Ricky’s Online Business Blog

I had good experience attending the first BarCamp in Malaysia and blogged about it in BarCamp – The Ideal Learning Platform.  Now they are going to have a similar one called Startup Camp in Malaysia on 22nd and 23rd November 2008 in Plug and Play Center, The Garden, Kuala Lumpur.

I’m not sure the difference between BarCamp and StartupCamp (can the organizer explain?) but I’m very sure it will be both fun and useful.  The article below is copied from their “blog kit” upon the organizer’s request.  Can you spot me in the BarCamp photo below? If you have missed the BarCamp, come join me this time!

Startup Camp KL 08 is going to be the largest unconference for entrepreneurs and startups in Malaysia. Over 300 entrepreneurs from all walks of life and sectors are expected to congregate in two full days of ideas exchange and making connections. Startup Camp is held in conjunction with the Global Entrepreneurship Week and it will be on the only National Level GEW event. It will be on 22nd and 23rd November.

Being an unconference, this event is organized by participants for participants. There will be no keynotes address, no special guest and no long boring lectures. It will be jam packed with new ideas and opportunities. If this is your first time attending an unconference, be prepared, for this is an ultra casual event.

For Malaysia’s very first Startup Camp. We have divided it into 3 tracks. These tracks comprises of the General Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurs and Technopreneurship. We have allocated slots of 45 minutes for the participants to conduct their sessions.

The session type range from discussion to presentation to round tables to games to anything you can think of. For those participants who wish to contribute a session can book their session at our Wiki. As for the rest of the participant, we all have two crucial task.

Number 1. Participants should be actively participating in the sessions and share with others. You can share with your friends details about startup camp before the event or you can share what you learn from startup camp after attending it.

Number 2. Vote with your feet. Do remember you can vote for each sessions with your feet. If you find you cannot contribute to the sessions or you cannot add value to yourself or the rest in the session, it is polite to walk out and drop in to another session. If you do not find session that you are interested, you can always add on the board to start and impromptu session.

Details of Startup Camp KL 08
Date: 22nd and 23rd November 2008
Time: 9 am to 8pm on Saturday and Sunday.
Venue: Plug and Play Center @Level 7, The Garden, South Tower.

Register at http://www.entrepreneurs.my/start-up-camp

I have a little idea for IT service providers to come together to promote your products and services using blog.

You can be selling computer hardware, doing computer repairs, setting up computer networks, providing web hosting, web design, e-commerce services, writing computer software, doing Internet marketing, teaching computer classes, or providing any other computer-related services.

But if your target customers are the SME/SMI (small and medium sized enterprises) in Malaysia, please consider this proposal.

You can’t be providing ALL computer services yourself, even Microsoft and IBM don’t.  But from the point of view of our target market, especially the less IT-savvy Malaysian businesses, these IT-related services are all just “computer stuff” to them.  So if there is a single, one-stop portal which can provide all their “computer stuff”, why not?

All of us can congregate to this neutral online blog platform.  We can write “advertorials” for our reader.  It could be some computer tips for our readers.  Of course, don’t forget to promote your services, include your contact details, and link to your web site at the end of your article.

This is like a tech and IT business blog geared towards the enterprises rather than individuals.  You build your credibility as an expert in your IT service and get customers from your blog posts.

So if you don’t already have a blog or a web site, you can consider this. It’s zero cost to you.  Just need your time to write about your area of expertise.

But if you are already blogging, why still join?  Simply because there is strength and synergy in working together.  While keep on blogging on your site, you can also copy and post your articles on this IT blog.

Anyone interested?

Recently I went to Kuala Selangor to watch fireflies.  We rode on the boat and travel along the river to see them on the river banks.  There are two famous places there, Kampung Kuantan which is on the upstream of the river, and Kampung Bukit Belimbing on the downstream.

These fireflies are little insects which emit light on their abdomen.  They emit light for mating purpose.  But I read that one type of female fireflies use the light to attract male fireflies to them and eat them up!

I was there in Kuala Selangor in 2004, now again in 2008.  There were not many fireflies four years ago.  But to my surprise, there are even less now!  What happened?  I don’t know.  Four years ago I saw people catching them while watching.  Or maybe that place is no longer an ideal habitat for the fireflies.

