TigerTwoTiger

The email has been a little quiet from everyone this month, but there have been a few Skype discussions, one which I would like to include in the comments section. I had a discussion with Sam Deeks. Sam is growing his online reputation management company in the south west of England, and he and I have spent many pleasant phonecalls discussing the state of the industry.

Sam’s focus is on user feedback and how companies should respond to it. He is focusing on the Hotel industry, but I thought some of his comments provide some good insight into online reputation in general.

“there’s a lot of work to do at the real-world edge of ORM , i.e. the “Here’s your devastatingly bad, unanswered review on TripAdvisor… now let us take care of it….” For the hoteliers I’m thinking about, the real world problem isn’t the TripAdvisor review, the problem is how to talk to that customer without feeling bad.”

So often, online reputation management companies are looking at the wrong end of the problem. Just “burying” something bad doesn’t make the problem go away. But facing it, and talking to the customer can be a difficult and frightening thing to do. If it isn’t done in the right way, the problem can spiral out of control. According to Sam, this is what online reputation managers should be focusing on, and I tend to agree.

“ORM is a diagnostic whereas for many ORM companies it’s trying to be a ’solution…the problem with the solution-makers is that they’re obsessed with the buzz and don’t bridge the gap to the basics’”

Unfortunately, businesses can be scared off by the jargon and the magnitude of the task unless their consultancy actually takes the time to go through the basics of reputation. Just launching into a technical solution is like prescribing a sugar pill, which will be of limited effectiveness, and not even bothering to tell the patient what their problem is.

In case anyone else would like to contact us to comment, ask a question, give an opinion or tell us we are good, bad or insufferable, just head to the contact page. Talk to me! I really, truly want to hear from you (and I won’t bite).

Thank you to premasagar for the image

I summed up my recent dissatisfaction with this blog on Monday, mentioning that I was afraid that we were getting too caught up in the echo chamber. Most blogs seems to have the same format, and I get the sense we may be simply one more blog in the noise. The problem is, when the writer feels dissatisfied, then that is a dangerous place! So we have come up with a new structure to try and add variety, a bit more interest (for both you and us) and something a little different.

We’re going to structure TigerTwoTiger a little more like a monthly magazine, given to you in bite sized pieces throughout the month.

We have spent some time going through paper magazines (remember those?), determining the sections we are going to include each month. I have listed what we are going to offer below, but any feedback is welcome. Of course, there is nothing stopping me putting up a post which is outside of the magazine format - a bit like a supplement I guess. Those posts which make up the monthly magazine will be marked T2TM (for TigerTwoTiger Magazine - not very creative, I know), giving me a bit of flexibility if I want to put up something which may fall outside of the format.

May 1st sounds like a great day to start. The plan is to include the following sections:

Editor’s Word
This will generally be opening thoughts, discussion about what the month has in store and what is happening in the industry, and what you can look forward to over the next four weeks.

Your Emails and Comments
This post will be to answer or discuss any emails and comments we may have received from you. Kind of self-explanatory really.

News
We aren’t going to pretend that we are going to bring you breaking news. As previously discussed, there are some fantastic blogs out there that do that, and all the rest of us kind of tag along. I am going to leave the breaking stuff to the bloggers who have their ear to the ground, and offer you a round up of the biggest stories of the previous four weeks.

The Top 10
Each month we will provide you with a list of the top 10 resources. The first month will be the top 10 articles for understanding online reputation management. In months to come we will offer the top 10 sites to network with over 30s, the top 10 places to build your reputation as an author, and the top 10 resources for encouraging your CEO to blog.

Opinion
This will be an opinion piece on the state of the industry in general. ORM covers a plethora of areas - Online PR, internet marketing, SEO, diplomacy, conflict resolution etc. This month we are going to ask Will Face To Face Relationships Will Survive?

Interview or Guest
Each month we are going to ask someone we admire to either guest post for us, or let us interview them. This is so you don’t get bored of me all the time, and it helps to bring a different perspective to our little world.

Feature
The feature will be an article discussing an aspect of online reputation management. It may be about improving your blog, or the increase in reputation disasters. We have left the section very open as there is so much going on out there, we needed a place to talk about it.

Special Report
The special report will cover either an event, something important that has happened in the news, or a particular topic of interest, offering you some background and a bit of history, as well as the impressions or impact.

