In my last post I selected a few (so-called) online professional networks and reviewed them. Here are some more: some useful, some not. This is not an exhaustive list, as these sites are constantly popping up. However, I will try to guide you through the dross to find the ones that work!
Ryze
This is a business networking site, and its functionality is similar to that of LinkedIn. It’s quite un-sophisticated though, and has only around 300,000 members, most of whom are US based. This site doesn’t seem to be going anywhere: although it’s been around a long time the look and feel are quite boring, and its offering is fairly limited. For these reasons, I won’t be using it.
Viadeo
This is an excellent site (which along with Xing) could prove a viable competitor to LinkedIn, particularly in Europe. It has a very strong presence in France, and acquired a network in Canada last year, bringing its member numbers to 25 million.
It charges fees of around €6 monthly for premium membership. The structure is very simple: users get access to all areas with premium membership, including contacting other members.
In late 2009, the Economist reported: “Last year LinkedIn had struck a deal with Apec, France's best-known professional-recruitment service, to offer search functions to its huge customer base of over 30,000 companies and 500,000 executives. But on November 17th Apec made a new deal with Viadeo, having noted that although LinkedIn could reach executives at France's biggest international companies, it failed to connect enough people in the country's thousands of smaller firms…
In Italy and Japan, LinkedIn is number one even though it has not translated its site into the local language in either place. In China, however, LinkedIn has to compete against the Chinese-language website of Tianji, the country's biggest professional network, which is owned by Viadeo.”
Plaxo
Plaxo sells itself as being an address book in the cloud. It has been around for some time: the company itself says it has 40 million members, although recent press reports quote 20 million. It launched ‘Plaxo Pulse’ (a true online networking site) but following its lack of success, Pulse has been rebranded and toned down to ‘Stream’ – which shows web-wide activity of a user’s contacts. Its functionality is mostly aimed at working with existing contacts and so it’s not useful for networking.
Naymz
Naymz is a little different from other networking sites in that it offers tools focussed on reputation, personal branding and identify verification. There is emphasis on the truth of the information on a profile, and members receive points on a reputation score dashboard.
Having said all that, Naymz has a slightly dubious reputation for being simply a scraper site that pulls names from other sites. Naymz appear to be completely US based, so will be of limited value to European-side networkers, especially at a basic fee of €25 monthly.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Which professional networks?
As you well know (and as previously discussed), there is a fine line between making effective use of online professional networks, and spending all day connecting, tweeting, commenting and blogging.
Who has all day to do this? Unless your job title is 'Online Marketing Specialist', then you'll need to consider a new network carefully.
Is it a useful marketing tool that will help win business? Or is it a time-wasting drag, devised by a clever techie start-up obsessed with bumping up their member numbers so they can make a quick buck with advertisers while dreaming of being the next Facebook?
Here's a high level review of some of the main networks. For more in-depth detail, or for some help on which are most suitable for your industry, contact KnowledgeWorks. More to follow in a few days.
Spoke
Spoke says it has 60 million users, mainly in the US. Basic membership is free but premium is costly (from $25 to $99 monthly). Most comments posted by members are dated from 2007 or earlier, so our guess is they’re not getting very many new users, or any up to date discussions. In any case, this is more of a 'people finder' than a professional networking site.
Xing
Xing is probably the most successful online professional network in Europe, after LinkedIn. It has 8 million members worldwide, with most of these European. Xing has strong corporate backing and this, along with with reasonable membership fees, is a good first step to a solid business model. Xing's functionality is very similar to LinkedIn – a blend of networking, discussions, and also job searches. It has yet to make a big impact in Ireland and the UK, but watch this space.
Zoominfo
This is essentially a US-based list broker. It claims functionality as an online networking site, but in fact it’s about accessing lists and contact details for people and companies. Zoominfo gathers data abut people and invites users to register in order to ‘reclaim’ your data and fine tune the profile that already exists for you. Even the free trial to premium level at Zoominfo requires that users share their entire address book (from Gmail or Outlook etc). Usually these sites allow you to pick and choose which of your contacts you’d like to search for, but Zoominfo takes it all. This site might be useful if you need lists from the US, but not for professional networking.
