What is the first thing you look at when you land on someone’s social network profile page? When you look at an “About Us” web page, where do your eyes go? If you are like the bulk of Internet users you will focus your attention on the eyes of the person pictured. And, according to research you will make a decision whether or not you like that person within 100ms. In one-tenth of a second, a mere blink, you will have assessed the profile pictures of the people you are looking at and decided whether to trust them. Either we are pretty shallow, or we have highly sophisticated mechanisms within our brains to help us make such judgements.

So, the kind of image you have on your website or on your social networking profiles will influence whether people wish to connect with you. Have the right profile pictures on Facebook or Twitter, for instance, and you’ll get more friends and followers. Similarly, if your company’s “About Us” page has an appropriate image of you, the business could well do better. But what is the right kind of picture? There is much debate online as to whether your profile picture should be head-and-shoulders, or a full body shot of you in some setting you enjoy, such as that picture of you beside your Ferrari, or windsurfing in the Mediterranean. Such images give a glimpse of your personality, true, but they don’t allow your website visitors to see what they really want. They want to look into your eyes.

Hence a close-up, head-and-shoulders, shot does allow your profile visitors to start making those judgements about you. But what if they don’t like what they see in your eyes? They can see what they want to make that snap judgement, but if they assess your character to be less than trustworthy within just 100ms, you could have lost them for ever.

Thankfully, new research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows us what we need to choose as our profile pictures. You need the most baby-faced picture you can get of yourself. The study used photo-editing software to manipulate the images of politicians so that the area around the eyes was softened. Then, the before and after shots were tested to see how far these politicians were trusted. And, you guessed it, the baby-faced pictures with the wrinkles ironed-out were the ones which got the positive votes. Even the political enemies of these people trusted them more when they were baby-faced than when they were natural.

Now, this does not mean you should rush out and start airbrushing all your profile pictures. But it does imply that if you choose a picture which enhances your youthful looks you will do better online. And how do you get such profile pictures without faking them? Simple. You need to get your profile pictures shot professionally by a photographer. Simple snaps done by your mate or your children will not be lit properly to make you look your best. But if you ask a professional photographer to help hide your wrinkles, they’ll know exactly what to do so that you get a truthful image which shows your baby-face.

Related articles

• Twitter Accounts with a Profile Picture Have 10 Times More Followers Than Those Without (hubspot.com)
• Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile – Literally (mashable.com)
• Heatmaps Reveal Where People Look on Social Media Sites [Research] (hubspot.com)

Princess Diana shares something with Osama Bin Laden apparently – like him, she is alive…! Trust me, it must be true because several people believe it and say so online. Yes, they are conspiracy theorists, admittedly. But there are plenty of people chatting away on the Internet who suggest, for instance, that Princess Diana faked her own death or that Bin Laden was already dead when the special forces stormed the building where he had been living. The problem with these people is that their beliefs are contradictory. Did you notice that the people who believe that Bin Laden is alive also claim he was dead at the time of the raid…? Er…how is that possible? And the people who believe that Princess Diana faked her own death also appear to think that she was assassinated by the authorities. Again, she cannot be both dead and alive at the same time.

Conspiracy theories are rife on the Internet. Only recently there was a theory circulating on the web that the Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, had been torpedoed by the Iranians. When it was pointed out that there was no explosion, but a gaping hole with a rock embedded in the side of the hull, the conspiracy theorists explained it away by the “fact” that the Iranians had perfected the technique of disguising torpedoes as rocks. The contradiction in the physics of not being able to behave in a torpedo-like way if you were shaped as a rock, somehow did not seem to matter.

And how many times have you heard that Neil Armstrong never walked on the moon because the whole Apollo programme was made-up by the US Government in league with Hollywood…?  The fact that this hoax needs the 50-year-long co-operation of hundreds of thousands of scientists and film crew members seems to escape the conspiracy theorists because it can be “explained away” by the notion that “hardly anyone knew”, not even the astronauts themselves apparently…! So, the theory is you don’t send them to the moon but make them and everyone else think they have been, thanks to the support of a handful of exceptional experts who have all stayed silent since. Once again, the contradictory nature of the moon landing conspiracy escapes the consciousness of the people who support such theories.

New research from the University of Kent, UK, shows that if someone believes an “official story” is untrue, then they become willing to accept contradictory notions – such as Princess Diana faking her own death and also being killed by MI5 or MI6. The contradictory nature of the various theories is seemingly invisible to people because of their fundamental desire to accept that the official story is untrue. That belief seems to “trump” the contradictions.

