Penny Power Coaching http://www.pennypowercoaching.com Digital Coaching for Entrepreneurs Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:37:47 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 No such pipe, or this pipe has been deleted http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2012/02/no-such-pipe-or-this-pipe-has-been-deleted/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2012/02/no-such-pipe-or-this-pipe-has-been-deleted/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:37:47 +0000 Penny Power http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/?guid=576ffe33731efe5d44792302a74a3b3f http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2012/02/no-such-pipe-or-this-pipe-has-been-deleted/feed/ 0 When creating a series of Blogs on Ecademy use a #tag #blogtips http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/11/when-creating-a-series-of-blogs-on-ecademy-use-a-tag-blogtips/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/11/when-creating-a-series-of-blogs-on-ecademy-use-a-tag-blogtips/#comments Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:26:00 +0000 Penny Power http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=170607
Jeremy Harbour's - selling a Business Part 1 of 7

If Jeremy added a #tag like #sellingaBiz then anyone could search the series of Blogs on Ecademy or even follow the #sellingabiz conversation on twitter

To demonstrate this, I have been using #DBBM around the subject of my Digital Business Britain Manifesto, if you look at this SEARCH you will see all the Blogs that I have written in this area of interest. Clustering like this can help people go on a journey with you

Also you can check the conversation on Twitter under that #tag and when the Blog is RT'd here, not only do you take your @twitter name but also the conversation you are leading

Try it out! It works!

Penny x



warm regards
Penny Power
Founder of Ecademy and Digital Youth Academy
Helping you build social capital in your business and life


Follow @pennypower

I support:
Digital Business Britain Manifesto
;
 ]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/11/when-creating-a-series-of-blogs-on-ecademy-use-a-tag-blogtips/feed/ 0 Ecademy Marketplace delivers again…. http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-marketplace-delivers-again/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-marketplace-delivers-again/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:05:38 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168910
I run training for BlackStars every month and recently I ran a session on using Marketplace. One attendee took the post course material and set about working out how some marketplace listings for some work he is currently doing with a client.

Careful design of the Marketplace listings he's put together, and use of the BlackStar features to maximise the SEO impact and an hour later he was listed on page 1 of Google for his chosen key words. 24 hours later he was number 1.

This is "make a big difference to your business" stuff and done well is one of the hidden strengths of Ecademy.

Here is the listing >

Here is the Google search > (for "Schools Commercial Transfer Agreement")

Digital Business Britain ManifestoWilliam Buist
Ecademy,

Follow me > #DTD]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-marketplace-delivers-again/feed/ 1 Klout makes further changes…. http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/klout-makes-further-changes/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/klout-makes-further-changes/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:13:53 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168804 algorithm development at Empire Avenue, Klout announced today that it will shortly be improving it's algorithm further. They've been presenting the three subscores, True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact, but it's the systems usefulness as a feedback mechanism to enable you to modify what you do to get best effect that I've always seen as its biggest strength.

I'm really pleased that they have recognised that and are planning to strengthen their feedback mechanisms by providing direct feedback on what has helped improve or harm your score.

Their blog today > says:
When your Klout Score changes you will be able to match it to a corresponding change in one of these subscores and understand why the change has occurred. If your Score goes up because more top influencers are acting upon your content, we will share that with you.


Some have concerns that all that Klout measures is your own activity but the evidence is strong that it doesn't. Today in their blog they have again reiterated the key elements of what they are seeking to measure:
The core premise behind our algorithms has always been that influence is the ability to drive action. We have tightened this concept even further in this release. You are not more influential because you tweet or use Facebook more, you are influential because you have an influential audience engaging with your content.


It's been through a lot of change, and in its early iterations it had a lot of flaws, indeed, I described it as broken here > - these flaws are now being ironed out, but as they say:
We are very early in what we view as a long journey. The team here at Klout is thrilled about the challenge ahead of us and are completely dedicated to creating the most accurate measurement of influence in the world.


They are getting there, the very influential - those with a score over about 70 - are pretty accurately measured now and these changes will make that stronger. The moderately influential (say over about 40) provide a good basis for saving time and improving the quality of the online interactions that you have. For those under that score these changes will provide more direct feedback to help you do the things that will make you more visible and bring you more business. The feedback loop of a real time score is a great help in doing that, but don't chase the score, chase being influential on-line and your score will reflect that, as will your business results.

