Wednesday, July 2. 2008Some Types Of People Who Read Blogs........John Linton .......appear to have serious psychiatric problems. I am reaching the end of the 365 days of writing this daily rambling of what I'm involved with each day of my business life and have nearly won my bet - only the logistical difficulties (and the lack of understanding of a traveling companion) from July 14th to July 26th stand in the way of 'victory'. When I was first appraised of why anyone in their right mind should attempt to write a regular blog on the boring aspects of the operations of a business the benefits (to the business) were very clearly set out and very well argued by the writers of the two articles an old friend gave me but I couldn't see how this could happen for Exetel. I can say, after 11+ months of writing a daily blog, that each of the seven benefits: 1) Increase in sales across all products/services have materialised for Exetel and for me personally in exactly the ways, and the quanta, stated in the articles. It has been a very interesting, and for Exetel a very rewarding, result for a minimal effort. The rewards are so large and so measurable that I still have trouble accepting that someone, actually two people, in 'academia' could provide such valuable guidance on such a difficult to grasp set of commercial concepts. In purely monetary terms Exetel is better off financially to the tune of North of $A2 million and that amount is directly quantifiable and is conservative. So, my advice to anyone who runs a business, or someone who would like the business they are associated with to do better financially and in many other ways is 'invest' in the 20 minutes it takes daily to write a few words about any aspects of your business that are current - I can personally add my 'testimony' to the claims made by other people that you'll never make a better time/financial return 'investment'. My blog is not 'advertised' in any way other than providing a link half way down an 'inside' page of the Exetel web site and this conforms to the advice I was given that absolutely no 'promotion' is required for the blog to achieve the stated benefits. It does take time for the 'readership' to grow and even more time for the 'correct' readership to grow but it did happen for me in the time frames suggested and the 'results' also happened within the suggested time frames. The one down side of writing a blog that is left 'open' for comments and questions by the readers of the blog (which, in my opinion is essential to get the most benefits) is that you have to read some 'communications' that are written by psychotics who sometimes manage to pack a really surprising amount of 'hatred' in to a few sentences - and this has happened on a linearly increasing basis over the past 11+ months. Lunacy is clearly on the rise in Australia based on the sort of communications I have been receiving. I seriously wonder at what state of mental deterioration these people must have reached to actually bother to read what some obscure individual writes on an obscure web site more than once as what I write seems to so deeply offend such people. I would have thought any, even relatively sane person, who found a writer on an obscure web site to be annoying would exercise the simple decision not to read what was written after the first time. Not the case with some of the psychos who clutter my inbox - they seem to read every word I write in depth and then write in abusive detail about every aspect of what has been written embellished with scathing appraisals of every aspect of my physical and mental attributes. Based on some of the emails I've received it seems that they are badly in need of remedial English schooling and a much better vocabulary as their successive emails are drearily repetitive (why do they find it difficult to spell even their swear words correctly?). I didn't bother to either keep the emails from such people or a record of the number and 'classification' of the content in the early stages but after the volume and frequency began to increase I kept a spreadsheet of these poisonous communications from December of 2007 onwards. Some of the 'statistics' from this record show: 1. an 'incidence' of 5 per week in November increasing, almost linearly, to 25 a week in the week ending 29/6/08. 2. an increase in repeat senders (more than 3 'hate mails' per month per sender) from none in December 2007 to 6 in June 2008 (one demented soul has written a vitriolic assessment of my morals, ethics and stupidity each day except Saturdays since February 2008) 3. it's impossible to be sure but over 50% of these 'hate' missives appear to be written by 'employees' of other ISPs 4. it appears that 50% are written by people for whom English is a second language 5. 75% of repeat writers include increasingly vituperative accusations of 'cowardice' on my part from not allowing their 'comments' to appear on the blog I think I'm a fairly thick skinned person who has dealt with 'anonymous' abuse sensibly for a long time and has never been affected in any way by the sort of people who write such things other than to marvel at why they waste their time doing it. However, perhaps because I'm very tired at the end of another very difficult and demanding year and I am certainly physically and mentally 'run down', I am becoming 'irked' by some of the more persistent 'serial abusers' and the hysterical level of abuse they resort to. So it's the only down side I have found in writing a daily rambling which is completely overshadowed by the enormous benefits of making the effort to set aside 20 or so minutes each day to express your views on something(s) that are in the forefront of your mind at the time of writing. My advice to anyone involved in running a business - write a blog on a consistent basis and watch your business significantly improve. Trackbacks
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$2 million. Yowsers!