In the online world – where such contradictory theories can circulate rapidly and easily – it means that we need to be particularly wary. If someone is unwilling to accept any official story for whatever reason, then it appears changing their mind with logical argument is unlikely as they will counter such debate with illogical and contradictory claims, without seeing the nonsense of their viewpoint.

For online businesses this can be a problem too. The people who believe that a company is simply out to profiteer, to fleece the individual, are willing to accept that whilst also believing that the firm is deliberately making losses. A company cannot make a profit and a loss at the same time, but the conspiracy theorists would think that possible.

It all rather suggests that if you suffer from conspiracy theorists attacking your views or your company’s position if you are in business, then the best thing you can do is completely ignore them. If you enter the debate you will just fuel the fire of illogicality and contradiction.

Related articles

• Contradictions Don’t Deter Conspiracy Theorists (livescience.com)
• Believing the impossible and conspiracy theories (eurekalert.org)
• Ghost of Princess Diana in Scottish Church (weeklyworldnews.com)

Stephen Hester, the embattled boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, cannot help being the current most-disliked man in Britain. It is not his fault that his employers decided to pay him £1.2m a year. Neither is he to blame that they decided to give him a bonus worth almost as much. But would he be as disliked as he is today if he had a different name? What if he were Tarquin Hester or Dave Hester or Jonathan Hester? The fact of the matter is, his name affects what we think of him.

So, if he is somewhat reviled today you can blame his Mum and Dad for choosing “Stephen” instead of a name that the rest of us might prefer – sorry if your name is Stephen…!

Your name has a significant impact upon what other people think about you. For example, it has been shown to have an effect on your academic performance because your teachers, presumably subconsciously, react better to some names than others. People with certain names do better at school than others. Choosing your child’s name can have a major effect on their life.

New research confirms the “name effect”. The study, conducted in Germany and the USA, found that the names of individuals affected, for instance, the extent of interest in them in online dating sites. The names of individuals were also related to measurements of self-esteem and smoking – people with negative names smoked more and also had lower levels of self-esteem. That’s probably linked to perceived lack of like-ability; because of their name some people get fewer social connections and feel less popular, which makes them think negatively about themselves.

So, if you lack followers on Twitter, or friends on Facebook it might be simply that your name is “wrong”. Human beings might like to profess we are not prejudiced against particular names, but this study – and others before it – show that we are biased against certain names and that we favour others. You might do better online if you use your nick-name, or your middle name.

Alternatively we could all call ourselves the most popular and most highly rate name found in this new research – Alexander. If we were talking about Alexander Hester today, the coverage would be a lot less negative. Still, at least his parents didn’t call him Kevin.  The research shows that is the most disliked name of all. Apologies to Kevins reading this…!

Related articles

• Outrage as Royal Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester gets £963,000 bonus (thesun.co.uk)
• National News: Miliband accuses PM over RBS bonus (coventrytelegraph.net)

Internet marketers are nothing if not creative. There hardly seems to be a day that goes by without some new idea from an Internet Marketing brainbox. And each time you think there can’t be any new ideas to market your business online, along comes another creative thinker who has developed an amazing way to promote your products and services.

In business meetings you will often hear people say “we need to think outside the box on this one”. It is a shorthand way of suggesting that the people in the meeting need to be more creative and come up with new and seemingly whacky ideas. And you can bet that many traditionally-based marketing departments are amazed at how much “outside the box” thinking there is in the young upstarts of the Internet Marketing world.

Recently, however, psychologists were interested to find out if by actually being “outside a box” made people think more creatively. The researchers conducted a study which was purportedly looking at different working environments. Some people were sat in a large cardboard box, whereas others were “outside the box”…! The researchers were not actually looking at work productivity or the way people responded to different environments. Instead the psychologists wanted to find out if being in a box hampered creative thinking and if being outside the box actually helped. And amazingly it did…!

When people were inside the box, they were much less creative than when they were, literally, “outside the box”.

So, in order to boost your creative thinking for your internet marketing you could always buy yourself a big cardboard box, do your work in that for a while and then physically step “outside the box” to improve your creativity.

On the other hand, you might want to take a different path to success…! What the research really shows is that a change in environment boosts your creative thinking. So, if  you are struggling with coming up with new ideas for your website, or how to market your online products, you need to get away from your desk. Take a walk, go for a coffee, simply walk to someone else’s office for a chat – all of these are tactics which help improve creative thinking.

In essence, when you are in your office you are in your own little “box” environment – step outside of that box and your creative juices will start to flow again. It all goes to show that there is often some truth in the jargon-laden sayings we hear in the workplace..! Get out of your office for a while and your Internet Marketing will be improved because you will literally be thinking outside of your box.

