Where do I start this week? I went business networking at the Brighton Curry Club and the Brunswick Jazz Jam (that’s social and networking), I’ve signed a new client for the Titanium “Done For You” service, my new niche has sortof hit me between the eyes, traffic to the site is up noticeably due to a new article marketing initiative, my new 4-week live coaching programme has really taken off. My website has been redesigned by a real life grown up graphic designer and I’m trying to manage without broadband for 2 weeks – bloody incompetent telecoms companies.
Let’s start with SKY. I’ll try and tell you the story without my blood starting to boil!! My sister had a phone and broadband via Sky so I thought it would be easy and quick to stick with them when she moved out and I moved in. The TV was in the same day I moved in, a week later her phone and broadband were cut off and I had to wait about 2 days for my phone line to be connected. Then I got a text and a letter to say that they were going to connect my broadband on the 26th – that’s three weeks from when I moved it. I called them today to see if they could move it along any, and they told me they couldn’t do it any quicker because BT were not in the area before that.
BT? What’s BT got to do with it? If I’d wanted to wait the usual 2 weeks for BT I’d have signed up with bloody BT. Thank goodness for my 3 mega-dongle or I’d be going bonkers.
Add that to the fact that they have installed my TV the wrong way around, so that I can only record downstairs and not upstairs where I would normally like to watch my recorded programmes….well, I’m not impressed AT ALL. I’m having to really practice my “Bug Free Mind” techniques very diligently this week whenever I think of it.
Out & About – Speaking Gigs
On the bright side, I’m speaking at a great new event in Brighton in a couple of weeks time.
It’s called Digital Business Brighton and happens on Wednesday 28th September at the Pavilion Theatre in the heart of Brighton.
In addition to me there’s a great line up of speakers and workshops including @PennyPower, founder of Ecademy which is still the most sophisticated online networking environment and @NickTadd founder of property tribes who will be talking with his wife Vanessa (@4walls) about how they developed this forum for property investors
Other speakers include @warrencass,founder of business scene who will be talking about what lessons the porn industry can teach us in its use of social media!! It should be a great day out – you can book here at the early bird discount of £50 until the 21st September. UPDATE : This event has just today been postponed till November!
Exciting New Client Alert
I’ve signed a new client for my “Done For You” Titanium Service and I’m really enjoying getting stuck in there. They are an incredibly talented composer, keyboard player, singer/songwriter musician and great friend of my singing sister Heather, which is how I met her. Here’s the bottle of Vintage Champagne we consumed to seal the deal and below, you can see just a small selection of Gold, Silver and who knows what other precious metal discs she has hanging on the wall of her music room!
Having been in one of the biggest rock bands on the planet in the 70’s who still have a huge following and now being one of only 300 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Music, she has no interest or inclination to get involved in her own online brand management and promotion, being stuck into writing her new book and creating a new Prog Rock Prom, so she just wants someone like me to do it all for her and make it all happen.
She’s now got a fledgling website (which is working for the search engines behind the scenes), a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I want her to Tweet herself as I think she will enjoy it but most of all I want her to write lots and lots of lovely content – her writing style is erudite and witty, just like Stephen Fry. I’m sure it’s not long before the publishers will come banging on the door as we will be serialising the book on the blog as I recommend many clients to do.
They Say Your Niche Finds You…
I’m wondering if this could be my new niche – helping Star / Creator profiles (in Roger Hamilton terms) manage and promote their brands online. I’m a Star / Creator myself so I’m sympathetic to their needs but I have a healthy dose of Mechanic in me too, so I love the techie bits (up to a point, when I hand it over to Steve). They would have to be Star / Creators who are already making an income from their work (Dee has many Gold, Silver and Platinum discs and writer royalties) because this top of the range service is not cheap, but does compare very favourably to even getting a top flight VA or Personal Assistant. And of course, that VA or PA would not have my strategic online business planning, techie know-how or copywriting skills.
Does My Website Look Good In This?
I’ve got friendly with a graphic designer called Clive Spring of YooHooCreative, through our work with the Worthing & Adur Chamber. Clive is very interested in what I do and is keen to make the transition from working mainly with print design to more online web orientated design; websites, online ezine templates, taking the image / brand through to the offline stuff like letterhead and business cards.
Now anyone who knows me knows that I find all the logo / branding part of a site very dull indeed and I’ve yet to be convinced that it actually makes a difference to conversions and sales. In my humble opinion overdesigned sites can look very corporate and impersonal and I’ve always tried to make my sites look very friendly and like a real person is behind them.
Well, over lunch last week Clive convinced me to let him have a go at redesigning my site and surprisingly quickly he called me and I went round for a presentation last night, and I have to say that, after the initial shock, I was blown away. He’d taken my rather antique looking logo (which I actually really liked) and advanced it into the 21st Century and then added a couple of colourways (I hate colour generally and wanted to avoid the red of the Money Gym, hate blue, green and yellow so poor old Clive was working with only one side of the colour spectrum).
Here’s the results so far, side by side – Click To Enlarge – and I’d love to know what you think. Can you use the comments box to let me know which one you like best and why?
