Member since: May 21, 2005
Last activity: 8 hours ago
Our immediate plans for video include the ability to embed YouTube video into your profile. Seems like a no-brainer that we'd want to include that ability in groups. What's your thinking? How would you like to see video included in Groups?
One question I've been asked is - can everyone I invite participate in my group? The answer is yes. But they will need to follow the link directly - that is, they won't be able to see Groups in the main navigation of the website until they've joined your group. Or, until the public launch, which we're planning for the beginning of next month.
Paid members of Biznik, FYI, will get Groups turned on for them Monday, March 9.
I just read Jeff Jarvis's book, What Would Google Do. He's the force behind the http://www.buzzmachine.com blog, and in the book he lays out a case for business change in a hyperconnected world.
He takes a look at industries like health care, journalism, the auto industry, and imagines how they might look if Google were running them with their approach, which is: Create something useful. Help people use it. Then get out of the way.
I'm going to host a book discussion about this book, which I'll be posting in this group shortly. The cool thing is that, with Biznik groups, anyone who is a member of this group can create a similar event - no matter where you are. So for example, someone in San Francisco could host a face-to-face discussion, and we can compare notes here.
All of us at the Biznik team are thrilled to have Groups up and running this morning. Welcome!
This is the place to post questions and bug reports. I'll be hanging out in this group frequently during the first few days of the beta launch, and we'll be making rapid improvements, so if you've got problems or ideas, let us know.
The FAQ pages on Biznik recently went dark when our video service provided changed their business model, and stopped hosting the video we had uploaded. Christian has been reworking the FAQs to be all-text since then, and today we updated them with the new info and new format. I think you'll find them much more useful.
Wall Street Journal writer Kelly Spor wrote a fantastic piece today aimed squarely at new entrepreneurs, Planning a Startup? Help and Advice Abound.
As the title suggests, it’s packed with links to great websites that help connect entrepreneurs with the advice, relationships and expertise they need to thrive in the current economy. And we’re honored that Biznik made her list!
You can now delete multiple messages at the same time from your Biznik messages in-box and out-box. Here's a video tutorial that shows how it works:
http://blog.biznik.com/2008/12/13/in-box-improvement-delete-multiple-messages/
Congratulations, Bellingham! You impressed us enough with all of the activity you have happening that we've added your city to the city list on Biznik, so that it's easily findable without having to type in the city.
Nice work!
Portland has a new Biznik member, Phil Berstein, who writes an informative blog, Phil on Advertising. After joining Biznik today, Phil blogged this question:
"So, my question is for those who’ve been on Biznik for a while. Does it work? And by “work”, I mean, has it caused a quantifiable improvement in your business? More customers? More traffic to your blog? And for those who have upgraded to a paid membership — is it worth the dough?"
You can post your answer for him here.
It's been a thrill to watch how Christa Patchen Wagner is rockin' Vancouver lately. Christine has already hosted one event, and has not one, not two, not three - FOUR more of her own in the calendar. In addition to that, she's also organized a workshop that she'll be cohosting with Lara and I in Vancouver on November 25th - Get Connected: How Biznik Can Help Your Small Business Succeed In A World Transformed By Social Media. Can you say rock star? She has definitely earned her Ambassador stripes, that's for sure. I can't wait to meet you, Christa!
Yeah, I know you probably have election fatigue, but the REAL time to vote is now! The 2nd annual Open Web Awards is open for voting, and if you're a fan of Biznik, I'd love to have your help in getting us some recognition for this extraordinary community. It's easy to do - just visit this page, where you can enter your email into the widget to cast your vote for Biznik:
I read a thought-provoking article this morning, Why women smile in their profile photos in business networking sites. Apparently, on professional online networks like LinkedIn and Xing, men frequently are unsmiling, while women are much more likely to be smiling.
I actually don't think that's true in this community. I just scanned through the first page of the seattle business consultant category, and it looks pretty even to me.
