Category: General

General Interest and Topical Articles.

Social Media Marketing Plans

I don’t have one of these and probably won’t ever have one! Social media companies and gurus would tell you that before you embark on any marketing ‘campaign’ on Facebook, Twitter, etc.. that you should plan things out to maximize the benefit. Plan how often you’re going to post, what you’re going to say, who you’re going to say it to, what manner you’re going to use, etc.. The advice would probably be to ‘provide valuable content while selling yourself’ or ‘remain professional and corporate at all times, use ‘keywords’ in everything you say to capitalize on Google’s newish ability to index content from the social networking sites.

They’ll recommend that you use all kinds of tricks to get more followers or to setup automated tweets for new followers or scheduled posts for when you’re not there to make it seem like you are. All kinds of analytical tools to measure your success or ‘ROI’ (return on investment) will be suggested. Software programs that ‘do all the hard work for you’ will be pimped.

Blah, blah, blah….already I’m bored, confused or overwhelmed!

My simple advice is to be ‘Organic’ and natural. Just get on Facebook and Twitter and make friends. Not cynically but make real friends, interact with people, joke with them and have fun. Be real. Be funny, Be outspoken even. Get your personality out. Post pics of your kids, it may be totally irrelevant to the service/product you provide but everyone loves a cute kid pic and it will help endear people to you and highlight a common experience!

It’s a hell of a lot easier and more fun to be real too. And I think people prefer to buy from real people or people they like rather than a nameless, faceless corporate entity. And if not, sure you might make a few valuable friends or acquaintances anyway! Never a bad thing.

PS – They’ll probably also recommend that you should use ‘them’ to run your campaign for you. I’ve never understood how one or more people, not of your company could possibly market your company for you somewhere like Facebook or Twitter where interaction is all important. I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone to speak for me!

Leon.

 

Website and WordPress Security

Unfortunately this post has been prompted by my own security scare! The problem, which surfaced yesterday seemed to center around the .htaccess file in the root directory of client WordPress powered sites. A hacker managed to exploit a file permissions vulnerability in this file in a pile of sites which basically allowed him/her/it to inject some code in there, redirecting any site visitor to http://r1estudio.com/cabanas with the following slightly pointless message:

Hack

I had a habit of setting the permissions on the .htaccess file to 666 which is the lowest permission I could give it and still enable WordPress to write things like Permalink, Cache & Mobile configuration to the file. Trouble is I never changed back once I had WordPress configured. The ideal permission for that file seems to be 644 which should stop anything editing it.

The .htaccess and wp-config files happen to be quite important in WordPress so make sure yours can’t be written to. As usual, you learn the hard way.

The same goes for all sites, whether WordPress powered or not. Watch your file permissions and passwords!

Leon.

Is it Really a Buyers Property Market?

Here’s the problem! We would really like to buy a rural, standalone house in Leitrim, ie – no neighbors on top of us, no unfinished, badly built, rotting ghost estates, some privacy and some space. Nothing too extravagant, just private. We should shortly be cash buyers so no banks involved, messing up deals. We won’t have a ton of cash but enough, or so I thought, to get a deal somewhere in Ireland’s smallest county population wise. Many have told us we’re rare in that we will have money and with cash in pocket, we can call some shots. Not true so far!

Having spent the last month or 2 trawling Daft.ie, MyHome.ie etc.. and going to see houses, talking to local estate agents etc.. it seems those kind of houses are in no rush to be sold. Sellers are either in no hurry to sell, don’t need the money or if they do need the money, they need a certain amount to cover mortgages etc. What doesn’t make sense to me is a seller putting an unoccupied house up for sale and leaving it there indefinitely, empty and falling apart, waiting on a sale that will never happen at the listed price or anywhere near it.

As far as I can see they have 2 options, take the house off the market, rent it out, continue to pay the mortgage and leave the house to their kids, or, take a good cash offer, cut losses, cut the mortgage right down and be done with the hassle of trying to sell and maintain a house?? A case in point was a cute cottage we went to see a couple of weeks back which we really liked but pulled out of because it had developed bad mold problems through lack of use, having stood empty for a year or 2.

It may be a buyer’s market if you want a grotty ghost house, but other sellers seem content to sit and wait. And that doesn’t help anyone..

Leon.

An Experiment for Estate Agents and Property Owners!?

I feel qualified to give a little advice to those involved in trying to buy or sell property at this difficult time. I’ve been keeping an eye on both Dublin and Leitrim property markets ever since we moved to Leitrim from Dublin in 2003 our intention being to buy a house and settle permanently down the country when the time was right or when the right house came along. Then the recession happened and while technically it doesn’t really affect us as prices are all relative, ie – they are going down where we wish to buy as well as where we’re selling, it has still caused a few headaches, namely people can’t get mortgages!

I finally put my Dublin house up for sale last November (2009) and there’s been very, very little interest in it ever since. I and my estate agent at the time done what everyone else done and continues to do, list at a price you’d like to get rather than one that is actually likely to sell your house in the real world! Result? No movement at all and every now and then I’d take a few grand off to see if buyers would spring into action, but nothing. Until..

