I was doing my reservist last week.  And I got to know a couple of new friends over there who actually don’t know how to start their own websites.  They are very interested to start one, but they just couldn’t figure out how to do so.  I think I should do one back-to-basics post for you to understand.  (Do note that I have affiliated with GoDaddy and HostMonster when writing this post.)

What do you need to get started?

First of all, you need to register a domain name of your own.  This is where you can have your own name such as CharlesLau.com for myself.  A full URL link will be http://www.charleslau.com or http://charleslau.com .  I will recommend you to use GoDaddy to register all your domain names because they provide very professional service and yet extremely affordable as well.  It should cost you below US$15 per year (depending on their promotions).

Secondly, you will need a web hosting plan.  This is where your website files will reside once your visitor clicks on your URL.  I will highly recommend you to use HostMonster as a starter.   They are always costing between US$5.95 and US$6.95 per month.  And you will only have to dedicate 1 year, which I think it is just nice to try it out.

That’s all you need.  An investment of less than US$100 to try out starting a website for one year!  :)

So how to start a website with your own domain name?

Step 1: Simply do a search of your ideal domain name at GoDaddy website.  Once you have found it, get your credit card and purchase it.

Step 2: Once you have gotten a domain name and login, go to your Domain Manager found at the top left corner (as shown in the screenshot below).

Step 3: Tick on your domain name, and click on “Nameservers” (as shown in the screenshot below).

Step 4: A pop-up will be shown.  Just fill in the two nameserver addresses as follows:

Step 5: You are done with GoDaddy.  Now, work on your web hosting plan with HostMonster.  Start purchasing a plan with them, and log into your account.  It’s advisable to get their free domain name as the name of your control panel for internal usage.

Step 6: Look for this link “Addon Domains”.  Click on it.

Step 7: Fill in your domain name and get yourself started!

You are done!

I heard that Common Craft is being mentioned in Inc magazine.  Hence, I went ahead and read the Inc magazine article that companies like Smule and Kiva Systems creating clever Web videos to explain their technology to customers and produce sales leads.

I agree with Lee LeFever of his following three points when creating a viral video:

Lee LeFever is one person whom I respect for his innovation to create viral videos.  Here are some viral videos (related to Internet)  that he has created:

1. Blogs in Plain English
2. Cloud Computing in Plain English
3. Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
4. Podcasting in Plain English
5. Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English
6. RSS in Plain English
7. Social Bookmarking in Plain English
8. Social Media in Plain English
9. Social Networking in Plain English
10. Twitter in Plain English

Having viral video to allow social media users to spread, it allows not only brand awareness, it also gives the people a chance to understand better about your products and services in an entertaining way.  Thus, it actually boost sales directly/indirectly when everybody simply enjoys spreading the videos to their online friends.

Photo credit:  lyon photography

Though it has been around for almost two years, I have just got to know about this that Starbucks is also jumping into the social media wagon where they allow people to share their ideas online.  They called it “My Starbucks Idea“.  It sounds like what Dell has done with their IdeaStorm website where they also want to hear your ideas.

I think it’s really cool to have found another company embracing the social media.  But if they are just making use of their existing plans and associate with the ideas shared within the social media, it is just a matter of time that the social media will “smell a rat”.  According to Brand Autopsy’s findings, only 6 out of 50 launched ideas are authentic!  Below is an extract from Brand Autopsy that 44 ideas are not authentic:

For example, Starbucks credits a customer idea for the Splash Sticks (#1 on the list) they offer customers to help ensure coffee doesn’t spill out of the plastic lid. Reality is this idea was being done in Japan months before its introduction into the North American market. It’s not a customer-generated idea because this idea was already in the Starbucks product pipeline.

Though Starbucks may not have implemented 100% of hearing their customers’ ideas, I can see that they are still trying very hard.  By starting such a website to gather ideas, I think that is already a bold step to take.  Social media is not a place where we can use “white lies” to resolve issues effectively because the customers will help one another to tell the truth sooner or later.  Unlike the traditional media of TV, newspapers and radio, the social media is a two-way communication… Remember that the social media can reply back with their thoughts… People are no longer hearing only the brands’ voice… They are also hearing their peers’ voice too!

