The Kiss Business too (2)

The Top 100 Business Blogs - wow!

After all the SOB Blog-birthday fun (did you know TheGoodBlogs have a new widget capturing all the 'Good' SOB-blogs? See here) another surprise this week. My one year old Kiss Business blog found its (his/hers?) place among the Top 100 Business Blogs.

John Crickett over at Business Opportunities And Ideas has done a tremendous job in creating this list - based on Technorati's ranking:

"I define a Business blog as one that provides business ideas, advice, commentary or feedback on business in general. I’ve excluded any site that I feel is primarily a news based site or that is merely posting content from other sources. I’ve also excluded sites that are too new or have not been updated for over a month."

The blogs are listed in order of their Technorati rankings (T), their Alexa rankings (A) are show as well. The rankings are correct at the time of posting (24.10.07)

1. Copy Blogger T: 36 A: 7,825
2. Seth Godin T: 47 A: 10,314
3. MicroPersuasion T: 169 A: 33,643
4. How To Change The World T: 180 A: 14,709
5. Duct Tape Marketing T: 215 A: 31,714
6. Freelance Switch T: 312 A: 10,638
7. A VC T: 1,226 A: 27,737
8. Rough Type T: 1,253 A: 69,429
9. Successful Blog T: 1,432 A: 44,935
10. Small Business Canada T: 1,517 A: N/A
11. David Allen, Getting Things Done T: 1,549 A: 53,592
12. Springwise T: 1,913 A: 23,858
13. Small Biz Trends T: 2,155 A: 63,364
14. Fast Company T: 2,310 A: 12,141
15. Instigator Blog T: 2,477 A: 58,816
16. Occam’s Razor T: 2,548 A: 45,541
17. Smart Wealthy Rich T: 2,879 A: 79,415
18. eMoms At Home T: 3,443 A: 27,125
19. Escape from Cubicle Nation T: 3,467 A: 202,751
20. The Marketing Technology Blog T: 3,496 A: 47,038
21. Business Pundit T: 3,724 A: 114,669
22. The Engaging Brand T: 4,404 A: 433,644
23. Influential Marketing Blog T: 4,779 A: 98,886
24. Drew McLellan - The Marketing Minute T: 4,820 A: 129,669
25. The Digerati Life T: 4,873 A: 53,353
26. Success From The Nest T: 4,908 A: 95,008
27. Business Blog Consulting T: 5,186 A:237,901
28. Church Of The Customer T: 5,576 A: 250,201
29. Todd And T: 5,643 A: 161, 019
30. Net Business Blog T: 5,936 A: 36,107
31. Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing T: 6,583 A: 92,784
32. Bootstrapper T: 7,497 A: 50,304
33. About.com Entrepreneurs T: 7,797 A: N/A
34. Blogtrepreneur T: 7,897 A: 53,011
35. Branding & Marketing T: 8,200 A: 710,326
36. Simplenomics T: 10,252 A:288,753
37. Freelance Folder T: 10,543 A: 63,590
38. Business Opportunities Weblog T: 11,018 A: 16,213
39. HELLO, My Name Is Blog T: 11,395 A: 422,218
40. Self Made Minds T: 11,704 A: 39,719
41. Sox First T: 12,894 A: 994,161
42. Young Go Getter T: 14,239 A: 45,373
43. Trust Matters T: 15,462 A: 58,403
44. Small Biz Survival T:  A: 18,074 A: 875,069
45. The Personal MBA T: 19,207 A: 142,649
46. The Entrepreneurial Mind T: 21,958, A: 155,166
47. Blog Business World T: 23,025  A: 252,405
48. Working At Home On The Internet T: 23,247 A: 423,900
49. Biz Informer T: 24,631 A: 904,745
50. EmpowerWomenNow T: 25,837 A: 117,085
51. Biz Plan Hacks T: 27,048 A: 1,335,732
52. CreateBusinessGrowth T: 32,949 A:197,290
53. Business Opportunities and Ideas T: 33,205 A: 282,805
54. The KISS Business T: 35,496 A: 621,082
55. Startup Spark T: 35,747 A: 386,949
56. Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing Blog T: 41,092 A: 467,418
57. MindPetals T: 41,714 A: 128,487
58. Marketing Deviant T: 43,764 A: 281,072
59. Go Big Network T: 44,842 A: 25,303
60. Cool Business Ideas T: 49,679 A: 187,126
61. Neville’s Financial Blog T: 52,048 A: 140,296
62. Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog :T 52,589 A: 795,253
63. College Startup T: 53,143 A: 184,398
64. Reflections Of A Biz Driven Life T: 79,365 A: 361,398
65. Branding Blog T: 93,462 A: 1,110,518
66. Carnival Of The Capitalists T: 93,462 A: 1,897,375
67. Young Entrepreneur T: 104,933 A: 26,491
68. Marketing Genius T: 132,066 A: 2,222,119
69. Better For Business T: 137,774 A: 590,797
70. The Small Business Blog T: 140,824 A: 577,490
71. Focused Mind T: 162,356 A: 520,971
72. Small Business Tips T: 166,367 A: 74,005
73. Lifes Perspective T: 194,358 A: 179,801
74. Business Opportunities Blog T: 199,700 A: 832,678
75. The Savvy Entrepreneur T: 224,227 A: 391,147
76. Egg Marketing Blog T: 231,062 A: 740,867
77. The Franchise King Blog T: 273,240 A: 520,732
78. Small Business Entrepreneur T: 317,977 A: 883,094
79. The Great Startup Game T: 331,293 A: 421,492
80. Work At Home Start Up Guide T: 345,597 A: 1,190,178
81. Dorm Room Biz T: 360,865 A: 957,072
82. Startup Blog T: 377,609 A: 2,552,189
83. Open Inovators T: 395,824 A: 1,230,257
84. Get Entrepreneurial T: 437,475 A: 446,085
85. Bplans Blog T: 437,475 A: 1,373,525
86. Stuff4Restaurants T: 461,534 A: 298,982
87. Canadian Entrepreneur T: 484,461 A: 237,901
88. Strategize T: 487,964 A: 2,856,731
89. The Marketing Spot T: 587,893 A: 2,550,840
90. The Ravings Of A Mad Entrepreneurial Scientist T: 587,893 A: 566,836
91. More Than We Know T: 871,446 A: 2,964,420
92. Solo Entrepreneur T: 1,212,405 A: 471,491
93. Stuff4Business T: 1,391,575 A: 298,982
94. Consultant Journal T: 4,262,598 A: 667,342
95. Startup Addict Musings T: 4,446,976 A: 1,03390,690
96. Edith Yeung T: 8,911,336 A: 125,290
97. Boostrap Me T: 8,911,336 A: 550,348
98. The Selling Sherpa T: Not Listed A: 772,292
99. BizzBangBuzz T: Not Listed A: 1,484,797
100. The Freestyle Entrepreneur T: Not Listed A: 1,519,518

