Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How Much is that Bloggy in the Window?

Do you remember the song "How Much is That Doggy in The Window?" Americans use the phrase to poke fun when they are embarrassed to ask the price of something. The Internet business seem to be embarrassed of prices. You may ask yourself Why? Fees and costs are embarrassing in most business negotiations when a product content or benefit are not well defined. In my opinion the Internet has many amazing capabilities to offer businesses and individuals. So prices and costs should not embarrass consumers or providers of Internet services (i.e. blog design, writing and editing.) Designing and building blogs and social networking accounts is hard work. To some companies a blog is their only Internet presence, they want to make sure the design and the content reflect a professional image. To some business managers defining blog articles require thinking about their strategy first, clearly understanding competitive messages in the market or even a complete organization of corporate communication (goals, ROI, internal cooperation.) On the technical side there are many details to define and implement. Blogs look simple enough from the "front" but a blog server like WordPress or Drupal can become a big site by itself with many discreet elements. Running a big blog is no different than a static web site using a CMS server (Content Management System: large programs to manage high volume content and reader traffic.) Once advertising, linking and social tagging is added, the blog becomes a business tool with management capability, monetizing issues, analytics (tracking and analysis of viewer traffic,) and ongoing comments and links maintenance (image and message maintenance) a blog is real work. It can get complicated if you let it. It can stay simple if you organize, plan and control the content flow, overall message changes and style demands. If you are selling anything on a blog that also means running an order system or linking to one. With merchandise sales other issues like security and order tracking need to be managed. Most companies do not design and deploy a complicated blog in one initial step. The good news: many blog design and operation elements can be added gradually. Also, you can buy services from different specialists and they can work independently of each other. So, how much is that blog? (with that great business advantage?)

Writing, Editing, Articles:

Writers and editors charge between $10 to $50 a page or an hour. The wide variation in price depends on the amount of work (from a single article to a series of 10 to 20 articles,) the specialization and experience of the writer (technical and professional writers can demand professional rates,) and the overall quality, number of review cycles and other factors. You can rate a writer by hour / article / page: each page takes a "working hour" which will make it to the blog as one article. Researched and well developed articles for large blogs can cost $100 each. The articles you see as "the ten best new video apps for the iPhone..." or "ten best boutique hotels in Mumbai" are usually written to order and would cost anywhere from $100 and up. Search for freelance writers on the net and look for portals with rating and past work. Also see if anyone in your business domain can recommend someone. Finally, get recommendations from designers and programmers who work together with writers. A few specialists usually form loose teams and work together well.

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Get Social Media Started - New Lands, Pioneers, New Business Models

Getting social media started at a company can be the best strategy to motivate managers and staff. Organizations sometimes have a difficult time getting started on a new idea quickly. Managers and workers get stuck doing something the old way, they need guidance on how to move to new lands. There are so many questions and concerns that learning logically is not a practical method. Sometimes as the Nike slogan goes, you need to "JUST DO IT". But what if you want to test the organization's ability to run a social network or write a blog, or even test how quickly you can write articles or work with another department? Even though writing is easy for some managers, the shift from highly polished, regularly scheduled communication to steady stream of quick off-the-cuff messages may not build momentum. Or worst, you may fail temporarily and turn off the people who just want to fall back into the old way of doing things. What do you do?

There are several ways to think of social media. This will help you understand and explain the shift to everyone in the organization. Understanding how the "new world" works, building new skills, guidance and strategy from management and examples from successful operations are simple techniques. Here are some points which explain how things work. I look at the main differences between social networking media and traditional media. Keep the differences on everyone's mind. People remember and act on a few key points. If you see five differences keep one or two as the important one for your company. Guide and motivate everyone to learn how social media works. There are many ways to learn how something works: examples, analysis, detail understanding, detail observation, etc. If your organization and the staff has not gone through a major shift in thinking in the past this is an opportunity to do so. Here are a few points that characterize the shift in social media to get you started:

A New Communication Channel: narrower, faster, connected, unedited...

Social media is a new communication channel. Paper based professional literature, domain specialty magazines, static web sites are formatted as a page, chapter, book, magazine... Social media is formatted as a message, stream, channel format. This is a crucial shift in format. The change in format affects how the messages are received and what needs to be said.

