Initiate the interaction.

When writing posts, occasionally throw in a question at the end – something that will get responses from your readers. Your questions may vary depending on what you want to hear from your readers, but the basic idea is that you start the ball rolling. Needless to say, when people start leaving their comments, make sure that you respond in a timely manner. You can also invite them to ask their own questions, the answers to which could actually serve as material for future blog posts.

Hold a debate.

I got this idea from Robyn-Dale Samuda’s post over at BloggingPro. While he says that he rarely sees this technique used, it can be a way to spark the interest of your readers. By choosing a hot topic relevant to your business and wording your post so that it is clear to them that you want to hear what they think about the topic, you can get people to voice out their opinions.

Make it easy for readers to keep track of the comments.

It can be tedious to keep checking one blog post if someone has replied to a comment you’ve left earlier. Instead of expecting your readers to do this, look for a plug-in that will allow readers to subscribe to comments with a click of the mouse. This way, they will receive notifications in their Inbox.

What are your tried and tested methods of encouraging readers to participate in your blog?

If you think about it, though, businesses just might have more at stake when it comes to making use of Twitter. You expend time and effort, which can all be translated into costs. How do you make sure that your investment – no matter how small – on Twitter will have returns? Here are 3 tips that can help you make the most of Twitter for your business.

There’s nothing worse than finding out you’re interacting with a machine. Twitter posts can easily be automated, making it easy and less costly for you. However, your customers are going to want to interact with real people, so it’s better if you have someone updated your account and add that human element.

Twitter is not only meant for you to broadcast whatever you need to broadcast. It is there so that people can interact with each other. Follow relevant people who Tweet and interact with them by responding to their Tweets, re-tweeting their posts, and so on. Customers, employees, and other relevant individuals should be on your list.

Don’t fall prey to being a boring Tweeter. Sure, you’d love to tell everyone about what’s going on in the company and what your new product is all about; but wouldn’t it be better if you got your followers thinking and replying to your posts? Ask questions that would attract your customer’s curiosity and while you’re at it, ask questions that you can use to improve your services and products as well.

Is it then a good time to start a business during recession?

The answer is a definite maybe. This is not necessarily the best time to be taking risky investments. However, if you plan your business just right, then you might be in for a successful venture. Here’s why.

It’s a buyer’s market. These days, the market is favoring buyers, and not sellers. In my experience trying to sell homes for a few friends, we’ve always had to contend with buyers’ offers. Because everyone else is selling cheaply these days (with the financial crunch), competition is tough.

Therefore, if you’re planning to start a business, you can expect good deals on assets, equipment and other things that a business may need (be it hardware or software). People are letting go of properties easy, and these are ripe for the picking.

Everything is cheaper. Related to the first point, many thing are cheaper in times of recession. Not only are buildings, assets and other products cheaper, even services are cheaper. Because a lot of people are being given the pink slip at work, many will be starting to freelance. Some would also agree to take jobs at lower rates than their previous ones.

If you’re planning to start a business, it might make sense to start now, while labor is cheap.

It’s the same with investing with stocks. Common sense might tell you not to buy shares of stock while prices are dropping. But long-term investors actually prefer to buy stocks while prices fall, because they consider the long-run average cost to be more important than the short-run returns. A lower long-run average cost, compared to a higher return (say, when you sell shares once the prices are back up) will give you some yield.

There’s no way than up. It’s a matter of perspective. When things are looking down, you should expect them to improve one time or another. If you start a business with a booming market, you might be facing tough competition from other people who have the same idea. But if you’re starting a business during a recession, then everyone else is thinking of survival or even subsistence–therefore, no one is really too keen on spending money to start up a a business and compete with you.

This is a maybe rather than a definite yes because this business strategy is not always applicable in all industries and instances. If you have extra money to burn, then by all means go for it. But if you expect banks to lend you money, then watch out for tough times–credit is expensive these days. But if you have a business plan that won’t involve much external investment, and if you can bootstrap your way into profitability, then starting a new business can be a worthwhile activity even with a recession.

About four or five years back, I realized that the Internet was big business. And so I dropped everything I had going on: launched several blogs, joined ad networks, and looked for sponsors. After some time, I quit my day job and focused solely on making income from online sources.