Photo image: John Niedermeyer

I’ve just checked my email.  12 hours ago, Digg emailed me a notification that they are giving us (the social media users) an opportunity to ask Toyota questions since the recent controversy surrounding the Toyota vehicle recall, one of the largest in history.

The Toyota US President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Lentz, will be in the hot seat for their latest LIVE Digg Dialogg, where he will tackle our questions head-on.  He’ll be sitting down with us to provide perspective on what happened, what Toyota is doing about it, and what consumers need to know.

This is YOUR opportunity (mine as well..) to make your voice heard – you can submit & Digg questions from now through Monday. The ones with the most votes will be asked in the Digg Dialogg LIVE at 2pm PT/ 5pm ET on Monday, February 8th.

—

Some thoughts from Charles

In terms of crisis management, I think Digg is a good forum in the social media to have your clarification explained to the citizen journalists.  Citizen journalists are actually referring to any social media users who have access to any form of social media such as Facebook, twitter, blogs, Posterous, Friendfeed, delicious, flickr, digg and so on.  That’s where they can update their status and be heard to the outside world!

In my opinion, you can consider using Digg to give your corporate announcements.  And I think this is a good model for the rest of the social media websites to have so that it will attract more brands to find an edge to be involved professionally with the social media in a personal way.

Photo credit: toyotacarmycar@yahoo.in

Well, I think this is a common topic for many MNC companies.  A lot of employees working in big companies are facing the same issue of being restricted to accessing the social media websites in their respective offices.

Companies’ dilemma to social media websites

A recent article from Harvard Business Review discussed about majority of firms with over 100 employees that have yet to embrace the use of social media in the workplace for the average worker.  In that article, it discusses about a growing number of firms such as IBM, Toshiba and Cerner Corporation becoming über-connected workplaces.  They actually made use of social media tools to connect their employees globally and to foster mass collaboration.  It’s not only about implementing new tools, but also embracing a cultural shift to create an open environment where employees are encouraged to share, innovate and collaborate virtually.

Social media tools as the new kind of communication tools (on top of phones and emails)

One thing that caught my attention is that social media is a new kind of communication, in addition to our existing telephones and email addresses.  Nowadays, I do communicate with my friends and acquaintances through facebook and twitter.  It is becoming part of my communication tools already.  Other than myself, the even younger generations have already embraced these tools as part of their lives ever since Internet has already been around when they are very young.

Historical similarities in denial of access during office hours

In the Harvard Business Review article mentioned above, it mentioned that employees were denied for using phones 40 years ago…. And employees were also denied for their email access in 20 years ago… Though I am not that old to determine such things 20-40 years ago, I can imagine the same thing happening for social media restrictive access nowadays.

All IT departments in the world should review their existing IT security policy

If companies are continuing to restrict access to social media, there is a likelihood that the new generations of employees (Harvard Business Review called them as “Millennials”) are prepared to bypass the corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked.  There are a lot of IT security policies that really meant well for the companies.  But because these security policies are not very updated with the marketing trend today, they are actually becoming a barrier to affected companies to grow with the trend.  While security policies cannot be compromised, a new set of security policies need to be enforced due to the increasing need of social media.  I am just wondering when was the last update of education in IT security policies…

Conclusion

While I don’t have a perfect solution to the IT security problem that social media tools can impose, I think the Harvard Business Review has provided a good article about using social media tools in your job.  It is just a matter of time when social media tools will be allowed for access to all employees in the near future…

Image Credit: rheathyurd

Everybody is talking about IPad.  I don’t know why… Robert Scoble is abandoning his Amazon Kindle for Apple IPad.  My colleagues are talking about it… My twitter friends are talking about it… Everybody is retweeting about IPad… It seems like Apple IPad has brought in a lot of awareness even before it is being released for us to use…  Here’s a presentation from Steve Jobs about Apple IPad below:

There are basically two camps for IPad…

• There’s a supportive camp…
• and there’s also a resistance camp…

You cannot compare Apple IPad with laptops

I think the resistance camp is basically comparing too much with the actual specs of laptops.  I think this is a wrong perspective of looking at IPad… IPad is more like a gigantic IPod touch actually… Many of us (including myself) think that Apple IPod touch is a waste of money when you can get an Apple IPhone… Now that they have increased the size of an Apple IPod touch (and called it Apple IPad), this is a really different ball game to play with.

