sites you can find that are free to use, add a similar press release or article to your website and direct everybody there then make sure there’s an easy link or two from the article to your product list or sales section. Also send the press release to off-line media like local magazines and papers, you may need to hire a PR company to make this more effective.

Register Your Small Business at Google Maps
Make sure that your website is listed on Google Maps and add your entire product or services list to Google Base where they are all searchable to your potential clients.

In summary basically get involved in online communities which don’t require lots of time – logging in and being active in your chosen communities for just a few minutes a day is better than not at all, and remember to try leave the url (your website address) wherever you go without spamming for for example the use of signatures on forums and your bio on Twitter!

Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »

Corporate Identity – Communicating Confidence through Competitive Branding

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

logosandbrand One thing that will truly help your business is building a corporate identity and competitive branding which will work hand in hand to get you recognised and build trust with your prospective clients. Managing and planning your business branding will effectively help your small business attract repeat business and new clients and so improving the success of your marketing projects.

The thing about business branding is its total overall effect through visual means, company philosophy and brand values. Your branding is significant and will have impact on how your target clientèle view your business and how you conduct your business and carry out your branding can gain you trustworthiness among potential customers.

Branding is not only about a logo but about how your business is perceived as a whole package so you need to think about how your company is presented. Your corporate identity is slightly different but equally as important as branding and should come before you think about logo and visual id, it is more about how your small business is made up and the decisions that your business makes. Defining corporate identity is the first step of building your brand and should be based on the nature and personality of your business.

You need to manage your branding perfectly and the first thing that you should consider is to work on a competitive branding project to eventually build it around your company and the way it works. You should aim at creating a brand that promises your clients something, delivers that something and gives them reason to trust you. Communicating confidence through your branding tells them you will deliver what you promise.

Branding your business can help aim your business toward the right type of client so when you think about how to market your business and whom you are targeting this should become the way that you attract the right type of person to your business. Ensure that your branding and your logo are clear and give a concise message and you will encourage people to come to you, also bringing with them loyalty or repeat business making it successful even in the current gloomy times.

Once you have decided on a brand, add your logo designs and company message to all your stationery and make sure you get a price from your designer for the whole package – not only simple logo design as its important to co-ordinate your branding project well and they most likely can help with the whole implementation project. It’s also important to reflect this branding on everything you do including your website, being consistent with your branding shows customers that you are proud and happy to display your name and logo everywhere, even adding it as a signature on all of your emails.

Ensure that the company you choose to design your professional branding and logo will supply you with a number of designs after the first brief so that you make the final decision. They also should quote you for adding your new brand to stationery and website and most will issue you with the option to setup a new website and can register and host everything for you too, so long as it’s competitive then there is no real reason not to take them up on this type of offer.

Looking like you are serious about business and that you have confidence in yourself will help reap rewards. Fail at this first hurdle and you could damage your chances of taking your business through the recession in one piece!

Posted in Branding, Graphic Design, Web Marketing | No Comments »