Newsletter #125 I Want It NOW!

Created on Aug 27 2008 12:00AM

A special hello to all new subscribers. This article is on the Web at this address.

Our last newsletter (7th July, 2008) was "Six Tips to Manage the Email Overload".

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Feature Article

One of the attractions and strengths of the Web is its immediacy. News organisations and specialist Websites realise that they can attract users if they post articles and results as soon as possible after events.

Want to know the result of the sports event you just missed? Pre the Web the first port of call would have been radio, but even then you have to wait for the news on the hour and then get a 20 second review. Newspapers and television are even slower. Now many sports and news Websites have live scoring and a report within half an hour, plus video highlights.

The key thing here is relevance and speed. In old media, content is professionally produced, rehearsed and checked before being released to public scrutiny; online is different. If it is relevant and timely people will read and view it, they’re not so interested in perfection. Witness the success of YouTube over traditional video networks and Wikipedia over Britannica. Both YouTube and Wikipedia are not perfect but they are relevant and good enough. Similarly blogging went mainstream after 9/11 because at that time personal blogs were the first to start reporting on the catastrophe.

Today relevance can be fleeting so that content that is usable immediately is often far more important than the polished version that appears hours or days later. As Robert Schuller said:  “Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.”

We see speed of response as key business weapon in whatever industry you are in. If you respond almost instantly, potential clients may stop looking elsewhere! Whether you are updating your customers with information that may affect them or responding to enquiries from potential clients, how quickly you do so is extremely important.

So how can you use this to your advantage?

• Use autoresponder emails to any queries from your Website so enquirers get an immediate response
  
  
• Further to the point above, make sure Website enquiries are responded to quickly by someone within your organisation as soon as possible. We recommend that company email is monitored at least 16/7 (16 hours a day, seven days a week) as often people are enquiring out of work hours.
  
  
• Almost everyone has a mobile phone so you can use SMS (text messaging) for notifications and reminders. In fact many of your competitors may already be using SMS in this way.
  
  
• When revamping your Website get the new content up there as soon as you can rather than waiting for perfection – your revamp is probably better than your existing site already.
  
  
• Search engine indexing also doesn’t occur instantly, so the sooner your changes are there the sooner they will be able to be Googled. The same logic applies to brand new sites.

On the Web users aren’t interested in perfection, so in delaying your response or your Website rebuild you may be wasting some perfect opportunities.

Hot Tips

Newbies

Many people don't realise that when you delete a file on a Windows harddrive that the file is not completely destroyed. Files can be recovered using specialist software. So before you dump or give that old computer away we would recommend that you employ an IT professional to completely erase all your old records.

Power Users

If you want to ensure that sensitive files are not left on a computer, as described above, and want to do the erasing yourself here are some pointers on how to do it. Technically you can never completely wipe a hard drive unless you physically destroy it. However software for deleting data can be used to overwrite meaningless data on to a hard drive's sectors multiple times, thereby removing much of the risk of sensitive files being revealed. An example of free software is located here: http://www.fileshredder.org/ and some commercial options are here:
http://www.blancco.com/eng/products/

Interesting Sites

Reelchanges.org has a mission: To enrich our culture by facilitating the creation and distribution of more high quality documentaries. The idea is for audiences to donate money to support filmmakers, whose films they like, and this money is passed directly on to the filmmaker. See http://www.reelchanges.org

InsiteFul Quotes

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Abraham Lincoln

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

Archives

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management