But it’s not as simple as that. Most people would think that running a money-making website is easy as pie. Well, in some cases it probably is. If you have a great domain, steady traffic, and good products to sell, you can perhaps make it big on affiliate commissions. However, this might not always be sustainable.

For the rest of us, though, successfully monetizing a site requires time, focus, effort, and a lot of marketing. You would often see your revenues trickle in a few dollars (or cents!) at a time, until you reach that tipping point when your cashflow would be enough for the site to support itself.

And so here comes the case for or against monetization. Most experienced online entrepreneurs would advise people to focus on several things long before we think about monetizing our sites. Some popular words of wisdom I’ve come across include the following:

• Brian Clark of Copyblogger would often advise online publishers to focus on writing good headlines. These are the first things that people see when looking at your content, and headlines could be a deciding factor on whether they will read on or not.
• Chris Garrett, who used to edit Performancing advises to start slow, but steady. True, while Performancing essentially launched with a bang itself, its editors were mostly considered celebrities already. For the rest of us who are lesser known, then growing one’s site steadily would proably be better.
• Problogger Darren Rowse advises to focus on a niche, rather than to spread yourself too thinly. A lot of blog networks have fallen into the trap of launching and running too many blogs about too many topics. Yes, it’s doable, but not always easy, and not always sustainable.

There are a handful of great advice out there, and these range from the very new to the very old. If you notice, my links span one, two or three years back. That’s because online entrepreneurship goes through the same cycles, and the same experiences year in and year out. Now the piece of advice that I would add is this: you shouldn’t be in a hurry to earn.

The best earning blogs, websites and web apps out there probably started out as hobbies, academic research, or something that was intended to scratch an itch, so to speak. Consider Google. Consider YouTube. I know I have a handful of personal blogs that I’ve either sold off or successfully monetized through advertisements. But I try to start clean–without sponsorships, without ads.

I think the best reason for not jumping into the monetization bandwagon too early is the matter of trust and public perception. Think of it this way: when you read a blog that has a clean, fast interface, don’t you prefer it to a blog that’s full of ads popping about here and there? Even if some advertisements are discreet, it still says something about a blog if it were ad and clutter-free. And to me, at least, it’s most especially a turn-off to see a poorly-written and poorly-maintained site that looks too commercial.

This doesn’t mean you should not plan ahead, though. Further down the road, when you’ve achieved your intended readership, traffic level, and authority, you can then start monetizing your site. It could be sponsorships, links, AdSense, or any other means. The important thing is to focus on quality, because that increases the earning potential of your site.

Image credit: flickr/westm

I say small businesses stand to gain much from using social media in their day to day operations.

Granted, most small businesses out there are probably brick-and-mortar operations, which have a small sales, manufacturing, service or other activities as its main source of income. Some of these may be home-based or freelance/professional basis. Indeed, many small businesses go on by without the need to engage social mediums on a day to day basis.

But social media can definitely help small businesses expand their network, and do marketing at lightning speeds at dirt cheap costs. Offhand, here are a few benefits of social media that I think small businesses should consider.

Viral marketing

For any business, there’s nothing like a viral marketing campaign done right. Word of mouth, after all, is a very effective tool in the dissemination of information, especially if it’s done among people who are considered to be connectors. The real measure of how effective a small business can do viral marketing is not by the number of people whom you can share information with. Rather, success can be determined by the importance and influence of the people you share this information with. Social media users who are influential and trusted are better at word of mouth marketing, especially if they are within fields of interest relevant to your product or service.

Market research

Not all businesses can afford to hire marketing consultancy firms to determine market trends and do research. The Internet is rich with this information, to some extent. For instance, you can use Google Trends to spot trends in user interest for certain keywords and phrases. You can look for product reviews to find what customers are looking for. You can even search for mentions on Twitter and on blog review sites to find what people are saying about your industry or product.

Custmer relations

In the eyes of a consumer, the best companies are those that are transparent with their dealings with the public. It’s best for any business to build up trust with the consumer base. One of the ways you can do this is by being accessible from all possible channels. Most businesses already have a website. But having a contact form that lets you receive emails might not be enough. If you bring your conversations online–like through a blog, forum or Twitter, then you have a better chance at resolving possible problems even before they happen. If you’re lucky, passionate users might even build interest groups themselves, and it will be the community that does the support for your clients.

