an intro to the OM4CP project

Went fishing early today, but caught naught...

Also went to the local police station (in Margate) to start the process of getting a police clearance, as this will be needed in the not to distant future when I apply for a visa or three to travel in Africa some time next year, So I have not been online till about two chimes  after three bells.

Started writing an intro for the OM4CP project, and the first draft is below for you guys to read and pass comments.  Your comments are always appreciated,  as these will help me understand the pain points that small business may suffer when using the OM4CP  FUFISM based marketing tactic.

Pics for today are sunrise at Shelly beach and some flowers that I saw earlier this year.  A stralitzia and an aloe

Enjoy the read, and please remember that I would appreciate a comment or twenty.

Introduction

Online marketing is fast becoming an essential part of all business, as more and more folks start understanding and making use of the the INTERNET and associated online information flow patterns.  If your business does not have an online presence then you will not be able to capture your fair share of the online queries that are taking place for your products, services or business offerings.

In the past it was only the rich folks, and big business  who had access to computers along with the capability to  use the internet for business. Today all new cell phones have access to the internet and the capability to use browsers.  This means the every Tom,   Dick,  Harry, and their female counterparts,  now have access to the internet and most folks make use of at least one social media platform such as facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google plus on a regular (daily) basis

A very large number of folks actually use search engines from their cell phones and recently it was announced by Google,  that the number of searches from mobile devices outpaced the number of searches from traditional PC’s and land or fixed line based IT equipment.

The computing power of the new smart phones is quite scary, when you compare their capability to the early PC’s that came out in the early to middle 1980’s. Back then a stiffy drive or floppy disk only had 1.44 Kilobytes of storage space, and today's smartphones have at least 64 megabytes of onboard storage and the capability of extending that into the Gigabyte range when one adds memory cards.

Most of the larger search engines such as BING, DUCK DUCK GO, YANDEX and Google recently had an issue where they warned all online marketing businesses that search was changing, and those who did not update their online resources to be mobile friendly, would have some sort of punitive measures attached to their online resources within the mobile search environment.  This had  many online marketers in a flat spin , and a rather large portion of them hit panic stations due to the onslaught of this issue within the social media environment.

The changes came and went past without too much fuss and life is still carrying on for all online marketing efforts.  These changes did not impact on businesses in a big way, and most businesses did not even see a change at all.  

The issue for all small and micro businesses  now becomes HOW CAN ONE USE THIS FOR YOUR BUSINESS ?

The team at info4u have been pondering this for a while now, and we believe that we have come up with a FUFISM based Online Marketing Solution that  is affordable, effective and efficient.  We are calling this solution OM4CP or Online Marketing for (4) Cell Phones.  The OM4CP online marketing tactic uses cloud based technology as offered by Google and runs on the Google Apps for business principles, but utilizes all of Google’s FREE SERVICES 

comments will be appreciated...

 

Second post for today

Rabbit holes are big problems for me, and I just stepped out of one, that I tripped into when researching a link on the 4x4 ban issues.

I ended up checking out the pages for  SEO Training Dojo   where I was interested in their HOA #FRIDAYSEOCHATS    found here

OK no more 4x4  stuff today, and back on track for the OM4CP project.  

The purpose of your marketing is to introduce customers to your brand and products

When dealing with the #FUFISM marketing philosophy the first thing that you need to understand is that   marketing is a complex issue and there are a few basic elements that each need to be integrated into your holistic marketing plan in ways that they complement each other and support each other, in their individual efforts to achieve many small steps in separate but interconnected conversion funnels, where all paths lead to the sales team getting good results.

One must remember that marketing is in place to generate sales, improve awearness or improve social interactions between company and public entities.

 

Some marketing may be just to get a prospect to read more about your stuff, and some may be to get your brand under the eyeballs of your intended target market, so that they may think of you in the future when they are ready to buy.

 

Marketing has many stages, and some are not so obvious.  Some stages of marketing are put in place to act as a base  stage of a conversion funnel,  and are very wide and at first glance appear to be PR stuff (public relations issues)

 

Your marketing staff  should thus be seen to be subservient to the sales team, but in many corporate structures this is not true, and marketing staff rule the roost and get the biggest share of the budget.  One often gets the marketing team dictating to the sales team what they should be doing, and marketing folks tend to have higher education levels, which gives them boosted egos, and makes them believe that they are in place to dictate to the sales folks how they should be behaving.

I find this very disturbing when dealing with big business, and have decided to step out of the big business consulting arena because of this misconception that causes many strange and unnecessary arguments between me and the marketing team.    