Best Practice
No, it isn’t going to be a top 10 list again (one a month is plenty) but it is going to be practical tips on reputation management and all that it entails. This month we are going to talk about dealing with personal attacks online, with some fairly important dos and don’ts.

The Series
We did start with a series before, and we are going to continue with that although they will be spread over a longer period (just to save you getting overloaded by the same old things each day). The first series will be on discussion forums, with more to come…

Reviews: Podcasts
I listen to more podcasts than is normal, I’m sure. At the moment I have in the realms of 16 hours of still-to-listen-to podcasts on my iPod and I subscribe to more each day! So, each month, I am going to do a review of a relevant podcast. I think I probably have enough in my subscribe list to last until 2011

Review: Books
And when I’m not listening to podcasts, I am reading books. So each month we will review a relevant book, starting with none other than Andy Beal’s Radically Transparent

Reviews: Screen
Just because spend all of my time reading or listening to podcasts, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be reviewing relevant TV, YouTube or Videos. I am probably going to haul in some help for this, as I am still waiting for my 36 hour day petition to be approved…

Reviews: Sites and Software
Like many of you, I try new sites and software all the time. And like most of you, I find some of them just mind-blowing, and others not worth the effort. There are sites out there which will really help your online reputation, so we are going to review one each month to help you decide whether it is worth your time or not.

Humour
Heading towards the end of the month, we’ve got to lighten up a bit don’t we?

Quiz
This will probably turn into a competition each month. I so wanted to put a crossword in, but logistically it wasn’t as practical.

Events and Calendar for the next month
We’ll give you a brief outline of what you can actually get away from your PC and go to for the month following.

Last Word
And we’re leaving this open…

This is an experiment for 6 months to see how it goes. It is going to be quite a challenge for us, and any help would be greatly appreciated, whether it is help to write, ideas for articles, questions or suggestions. T2TM could fall flat on it’s face within a few months, but you can’t say we don’t try anything new…

You may have noticed that this blog used to have a little bit of Google Adsense on the page. You may also notice that that little bit of Google Adsense is now no longer there. In light of yesterday’s moment of contemplation, the decision was made to remove advertising from this blog.

History

The question was posed to me at a recent seminar I ran, asking why it was there in the first place. My response was that it had been an experiment, dating back to when this blog first started. At that stage, I had spent quite a bit of time in reading about those bloggers which were either making millions from their blogs or were trying to make millions from their blogs. It seemed like the sensible thing to do – I mean, where was the harm?

As it turns out, we have made a grand total of 62 cents from Adsense in the seven months it has been there. Not exactly a great return. The problem with advertising is that unless you do it seriously, it is probably not going to allow you to retire next year, and that for every blogger who has quit their day job and is making a nice five figure salary, there are probably 10,000 bloggers out there who have done about as well as we have.

What is your intention?

I said it yesterday and it is just as relevant today. What is the intention of your blog? The conclusion we came to is that our blog was designed to demonstrate our professionalism, expertise and opinion of the industry. Making money directly from it is not a focus. In fact, we felt that advertising actually detracted from our aim which is why we chose to remove it.

We’re in good company

Courtney Tuttle discussed why Mark from 45n5 removed ads from his blog. Many of the reasons were simple enough, ranging from the aesthetics, to trust, to goals. Courtney disagreed and outlined some good reasons for his own opinion, however I think it is important for anyone with a blog to really take the time to think about the goals of that blog. If one of its goals is to make money, then by all means use advertising. However, if your blog is a part of your company’s reputation management campaign, then is placing advertising helping that reputation?

For us, the answer was no. The company has a number of clear income streams outlined in the business plan, and the blog isn’t one of them. If it had of been, that little bit of Adsense wasn’t really going to do it. We are still happy to experiment with the traffic drivers (BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and Entrecard, although the jury is out on the latter and I will probably wait to see where it is headed before making a decision on it) but advertising for the sake of income isn’t what we are about.

Ask yourself…

Does advertising fit with your goals?
Is the return you make from it going to make it worthwhile?
Who are your readers? Will advertising cause them to trust you? Take you seriously?
Is the amount of advertising you require to make a decent return going to detract from the rest of your site?

I don’t have the answer to these questions for anyone other than ourselves. You have to think about it yourself and come to a decision.