Any small business stands to gain a lot with social media. Even if the benefits may not be direct, it’s a matter of extending goodwill and enhancing your presence in an ever growing community of connected individuals. Being active on Facebook, Twitter, in blogging and forums may not necessarily be able to directly result in added sales, revenues and expanded business. But by being connected, you can start building up a network and you can gain the trust of your audience.

image credit: flickr/caseywest

But there’s one thing I don’t like about Gmail for mobile. Once you’re connected, it seems to assume you have a constant connection to the Internet. And therefore, in the even that I walk out of a WiFi hotspot’s range, my mobile phone incessantly asks me for a connection until either (1) I select a valid connection, (2) activate a new connection, or (3) turn off Gmail.

In case #1, I should be in an active WiFi hotspot, in the absence of which I have to resort to #2, which means I have to pay connection charges (minimal, but annoying if it accumulates unnecessarily). Since I don’t want to spend extra money on unnecessary connectivity, I often select option #3. However, since the software incessantly asks me for a connection, this usually involves some keypad calisthenics, which requires me to bring up the task manager, hit the “kill” button (the erase button on the S60) and hit the confirmation button. All this while shooing away the connection window every nanosecond or so.

What’s my point in all this? I think it’s all about a usability issue. These days, you would rarely see a piece of software that doesn’t bother you for an Internet connection to update something. In fact, most would rather just go ahead and initiate a connection without your knowledge. My issue here is about the software doing something on its own, and it’s something I would rather have it not do. Software these days are too smart that it makes you feel stupid. Sometimes you have to fight with it in order to maintain some semblance of control.

It makes me feel as if developers (and businesspeople who own the services) are assuming too much. Suddenly, everyone is assuming that we all have a running Internet connection wherever we go, whatever time it is, and that we don’t care how much we spend. Well, some of us want to keep our privacy, thank you. We want to be able to control when we get online, how we get online, and how much we spend getting online.

This would be a good question to ask yourself when you’re in the process of developing an application, or just about any business (online or offline). Do you assume too much? Do you do too much of the thinking for your clients or intended userbase? Is everything becoming too automated that manual intervention would suddenly become tedious and cumbersome?

Don’t take anything for granted. Just because you’re overflowing with bandwidth doesn’t mean everyone else is enjoying the same connectivity. Just because you have massive processing power doesn’t mean everyone else’s computer is fast.

This is the core of most usability tests–try to drop all assumptions and take take things afresh. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your intended client. Try to see things from the perspective of someone who knows nothing . Try to put yourself in his situation. Will your application or service still be as cool, interesting and usable as it is from your own point of view?

Oftentimes, it’s looking from outside that we can see as objectively as possible. When you assume too much, you tend to narrow your field of vision too much, and you could lose sight of the more important things.

Image credit: flickr/banlon1964

Just this weekend, a tropical storm hit my country, bringing in a month’s worth of rainwater in just half a day. This resulted to flash flooding, which submerged 75% of the capital in flood waters. That’s 75% of about 20 million people in the metro and its surrounding areas. While the drainage systems here leave much to be desired, this level of calamity and damage has not before been seen. Towns that are relatively high saw flooding on the streets. Those in the flatlands, valleys and residences near bodies of water were not too lucky. Many endured getting their houses fully submerged underwater (yes, even two to three storey homes). Some lives were lost; a lot were displaced.

In cases like these, small businesses would surely be facing trouble. What if you had a store or shop, and all your inventory was spoiled? What if you were into building, and your equipment was destroyed? What if you’re in the transportation business, and all your vehicles were submerged and carried away in the current? These are typical in a brick and mortar type of business.

How about online businesses, then? Does calamity have a place in today’s connected world?

In my case, I lost my Internet connection for a span of a day and a half. I did not lose electricity at my home (which also houses my office and equipment). But with the loss of connectivity, I wasn’t able to respond to messages, talk to clients, meet deadlines, and the like. It’s a good thing that a big part of my online activities involves teamwork. Thus, while some of my colleagues are also residents of areas probably hit by calamity, some are living in other countries altogether. People across the globe can share the load, then.

