Do Internet Skills Matter? After The Gold Rush

How crucial are skills to the internet professional? WOW, hold on! What are we talking about? Is there such a thing and an internet professional ? ? ? This question kind of sneaks up on people. Since the internet profession has evolved and grown so quickly, it seems like experience or "showing up for work" at a successful company is enough to qualify as a professional. That's the nature of fast growing professions. Even in the software industry, where professional skills pioneer like Steve McConnell have been preaching for over a decade, professional qualification, certification and skill assessment is not an industry standard practice. Yet, for the customers, especially the ones starting out with new internet projects (without experience) the qualification and skill level of their employees is crucial. In general, the world of software development and content management, are mysterious and vague. This state of affair has not changed in a long time. As far back as 1974 Brooks' The Mythical Man-Monthdescribed in details the follies IBM in his biggest project to date, the IBM System/360, and how difficult estimation, development, testing and maintenance of large software projects. Much has changed since the early days of software development, yet we are still in an era where it is difficult to manage and therefore describe to outsiders the work of technologists in software. This is even more true today with different aspects of content and application use on the internet.

Retail Sales Techniques: Will They Help You?

Editor: The title of this post "retail sales techniques" is used as a general term. Some ideas here relate to corporate and other sales practices. In internet lingo B2B and B2C.

In reality, sales roles in most companies are not a valued position. In some business sectors, sales people are downright badmouthed and ridiculed. I have been at both sides of the fence, neither one is pretty. In the traditional corporate management world, the headquarters and regional offices, sales people are not always understood. Most are seen as slick (i.e. slippery) deal makers, ready to "bomb the price" to close a deal. In general, very few corporate managers without direct sales experience understand the intricacies and subtleties of a sales process. That said, there is awareness in most senior executive circles of the role sales plays in the success of the company. While it is simplistic to say that "without sales you don't have a company", the concept goes beyond simply stating this fact. Why is this an issue to address in this blog? Because I see gaps in the understanding of what it takes to sell on the internet. Real gaps in effective internet sales, lead generation and attractive offers. Many real gaps in sales operations. Real gaps in actually running a sales effort on company web sites or sales portals (online shops). So while you may have a good design and bring people to the site with SEO or fantastic writing... if you want to sell, you need to do more than that.

What Will You Do With Seven Thousand Clicks?

Fist a short introduction:

For the last five years my work revolved around blogs. Some personal, some for pay and some just for fun (commenting). Five years ago I did not imagine what can be done on the internet. I did not set out to make money or to find work. I was curious of some bloggers and what they were able to do with a few posts and creative ideas. I was also curious where my professional field of work, technology marketing, was going to do with blogs. It turned out that blogging was one of the best investment of time for my career. It is also probably the best way to spend time in keeping with the incredible communication revolution that includes all kind of digital media from music to mobile messaging to every kind of digital format (videos, pictures, text and audio) you see today on the internet.

What's Going On Here?

Like five years ago, I do not have a set plan for this blog. I do want to write about my experience and to help people with their blogging and marketing. Like everyone out there, I have seen things from my own corner of the world. So here it goes... ENJOY !

What's In A Name?

I have a client that wanted a web site, a blog and lots of people to come and see his site. I thought that what he said is what he meant. So I set out to do the best job I could, set up a WordPress site, wrote blog articles, got going with the Linked-In promotion (this is a bit before Twitter and Facebook were popular)... anyway, in about two months we got seven thousand clicks. No AdWords advertising, no big paid campaigns, just posting messages on other blogs and Linked-In. It turned out that this customer wanted to make money. He wanted to shift his "boots on the ground" sales effort to a fully digital web one... well... (imagine Ronald Reagan's voice here) it did not end up exactly as expected. So stay tuned, the story will follow. Ask yourself: "what will I do with seven thousand clicks?"