 

I do not like arguing with,  or trying to convince hard headed fools that they need to catch a wake up, and join the new age of integrated  marketing where online marketing has changed due to the impacts of Google Humming bird, and subsequent search algorithms which influence SERPs or Search Engine Results pages.

From a FUFISM based marketing perspective there are 5  major marketing elements that need to work together as a team, and act as an integrated\ marketing support base for the sales team.  In my personal view these 5  elements are :

 1) your off line marketing which includes but is not limited to

• the print media, where news paper and magazine articles are the primary  base
• radio and audio visual marketing projects
• Person to person marketing at road shows and trade fairs as well as industry specific conferences and forum meetings

 2) Your web site

3) your blog

4) your social media marketing efforts

5) last in the list but most important : the psychology of marketing

Now this is where I get stuck and all worried, coz now you need to document how these 5 elements fit together as well as  how they are expected to interact with each other, whilst supporting each other, and I have an allergy to documentation, and often neglect to  document my work.

Failure to document your work, and have proper well thought through plans, policies and procedures in place (which are documented) is planing to fail in your marketing efforts.

You need to document the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of each of these 5 marketing elements, and ensure that your documentation includes policies and procedures on how, and why they will work together as a team with each other.

On thursday, 23 July I wrote a post discussing the purpose of your web site on the 4u brand blog which you should read  as there I also discuss issues around documentation of your work.

earlier today I wrote a post on the purpose of your blog and also discussed the importance of documenting your work, as well as the purpose, aims and objectives of your work. which you can read here

Enjoy and thanks for reading my post. A comment and share will be appreciated.

lets start at the begining

This document is a basic out line of the OM4CP online marketing tactic with links to blog posts and web pages where the conversation is expanded.  these issues are in  no particular order and  a new document will be created some time in October 2015 which will have a defined workflow and logical progression of how things should be done in order to get the best results.

this project (OM4CP) came about because I need to get my act together and develop a product that I can sell and earn a constant income. I was busy with my book on FUFISM, and thought I would have it complete by end June 2015, how ever it is now (early August 2015) still not complete, and I have zero financial income, so I am fishing and selling fish to cover up some expenses.

I am still writing the book on FUFISM, but not spending as much time there as I would like.   Selling the FUFISM marketing philosophy to small businesses is not as easy as I thought it would be, and I have had very limited success.  

I have put a blog om4cp.blogspot.com in place without any documentation, just like my other blog 4ubrand.blogspot.com also has no documentation. I am a very bad business man….

I tell all my clients, and also write in my blogs and social media posts that one must document everything you do, but it appears that I do not practice what I preach….  hence this document, which is the beginning of me documenting everything I do.  I know that this is going to be a pain in the buttt,  but I need to start somewhere, and today right now is the first steps…

this document will be published to the web as  Google docs page, (only edit... this is now a blog) and I will place the occasional link within the social media space to this document.  If you want to chat or get in touch with me please do so by using the social media.  My preferd platform is Google plus, where you can find me at   https://plus.google.com/u/0/+FrankGainsford

I have a profile over at https://about.me/info4u where all my social media links can be found in one place.  I will be updating this and using this service a bit more over the next few weeks.  I already have more than 75 000 (seventy five thousand) followers on G+, and most of these followers came about due to the circle sharing tactic, so my view count is not as high as it should be for that number of followers.  view count on Tuesday 4 August 2015 = 2,648,731 and counting.

I am a bad example, as I do not practice what I preach, or as one Mark Traphagen says… EAT YOUR OWN DOG FOOD. Well from today, right now I aim to change that, and will be writing here as I do things, and placing links in this document to what I have done, where I have posted on social media, discussing why, along with some aims, objectives, intent or purpose

In Business documentation is the thing that causes me to have fright attacks, as I have been avoiding documentation like one would avoid a plague.  That has to change.

I am already thinking about quitting… as keeping records makes me feel guilty, of what I do not know… so If you are following me and reading this and it is out of date,   you know what to do…   GIVE ME A CALL ON MY G+ PROFILE AND ASK WHATS UP>>>>>>.

I am too easily distracted, and often fall deep into rabbit holes  and can't find my way out.  When I do step out, I am not in the frame of mind to finish what I started, and then just end up reading more G+ posts that are in my stream.  I started following a few shared circles way back when, and have added a considerable number of people to my follow list since.  I currently have 3974 folks / pages in my  circles.

