Entries from August 2006 ↓

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If your ambition in blogoland is to get to the top of the pile, think again about what you are trying to do and especially how you intend to do it.

According to John Dodds at Make Marketing History the old rule or principle about what makes a good site a good site - “content is king“, may shortly lose out on sole occupier of the top slot and be forced to share equal ranking with context (distribution channels). See John’s article here

So how will this impact us non-geek, non-marketing specialists whose ambition is to reign over the A-list at Blogebrity? Kevin Behringer says the point about context being important is in the searching for what you want.

As John points out:

” There is so much content now that the key problem is how people search for it across multiple channels in multiple media. Media people no longer think in terms of television but in terms of screens, be that a TV monitor, a PC screen or a phone screen. This raises a new set of issues for media but they apply to all businesses.”

Now I don’t know what you think about it, (please don’t debase the conversation just yet….!), but I get the feeling that the topic of context has not just popped up from the bowels of the Think Tank. I would not be too shocked to learn that this little subject has been around for a long while and has simply trundled along picking up traction here and there as viruses do, until some real traction pushed the impetus to where it is now a general talking point.

My view on content versus context generously errs on the side of content. I think it doesn’t matter how well you build a blog’s context for search engines. Search results are useless if you select a site and the content proves to be abysmal. In this respect – the rule makers are changing the rules again. As in the past, they are bringing in a new flavour to the SEO battlefields and I ask – WHY?

I recall in the not too distant future that the SEO rules changed again then again and again and again and will probably keep changing and be held in a state of flux by the main protagonists (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) who want to rule the search engine industry

John Dodds advocates that a good balance between content and context is required and IMHO he is 100% correct. But I cannot be bothered to stress out and apply unnecessary pressure on my two brain cells!

In time I might do something to rectify my content/context problem. Meanwhile I ain’t fussed and will continue to try to put together a string of words that qualify as good content. And to this end, if I want to garner credibility in blogoland, I will continue to ignore the others and go my own way. If it works – fine. If not – also fine. I enjoy blogging and will carry on posting without kowtowing to new SEO rules. The context game is for the Search Engine owners and wannabe A-listers to battle out among themselves .

I don’t have the time or inclination to change focus. The SEO rules change so often and have messed us around too often for me to care anymore.

Rule Change Credibility

For future reference please bookmark this post. It contains links to posts that will drag you out of your doldrums and get you back to knowing that you are not in any way a failure. My mantra henceforth shall be “Failure Does Not Exist. Only Different Outcomes Do“.

Failure as a state of mind and as a word should not exist. To begin with, as a word, it should be censored from all communications media. It should be deleted from all dictionaries and school grammar classes (if such things still exist in the educational carriculum!). As a state of mind, we should guard against insinuating, saying or just inflecting at all that a person is a ‘failure’. Especially young people whose self esteem is still in the process of being formed.

Nobody must regard themselves as a failure.

Read the posts below:

Stop Being Rough On Yourself
Wallflowers Can Kiss Failure Goodbye
Manage Your Tomorrow Today
You are Responsible for Your Own Destiny
Manage Your Indecisiveness and Blossom
Stop Creating Stress For Yourself
Failure Does Not Exist
Things to Engage
Get Unstuck and Get Going
Become ‘you’ centric
Are you doing Great Work? Or merely Good Work?
The Crown Jewel of Life’s Attitudes
YOU NEED A GOAL

Suggested Reading for ‘Failures’

This weekend was Granny’s 78th birthday party. It was a time to get the family together and go on Granny’s Annual Birthday Picnic.

The weather shined on the day as the clan gathered at a Country Fayre down Somerset way. The plan was to all meet at the Fayre and thence to proceed to a secluded field alongside the lake and do justice to the food and toast granny’s big day.

To this end, sister #1 had spent the previous evening and night baking the birthday cake. Much effort had gone into it. Hours were spent in making certain the mix was just right, the oven was free of draughts and up to temperature and then the icing, (frosting for our USA friends) demanded the utmost care and precision.