Digital Business Britain ManifestoWilliam Buist
Ecademy,

Follow me > #DTD #Abelard

Other Background:

Using Hootsuite and Klout to save time >
How Klout measures you now. >
How to use Klout with Foursquare >
The importance of metrics >
Peer Index analysis >
How to use the Ecademy score >
Social DNA and mapping the menome >]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/klout-makes-further-changes/feed/ 0 Will your business use Google+ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/will-your-business-use-google/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/will-your-business-use-google/#comments Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:09:14 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168638
The consensus seems to be that Google+ opened its doors to wide too soon and many people joined a half built untested product which had some nice ideas poorly implemented. They are changing and developing fast, but if you lose someone's attention it's hard to get it back.

Behind that perhaps is their desire for businesses to hold back from creating profiles, see this video:


What do you think? Will Google plus be a part of your business development plans in 2012?

Will it become another Orkut, popular in a niche, but never getting mainstream business engagement.

Follow me > #DTD]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/will-your-business-use-google/feed/ 0 Empire Avenue’s Algorithm development. http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/empire-avenues-algorithm-development/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/empire-avenues-algorithm-development/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:12:20 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168611 Empire Avenue (EA) matures it needs to adapt and develop it's scoring algorithms to level the playing field and maintain interest - A tough call. Empire Avenue have always used two elements to determining your "share price", (effectively another online metric, like Klout, Peer Index or Ecademy).

Firstly is buying and selling activity, people on EA have limited resources (called eaves, a virtual currency) which they spend to connect with you. Connections with people of a good reputation tend to be expensive because many people are seeking to connect and buying their shares, pushing the price up.

Secondly is the interactions those people have across the web. These two factors are used as inputs to a 'market maker' algorithm, the output form which is the share price.

What became obvious was that it was possible to unfairly use some tactics for the social networking elements and drive the share price up. EA have addressed elements of that and now take more account of what others do with your content and how conversations and engagement flows around from what you do. In many ways this is a change towards an engagement score like Ecademy's. Their blog about the changes is here >

The inputs and complexity of the algorithms will continue to increase and they will all become more reflective of interaction. We have to recognise that we are at the start of a social revolution, not in the middle or end of it, and these tools are still in their infancy. One interesting aspect that they have implemented is that they measure everything and take the biggest five social scores only. Activity on other networks beyond that is ignored. However if your activity moves from one network to another your score will move with it.

All in all this means the methods of mapping your social DNA are still changing; They are becoming more appropriate and relevant and less able to be gamed and manipulated and that's good for all of us.

Follow me >#DTD #Abelard]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/empire-avenues-algorithm-development/feed/ 0 Local Influence and Marketing http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/local-influence-and-marketing/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/local-influence-and-marketing/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:27:11 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168564 have acquired GeoToko a geolocation toolset that will allow their users to run and track local and geographically based marketing campaigns. This is exciting. Along with their integration of Klout this now means Hootsuite can be a key part of any marketing campaigns that you run. Not only can you target local areas, but over time find and speak through the local influencers in that area.

The way that these tools are going to developed is limited only by our own lack of imagination, these really are the tools that drive a social revolution.

Digital Business Britain ManifestoWilliam Buist
Ecademy,

Follow me >#DTD]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/local-influence-and-marketing/feed/ 0 Ecademy Score : Engaged (on-line) businesses spend more…. http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-score-engaged-on-line-businesses-spend-more/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-score-engaged-on-line-businesses-spend-more/#comments Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:07:20 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168417
A key conclusion from Bain's report "Putting social media to work" is:
We found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20 percent to 40 percent more money with those companies than other customers.
That's a big difference. Which businesses are you following, and perhaps more importantly who is following you and your business? do you know? That's where next years income growth is going to come from.

Another key conclusion:
Several companies have registered real bottom-line results from their social media efforts. Most impressive, however, are the companies that have stepped back and deployed holistic social media strategies aimed at unlocking value at each stage of the customer corridor.

Unlocking value and stepping back to get your strategy right stood out for me. To do that well you need feedback.