You cannot compare Apple IPad with Amazon Kindle

While I am envious of the Americans who can get to own an Amazon Kindle, I think that it is wrong for those of you to get rid of Amazon Kindle for an Apple IPad.  (Robert, you hear me?)  Thanks to the presence of Amazon Kindle… I can finally sense the presence of the ebook readers around the world… That’s when I found Hanlin A9, which I am still waiting for them to start manufacturing in the Q2 of 2010.  No matter what, an Apple IPad is still a big LCD screen where it will tire our eyes after reading for a while…  That’s where ebook reader shines… But of course, you got to have an ebook reader which has more capabilities than the existing versions of Amazon Kindle… It’s not enough when you can’t read websites, powerpoints, excel spreadsheets and word documents…

Do you think I will get myself an Apple IPad?

Very unlikely… Even if I have paper books to catch up from the PR folks, I think an ebook reader is still a better choice… No, I have not gotten an ebook reader yet… But I will get one for sure… Trust me that I will get an ebook reader very soon!

I would think that Apple IPad will be suitable for those who enjoy surfing the Internet at home with comfort.  It’s more like a luxury where you have extra cash in your pocket to spend on.  Apple IPad will be a good-to-have gadget.  Just see how easy it is when Steve Jobs surf around the net with Apple IPad…

It’s my birthday today!  Thanks for all the birthday wishes on my Facebook.  Really appreciated it a lot… All the wishes came from my colleagues, friends i know of, and also friends of the social media…

Photo credit: Builders Studio

Other than from Facebook, I also received birthday wishes through my emails and my mobile phone.  One very interesting emails come from my insurance company who sent a birthday wish to me.  At the very beginning, it sounds very sweet of them to do so.  But the whole mood turned sour when they put in this robotic disclaimer “If you do not wish to be in the mailing list for these periodic electronic greetings, please click here” .  Though it is still very sweet of them to greet us, it is still a robotic greeting… And if they really want to send this robotic greeting, can’t they just personalize it further?

It sounds even weird when they have this “Please do not reply directly to this email.”

This is supposed to be a birthday wish, isn’t it?  Or it’s just part of their email blast to intrude other people’s privacy?

The Internet has made it easy for many people to do a massive marketing with a human touch.  It is especially easy when there are computers out there to help us with easing our job.  Companies out there have to understand that customers do change even though you have been “consistent” in your interruptive marketing… Take a quick look at the funny video below to understand better!

By the way, I will be away for the whole week for my national service.  Will be right back after a short break!

Those of you who have fluent with the usual “offline” marketing strategy, will just think of how to allocate a certain marketing budget, and do a one-time campaign only for the social media marketing.  It can be disastrous if this is what you are doing…

Many of you will do marketing this way:

1. Think of a marketing budget.
2. Find some social media channels to work on.
3. Find a meaningless meaning to associate it with your brand.
4. Spend it and see ROI.

While ROI is very important in every company, consumers don’t like to be sold.  They like to be wooed.  Check out some of the dating rules to woo your clients here.  We are all still human beings.  And the social media has brought the brands closer to the consumers.  Consumers like to discuss with brands directly.  Consumers like to be online ambassadors where they can copy and paste your brand logo, and talk about you in their own forum.  And if you as the brand custodian are going to communicate with the consumers, it will simply make them even more excited about it.

1. Build your social media marketing with the “crisis management” in mind

As you build a community on the web, everybody will have a chance to communicate with you and amongst themselves.  This will become a channel for you to communicate when there’s a problem arise that requires you to find a way to announce things to the public as quickly as possible.  It is not easy to build this channel immediately… It requires time and effort… Hence, your ROI should be to build your tribe – a community where they are willing to hear what you want to tell them about.