A New Format: short messages, serializing, commenting, interaction...

Messages, even complex ones, are broken into very short segments. The 140 character cell phone SMS format is now how twitter works and is used by many as a standard. On social network message boards like FaceBook people usually read just the headlines. Short messages stream before our eyes, so you need to segment what you want to say. Seth Godin's blog and Jakob Nielsen's AlertBox newsletter are great examples of how to segment ideas into small pieces.

A New Business Model: open source, collaboration, open communication...

There is a movement to open all information. The movement to give everything for free is crucial to understand. That does not mean giving services or product for free. Exactly the opposite. Think of a lawyer that helps you with a law suite. The law itself and the case law is "open" and free. You just have to go to the library and read it. But the advice and his experience is highly valuable. Tim O'Reilly's Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution is a great book on how software took the first step in decades toward open information and communication. Adapt your information and communication to an open format.

A New Frontier: many unsettled territories, abandoned sites, pioneers...

The movement to change business communication and interaction is still very new. This should not be the reason why you are not doing it yet. If your competitor or partner is not doing it yet, you are just lucky. If you do not see enough relevant examples in your town or state, look somewhere else. New frontiers with the Internet as a technology move very quickly. This is happening all the time, everywhere ~ get going quickly.

Do Not Fear New Skills: writing, editing, connecting, programming...

Every time communication takes us to the next phase there is a shift in skills. The amount and quality of writing is pushing us all to be better writers, photographers, audio readers, video directors, editors and gatherers of information... the list goes on and on. Until social networking sites were accepted, networking was considered somewhere between an art and a personal attribute, the gift of the gab. Today we have the tools so everyone can do it. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and the Tipping Point are books about networking before FaceBook and Twitter.

Get help, seek advice, learn and try out, don't feel overwhelmed...

Just like any technology and business revolution, most people can not do it alone. In every technology shift freelancers, advisers, coaches and implementers offer help. If you can't do a blog by yourself, get someone to design and write. If you do not understand a social network, hire a young networker to do it for you. Learning and planning and thinking is not enough. You need to get going and do it fast.

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Saturday, September 26, 2009

How to Define New Marketing? Is It Really New?

Is the Internet, it's use and our behavior changing enough to change the way we market? Marketers look at the younger generation to see how they behave and how things change. Usually this predicts what will happen in the future. Marketers are also interested in the use of the Internet to become more effective. So is there enough change to call marketing with the Internet "NEW MARKETING"?

The idea of "New Marketing" just started to ferment in my head about two years ago. I tried to explain a product manager what he can do with a wiki. He was vaguely familiar with Wikipedia as a place to get information. But he didn't realize that all that content came from a large number of independent unpaid volunteer "experts". I tried to make an analogy to the software world. But the message was not getting across. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that understanding a technology is one thing. Benefiting from it, is a bigger step.

What is "new marketing"? My definition is using current tools to do old tasks better, OR doing new things that could not be done before. -- For example, with Blogs, one can post any kind of opinion, idea or information article without the need to pay for the channel (newspapers, fliers, newsletters and magazines.) For a long time, a marketer's job was to get things into the channel, in B2B the trade press. There was the whole world of advertising, PR and collateral creation and dissemination. Notice, how the Internet changed the way we perceive the "channel" in a short time, the trade press changed because of independent web sites and blogs (approximately 1995 to 2002). Now magazines write about blogs not the other way around. This switch can be attributed to the wide range of information and specialization of blogs and their ability to keep current. Besides providing much more information, the content is searchable, referenceable, and can be linked to related information easily. Again, technology changes many things and on a fundamental level, this is not a new phenomena.

It seems to me that very few managers and executives in marketing are using blogs. Marketing people always have things to say. They love to talk to customers that know their product. They love to talk to developers that create new products. They love to talk to researchers with new technologies. They love to talk to sales people about what is going on with the "market". They love to talk to market researchers about "statistics" - what is going on "big picture" ... OK, enough with "they love to talk ..." - you get the point.

