These great POV glasses have swappable lenses - sunglass or indoors.

In fact, if you already wear glasses you may prefer to use them without any lens at all.

BITTS are importing these glasses and are happy to give you a quote (bulk order discounts apply)

Please email les [at] bitts4learning.com.au for enquiries.

Order now as shipments do not last!

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To expand on the Northern Star column this week let’s look more closely at what a Blog actually is and how people are using them to expand, enhance and add value to their business.

Some of you have heard about Blogs but never have tried it while others have launched into life changing careers using blogs

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati. Technorati, which is among the most popular blog search engines, provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings. Research community is working on going beyond simple keyword search, by inventing new ways to navigate through huge amounts of information present in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by projects like BlogScope.

Most of you are familiar with Google as a search engine. I wonder when you search for information in Google whether you ever use any extra features or just type some words into the search box and cross your fingers?

When you go to Google, you will notice in the picture below that there are some extra links at the top left area of the page that allow you to search more specifically.

The last of those links is More and there is a little arrow pointing downwards.
If you click on that arrow you are able to search specifically in Blogs.

There are different types of Blogs are typically categorised into the following: Personal - an on-going diary or commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common Blog.
Business either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes.

Also Blogs can often be categorised by Genre, which focus on a particular subject, such as politics, travel, house, fashion, education, classical music, questioning and quizzing Blogs and legal. Just a word of caution here whatever you post onto a blog has the potential to viewed by millions of people all over the world and could have legal repercussions, so keep it honest and truthful and you shouldn’t have any concerns.

You may search and even subscribe to RSS Blog feeds to assist your information gathering and market research activities in your business.

But would your business benefit from a Blog?

The first consideration is how would you build into your business plan the time that would be needed to keep the Blog updated?
If you already do a lot of market research or spend time making information in your business area available to your customers then a Blog may simply become a more efficient way of storing and distributing information you are already working with.
If not, then the Blog will become additional hours you will spend within your business (or an employee will spend). You also need to consider that if you allow your readers to respond with comments then you need to allocate time to read and reply to these comments.

If we were to presume that your Blog is successful, then this could translate into a significant amount of time each week. However, if your Blog is successful then that would also be translating to expansion of your business and increased profits, and therefore becomes a solid investment.

Give yourself a break to work on your business instead of just in your business and think about what a Blog actually is and how they are operating within your own area of business already.
You may already be aware that the best way to succeed well in business is to find a niche. Will a Blog be a niche, can you expand to a niche incorporating a Blog or will it just become another chunk of text floating around out there in cyberspace or in the blogosphere?

So let’s take an example.
If my business area was Financial Advice, I would go to Technorati and do a search.
You may like to follow this along as a little tutorial, maybe first doing the search I am doing and then again searching on something within your actual field of business.
Into the search box I typed Australian Shares Investment.
Remember that you will not receive the same search results as I have, as new Blogs are being every minute and added to the possible search results.
When I did this search, on the first page of results I retrieved the pictured results.
I was offered a range of video clips and text Blogs.

As a Financial Adviser I would then need to spend time checking that information in these Blogs is accurate of course.
Keeping a track of my research will be incredibly beneficial. You could consider setting up a spreadsheet with headings such as:

These are suggested headings only, but would give you a way to track some information about each Blog and you could devise your own rating system to assist you in sorting this information later.
Now I can return to search again on other keywords that are relevant to my business and begin to estimate what the general quality of information being Blogged is, what level of audience participation is happening in the Blogs.
What you are doing here is market research – what is being Blogged out there on topics relevant to your industry? Is it just a load of hot air, or is it informative. Is it likely that you could contribute with your own Blog, and is your audience participation likely to turn into generation of income?

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Enough from me, if you have whetted your appetite now, here are some links to follow to satisfy that appetite for a first sitting.
BEWARE – Blogging is known to be addictive, so enter the world of Blogging at your own risk, and be prepared for the ride!

Technorati is one of the major Blog search engines. Here you can read about what Technorati and Blogs are.

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopaedia using wiki technology. We will discuss wikis in further columns in the Northern Star, but for now you can read a little more about blogs here.

WordPress have a comprehensive article about not just Blogs but all the features that a Blog includes and how they can be used to your benefit and to your readers benefit.

Blogger Forum – beware you could easily lose hours perusing this site. It is a forum – a web discussion board – specifically dedicated to discussing Blogging.

Daily Blog Tips contains links to the top 25 sites on the web that discuss Blogging.

How Bloggers make money – this is an interesting article on a wide range of ways Bloggers can make money (and isn’t that why we would consider Blogging, fame is enjoyable, fortune is spendable!)

Sydney Morning Herald Sports Blog - this newspaper actually has an online sports blog

Worlds Best Blogs - Sydney Morning Herald have published a listing of the ‘best blogs’

The Australian has a blog section

Blogpond - top 100 Australian Blog sites listing

Media Blogs - The Daily Telegraph has a blog section

I hope that you don’t burn yourself out on information overload, but are able to come back here and leave a comment about your research!

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Blogging is a term that is widely used but is it understood?  What is it and can it help my business?

A blog (short for web log) is a website, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or material such as graphics or video. Entries are usually displayed with the latest entry on the top. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content – to blog.

What makes a blog different from other web pages is the ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format.  They have become enormously popular in both the personal and the business world.
A major blog search engine Technorati is tracking more than 112 million blogs!

Blogging is essentially a way of publishing material to the web without having to know anything about web page design. Some institutions see blogging as a means of pushing messages directly to the public.
Blogs are categorised into Personal commentaries by individuals, and Business blogs for internal communication or external marketing and public relations.

For an example of how a blog has been incorporated into a local business, you could visit my blog that is linked to these columns. You will find an expansion of this column there.  You can examine a blog for yourself, leave a comment and I will reply. Last week several readers left valuable comments at the blog.
This weeks blog will include links to resources that will further assist you to investigate other blogs and tips on how to check what blogs are on the web within your own business area.
An important aspect of blogs is the RSS feed facility. Oh dear more jargon, I had better explain RSS next week!

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