2. Build your social media marketing talents in your company

There are a lot of brands out there who are using inexperienced social media talents (find out how to hire social media talents here) to build a community.  In fact, it can be really dangerous to have all these “internet-disabled” marketing communication personnels to work out an online marketing communications for their companies.  (Even for myself, I wouldn’t dare to say I am good… I am always learning, and I will keep on improving myself or with the company.)

Just imagine that only those of us who have quite experienced on the social media are probably a minority working for a brand… If the whole team is not very experienced with the social media, it can be inefficient because they will never understand why we need to do it this way or that way.  (Basically, we need a team who have certain understanding of social media so that we can work effectively.)

3. Build your social media marketing with a “termination  clause” in mind

I don’t understand why a lot of brands are not building social media with an end in mind.  Every contract on earth has a termination clause.  But why social media is not having such a clause?  If there isn’t any clause to terminate, the employees will think that they have to maintain this social media site for the rest of their lives.  If not, the sites will just get stagnant.  This is really bad for the brand…

Image Credit: MediaLife2009

Just some ramblings from Charles

I bought my laptop last few months ago.  The performance has been satisfying.  The only hindrance is with the random hangs that it gave me along the way.  I got really frustrated and asked around how to improve my hardware problem (I am guessing it could be an hardware issue).  Then I found this interesting feature called Windows Experience Index in my Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate Edition.  It assesses the key system components on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9.  More information can be found below.

What is the Windows Experience Index?

The Windows Experience Index measures the capability of your computer’s hardware and software configuration and expresses this measurement as a number called a base score. A higher base score generally means that your computer will perform better and faster than a computer with a lower base score, especially when performing more advanced and resource-intensive tasks.

Each hardware component receives an individual subscore. Your computer’s base score is determined by the lowest subscore. For example, if the lowest subscore of an individual hardware component is 2.6, then the base score is 2.6. The base score is not an average of the combined subscores. However, the subscores can give you a view of how the components that are most important to you will perform, and can help you decide which components to upgrade.

You can use the base score to buy programs and other software that are matched to your computer’s base score. For example, if your computer has a base score of 3.3, then you can buy any software designed for this version of Windows that requires a computer with a base score of 3 or lower.

The scores currently range from 1.0 to 7.9. The Windows Experience Index is designed to accommodate advances in computer technology. As hardware speed and performance improve, higher score ranges will be enabled. The standards for each level of the index generally stay the same. However, in some cases, new tests might be developed that can result in lower scores.

It’s frustrating to see my laptop to have a rating of 4.9 on my graphics.  I would have expected it to be around 5 to 6 at least.  Even if it is so, it could be the main cause of the random hangs on my laptop.  (I am carrying a Dell Studio 1557 by the way.)

Here’s the screenshot of my Windows Experience Index.

After checking out on improving my graphic card performance, I installed whatever drivers that can help.  In the end, my result is still the same as 4.9 for my Graphics.

I google about how I can improve my desktop performance for Windows Aero… And it turned out that I may need to upgrade my video card in order to enjoy a better rating.  (The objective is still to resolve my random hangs that I am having.)

I guess the only way out is to upgrade my graphic card… But does that going to achieve my objective?  :(

Just some random check outs of a nice website

I found this post from my favorite blogger Chris Brogan who had a Kitchen Table Talk about How Social Media Can Power Your Business.  It speaks about Joe Sorge, who runs AJ Bombers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as Water Buffalo, and a few other restaurants in town. Chris is fascinated about how he uses social media to humanize his business. Here’s the video:

As I took a quick look at his website, I think he has a really good landing page!  It’s a very simple landing page with only words and pictures that a person wants to see.  Best of all, it is focusing on the idea that people don’t read on the web… They only scan for images and words…

Just take a look at it yourself!

http://www.ajbombers.com/

It has a mailing list capturing system on the left… Some nice pictures at the bottom… And the focus is on the right side where it shows live feed of the tweets and leveraging a lot on social media/web tools to build a nice site.

I think if they make the logos of Facebook” and “Twitter” more significant, it will most likely increase more awareness because these two logos simply blended with other words such as “danger” and “I love nuts”.