I need to do an audit of all my online work, and this is going to be a scary thing, as I have done so much work that is undocumented, and left bits and pieces of things all over the place.  this comes from the days when I started a company called info4u with my younger sister way back in 2000 to do online marketing in a small town called Mtubatuba in North east Zululand, just 25 KM west of the village of St. Lucia.

Things were going quite well and I also had a small business on the side making and selling a chilli paste.  I had three ladies who used to cook for me and they worked monday to Friday with me doing all the batch mixing and the SECRET herbs and spices part.  I used to drive a RENAULT 5 (a red one) until I got horribly DRUNK one thursday night at the weekly party held at the Umfolozi Country club where I used to play lawn bowls.

In those days getting totaly out of it, and driving to St. Lucia to have an after party at 3 bells in the morning was the standard fair for thursday night parties.  The country club would be deserted on Friday nights, as everybody would be in St. lucia, drinking and having a good time.

Back in those years St. Lucia was a thriving holiday destination, and there would be more than 100 boats on the lake, and if one went down to the beach to do some rock and surf fishing there would be more than 200 bakies parked on the short stretch of beach (about 7Km) between the swimming beach and First rocks.  During August there would be more than one thousand bakies on the beach at sunrise, and every body would be catching their share of nice sized shad.

St Lucia was a really great spot to be, and I would sell quite a bit of chilli paste every week end, enough to party till the cows came home, and then some extra.  Money was flowing like water, and life was really good.  We had a few online marketing customers, and these paid all the bills then a few pennies extra were left over to keep my sister happy.

Then there was the fishing…..  from June through to December the shad were quite hectic, and we often sold many more fish than we were legally allowed to catch, and these just supplemented the drinking and party money.  life was truly awesome back in the very early 2000’s until end 2002 early 2003 when the impact of the government legislation to close the beaches of the Elephant Coast to reasonable motor vehicle access.  we called this the 4xr4 ban, and that was a real problem.  This legislation destroyed the tourism industry along the Elephant Coast of KZN South Africa and tourism within North East Zululand has till today not recovered.   I spent an awful lot of time and money fighting this 4x4 ban,  but got no where.  Those who supported me in my efforts to fight the 4x4 ban had many political problems with tax inspectors, labour inspectors, health inspectors and many other  issues with certification and accreditation of their business, as this was a government organised  tactic to destroy the tourism industry of the Elephant coast, and as I am sure you know corruption and skiniving is a big issue here in South Africa.

I know this sounds a bit crazy, but when one looks at the issues that went down, and how many tourism businesses closed down within the area then it is very disturbing.  In  2004 KZN tourism did a study of this issue, and their findings showed that more than 20 000 (twenty thousand)  folks lost their jobs due to this legislation which prevented 4x4 vehicle access to the Elephant Coast beaches. read here   This paper (occasional paper 20 by KZN Tourism) was ignored by the government who was at that time in the process of tightening up the legislation associated with the 4x4 ban, as the residents of the village of St. Lucia were in the process of taking legal action against the government.

Unfortunately the residents of St. Lucia left it too long, and the damage was done. St lucia turned into a ghost town, and the South African Government was happy.  They could now market the area as an international tourism destination where the locals would be excluded, as the local tourism industry had relied on the beach access  and boat fishing opportunities on lake St. Lucia which were now non existent.

My chilli paste business failed, my tourism marketing business failed, fishing became very difficult due to the beach access issues, and thousands were left destitute.  Fortunately I had family that helped me out, but many others were not so lucky.  In the early days I tried to form an organization called ARBU or the Association of Recreational Beach Users, which failed miserably I have since tried to revive this organization, but  not been very successful.  thinking about this, this failure is connected to me having an allergy to documentation…

any business or organization that has poor or no documentation is doomed to failure.

Rabbit holes are dangerous things, and I need to keep out of them some how…  you see The 4x4 ban and its issues distracted me from today's issues, which is the beginning of an audit of all my work.   

Decision to turn this into a personal blog that supports all the work I do, and link this to my G+ profile….  also no editing and back tracking, so things may not read logically...
 

The 4x4 ban and its related issues is still a problem, and I still get phone calls from guys all over the country asking me to take up the issue once again. I have a petition at avvaz and if that petition gets enough signatures, then I will take up the issue of the 4x4e ban and lost tourism once again.

In the mean time I need to get the OM4CP project functional and generating an income for me.  I have put a blog (om4cp.blogspot.com ) in place and started posting there.  I will add each project as a page in this blog, so as to keep it ever green.  this will fall under the projects page here