Thank you to Lee Jordan for the image

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Recently, I have found myself at a bit of an impasse with this blog. It is not because I haven’t wanted to write, although time (or lack of it) has been an issue. It is more that I am feeling slightly disillusioned because I am aware that I am quite regularly stuck in the proverbial echo chamber with my subject matter. If I am finding some of it a bit tired, then I can only imagine what all of you, with 100 other blogs subscribed to talking about similar things, are feeling.

What is the echo chamber?

Essentially, it is the phenomenon whereby bloggers blog about the same topics, feeding off other bloggers and essentially talking to even more bloggers who will write about the same topics…

Strangely enough, even this post is a bit echoey…

Problogger on Echo Chambers
Bloggers For Hire on Echo Chambers
Jeremy Zawodny on Echo Chambers
Doctor Vee on Echo Chambers
Chris Pirillo on Echo Chambers

…and so on…

But what to do about it?

Blogging, due to its simplicity and accessibility, was always going to become something of a ‘me too’ exercise. Some industries are worse than others of course (if you ever stumble across a How to make money online blog, you will see very quickly what I mean). And because social media, online reputation management, SEO and various other tech fields all tend to rely on blogging, we do all find ourselves covering the same things.

Which is why I have been a bit quiet recently…because I am trying to figure out a way to do something different. The last thing I want to do is write another “10 Ways to…” list or “The top 7…” list, like everyone else does. Yes, they work (sadly enough), but they are so overused. I don’t want to keep rehashing information that I have found on the top blogs. And Techmeme is fascinating, but there is no way on this earth I am going to be the first person to see something new…

Taking stock

Sometimes, it is worth going back to basics. And the first question to ask is…

Who am I writing this blog for?

And

What is it that is going to help them which they may not be able to get anywhere else?

These are much tougher questions than they may appear, particularly the second one. But before you sit down to write another article, have the answers to these questions ready and test your article against them. It may require a bit of market research, or a bit of time spent chatting with your readers to find out. It may require a bit of trial and error – making mistakes is part of it. But if you feel that your blog is simply echoing what everyone else in your industry is doing, then to avoid becoming a bit more noisy in the already deafening cacophony of information, step back and find out just who it is you want to be talking to.

I couldn’t finish without a bit of a list…

These are the possibilities I have been contemplating. Any others would be gratefully received.

• Changing the blog format - so rather than random(ish) posts 3 times a week, or a 5 post series, try something from the offline world. A magazine format, a newspaper format, or perhaps model it around a television program
• Older news - go back over things that happened a year ago or longer and see how that has affected what is happening today. Historians do it all the time.
• Spend a bit of time with personal observation or essays on general (as opposed to specific) trends.
• Spend more time with latest news which is related but slightly outside of the industry.

I am still contemplating these, but watch for a few experiments over the next few weeks. Like everything, blogging needs to evolve. And it is pretty tough to evolve if you keep running with the crowds.

Thank you to kjd for the image

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If you spend time on any of the enormously successful blogs, you will notice that many of them post not just daily, but sometimes several times a day. I know that regularity of posting is something we (and many others) have discussed before, but the question has been asked of me several times over the past week in seminars and in conversation, so I felt it worth briefly touching on again.

Jonathan Fields spoke about the posting patterns of top bloggers. His observations are incredibly valuable, but for many of you, blogging is just one part of a reputation management strategy. Blogging needs to find a space in between running a company, managing staff, overseeing or doing all of the marketing, sales, strategy, decision making, facilitation, administration, finance, making tea and every other important aspect of your business. And I hear from many of you that you just don’t have the time…

Regularity is the key

No-one is going to take a blog seriously if you only post once a month or once every six weeks. There is no doubt that you need to be reasonably regular with your posting. The reason being is people check their RSS readers regularly, and I know that I for one will end up deleting a feed if no-one has written anything for a month or more.

But, that doesn’t mean you have to write five times a day. By the same token, I will ‘mark all as read’ or skim though if there are so many posts on a feed that I just do not have time to read them all. It means I could miss some important stuff, but there are only so many hours in the day.

If you feel you can write twice a week, set aside time on Monday morning and Thursday morning to write. If you feel that writing during the week may be difficult, try writing a couple of posts on the weekend and setting them to appear later during the week. Of course, sometimes things just happen. Last week, with the combination of running the London Marathon, teaching a seminar, meetings and not being well, I just couldn’t find the hours I needed to post. In that case, the best I can do is get back to writing as soon as possible (i.e. today) and return to my routine.

