I started a business. It made me want to drink copious quantities, smoke myself into oblivion and hit my head against a brick wall. Instead I wrote a blog.
Site Launch Day: 14
User Count: 22
Going right: Got my first customer!
Going wrong: Had thought about every little detail apart from what happens after point of sale.
Comment: Luckily he's a friend.
My Dad congratulated me on my pregnancy last night. 2 weeks after I pinged his wife to tell her. It's no coincidence that I find myself listening to Cats in the Cradle this morning. We have a strange relationship, my Dad and I. We barely see each other, never talk and our emails are mainly one liners. Luckily I now have this blog to communicate with him (better still, he can't answer me back).
Typically my response to his congratulatory email yesterday was short and sweet.
Dad,
Due date march 30 - day after Freya's bday. Guess June is a frisky time of year. Maybe you'll find my blog interesting www.thediaryofayoungstartup.com - its geared towards women readers so I won't feel too badly if you don't like it!
L
His email to me was the same.
Hi Lou,
I'm sweating it out here - some cool Swedish weather would not go amiss. Your blog is a bit quirky - but I sort of liked it (after you get used to it).
Love xxxD
If you didn't realize - firstly, you're forgiven - that secondly, this email above is great approbation for both my impending child AND my blog.
And yet there is great love between us; even if it is only intellectually that I know this, because of the absence of total passion. Love without passion and contact is very difficult to maintain and mine for my father still beats powerfully in my heart - as does his or me. He is 80 years old - a revered (and clearly, dispassionate) economist. Not like Keynes or Stiglitz, but nevertheless respected in his circles. Thus it was to my surprise that I found out I had knocked him off the top spot of a Google search for "Leontiades" - I regularly check this in my bid to keep us up in the rankings.
(Dad, if you're reading this you're on page number 3 with this reference to your articles and a rather dashing photo of you, after me (top spot from our family) and your brother Milton ;-)
Such is the power of social media. I have written no books - he has written 3 (somehow this has grown from the 2 I knew about and I only found out on looking at the web page above), and his brother Milton has written 9. But I, on the other hand, have filled in my Google profile with the following literary prose:
"Undying love affair with the internet, excel and Super Mario. Hugely interested in technology adoption and usage. Geek. But v. importantly also woman :-)"
That's it. 22 words (and a smiley) is all it took to knock my Dad off the charts. And I happen to know ('cos I was there) that his first book took him 11 years. You can find a part of it for sale on my site (International Portfolio Strategy).
FACT: Google is the biggest search engine on the web and looks likely to hold the top spot for a long, long time. (Read our blog about their world domination here)
OUTCOME: In order to get high in Google rankings, play according to their rules. Which basically means, use their stuff. (For those of you holding off on joining Google +, I hope you have a good reason). So follow this three step guide:
1. Fill out your Google profile & join G+ - use your gmail account (which I assume you have already) as a login to everything; Hook up FB , amazon etc. with this account as well.
2. Add content to your site/profile and update your status on G+ on a regular basis. Get on the G+ bandwagon and add followers. It's in the new technology adoption phase where people are just adding each other with no real knowledge of where it will fall. Hurry - that wont last long.
3. Link a network of pages to each other to create and drive traffic. Keep post links in different user forums. More activity = higher rankings. Our latest article is in the Urban Times here
Contact me if you think we can work together, because I am more than willing to write a review and link it back to your site. If you work in finance, strategy, online reality etc. I may even be able to associate with you in the Investment Impact blog. But be warned. I will be honest...and you may not like it.