Related articles

• Thinking outside the box DOES boost creativity: Cramped work spaces produce few ‘lightbulb moments’ for employees (dailymail.co.uk)
• Leave the Room to Boost Creativity [Brain Hack] (lifehacker.com)
• To ‘think outside the box,’ think outside the box (eurekalert.org)

Twitter is not necessarily doing what you think it does. Rather than being the place where you send out short messages to your friends and colleagues it may be the place where your behaviour is manipulated by software. Researchers in Boston, USA, have discovered that “Twitter bots” can change our behaviour. The “bots” are automated pieces of software that trawl through the Twittersphere, find some target Tweets and then automatically Retweet them. To the original Tweeter it looks like a human being has found what they said interesting. Far from it; the Tweet may never have been actually read by a real person.

The Twitter bots also sometimes include a “mention” in the Retweet. That means, for instance, if I were to Retweet something you said on Twitter, but also included my son’s Twitter name in the Retweet I would have given him a “Twitter mention”; inserting anyone’s Twitter name or handle into a Tweet is a “mention”. The automated bots will do this at random, adding people who have used similar words to your original Tweet. The implication is that one of your “followers” knows that someone else would also be interested in what you have to say and so is effecting an introduction. Indeed, this is what happens all the time with real people but automated software can do it too.

The problem for Twitter users is this. Unless you know the person who is Re-Tweeting you, the Retweet could come from automated software – not a real individual. But the inclusion of “mentions” merely adds to the illusion that someone else thinks your content is worth spreading and sharing to other like minded people.

The result is that these automated Twitter bots can fool us. They can make us think people value our material, when in actual fact no-one has engaged with our Tweets at all. However, what the researchers found next is fascinating. It seems that the automated bots are so good at giving an impression of human behaviour we behave as we would do in the real world. The bots appear to be helping create new followers and connections between the various people mentioned in the automated Retweets. In essence, the bots are creating introductions, helping us network.

But the problem is – in the real world we only introduce people to each other who we think will get on, who will share common interests or who we think can help each other. Twitter bots cannot make such value judgements and are therefore inferior to natural human behaviour. Even so, we appear to be take in by them. Perhaps it is time to review your Twitter Followers and to make sure you are only being followed by real people. That way you will minimise your chances of being manipulated by software into following other people who you have little real connection with.

Related articles

• Should You Add “Please Retweet” to Your Twitter Updates? [Debate] (hubspot.com)
• Obama’s State of the Union Address Sees 760,000 Tweets [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
• FAQs about using Twitter for business (marketing.yell.com)
• Can Twitter Bots Encourage Human Communication? (blogs.wsj.com)

Hello, how are you? Hope you are well and that you have had a good day so far. Now, tell me, isn’t it nice to be asked, to be recognised, to be noticed? I am writing this from the Rudding Park Hotel, near Harrogate, where I am speaking tomorrow morning. I arrived to be met by a cheery smile, to be asked “how has your day been today Mr Jones?” and to be escorted to my room with a bright conversation about the area. Once in my room I rang room service: “Good evening Mr Jones, how are you this evening?” was EXACTLY how the phone was answered..! Wow, what a hotel…! I was so impressed, the FIRST THING I did was to open up my laptop and write a FIVE STAR REVIEW on Trip Advisor. The hotel had made me feel welcome, as though they were running the hotel just for me. So many hotels simply seem to ignore their visitors.

And, sadly, so do many online businesses. The chances are you have emailed some website or other, never to get a reply. Or you have asked a question in a company’s support forum or ticket system, only to have to wait weeks to get an answer, if at all. Many companies simply build a website and leave it there; it’s rather like building a retail store, dressing the windows so people can see what you have to offer and then letting people in the doors only for them to find there are no staff.

Human beings do not like being ignored. And this is confirmed by a new piece of research from psychologists at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. They found that people feel good even if they get a sense that strangers warm to them. Being ignored by people walking past meant that the participants in the study felt negative. It shows that simple connections are all you need to make people feel more connected with you.

Online that means the language you use – hopefully you feel I am writing this directly to you, you can almost hear me speak it to you. Also, it means answering comments as quickly as possible, dealing with emails immediately and doing everything you can to make people feel you are not ignoring them. Much business online is missed because websites simply ignore their visitors.

If you want to discover how it feels to NOT be ignored, to be welcomed and treated as a friend, check yourself in to Rudding Park…!