While waiting on the jetty, I could see a photo showing hundreds of fireflies beaming their light.  I don’t know when the photo was taken, and for how long exposure time it was taken.  But I’m sure people would have an expectation of watching so many fireflies by the river.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.  If you want to see how satisfied the customers are after visiting a place, look at their faces when they come out.  Do you see a lot of smiles?  Do you think they will go out telling their friends to come?  Sorry to say but watching fireflies is a one-time business only.

What will happen if the day comes there is no more firefly in Kuala Selangor?  Less tourists will go there.  There is even a firefly resort built near the jetty to accomodate tourists coming for fireflies.  Do they have to close shop then?

Well, hopefully they could do something to preserve the fireflies.  Otherwise Kuala Selangor will no longer be on the tourists’ map for fireflies.  But if the “extinction” is expected sooner or later, then perhaps it’s time to change business model not to depend so much on fireflies any more.

Sometimes, we may need to proactively “disrupt” our business first, before it is disrupted by others.

I was asked by a customer on how to create a blog like my RickySoo.com.  I guess I might as well post the reply here so that others can be benefited too.

First of all, this blog is not a prominent one.  There are many other blogs doing much better than mine, in terms of their business model, strategy, marketing, design, usefulness and content.

But having created a few blogs for myself and others, I guess I still qualify to give my two cents.  Below is not a step-by-step guide but just an overview.  Not only the technical side, but also the business and marketing aspects as well.  If you need any detailed information, please post your questions in the comments below.

Why you want to blog – Decide on the objective of a blog.  Is it to promote your business, sell your products, bring traffic to your main web site, be a PR channel for your business, express your opinions, earn money by blogging or anything else. Even if it is just a personal blog, you still need a “business model”.

Domain name and web hosting – Register a domain name and web hosting.  For serious blogging, don’t use free blogging service.  There are many such domain name registrars and hosting providers.  You can also consider mine at http://bizpartner.com.my.  Alternatively, if you already have a business web site, you can include your blog into it under a folder such as http://www.yourbusiness.com/blog, or a subdomain such as http://blog.yourbusiness.com.

Get WordPress – Download the free blogging software called WordPress here at http://wordpress.org/download/.  There are many other such software.  But so far WordPress is the most popular one.  Your web hosting provider, like me, may also provide a facility (such as cPanel) to install WordPress on your web server with just a few clicks of button.

Install WordPress – If you have downloaded WordPress manually, install it on your server.  Refer to the documentation at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.  It’s a 5-minute installation.  Basically you just need to upload the files to your server, run the install file, and then follow the instructions on screen to finalize the setup.

Tune up your blog – Login to your admin account, click “Design” to choose a user-friendly blog theme. Click “Settings” to set up various options, especially options for Discussion and Permalinks.  For a start, you should allow anyone to post comments.  You should also change the “permalink structure” from the default to another more search engine-friendly structure such as “Day and name”.

Publicize your blog – Let Google know about your blog.  You can submit your blog to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl/.  Let your friends and customers know about your blog.  Try to get other web sites to link to your blog.  Incoming links help search engines to find you, and also to better your search engine ranking.  If you have another business web site, you should put up a link there to your blog.

Blog consistently – It is one thing to set up your blog, but it’s another to run it successfully.  To make it effective, you need to make new blog posts regularly and consistently, even if it means just once a week.  In other words, you need to keep on adding (good) content into your blog so that search engines and other people can recognize it.

Review your blog – Evaluate your blog regularly to see whether it’s helping you to achieve the objective you set in the first place.  Change course, or fine tune your blog to make sure it works for you.  Close it down and restart another one if necessary.  I had two other blogs on RickySoo.com since years ago but closed them down since they were not serving any useful purpose.

More advanced options – The above is just scratching the surface.  As you use blog more often, you will naturally learn more.  Then you can consider other more advanced options such as installing useful plugins, dealing with comment spams, search engine optimization (SEO), tracking your feed readers, doing web site analytics, promoting it on social networks and so on.  But don’t worry for now.  There is a time for everything.

Have I missed out anything else important? Please correct me or add your comments if any.  Happy blogging!