Needless to say, the picnic spread (Jeanne, thanks for a few hints at your site Cook Sister) was excellent having been concoted, created and cooked or pickled or whatever by The Sisters Three, and much glee and gluttony was experienced by all in the feasting thereon.

The big moment came for the Birthday Cake to be uncovered and voila, there it was in all its splendour. Sister #1 was justifiably proud of the cake. It was tremendous! By pure fortune and not due to family pecking order, I got given a large wedge. Oh boy was it good. I made it last for 20 minutes at least and mopped up the crumbs from the plate in equal glee! Yummy!

And so the afternoon in the sunshine at a field covered in gloriously green grass (no lack of water spared here apparently!), passed by with dragonflies buzzing around, the sounds of the Fayre in the background, the odd passerby going to collect wild blackberries stopping for a chat and that summer afternoon stupor beginning to wend its way into all of us. It was a lovely day and granny was as pleased as a birthday girl can be.

At 4:30pm, tea was announced but before that Sister #1 had to go collect her car. Yours faithfully here, decided to move his Land Rover to accomodate Sister #1’s clapped out 1980’s Volvo sedan!

I reversed over the birthday cake.

End of picnic. End of glorious summer day for birthday granny. Return to sisters, nieces and nephews versus brother in an orgy of bickering then pushing and shoving and fighting, shouting followed by the girls crying spat! Not my fault was it? Oh yes. Apparently, I should have walked around the car instead of getting directly into the driver’s seat without first attempting to check the vehicle like pilots do as part of their plane’s pre-takeoff check! Had I done so I would have seen the birtday cake in its box in the shade created by my left rear wheel where for some inexplicable reason Sister #1 had decided to place it instead of in the shade created by a frigging big tree under which the picnic hampers were already located!

What a great day it turned out to be. I love picnics. Great sport!

South African women value shopping above sex, survey results suggest.

Go read it here

Have been recently thinking about the meaning of life and how n why we are here. I am too much of cynic to belive a God exists and plonked us here or shot off a space pod filled with miniscule pores that’d become the soup of life.

I’m a Darwinian man through and through. I cannot believe there is so much crap going on in USA about Design vs Darwin. To me it is as obvious as the noses on the Pope’s or the Head Mormon Fella’s and the Chief Rabbi or the Archbishop of Canterbury’s face - we are frigging monkeys! I mean don’t they realise the similarities every morning when they are bollock naked having their dump of the day on the crapper? Some hunchbacked draughtsman in God’s loft didn’t sit at his drawing board and draw out the homo sapien blueprint to some ethreal old fart’s instruction.

There are a lot of questions to ask about life and the planets and if there is an afterlife etc etc yada yada yada. These thoughts have pre-occupied the best thinkers and philosophers the world has known since time began and still there is no answer. Just I was about to call it quits, I had my eureka moment and it dawned on me that they’d been asking the wrong questions.

The only question to ask is: Will Americans Love Marmite?

Remember my decision to press flesh, meet n greet and go eyeball staff, peers and othe colleagues?

Well something has stirred the sleeping giant and all I see these days are my staff in huddles with other departments in meeting rooms, the coffee shop or outside in the glorious sunshine. And guess what - they are not goofing off. Resolutions to previous bottlenecks have suddenly occured. Backlogs are being wittled down and decisions taken. Results are improving and August which is normally a bummer month is turning out into a bumper bonanza result month.

So the point of thie post is: Leave your cubicles or workstations and go meet people. Forget the emails, type out a memo and go hand deliver it. Watch and delight in the look of surprise on the recipients face. Ooze them!

Go do it and you’ll see some good stuff will begin to happen.

It is futile to resist an Ooze. Fear not, Ooze is a good thing. Ooze is the In Thing, the Now Thing, the Ooze Thing.

The Ooze Generation is here and you will ooze people without being consciously aware that you are doing it. And they will ooze you back and all will be as fine as it can be.

Be part of the Ooze Generation!

