I needed a mini vacation badly, to disconnect from blogs, twitter, facebook, clients, business, my cell phone my laptop, from TV – the whole nine yards. It’s been a good year for me and I know 2010 is going to be amazing. So I know i needed to hop off the train for a bit and recharge in preparation.
I decided to head to the Coast, near water, beach, more trees…I went online to decide..Negril, Portland, Treasure Beach or Ocho Rios. I used google and visitjamaica.com chiefly to decide where to go. What I saw made me want to cry…Jamaica’s tourism image online SUCKS! Why are some of the Jamaican hotels, villas, attractions and restaurants surprised by their low occupancy levels? Well it starts with the fact that yes, Jamaica’s overall tourism product needs an overhaul, an upgrade to something beyond the sun, sand and dorm rooms by the sea like RIU.
Seth Godin, who has written 12 bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages, is an in demand global speaker, digital age trend watcher and thinker is one of my mentors. I’ve bought and read his books, watched his videos and read his blog religiously.
I was commissioned to do an all day workshop with Jamaica Trade and Invest /JAMPRO on December 3rd at the Jamaica Conference Centre where I spoke to just under 100 Jamaican entrepreneurs of Micro, Small, Medium -sized businesses. I prepared a 95 slide power point presentation which was in demand at the end of the day. I pondered whether to just give it away, selectively do so or not at all.
So I asked Seth and my other colleague and mentor Gerd Leonhard, The MediaFuturist – he too is a blogger, global speaker, trendwatcher and ebook publisher. Gerd in a reply email said “My philosophy is ‘knowledge grows when shared’ and I have had a very good experience with that so far. I only publish PDFs though, not PPTs, and only use creative commons licensed images (Flickr) or iStockphoto.com or fair use stuff. If it’s free published I have never had a real issue.Cheers from Switzerland and let’s do something together in Jamaica one of these days;)”
I emailed Seth and asked him too, he too replied promptly and said…“I don’t share mine, because they have no text and make no sense..but if they had text, I’d share em.” So I followed their advice I shared my PDF Presentation…on Facebook, on Twitter and my Company Blog as a free download. And I more ebooks coming too and my roster for speaking in increasing too.
Trinidad’s telecom company, Telecommunications Services of T&T (TSTT) took a major jump on its competition yesterday to lead the country into the next era of high speed wireless solutions, with the launch of its new 4G version of Blink on the Go in time for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The Caribbean may be lagging behind three other areas of the world when it comes to Internet usage but the Dominican Republic continues to lead in the region with the most web surfers.
Latest statistics compiled by the Miniwatts Marketing Group based on International Communications Union and Nielsen data, show that while the Caribbean lags behind Asia, Europe and North America when it comes to Internet penetration, the DR has the most web users with a whopping 3 million.
Even if you personally consider Twitter an annoying pop culture trend, you can’t argue against its power to reach thousands of people in seconds, for free — making it a perfect marketing tool for a small business.
Serial entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki promotes his newest company, Alltop, by tweeting 140 character notes to 190,000 followers on Twitter. Here, he offers his advice on using Twitter as a marketing tool.
Dale-Kurt shares his views on social media marketing used by commercial brands in Jamaica. Those that got it right and those who did not. Check out what he says about Island Grill, Restaurant Week Jamaica and two financial institutions he believes is doing it all wrong.Join in on the conversation.
(New to Me) I can’t remember where I saw Jamdowndigital but it caught my eye. I’ve been so tired of seeing music and entertainment sites that throw free music videos and free songs your way with no true road to sustainability i.e..profitability. Hence it was damn refreshing to see someone offering a service and charging for it.The well thought and designed site is a contender and yes a competitor to PuKSHOP.
Social Media and all its multiple touch points (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, social networks,share buttons and f=Forums) scares some Jamaican companies. They are afraid to put their company and its products and services up to public scrutiny. “What do we do with all the negative comments ?” -This is the most popular response I’ve heard over the last year from some company executives as they’ve assumed that is all they will get . The two other typical responses have been “Why do we have to be so directly connected to people online ? ” , and “Ok ok so if we are really going to place ourselves out there who is going to manage it ?”
From the lips from the ProBlogger Darren Rowse, is a sweet blueprint for monetizing your blog. It really does come down to treaing your blog, your product as a business. Traffic, community, revenue doesn’t drop from the sky. Like anything else you gotta put your back into it. I found this post enlightening nd underscored some things I already knew too.
“In this post I want to present some visuals on how I’ve expanded one of my blogs and diversified its income streams.
* How do I expand upon my blog and add different elements to my site?
* How do I move beyond the basics of making money with AdSense on my blog?
I’m asked these two questions a lot and in this post I want to share, with some visuals, how I do it on one of my own sites.
While at Blog World Expo last week I was asked to present to a small group private group on how I make money blogging. As part of the presentation I put together some basic graphics that attempted to visualise how Digital Photography School works and with the permission of the clients I presented to I’d like to share them here. More
I needed a mini vacation badly, to disconnect from blogs, twitter, facebook, clients, business, my cell phone my laptop, from TV – the whole nine yards. It’s been a good year for me and I know 2010 is going to be amazing. So I know i needed to hop off the train for a bit and recharge in preparation.