With one’s business being mostly virtual, one would probably think himself invulnerable to storm, fire or whatever natural disaster will strike. On the contrary, though, even if your business is purely online, you would most likely be affected one way or another.

First is when your equipment or business premise gets damaged or affected. When Hurricane Ike devastated the Americas in 2008, some of the US-based datacenters we’ve been using were affected. Or at least the support personnel that manned the hosting company were all unavailable for inquiries and reports.

Second is when your communications infrastructure fails. This has been my experience time and again. One instance was when a storm hit about three years ago. We lost power for almost a week, and I had to rely on visiting WiFi-enabled establishments just to do some work. And apart from my weekend hiatus, just a few months back, underground Internet cables had been severed, resulting in loss of connectivity to a big part of the Asia-Pacific region.

Third is when you and your staff/colleagues are at risk. Calamities often don’t just pose risks to property. Rather–and more importantly–it involves risk to life and limb. Property damage is probably acceptable, but when you and your family are faced with life-threatening situations, then it becomes more serious. Even if you have to attend to business matters, you’d rather just take time off, and bring yourself and your family to safer ground. The lost productivity is just a small price to pay for safety!

In any eventuality, it pays to be prepared, and to make arrangements beforehand such that you minimize (or mitigate) risk, and have a backup plan for everything. For an online business, or even any business in which data or internet connectivity is an integral part of operations, here are a few things I can think of as part of one’s contingency plans.

• Backup your data and store these in multiple places. Be sure to keep copies of your important data in safe places. Best if you have these in a format that’s not easily destroyed, such as by magnetism, shocks and breakage. If you have really sensitive information, you can store these in different servers across the world. Or in the case of server-intensive services, you can distribute the load across the globe. Suddenly, cloud hosting sounds like a good idea.
• Have a backup connectivity plan. Most online professionals probably rely on broadband internet connection at home or the office. Most would have some form of backup plan, like a 3G-enabled mobile phone, a secondary connection, or even a dial-up account. It’s best to have at least two ways to connect, so if one fails, you have others as backup. Even if a mobile connection can be really slow, it’s still a good way to communicate with colleagues and clients, so you could explain your situation.
• Offer help. Not everyone gets into major trouble during calamities. If you’re fortunate enough not to have been badly hit, it would only make sense to help others in whatever way you can. In terms of business and marketing, this generates goodwill. But of course, it also generates that warm, fuzzy feeling inside of you, knowing you’ve helped others in time of need. And knowing that after a disaster itself will come rescue, relief and rehabilitation activities, perhaps you could also help raise money for a good cause.

Disasters are usually a time when competitive barriers are let down and everyone tries to pitch in to help. Any business, even if it’s not rooted too much on physical infrastructure, would surely be affected one way or another. Are you ready for this?

image source: flickr/alpoma

Would you rather do business with someone you personally know, or with someone whom you know is a proven entrepreneur?

This was one of the questions in an entrepreneurship questionnaire that a friend (and prospective business partner) gave me a few years back. I answered the former. Surprisingly, I was wrong. It turned out it was supposedly better to do business with someone who has a proven track record rather than someone whom you simply trusted and knew personally. Looking back, I think this concept is valid to some extent, but it’s also has its shortcomings.

Business can strain personal relationships. At one point or another, I’ve joined up with a family member or relative in some small business (mostly online ventures). And whenever we faced problems with our enterprise, it took a toll on our interpersonal relationships. This is true especially when it comes to money matters. Sure, you can be lifelong friends, but when it comes to accounting for who gets how much, and when, it’s a whole different ballgame.

You can trust someone with your life. But perhaps it’s not always the case with money. And when you fight about business decisions, money or even small and trivial things, the trust factor tends to diminish. And once you have a hairline crack in your personal relationship, it might lead to a crumbling business enterprise, as well.