Hi there!
Just a quick note to let you know that you can enjoy iScatterlings at iScatterlings.co.za Yes, iScatterlings now has a home address! Ja skatties, ons is trerug by die rondavel. So all you SA based fans who are feeling too fingerslap to type iScatterlings.com, can type iScatterlings.co.za

Oh the joy of modern science and technology. Marvellous hey?!

You can click here to go see my Picassolike cartoon collection. I am busy with Series II entitled - “Ooze - Positively The Sequel” Or you can click on the cartoon below to go see Ooze The Series One (Nommer Een)

Ooze The Planet will be featured here shortly too. Work is in progress and Ooze - The Movie will follow soon after the other one that is scheduled to be published in public for the first time ever too. Not that one, the other one.

The Ooze Dolls will be on sale in the distant future too at our Ooze Farm Shop off the N1 on the way to Franchoek. Dis ‘n klein plek.
If you hit Wellington - you went past it so you might as well carry on to Stormhoek. Die wyn is goedkooper en ons Amerikaanse vriende se dit smaak heerlik en maak partyjies ’swing’. Jawelnofine, Count Basie liedjies by parties is nie my scene nie. Bay City Rollers, ABBA, Bless Bridges, Sonja en Carole King is mos my cup of Merlot!

Geniet mense! Enjoy!

[Never ever forget that you are only as good as your staff allow you to be. If they are good, then you are good and the bosses see you as a diamond bloke too. So be a diamond geezer and ooze your staff everyday. You will not regret it and they will like it a lot. Know wot I mean?]

by AIJAZ ANSARI, Associated Press Writer BOMBAY, India

When Hitler’s Cross restaurant opened four days ago in a Bombay suburb, local politicians and movie industry types were on hand to celebrate beneath the posters of the Nazi leader and swastikas.

The owner insisted then _ and still does _ that the name and theme of his new eatery is only meant to attract attention, even if it has outraged Bombay’s Jewish community.

“It’s really made people very upset that a person responsible for the massacre of 6 million Jews can be glorified,” Elijah Jacob, one of the community’s leaders, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

But owner Puneet Sablok has refused to back down, and apart from Bombay’s 4,500 Jews, there’s been little controversy in India, where Holocaust awareness is limited, Hitler is regarded as just another historical figure and swastikas are an ancient Hindu symbol, displayed all over to bring luck. There are just 5,500 Jews in all of India.

Read the full article here

For the record: This appalls and saddens me.

[Ever been ignored by your barman? I didn't think so. So why would you ignore her or him? That is just plain rude if you do. Ooze the barman or bar lady. They work damn hard and listen to your sobstories all night long and also put up with you when you're pissed as a fart and puking, fighting, verbal abusing other patrons, acting like a slapper and making a complete arse of yourself. Your barman is there always while you have 'fun', so please ooze them instead of abuse them.]

[ Remember the refuse collection stikes New York had a good few years back? Made the city stink didn't it and it also made NY look like the city's garbage dump had relocated city centre. Not nice. So keep your garbage man well oozed and I doubt you'll have any problem when it comes to getting rid of that mountain of Xmas wrapping paper, leftover turkey, curried turkey, sandwiched turkey, soup of turkey, grilled turkey, potroasted turkey, minced turkey and all those empty booze bottles!]

[Enough said - if you don't ooze with your customers the opposition will and will also happily take their business away from you. Oozing and ensuring customer retention is active and part of the sales routine is not rocket science is it, but how many businesses continue to fail at this?]

“Power is what you think it is.”-Gary Karrass (Part II of P.R.O.F.I.L.E.)

4. F = Frames of reference
Paul McKenna is known throughout Britain and much of Europe for his success in using hypnosis both in his stage show and as the ‘therapist to the stars’.