Yours truly was truly amazed to find "The Kiss Business too - No more Double Dutch in business" ranked at 54! Wow.

The future and change

My friend Steve Roesler (All Things Workplace) is back with more post in his series about Change - (Creating Change and Smooth Transitions): not just a must-read, but also a must-think/ponder topic.

While reading - during lunch-time today - I found this 'thoughts on change' in "Soar with your Strengths" by Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson:

"The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created - created first in mind and will, created next in activity.
The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination"
John Saar

I can live with that ;-) Rephrase that: I live with/for that!

Reminded me not only of Steve's series and my own ponderings on it, but also on what my mentor urges time after time: thinking out ideas/changes is fine - implementing ideas/changes is better and much more rewarding.

A Birthday party, multiple again! 24.10.07

Liz at Successful and Outstanding blog(gers) is throwing a party!

A Party, Wednesday, October 24th! You’re Invited!!

In honour of various blog birthdays (my Kiss2 among them) the celebrations will be plentiful. What will be happening:
It’s an all-day conversation with outstanding gifts for EVERYONE.

    * Open Comments all day.
    * Flash mob commenting.
    * Photographic Party Favours.
    * HUGE SURPRISES!!.
    * Guest posts galore. (My  contribution - The Currency: Talent)

A Party! You’re Invited! C’mon! Let’s Talk and Have Some Fun!

(There’s only one rule . . . be nice.)

Changes and 'simplicity' (or plain laziness?)

Changing methods never comes without some repercussions.

On  "All Things Workplace" Steve Roesler is dedicating a whole category on the subject "Creating Changes and Smooth Transitions". The main train of thought on his latest series (4 articles so far) is how to get others on board when the change instigator has a mile-long head lead.

A week ago I mentioned working with (more testing out) the online software program of AWeber that will make my life as 'marketing' manager more easier (with a bit more automagical auto-responder emails to our prospects). I'm getting to grips with all the features the online program has to offer and I must say, I didn't find it that hard once you know the sequel you have to follow to start an email campaign.

On a monthly base we as Wood You Like send out an semi-automated newsletter and one of the features of AWeber is doing that fully-automated. Only thing is though, our existing newsletter readers have to confirm their subscription. Re-register their interest in our news, because we, as company, are changing one of our methods to communicate with them. We know it's for the better, but - and this is the reason for mentioning Steve's series - we are also miles ahead in this particular 'change-process'. Will our readers 'catch-up' with this and how quickly?

