Internet Business

Several months ago I went on the cruise from hell. It wasn’t advertised as a cruise from hell, but instead as an opportunity to check out a networking club, to have fun, to see what this particular group had to offer . . . but make no mistake, it was the cruise from hell.

A THREE HOUR CRUISE . . .

A client of mine insisted I go on this evening cruise as her guest. She’d been talking about this group, and about how I should come to a meeting and sign up, about how much it would benefit me. She was insistent, and not easily dissuaded. The cruise was put together by the local chapter, so involved quite a few separate clubs.

I acquiesced. I was free that night, and didn’t think it could hurt. I was wrong.

My client had another guest also, so the three of us embarked on our adventure with the expectation that this would be a good business networking event, and should also be, as promised, fun. We were assured there would be food available, as well as the no-host bar.

And yes, a cruise around the Sound is always fun. But on a winter’s night, the scenery is limited to lights in the distance, so we were hoping there would be more going on inside than outside. And there was. Each club was clustered together in its little pocket of togetherness. On the dance floor, off the dance floor, these were people who knew each other well and didn’t seem to be very interested in meeting anyone new.

We signed in at a “guest register,” but the purpose of this was never made clear. After that, no one seemed to care that we were guests, that we were there to find out what this group could offer us, and afterwards, no one ever followed up with the information we’d left behind. Perhaps it was an exercise to make us feel welcome? If so, it didn’t work.

The no-host bar was quite a success. The food . . . not so much. It was brought by the members, and apparently there was a contest, though I never did figure out the purpose or the results. Some of it was abysmal, some of it was good, and there wasn’t nearly enough of it to feed a boatload of drinking people. (Or drunken people, for that matter.) Yes, many people seemed to be having a very good time. These appeared to be the people in the group, who were of the idea that this cruise was an excuse to party with their own group of friends. That’s nice for them. Other guests that I noticed were, much as we were, standing around looking for an emergency exit. Even my client, a member of a club, was not particularly enjoying herself. This could be because she was saddled with two unknown guests, or because her club wasn’t as much “FUN” as some of the other clubs.

This event seemed to work just fine as a gathering for club members from the local chapter to get together and party, as a way to solidify bonds already formed, as a way to relax in a non-business environment, but not as a means to introduce prospective new members to the club. I am not particularly motivated to attend any meetings after the cruise from hell.

Suggestions for making an event such as this work on both fronts:

Define what you want to accomplish before planning the event. A social event for your own members will have quite a different structure from an event that’s to attract new members. If you’re combining the two, don’t assume potential new members will be drawn in by your obvious ability to have fun with each other . . . we have our own groups of friends who meet that need just fine. We’re looking for business opportunities.

Show prospective new members what they can gain from joining your organization. How does your organization differ from others?

Take an interest in prospective members, keeping in mind this does encompass more than saying “hello” when they show up. If you’ve asked them to provide contact info, follow up with them after the event.

If alcohol is available, ensure there’s enough food for everyone. In fact, even if there’s no alcohol at your event, make sure there’s enough food available. Give us something to remember that was positive, even if it was just the great appetizers.

Remember that most people are not innately extroverts, able to mix right in with any crowd they walk into.

Defining your mission in advance and planning around what prospective members might want to experience, rather than planning a good time for your members, will improve the success of your networking event, and boost your club’s membership.

Monique Young relies on networking extensively, and considers it the most effective form of advertising for her business. She can be reached at http://www.youngbusinesssolutions.com

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Ever feel like there is too much information to deal with? Well, it stands to reason. Extrapolate a 2003 study from UC Berkeley and you get a total of 6,917,529,027,641,081,856 bytes of data produced annually in all forms on Earth. That’s almost 7 exabytes - or around a gigabyte for each person on earth every year!

When you look at it this way, it’s not whoever has the most data who wins in this information economy, but whoever can make sense out of their own domain of knowledge in time to move through windows of opportunity or avoid disruptive surprises.

If it were possible to get your arms around just the World Wide Web (800 terabytes or 80 times the size of all print collections in the US Library of Congress,) you might be able to find key indicators that can have powerful positive influence on your day-to-day operations. There are industry events, legal decisions, and regulatory changes dispersed through the web like needles in a gigantic moving haystack. The bookmarks of today are the page-not-founds of tomorrow.

If you spent all day on the web you might get what you need - for today. If you are planning on gathering intellegence about your competitors for Internet Marketing, you may be able to use a little help! Tomorrow morning, your answers may be obsolete, and you’re back to square one. But there is hope, thanks to strategic use of Internet agents.

I define web agents as saved and scheduled queries which compile, sort and send results to you without intervention. They must only be set up once and are consistent in the information they send. They can be your eyes and ears on the web and blogging community, and they work for free.

The most basic type of agent is an email alert. These are old-school in that their delivery depends on it making it to your in-box and through your SPAM filters. Email alerts are available from many sources, such as Reuters and CNN, or even eBay. They are incredibly easy to set up, but can be tricky to stop or change. I find them of limited use, but Google News Alerts does the best job of any I’ve tried.

If you know in advance the URL of information you want, you may want to use a “page monitor.” These “visit” a site on your behalf and send you an email when the contents change. This is very useful for watching your competitions’ websites or press releases. For less predictably-located information you can use an “inverted search engine” such as googlealerts.com or feedster.com. Still, these make their way to you in the mass of other email you read, making them less useful.

Email notification methods are rapidly being overtaken by RSS, which stands for either “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.” It offers many advantages over email alerts such as privacy and subscription control. To find RSS feeds (sources) you can use a search engine like feedster.com, which has indexed over 150 million RSS items, or look for the orange RSS icons found on many web pages. Feedster.com, in particular, will send alerts of new posts by author, subject, and more, and it will even combine your feed search results into a new “feed-feed” to scan quickly.

Feeds are usually viewed using software called an aggregator. These come in all flavors, including plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook and Eudora, as well as “live bookmarks” in the Firefox browser. Microsoft announced last month that RSS support would be built into the next version of Windows and Macintosh users have enjoyed it for a while.

Subscribing is done via simple click or cut and paste. You can assign expirations to keep your screen clear of old news. In some ways, it’s like a Tivo for business intelligence.

My current favorite combined system is Klipfolio by Serence, a free tool for assembling feeds to meet your own needs. There is a page monitor, feed monitor, and automated Google query system for web or news searches. You can browse an incredible “Klip farm” with thousands of data sources of all types. I have around forty precision feeds, page monitors and news searches, and find it quite manageable for a morning scan, and have never been so well informed.

A warning: Once you start using RSS or Klipfolio you will not be able to live without them. The first time you are able to make a competitive move based on a feed summary sent to your cell phone, you’ll be hooked. You’ll want to install it on your entire staff’s computers, and design queries for each person’s roles. “How’d you know that?” is something I love to hear, especially from a potential customer. “I try stay up to date” is my polite answer. Of course it’s possible to react too quickly or too often, so sometimes you can use multiple feeds to triangulate on the truth and see what’s really going on.

Albert Einstein once said “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” I hope that some of these ideas will help you see a little farther ahead for your own business.

Scott Clark is an Internet Marketing Consultant and Search Engine Optimization expert since 1996. He specializes in critiques of existing sites and strategic marketing plans. Scott Clark can be reached at 888-668-4393 or online at http://www.sitecreations.com

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