May one ask how this came about? Comment (1)
I could explain it in detail but that would spoil the future use of this particular blog.
There is no actual 'secret', and if you could ever find it useful to spend the time working through the various 'articles' on the use of blogs on the web and in various other sources you would be able to determine whether you could use a blog to achieve similar benefits - I think the benefits are 'universal'. Comments (6)
How did you quantitise that figure though?
Comment (1)
All aspects of a business are recorded and measured against previous results and planned results.
It isn't difficult to track changes that occur as a result of discrete actions taken by an individual within the company and things that occur for reasons not able to be attributed to a discrete action. Comments (6)
All i can say is that i hope the positive comments and emails out-number the nasty ones.
happy financial new year! Comment (1)
Abusive e-mail every day except Saturday?
Do they win a prize or something? What a nutter..... Comment (1)
Do you have links for those articles you mentioned? Also what were the 7 benefits?
Comment (1)
The articles were 'hard copy' and I don't know whether they were on the web so I'm sorry that i can't gve you an easy reference to the specific ones I read.
The benefits were: 1) Increase in sales across all products/services 2) Better pricing offers from current suppliers 3) Offers of better pricing from new suppliers 4) Lower personnel 'turnover' 5) Higher number of useful/practical suggestions from people unknown to you 6) More press coverage 7) More invitations to join other 'boards/entities' Comments (6)
I am one of your new "record making" customers who churned to Exetel on the 30/06/2008.
I have been reading your blogs for several months now and they strongly influenced my decision to move to Exetel. Where else can you get such a window into the thought processes that go into shaping a business? I am so looking forward to seeing the ideas shared over the last few months come to fruition as new services. Thank you John and keep the blogs coming for another 12 months Comment (1)
Thank you for your support - it's really appreciated.
Comments (6)
Hi, thanks for the really insightful post. It's very interesting to hear your stories on returns achieved. Thanks for sharing.
Comment (1)
Wow, lots of comments today!
I've only been reading for about a month now, and sorry I can't help you achieve any of your goals, but I'm certainly learning a lot about businesses and the thinking that goes on behind the scenes. Hopefully I'll be able to put it into practice some day. Keep up the good (mostly!) work. Comment (1)
I thought the bet was for a year's worth of blogging.
Keep up the blogging as it is very good for a technical Exetel end user to get an understanding of how an ISP works. As you have stated and given to your best ability without any lawsuits a behinds the scene view of how an ISP thinks. I have seen after being hooked up to AARNET and the Internet for over 20 years now and have seen many ISP's come and go. I hope going forward you still have a place for the technical home user as most of the ISP's I have been a user of that move into the business market eventually piss off the home user segment. Hope you win the bet. Andrew Comment (1)
The principal reason that Exetel comenced in business was to provide the lowest cost broadband services to residential users in as many places around Australia as possible - I don't see that ever changing.
We need to develop a larger business user base to continue to 'balance' our bandwidth usage. Comments (6)
Very interesting blog, keep it up.
Sometimes I think you give us too much information though. Suppliers must know now that anything they offer or tell you may become public, without naming them of course. Comment (1)
John, great job in nearly reaching your milestone.
I have read your blog nearly every day for the last few weeks, its been very entertaining and informative, more so than normal news sources, including whirlpool and Australian it, simply because there is less miss-information. It seems a bit like that movie "Master and Commander" with you as Russel Crow, respecting your staff as you sail your ship (Exetel) and occasionally having to battle a big french ship (Telstra, Optus etc), while putting out other fires, and making some time to admire your surroundings. Comment (1)
Hello John,
I love reading your blog, so insightful. There are a few other Australian companies I would love to see inside, just because they're so *interesting*. One in particular is Jim Penman from Jim's Group. I haven't been able to find his blog, if he has one. I wonder if your adamant enumeration of the pros would be enough to encourage him to start? Comment (1)
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