Related articles

• 9 Must-Haves for the Perfect Landing Page (hubspot.com)
• The Ultimate Guide to Designing the Perfect Business Blog (hubspot.com)
• Top 10 Reasons Your Website Is Losing Sales (mashable.com)

Business owners tend to fall into one of two camps – those who are willing to have a go at anything and try new services and ideas, or those who want to maintain the status quo and who are very conservative in their approach to life. Indeed, the notion that people are either open to change, or they are not is a central characteristic of personality psychology. In personality tests your degree of “openness” is assessed and forms part of your personality profile. The degree to which each of us is “open” is, according to personality theory, a rather fixed part of our very being – we are either open, or not.

However, recent research suggests that our degree of openness can indeed be altered. It is not a firmly established personality trait after all, but something which can fluctuate. And that is good news for the online success of anyone running an Internet business. The online world is changing at such a rapid pace that you need to be able to adapt and move quickly in order to succeed. However, business owners who are rather conservative, who preserve the status quo and who do not want to try the “new fangled” ideas until they become established could be doing themselves a disservice. In the past it was indeed wise for business leaders to wait, to let other test the waters and find the problems, before then taking on any new ideas. But nowadays, the new ideas are old ideas within months – if an online business does not take up such new things quickly, they easily miss out. The old, slower, way of doing business is no longer an option online – which means that those business owners not open to change could find life tough on the Internet.

But the research shows that all is not lost. Rather than thinking that this fast-moving online world is “not for me”, the business owner who is traditionally not open can alter that aspect of their personality quite easily. The psychological studies show that crossword puzzles and Sudoku tests can increase the level of openness in an individual. This means that if you want to increase your online success all you need to do is take up crossword puzzles. You’ll become more open to new ideas and information and as a result you will be more willing to try out new elements which could improve your web business, for instance.

Related articles

• The psychology of crossword puzzles (cogsciblog.wordpress.com)
• How crossword puzzles mess with your mind (newscientist.com)
• Feeling low? Write a blog…! (grahamjones.co.uk)

How many times have you searched for something, only to find that you are presented with results that don’t quite match what you wanted? It is a daily occurrence for many people. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing do a fantastic job, but ultimately they are only as good as the words typed in by their users. Type in something that is somewhat ambiguous and you can be presented with all sorts of sites you didn’t want…!

The problem is that many words have multiple meaning. Search engines have to try to work out the exact meaning of what users type in. But unlike human conversation, typing frequently does not present any real context. For example, when you use a word that has several different meanings someone listening to you instantly knows which meaning you are inferring because of the tone of your voice, your body language and the overall context of the conversation. Search engines don’t have those benefits to rely on. All they have is typing.

The mathematical algorithms which search engines use do have some ability to work out roughly what people are searching for, depending on the other words that are also typed in. This is an attempt to establish the context of the word. As an example, consider the word “script”. It has several possible meanings – a drama script, a computer programmers script, an academic examination paper, and a medical script or prescription. If you are two doctors chatting away about a script you know what you mean is a prescription, not the text of the latest movie. Equally, if you are in a meeting about computers, you infer that anyone talking about a script is focusing on programming, not discussing academic exams.

However, if you are a search engine and someone types in “script” what do you present as the result…? This is a problem which all the search engines have to tackle and they are not helped by their users – us…!

Ambiguous words help people not search engines

Linguists have discovered that ambiguous words with multiple meanings actually increase the accuracy of our communication. Past theories have suggested that linguistic ambiguities have arisen because language was never supposed to be something we used to communicate with each other, but as an internal thinking system. We would know what we meant; it never mattered that no-one else would…! However, the new findings from linguists show that ambiguous words help us communicate better. It turns out that it is more efficient to use a short word with several meanings and let the listener work out the meaning as a result of context, body language and vocal tone, for instance. Otherwise we would have to use very long words, conversations would take longer as would thinking, making the production of speech a cumbersome and slow process. Ambiguity actually speeds up communication.

Unless you are a search engine….!

So, how can you help yourself – and your website visitors – to get the results wanted in a search engine? The answer is to focus on long words, which the linguists demonstrate are much less ambiguous. So, if you are a medic, don’t go for your first instinct of searching for information on a “script”, write the word you almost never use “prescription”. If you are a computer programmer use the old-fashioned  “batch language file” instead of “script”, for instance. In other words, go for complex when searching, rather than simple; go against your normal communication instincts.

For website owners it means you are more likely to get that coveted “number one” position on a search engine if you focus on the less popular, longer and less ambiguous words.

Related articles

• Search engines are less valuable than we think (grahamjones.co.uk)
• How Search Engines Work (searchenginewatch.com)
• How To NOT Get Banned From Search Engines (howtospoter.com)

During economically troubled times you cannot miss the vast amount of price discounting and “special offers” which retailers and online stores use in a bid to tempt people to buy. With businesses themselves facing difficulties, they do almost anything to get more customers and people buying more. But sometimes the sales promotions do not live up to the desires of the company; often consumers just walk on by, ignoring the “deal”. Part of the reason for that appears to be in the way the offers are made.

