What’s in a plan?

Karen    Business Tools and Resources    

Cliches around planning abound – fail to plan and you plan to fail, and of course if you are using ‘bleeding edge technology’ you can find out ‘who moved your cheese’ , ‘push the envelope’ and ultimately ‘make money hand over fist’. read more

Welcome to Twenty 11 – what are you thinking?

Karen    Uncategorized    

What are you thinking? What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

Familiar prompts from our friendly social media big brothers. Do people really want to know? And when they ask “what are you thinking” or “what are you doing?” does that really mean we should literally share it all? read more

Awesome free business tools!

Karen    Business Tools and Resources    

Working with a range of businesses of all shapes and sizes on a daily basis makes me acutely aware of the challenges that many are facing in the current business environment.

Down here in Canterbury, not only are many desperately trying to rebuild their client base following the events of September 4, but most were already dealing with the fallout of an economic recession that has affected businesses around the world. read more

Controversy equals Traffic

Karen    Populating your site     traffic

Be they politicians, celebrities or criminals, anyone wanting attention has long known that one of the surefire ways to get it is to take a controversial stance on something. Anything at all actually – well anything that has two distinctly different sides to take a position on.

And the effect of a truly controversial stance?

Traffic.

read more

Networking through disasters

Karen    Uncategorized    

So you may be aware that Christchurch, New Zealand (my hometown) recently experienced an earthquake – 7.1 on the Richter scale. To be more accurate, more than 700 earthquakes in the last two weeks if you count all the aftershocks, many of which were over 4.0 on the Richter scale and therefore definitely noteworthy. read more

BP’s Giant Coffee Spill – Worse than Oil?

Karen    Uncategorized    

Love this YouTube video, a perfect perfect satire of the whole BP in the Gulf of Mexico debacle. Obviously plenty of others agree, given that it now has over 5 million views.

As a former PR professional, this whole crisis makes me shudder for two reasons – first and foremost, I would hate to be in BP’s shoes and secondly, I have no idea in the world how they can possibly spend $60 million on PR for crisis management.

What concerns me even more are the long term ramifications of this situation, especially given the disastrous potential effects of the banned chemicals they are using to disperse the oil, which will in fact make everything worse by spreading oil-dispersed particles right throughout the water column (instead of floating on top as oil does). But of course, from BP’s perspective, it will be all good because the TV cameras will no longer be able to see the oil slick floating on top of the sea.

Sigh.

What do you think?

How are you playing the game of life?

Karen    Uncategorized    

Do you see life as one enormous computer game or iPhone app?

Or do you take things (and yourself) a whole lot more seriously than that?

For me, it’s a bit of both. I think that anyone who can’t step back and laugh at themselves and life in general, is really in danger of losing perspective.

But I also think there are some things we need to take pretty seriously – and act on when and if we can. read more

May the Force be With You – Or – Using our Powers for Good

Karen    Uncategorized    

Most of the time, when we do SEO work for clients, it is all about attracting as many visitors to a site as possible, and then converting them into customers or prospects or followers or subscribers.

But the powers of search optimisation can also be put to work for worthwhile causes.

Causes that might even change the world. read more

Why Have a Website? 10 Reasons Why you Should.

Karen    Uncategorized    

Seems to be a frequently Googled question, so I thought I would have a go at addressing it.

It’s an interesting one for anyone who is already online, since they would appear to be benefiting from all the websites that are currently online, but perhaps they are looking at the issue from a business perspective – for example, if I am someone who gets most of my customers from word of mouth, I spend no time at all in an office in front of a computer and I am already flat out busy … why have a website? read more

8 ways sex could help you survive a zombie outbreak

Karen    Telling stories     awesome content, zombie

Yeah, really! read more