This brings up the final point in this post. If you are ahead of the competition with the use of the "new" tools (I call them current tools) you can be ahead of the pack and set a direction in your own domain. New marketing is doing things that were done before better. It's also about beating the competition without more resources. It's about being smart and pushing the envelope of tool use to your benefit. For the first time in a long time you can benefit from new technology, new way of doing things and new market behavior: DON'T WAIT - MARKETS DO NOT WAIT FOR ANYONE

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Do You Need to "GET" Blogging to Benefit?

Trying to sell blogging services is not easy. Specially in a down corporate economy. Seems like corporate managers want ROI, re-branding to beat Microsoft or simply do not understand blogging. The first year I sold blogging writing and design I tried to explain the whole phenomena of blogging. Then I tried to explain how businesses can use blogging to communicate better. Then I tried to explain the international implication of blogging (it really does not matter where you write, edit or manage a blog.) Looking back, most people even after politely listening did not "GET IT". Actually some well meaning (very smart) managers even said that they do not "get it". Some of them understand that "getting it" is not a crucial element in their decision making process. They either bough a blog and had one or did not. As managers concerned with both detail and generality they realize how some new trends are crucial to the future success of a company even while the management does not understand the details. These are the more successful managers that realize change does not wait for anyone. If you make the change you may have a chance to learn and profit. If you do not make the change you will be left behind. It's an old story, but one some people learn only after they go through it themselves.

What does it mean to "GET IT"? The answer lies in a few parts, so let's break it to the bigger elements:

  • Overall understanding of blogging as a shift in communication: simpler format, emphasis on content (not design, e-Commerce), group interaction.
  • Seeing specific examples of working blogging in your own domain (seeing is understanding.)
  • Trusting and testing a blog for a specific business goal (JUST DO IT).
  • Success or continuation of a blog for business purposes (knowledge base, news repository.)
  • Using a blog as a simple communication media format: news, press releases, articles, interviews, etc.
  • Integrating a blog into a business strategy and operation (strategic communication.)

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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Tapuda on Twitter: Restaurant Just Twitting for Biz...

Can a business run just on twitter? Apparently yes. Tapuda (spud or potato) is a small restaurant that by chance started using twitter. They started by advertising their daily specials. Then they updated their customers on a regular basis during the day. Lunch time takeout is one of their specialty. Twitter is an ideal communication channel for the casual restaurant. If you are in the office, getting update on the web is simple. You can also just go to their twitter page and see what is up with them. If you are updated by SMS than you can turn on and off updates. It is easier than SMS, more automatic than calling and getting an update. To the people who are twitter and SMS "hooked" it's a way to do business.

UPDATE: as of mid July 2009 Tapuda has gone "off the air" on twitter. Apparently due to the twitter marketing success they are upgrading and renovating the place. Let's keep an eye on them and see where this business goes.

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Monday, September 14, 2009

Blogging for Business: Describe Your Service or Product

This is a continuation to my article on my blog writing and editing services. I also wonder why more service businesses are not using blogs directly to advertise? The business use of blogging, social networks, social tagging and indexes is new. But communication of business services and products is as old as business itself. Using new ways of communication takes a little experimentation but should not be that hard. Here is a story and commentary on using blogging for direct business information.

Last week I met with a business service provider. She is a consulting recruiter and develops recruiting strategies for companies and individuals. The core skills and knowledge she has packed down, the business side is an "on the job training" affair. She has sixteen years of experience and just started on her own business. The first few months in business she set up a blog, a page on FaceBook, updated her Linked-In profile and made a few sales directly to her old customers. She is at the starting blocks, got a few consultation hours and a few assignments. What's next? A "brochure site"? An additional page on the blog? An article about her offering on the blog? At our meeting, which did not cover her business promotion she asked if a brochure site needs lots of work and attention (SEO, social tagging, updating, google advertising). I was wondering why all this effort does not go to the blog. She said something like "it's just a blog, that's not what people expect from a business..."

Some people do not view a blog as ready for business. Some think that a brochure site is necessary for basic information, sample work (portfolio) and even PDF brochures which prospective customers can download and print. It seems like blogging and social networking is a transitional method to do business. This is probably the case in a few industries, but for the most part each blog article is essentially a page by itself. You can add a separate static page: "about" or "services" or "contact" on most blogging platforms. But in reality, why not add an article in the stream of the posts and make it part of your work. Actually, adding information periodically to the stream of articles has many advantages.

