Category: News

31 October

What is Twitter?

People often ask me – What is all this Twitter, Facebook stuff all about?

My answer usually hinges around explaining to them how people’s communication choice’s are changing in a similar way to how we changed our method of communicating when we bought our first cell phone. We no longer needed to wait at home for that important phone call, we could just pick up our cell phone at any location and call/text our friends. Twitter and Facebook are the next step in this communication evolution as the Internet allows us through these platforms to communicate for free on a one to many basis, rather than a one to one method like your cell phone. So you can now tell all our friends about the new bike you have just bought or about where we are having dinner tonight. Your friends who are now following you on Twitter have the choice of whether to act on this information or to ignore it.

After dabbling a bit with Twitter I initially wrote it off as a niche teenager communication tool that while sometimes useful would not be something I would ever use, however I am finding more and more business uses for it as I interact with others through it and explore its uses.

So, what is Twitter? According to Wikipedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

For a business Twitter offers new ways of engaging existing and new clients in a way that was never possible before. Take a look at this short screencast video that explains how to use Twitter in your business. Enjoy!


Screencast courtesy of www.smallbiztrends.com

27 October

Data Centre Tours extended

RSAWEB Data Centre - Where we host your web servers

Join us for the RSAWEB Data Centre Tour

For those wishing to join our Data Centre Tour scheduled for Nov 13, the tour is now fully booked. However, due to popular demand, we’ve created another opportunity for visitors to take a guided tour of our Cape Town Data Centre. (If you missed the details on what the tour is all about, you can read about it here.)

The details for our 2nd Data Centre Tour are as follows:

Date: 20 November
Time: 10am -11am
Street Address: 1st Floor, The Terraces, 34 Bree Street, Cape Town.

For security purposes, you will be required to bring your ID/drivers license for identification.

To book your space on the tour, please RSVP well in advance.

09 October

Your home page is valuable

Your home page is one of your most valuable company assets. It is your online store front and is becoming more important in most companies marketing mix.  Customers when they land on your home page within about 5 seconds form an opinion of your company. Your home page’s format, colours and content provide customers with queues for them to form fundamental opinions to questions like:

  1. Do I like this company.
  2. Can I see myself buying something from this company.
  3. Does this company look trustworthy.

Knowing this I have always seen our home page as our most important company asset, which may be justifieable as we are a internet company. How have you justified your home page? Is it an afterthough because all you really needed was the domain for email? or are you investing in your online reputation and brand?

We have found through clever, relatively inexpensive changes to the structure, colours and layout of our website that users experience has improved which ultimately results in more sales leads.

Think about your home page, and I would reckon a small investment in it will reap far more rewards than through most other marketing efforts.

08 October

Caffeine, muffins & servers

RSAWEB Data Centre Tours

During the month of November RSAWEB will be opening the doors of their Cape Town Data Centre to the public for guided tours of the facilities by their team of technical virtuosos.

Located in the heart of the Cape Town CBD inside the majestic Terraces building, RSAWEB Data Centre 2 is a hidden gem waiting to be discovered. As MD Rob Gilmour puts it: “For businesses looking to expand into prime data real-estate at affordable prices, this is it…”

DC2 is loaded with features, including fully redundant power systems, raised flooring, advanced climate control, Cisco certified Gigabit network backbone, redundant connectivity systems and biometric access control amongst others. More than that, the Data Centre provides a host of business opportunities as well: “DC2 provides the perfect platform for customers to create and package their own web based products. We offer the full range of hosted products from rented servers to fully managed solutions best suited to companies looking to grow their internet infrastructure without the associated capital costs…” affirms Technical Director Mark Slingsby.

Come and discover the inner workings of our world class Data Centre environment and stick around afterwards for a cappuccino, muffin and some serious techie talk.

The first tour is scheduled to take place on Thursday the 13th of November, and is open to everyone, whether you’re an existing RSAWEB customer or not. Tour space is limited, so you must RSVP with you name, company & contact details should you wish to participate.

06 October

Do you SMS more than you phone

Send More SMS MessagesI personally do, and it seems that for the first time in history the average American does too. The New York Times published an article stating that in the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile.

I have no doubt that in South Africa, the average cellphone user has been SMS’ing more than calling for some time due to our higher call tariffs.

So what does this mean, how can you capitalize on this?

Here are 2 examples:

  1. Use SMS communications from your website, rather than email/call/fax, try send pertinent information via SMS.  An example of this may be a “contact me form” where when a user inputs his details for you to call him back, you could SMS the user immediately thanking them for their request and alerting the user that it may take up to 30 minutes before you call them back. In time sensitive business applications such as selling insurance online, managing this expectation could be the difference between providing what you consider a good service, and the users expectation for an immediate response.
  2. Allow people to SMS your business, try setting up a inbound SMS system. For example this same insurance company could publish a number and say on their website: “SMS 08xxxxxxxx with your car make, model and year and we will get you a quote in 30 minutes”

The bottom line is marketing is now all about using communication methods that users are already comfortable using, so if you are already using the web and email and are finding you are not growing your business or delighting your customers more, try SMS.

Checkout MyMessager, should you need the technology and API’s to do this.

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