You tend to be complacent with close friends and relatives. When you’re working for your boss, your main goal is to impress him and show how well you perform. But when you’re working for a parent, a sibling, or your best friend, this might not always be the case. Friends and relatives tend to be more lenient and forgiving with each other. While a relaxed atmosphere might be conducive to creativity in some industries, it might not always be the best environment in all business enterprises. How would you feel if you hired your brother or sister as a business partner (or as a manager in a business you own) and he often just slacks on the job. See point #1 above, and you’ll know why partnering with someone you know closely might not always work.

However, going for the track record might not necessarily be all that good, especially when the trust factor is nearly zero. How sure are you that the new millionaire investor will not just leave you hanging in the air when things go sour? How sure are you that your new business partner is trustworthy when it comes to finances and the legal aspects of your business?

A good business relationship is built on trust. Many people I know forego the usual contract signing and agreements when they start new business ventures. To some entrepreneurs, a handshake is as good as a contract. Verbal communication is as good as black and white. This is where a proven entrepreneur, but a stranger, might not be the best fit. You need someone whom you could trust, but who also has the right attitude and mindset for business.

So I ask you, would you go for trust of track record?

I’d go for both.

Image credit: Flickr/quazie

However, it turns out that not each and every one of these can be as successful as you intend them to be. With blogs and web apps, branding matters. Usage statistics matter. Word of mouth matters. Community matters. Not everyone will make the grade. Sometimes you might have one or two sites that grow to be popular reads, and possibly high-earners, too. The rest might not be as successful.

The question here is how focused are you in running your enterprises and endeavors? How focused should your business be? I know a lot of online entrepreneurs who are fond of buying up online properties, developing these, but end up offloading (selling, cancelling, merging) these products when they turn out to be unpopular.

To some extent, I experience this with my own ventures. Some assets turn out to be non-performing and therefore have to be offloaded. Maybe someone else can better take care of my creations, and bring them to their full potential. Maybe someone else can put in better effort and time. Maybe someone else can create better value. Or in some cases, one would have to contend with the fact that some ideas are just not workable–at least at the present time.

My point here is that sometimes we are burdened with a lot of things in the fringes that we tend to forget the focus of our business. When things are hectic and busy, take a while to think. what is the core of your business? Are you keeping faithful to that core ideal or core thrust? How much of your effort are you focusing on this particular goal? And are those little things on the fringes working to complement this central ideal, or are these just taking your precious time away little by little?

For all you know, the long tail effect can also work the other way around. Rather than small benefits adding up, it could be small costs adding up to a big headache.

Keep focused. Keep the faith.

Image source: flickr/gerlos

Now blogging doesn’t sound like a complete waste of time, does it? My blogging during company time helped me on two fronts. First, I helped publicize the company’s services. No, I was actually evangelizing, and not just publicizing, since I was so passionate about the technology (at least back then). Also, it paved the way for me to become better known in the blogosphere as among the first people in my country to make a living out of blogs and blogging.

Now does the same hold with Twitter?

A lot of “internet marketers” are taking Twitter by storm, but a lot of people are still getting it wrong. Twitter is not about blatantly blasting messages to thousands of people. It’s not about getting the most number of followers. It’s about genuinely connecting with people in a forum where they are comfortable. Now in that regard, Twitter is not a waste of time, but instead something that you can productive with.

In my case, I find myself actually being less productive the more time I spend away from Twitter, and other online sources of discussion and information for that matter. To many, Twitter is a place where they can chat and banter. It’s a place to showcase their latest conquests, rants and raves. But to folks like me, it’s a place where I can look for hot trends, for article ideas, and even for business ideas.

So whenever I find myself having blogger’s block, one of the first things I do is check TweetDeck for new updates, links and other messages from my contacts. I also watch tweets on keywords relevant to my fields of interest. And when I post something new, I try to give it a bit of a push by tweeting a link. I don’t usually expect people to take notice of automatically-tweeted blog post announcements, and so I manually craft each headline, to make it interesting and relevant.

And so that was my long answer. My short answer is no: Twitter is not a waste of time. Yes, it does eat up a lot of my time, and most of the time it also compounds to the time I spend, dealing with the information I learn and discussions I get involved in. It keeps my mind active, my fingers twiddling on the keyboard, and in some cases, the cash register ringing!

Image credit: flickr/foxtongue