Do you think women smile more often than men in their Biznik profile photos? If so, why?
Good morning everyone. Hope you had as awesome a weekend as Lara and I did - we were in San Francisco at the Biztech Day conference, where 500 small business people got to soak up how to promote their business with social media. And this morning is off to a rocking start here at Biznik, where we've just launched a big new feature: new city pages and business categories. Here's what's new, starting with what you'll notice the most:
Business categories
You've been telling us that the member search on Biznik isn't good enough. That you want to browse members by business type. We listened, and today when you log in, you will noticed that you have to select a category that best describes your business. The list isn't perfect, of course - it's impossible to fit every business into 64 categories, the number we've chosen. Don't worry - just choose the best one, and you can change your mind later. In fact, if you're a paying member, you can select more than one category, or even make up your own category. Active members get up to two categories, and Supporting members get up to four.
Another benefit to the new categories: Search engine optimization. The category pages are highly optimized for the category - so choose a category you want to appear in when your customers are searching for those terms. I'm going to post a brief video about how to do this later this morning - look for that on the Biznik blog. Meanwhile, let's jump into where the new categories are going to display: on the new City pages.
City pages
The old 'Members' page was getting really tired. It was simply a list of the most active members, with the most active member at the top. It worked well when Biznik had a few hundred members, but with Seattle membership alone pushing 8,000 people, it's time for us to rethink what appears on the 'Members' page for each city. We approached this task with these things in mind: Usefulness to members, usefulness to people who might want to hire members, and with an eye to spotlight members who are making extraordinary contributions to the community.
Take a look at the new page for Seattle. The first thing you'll noticed is that you can browse members by category. Next, you can see the newest members who have signed up (it only shows members in here if they've uploaded a photo - important to show your face in this community).
Below that, we've got one of the bigger changes - Biznik now shows six of the most popular event hosts! The most popular business networking event hosts on left, and most popular workshop hosts on right. Popularity is calculated by the number of people who attended your event.
Photos from recent events in that city, and what members near that city need complete the main column.
Over on the right, at the top you can now see at a glance how many members are in that city, how many needs, and how many events. Under that, a featured member promotion appears, randomly, from among the most active members who have posted promotions. In Seattle, that means that it rotates from among Supporting Members who have uploaded promotions. Elsewhere, if there are no supporting members, it rotates from anyone who has posted a promotion.
Woven throughout the page, you'll notice buttons that allow YOU to create your own event, update what you need, or post a new promotion.
Another cool feature: The talk items in the sidebar are from members who are local to that city. So now, you can see at a glance the talk that is started by people near you.
Finally, on cities outside of Seattle, you can now see the Ambassadors who are heading up Biznik's growth in that area. If there are now Ambassadors, we invite you to learn more about the Ambassador program.
So jump in, select a category for your self, and get familiar with the new city pages. And let me know what you think of the changes.
So, Lara picked up a copy of Seth Godin's new book, Tribes, and the cover fell off. Under the cover is a photo montage of thousands of tiny little mugshots. Somehow Lara, with her amazing eye for detail, immediately spotted Biznik member Betsy Talbot in the sea of faces. I double checked, and sure enough, it's the same photo that she has on her Biznik profile. Congratulations, cover girl!
Here's a request for someone to write an article that is focused on how what happened on Wall Street over the past week will affect small business people like those of us here on Biznik. Any takers?
I spent my weekend playing with numbers. Yeah, I know, it's really not like me. But yesterday, I got this idea for how I could come up with real numbers to show how Biznik's Supporting Members rank on Google. To recap: Yesterday, I did a quick survey of 33 profiles (10 percent) of Supporting Members, and was blown away by how high the average member ranked on Google (that quickie survey revealed 92 percent rank in top ten for either name or keywords). But a little voice in my head -- I think it was the voice of my University of Montana math professor -- made me dig a little deeper. I did a little Googling and discovered that my survey wasn't statistically accurate enough for me to put much weight into it - the margin of error for my sample size is 13 percent with 90 percent confidence. Not good enough.
