Toluu : Chris Garrett on New Media

Chris Garrett on New Media

the business of blogging and new media

Leveraging Authority for Creative Control, Freedom and RewardsYesterday

Ask a business owner what they want, why they are in business. You will certainly hear the following amongst the answers:

Rewards (financial or otherwise)
Freedom
Control

What you will find though, and I include myself in this, is business owners actually working COUNTER to those aspirations.

Rewards, freedom and control come from being at the top of the pile when it comes to business decision making and influence. We look for security by moving towards the bottom of the pyramid – taking a 9-5 job, freelancing, and generally working for others, but times have changed and those roles are anything but secure.

It has been my birthday this week. I have been spending time with Darren in Australia. These things combined have given me an opportunity to reflect on where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. The conclusion I have come to is that I have been steadily working up the ladder but I have a ways to go.

I am not saying that you can only be one thing. You might choose to invest and be creating at the ground level at the same time. Today I am shooting some video – this is doing, but I am also building an asset with terrific leverage potential, which is investing time and money.

How to Kill Your Brand in One Easy StepJuly 21

Most times when a company kills their brand it is through a steady decline. The kind of loyalty to unloyalty that Scott talks about in his excellent post over there.

There are also those occasions where the brand goes from king of the world to “wouldn’t touch that in a hazmat suit” bad overnight, such as BP.

Despite the “overnight OMG” effect, brands are often resiliant things. People are making a big deal about the Apple iPhone 4 Antenna Issue as if this could be their downfall, but in my view Apple loyalty seems solid despite what the media would like us to believe, which shows how years of commitment to quality can be a powerful thing.

The customer nightmares that stick with us though are when we feel a personal impact. It might be an afront, an outrage, upset or just failing to live up to expectations.

I wanted to set up a hosting account for a throwaway project, keeping this new project isolated as much as possible from my other sites. At some point I might want to jettison or offload the whole thing, and I remember how tricky it was to extricate myself from my photography blog when I sold it (people still contact me about it thinking I own it). This needed to be reliable but not spectacular, it was not core to my business like chrisg.com is.

A $10 a month product for something you are not sure you will persue is not one you do much

5 Reasons to Love Webinars ExplainedJuly 12

Webinars rock, but it seems my “webinars rock” illustration caused more confusion than it educated! To rectify the situation, I have cut up and explained my thinking in this article.

1. Awareness and Ideas

The first reason to love webinars is that you get the opportunity to create a sense of event around your ideas, value and information. This attracts attention and builds traffic and positive awareness. There is both a direct attraction to something “live” and newsworthy, but also the viral impact of people sharing their intention to attend, and a third party/affiliate promotion opportunity.

2. Products and Teaching

When you present your information live and interactive, the audience can question, clarify and drill down the parts that interest them most. Rather than guess at what your audience most wants, allow them to ask you! This means teaching is deeper and accelerated in comparison to other forms of presenting content onli

Why Webinars RockJuly 8

Check Out Magnetic Webinars

… or ask me any questions or let me know your thoughts in the comments …

Claiming Your Independence – 5 Years of Business LessonsJuly 5

Five years ago I cut loose from my day job and launched myself into the adventure that is working for oneself. That was the start of my journey towards claiming my independence day, and I think there are lessons for you if you want to do something similar to what I have done.

I’m proud of where I am at but as well as talk about the successes, I am going to share with you the mistakes so you can avoid them.

If you just want the main lessons, skip to the end. Otherwise, see what you can learn from my journey …

I left my easy and relatively fairly paid job at a marketing agency to start a business. A real business, not the toy sidelines I had played with before. This one was going to be the sole income for our household. Knowing that your work has to pay all the bills concentrates the mind on what is really important.

State your intention.

The intention had been there for a while. You can see that I had been working up to the point for a little while in this image below. That image is taken from a site I used to frequent, I was defending blogging and saying why I did it.

This was April 2005. Shortly after I received a contract opportunity that allowed me to pull the trigger on my plans and finally leave. A few people have suggested that I achieved my goal because

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