Blogging Can Drive Your Business… If You Know How

The internet is used by millions of people every single day. They’re browsing the web, taking in all sorts of information, hanging out on social media and shopping for the best deals.

They are your target market. You know they’re there, but you just can’t get them to notice you and your website; how do you attract their attention?

You can advertise, sure, but that cuts into your budget quite a lot. You can use social media (and probably already are), but again, it’s hard to attract their attention because you’re limited to what you can share and talk about.

This is especially true for small startups and those branching out online for the first time. The internet can be a harsh and scary place (I know, I’ve been there!).

If you don’t have a blog, you’re traffic will suffer

The first thing you should be asking yourself in today’s online age is, “Does my business have a blog?”

If you’ve answered no, then where have you been?! According to QuickSprout, companies with active blogs receive 97% more leads, and 61% of consumers feel better about a company that has a blog.

For full infographic, visit QuickSprout

Even well-established and recognised brands use company blogs. They don’t necessarily need to. But they still do. And here’s why:

1. Blogging increases traffic to your site, and all that traffic has the potential to be turned into customers.

If you’re providing valuable content, and are promoting that content properly (don’t worry, we’ll discuss in detail this further down), then you’re going to receive a large amount of traffic that you definitely wouldn’t have reached through advertising alone.

All of this traffic has the potential to be converted into customers.

2. Blogging is a form of free advertising

Your blog is your very own platform to say whatever you want to. You can promote your latest products, share your industry expertise and give your business a personality.

3. Blogging helps with your SEO efforts

Each new blog post is another indexed page on your site. This tells Google, and other search engines, that your site is active, which is one of Google’s factors when it comes to ranking your site.

What’s more, blog posts allow you to target and rank for certain keywords. This doesn’t mean writing a blog post with the sole purpose of keyword stuffing – that will get Google’s attention for all the wrong reasons.

4. Blogging makes your Social Media efforts a lot easier

Blogs and social media work in partnership with each other, to make your job a lot easier.

It can be difficult to know how to tackle social media; finding interesting and valuable content is a pain, and when you do find something of value, you ultimately end up driving traffic away from your site and your business.

However, if you’re the one posting interesting and valuable content on a blog that you own, not only are you keeping the traffic in your ball court, you’re also giving people another valid reason to follow your social media pages in the first place.

“But I have a blog, and I haven’t had any of these benefits”

Having a blog is a great start, but that’s just the beginning. The next questions you have to ask yourself, are “Is my business blog active?”, and “Am I promoting my blog posts effectively?”

It’s all very well and good to have a blog these days, but if you just publish a couple of posts every now and then sit back and wait for the traffic to pour in, you’re doing it wrong.

Top 5 Common Business Blogging Mistakes

Mistake #1: Not promoting your content

How easy is it for people to find your blog? Do they even know you posted some really cool industry tips yesterday?

Promoting your blog and your blog posts is essential for getting traffic and reaching out to new audiences. People aren’t going to come to you. You need to go to where they hang out online and place your awesome content right in front of them:

• Promote your blog posts on social media (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon etc.)
• Join Google+ communities and Facebook groups
• Use hashtags (#)
• Reach out to influencers in your industry, asking them to comment/share your post
• Guest blog on relevant and authoritative sites in your industry

Mistake #2: Inconsistency

You need to be regular with your blog posting. Decide how many blog posts you can write a week and stick to it.

A consistent blog is an active blog (remember how much Google likes active sites?), and relays to your audience that you are dynamic and up to date.

As people learn your publishing schedule, they will become more likely to subscribe and/or follow you.

Mistake #3: Being too self-involved

Yes, do include your latest company news in your blog. But don’t make your business the only thing you talk about.

This is a huge mistake I see all the time, and the terrible truth is that no one cares.

The trick is to think about what your audience wants. Inspire them, share tips and information they can’t get anywhere else. Answer their burning questions and provide them with useful material.

Mistake #4: Boring design and layout

You need to make your blog posts look pretty. It may sound silly put like that, but if your blog posts contain no images, and have large chunks of text that haven’t been broken up, you’re going to see a high bounce rate.

If possible, use a featured image that is as engaging as possible. Avoid using logos and stock images if you can, and use sub-heading and bullet points to break up large paragraphs of text.

For full infographic, visit MDG ADVERTISING

Mistake #5: Missing the point

Remember why you started your blog in the first place? To increase traffic and by doing so, to increase your sales.

You need to convert your new audience, by using strong call-to-actions (CTAs).

A CTA is an image or line of text that prompts your traffic to literally take action and converts your audience to an engager or potential customer.

For some ideas and examples of effective CTAs, HubSpot has a great blog post that I’d recommend.

