One Day Course

Dead Men have White Collars is a one day classroom based seminar on how to use resources on the Internet to market yourself and your business.

It teaches how to create multiple income streams using FaceBook, YouTube, blogs, websites, podcasts etc. This weekly blog picks up where the seminar finishes giving additional insight into WordPress and current marketing trends and conditions.

Dead Men is based in South Africa. Click here for more

New Dead Men Roadshow

A new Dead Men road will be starting this month. The first venue will be in Johannesburg on 15 April at the Platinum Planet headoffices

Best new marketing blog

Some blogs are about as perfect as you can get and they have the stats to prove it i.e. in one year, 3 million visitors, 3500 followers on Facebook, 3800 subscribers to their RSS feed and 1600 followers on Twitter (Dec 2009)

The blog I’m referring to – Bike Exif an Australian outfit that specialises in classic motorcycles, custom motorcycles and cafe racers. Chris Hunter is their creative director.

Mac custom motorcycle

Click here to view post on Mac Motorcycle

The blog has a community. It is full of passion. It focuses on design; each motorcycle and photo is a work of art. Every motorcycle has a story and every owner and custom builder is profiled; everyone is important. They post almost every day. The blog content is tightly focused. You have a regular website and a mobile phone website. You can follow them on Twitter, Facebook or via subscription (RSS feed) or a daily email.

Even if you are not a biker, this is a blog website we can all learn from!

Comments Discussion Blogs

On the old Internet (Web 1.0) communication was in one direction only i.e. from author to reader. On the new Internet (Web 2.0) communication is not only two way but is a community affair with everybody involved with comments on comments and entire conversations.

WordPress blogs allows reader comments and discussion but there are a number of settings that you can implement to control how comments work. Log into your dashboard and check out ‘Settings, Discussion’. Here you will find many different settings that can make comments work for you.

Wordpress - comment discussion settings

Podcasting Introduction 101 how to

My friend Jonty Cogger will be travelling up through East Africa this December by bus. He will pass the time by listening to saved podcasts on his iPod.

Podcasting lets you automatically receive the latest episode of your chosen audio programme as soon as it’s available.  This audio offering could be from a radio station, from an industry leader or from an organisation e.g. your local church. By subscribing to a podcast you can take the program with you and listen wherever and whenever you like.

The BBC have a large number of podcasts covering a wide variety of topics. If you have never subscribed to a podcast before this could be a good place to start. Click here for more information and to watch a short explanatory video.

RSS news feed subscription

Deciding on who you read, listen to or watch is an important element of the Dead Men strategy – you don’t want to listen to prophets of doom that offer no useful solutions or who see no opportunity in chaos and crises.

Once you have found someone worth following you want to get their information easily and quickly. The best way is via RSS – a news feed – also called a channel or subscription e.g. on YouTube you would subscribe to a channel.

BBC - RSS news feed information

If you have never tried this before you could start by subscribing to the BBC newsfeed to see how it works. Here is a link to the BBC website that explains how to go about getting the latest news.  Click here for more information.

On a more advance topic you can even have your own website reflect in real time the BBC headlines

Proofreading grammar checking WordPress

A proofreading tool is very useful to get rid of things like passive sentences, bias, jargon and poor phrases.  Ms Word can do this task for you but so can WordPress (although it may slow down your system a little)

To enable proofreading and grammar checking open you dashboard by logging in. Go to ‘My Account’, ‘Edit Profile’. Here you will find many useful settings, including proofreading.

You can create a list of cultural exceptions relevant to your part of the world under ‘Phrases to ignore’.

Grammar checker in WordPress

Crises

Crises = danger + opportunity

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.”

Richard M. Nixon

Paradox is a characteristic of our modern society. It is so easy to fixate on the danger and become paralyzed. It is so easy to stop thinking and cease to see the bigger picture (the context of the crisis). It is difficult to tear our eyes away from the danger and strike out, with a brave heart, towards the opportunity lying within our reach.

Today I would like to encourage you to see the opportunity in every crises.

You can do this . . .

Blogging is not something extra

Blogging (podcasts, YouTube videos) and all forms of social media is not something EXTRA – it is in place of.

Blogs should be in place of mountains of long explanatory emails, memos, circulars, journals, product training, think-tanks, authoring in Ms Word, planning meetings, mentoring meetings etc

Podcasts, in place of endless staff meetings and training events.

Videos, in place of training seminars and motivational meetings.

Social media e.g. FaceBook in place of newsletters, emails and phone calls.

As long as you think of the new Internet tools as ‘something extra’ you will struggle to start or make a change in your circumstances.

“Destroy it all and start again.” – Tom Peters.