Jigsaw
This is a good US based B2B directory with contact details only. It has powerful search functionality, with a very detailed search engine, although data is likely to be scraped from other sources rather than contributed by the individuals themselves. Jigsaw charges for obtaining contact information. Again, Jigsaw could be useful for finding people and their contact information, but it's not useful for networking. Jigsaw has recently been acquired by Salesforce.com, the contact management business, and this could raise issues about ownership of data.
Who has all day to do this? Unless your job title is 'Online Marketing Specialist', then you'll need to consider a new network carefully.
Is it a useful marketing tool that will help win business? Or is it a time-wasting drag, devised by a clever techie start-up obsessed with bumping up their member numbers so they can make a quick buck with advertisers while dreaming of being the next Facebook?
Here's a high level review of some of the main networks. For more in-depth detail, or for some help on which are most suitable for your industry, contact KnowledgeWorks. More to follow in a few days.
Spoke
Spoke says it has 60 million users, mainly in the US. Basic membership is free but premium is costly (from $25 to $99 monthly). Most comments posted by members are dated from 2007 or earlier, so our guess is they’re not getting very many new users, or any up to date discussions. In any case, this is more of a 'people finder' than a professional networking site.
Xing is probably the most successful online professional network in Europe, after LinkedIn. It has 8 million members worldwide, with most of these European. Xing has strong corporate backing and this, along with with reasonable membership fees, is a good first step to a solid business model. Xing's functionality is very similar to LinkedIn – a blend of networking, discussions, and also job searches. It has yet to make a big impact in Ireland and the UK, but watch this space.
Zoominfo
This is essentially a US-based list broker. It claims functionality as an online networking site, but in fact it’s about accessing lists and contact details for people and companies. Zoominfo gathers data abut people and invites users to register in order to ‘reclaim’ your data and fine tune the profile that already exists for you. Even the free trial to premium level at Zoominfo requires that users share their entire address book (from Gmail or Outlook etc). Usually these sites allow you to pick and choose which of your contacts you’d like to search for, but Zoominfo takes it all. This site might be useful if you need lists from the US, but not for professional networking.
Jigsaw
This is a good US based B2B directory with contact details only. It has powerful search functionality, with a very detailed search engine, although data is likely to be scraped from other sources rather than contributed by the individuals themselves. Jigsaw charges for obtaining contact information. Again, Jigsaw could be useful for finding people and their contact information, but it's not useful for networking. Jigsaw has recently been acquired by Salesforce.com, the contact management business, and this could raise issues about ownership of data.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
SME: Are you budgeting for market research?
A colleague commented recently that many SMEs don't budget at the start of the year for market research.
I've worked with a lot of SMEs, and I know these things about SME owner managers:
So the message is, allocate a piece of your budget for research - it'll pay off next year, wait and see.
I've worked with a lot of SMEs, and I know these things about SME owner managers:
- you are dedicated to growing your business
- you expend every ounce of your knowledge and experience in bringing about this growth
- you constantly seek to expand your own skills by networking with others to learn more - in order to grow your business.
I also know that:
- in a small small team you must outsource: your pool of knowledge is by nature limited
- there are areas which can help to grow your business, which you may not until now have utilised - these can be a number of things: technological, operational, or market based research
- market research will always help you to stay ahead of the competition
- research is a pre-requisite to succesful expansion or business development
I've seen it time and time again. Companies operate within their comfort zone: they anlayse the hell out of the factors they're familiar with, such as the supply chain, manufacturing, quality control and so on. But with the best will in the world, ad-hoc necessities like research tend to fall much lower on the prioirty list - largely because they're outside an SME owner's area of expertise and experience, and because they're ad-hoc.
Allocate a small amount this year, and use it when you're tearing your hair out saying:
- Why am I losing sales to this new competitor? What are they doing that's new?
- I don't understand enough about this market to take this risk! Am I making a mistake?
- How can I estimate for stock levels when I don't know the size of this new segment?
So the message is, allocate a piece of your budget for research - it'll pay off next year, wait and see.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Our personal lives revealed
The US has seen some growth in people search engines recently. Enter a person’s name and results show any personal information about them, including their Facebook pages, linked in page, website, etc. Some examples are Wink , PeekYou, and Zoominfo for business people.