Forget about the weekends

Interestingly enough, blogging should be a Monday to Thursday activity as Dee Barizo pointed out. Although some of us keenly check our RSS readers even on the weekend, many people prefer to spend their weekends with their family or friends rather than working. Therefore it is important to maximize your efforts when it is going to be most appreciated.

10:90 - Where your priorities should be

It may seem obvious, but a blog isn’t worth anything unless people can find it. Dee suggests that in fact the split between blogging and marketing your blog should be 10% to 90%. Even if you change the ratios to 50:50 (which is naturally going to reduce the effectiveness of your marketing), spending 2 hours a day, every day blogging means you need to spend another 2 hours a day, every day, marketing. That often isn’t reasonable when we are expected to achieve everything mentioned in the second paragraph above…

Don’t add to the noise just because you think you should

Your blog should be a serious undertaking, but then so should your marketing and your business. Set yourself a posting schedule. Try hard to stick to it. But don’t beat yourself up if it slips here or there, and make sure you are posting for good reason, not because you feel you should.

I would be interested to hear about posting patterns for all the rest of us. What do you do when holiday time comes around? What happens if you fall ill? And what do you do if you just don’t have anything to write about?

Thank you to joathina for the image

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It seems that the UK is seeking to take some serious action on those companies who want to manipulate the spirit of blogging for their own ends. The ethos behind the popularity and effectiveness of blogging is the fact that it forces a good measure of authenticity. As we have mentioned before, it is really difficult to maintain a false identity online, and it’s even harder if you are coming to the internet with a mindset of pure marketing and profit. Several very large companies, such as Walmart and Sony, have come unstuck because of this, and now it seems that the UK want to do something about it.

What are flogs?

Flogs are fake blogs. They are blogs which on the surface seem to be written by grass-roots third party individuals who are extolling the virtues of a particular company, but in fact turn out to be commissioned by or even written by the company itself without any disclosure. It is a bit like Gillette paying Thierry Henry to insist he uses Gillette razors every day, but without admitting that they are paying or in fact have anything to do with Thierry’s statements at all.

Why would a company create one?

It seems fairly obvious that flogs are simply because a company can see how influential blogs are, but are unable to think of a blog as anything other than an extension of their traditional marketing strategy. It often stems from arrogant belief that the internet is just like broadcast advertising where you can fake it and because you have a big name, everyone will believe it. Sadly, I can see the bigwigs of Sony sitting there with their super-expensive but non-internet savvy PR Company saying “everyone is into this blogging thingy. We need to do something – I don’t know, just make it up. I am sure no-one will know the difference.” It might have worked for advertising or press releases. It just doesn’t work here.

I think there is also an element of impatience involved. Social media, blogging, building third party advocates and really making an impact on your online reputation is something that takes time and effort. Unlike buying advertising space, it can take months to develop an active and effective blog, if in fact you even reach that stage. I would suggest flogs are an attempt to bypass that.

What they should be doing…

If companies want to use blogs, they should initially look to set up a company blog or a CEO blog to start discussion. They need to build trust with online users and that can only be done with authentic conversation. The kind of blogs which Sony and Walmart tried to create can really only be created genuinely by customers who love the product so much that they are willing to shout about it. There are plenty of examples of that out there – sites which have been neither endorsed by nor paid for by the actual company, but which stand as some of their biggest advocates. If you have a great product and you have built trust, this can easily follow.

If they want to actively get their customers involved, run a competition asking for experiences and give out prizes. Sony could have easily done this – asking people to make a video or write an article about what they want from a PSP, and then compiling the answers and giving out PSPs as prizes. That way, not only would they have had genuine responses, but they would have increased their trust and reputation further, rather than damaging it…

Will a law solve the problem?

Perhaps it is a good start. As Chris G rightly pointed out, it could be seen as a victory for the UK consumer, but I have some concerns. Flogs arise out of either genuine ignorance of, or an unwillingness to embrace social media. But unless companies are given an education about how it works and how to best engage online, just slapping a law down isn’t going to help change the mindset of old PR and advertising to the new form of online communication. My fear is that if companies are no longer allowed to develop fake blogs, they will simply turn their traditional marketing sites to some other aspect of the social internet and attempt to shoehorn it in. Time needs to be taken to help companies to understand.