A few months ago my current estate agent suggested we do something radical and drop the price down to rock bottom, undercutting every other house in the area. Madness I thought at first but as the logic was explained to me, I warmed to it a little. The idea was to basically market the house at a price that looked too good to be true and such better value than all around that people couldn’t help but book viewings to see for themselves. Hopefully then, people would start making offers and a few rival bids would be made (a bit like an auction) that would push the house price back up to it’s ‘natural’ or ‘real world’ value and possibly even surpass the new ultra low price we listed it at.

Reduced To Sell

I’m pleased to say that it’s pretty much worked out as expected. We’ve got a ton of viewings over the last couple of months and a few people have made offers against each other and pushed the price up close to it’s listed value which admittedly is nowhere near what I first put it on the market at but it’s got me a big step closer to selling the house which is my main objective. What I get for it doesn’t really matter as long as it sells at a price that allows us to buy something half decent in Leitrim. And with cash in my pocket I’m optimistic that there’s a deal to be done somewhere down here!

Now, not everyone will be in the lucky situation we’re in of course. For a start, we’re moving from the capital city Dublin to a county with the lowest population in Ireland – not the other way round thankfully! Also, my Dublin house was an inheritance and there’s no outstanding mortgage on it. People may have large mortgages that need to be covered by a sale or they may need to achieve a fairly specific amount on sale for whatever reason. You also need to avoid giving your house away for next to nothing! But if you need to sell your house and nothing is happening then maybe it’s time for radical action and thinking outside the box?

If nothing else, lowering your house to rock bottom of what you need or to well below competing, local house sales will be a valuable experiment on just how much your house is actually worth. You can get all the professional valuations you like but ultimately your house will only be worth what people will or can pay. You don’t even need to accept any offers, just watch and learn.

If all sellers and estate agents started from the bottom up price wise instead from the top down, I’m sure houses would sell, the property market would come alive again, ugly, idle housing estates would shift and who knows, maybe even the economy would be re-ignited!?

Leon.

Eircom, 3, Broadband and Phone Contracts

A few weeks ago, I had a brainwave. To counter some financial problems I thought I’d have a look at my business and house outgoings and see if I could cut some of them out or reduce them a little. I fully expected to find a pile of bills/services that we might be able to do without…services we might have signed up to without consideration when times were better. I suspect there’s a lot of people in the same boat now! I started off looking at the biggest bills, ie – rent (couldn’t change that), tax (couldn’t change that either..), etc, etc.. Unfortunately, I didn’t find too many bills that could be lowered but the phone bill, always shocking when it comes in and so easy to overspend on, started to stand out for me as a large leak that needed plugging..

It’s a fairly common conception especially among business owners that you need to have a landline to run a business. People will tell you that you wont be trusted if you’ve only got a mobile number on your business card or website and that the only proper broadband is DSL/Phone line. I say, feck that.. In fairness, when I moved to my current address and realised that for the first time since I moved to Leitrim, I would have access to ‘proper’, fast (7MB) broadband, I was happy as Larry. Then, 3 things happened..Money got very tight, Phone bills increased and Three installed a broadband mast locally as part of the National Broadband Scheme.

I decided to grab a Three mobile broadband dongle on a 2 week trial and see if it compared to my Eircom service. It compared very well! While the rated speed of the Three device was actually slower than Eircom, it just felt a lot faster, possibly due to contention ratios. Also, the upload speed, important to a web designer like me, was way faster. It averages out at about 3 or 4Mbps down and 1 or 2Mbps up. I also tested Skype out on it and it was crystal clear and stable. Three’s service worked out at only €15 per month (cheaper if you already have a Three mobile pay monthly plan, which I did).

The next obvious step of course was to ring Eircom and cancel my line completely. I had signed up to a monthly package on Skype, got my Skype landline number replacement and was all set to go without my landline when the guy in Eircom cancellations said I had a ‘contract’ until March next year and if I chose to break it, I’d have to pay the remainder of the recurring fees.

Apparently you sign up to a 6 month contract for the phone and 12 months for broadband. The fact they are kinda co-dependent on each other but have different contract periods is a bit weird? Your contract also seems to get restarted whenever you change your package which is even more annoying.

All of a sudden, my feeling of pride at having identified and executed a saving of about €125 per month went out the window. Now I’m no stranger to phone contracts or even breaking them but for some reason I didn’t expect landlines to be the same as the mobiles ones I’d had in the past. Also, when I moved into this house, I just knew I needed a phone line and broadband and wasn’t aware that I was signing up to an unbreakable contract. I have no recollection of seeing or even signing a contract or having anyone tell me I was entering into one. In fact, I just transferred my account from the old house to the new one and the old account had been running for at least a year or 2.

Basically, if you want to have a phone in this country, whether mobile or land based, you need to enter into an unbreakable and lengthy contract. You have no choice. That’s just the way it is. And sometimes, you’re not even made aware you’re entering into one. Not fair I say?

