Reaching Out (2) – Starting an Online Business

Hi All,

This speech had been delivered by myself July, 21, at Cairo ToastMasters club.It was my 4th speech at the competent communicator track where my objective was “How To Say It” so while preparing this speech my main emphasis was picking the right words and forming the right phases and getting away from using jargon or difficult words. This speech is supposed to be from five to seven minutes.

By the way, I’ll rewrite the content in more details and publish it and make Vlogs about it in the future, really delivering these speeches inspired me with some business ideas that I’ll be executing in the coming few months. here, on DeveloperMan and Al-Adham Web Solutions.

Introduction

Last time we stated general points in reaching out to people on the internet and gave basic steps you had to follow in order to be successful in your online communication using different social networks. Let’s remember, it was “Be there, participate, engage and then personalize” Last Speech

This time, we’ll explore a new model of what’s called online businesses, where there is no physical office and business is totally being ran online by a freelancer or a team of freelancers. The same ideas apply to a company trying to expand its client-base through the internet.

This business model is found to be convenient by designers, programmers, IT professionals, writers and consultants.

There is 4 major steps that you should follow to run a successful online business.

Present

The first obvious step in running a successful online business is to have a strong online presence, that’s a website; the idea about your business is being reflected through your website, putting a small investment on getting your website done professionally will save a lot of troubles on the long run.

Having your own domain name is essential; it’s strange seeing some people still seeking to run online businesses using a freely hosted blogs or websites, investing $10 and getting your own domain name and email, is an essential step to run a successful online business. So, present yourself professionally, chose the right domains and create the right email addresses.

I remember when I was having a “computer networks” course with participants who were elder than me, I was eighteen at this time and most of them were at their mid or late twenties. We exchanged our contact information, and I gave them my fancy email at this time which was abdo37_sk3, the next session I accidentally heard a discussion where someone was asking have you added them, not all, look at that email, what an idiot! Why should I add him!

After that, I got my emails sorted out professionally, so having your own domain and emails will not only give your audience the smell of professionalism, but will save you from being labeled as an idiot too.

Seek

It’s not hard to get a professional online presence, it’s usually very quick and affordable, the difference is made by the marketing plan this online business will utilize to reach out to people.

Having a few pages about your business, won’t be more than getting some other pages stuck on the already dense internet, if it’s not backed by a strong marketing plan. The ultimate goal from marketing an online business should be putting your website in front of interested prospects’ eyes. The most famous techniques are:

The regular PR work: building relations with other already popular sites, adding the site to business directories

Paid advertising: where you can seek to show your website to a specific group of people filtered by age, gender or location interested in something specific.

SEO or search engines optimization: is helping your website being found by prospects searching for a certain keyword that you chose to optimize the website for.

Involve

The next step would be getting the visitors involved with the site the moment they see it to ensure it won’t be just a onetime visit. The repetition of the marketing message is what will convince those visitors to become interested and finally use your services. Some tools that are being used to involve visitors with the site are:

Newsletter: Is collecting visitors’ emails and sending them regular Email updates about your business, which is being considerably replaced by the next point.

Business blogs: Where articles and updates are being posted regularly on a part of the website and the audiences get involved with that content, by commenting and interacting.

Widgets: Involving people would be by finding where they frequently are, for example if they’re using Facebook regularly why not to make a Facebook page to your business and interact with them on it, you’ll find these widget things that will help you connect your site or blog with other famous networks where it’ll be much more easier for people to involve with you.

Manage

Congratulations, you’re now winning projects, and people are asking you to get their projects done. There is a lot of online communication and project management tools that will help you manage your projects effectively, starting from an IM and VoIP service like Skype, through which you can chat and talk with your clients to full project management tools and client management applications, where the client can check all the information about his project on a certain part of your website.

Conclusion

Through these four steps professional presentation, seeking the right audience, involving and engaging visitors and getting them interested in your service and finally managing the projects and the client communication the right way.

We could now, congratulate you on joining the league of successful online entrepreneurs.

Thanks

– Abdo

Sharing Link: https://www.abdomagdy.com/dzv9gb

Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land

As a part of my blog yesterday War On Gaza, Background for Truth Seekers! I meant to provide some documentaries as a reference for whom might be feeling that something isn’t right in his perception of the conflict, or what the western media is presenting to him/her.

For someone who’s watching Aljazeera!, then reading western media articles online, it’s sometimes hard to tell that it’s the same incidents being covered, or the weight given to each incident is somehow close to fair or normal, a certain techniques, including making use of people’s perception to the conflict (which is one-sided and formed by the previous propaganda from the beginning of the conflict) to get the new incident as an evidence to that perception maybe, but when it gets up to 1000 kills, most of which are purely civilians, shooting ambulances, aid workers, and killing journalists. Isn’t it the right time to double check your information? or question your perception?

Of course that’s in case you’re searching for the truth, not someone blindly supporting a certain project and somehow involved in promoting the massacres, and spreading false information to intentionally cover what he/she know is the truth.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is a 2004 documentary by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff which—according to the film’s official website—”provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and which “analyzes and explains how–through the use of language, framing and context–the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_Propaganda_&_the_Promised_Land

The official page from Media Education Foundation, the producer of the video is here: http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=117

Here is a clip as an introduction to the video: [8:33 Min]

As the video is protected by Fair Use Clause, which allows the broadcast of the video for the purposes of commentary, criticism and education. here is the full video [80 Min]

Finally, truth and facts isn’t things that someone – including myself – say it’s the truth and the facts, everybody should form his own opinion after listening to both sides and understanding what they’re trying to communicate, and bypassing the propaganda from both sides.

Regards,
Abdo