So today (09/22/08), I set out to produce a statistically valid survey that would allow me to say, with 95 percent confidence and a 5 percent margin of error, just how well Biznik's top members rank on Google. I found this survey random sample calculator that revealed the magic number I would need to survey: 177. So I rolled up my pajamas and got to work.
Some background on the methodology I used: For searches on member names, I entered their names exactly as they entered them into their profile, removing any punctuation such as colons or comas. For keywords, I selected no more than three keywords from each profile, in the order that they were entered by the members. I also removed all punctuation and symbols such as "&." Finally, I included the member's city at the beginning of the search, because that's what we've optimized for in the title tags. So, for keywords of "Contract CFO," I used "Seattle Contract CFO." To clarify: for each search I used up to four total keywords: the city, and up to three keywords. It's important to note than many members used more keywords than that in their profiles, but I discarded them, because, well, that's just keyword stuffing and who would search on more than four keywords, anyway?
It took me most of the day, cutting and pasting into the Search Engine Forums SERP Tool, before I had the numbers. As I was pasting them in, I kept thinking, wow, I can't believe how high members are ranking. When I finally totted them up, I was even more blown away than I was with yesterday's numbers. Here they are:
Members in top 10 for either keyword or name: 93 percent.
Yeah, that's pretty cool, hey? And check this out: 60 percent of Biznik supporting members in this survey ranked not just in the top 10, but NUMBER 1 for their keywords on Google. Let me say that again: 60 percent of Biznik's supporting members rank #1 for their keywords on Google.
Here's the best of the rest:
So. This allows me to say, as I crawl into bed tonight, with 95 percent confidence and a 5 percent margin of error, this: Biznik is a tactical nuclear weapon in the battle to get your business noticed on Google.
Next up: compare these numbers with a survey of basic, free members. Is there real value in upgrading, or do free members get the same results?
We just launched a new promo box at the top of the Biznik home page, which is a simpler, cleaner overview of what Biznik is all about: "A business networking community where collaboration beats competition." We also dropped in icons that showcase some of the awards the site has won and press we've gotten.
It's a pretty minor tweak, but one that I think makes it much clearer what the site is about, and reinforces that it's actually working.
This is an incremental step toward some larger design changes we'll be making on the site in the coming weeks, all aimed at making the site easier to use, even more optimized for search engines than it currently is, and communicate more clearly what the value of being a Biznik member is to newcomers.
We've been doing a lot of behind the scenes work on simplifying the events and article urls, and as of today, the products of those efforts are live on the site. What this means for you is that it's now easier to remember and share the url for your event or article. Both are now more SEO friendly, too, meaning that they'll rank better in search engine results.
Here's an example:
Old event url: https://biznik.com/events/2008/9/9/introducing-twitter
New event url: https://biznik.com/events/introducing-twitter
Don't worry - your old urls will automatically redirect to the new ones, so you don't have to update anything - it all happens automatically.
I've recently come to think that "business networking" doesn't really describe adequately what's happening with this community, Biznik. This is a place where on one hand, members simply post profiles to drive search engine optimization of their own websites, and on the other, snag new clients at face-to-face workshops that they teach. It's a place where members build their reputation by publishing articles, and get noticed by posting helpful responses to new members' questions.
A few terms that are bouncing around in my head: "business social network," "small business community," "collaborative community."
What would YOU call it?
In case you're wondering what happened to the Tips section this morning, I'd to announce that we decided to pull the plug on Tips. Why? Because the quality of most tips was extremely low, and it was turning into a magnet for the low-quality type of post that was mainly full of posts back to the poster's website. Read: spam. Also, tips did not fit well into the Article format that we've had great success with, and was confusing for members when deciding what to call their posts and where to put them.
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