BLOMAP & Co.

Web-development and usabil­ity improve­ments

The web-developer com­pleted only today the html link func­tion­al­ity for Blomap because he had hol­i­days and other com­mit­ments. All usabil­ity improve­ments are pend­ing. I have to accept the delay and let it accept to the team of pub­lish­ers who were wait­ing for this func­tion­al­ity to start. I am con­fi­dent the pro­gram­mer will move on soon because of obvi­ous money reasons. 

Affil­i­ate Mar­ket­ing

How­ever, I inves­ti­gated and found pos­si­ble to track the work of each pub­lisher through the links pro­vided by the affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing agen­cies. I will be involved more than I ear­lier con­sid­ered in the con­trol­ling and track­ing of the links. Next week will be deci­sive, I will have to start the work with the publishers.

Edi­to­r­ial plan and stance

I fell behind with the edi­to­r­ial plan, though my ideas are much clearer now. 

I am totally self con­fi­dent about the edi­to­r­ial stance I defined at first. In addi­tion, I am re-defining the edi­to­r­ial plan as a mix of hot-topics (break­ing news and hol­i­day and travel top­ics) which help expand the com­mu­nity and the search engine opti­mi­sa­tion and com­mer­cial top­ics such as affil­i­ate ads.

Ads

I cre­ated the first Ad-words for Blomap to see what results I could get and it gave me rea­sons to insist on travel and hol­i­days top­ics which still looks to be domain of tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing. In addi­tion to that I pre­pared some ads on Face­book which are geo-localised on cities where Blomap presents rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. Even if I cre­ated the pos­si­bil­ity to select all Euro­pean lan­guages when writ­ing, users feel imme­di­ately in a for­eign coun­try when the home­page is in Eng­lish. It’s obvi­ous that I would like to geo-localise the web­site in terms of lan­guages, but for that I need invest­ments I will have to look for very soon. Turn­ing on the ads, accord­ing the above men­tioned lan­guage issue, I had to select Eng­lish speak­ers in coun­tries where the mother tongue is not Eng­lish. I’ll see the results and will adapt accordingly.

Busi­ness customers

I got the sec­ond poten­tial busi­ness cus­tomer by a struck of luck. I was look­ing for an accom­mo­da­tion in Lon­don and the real estate agent looked really inter­ested in my social media activ­ity he got through my email sig­na­ture. So I invited him to join Blomap, I told him I will adver­tise 10 apart­ments for free and then he will decide what to do, if he wants to con­tinue alone or with my help. I’ll do it very soon.

As for the first busi­ness cus­tomer, an hos­tel in Ger­many I’ll con­tact him again after the first cam­paign with this very inter­est­ing sec­ond cus­tomer. Apart­ments in Lon­don are much eas­ier to advertise.

After all of that, I will start adver­tis­ing on Blomap other poten­tial busi­ness cus­tomers  I will eas­ily found in other social media. The strat­egy is sim­ply man­ag­ing their Blomap space and dis­trib­ut­ing the posts on other social media.

Part­ner­ships

I am look­ing for at least a busi­ness part­ner and I am find­ing that very difficult. 

Switzer­land is not as advanced as UK and I am dis­cov­er­ing that I have under­es­ti­mated me so far, because when it hap­pens to speak with other pro­fes­sion­als I often have to explain busi­ness and mar­ket­ing strate­gies well known to me. So all stud­ies and expe­ri­ence have been prof­itable, this is a very good sign even if some­times some peo­ple make me feel as a fish out of water. I have to over­come this feel­ing and replace it with sim­ple con­fi­dence and opti­mism which are dri­ving me through all the hurdles.

I am also meet­ing a lot of bril­liant, proac­tive and pos­i­tive peo­ple, I always keep it in mind and remove any negativity.

Social Media Basel Group, Apero and more

The first inter­na­tional Social Media Apero was very good for a start it only had some issues with the venue. How­ever, I took video-interviews and knew very inter­est­ing peo­ple who had pro­pos­als for other social media events and posted inter­est­ing events in Switzer­land on the Social Media Basel group page on Face­book. In addi­tion, I had the oppor­tu­nity to intro­duce myself, to men­tion Blomap and to dis­trib­ute some adver­tis­ing and busi­ness cards.