Ok, it might seem like a ‘nice-to-have’, a bit like the google images search which restrict searches to results with pictures. Or an easy way to find a person’s LinkedIn page. Or an easier way to find a long lost friend or classmate (without all the Google Search results clutter).
However, there are more ominous uses! Most notable is the trend of employers using these search engines to trawl social networking sites to find out more about potential new employees (or partners, or suppliers, or contractors or consultants…).
Suddenly, that photo of you on your friend’s Facebook page where you’re dancing on a bar table with your trousers on your head might not seem quite so funny...
Until recently, it’s been fairly easy to keep personal information personal. Watch what you say, stay circumspect about life outside the office and no-one will find out about your personal peccadillos.
However, sites like these (as well as a regular Google search) mean that your personal life is increasingly on show. Now your professional connections can search and view and wonder, and maybe even think twice about that job offer based on what they see you doing in your spare time.
Like a lot of trends, 'people-check' is slowly making its way to our shores. Krishna De reported in her blog this week that 40% of European tech firms check social media profiles of potential employees. Krishna also reports that Irish SMEs are embracing social media marketing - and this means they’re likely to use it for people-check too.
Unsurprisingly, the US market has come up with a partial solution. Naymz is an online professional network which offers members the option of a Google ad which appears when their name is searched, pointing to their profile on Naymz. It's designed to encourage people to just look at the ad, get the information they need there, and ignore other Google search results.
Naymz used to also offer 'search engine flooding': camouflaging a web page that you don't want people to see. They create lots of related but postitive comment about you, and work to get that placed higher in the search engines. This 'search engine flooding' technique might eventually push the offending page to Page 2 of more of Google results, making it unlikely to be spotted. However, Naymz haven't been giving this the big sell recently, meaning it's probably not effective enough.
So, reader, the moral of the story is: be good, and if you can't be good - BE CAREFUL!
Ok, it might seem like a ‘nice-to-have’, a bit like the google images search which restrict searches to results with pictures. Or an easy way to find a person’s LinkedIn page. Or an easier way to find a long lost friend or classmate (without all the Google Search results clutter).
However, there are more ominous uses! Most notable is the trend of employers using these search engines to trawl social networking sites to find out more about potential new employees (or partners, or suppliers, or contractors or consultants…).
Suddenly, that photo of you on your friend’s Facebook page where you’re dancing on a bar table with your trousers on your head might not seem quite so funny...
Until recently, it’s been fairly easy to keep personal information personal. Watch what you say, stay circumspect about life outside the office and no-one will find out about your personal peccadillos.
However, sites like these (as well as a regular Google search) mean that your personal life is increasingly on show. Now your professional connections can search and view and wonder, and maybe even think twice about that job offer based on what they see you doing in your spare time.
Like a lot of trends, 'people-check' is slowly making its way to our shores. Krishna De reported in her blog this week that 40% of European tech firms check social media profiles of potential employees. Krishna also reports that Irish SMEs are embracing social media marketing - and this means they’re likely to use it for people-check too.
Unsurprisingly, the US market has come up with a partial solution. Naymz is an online professional network which offers members the option of a Google ad which appears when their name is searched, pointing to their profile on Naymz. It's designed to encourage people to just look at the ad, get the information they need there, and ignore other Google search results.
Naymz used to also offer 'search engine flooding': camouflaging a web page that you don't want people to see. They create lots of related but postitive comment about you, and work to get that placed higher in the search engines. This 'search engine flooding' technique might eventually push the offending page to Page 2 of more of Google results, making it unlikely to be spotted. However, Naymz haven't been giving this the big sell recently, meaning it's probably not effective enough.
So, reader, the moral of the story is: be good, and if you can't be good - BE CAREFUL!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Running on empty
Damien Mulley talked in his blog last week about what a desperate state Ireland is in and how things look so bleak and unpromising. However, he then went on to list some of the advantages of doing business in this environment.
It’s true: though the outlook does look very bleak there are things we can be doing to win sales, develop our business and stay ahead of the competition. And the most obvious of them is... online networking of course.