But, it is still a good start. Now, if they could just do something about splogs (spam blogs which simply scrape content from others), then the blogosphere would truly become a trustworthy place to be. Although perhaps that is a bit utopian to believe?

Thank you to notafish for the image

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Most of us know the difference between ‘new media’ and ‘media’ right? Media without its adjective is newspapers, radio, television etc. The all new and improved media is the stuff of the internet. In fact, new media seems to attract other adjectives – social media and online media are two that spring to mind, but I am sure there are others. It seems like a simple enough division, but in 2008, just how accurate is that division? Is there really a new media or is there just media?

Where is the line?

When one first considers the categories, it may seem obvious where the line between media and new media is on the surface. But think a little harder. Is streamed radio media? Or is it new media? What about the fact that newspapers are being read online more and more? How about YouTube? Isn’t that just television? And as for actual television nowadays, what with the choice, the ability to watch what you want, when you want, sophisticated storage and recording, it is a far cry from television of the mid 1980s. Surely that would fall into the category of ‘new’?

Perhaps if we look at new media in the context of its social aspect, but once again there are problems. In the UK, several of the national newspapers have adjusted their online versions to allow for social interaction in accordance with demand. Many allow for profiles, some have made room for user blogs, others have their front page constructed in accordance with the most popular stories as voted by the users. This indicates that the traditional form of media is shifting away from that traditional form, and ‘new media’ is becoming the norm.

Implicit judgement

Unfortunately, judgement is still implicit within the terms media and new media. The traditionalists prefer to retain the adjective because it allows for the continuation of the belief that it is ‘other’. With that continuation comes the suggestion that the traditional form of media is the one to be trusted. It is the one which has survived all this time, and if you want quality, you don’t dally with the ‘new’. As Sean Carton suggested over at ClickZ, the fact that new media is regarded as new implies that it is untested and still in an experimental stage. It is a pretty huge and long running experiment if this is the case.

No matter what the proponents of the media/new media divide may think, the world of information has irreversibly changed. There is no way that we will go back to gathering all of our knowledge from the daily newspaper delivered to our door or the 6.00 News on Channel 5. We are never again going to race in the door only to discover we have missed our favourite radio or television show by 15 minutes, or put aside everything else in order to watch it at the time the broadcasters dictate. ‘New Media’ has become mainstream, and therefore it isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’, as Carton described. It is a ‘must-have’ of any marketing strategy, and it is ignored at your peril.

Isn’t it all just media?

Steve Rubel summed it up succinctly

Maybe we can stop calling stuff “social media.” It’s all media - all of it. Things don’t fit in little boxes anymore.

Media is a means of communication. The internet may have been a new means of communication back in the 1990s, but I think almost 20 years on, it has probably graduated to the point where it no longer requires an adjective for legitimacy.

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Many years ago now (and we are talking back in the 20^th century here) I started doing web design. I learnt HTML, Javascript, ASP and every other acronym you could possibly imagine before even the dot com crash. Back then it was the most forward thinking industry to be involved in and back then I really loved it.

Roll forward ten years. Websites are now as essential (and as prevalent) as business cards. The days of being one of the ‘select’ who could build a website (in Notepad no less) are long gone – children learn how to do it at school, you can download free templates and buy sites for pocket change. However, even more interesting is not the fact that websites have become a commodity, but the actual impact of such websites.

Back in the late 1990’s, what a company said on their website was gospel. The company site was the choice of destination for anyone who wanted to find out about the company. The ‘News’ page (if it was kept up to date…) gave the latest on what was happening, and the About Us page told you all you needed to know about how good the company was and how revolutionary their widgets were. Although I no longer am involved in web design or creation, friends and colleagues of mine who still are lament over the fact that they deal with companies today, in 2008, who haven’t really moved on from the turn of the century ethos.

Do people pay attention to websites any more?

If you look at some of the statistics that Andy Beal discusses, there is a fairly obvious trend. 80% of adults are more likely to buy on recommendation from friends or family, 52% prefer to get their information from someone like them and 90% of consumers trust recommendations from others. Essentially, what is happening is a loss of trust in the direct word of the seller, and a decisive shift towards third party trust. However, aside from some rudimentary testimonials (which, more often than not nowadays are viewed as being fabricated), a company website doesn’t offer that kind of information.

