What is Google Wave?
Google Wave is tipped to be the “next generation” of Internet communication and was first announced by Google in May this year. The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message). Google Wave will be launched to a select group of people at the end of this month and soon after that to the internet population.
In traditional email, you send a message to one or more recipients which consists of a message and possibly attached. The recipient can then reply to the sender or reply to all. Google’s Gmail, built on this with the threading of conversations, so replies to emails are joined together in one thread. This can be confusing at first but is really useful once you get the hang of it.
Google Wave is the next innovation on this. Instead of having of a message (eg email) as a standalone piece of information you have a Wave which is an entire conversation containing many forms of media between 2 or more people.
Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. You see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
So that makes it an email, document, forum, wiki, chat, video library, image library, podcast, social network and collabation system all in one.
An example of google wave
Terminology that is currently used is;
Wave is a group of wavelets, consisting of one or more participants. A wave is a living thing, with participants communicating and modifying the wave in real time.
Wavelet is a part of wave, a threaded conversation that is spawned from a wave (including the initial conversation). Wavelets serve as the container for one or more messages, known as blips. The wavelet is the basic unit of access control for data in the wave. All participants on a wavelet have full read/write access to all of the content within the wavelet.
During the lifetime of a wave, you may spawn private conversations, which become separate wavelets, but are bundled together within the same “wave.” Since events occur at the wavelet level or below, the context of an event is restricted to a single wavelet.
Blip is the basic unit of conversation and consists of a single messages which appears on a wavelet. Blips may either be drafts or published (by clicking “Done” within the Wave client).
Below is the 1hr20min video of the announcement of Google Wave in May this year.
Create your digital toolbox
When I first started in the digital industry 10 years ago, if you had a website your were using the internet as a marketing tool to it’s maximum and were miles in front of your competitors who didn’t have a website at all.
Now a website of some sort is mandatory for all companies and it’s how it is used in conjunction with an overall digital strategy that is the key factor in your online marketing.
Here are some digital tools that all businesses should have in their toolbox.
What is the best thing you can do for your website
So you've got a website, what next. What can you do now to get it working for you and working for your business?
- Email Marketing – a simple, regular, valuable email message to your database can have incredible increase on your enquiries and sales.
- Google Adwords / Facebook Advertising – Target Google or Facebook ads can get in front of new prospects immediately and provide instant traffic and enquiries. It's under your control, scalable and measurable.
- SEO – Survey your best clients and find out what words they would use if they were looking for your products & services. Optimise your website in search engines for these words.
- Social Networking – Interact with communities such as Twitter, Stumble Upon, Facebook, and LinkedIn to form relationships with your target market and drive them to your site.
- Design – what is the perception that your website is creating. Does it match the brand that you have or that you are trying to convey? How people perceive your business is their reality.
- Outsource – if you don't have the skills or the time to do it yourself, let a professional help you. It will be well worth the investment and you can spend your time doing what you do best.
- People – brand individuals by using blogs, twitter and articles. People like to do business with people more than companies.
- Quality – people seek consistency and quality. Make sure your website is error free, easy to navigate around, generally helpful and everything the user expects. Test, Test then Test again.
So what is twitter & why?
Twitter is becoming a popular online forum for ongoing social and business commentary. It even got a mention on Rove last night, which generated a heap of traffic and new members.
The actual technology and functionally is very simple. It’s getting your head around how you use it effectively is the hard part.
Functionally
People go to Twitter and create an account. Then they can start posting messages up to 140 characters long about anything they want to. These message are displayed on their own personal twitter page. Mine is www.twitter.com/matt_freedman
That by itself isn’t very useful, but in your account you can “follow” other people which is like making them a friend, and then when you log in you see all the messages or ”tweets” from all the people you follow. You can also see who is following you.
You can also reply to peoples tweets, which puts your reply on your page with a @otherpersonsid at the start of the message. If you see someone else’s tweet that you like and you want to use it you retweet it by copying it and putting “RT @otherpersonsid” at the start of it to give them credit.
You will also see links showing tinyurl.com/… Because you can only have 140 characters in each tweet you have to keep your message succinct, and a full website address takes up a lot of space. So you can go to www.tinyurl.com (and other websites) and type in your desired URL and they will give you’re a short one that redirects to it for you to add in your tweet.
Why it’s useful
While some people just tweet about the weather and mundane things, many others tweet about their area of interest or expertise. By following these people you can keep up to date with what’s going on in your industry and even start to communicate with some of the leaders in your field. I use twitter to help keep up to date with the plethora of new information on internet technologies, eMarketing and social media.
How it can be used for a conference
If you are organising or participating in a conference or summit Twitter can be a great tool. You can create your own twitter account for your conference, something like www.twitter.com/myconference09 and then start posting tweets on coming sessions, earlybird finishing and other relevant information. You would encourage attendees to become a twitter member and start following you. When it got time to the conference you instruct members using twitter to add tage, such as “#myconference09” to every post and then people can go the twitter search page http://search.twitter.com and search for #myconference09 to get all the discussion that is going on about the conference.