  • You do not need a separate web site, account, address, contact... pages
  • You can add a page or a link to the blog's sidebar and make it easy to find.
  • One article can be linked to any other "about" or "services" article any time.
  • Articles can also store PDF or image files of brochures.

But most of all, a blog can be your main destination. Newspapers do not have "about" or "services" page before the headline. Magazines proud themselves on a fresh attractive cover on every issue. If you write well and have fresh relevant ideas, a blog article is as good, no, BETTER than a landing page or a home page. If you find examples of "services" or "special offer" articles on professional service blogs please post the links in the comment section. I think that they are out there. If you can't find many it is just the nature of early use of blogs instead of brochure sites and full fledged static CMS sites. There is absolutely no reason why you can't explain your services, offer introductory deals or float an opinion on using your blog. This should sell your service, otherwise you are just going back to the old school of doing things. Think about it, it makes sense!

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Saturday, September 12, 2009

Page Design: How to Choose a Blog's First Look

Ed: This is a short detour from the introduction to blogging series. PAGE DESIGN is crucial for some people. If a blog is the only web presence you have, a design could give you an advantage over the competition. It could also give you a "first impression" image which you may want to fold into the business' marketing. A simple design focuses the eye at the content: article titles, sidebar content, pictures and article length, etc. Hosted systems like Blogger.com, WordPress.com and TypePad.com give you initial starting points. But usually you will want to customize the look even at the setup stage. You will certainly need to customize the look later on. Researching on your own or hiring a page designer can be helpful. I would leave the custom design after a little experimentation. Even if you already know what you want, write a few articles (posts) and ask for feedback from people. Another method is to experiment on your own with the page design. In all the blogging systems you can add and remove widgets (boxes which are part of a page), change the style and look of the page itself (with images, background), change the post look, length and widgets of the post itself and change the "template" itself (this is like a template in Power Point or a style sheet in design programs.) All these changes you can do quickly and see the results in seconds.

Like I suggested in earlier posts about writing and editing, it helps to look at other blogs to get ideas for your design. To me a page layout is like a new house. Some people design everything and have it furnished before they move in. Some like to live in it for a while and move the furniture a few times before they feel comfortable ordering new furniture and redoing the kitchen. With a page there are a few things that will affect the content itself. The surrounding design: sidebars, widgets, post heading and footer will focus or distract from the writing. You can reverse engineer other people's blogs, try different widgets, track traffic and comments and see what fits your needs. If your blog does not get lots of traffic, let changes stay for a while and see what people think. Remember that most blogs do not invoke strong opinion on the design (or layout). Even if you have a design blog ask friends or customers on what they think. Let's get down to details.

Designing your blog page is easy. Blogs for the most part use templates. In blogger (this site is hosted on Blogger.COM) there are standard templates that come when you set up the blog and templates developed by designers you can use for free or buy. In WordPress there are hundreds of templates, from simple free ones to highly customizable "premium" templates (cost vary from $30 to hundreds.) You can also hire a template designer or customizer to make changes to a template or design you one to your own specs. Complex templates (also called themes) can have enough "elements" (or code) to become a complete web site and some actually use WordPress or Drupal as a basis for a magazine blog. These customizations enable publishers to support a large team of writers and editors. Some blog themes are used for Pod Casting or photo magazines. Note how the content (article text, images, MP3 files) can stay constant and the template change dramatically. There are some limitations and the theme designer will usually help with drastic changes. If you need to redesign the template completely be aware of changes to connection widgets which sometimes get "lost" (plug-ins in Java Script from twitter, digg, stumble-upon, etc.) In general, if you need help with a professional template, the designer or coder can take care of all the details and help you understand what needs to be redone and what potentially needs to change or be lost. Good luck with your page design and get going... if page design is a little intimidating - you simply need to get your feet wet - blogging for business is a great way to promote and market your image! ITS WORTH THE EFFORT!