However, I know that some online gurus such as Michael Dunlop of IncomeDiary.com and Pat Flynn of SmartPassiveIncome.com go for a very heavily graphic designed site while Glenn Alsopp of ViperChill.com goes for something much more up my personal street – beautiful.
Talking of Glenn Alsopp, he’s been featured in the Guardian as he’s decided to help a beginner blogger go from zero to hero online and mentor her to build and monetise a blog – one of their reporters I think. That will be interesting – every time I’ve tried that (mentoring for free) they have given up but she’s getting paid by the Guardian to do it, so that will keep her motivated!
Ideally, I’d split test the whole thing to see what effect it has on my conversions to subscribers for the report, but I can’t think how to do that unless I split test the header on a sales page first. The only other way to do it would be to just bite the bullet and change it over, then monitor results but that is going to necessitate a bit more of an investment to find a coder to make a “skin” for the Catalyst theme, based on Clive’s designs. Steve’s investigating that right now.
New “QuickStart” Mini-Coaching Programme Launches & Fills In 2 Days!
I hosted my first live coaching call for the new mini-coaching programme on Wednesday this week – that programme filled up within 2-3 emails so I’m taking bookings now for the October 5th one now.
This includes
- 4 x live “Quickstart” coaching/mentoring calls, over four weeks, covering Your Business Mind, Your Business Marketing Online, Your Business Marketing Offline and Your Business Money.
- I’ve also thrown in 4 x weeks membership of the private Facebook group
- And and 30 x days membership of the private Members area of the Business Success Factory website which in itself includes two more webinar Q&A support calls per week.A nice little bundle I thought and it seems you agree! If you like the sound of that find out more here >>>
Curry, Networking & Music Glue
The Brighton Business Curry Club evening was as busy and noisy as ever and I was startled to be joined at the bar by a potential mentoring client who had recognised me as she arrived. I don’t normally like to see clients before working with them, being highly visual and for lots of reasons to be discussed in another blog post perhaps but she was very friendly and nice so it was all good.
I ended up sitting next to the ever entertaining Josh from Acumen Business Law. He specialises in Intellectual Property and I met him first at the Brighton Business Fair at Hove Town Hall last October. We talk about the music industry a lot and he put me onto a great resource for musicians, bands and venues this week – MusicGlue. Check it out!
Acumen are a firm that interest me a lot from a business model point of view, as Penina Shephard is breaking the mould where law firms are concerned. One of the FT’s Top 50 Innovative Lawyers but a bit of a nasty looking website. Penina is lively on Twitter though with lots of good advice for business owners so well worth following.
I have a big gap in my networking skills – I love networking online on Twitter, Ecademy and Facebook (Linked In is way too dull), I love real networking events but the bit in between – the phoning and having meetings, I just can’t do.
Why is that, I wonder and what is it costing me?
And more to the point, what can I do about it?
Hummm… Which new look do I prefer???
Have to say, I think it’s a case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Sorry.
I far prefer you’re original logo with the ‘clock cogs’. One of the reasons is, I prefer the white background. In Clive’s presentations, I think they look far to heavy and dense, so of the three, it’s easy to see that I prefer the one on the left, because there is less blocking. However, I do think the more obvious tab bar in a contrasting colour is an improvement. It would look great on your site as it is now if done in the same ‘gold’ as the main cog and divided into separate tabs as illustrated on his site.
Lastly (sorry for appearing to shoot him down in flames) I think his colour schemes are grim. If you like black, white, silver and gold, maybe he should have used the same. This does appear more change for changes sake.
Stick to what works and tweak it. (Are you aware that both the ‘home’ and ‘blog’ tabs show the same pages?)
Hope sky pulls it’s finger out.
Hi Nicola,
Just to let you know I prefer the webpage on the left. The middle one is a bit male looking with all that black, the one on the right has too much purple so I think the one on the left is the best.
Neil
Thanks for your comments so far!! To be fair, Clive was trying to stick as close to the original colours as possible, because I didn’t want it to look TOO different too quickly but then introduced the purple as an alternative. Steve loves the black one (he’s very austere in his design sense too) I think the purple is too “Rich Dad” and I agree with you about the lots of white – I love it.
Hi Nicola
I basically agree with Neil.
I like the webpage on the left the best. I know business is black, but it doesn’t attract me and I imagine the colour black would put off many of your creative clients.
The one on the right, (although purple is my favourite colour), is too hard to read and doesn’t grab the eye as much as the left one.
I think it is an improvement on your old site, not just because I like purple, but because a bit of colour helps it to stand out.
But in the end go with your gut. What you like best!
Sonja
Hi Nicola,
Personally I much prefer what you have now. I fee these new designs are really dull in comparison. I like your white background it’s very clear and attractive and especially if you are a visual type like me, it doesn’t look threatening which the others do rather…I agree with Annia Summers, these new designs are too dense. I would stick to what you have. The new ones look like very traditional, dreary, business sites. There are couple of features that the new ones have that you could incorporate as far as accessing things but the general look……..nah!