Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Demystifying Online & Social Media workshops

    Demystifying Online & Social Media workshops

    You need to be where today’s customers can find you. A web site and social media presence are essential for every business.

    The Internet is the new shopfront – our customers, suppliers, staff and anybody who wants to deal with us is checking us out on the web before they contact us.

    Social media is where our customers are talking about us. It’s vital that businesses have a social media presence and know how to use it properly.

    Both a web site and a social media presence are essential for every organisation, but how does a time pressed manager or business owner make sure they are getting the most from their investment?

    The Demystifying Online & Social Media  workshops are two half day sessions. The morning session will show you how you can use various Internet tools to promote your business and products online to the world. The afternoon session will show you how to use social media effectively to service your customers and market your business.

    Business veterans and Internet experts Brad Keeling and Paul Wallbank will guide you through the online tools and techniques which businesses owners and managers can use to improve their Internet performance and effectively extend their web reach to their key customers.

     

    I already have a website

    Even if you have website, it’s essential to be using it properly and making sure it’s leveraging other online channels – it’s now essential the local plumber, lawn mowing service or hairdresser is getting the most from their web presence.

    What will I learn?

    During the workshop participants will develop a cost effective online presence, understand how social media can work for their business and gain insights on strategies to their presence on the web.

    The morning session covers;

    • basic web design essentials
    • choosing keywords
    • using online basic search optimisation strategies
    • making images and video work for your site
    • using free local directory services

    The afternoon session will cover;

    • choosing the right social media tools
    • integrating social media with your business
    • building a social media following
    • dealing with trolls and haters
    • gathering business intelligence through social media

    All of this is explained in basic, commonsense terms and at the end of the workshop you’ll have the knowledge to run a basic but effective online and social media business strategy. A full set of reference notes will be provided to workshop participants.

    If you’re a tradesman, local shop, restaurant, cafe or any other business catering to a neighbourhood, suburb or district these are workshops you cannot afford to miss.

    Location

    Business Growth Centre
    48 Oakdale Road Gateshead NSW 2209 Map

    Date and Time

    Friday, October 26 2012.

    Morning session. Getting the web working for your business – 9am to 12pm
    Afternoon session. Unleashing social media in your business – 1pm to 4pm

    Price

    Single session – morning or afternoon $49.00
    Both sessions – $89.00

    Book now

    Seats are limited so book now through our secure website to guarantee your place at this workshop which no business can afford to miss.

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  • Six billion pairs of socks

    Six billion pairs of socks

    Ever since the days of Napoleon business people have lusted over the idea of selling into the Chinese market – the idea of a billion people clambering to buy just one widget each brings a gleam to the eyes of even jaded entrepreneurs.

    When Deng Xaioping opened the Chinese economy in the mid 1980s Australian brewers, Swiss watchmakers and German motor manufacturers rushed into the country believing that a billion liberated peasants would rush to buy expensive beer and watches.

    As it turned out, the real opportunities for foreigners were in the other direction. When China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 the boom that had already started in the Special Economic Zones along the southern Chinese coast spread across the Eastern provinces as manufacturing from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan to find cheaper labour.

    300km South-West of Shanghai the city of Datang became “sock town” where local companies manufactured a third of the world’s sock supply.

    Chinese sock manufacturers became so competitive that their Japanese counterparts were forced to move upmarket in an effort to secure a position in an industry awash with cheap products.

    Today the Chinese sock industry is looking sick as manufacturers go broke and inventories pile up reports The Observer.

    Excess capacity is a problem in many industries, particularly motor manufacturing where governments around the world have supported their local producers resulting in a glut of cars and trucks. Socks are no exception to the laws of supply and demand.

    The travails of China’s sock industry are a cautionary tale for those who project straight lines for Chinese growth.

    Facile assumptions that every man, woman and child on the planet needs to buy two pairs of socks a year, or that China will build millions of steel hungry apartments each year, is not economic analysis and any business built on such shaky beliefs is leaving itself vulnerable when things don’t work out.

