"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 3 new articles
Small Business Success Stories Wanted! Winners Attend GrowSmartBiz Conference for FREE!Every small business owner has a story, and we want to hear yours! As a small business owner, you put your heart and soul into your work, but that effort often goes largely unnoticed. This is your chance to tell everyone about your company and what you have done to make it a success. Tell us your story! From August 11 through September 22, Network Solutions will select one small business success story from the entries each week to publish on the GrowSmartBusiness Blog, a site dedicated to furthering small business growth. Additionally, each of the eight winners will receive FREE admission to the GrowSmartBiz Conference – a premier educational and networking event designed to help small business owners successfully grow their enterprises – hosted on September 29, 2009 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. Please submit all entries to growsmartbiz@networksolutions.com by Monday, September 21, 2009. All entries have a 500-word maximum and should include the challenges you have faced, especially given the recent economic downturn, and innovative ways you have overcome them. Selections begin on August 11. The earlier you submit an entry, the more opportunities you have to be chosen! All entrants not selected will receive a discounted admission to the GrowSmartBiz Conference. In addition to the Success Story of the Week contest, the GrowSmartBiz Conference wants your topic ideas for the fourth panel! If there is a topic you are particularly interested in hearing about, please suggest your topic or vote on others' ideas athttp://growsmartbiz.ideascale.com/. For more information on the GrowSmartBiz Conference, please visit: http://growsmartbusiness.com/small-business-conference/. Disclaimer: All winners will be informed by a Network Solutions representative prior to their story being published on the GrowSmartBiz Blog. Network Solutions is not responsible for the winners' travel accommodations. If contest winners are unable to attend the GrowSmartBiz Conference for any reason, tickets are not redeemable for cash, merchandise, or any other item of value. In the event the winner cannot attend, ticket can be transferred to another party. Entries not selected will be given a special code to register for the GrowSmartBiz Conference at a discounted rate.
Mafia Wars, Gaming and Getting People to Do StuffUp until this point, I’ve avoided Mafia Wars, which I’d previously known as “that multiplayer game on Facebook with all the annoying status updates.” However, since I’m trying to look at ways that we can use social gaming to help influence and change offline behaviors (especially in the areas of disaster / personal preparedness), I figured I’d better give it a shot. Mafia Wars is just a current incarnation of online crime games (predecessors include Drugwars, Dopewars, and Pimpwar). It’s basically a resource management strategy game (with a lineage that goes all the way back to Oregon Trail) with a strong multiplayer component: Since it’s tied to your Facebook profile, you’ve automatically got a built-in pool of potential teammates and adversaries. So what makes it work? Why are people so willing to spend time on what’s essentially a number-crunching exercise? I’m not a gaming expert (also, I’m still learning the game mechanics), so there’s probably more thorough analysis out there. But here are a few of my thoughts: * Who’s Bad (or at least, Bad-Ass)? Clearly, people like pretending to be bad, especially when bad is exciting, violent, and sexy. Reframe “Mafia Wars” as, “Lemonade Stand” or “Office Manager,” and it loses its allure, even though the game mechanics are the same. * “First Taste’s Free”: The game is free-ish (you can buy premium upgrades), but more than that, getting rewards and moving up through the first few levels is really easy, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. This moves you up not just through the learning curve, but the addiction on-ramp. (Most games do this.) * Casual, packetized gaming: The game clock is always running, and you can pop in and out as needed — it doesn’t require your constant attention or presence. So you can plausibly claim you’re multitasking (even though playing the game is a distraction). However, insidiously, there are… * Incentives for frequent participation: Certain resources (like property revenue and energy points) max out over time; there’s an opportunity cost if you don’t check in at minimum intervals to spend them, much like keeping a savings bond after it fully matures and you stop earning interest. It’s a bit of applied psychology — explicitly requiring you to check in at regular intervals would quickly become a chore (Tamagotchi, anyone?), but framed this way, it’s something you end up wanting to do. Not only that, it encourages you to stay online by putting things… * Just out of reach: You don’t have to sit there watching the game — you might only need to check in a few times a day (or less) to extract maximum value. However, watching indicators of incremental progress (countdown timers and progress bars) is oddly compelling, and probably pulls on the same brain reward mechanism that keeps people at slot machines. Here’s another example of “just out of reach”: one of the more lucrative properties available early in the game — a Mafia Mike’s bar franchise — is really, really cost-effective. In fact, it’s absurdly underpriced: It’s just that, to get it, all you have to do is recruit a few more members to your gang. * Achievements and Rewards: Arbitrary goals are arbitrary, but they can be stunningly effective in getting people to do stuff. Just ask any Xbox Live player. Now, I haven’t really touched on how the multiplayer-specific aspects of the game encourage participation. This is because I’m still learning them, and because I told myself I would try not to annoy my Facebook friends with silly Mafia Wars communications (the game does enough of that by itself). We’ll see how that goes. I know there are folks out there who play Mafia Wars — any of you have any thoughts on how the game mechanics encourage participation, and how we can use them either to develop games meant to change real world behaviors, or how we can incorporate those mechanics into non-game activities? Leave a comment and gain +1 energy.
