It struck me at a ‘welcome party’ while skiing the other week that tour operators still package us together into convenient little groups then package and label us.

The traditional skiing holiday with its early twenties enjoying boozy apres ski activities well into the early hours was clearly the format that worked 25 years ago. However, those 20 somethings are now in their mid 40’s and their expectations, wants and desires have changed. While listening to the local reps rant on about their apres ski activities, consisting of pub-crawls, pub-quizzes and boozy ski-trips I had already switched off and was looking around at their target audience.

Being late forties I wasn’t the youngest there but there were many far older than I and they had also switched off. Oblivious to their audience (customers) the reps continued their talk. Less than half way through I got up and left. Apparently we (me and the wife) were the only ones that voted with our feet.

This particular operator was desperately keen to get our feedback as it was important for them to learn from us, ‘particularly in these difficult economic times‘. That’s a great start, however, listening is only the first part of changing. Tour operators, like all businesses, need to actively listen to their customers then act and respond to their comments and needs. It’s not good enough nor acceptable to group, package and label our customers. Customers are human beings and each has their own needs that have to be satisfied in a way that they want. Our recent welcome party was a stark reminder that many companies, and probably industry sectors, still have a long way to go.

1. Google yourself, your friends and your exes!
With an estimated 20 billion web pages in its index, the chances are that there’ll be a reference to someone you know listed in Google. If there’s not a specific reference you yourself, you may well have a namesake living somewhere else in the world. If there is, drop them a note, they’ll more than likely be pleased, or at least curious, to hear from you. You can extend your search to friends, work colleagues, old school mates and even exes, you’ll be amazed what you can find out!

2. Get Flickr’ing.
Most people now own, or have access to, a digital camera (nearly all mobiles have one these days) and have thousands of digital images clogging up their computers’ hard-drive. One of the joys of photography is sharing your photos and memories and flick.com is a great place to do it – and it’s free!

You can create your own online albums, upload images to them and then share them with the world. Guests who view your photos can also comment on them and you can get some great feedback on what’s great about your pics and how they can be improved.

If you fancy yourself as a critic, you can also comment on other people’s photos. Flickr.com has an estimated 4billion photos that should keep even the harshest critic busy for a few days.

3. Get a new Notebook.
We’re not talking about a new laptop here but referring to a great online service that helps wean you off post-it pads and start using a digital version instead. www.evernote.com lets you post notes, pictures, videos, screen-shots, web-pages and just about anything else you can think of to an online site that allows you to retrieve your notes wherever you have internet access, including your mobile. And it’s free!

The concept of saving ‘post-it’ notes online takes a little thinking about but once you’re over that, you’ll ever go back. You can organise notes into different notebooks – home, work, projects, hobbies etc and tag them (e.g. articles, shopping, technology) for easy searching, retrieval and amending. If you have mobile Internet access, try the mobile application, it’s great for capturing your notes and thoughts while on the go.

4. Entertain yourself with Youtube.
We’ve all spent hours over Christmas watching reruns and boring TV but with Youtube there’s no longer any need nor reason to get bored. There are more hours of entertainment uploaded to Youtube every day than the movie industry produces in a year. You can watch everything from the latest X-factor contestant to an explanation of how a rocket engine works, and you can watch it when you choose to watch it. So if there’s nothing that grabs your attention on the TV, power up you PC and have a surf around Youtube. You will be amazed as to what people will film themselves doing!

As a bit of fun, if you reply to this post with your favourite Youtube clip  I’ll share it here (subject to editorial review). One of my favourites to make you smile is below..

5. Check out the sales.
Shopping online has always been about bargain hunting so, for the sales this January, don’t get up early and camp outside in the pouring cold rain; log-on early, grab yourself a nice cup of coffee, turn on your pc and surf in the warmth and comfort of your own home.

‘Etailers’ (online retailers) know that people want to enjoy the sales online and often provide early notices for their registered customers. Get registered for advance notices and get a lead on the other bargain hunters.

So, instead of getting bored with TV and relatives, get online an have some fun. Let me know any great sites or services you come across.

Nadolig Llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda.

iTalk: I know the latest iphones have a built in app for voice memos but i find it a bit non-intuitive for an Apple app and much prefer Griffin Technology’s iTalk. It’s fast to get going, simple to start and pause and has selectable recoding qualities. And the best bit; it syncs wirelessly to your mac. Now why can’t all apps do that?

visit site>>

Tweetdeck: For all us twits that feel the need to regularly tweet, an app for one’s iphone is an essential item. I’ve been through many during the past year and only one gets close to providing a mobile service that matches a laptop/workstation experience. What’s more, Tweetdeck is free. Go and download it and try it out.

visit site>>

Evernote: Anyone that doesn’t use Evernote should have their head examined. It’s one of the best web-based tools around and it’s even better when mobile. As well as saving all your great ideas when you’re out and about, you can recover all the notes you’ve saved and tagged. This app alone saves me hours of time every week in no longer having to search through scraps of paper for those important little notes.

visit site>>

Stanza: A new entry this past month, Stanza is more than just an ebook reader, it’s a gateway to a whole world of ebooks, including thousands of free ones. You can search, download and read ebooks straight from your iphone just as you would a Kindle (if you had one).

visit site>>

iSki: From this years favourite to last years favourite. iSki is a must for all ski nuts. If you’re on the piste or of to the piste you’ll need to understand the local weather conditions. If you’re stuck at home with nothing to do, iSki gives you instant access to hundreds of webcams all over the world so even when you can’t be there, you can see what you’re missing.

visit site>>

So those are mine: What’s your favourite app?