You can also add your twitter posts to your website and make it a latest news feature of the conference.
7 Ways To Build A Successful (And Profitable) Community Website
Online Communities are becoming more and more prevalent and can be found for just about any niche or topic area that you can think of. They are one of the ways to plant the seed of a viral marketing campaign, and if you participate actively and within the spirit of the community (and not just use it's a channel to spam your message) it is one of the fastest ways to build word of mouth referrals.
But what if you can't find a community to participate in that meets your needs? Why not start your own community website?
The Young Entrepreneur website published these 7 ways to build a successful community website that I thought said it all.
1) Pick A Theme
I see so many forums, blogs, and portals that don’t have a specific niche. If you try to be everything to everyone then you’re not going to make a memorable impression and people won’t come back or get involved.
2) Choose Something You’re Passionate About
Just like my advice last week (5 Ways To Know If Your Business Idea Is Any Good), you have to love what you do. Especially in a community driven website if you don’t have an interest in the topic then there is no way you’re going to be successful. You have to live and breathe the subject matter to drive it forward and you’ll have a lot more fun as well being able to share your passions with others. It can be tempting to jump at an opportunity because it looks like a “sure thing” but if you don’t love the topic, don’t do it.
3) Get It Started Yourself
You can’t have the mindset of “if I build it, then will come.” It’s so easy to set up a new blog or forum – the technology makes it extremely simple to get going so anybody can do it. The key is getting it started, putting up interesting content, and continuing to post and add to the site. If you are not heavily involved at the start to get it to critical mass, it won’t succeed.
4) Get Help!
You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to get your website off the ground (see point #3!) but as soon as possible you need to engage people to come out and help you. Get them to comment on your blog, get them to post responses in your forums, get them to moderate different categories and contribute. You can’t do everything yourself and more people become interested in your website if they see that there is a discussion going (not just you talking to yourself). Start with your friends and people you know and then reach out to others who run related websites who might be interested in participating.
5) Post Interesting Topics
People click through, read, and participate in stories that are engaging and interesting. Be controversial, offer practical advice, be a source of inspiration. If you’re just regurgitating news from a Google Alerts feed then people aren’t going to care and come back to your website. A good trick is to look at the homepage of Digg and see what stories consistently come up on the first page. Adjust the topics to fit your niche and get writing!
6) Get Prizes
People love contests and there’s nothing like a great prize to get people talking. If the prize is related and interesting to your target audience and there is a degree of value associated with it then visitors will increase their participation and help drive more traffic for you. The prize doesn’t always have to cost you money either. How about a feature story on your website or a special report or service from a partner who is willing to donate a prize? If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you need to think outside the box – I’ve never paid for any of the prizes I’ve offered on my site – you just need to get creative!
7) Encourage Your Top Users
You will have a top percentage of your users who love your site and visit it daily. Give them encouragement and recognition in the community. Point out how useful some of their contributions are and thank them for their involvement. You can also profile them as community ambassadors. Stay in regular contact with them and get their suggestions for how to make your website even better. Keep your champions happy and they will help you go out and bring more people in!
What would you add to the list of how to build a successful community website?
Facebook – Social Network or Business Opportunity?
Are you on Facebook? Like a lot of new technology, I started using it because I need to research Internet Technologies as part of my job, but found it quite useful and kept using it. I created my own profile, then started keeping in touch with friends who I weren't keeping contact with regularly enought and then started to find friends that I'd lost contact with altogether, and some of them found me. Then I created a dogbook page from my dog Cosmo, and poked a few people and took a likeness quiz. The novelty soon started to wear off, but then I started to embrace the business potential of facebook and now it accounts for about 5% of the traffic that goes to Sticky Tickets. Facebook is a network of people and groups and should be treated the same as any other network. To get the most out of it, you need to invest time in it. You need to get to know the people in the network and build relationships with them. You need to participate in the groups, but most importantly, like any other network, you need to look at each individual and try and work out how you can truly help them achieve what they want, and when you do, the business will come flowing back to you.
Here are a few Facebook resources that I found extremely useful.
- The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook (Inside Facebook): Justin Smith shows how Facebook includes a variety of channels that spread the word in a very in-depth blog post.
- 9 Reasons You Should be Using and Watching Facebook (Sugarrae): There’s a lot of marketing potential in Facebook, and Rae shows you why.
- 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally (Web Worker Daily): Networking on Facebook is precisely what you make of it. If you have the mindset to make Facebook a professional tool, you certainly can turn it into one.
- The Updated Unofficial Smartass Facebook Guide (Sugarrae): People still don’t know how to use Facebook. Rae explains all.
- 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free (After the Launch): How do you promote your business on Facebook? Easy.
- Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? (SEO Space): Jody Nimetz highlights the pros of opting for Facebook ads.
- Facebook Flyers Pro Taking Off (Optimize and Prophesize): Jonathan Mendez illustrates the ease of targeted Facebook ads.