Smart Working – Writing Effective Blog HeadlinesThere are so many great bloggers out there and many of them get a quick glance from a random search result and then that potential subscriber is gone. Even if you are able to catch that new subscriber, they put you in their feedreader and along with their other 50-1000 feeds (I am more in the 85 range now but I used to subscribe to 450) so your chance of getting noticed with your great writing comes down to one major thing – HEADLINES THAT ROCK! Easier said than done, headlines are an art all their own. I try desperately to write good ones but some times mine are on the verge of clinical because I want to tell exactly what you are about to read (SERIES X Part #Y – THIS IS REALLY COOL AND I THINK YOU SHOULD REAL IT BUT THIS IS TOO LONG FOR YOUR READER, SO PLEASE CLICK) but get caught up in it all resulting in an epic FAIL. Other writers on our team have this trick down to a science. Joe and Ken are masters at this and have a combination of funny, quirky, SEO bait and “gotta read this” rolled into one. So what is one to do if they are “headline deficient” or “title impaired”? Consult with the masters, of course. Two of those masters are ProBlogger and CopyBlogger who blog about blogging and show you how to be effective and actually make money with this skillset. Dean Rieck over a CopyBlogger recently wrote a killer article with a killer title – “9 Proven Headline Folmulas that Sell Like Crazy“. I am going to disect them and see how they apply practically to your own blog. 1. ) Say it simply and directly – I like this because you get right to the point and people know what to expect. It needs to be short. This is a hard one. Difficulty – 7 out of 10 2. ) State the big benefit – Usually involves the word “Free” or some time benefit. This is a moderate one. Difficulty – 5 out of 10 3.) Announce Exciting News – People love the news especially when it is timely or exclusive. Difficulty – 3 out of 10 4.) Appeal to the “How-To” Instinct – I have to admit that I am a sucker for hacks that can improve my life and getting advice from the experts. Difficulty – 6 out of 10 5.) Pose a Provocative Question – Bloggers like to think they are controversial when most times they are just annoying. This is one of the most challenging types of headlines but if you get it right, traffic, trackbacks and comments are yours for the taking. Difficulty – 9 out of 10 6.) Bark a Command – Now we don’t mean be a dictator or be a jerk but having a strong command will give attention to what you are asking them to do. If it is compelling they will click. Difficulty – 7 out of 10 7.) Other Useful Information – Sometimes this just useless information to fill up your brain or be used once in a board game but I gotta tell you men and women both love the lists. 10 of this or 10 of that or 9 types of blog headlines. Difficulty – 4 out of 10 8.) Honest enthusiastic testimonials – Readers love real people and those testimonials that are real ring true but also hear what other people like them say about it. Difficulty – 4 out of 10 9.) Authenticate your statement with something that makes it more real – The more real the more compelling and the more click through. Easy to try but hard to make work. Difficulty – 8 out of 10 We want to know what you think More Recent Articles |
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