    The same is true for nations. Hollow assumptions can put an entire economy on shaky ground. Just thinking that every Chinese family needs six pairs of socks doesn’t guarantee economic success.

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  • This is what happens when you rush things

    This is what happens when you rush things

    Nokia are going to release a smartphone with the best camera seen so far on a mobile phone.

    Desperate for good news and positive coverage, Nokia decided to announce the Lumia 920 prematurely and their marketing people are forced to fake the videos and sample photos.

    Then they get caught.

    And instead of having the media fawning over the impressive features of the Lumia 920, Nokia are scorned. A particularly damaging thing in a fortnight where Amazon and Apple have major announcements.

    The problem is giving yourself artificial milestones that can’t be met. People take shortcuts to meet those deadlines and debacles like Nokia’s are the result.

    Artificial “drop dead dates” are the mark of panic by poor management. One wonders how long this can continue at Nokia.

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  • When disruption meets regulation

    When disruption meets regulation

    Taxi booking applications have been one of the big areas for smartphone developers. Around the world apps for hailing cabs have popped up following the lead of San Francisco’s Uber.

    One of the opportunities for copycat developers is that in most places taxis are regulated by the local city or state government, so an app for New York will struggle in Los Angeles, Paris or Tokyo and savvy entrepreneurs can create their own Uber knock off suited to their own location.

    The problem is in most places taxis are regulated as a cartel, not a public service. Sometimes that cartel is to protect drivers, sometimes the companies that run the networks and often taxi license holders.

    Sydney, Australia, is a good example of the latter two. The New South Wales state government’s rules are designed to protect the interests of the greedy ‘investors’ who’ve bought taxi license plates and the networks who run the booking systems and management of the cabs.

    The result is Sydney cab drivers are treated like serf in what can only described as a feudal system while customers have to put up with lost bookings, poorly kept vehicles and high taxi fares.

    It’s a lousy deal all round and is a great example of where disruption can change things for the better.

    The problem is the incumbents will fight innovation that threatens their cosy and profitable arrangements and the regulators are part of that comfortable alliance.

    In New York it looks like the Taxi and Limousine Commissioner does have some of the consumer interests at heart, pointing out that the metered fare is what passengers have to be charged by law. In most cities though, particularly Sydney, protecting the passenger is just another smokescreen for protecting vested interests.

    Something that many innovators don’t realise is the power of those vested interests.

    In the case of the taxi app developers many of them are about to get a nasty taste of just how vicious incumbent and their tame regulators can be when confronted with a threat to their cosy business arrangements.

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  • Moving on from the gadget era

    Moving on from the gadget era

    Yesterday at the launch of the next generation of Kindle e-readers Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos observed why the various Google Android based tablets have failed.

    Why? Because they’re gadgets, and people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month.

    Throughout the industrial revolution progress and innovation was about creating products that improved people’s lives – whether it was Josiah Wedgwood making affordable crockery, Thomas Edison commercialising the light bulb or Henry Ford making cheap motor cars available to the masses – these innovations changed the way we lived or did business.

    In the late Twentieth Century business focused more on creating gadgets and our lives became a race to accumulate more useless tat to store in our big McMansions to store the junk in.

    We wore out our credit cards and home equity in “buying stuff we don’t need to impress people we don’t like” throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

    Today that’s changed, consumers are now more cautious and, despite the efforts of governments to prop up the broken system, the great credit boom is over.

    Jeff Bezos is onto this, instead of Amazon offering me-too products that don’t add value,  “people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time.”

    The word ‘service’ is notable — one of the things Amazon have achieved is changing how customers use books and DVDs from outright purchases that they can trade and sell to licensed products where Amazon and publishers control distribution.

    Amazon are consolidating their position as one of the big four Internet empires. How Google, Apple and PayPal respond to Amazon’s suite of services will define much of the online economy.

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