Consider cans of beans where you are offered “two for one” or “buy one get one free”. You can quickly and easily divide the price in two and work out the cost of each individual can. But if the deal is “three for two”, the mathematical calculation is now more difficult. However, it seems that makes many people give up on the potential purchase because they feel the retailer is trying to hoodwink them, making the price calculation deliberately tough.

Psychological research on consumers shows there is another way to increase sales. What you do is give the quantity first and then the actual price amount afterwards. So instead of saying “three for two” your sales display says “three for £10″. The math is a little difficult as it is not a round number, but people realize that each item us roughly £3 each. However, if you were to say “£10 for three”, research shows that people are less likely to buy – putting the price first is off-putting, even though the deal is the same.

Online you can use this technique in a variety of ways. Imagine, for instance, you sell e-books and you have a “package deal” for 10 books in a collection. If you say “£47 for 10 books” you will get fewer sales than if you were to say “10 books for £47″.

Similarly, if your shopping cart allows people to select multiple copies of something – such as products you might deliver to them – do not allow your shopping cart to put the price first; it should display the quantity first, then the price. That way you’ll reduce the likelihood of shopping cart abandonment – which happens in almost 50% of all online carts. Half of online shoppers decide they want to buy something and then, at the last moment, change their mind. You can help reduce that reversal of your fortunes by presenting the price information in the right way.

What the research shows is that people focus on the first number they see. If that is a high price figure, such as £27 for three items, they perceive it as expensive, even though the items are only £9 each. If they see the “3″ first, the package deal is perceived as valuable because of the low number.

If you want more sales, or if you are in economically troubled times, the way in which you display your pricing information could have an impact.

Related articles

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• Digital Download Shopping Cart from DigitalContentCenter.com Now PCI Compliant (prweb.com)
• 5 things that will increase ecommerce conversions on product landing pages (slideshare.net)

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day there are 23,148 searches on Google; that’s a whole lot of searching…! Search is one of the most popular online activities, making Google the “number one” website in terms of traffic, brand recognition and financial success. Whatever you spend most of your time doing online, there is little doubt that search is massive.

So it is no surprise that businesses want to be found. They want to be on the front page of those Google results at the very least, preferably in the top three items listed and ideally, “number one”. After all, with all those searches happening every second, you’d want to be in front of all those eyeballs; it makes business sense.

Except for one thing – the data released by the Google Analytics team recently. Google Analytics anonymously collects information about visitors to many websites where the owners have allowed the search company to get basic data on, for instance, where the visitor came from, what pages they looked at and so on. Google has been quietly collecting all this data for a long time and so has a bank of information which clearly reflects how we behave online. The data demonstrates that searching for stuff is only a relatively minor reason people end up on particular websites.

Indeed, the vast amount of data in Google Analytics shows that only 27% of visits to websites arise via search. The biggest reason people end up on a website is the “direct” route – either people typed in the domain name into the browser address bar, or they have previously stored the site as a bookmark. Either way, the “direct” route is chosen by almost four out of every ten people who end up on a website. According to the Google data, a further 21% of visitors land on a website as a result of a link from another site, or from a social network. The remainder of visitors end up on a website from “other” sources, such as email marketing campaigns, display advertising or affiliate promotions. In total it means that, on average, around three quarters of people visiting websites get to them WITHOUT using search engines.

If a business focuses its online attention in “getting to number one on Google”, for instance, it is only really targeting a quarter of its potential. Relying solely on search marketing means you are missing out on traffic. Indeed, Google’s own data suggests you should be putting most of your effort into getting links, social media mentions and using email marketing more. In fact, if you did those three things INSTEAD of search engine marketing, you would end up with more visitors.

The data is in Google’s Newsletter Archive.

Related articles

• Google Analytics for Your Small Business (microbusiness.vistaprint.com)
• How to Get the Most Out of Google Analytics (mashable.com)

Remembering to write your next blog post can be a bit of a problem; your normal working day has all sorts of twists and turns and the blog you intended to write slips your mind. Not only that, by the time the day draws to a close you can’t even remember the topic you wanted to write about. You are not alone…!

Recent research on memory has provided an interesting twist. Psychologists at the University of Exeter in the UK looked at various ways in which people with memory problems could be helped. They were studying individuals who had suffered brain injury which had affected their memory. One of the tools they used to help people remember thing was Google Calendar – the free, online calendaring service that comes with your GMail account. The researchers found that Google Calendar was superior in helping the brain injury patients remember things – much better than writing things down in a traditional diary, for instance. It seems that the automated features of Google Calendar were useful and provided something over and above a normal diary. It shows that there is something in the Google Calendar system which helps us more easily recall things, which means you can use it to help you to remember what to blog about.