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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Researching Technorati for Blog Samples, Google's Blog

Google's blog is on Blogger.com, it has a simple layout with wide audience topics

With a blog strategy in hand (see last post) start looking at blogs as samples. Technorati is a blog rating and tagging portal. You can "claim" your own blogs, review, rate and tag other people's blogs or review blog articles one at a time. On your blog you can add a Technorati button that will take readers to a submit form automatically. Technorati also lists their top 100 blogs. On their list you can see the top blogs according to their user rating. There are not necessarily the "best" blogs in each category but they do rate by traffic and tagging popularity (read about their "authority" measure, a higher number is more popularity).

Tecnorati top 100 blogs is an excellent resource to get an idea of the wide range of blog design, content and audience. Take a look at The Official Google Blog (number 7 today when I looked at the list). It is a simple design, hosted on Blogger.com (a free service by google), and covers general topics both technical and business related to google products. Take a look at the top 100 blogs as a starting point. Find a blog with articles written to audience similar to your target audience. Although the blogs on Technorati are skewed toward technology, politics and personal opinion, there are also blogs on other general topics.

There are other tagging portals such as Stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon is a general purpose article review and tagging portal. It is used by blog readers to rate blog articles. Bloggers that want to promote articles to the general public use Stumbleupon.com. To search blog articles, you can also use Google Blog Search. This is a specialized google search focused on blogs.

I advise you to look at 10 to 20 blogs for subject matter, design (page layout) and other features. Read 3 to 5 blogs carefully. Look at your strategy write-up and see if you can reverse engineer the editor and writers. Give them attributes (deep and narrow focus, highly specialized field, etc.) and see which ones fit your view. You can always go back to the strategy and add more details based on your research. Now you can pretty much describe in detail what you want the first cut of the blog to look like.

next: outline, platform, get SET!

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Sunday, September 6, 2009

Blog Subject: One Hour Strategy Session

You can develop a blog strategy in one hour. I use this technique with people without a clear picture of a blog. Some people see and read blogs and want to do something of their own. This happens with many people who have something useful to say but need to work out the details. This happens with professionals and managers with some sort of specialty. Once you have a "one hour" strategy you can think better about your overall message. You can also integrate the blog strategy into your overall strategy. What can you do in one hour? Take the following attributes as a starting point. Add attributes of your own. Take a look at a few blogs or newsletters and see if you can "reverse engineer" the strategy behind their work.

  • Subject matter: Describe the posts in a few sentences or a paragraph. Computer professionals refer to subject of blogs as "meta" information (information about information, see M-W metadata). In my Tel Aviv blog I wrote: "Tel Aviv, Israel's second largest city, is one of the hidden gems among cities. Streets are noisy with cars and people. Cafes are open early and are full by 11. There is music and theater in styles from western to middle eastern..." Seth Godin's blog is about his books and ideas related to them. He uses various techniques to stimulate discussion. This is something most people can not do but works great.

  • Exposure: How are people going to find the blog? Who will be interested in spreading the word? Here you can also add details about the content and articles. What are you going to say that will make people want to share what they read? Exposure is probably the most variable factor in blogging today. Some blogs like Arianna Huffington's political site is virtually a digital newspaper. While some product blogs are so specific they will never have thousands of readers.

  • Frequency: How often are you going to write? What time sensitivity are important for publication (news items, company or product press releases). Some blog strategists advise on a post a day or every two days. Blogs are a flow of information, you are better off with short articles more frequently than long articles. Although Clayton Christensen blog a Harvard business school strategist on innovation and Tim O'Reilly blog on Internet and technology trends are clearly based on long articles with deep thinking. Both blogs are authored by a team of writers.

  • Writing Quality: Who writes articles? what is the ability and experience of the writer? What source material do they use? What can be gathered and reused from other sources? (company / product / newsletter). Writing quality is probably the one item that can make or break a blog. There is too much competition for "eye balls on the screen" to neglect this point. If you can not write well on your own get a good writer or an editor. The same goes for material acquired from outside sources, if it is not high quality it will detract from the blog's attractiveness.

  • Editing Quality: Think of a blog as a newspaper column. Or even a tiny magazine. Even with one writer, the editorial role is crucial. Who and how are you going to set subject matter? What is the important message you need to deliver? What series of topics are you planning? Who is the planner? If you don't think an editor can make a difference, read the book by Lauren Weisberger "The Devil Wears Prada" (there is also a movie).