Some other key points...
Companies find it valuable to track the percentage of customers "engaged"

They [successful businesses] articulate the value of engaging their customers where they are increasingly spending time and consider the real business value that authentic engagement can create.


For small businesses doing these things is hard, feedback and metrics have been sparse and the time costs of deep engagement have seen difficult. The Ecademy Score was developed to address these issues and support members seeking to understand who they are engaging with and to provide feedback quickly on the engagement impact they were having.

Digital Business Britain ManifestoWilliam Buist
Ecademy,

Follow me > #DTD]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/ecademy-score-engaged-on-line-businesses-spend-more/feed/ 0 It’s fading fast – Metrics gain a new importance http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/its-fading-fast-metrics-gain-a-new-importance/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/its-fading-fast-metrics-gain-a-new-importance/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:08:53 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168279
Twitter's 'top tweets' search history only covers the last 4 or 5 days, if you try to go further back you get switched to real time search, i.e effectively what is happening now. That's great for immediacy, rubbish for latency.

Read more here >

You can still read an individual users history from their profile page, starting from now, and moving backwards, but you have to go at Twitters pace, and for prolific tweeters anything more than a few days ago just takes too long.

This changes the game, if you want to build a reputation, be known as an expert, or show authority to those who only use twitter and basic clients to access the data then you have to be active, all the time, and consistently on message. That's hard. Very.

At the same time this article > demonstrates the growth of calls to the Klout API doubling from 2 billion in June to 4 billion in July to over 6 Billion in August. That's about 2,500 calls for a piece of data every second, of every minute of every hour of every day in August. Klout is being used significantly and often.

Some of those calls come from twitter clients, and users accessing through those clients, for example Hootsuite includes a filter by Klout score (see here for details of how to use it >). But the growth of users, measured twitter accounts, and client usage isn't expanding anything like that fast.

Something else is at play here.

I think that as twitters history data shrinks more organisations are turning to Klout to identify not just what to monitor, but also who. After all if someone is not influential online they can safely be ignored, nobody is listening to them anyway. Metrics evaluations are the big growth area as brands get wise to the need to be monitoring and get more sophisticated in their use of filtering tools, such as Klout.

Since it's become impossible to search and review history, for new people, how can we know the topics and areas of influence that they have, how can we tell the subjects they talk about? Well Klout and other tools are recording and keeping that information in a searchable and usable way.

Data analysis and evaluation becomes essential when the flows of data are so large. When we use these things well they can save us time, give us a better result and drive more business, or better quality contacts to us. Brands know this, that's why they are using techniques and tools like Klout or commercial social scoring.

The trends are plain, our data is being monitored and what we are saying and doing and interacting with is being analysed and used to discriminate and segment markets and groups to provide preferential treatment, or identify possible business opportunities.

Other tools for metrics are being developed too, here is an example with Nike >

I think it's important to understand how other businesses and consumers are using these tools to help guide them and their activity and choices. In the last decade we talked a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but in this one we may move to SMI (Social Metrics Integration). We are going to have to understand our Social DNA, and map our business menome >

Are you and your business ready?

William Buist
Follow me > #DTD #Abelard]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/its-fading-fast-metrics-gain-a-new-importance/feed/ 0 How Google plus wil be supporting business http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/how-google-plus-wil-be-supporting-business/ http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/how-google-plus-wil-be-supporting-business/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 23:12:14 +0000 William Buist http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=168187

The video gives an insight to what is coming, including analytic integration and ad words integration. That's seems really exciting to me, as by building the right business circles and hangouts you'll be able to integrate ad words campaigns for your products and services that closely mirror that circle's needs. Analytics will allow you to monitor and adjust your business approach based on the engagement you actually get. You'll be able to effectively publish into the demand, rather than spam selling in broadcast mode. These will be new skills and we'l need to watch, absorb and learn how they deliver it carefully.

Interestingly they are suggesting not building a business profile in your personal profile and I think that's good advice. Use Google plus to build your personal brand now, but be ready to move quickly later in the year.

William Buist
Follow me > #DTD #Abelard]]> http://www.pennypowercoaching.com/2011/10/how-google-plus-wil-be-supporting-business/feed/ 0