China :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Just under two weeks ago I posted on my Social Media Show podcast site a 30 minute conversation I recorded with Professor Lonnie B. Hodge, about the workshops on the digital media release, which we are scheduled to deliver in China from July 18 to July 25.

I had intended to publicize the podcast but have not done a lot in that regard. Nevertheless, some people have either listened to it online or downloaded it, presumably to listen to it at a convenient time, on their iPod or other audio player.

What I find interesting from the statistics is that the number of downloads – 99 – far exceeds the number of events where people listened online – 17. Perhaps some people would listen online if the podcast were briefer. Or is that sort of breakdown fairly typical?

Looking at the stats for some other podcasts, another at 32 minutes has so far scored 18 for downloads and 7 for listening online. For a shorter podcast, at just over 15 minutes, the figures are 32 for downloads and 10 for listening online.

Obviously one can’t draw too much from these few examples. It does look as if downloads might trump listening online generally, but the ratio of difference is considerably higher in the case of the podcast on the China workshops than for the other examples.

One of the considerations that emerges for me is that if you are relying on a podcast to get someone to take action – say to book online for a workshop – and you structure your podcast with a call to such action, that call might be delivered while someone is walking on the beach, or working out at the gym, or in a car or bus on the way to or from work. And that surely means that, more often than not, and for more of your target audience, the action will not be taken on the basis just of that call to action in the podcast.

I imagine others have looked at this issue and come up with strategies. I’d love to know what such strategies could be, or the elements of a strategy, if you would care to leave a comment.

Now that I come to think of it, I’m pretty sure we did not actually include a call to action in the podcast. But we did include the details of the workshops in the accompanying blog post.

Here they are. Please forward the link to this post to anyone you know in China who could be interested in attending.

Hong Kong (18 July): http://pr-20-hongkong.eventbrite.com

Shanghai (21 July): http://pr-20.eventbrite.com

Beijing (23 July): http://pr-20-BJ.eventbrite.com

Guangzhou (25 July): http://pr-20.gz.eventbrite.com

For more information, please contact us.

Question: how do I frame a blog post for this solo professional, working from home focused site, when the subject is how my company has been appointed a partner for a product which is really an Enterprise 2.0, collaboration, social media platform?

Not really work from home stuff, is it?

At first I thought not. Then, because I really wanted to share my good news here and knew that some readers and subscribers would otherwise miss that news, I mulled it over and came up with at least two reasons why the story is appropriately included here.

But first, the basic story is that last week, the Colorado Springs headquartered ITBrix LLC announced that my company had been appointed as solution providers for the ITBrix WordFrame Community 1.0 platform, with a regional focus – China, South East Asia, Australasia. There is a “social media release” version of the press release, with summaries and related links, on my deswalsh.com site.

Now, relevance to home based business?

OK. First, there is the fact that the technology that makes a product like WordFrame also makes it possible for me to have, from a home office in a still fairly sleepy holiday town on the edge of a tourism centre in east coast Australia, a base for a regional business, indeed a global business. That for me is a pretty cool consideration in its own right.

Second, there are lots of others like me, or people in small groups in small offices, but who belong to professional or business associations, or, like me, have partnerships and strategic alliances which jump across the old barriers of distance and time. WordFrame, or other social media, collaboration, document management platforms, can work for them/us, at least as well as for companies and organizations in traditional, central city office buildings, manufacturing plants and other “regular” work environments.

Accountancy practices, for example, are often in the small, even solo business sector. So the adoption of the WordFrame Community platform by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, England and Wales (ICAEW) shows how WordFrame can work for a group of professionals in independent businesses.

If you are a member of an organization or professional group and would like to see how the WordFrame Community platform could help you collaborate more effectively, why not organize a demo for yourself and some colleagues? Just contact me and I’ll get back to you with the details.