It is because of this shift that people are looking at other sources to help them make choices. Blogs, which really do offer latest news are eclipsing company news pages. Review sites or third party blogs have made the testimonial page almost redundant. And what people say about a company within their network, either to their face or via social media, says more to the potential customer than what the company says about themselves.

Are design, Flash animation or static pages worth the investment?

As such, spending vast sums of money on a Flash website with an intricate design and beautifully crafted pages of text may end up being money washed away. Because if a search for your company brings up 10 results which are from third parties (which are regarded as inherently more trustworthy than you are) and all of those results say that it really isn’t worth buying your widgets due to bad personal experiences with your organisation, many people won’t even bother looking at your fantastic Flash animation. And even if they do, chances are it probably isn’t going to convince them, especially if what you say on your website is completely incongruent to what the recommendations (or lack thereof) say.

Can we dispense with the company site altogether?

So where does that leave the good old company website? Is it going to be relegated to the past along with cassettes and video tapes, discussed over a beer with a laugh and a ‘I remember when…?’ Well, no. I don’t think it is as dire as that. There is no doubt that every company needs some kind of web presence, even if it be a site to provide contact details and all the necessary details that people will want after they have read the fantastic reviews about you. The thing that has changed, however, is that your website is no longer an end unto itself. There is no way you can think that just by plopping a site on a server somewhere, you’ve adequately tipped your hat to the internet and you don’t have to do any more. Suddenly, the goal posts have shifted – a lot. You are better off investing a little more time and money in ensuring that your reputation is the best it can be, and the recommendations are glowing, than you are commissioning and flashy animated introduction.

Of course, do feel free to disagree with me…

Thank you to Toshio for the image

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I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter. I like the fact that I get instant alerts about blog posts or interesting articles from the people I follow. Despite the fact that Twitter is actually pretty awful at updating feeds (Andy Beard discovered that actually only about 20% of tweets ever seem to make it through to the people following you), it gives me a sense of sitting in a global office with a whole lot of other people who occasionally jump up and shout ‘hey, I have just found a great article’ or ‘just had a chicken sandwich for lunch and it was delicious’.

Twitter, however, is far from the only social media site I engage with. In fact, as tweeted the other day, if I spent an hour a day on each of the social media sites I try to be active on, I would have to be online for 28 hours a day. Not an easy feat to accomplish. When you put it into perspective like this, it makes you start to think about what it is all for. Shortly after this uncomfortable revelation, doshdosh (aka Maki – author of one of the best researched social media and internet marketing blogs out there) tweeted that social media is a tool, not a destination…

What are you doing it for?

It is easy to get caught up in the hype of social media, especially when every day a new site or a new community seems to appear. And even if social media isn’t your main business, but has been integrated as part of your marketing or PR strategy, just keeping up with it is a full time task. But the important thing is to stop and think about these two important questions at regular intervals:

1. What is the ultimate goal of what we are doing?
2. Is what we are doing leading us to that goal?

Your ultimate goal

There could be a multitude of reasons why you decided to integrate social media into your business or individual marketing and reputation strategy.

• To increase sales of your widget or widget service
• To build up your mailing list
• To increase your turnover
• To increase the number of fans who might buy your album, book or other work of art
• To build your visibility
• To reach as many people as you can with your message or expertise
• To make lots of friends
• To feel popular
• To get-rich-quick
• Because everyone else is doing it and you didn’t want to feel left out…

None of these reasons is the right one or wrong one – they are your reasons. But they are reasons. The best thing, if you haven’t already done it, is to write your goals down. Put time frames on them so that you can measure them. And refer back to them frequently.

I could have added the tautology ‘we’re involved in social media to get involved in social media’ but that would be labelling social media as a destination.

It’s time to be ruthless with your tools

It is important to take stock of these goals because if the tools aren’t working to get you to the goal, then it is time to change the tools. If you had to dig an enormous hole in a day and you were down on your hands and knees with a teaspoon, chances are you aren’t going to reach your goal. It is time to ditch the teaspoon and go and hire a backhoe.

Let’s take one of the goals – to increase sales of your widget.