In the end, it was suggested that I reduce my Eircom bill to the bare minimum €49 per month for the remainder of the contract and have mobile barring activated on the line to try help keep the bill at no more that this monthly amount but it’s still €49 pm more that I want, need or can afford to pay. It also costs €25 to downgrade a package!

Leon.
* UPDATE After getting on to Eircom support again over my contract issues I was told that moving house or changing package shouldn’t have changed my existing contract and if it did, I should have been told this at the time. I was also offered a contract get out without penalty so it might pay to complain! But contracts still exist.

How Do YOU Come Across Online?

Several online acquaintances were kind enough recently (I didn’t ask them!)  to offer me some super critical feedback on how they saw my Social Networking and Branding efforts online. From their ‘comfortable distances’ they pointed out the flaws in some of the things I say in my Twitter and Facebook feeds and advised me to desist from certain activities. Having relatively recently ‘found my voice’ and style so to speak through things like Twitter and Facebook among others, and feeling fairly confident that what I was saying on these sites was generally interesting, enlightening, funny or useful to my audience in some small way at least, I wasn’t too happy with this criticism and it came as a bit of a shock..

I can’t say for one second that it’s going to make me censor myself online and I hope to continue saying it like it is, calling people out, alerting people to good and bad service from companies, occasionally cursing when needed and calling a spade a spade but it at least made me aware that I should try imagine how I sound to others. With just a little ‘out of body’ thought, you might realise that the largely IT/Techy crowd on Twitter don’t necessarily want to hear about your cat or that family and friends on Facebook don’t want to be bombarded with businesses stuff. ‘Know your audience’ and tell them what they want or need to hear seems like apt advice.

My moral is basically this – think before you speak, brand yourself and your business as honestly and effectively as you can but if you feel something needs to be said, say it. And if you are being honest to yourself and your gut instinct then you should eventually gain the majority’s respect. The rest can fuck off!!

Leon

Working From Home Pros/Cons

I remember the last time I had a proper job working for the man, fixing bus ticketing machines in Dublin, back around the turn of the century. I’d get up at the same time every day, get the same bus, see the same people in the same places at each bus stop and they’d get on and sit in the same seats.. I’d get to work and see the same people and do the same thing all day. All very ‘samey’! You couldn’t tell one day from another after a while and of course, I slowly but surely lost my mind…

But all you slaves to the rat race, working in dead end jobs, stuck in traffic for hours on end every day, doing the same thing over and over, seeing the same people, taking the same crap from your boss and wishing you could work for yourself and/or work from your own home, rolling out of bed into your cosy home office and starting/stopping work whenever you feel like it…you might want to wish again! There’s two sides to every story.

I’m not about to quit my home office any time soon but here’s a few things to think about!

Pro Working from Home:

  • Get up whenever,
  • Finish whenever,
  • Flexible working hours/breaks, etc..,
  • See more of your family,
  • More comfortable environment,
  • Better food!
  • No travelling or traffic jams,
  • No dodgy workmates,
  • No boss looking over your shoulder.

Con Working form Home:

  • Too many distractions,
  • Family think you are ‘available’ all the time,
  • Incoming, non-business Phone calls,
  • Computer Games,
  • Facebook & Twitter!
  • No company/other people = stircrazy!
  • ‘Need to get out of the house’ syndrome,
  • Forget to take breaks,
  • Clients want to call in,
  • Working too late.

My top tip, not that I’ve managed this myself yet so maybe it’s more a goal!, is to treat your home working as if you’ve gone to work, ie – when you step in the home office door, you are ‘gone to work’ and not available to anyone for anything except work. If you have to lock the door, do it. Just don’t stay in there too long!

Leon.

Protecting Your Brand

I was reminded recently why it’s important to keep an eye on what people are saying about you, your business and brand, especially online where people say what they like a lot of the time (me included!). A follower of mine on Twitter and fellow web designer had some time on his hands one Saturday evening and decided to let me and a large client of mine know that the site I built for them used an off the shelf template. His tone suggested that I’d done something wrong by using an existing template and not telling anyone or crediting the original template creators. He misread my footer link on the clients site, thinking it said “a Reverb Studios Designed blog” when in fact it said “a Reverb Studios Design blog”, quite different things really! I used an outdated and freely available template, heavily customised and modernised it both back end and front and felt I didn’t have to credit the original designer for these reasons. Something which on reflection, I’ve now changed and included a credit to them just in case.. I also didn’t charge the client an arm and a leg for a custom designed site from scratch, instead charging my usual budget price so I don’t believe I done anything wrong.

The consequence of ignoring or not spotting this kind of thing is that negativity about your company can spread quite quickly and damage your brand and future earning potential. It was made easy for me on this occasion as the moaner in question communicated his imagined problem to me at the same time as my client but things will not always be that easy. Apart from keeping a very close eye on things like your Twitter and Facebook streams, you can also use an excellent service like Google Alerts to let you know when you’re mentioned or when someone links to your site.

If you know stuff was said about you in public then do the best thing you can and defend yourself there too.

Leon.