Many people use an online calendar system, or software such as Outlook, to help them organise their appointments and schedules. However, using Google Calendar you can plan your blogging activities so that you don’t have to remember them – Google will do that bit for you. Here’s what you need to do.

Step One: Get a Google Calendar Account
If you don’t already have a Google Calendar or you haven’t added one to your GMail account do so.

Step Two: Set up a Calendar called “Blogging”
Once you have your Google Calendar account it will show the standard “Calendar”. Look on the left hand side of the screen, where you will see a label “My Calendars”. Click on the down arrow next to that and choose “Create New Calendar”. Call it “Blogging”.

Step Three: Enter Daily Topics
Choose a different topic or theme for each day you will blog. For instance, if your blog is about gardening, you could write about soil conditions on Mondays, dealing with pests on Tuesdays, creating great lawns on Wednesdays and so on. Now, in Google Calendar enter an event with the name of your topic for the time of each day you are most likely to write about it. Give each topic a different colour, using the choices when you create the event. That way you will get used to the colour system and at a glance know what topic you need to write about.

Step Four: Repeat the Events
At the top of the screen, there is a “Repeat” box you can select. Tick this and get the event to repeat every week. You have now filled in your blogging calendar for the rest of the year…!

Step Five: Schedule Reminders
When you create the topics, use the reminder function at the bottom of the event screen to get an email or pop-up to remind you that, say, in half an hour you need to write your blog post on a specific theme. That way, you can forget your blog and wait for the reminders about the topic you should be writing about.

Step Six: Edit individual Events
For each of the individual events you have created, edit them and provide more details about specific blog posts by adding them to the “Description” box. So, for instance, if you were blogging about gardening and every Wednesday was to be about great lawns, open up this week’s lawn event and type in some details about a specific idea on that subject you have. For example, you might have an idea to write about the best way to cut the grass. If you have any links which are useful, copy those into the “Description” box too. Then open up next Wednesday’s lawn care event and enter details about another idea, such as the best way to water the grass. Repeat this for as many topics and days as you can.

The result of spending an hour or two doing all this will be that you can forget all about your blog…! Google will remind you WHEN you need to write something and WHAT you need to write about. The only thing Google Calendar cannot do for you is actually write the blog post…! Even so, rather like the brain injury patients who found that Google Calendar was the best method of helping them remember things, you too can benefit from the system to help you keep on top of your blogging.

Get Graham Jones to help you plan your blogging

All the research confirms that regular, frequent blogging is what makes the difference between great and average online businesses. However, to achieve success with blogging you need plans - well structured editorial content plans and schedules. I can help your company produce an entire blog plan for the year ahead, including details of what to write about, who will do the writing and when each article will be published.

To get your blog plan completed check out my Content Planning Service.

Related articles

• How to Create a Social Media Editorial Calendar (searchenginewatch.com)
• Google Calendar Tip: Creating Tasks from an Email (savvyblogging.net)
• Reduce Google Calendar Clutter By Hiding Morning and Night Hours (googletutor.com)

As you read this, millions of people are exchanging news, views, ideas, pictures, videos and a whole host of other stuff using online social networks. Every day, billions of bits of information are swapped between people online – the world of social media is truly immense. So it is no wonder that businesses want a slice of the action. Indeed, there is plenty of material you can read on harnessing the power of social networks in your business. But is it actually worthwhile?

New research shows that social networks are truly social – people swap pictures, videos and blog posts about each other. Only rarely, it seems, do they talk about brands. Indeed, almost 60% of people on Facebook have NEVER mentioned a brand, according to one study. Similarly, on Twitter, six out of every ten Tweeters have never mentioned brand either. So, in spite of the desire for businesses to get people talking about the products and services they sell, it just is not happening very much.

Many businesses, of course, worry that social networks allow people to talk negatively about their brands. Indeed, companies have social media policies in place to prevent their staff talking about the office mishaps, for fear that anything negative “getting out” will damage the firm. Yet research confirms that when people do discuss brands in online social networks only 0.5% of their updates are negative mentions of brands. In other words, the negatives are there – but almost invisible.

In fact, what companies should focus on is the fact that around a quarter of people on Facebook have mentioned brands in a completely positive light. That means that it is 50 times MORE LIKELY that someone will say good things about your business than writes something nasty.