Early in his career, Paul was invited on to a chat show to participate in a debate on ‘the dangers of hypnosis’. When Paul pointed out that he didn’t consider hypnosis to be dangerous, the show’s researchers excitedly explained that that was exactly why they wanted him to come on - to express his point of view. Paul knew that whoever sets the frame for any debate or negotiation invariably controls the outcome. Given that the show was being framed as being about ‘the dangers of hypnosis’, the best he could hope for was to show that hypnosis ‘wasn’t that dangerous’. He agreed to participate in the debate only if the frame was changed to ‘The healing potential of hypnosis’.

In the same way as two different frames can completely change the way you look at a picture or think about a debate, having a variety of frames through which to view a negotiation can completely change the way you approach it.

Here are some of the most common variables you can use to change the frame:

*How much territory is actually being covered in this negotiation? Is it just one product/idea/deal, or is it multiples?

*Is it a one-off, short-term, long-term, or the first of many individual ones?

*Is it about a detail of the deal (price, terms, etc.) or whether or not there will be a deal?

*What other similar deals can you compare this one with? Which deals might they want to compare it with?

*What’s a good metaphor for this deal? Is it like buying a house or like selling groceries? Is it like hiring a movie star or developing an athlete? Is it like a game of chess, a boxing match, or a dance?

5. I - Information
It is not unheard of for some Hollywood players to hire private detectives, set up surveillance equipment in hotel suites or even arrange the odd chance meeting with a beautiful woman or handsome man in an attempt to pick up some ’secret’ information that will give them the edge in a negotiation.

While much of this is ethically dubious or even blatantly illegal, the fact is that when it comes to most negotiations information is king, and the more you know about the other people’s resources, references, entry and walk away points the easier it will be for you to get what you want. As well as doing your homework and due diligence, a fun and useful way to pick up bits of extra information is to prepare for the negotiation from the other side’s point of view. Here’s how:

Imagine stepping into the other person’s shoes and look at things through their eyes. Ask yourself what really matters to you as this person. What’s your bottom line? What are you hoping for? What do you think you’ll get? What do you know that the other person (you know, the one who looks and sound remarkably like you) doesn’t?

While in one sense you are ‘making it all up’, it is surprising how often the information that comes to you in this simple thought experiment turns out to be useful and sometimes even spookily accurate!

L = Leverage
Your leverage in any deal comes primarily from who wants or needs to do the deal more. If they can’t get the funding without you on board and you know it, you’ve got leverage over them; if you’re going to go bankrupt without this contract and the other side knows it, they have leverage over you. (This is why having accurate information about the other side’s real situation and position can be so useful.)

This is also where the art of the bluff can come into play. Just because you do need the deal doesn’t mean you need to tell them that; just because they don’t seem bothered doesn’t mean they aren’t.

Ask yourself:

*What leverage (real or imagined) might you have over them? How can you best use that to your advantage?

*What leverage (real or imagined) might they have over you? How can you counter or at least lessen the impact of that leverage?

E = Ecology
In nature, ecology is the study of the relationship between an organism and its environment. In negotiation, it’s the analysis of how the way you negotiate and the results you produce impact the bigger picture of your business, your relationships, and your life.

Winning the deal but blowing the relationship might be OK in a one-off transaction, but disaster in a long-term multi-item deal. Losing the deal might mean not only a loss of potential short-term reward but also a negative shift in how people perceive you in the market place. And violating your own personal values and ethics in pursuit of a result will probably mess up your relationship with yourself, regardless of the outcome of the negotiation.

Be sure to ask yourself (and where appropriate, others) about the potential impact of as many scenarios and contingencies as you can come up with.

Michael Neill

There I were
wandering lonely as a Ford Ghia
When bang my dreamstate of whistles
and blowing horns was interrupted
by a hoodie skinhead
Bashing me headlights in!

I shouted ‘n screamed
Flicked him the bird and
called him names
And reminded him to
go play his thieving games
at his council estate and not here where the trains
cross the road

The bastard had broken my exhaust fume reverie
Now all I can do is pack it in and fail
and drive on to
that small tenement home and
my snort ‘n crack and mainline Boddington Ale
but I can’t get out or the car started

by Rob 21st August 2006