No better way to find out with a small test-group. I've just finished reading (on recommendation of the 'good doctor') Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini. One of the captivating researches mentioned in the book (more posts will follow on this excellent and sometimes astonishing book) is that most persons want to appear consistent, i.e. once they have agreed to something they are more than likely to back that decision again.

Counting on that human trait I mailed one group of 100 of our readers with a small newsletter, requesting them to re-register their subscription. The email contains a link to our newsletter page on the website where they have to fill in their name, email address and click the button "Sign me up!". Then an automated request to confirm the re-registering would follow, with the request to click the link embedded in that email. All in all 5 actions, very kindly asked, but 5 separate action nonetheless.

Another book (“The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” by George Silverman) I read beginning this year talked about "Shortening the Decision Cycle". Making it very simple for a person to decide on anything really. AWeber also has a feature to import existing lists of readers, who will be sent an automated email - the same Request Confirmation email the first test group will receive once they've gone through the 4 other actions.

So I decided to test out if the combined ideas of consistency and shortening the decision cycle would make a difference to the number of re-registering readers. In AWeber I created a new campaign, edited the request confirmation email text to explain very shortly why the receiver was requested to click on the link in the same email to re-register for our  newsletter - imported a different group of 100 existing readers to the online software and waited.
That was Friday afternoon.

Same wording used in our kind request, only the number of actions to take is different.
A clear winner - in this catch-up race for change - is showing its face: but is it laziness or life made simple?

The results so far:
3% of group 1 (5 actions) re-registered versus
25% of group 2 (1 action)

You tell me?

Time flies, Kiss blog 1 year old! - young I mean

Would you believe it! Today, exactly one year ago my Kiss Business too (No More Double Dutch in Business) was 'born'! And it seems to be a good tradition to 'celebrate' this blog-birthday. I could of course bore you to death with all the statistics I can find about the Kiss2 Blog, (153 posts, 2 pages, 351 comments, 16 trackbacks, 64 readers per day, 9878 life-time page views, 181 Technorati authority, 26,802 Technorati ranking, 437 blogpost linking to this blog, 98 fans, 12 community members on MyBlogLog) but I won't.

I'm going to use this special day to finally honour one of the meme's I'm still due on: Out of the Past - (my turtle friend Robert Hruzeck 'only' tagged my on 16 July this year - so in fact I'm also honouring our 'turtle' tradition):

"pick the ten posts that, when read, will give your readers a good feel for what you and your blog are all about".

So, without further ado and in no particular order:

• Z-list? great another list mainly because through that list and all the stampede, commotion, opinions, pros and contras I found many new friends in the blogsphere and through those new friends even more new friends
• Frequent readers of this blog know I read a lot and publish various book-reviews here, but the lessons learnt from "Book review - Now Discover your strengths" still resonances through my whole being. It was also the main reason to start (yet) another blog, a more personal one.
• When I started this blog it was mainly to write about 'making being in business simple'. Businesses who make your own business life simple have my greatest admiration (and support!). Shortening the decision cycle is exactly the type of stories I like to tell.
• Books have an important place in my life (always had and always will), I get great pleasure of discovering new ideas etc out of them. But I also love combining ideas from various books into - for me - practical better ideas, plans or systems. In June even more happened because of a certain combination I made. "Combinations and my project" relates how one thing lead to another, which lead to another ;-)
• Writing is my second (and 'old') love. Groups-writing projects (be it under the disguise of being called just that, or a Tag or a Meme) are a very nice way to fulfil that writing 'need'. One of the first I contributed to is still my favourite: "Gotta' Get Goals"
• I also like to 'talk' about good friends and how they helped/help me along. Another group writing project gave me a good opportunity to do so: "What I learned from my mentors"
• According to the Gallup Strength finder I'm a learner. "To Boldly Go... learned to think bolder" became a milestone in this never ending learning process.
• Once again, this blog tries to promote and/or report on those practises and companies that can make your business life simple. "How to confuse your clients with partnership" shows how not to go about it!
• Coming back to reading, combining and writing: Combined Snippets 2 might sum that up pretty much. Plus it lead to a whole new fixed page (when I finally got round to it!)
• Thought long about which post to list as entry number 10. And I can't decide between two posts: "Do-ers, thinkers and dreamers (and cats)" or "What truly great businesses (and business people) do".
  So you decide - lets turn this into a little contest between the two ;-) Just tell me which one you think reflects the Kiss Business too blog best (and why!) - I'll report back on it later.

Remains just one thing: THANK YOU ALL for this year, it's been a wonderful year!