  • Sample Blogs: This item takes more time and you should probably do it ahead of time. There are millions of blogs and probably thousands of really good ones. Take a look at the subject matter, does it fit a similar line as your ideas? Take a look at the design, the content, the writing style... all the attributes that matter for your work. You can take one sample and use it as a prototype, I get request from people who ask "can you make me one like that"? You can take one attribute from a few blogs. You should also have a list of what you don't like. Sometimes if a blog has something you don't like it is more important. I would not advise you to pre-design all the fine details at this point. Give yourself slack to experiment later in the design. You will also need to work with a design once you have articles, comments, and other components on the page. If you want to search for blogs take a look at Technorati. A portal for blog rating and tagging. The amount of information about blogs is staggering. Google blog search is also useful in finding articles in blogs, no rating here.

  • Resources (staff, budget, equipment) These are items crucial for the corporate blogger. While you can use free or almost free products as an individual, companies usually want to tie blogs to their overall Internet operation. If you need to schedule setup, installation, software purchase or licensing do it as soon as possible.

  • Policy: In some corporate or organizational (government, military, etc.) you will need to set policy, mission or target goals. You may need to comply with higher level policies in terms of disclosure, intellectual property licensing / attribution. For example, the State of Israel owns a great deal of writing and images. They do not have a licensing or attribution mechanism which is useful for blogs (i.e. small projects). You simply can not use any photograph from a government ministry without permission and it is difficult to obtain permission on many items. University material can have the same issue. Authors do not necessarily own their material or they own only a fraction of their work. You will need permission from the university to publish. On the positive side you can usually set your own publication policy. Take a look at the New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in Journalism. You will not need this much of a policy on the first 100 blog posts, but it's good to know that someone can be your beacon of light on policy.

  • Business drivers: What is the driving forces behind the blog? What are you going to achieve? What products or projects are you supporting? Are there secondary factors or outside interests in the blog? Who is responsible to the blog's results? In business there is always a dependency on external factors. Make sure these are clearly defined before the project takes it's own shape.

  • Corporate drivers: Following the business drivers point do the same with the organization itself. In non-corporate environments this could be a more crucial strategy element. In governments there is usually a clear and strict policy on publication. You may need approval on your subject matter or the writer's rank (low level workers in most governmental organizations do not have publication authority).

These strategy items will get you started. Do not take more than an hour. Do as much as you can quickly. Than let someone review, critique or modify the strategy. If someone comes to me with a strategy it would be much easier and faster to get a plan together. It will also help in getting things nailed down once the work starts. Finally, if you work in an organization with many different interests this could be a way to unify strategy for the blog. Take this as a first cut (you only spent an hour). There is no need to finalize a strategy or policy. There is also no need to have too many specific details. Blogs started out as an informal communication sites. By their nature they are more personal and revealing than formal publications (official web sites). Use the history and scope of blogs as a guiding standard for your strategy work.

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Blogger and Social Networker for Hire

Dry grass, end of summer, Tel Aviv / © 2009

Should you hire a blogger to get you started? What can you communicate with a blog?

Can a professional social networker get you noticed? What are you missing without Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace?

Do you need a blog? Do you want to communicate using a social network? Do you need help in designing and running a blog? Hire a blogger or a social networker - get your message out there. Otherwise people will not know what you have to say.

Designing a blog is not hard but take time. Writing articles for blogs takes dedication over a long period of time. Blogs also need to stick to a clear subject connecting readers. Blog editors and writers may need to experiment with format and content until readers respond.

The use of blogs and social networks started out with great energy and enthusiasm. Early bloggers came from all sort of specialties. They wrote, edited, designed and promoted on their own, it was fun. Now that blog format is an established standard for communicating effectively corporate managers are taking notice. With all the millions of blogs, there are still many who are not able to design and run a blog. The ones without blogs are going to miss out to competition.

If you are a product manager, a marketer, a technologist - and you need to communicate to people efficiently get started. If you need help with developing a strategy for subjects, if you want to test some ideas, if you need to write and edit some articles, give me a call [tel: +972-54-314-2441] or send a message [ami . vider @ gmail . com]

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