Posted by Ingrid Riley on July 14th, 2010
Yesterday I was interviewed by Yvonne Nicholson, Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica and Jamaica Observer columnist on Why businesses fear social media. Her column was published today in the Jamaica Observer and I was quoted a couple of times. You can read the article here “Why businesses fear social media”.
It reminded me also that I had written a similar blog post on this same issue November last year “The Number 1 reason Jamaican companies are scared of Social Media”. So I decided to update it, add a case study I usally talk about in my workshops and repost it below:
Social Media and all its multiple touch points (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, social networks,share buttons and Forums) scares some Jamaican companies and a few Caribbean ones too. They are afraid to put their company, its products and services up to public scrutiny. “What do we do when we get 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 happen when they “put themselves out there”. 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 ?”
Popularity: 46% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on February 16th, 2010
So like the Jamaica Observer, the Jamaica Gleaner has pretty much tweaked a premium WordPress template to relaunch a new look website that’s more social and ad friendly. The Jamaica Gleaner launched their new look website this evening. Funny when The Observer launched theirs we said wow, to the Gleaner website we managed… ahmm oookkk.
But my fellow tech entrepreneur Colin Scott puts his own candid spin on it in an email discussion this evening and I had to share it. In essence, who needs the “pretty” when you’re making money. “Ok, Ok So we don’t like it but we are still forgetting the #1 rule…. “They DONT CARE IF YOU LIKE IT” ..its a revenue decision.So lets critique it from a revenue perspective.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on January 28th, 2010
A Mobile number portability (MNP) service enables mobile phone users to change their service providers without changing their original number. Its purpose is to foster consumer choice and effective competition by enabling subscribers to switch between providers without the costs and inconvenience of changing telephone number. It can also be applied to fixed lines.
Yet, it’s the one thing Claro really wants, second only to overtaking Digicel this year in the marketplace. Digicel on the other hand, says “that the costs of implementing number portability are not outweighed by the benefits, based upon its experience in other markets.” Claro wants it badly; Digicel says it’s too expensive. It is, perhaps, tempting to assume that a newer market entrant would be welcoming MNP much more enthusiastically, mindful of an improved opportunity to grab customers from established rivals. So it’s not surprising then that challenging operators would take the aggressive stance, whereas dominant operators are initially more reluctant to push MNP. Hmmm!
Popularity: 13% [?]
Posted by Robyn-Dale Y. Samuda on January 27th, 2010
As we continue to study the world wide web and focus on how we can take advantage of this limitless resource and marketplace, we must pay keen attention to the players who are winning the game and do so consistently. Also, we must learn as much as we can from them to avoid re-inventing the wheel and rediscovering fire.
Therefore, I chose to do a quick case study on the top 5 websites in Jamaica and also do a rough listing of 9 more based on their user traffic. Since high user traffic indicates that there must be something attractive or useful on that site. This is key if we want to retain regular viewers, increase advertising opportunities and thus create and maintain website profitability.
Most persons do not clearly have a plan to directly monetize their websites. Too many individuals create websites without setting targets to achieve specific landmarks. So, let us begin to look at some sites in Jamaica that are consistently attracting traffic and see what we can learn.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on June 24th, 2009
We wrote a post on the Jamaica Gleaner last week with the headline- “ Jamaica Gleaner,Caribbean’s oldest newspaper profits plummets, vows to focus on increased market share online” which became the hot post for the week. It had a just under 20 comments amongst all of that was a continuous banter between two regular bog readers that was a Gleaner vs Observer war of words of sort.
The debate raged as to which site is really number one. So we decided to dig up some stats and see what comes out of it. We used both Alexa.com(owned by Amazon.com) and Compete.com as references. Here are the results.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Posted by Andres Alexander on June 24th, 2009
JamaicaObserver.com a few months ago changed the design of their website much to us and all their readers elation. The previous site was over give years old and well, sucked. Since they’ve made the change, their website traffic has gone up more than 50%, which oughta be the case, everyone likes a pretty and functional news website. And it wasn’t done by no large local or American firm, instead it was a designer, a programmer and an inside guy who did it and that must be commended.
However having said that, I recently went to popstylejamaica.com the leading Jamaican fashion blog run by Tesi Johnson and I was like, hold up ahmm this site design looks familiar. So I opened two separate windows, one at jamaicaobserver.com and the other at popstylejamaica.com and then it hit me, they are template twins. You have a look at that pic and tell me.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on January 31st, 2009
We waited over five years for the Jamaica Observer, the youngest of Jamaica’s two daily newspapers to upgrade and change the look and feel, navigational features and interactivity of their website. Its new site went live about 48 hrs ago.
What we now have is a site that is spacious, light and bright in its look and feel; well organised content that’s easy to see and get to; they’ve made smart space to accommodate advertising and video and in the age of sharing and social media tools, they’ve loaded up the site with more than 20 options. But still, they’ve not scored a touchdown in my mind, they’re still clutching the ball, toes just on the other side of the big win. Why?
Popularity: 10% [?]
Yesterday I was interviewed by Yvonne Nicholson, Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica and Jamaica Observer columnist on Why businesses fear social media. Her column was published today in the Jamaica Observer and I was quoted a couple of times. You can read the article here “Why businesses fear social media”.