What the studies really confirm is that social media is about people chatting away, just as they do in bars, at dinner parties or when they socialize around the barbecue…! They talk about each other, their families, their holidays and the latest movie they have seen. They chat about last night’s TV and they discuss their aches and pains. Then – and only when it is relevant – do they talk about any particular brand they like. And usually it is to tell one of their mates how good a particular item is they have just bought.

Online social media is no different. People do chat about this, that and then occasionally your brand. So, rather than trying to “dominate” the social media space with your business, instead treat it like a normal social space where people will occasionally mention your company, at the appropriate point in the conversation.

If you look at the raw data of all the research, with brands only occasionally being mentioned, it might seem sensible to put your marketing resources elsewhere. But if you want to be mentioned socially, you need to be in that social space. You just have to accept that your company’s brands are not going to be the focus of conversations. But if you aren’t engaging in social media, then there is little chance of your brand getting a look in.

And remember this – when people do talk about your company it is almost always going to be positive. If you are not using social media, you are missing out on a massive supply of positive word-of-mouth.

Related articles

• Is the social media world destroying our online business? (grahamjones.co.uk)
• Be social: Do you really need a social media manager? (marketing.yell.com)
• Some Key Social Media Trends To Look For In 2012 (techcrunch.com)

How much time is too much online? Like many things, people can become addicted to the Internet, though psychological diagnosis manuals still refer to Internet Addiction as an “impulse control disorder“, which means that as yet there is insufficient evidence to truly confirm that “Internet Addiction Disorder” (IAD) is a true medical condition. However, new evidence from the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows for the first time that people who spend hours on end connected to the Internet have the same kind of brain structure as people with addictions to alcohol, drugs and so on. In other words, it looks very much as though it truly is possible to be addicted to the Internet.

Until this study, many psychologists have believed that so-called Internet Addiction is merely obsessive behaviour and that people who are completely obsessed by an online-game or Facebook, for instance, have a problem with controlling their impulses – they are motivated by the short-term gains of the elated emotions they feel whilst online, without considering the long-term impacts on their lifestyle, for instance. Addicts, however, often know they are doing the wrong things, but are unable to live without their “fix”. Indeed, the diagnosis of “addiction” requires the confirmation of either physical symptoms upon withdrawal of the addictive substance, or disruption to normal relationships and lifestyle. Few people who are obsessed with some aspect of the Internet have ever been shown to be in such dire straits, hence that’s why true addiction to the web is something which up until now has not been thought to be very likely.

But the new research from China could change that viewpoint. The fact that the brain differences have been observed using a controlled study, comparing “addicts” to “healthy”, matched individuals, suggests that Internet Addiction Disorder is very real indeed. However, the study does not tell us what the brains of the participants in the study were like BEFORE they used the Internet. We don’t know if the Internet caused changes to their brain structure, or if their brains were differently structured in the first place.  What we do know, though, is that in other forms of addictions similar brain structures do exist. It may well be that these brain differences compared with healthy people are what leads some individuals to become “addictive”.

However, you do not need to use MRI scanners to find out if someone is addicted to the Internet. All you need to do is look at their behaviour. People who are so obsessed with the web that their normal life is disrupted clearly have a problem. When relationships suffer as a result of excessive Internet use, that is also a signal that something is wrong.

In the workplace, if people are taking shorter lunch-breaks, or no lunch-break at all then this could suggest that their work is disrupted by over-use of the Internet. Similarly, if their work deadlines are continually extended or missed, it is a sign that something is wrong. Equally, if their friends in the office start “gossiping” about them because they no longer go for that after-work drink, it is a signal of colleague relationship problems. Whilst these things could be explained by other factors, Internet Addiction could also be a consideration.

What this new research now tells us is the fact that some people clearly can become addicted to the Internet. With more and more businesses relying on the web in the workplace, this problem could eventually become more significant than alcoholism, which already costs an estimated $185 billion to the US economy each year and £20 billion a year in the UK. Perhaps it is time for us all to think about the way we use the Internet – it IS addictive.

Related articles

• Internet Addiction Harms Brain ‘Like Cocaine’ (news.sky.com)
• Internet addicts’ brain structure similar to drug addicts’: study (vancouversun.com)
• Web addicts ‘have brain changes’ (bbc.co.uk)

When Google came to prominence 14 years ago it was a breath of fresh air compared with the main search engine at the time – Yahoo! The problem for Yahoo! was that it was subjective. Based on human editors who could not keep up with the pace of the growth of the web, it also meant that if they did not like a website it did not appear on the search results. Searchers were effectively prevented from finding much of what was available online. Google was a “game changer” because it used a mathematical algorithm to find web pages. No longer was there any subjectivity – if your website contained a word, Google would present your website in the list of results when someone searched for that word.

