There’s a news article on The Register that goes into further detail of this, including possible security issues. Hopefully those aspects will be sorted out before the influx of new TLDs.

I’m just loving the idea of such short domains though

Dreamweaver-Style Websites

In the initial days of websites, before database driven CMS systems became commonplace, a website company would have various packages on offer. These packages would frequently be listed as ‘silver‘, ‘gold‘, ‘platinum‘ and ‘diamond‘, or maybe as ‘basic‘, ‘standard‘ etc. These packages would have mostly the same features (free domain, year hosting, etc), but then there was the X list of items.

These are things such as X number of email addresses, X disk space, X bandwidth per month all of which went up with the more expensive packages.

This is fine, but these packages would also have X number of pages listed.

Now if you’re creating a website within Dreamweaver you would create the first static HTML page, then have to duplicate it to create the next and so on. Then going back and ensuring that the menus linked to each other, and that the client provided you with the content to insert. All of which is time consuming.

Database Driven CMS To The Rescue

However with a database driven CMS, such as WordPress, once the initial template has been created, the content of pages (and any corresponding menu) is automatically inserted.

WordPress supports unlimited number of pages, and the menu system is flexible enough to allow anything you want.

Reintroducing Arbitrary Limits

I recently had the pleasure of looking at a potential clients existing website and it’s admin. Even though that CMS was database driven, they had implemented it in such a way as to have these old limits (such as number of pages) baked into it. If you’d hit your limit of pages it actually asked that you upgrade your system! It also didn’t allow editing the menus as this was set by the developer.

The client was frustrated in that there was little they could do. Because of the fixed page limit (and fixed menus), they had no choice but to edit existing pages and squeeze more content onto them.

I should point out that there were a number of other fixed aspects to their site, which if changes were required, the developers then charged to make.

Finally Some Common Sense

We don’t believe in these kind of arbitrary limits. We’d prefer giving our clients the ability to have as fully flexible a site as possible, to allow editing all the textual content, and to reposition content if necessary. It takes more work upfront, and cost, to ensure this remains true on our sites, but the advantage to our clients is immeasurable.

I guess this is the reason why that potential client became an actual client.

The human touch

There is no getting away from that, and therefore companies need to get involved. Or risk not being able to defend themselves, should they be unjustly (or justly!) maligned online. But traditional marketing methods are arguably the worse approach for entering the conversation.

Take your corporate hat off for the moment. The vast majority of companies, despite all that has been said surrounding social media, still use the various platforms, to throw out marketing messages. Special offers via Twitter;  blog posts that invariably culminate in how we can sell you more product.

The social web is exactly that. A multitude of conversations/ social interactions. People are guarding themselves against the generic company PR, marketing communications. It’s a real turn off.

MORE CONVERSATION = MORE ACTION

Conversations are where ideas happen, and new partnerships are formed. People want to talk with the humans behind the closed doors of companies. Your employees are itching to help your customers in a way that is accessible to them. Through human-like, natural and honest conversation. It is not so bad not to know the answer. Humans can solve issues working together.

Unmarketing the key to success

Companies need to shed their old ideas. Customers are people. Real people. And then can see through the marketing speak. And moreover, they can just turn off instantly. These real people want to deal with the real people inside your company. So hard as it may be, companies need to cede some control, and just let the conversation flow!

If you want to chat, about anything..you know where we are! Great ideas will spring therefrom!

Properly used, the internet unleashes personal communication and experience-sharing on a scale unprecedented in history. With this in mind, you need to move your focus towards what you can provide to your clients and followers, that is not only of interest to them, but also valuable enough to share with their social networks.

By exploiting this, you will ultimately be able to make each one of your customer’s a convincing salesperson and a compelling advertising medium for your brand.

Emarketing is about people who use the internet; it is not merely about the internet as an advertising  medium. It is the collection of processes that seeks to understand and respond to customer needs in the online environment. It forms relationships with customers, build brands, and drive business to online and offline channels.

First things first, you need a vision. Without a clear vision of the future, a company’s tendency is to clutch tightly to the past.

The online environment is changing so fast, that it is vital companies have a vision, and a strategic plan in place to adopt to change as it happens. We are no exception to the rule! In fact, given the market in which we operate, our reputation is contingent upon providing our customers with the knowledge and the tools to success in Web 2.0

This is how we are going about the first stage:  A clear vision. Why don’t you ask yourself some of the same questions, and let us know what you come up with.

A strategic plan:

• Mission – briefly but clearly define the core purpose of your business. It should reflect the motivations and aspirations of employees and customers working with you. A mission statement focuses on what the organisation is now. It focuses on today, identifies your customers, your critical processes, and your level of performance.
• Vision – briefly but clearly define your broad aspirational image of the future that your organisation is trying to achieve. Your vision statement describes in a couple of sentences a picture of your desired future, as if you were right there now.
• Environment scan – What are the relevant characteristics of your current and immediate-future operating environment? SWOT Analysis. What factors directly affect the online business?
• Priorities– From the SWOT Analysis, what are your strategic priorities?

The only problem comes when we are using another computer for some reason. For example if you don’t have your laptop set up in exactly the same way as your desktop, you will end up getting frustrated. This is simply because you don’t have the programs you need on the computer you are using at that moment.

The answer to this is to use AlwaysOnPC. This site calls itself “your virtual computer”. Instead of having your desktop on your desktop (quite literally) you can have it online instead. It is all secure of course, and the beauty of this is that you can access it from any device you want to use.

The system currently supports desktop and laptop computers of the Mac and PC kind, as well as operating for iPads, iPhones and much more besides. As you can see it is a very useful thing to have and it practically eliminates the frustration you get from having different desktops and systems for every device you have.

The system is available to try free of charge for five days on your computer. From then on you will have to pay for it, but you might find it is worth doing so if you constantly switch computers for some reason.

The service is easy to use. Take a look at this link,where you can walk through it step-by-step.

Matt has the full details on phone your blog and I have to say the first time I saw that title I thought it would be a feature where it dictates a text entry to your site. What it actually does is still impressive in that it records your phone call, saves it as an audio file and auto publishes it to your site.

Now if only it could be expanded to become a way of generating a new podcast, it would be even more powerful. On the other hand I think drunken phone calls could become a whole lot more dangerous.