Yell.com are seeking to refinance £3.8billion (that’s £3,800,000,000!) and, at the same time, are looking to raise a further £660m (that’s another £660,000,000 ) from its investors.

For most business owners these figures are incomprehensibly large.

At its simplest level Yell.com provide directory services to businesses and generates revenue through advertising. That’s a simple enough concept for most of us to grasp and makes one wonder why, therefore, Yell.com are in such difficulty.

The simples answer is, of course, The Internet and the shift in consumer habits in relation to local search ( I do, however, accept that there are some complex issues behind the current difficult financial situation)

Personally, I can’t remember the last time i looked at the Yellow Pages so I took a quick straw-poll of my friends to see what they thought. Not one could remember the last time they used Yellow pages (nor yell.com for that matter) to find a local product or service over using The Internet. Not one could remember the last time they dusted off their copy of Yellow Pages and tried to find their local drain unblocking service, removals company or dentist.

And there’s the rub: More and more frequently, consumers are turning to the Internet as their first point of call for local search and, with some 90% of the UK market, Google will be the main deliverer of results for those searches.

As businesses catch onto this situation and turn to direct, online, niche search, they will benefit from reduced advertising costs and improved conversions. Where though does that leave Yell.com, its debt and investors?

The ‘Jedward’ saga generates so much media interest for the X-factor that Simon could not bring himself to judge them out of the competition (no matter how much he claims to hate them) so he, once again, side-stepped the issue and left it to the public.

Putting aside my personal preferences and the fact that this is supposed to be a singing talent competition (Simon C’s definition when it suites him), I decided to get some real-time responses and follow consumer interest through Twitter with #xfactor.

Wow! Talk about a hornet’s nest. At one point, just a few minutes after ‘Simon Cowardly’s’ decision to go public, there were upwards of 1000 new tweets ever 15 seconds. ITV2 were claiming the telephone lines were hot with callers but I can’t imagine that there were a fraction of the nuber of people tweeting their frustration and anger.

Today I’ve received invites to join Facebook groups that ‘Ban X-factor from TV’ and a few others that want to do some horrid things to Mr Cowell.  My RSS feeds are hot with news stories and, since I started typing this entry, there’s been another 1748 tweets on #xfactor (so far).

I don’t know if Mr Cowell is on FB, Myspace or tweets or does anything else with Social Media. If he does, well done Simon, your finger is well and truly on the pulse. If he doesn’t, I doubt he’ll much care for what’s said about him and his X-factor.   However, there are tens of thousands of conversation going on every second on the social network and to completely ignore them all would be utter maddness; for Mr Cowell, the X-factor, and anyone else who’s not listening to the chatter regarding their brands.

The Internet has allowed social networking activities to evolve on a scale that even 20 years ago was unimaginable. Social network service providers, like Facebook, allow new groups to form and evolve on a global scale within minutes. You can now join special interest groups that share experiences on growing, say, minature tomatoes or a general group that links school-friends or family members.

Other popular sites that you may have heard about include MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, YouTube, Friends Reunited and, of course, Twitter. All these cater for slightly different groups, ages and needs but they all have one thing in common; they provide a service that allows anyone to keep in touch with, and grow, their own network of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances.

Although the main growth in the use of these sites is by the young and early adopters who generally accept, and are very comfortable with, these technologies, there is a growing acceptance by the older generation who have been introduced to the technology through Friends Reunited (now with an estimated 21 million members!).

People tend join social networking sites for all kind of reasons:

As personal time becomes even more scarce, they are a great way to keep in touch with your friends, especially as friend-networks are now geographically diverse. The days are long gone when the friends you grew up with still live in the same village as you – even I have childhood friends that are now spread-out all over the world. Social Network sites make keeping in touch really easy and fun.

Many businesses use social networking sites to keep in touch with their employees, suppliers, sub-contractors and even customers.

Teenagers use a multitude of new media technologies, including social networking sites, to keep in touch with their friends. Bebo and MySpace are favourites with this age group and features that include photo-albums and polls make these sites interactive, great fun and very addictive.

As well as the social aspects of these sites, they also provide more serious applications; special interest groups and politicians use them to spread the word, gain support and get feedback on their opinions and policies and businesses are using them as powerful marketing tools – although beware, as negative views spread more quickly than positive ones!

Another type of social network site that has grown massively since their advent is the online dating community. Virtual dating with the goal of finding your perfect partner has evolved from being a sleazy pastime to a serious business. An estimated 1 in 12 newlyweds in the UK initially met online and the fastest growing sector is those aged 50 and up. We usually only hear of the more unusual stories but there are thousands of new relationships starting every day around the world thanks to social networking sites. With the Internet changing so much of our lives, why should the human heart be exempt?

Looking forward, the ever reducing cost of getting online with mobile devices, the explosion in availability of rich content such as music and video, coupled with our ever increasing fascination with technology, will make social networking sites an ever more important point of contact with our chosen social group; with whom we will be able to share experiences, like watch a film, as well as just keeping in touch.

Has the way we make and retain friends changed forever? Hopefully not, but keeping in touch with them certainly has.
Have you, or your, business used social networking site to help communicate with your network in an innovative way?

(article originally written for out-and-out-living magazine, June 2008)

Here’s the story. As only the Monty Python cast could tell it…

The serious side of this is the power of free and it’s ability to generate a huge following. The Monty Python’s decision to give away all their archive footage has developed a new generation of Python followers and has relaunched their dvd collection to best seller status.

Whether you’re a fan or not, go grab yourself a coffee and take 15 minutes to browse around their channel. Come back and tell me if you didn’t get a smile on your face. http://www.youtube.com/montypython