Test post from HTC Desire using WordPress for Android.
Apr 302010
The basic answer is yes, but it comes with the usual health warning, BUYER BEWARE!
I was recently contacted by a sales person for a local business directory here in Gorey, GoreyBiz, who wanted me to pay €300 exVAT to be listed. The first point he made to me was, that the cost of the annual listing in the online business directory was comparable to the cost of one ad in the local newspapers. While this is very true, it only represents value for money if your business can be found on the Internet. So the first thing I did was get on to Google and type in “computers gorey” to see how effective the directory was. Now I had expected GoreyBiz to show on at least the first page, but to my surprise GoreyBiz still had not appeared after 10 pages, at which point I gave up. I then typed in “accounts gorey” and GoreyBiz only showed up on page 4.
So I would not regard paying €300 ex VAT for a directory entry that cannot be found on the first 4 pages of Google, at best, as good value for money.
While I was doing these searches on Google I noticed that in all cases another online business directory, GoreyLinks, always came up in either 1st or 2nd place. When I checked the price, I discovered that a listing on GoreyLinks cost €40 ex VAT annually.
Now €40 exVAT for a listing on GoreyLinks, that always shows up in 1st or 2nd place on Google, IS great value for money.
The most important point is that, if you are going to spend money getting listed on an Online Business Directory, then check out their claims before you part with any money. If you are unsure, then contact your local Independent Computer Services provider.
I am regularly asked why an SME business should have a blog and I sometimes find it difficult to get the whole idea of blogging across. So when I came across Aisling Nelson‘s post on the O2 Ideas Room blog I had to include it.
Read Aisling’s post HERE. She explaines blogging much better than I can.
Nov 182009
Recently I installed a couple of utilities (add-ons for Firefox) to help me keep up with the various Blogs, Newsfeeds, and Twitter accounts. Brief for the feeds and Echofon for Twitter and I have to say they are great at organising everything and preventing information overload.
But there is a problem, because the information is being presented to me in an organised, readable format and most importantly on a regular basis, I find myself being distracted by really interesting snippets of information and not concentrating on the task at hand. As a result I have had to dramatically reduce the number of times these utilities update each day.
Now don’t get me wrong keeping up-to-date with what’s going on in your business sector is really important, but you have to achieve the right balance.
Should you moderate comments on your blog?
I had always thought that the safest thing to do, to prevent potential libellous comments being posted on my blog, was to not allow any comments that might have issues to be posted to the blog by moderating all comments.
However having listened to The John Murray Show on RTE Radio1 yesterday I have had to change this. A solicitor pointed out that by moderating comments you might not be able to avail of the hosting defence.
The hosting defence says that, as soon as you are aware of a third party posting information to your site that might have issues, and are so informed, then if you remove the content promptly then you cannot be held libel.
However if you edit the content in any way, including moderating or even correcting spelling mistakes, then you are the publisher and cannot avail of the hosting defence.
I now do not moderate comments but will monitor them carefully and remove any I think are dodgy.