KHALID

Twitter, the social media application that is used by everyone from celebrities to entrepreneurs to individuals to animals (yes, people tweet on behalf of their dogs!), is a great way to network, and I feel there’s an untapped market people aren’t exploring its true value. I spent this morning looking for hotels in Edinburgh for my latest business venture, and I managed to follow a few, DM one and e-mail more two directors.

By utilising twitter, as well as the numerous directories jam packed with geo users, I’ve reached out, gained interest and got in touch with the right person when usually a generic e-mail to their a business’ mail@ or info@ contact address would be ignored / misplaced.

Just like I said in my picking up the phone post, don’t be shy and get in touch!

My good friend Fraser, one of the nicest web folk I’ve met, recently sent me over two lovely bottles of wine, one for his white wine site, the other for his red. They arrived late, due to Royal Mail’s terrible service, but hey who was I to complain it’s free booze!

Fraser’s got two cracking domain names with a lot of potential (note to wine sellers / wholesalers / business owners get on the sites!) and I thought his cool advertising was effective.

I passed the red bottle over to the girlfriend’s parents as I’m not refined enough to enjoy warm liquid.

However, last night the mrs and my mate’s partner enjoyed the bottle of chilled white and didn’t have a bad word to say.

The labelled wine was certainly a talking point and the people I told were certainly intrigued. It is a cool way to market your brand, especially if you’re in the domain industry where half the folk love a good bevvy.

If Fraser can continue churning out quality articles his twitter following will certainly go up and I’m pretty sure that’ll convert into a nice trickle of wine buyers through any affiliate programmes he hooks up with.

I wish Fraser the best of luck with his sites and if you’re cheeky enough to ask on Twitter he’ll probably send you a bottle!

I can’t recall the number of times I’ve e-mailed individuals, companies, potential clients etc and never received a reply. It may be my wording, it could be my approach, but in my experience e-mail isn’t cutting it if you want new business.

Recently, I’ve been working alongside another business owner to try to gain new contracts in a mutual area of business. We both e-mailed a firm and never heard back, yet I got in touch with their London HQ and now we may have the opportunity to work with one of the biggest companies in that industry.

It took me a couple of minutes to get an instant interest where as writing an e-mail and tapping your desk waiting on a reply is not only tedious, it is painful. Often your message gets sent to the wrong person, ends up in a junk mail folder or is simply discarded.

So, my tip of the day / week / month is to get over being shy, pick up the phone and speak to the right person first time. Follow it up with an e-mail if required and make sure you leave a good impression.

One day e-mail will get there, but for now the telephone is top!

Fraser Edwards, a well known affiliate organised another cracking event in Edinburgh recently, attracting Elaine and Dave from All Kids, The Hodge (a man who loves legal letters), Clarke (who has recently joined the HBOS blowjob club), Jonathon, Geoff, Mark (the hashtag addict), Fiona (the alcoholic) and Chris (the shark man) from Big Mouth Media (who I like to call “Gobshite Solutions” as it sounds better).

We started at the Voodoo Rooms, with Paid on Results buying a few beers for everyone (must be all those sex toys they sell). We then headed to Grand Cru and had a good munch and plenty of banter. The most notable story of the evening was how Clarke acquired his first employee, although I won’t go there – they have lists for people like him.

The Hodge wouldn’t give anyone discounted tickets to Think Visibility without a Burger King as he wanted a free toy, so he got a bit of a pasting which he didn’t mind as he revealed he regularly comes into contact with legal bullies through the opinion he airs online – good on ya!

Big Mouth certainly sent their best employees; Fiona dropped drinks on two people and Chris took the conversation in a whole new direction talking about sharks!

As a responsible individual I didn’t dilute my sanity with alcohol and played driver, which I was quite happy about as it gave me automatic rights to write this blog post without the worry of being able to defend it.

Much love,

Ethan

p.s. (this post is a complete joke, the people who attended the evening will understand!)

p.p.s photo courtest of Mark, showing how crap the camera on the iPhone 4 is.

Having recently moved city so Christy can study, my daily commute to and from work has become easier. There’s less traffic lights which is good, although it still takes 45-60 minutes either way. Our flat is lovely, with a great view over surrounding buildings and we’re literally in the city centre. Despite this, there’s relatively no noise and with a 24 hour concierge / security service and underground car park everyone sleeps safe at night.

We combined our move with purchasing Ollie, a purebred Bichon Frise. If it was up to me we would have got a bigger dog, however Christy got her way and it makes sense as we’re in a flat and I can just imagine driving home to find her being dragged along the street by some 15 stone beast! I’ve always wanted a dog and both Christy and I have both had them in our families previously, so we were both aware of the commitment involved.

Ollie was a fantastic edition, and got us out walking a lot more. Every evening we take a stroll down the to the quay it is lovely. Coming home and being eagerly greeted is an amazing feeling and Ollie has really added to our lives.

Ollie is extremely close to us and if either of us go to another room he always follows. We figured he’d be a bit calmer and overall happier if he had a buddy to keep him company, so we purchased a Lhasa Apso named Brodie.

The great thing about the dogs is that they’re completely different in nature but both fantastic pets and enjoyable to be around. We regularly get stopped, purely because they are both so small, by people who just adore them.

Having been around a variety of dogs I have to say smaller breeds seem to have more personalities. Ollie and Brodie are like two little men, and are hilarious to watch when they’re having fun.

I don’t want to sound like a weird dog lover who is insanely boring so I’ll keep this post short, but I have to say I feel like I’m enjoying life much more with them in my life. They say “a dog is a man’s best friend”, but they never had the internet when that term was coined haha! Really though, they are great and if you can look after one properly I’d recommend them over any other expensive purchase! Getting away from the computer and taking in some fresh air on a long walk is a great way to relax.