The first group’s online mod­er­a­tion duties were just rou­tine: daily updates, Face­book ads, dis­cus­sion open­ings, videos, pic­tures, com­ment­ing, thank­ing, reward­ing, remov­ing of dis­turb­ing peo­ple and irrel­e­vant com­ments. I cre­ated a fan page after request of one of the most pos­i­tive mem­ber. Some­times I think it could con­fuse peo­ple to have both, fan and group pages, though I already did it. Then I cre­ated a Twit­ter pro­file for the group @smbasel and for the apero @smabasel. All of that implied work for the expan­sion of the com­mu­nity and fol­low­ers. To expand the com­mu­nity in terms of Social Media stu­dents and Pro­fes­sion­als more than enthu­si­asts is my new aim, since a cou­ple of social media fans looked very dif­fi­cult to deal in terms of cul­ture and ethics. How­ever, I solved most issues by post­ing on the Social Media Group page the Blog­gers’ Code of Ethics by Jonathan Dube as a Man­i­festo, Best Prac­tices and Terms and Con­di­tions to be part of the group.

To cre­ate, share and pass on the social media cul­ture is my first aim, it is a vital and pro­fes­sional need and the basis for the expan­sion of my own business. 

I started a con­ver­sa­tion with the Social Media Basel group mem­bers: I am dis­cussing about the best next venue for the apero, I am look­ing for a guest star for the next Social Media Apero and for a loca­tion for a Social Media Surgery/Factory. 

As for the guest star I invited Gerd Leohnard (inter­na­tional social media guru), who looks inter­ested and imme­di­ately became a mem­ber of the group: WOW!

As for the next venue, I am very con­cerned about doing the right choice this time and it looks dif­fi­cult to keep an infor­mal envi­ron­ment and an appro­pri­ate loca­tion at the same time.

The cof­fee bars don’t let you reserve tables and don’t inform you about pos­si­ble unex­pected clos­ing as it hap­pened last time. We moved to another loca­tion but a cou­ple of peo­ple felt upset. This is a cul­tural dif­fer­ence I must take into con­sid­er­a­tion, I do not want any­one to feel upset. I found also very dif­fi­cult to let a cou­ple of peo­ple under­stand the dif­fer­ence between hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal organ­i­sa­tions and many other social media aspects. So I am con­sid­er­ing a monthly meet-up where to dis­cuss about a book on social media I will reg­u­larly pro­pose to read. Very inter­ested peo­ple will join it, the oth­ers will spon­ta­neously leave as usu­ally happens.

Social Media Surgery/Factory

As for the Social Media Surgery/Factory, a bril­liant stu­dent in media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion high­lighted the pos­si­bil­ity to apply for the Start-up Incu­ba­tor in Basel and I imme­di­ately requested infor­ma­tion. I am wait­ing for a feed­back. If it works, it will be the first open office and social media surgery in Switzer­land, sim­ply won­der­ful! I am also hop­ing to know there peo­ple who can help me with Blomap and work together for its improve­ment. Any­one will bring projects and new ideas which can pos­i­tively influ­ence each other.

Social Media Natives

I am con­vinced that this blog I am going to cre­ate will be a bomb though it will take me a lot of time to develop the research. I am very enthu­si­ast and I will be def­i­nitely start­ing it next week. I am going to con­tact very soon the Reasearch Cen­ter for Infor­ma­tion Law at Uni­ver­sity of  St. Gallen in Switzer­land and the Berk­man Cen­ter for inter­net and soci­ety at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in USA.

Fur­ther Networking

If all of that where not enough, I am build­ing rela­tion­ships with other social media events’ organ­is­ers in Switzer­land such as Mar­cel Ber­net, one of the organ­iser of the Social Media Gif­pel in Zürich and Gold­bach Media, organ­iser of a free Social Media sem­i­nar in Basel. I sup­port their events I strongly believe in. I am just greate­ful to these peo­ple and asso­ci­a­tions to be so proac­tive in the Social Media indus­try in Switzer­land.  I was invited as Vip guest at the next Social Media Gipfel and I accepted with great satisfaction.

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