Firstly, you will have identified what that increase should be – say you want to sell 12,000 widgets in 12 months. You know that for people to buy widgets, just going to your website isn’t enough – they need to go to your website with both the interest in widgets and trust that you are the ultimate widget maker. Now, are all the hours you are spending on Facebook reaching widget lovers? Would you be better spending your time on a widget discussion board? Granted, voting on and posting widget related topics in Mixx may raise your profile, but is it really working to get people to your website? Check your web stats. Find out what sites are driving the most traffic and whether that traffic is converting. Ultimately, your destination is 12,000 widgets by December 31^st. A LinkedIn profile or a presence on Facebook is simply one means of getting you there.

That’s not to say it is all bad

Ultimately, social media is a lot of fun, and I would most definitely recommend retaining that fun element where you can. Like offline networking, you sometimes never know what may come out of an interaction. But always keep in mind what you want to achieve at the end of the day, which will help you to keep on track.  I wouldn’t want to give up the sense of camaraderie and companionship I get from Twitter, but I do try to keep in the back of my mind what I am using it for, even if that purpose is simply the feeling of not being alone.

Thank you to Daniel Greene for the image

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Firstly, I have several apologies to make. Let me make them straight up and then I’ll explain what has happened here on T2T in the past few days.

To everyone who received multiple trackbacks: Because I have had to reconstruct this blog from scratch, I suspect you have all received the same trackbacks from old posts. I am so sorry about this and I promise I am not trying to spam. I just wasn’t sure how to not send them when I re-posted each lost article.

To people who had written comments: I am going to try and put the comments that I have got backed up back into the database, but for anyone who commented and now the comment is gone, I am sorry. Because of the month’s worth of lost data, I am trying to retrieve what I can from Google cache and I suspect some of the comments will have vanished.

To anyone who has arrived at this blog in the past three days and wondered what on earth was going on: I have been working like mad to try and repair it which accounts for the odd posts, dates and appearance. I did as much as I could in the wee small hours of the morning to try and keep disruption to a minimum, but it was a pretty major task.

So, what happened?

Monday 31st March

10:07am: I finish reading Neville Hobson’s experience of Wordpress 2.5 and think “well, if it works for jangles, it’s got to work for me”

10:08am: I send a tweet asking for any last minute advice before I upgrade, then head over to the innocuous sounding Three Step Upgrade at Wordpress.org. Three steps? This should be simple

10:10am: I take a backup of my database but I fail to check the backup…

10:15am: Start of the upgrade process. Click the button which says Upgrade which is supposed to upgrade the database…and wait…and wait…then nothing. No instructions. It’s stopped loading. Just nothing.

10:20am: Thinking that perhaps it was done, I try to log into my control panel and…it fires me back to the upgrade page. So, I push the upgrade button and wait…and wait…then nothing again.

10:25am: After repeating the last step several times, rather than getting nothing, I receive a scary looking error message talking about duplicate entries and stuff. Head straight for the forums to see whether anyone can help.

10:35am: With no joy from the forums (seems I am the only person in the world to have had this problem on an upgrade to 2.5) and having gone through the same process about 10 times, all with the same result, I decide it would be best to go back to version 2.2.1 and load my database backup over the top of the now half upgraded database.

10:45am: Backup uploaded and version 2.2.1 reinstalled and…why is the latest post dated 28th February 2008? What happened to the 20 odd posts which I have put up since then? And why can’t I get to the dashboard at all?

10:46am: Panic.

10:48am: Call techy friend who isn’t there. Panic a bit more.

11:50am: Finally speak to techy friend who promised he would take a look…

Tuesday 1st April

5:30pm: Still no updated blog. Still don’t know what is happening.

10:00pm: Techy friend rings with the sad news that my mish-mash of version 2.2.1 and 2.5 as well as the fact that there is data missing from my backup means that my only real option is to scrap the lot and rebuild it again from scratch. He gives me advice on how I can retrieve the missing posts from Google cache, and instructs me how I can get into the database to adjust the dates so it doesn’t look like I have posted 50 odd posts on one day, and wishes me luck.

Wednesday 2nd April

2:30am: Still retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details.

9:00am: After some sleep, I am back retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details.

3:00pm: Finally finish retrieving old posts, posting them back up, changing database details. Now it is on to the comments.

The lessons learnt

Always check your backups.
Always check your backups.
Don’t believe it when the upgrade instructions tell you that it is only 3 easy steps.
Write each post in Word first and save a copy so as to alleviate panic.
Always check your backups.

Thank you to kateoo for the image

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