It's running, because despite what you might think it will work for you. And you're doing it on empty, because it's free. If business is slower than usual and you have some down time, then use this time to get up and running online, and here are three good reasons why:
Your customers expect you to be expert, in all things!
First off, everyone is thinking about it, so if you’re a service provider and you DON’T have an online presence then you’re looking outdated and out of touch. Customers want to know that you’re ahead of the game in all things service-oriented and digital (whether this has anything to do with your business or not). So developing and maintaining an online presence is a must.
(NOTE when I say online presence I mean on professional networks, on twitter, blogging, etc. Of course you have a decent website, that goes without saying)
It's marketing, at no cost
Secondly, it’s an inexpensive way to network and win sales, particularly if you’re cash strapped. There are no associated costs, except for your time. That beats shelling out for advertising, brochures or DM mailings for sure.
It's a great way to build your expertise
Finally, it’s a great way to easily develop your expertise. You can connect with like minded people and learn from them, all from the comfort of your own desk (or PC or mobile device). Free webinars, excellent expert blogs, tweetmeets, LinkedIn group discussions – these are all available and cover your sector or industry for sure. And if they don’t then set up a group and get people talking. Once you sort out the wheat from the chaff, and figure out which ones are bringing you real knowledge (and which are wasting your time) then you can’t help but learn. and once you start to communicate this learning with your prospects and customers, then you’re actively keeping one step ahead of the competition.
So, in a nutshell, use the downtime to get online, get your presence felt there, and use it as a long term strategy to build revenue and grow your business.
It’s true: though the outlook does look very bleak there are things we can be doing to win sales, develop our business and stay ahead of the competition. And the most obvious of them is... online networking of course.
It's running, because despite what you might think it will work for you. And you're doing it on empty, because it's free. If business is slower than usual and you have some down time, then use this time to get up and running online, and here are three good reasons why:
Your customers expect you to be expert, in all things!
First off, everyone is thinking about it, so if you’re a service provider and you DON’T have an online presence then you’re looking outdated and out of touch. Customers want to know that you’re ahead of the game in all things service-oriented and digital (whether this has anything to do with your business or not). So developing and maintaining an online presence is a must.
(NOTE when I say online presence I mean on professional networks, on twitter, blogging, etc. Of course you have a decent website, that goes without saying)
It's marketing, at no cost
Secondly, it’s an inexpensive way to network and win sales, particularly if you’re cash strapped. There are no associated costs, except for your time. That beats shelling out for advertising, brochures or DM mailings for sure.
It's a great way to build your expertise
Finally, it’s a great way to easily develop your expertise. You can connect with like minded people and learn from them, all from the comfort of your own desk (or PC or mobile device). Free webinars, excellent expert blogs, tweetmeets, LinkedIn group discussions – these are all available and cover your sector or industry for sure. And if they don’t then set up a group and get people talking. Once you sort out the wheat from the chaff, and figure out which ones are bringing you real knowledge (and which are wasting your time) then you can’t help but learn. and once you start to communicate this learning with your prospects and customers, then you’re actively keeping one step ahead of the competition.
So, in a nutshell, use the downtime to get online, get your presence felt there, and use it as a long term strategy to build revenue and grow your business.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Advertising – not the be-all and end-all
I read a blog post recently about a consultant who was trying to develop his business and wanted to advertise. This person immediately began an analysis of potential costs and returns for each advertising medium, as well as some brief analysis of who their customer might be and how best to reach them.
What he hadn’t considered at all was that advertising might not be the best way for him to grow revenue.
Businesses sometimes see advertising (often mass market advertising) as being the goal of a cash rich business – have the cash, spend it on advertising and watch the business roll in. Instead it can prove a costly mistake, either as an overall strategy or in implementation.
I worked with a client who was thinking along the same lines – this business needed to grow revenue and wanted me to advise them on how best to advertise.
First a little on the company background: the business owner/managers were two ‘techies’ who had set up an online retail business. Their expertise was technical, and certainly not consumer or retail.
I immediately called ‘Whoa there’. Mass market advertising is not always the right way to go – in fact it could bring huge problems like an inability to meet demand due to stock or resource issues, leading to poor customer service and brand damage, to name but a few.