This is why Google became so popular. We could find everything on the web, no matter whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Whatever you search for, you’ll be presented with all of the web pages which exist for that word – sometimes tens of millions of them…! That’s why we love Google – it finds everything.

However, over the years Google has made changes – seemingly to improve the results we get. The main problem for Google was that because it is based on objective mathematics it means that anyone can fiddle the results easily. Search phrases were “hijacked” by spammers and “black hat” search marketing specialists. They could get to the top of the list easily using their optimization techniques; meanwhile legitimate and more useful sites were pushed down the search results listings.

Google knew it had to act – otherwise people would desert the search engine in favour of one that presented more useful and more reliable results. After all, they did that once by leaving Yahoo!  So, Google introduced quality controls and systems which meant that the rubbish content would still be in a search results listing, but relegated to page 100 or some such results page no-one looks at. The changes meant Google retained its objectivity and presented us with more accurate and useful results.

But Google is changing – and for the worse. The company is focused on the ever burgeoning world of social. Currently it is exploiting its fifth attempt at a social networking system, Google Plus. Previous Google social networks, like Buzz and Wave have bit the dust. The company has high hopes for Plus – so much so that it has now started to use data from  the social network to influence the search results it presents to you.

And that could be the undoing of Google. It means that search results will no longer be objective – but subjective. The results you get will no longer be based objectively upon two factors – your search history and the mathematical algorithm. Now the results will be influenced by what you do on Google Plus.

According to Google this will personalise your results – but at the same time it could remove from your visibility objectively presented results which might be more useful to you and which do not rely on the chit-chat between you and your mates.  According to the search engine expert Danny Sullivan these changes are “very un-Google-like“. He says the changes are “unfair”.

Whether or not they are fair is something which the American legal system is currently testing, as is the European Commission. But whatever their decisions, ultimately it is people who will decide, voting with their feet by walking away from subjective results. Google seems to have forgotten that what got it into the search business was the need for objective search results. The company’s clear desire to gain traction in the social media world is taking its eye off the ball; it is replacing objectivity with subjectivity – and that could be a fatal blow.

Related articles

• Google’s Biggest Social Search Update Yet Features Google+ Content (hubspot.com)
• Google: Search, plus Your World (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Google Search Just Got Extremely Personal (huffingtonpost.com)
• Google+ Status Updates Now Appearing in Organic Search Results (hubspot.com)

Your business depends upon the mood of you and your staff. Depressed people do not make good leaders or good workers. Neither do people with anxieties which incapacitate them by preventing full participation and enthusiasm for your company. Ask Google if they think a happy workforce makes for a good company…! The search engine is famed for having fun-filled offices, places to relax and free staff lunches from leading chefs. The work environment within Google is dramatically different from, say, your bank or your local solicitor’s office.

Many people who run businesses or who work in the typical office are not in the right mood to do the best. So, just how can you improve that situation and be more positive? You might not be able to afford the luxuries offered by Google to its staff, but at least there is one thing you can do which will significantly improve the mood of your staff – and yourself. What is it? You guessed it – blogging.

Blogging is therapeutic and hugely positive. New research shows that blogging SIGNIFICANTLY improves socio-emotional difficulties and self-esteem. Studies amongst children have shown that blogging improves literacy. And studies have also shown that writing reduces depressive episodes. In other words, if you allow your staff to blog, you will make them happier. And happy people are more positive and thereby more useful to your business.

Studies of writing are consistent in one thing, though, which may concern business owners. People tend to improve their mood and become more positive much more when they write about the negative things they experience. In other words, if you have a tough internal meeting, your staff are going to improve their mood about it if they blog about their negative feelings as a result of that meeting. And that’s precisely what business owners do not want them to write about…! At least not publicly…!

So, what can you do to encourage blogging and help improve the psychological health of your employees – and employers, remember, under health and safety legislation you are also required to protect psychological well-being as well as physical.

Firstly, have a blogging culture. Encourage all your staff to blog – add staff blogs to your business website. All the research shows that when your business blogs prolifically it leads to more business. So blogging will help you and your staff at the same time.

Secondly, encourage personal journal keeping. This could be a private blog or a physical journal where people write down their thoughts about the negative aspects of their work and personal life. But if they do so, their emotions will be boosted – thereby improving their performance at work.

Blogging – whether public or private – helps you, your staff and ultimately your business. And the research shows people only need to blog twice a week to have a significant impact on psychological status. So why wouldn’t you encourage it in your company?

Related articles

• Blogging May Help Teens Dealing with Social Distress (socialpsychology.org)
• The benefits of business blogging: Part 1 (marketing.yell.com)
• What’s stopping you writing a business blog? (marketing.yell.com)