My client was in a similar boat: our research showed that mass marketing just wouldn’t work for their business: instead they needed to build their brand and market to their specific segments, thereby growing the business organically.
A key option which I explored with them was to diversify a little: we recommended that they use their technical expertise to ‘white label’ their offering to other players in the market. Our research showed that other players were struggling to move to online retailing. These companies had the retail experience but not the technical expertise (which my client had in spades).
This strategy proved a successful one: now the client is working on technical projects they are good at, enjoy, and are growing their expertise. A little targeted advertising and brand development kept their core business in growth mode too, albeit slower than they had originally envisaged.
What he hadn’t considered at all was that advertising might not be the best way for him to grow revenue.
Businesses sometimes see advertising (often mass market advertising) as being the goal of a cash rich business – have the cash, spend it on advertising and watch the business roll in. Instead it can prove a costly mistake, either as an overall strategy or in implementation.
I worked with a client who was thinking along the same lines – this business needed to grow revenue and wanted me to advise them on how best to advertise.
First a little on the company background: the business owner/managers were two ‘techies’ who had set up an online retail business. Their expertise was technical, and certainly not consumer or retail.
I immediately called ‘Whoa there’. Mass market advertising is not always the right way to go – in fact it could bring huge problems like an inability to meet demand due to stock or resource issues, leading to poor customer service and brand damage, to name but a few.
My client was in a similar boat: our research showed that mass marketing just wouldn’t work for their business: instead they needed to build their brand and market to their specific segments, thereby growing the business organically.
A key option which I explored with them was to diversify a little: we recommended that they use their technical expertise to ‘white label’ their offering to other players in the market. Our research showed that other players were struggling to move to online retailing. These companies had the retail experience but not the technical expertise (which my client had in spades).
This strategy proved a successful one: now the client is working on technical projects they are good at, enjoy, and are growing their expertise. A little targeted advertising and brand development kept their core business in growth mode too, albeit slower than they had originally envisaged.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Acceptable frequency of blog posts?
It's interesting that as soon as my day job gets busy the first thing to suffer is this blog.
There's a lesson there for all of you potential bloggers out there, and one I've evidently yet to learn myself.
Blogging must be regular - even if it's short - otherwise readers will look elsewhere, as I've done myself many times. It's the regularity of the posting that makes it up to date, relevant and interesting. A post that's more than a few weeks old smacks of half heartedness. It says to the reader: "Don't bother checking this blog again as this could have been my last post". We've enough to do every day without clicking through to an empty blog to check for a post. And those 10 seconds wasted out of anyone's day is an insult, if you ask me.
So, please accept my apologies for having having been such a lame poster in the last few weeks.
What do you all think - what's the minimum acceptable frquency of blog posts?
I know there are ways to get alerted for a new blog post but not everyone uses these, so let me have your thoughts.
Personally, I think two weeks is about the longest I'd be happy to leave a blog empty for. Ideally I'd like to post twice a week.So, I'm not happy with my recent lack of posts. In future, I'm going to try to stick with this limit, and if I can't do that, I'll stop blogging.
How's that for a promise!
There's a lesson there for all of you potential bloggers out there, and one I've evidently yet to learn myself.
Blogging must be regular - even if it's short - otherwise readers will look elsewhere, as I've done myself many times. It's the regularity of the posting that makes it up to date, relevant and interesting. A post that's more than a few weeks old smacks of half heartedness. It says to the reader: "Don't bother checking this blog again as this could have been my last post". We've enough to do every day without clicking through to an empty blog to check for a post. And those 10 seconds wasted out of anyone's day is an insult, if you ask me.
So, please accept my apologies for having having been such a lame poster in the last few weeks.
What do you all think - what's the minimum acceptable frquency of blog posts?
- Hourly
- Daily
- Twice a week
- Weekly
- Twice monthly
- Monthly
I know there are ways to get alerted for a new blog post but not everyone uses these, so let me have your thoughts.
Personally, I think two weeks is about the longest I'd be happy to leave a blog empty for. Ideally I'd like to post twice a week.So, I'm not happy with my recent lack of posts. In future, I'm going to try to stick with this limit, and if I can't do that, I'll stop blogging.
How's that for a promise!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