Start blogging today

• Create a blog or look over your existing one
• Decide how many posts you’ll make a week and when you will publish them
• Brainstorm original post ideas that provide value to your audiences
• Decide how and where you’ll promote your blog posts
• Include a CTA

Remember, blogging won’t get you heaps of new traffic overnight, but after time you should notice an increase overall.

Blogging is only one branch of your marketing strategy, and won’t replace other traditional methods of advertising.

Got something to add? Disagree with one of my points? Comment below to share your experiences.

Louise Dickens is an experienced blogger with a degree in journalism, who currently works as a Content Marketer for Aptitude.

Top Tips for Building a Successful Blog from a Blogger of Two... By Dioni Zhong of Wandering Mee and Meexia.com...

I've been blogging for years, and before that I was working on a number of personal websites for more years. Today I have a mature book blog (5+ years) and a travel blog (1 year), both of which have given me many perks, from getting tons of free books, invited to stage plays/shows/exhibition, to generating revenue, so I like to think that I know a thing or two about building a successful blog and here are my top tips:

1. Pick a topic you can talk about forever. Many people are not too sure what blog they should be writing about. Though you can have personal blog for just family and friends, to have a specific topic that you have most interest in, the one you can talk about all day long, all year long and more, would bring your blog to another level and a much wider audience - readers with common interest. Also that way you will never run out of ideas!

2. Be consistent. Another pitfall that new bloggers often fall into is getting really excited at the beginning but declining very rapidly in the few weeks or months that follow. I assure you there would be a period of time when you feel like nobody is reading and what is the point of it all, but if you push through you will finally start to build your audience. Consistency is key.

3. Join the Community. No man is an island, and it also applies to blogging. It is important to build relationship with fellow bloggers in your area. Start by visiting other websites and dropping by comments. Respond to comments on your own blog. Use social media channels to help you advertise yourself/your blog/your brand (twitter is probably the most useful at the beginning, but there's no harm at having a Facebook page too).

4 Concentrate on providing quality content that you love. There are many things that can distract you from doing your own blog, from the hustle and bustle of social media to the pressure of building stats to thinking too much about what other people want you to write. Having your readers in mind is good to a point, but thinking too much about it could be too tiring. Instead of always following what the other people are writing/doing, it pays to be original and different. There's often strong tendency to follow what the more successful bloggers are doing, which could be useful at times as you know they do something right, but if you do something that nobody else does it stands you out from the pack, and there's always reason for readers to go back.

5. Be reasonable on how much you can commit to the blog. This would always be my main struggle. How much time can I commit to my blogs and what would be the impact of that? There are many more bloggers out there that have more time to work on their blogs and it is impossible for me to compete in that aspect. Back to the consistency point, how much can you churn out a post? Once a day, three times a week, once a week? Whatever you decide, set reasonable goals for yourself and don't stress out. Your blog could grow to be something more in the future, but you can never get there if you run out of steam. Treat it as a marathon not a sprint. You have to do it for you - to love and to enjoy first and foremost.

So those are my top tips for building if not a successful, a satisfying blog. There are of course tons of other things to learn, like which blogging platform to use, whether to have your own domain/host or not, how to structure your posts, etc. (Short answer to the first two: use wordpress, and own domain if you intend to go far). There are also specific styles for different type of blog, which you have to learn as you go. For example for my book blog I almost use no social media channels, but use them more for my travel blog. I almost never got advertisement offer for my book blog, but I do quite a bit for my travel blog. All these take time to navigate, but the good thing about blogging is that you can set your own pace and do what suits you best. When you genuinely love what you do it shows and naturally attracts people, so keep at it and good things will come!

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Find Dioni's incredible blogs (meexia is one of the best literary blogs we've found) at:

http://www.wanderingmee.com 

http://www.meexia.com/bookie

http://www.facebook.com/wanderingmee.

Seven Days of Media Deprivation by Emma Laird Craig - Can you do it over the Christmas period?

In “The Artist’s Way at Work” Julia Cameron suggests ‘few techniques function as a stronger jump start to original thinking than a week of media deprivation...our cultural addiction to the media has become deeply embedded, pervasive, and very hard to escape.’

Recently this young woman about town (as apple addicted as the next) said yes to the calling to go on a self-imposed media detox for one week.  The terms and blurting protestations were as follows:

1. NO READING. Yes, that includes worthy endeavours such as novels, autobiographies, & self-development.  (Damn! I just had a new-book-buying-binge.)
2. No newspapers or magazines, trashy or highbrow; even dart your eyes from commercials on the tube escalator; no peering over someone’s shoulder to read their Metro. (I can handle that though I shall miss the horoscopes in the supplements, ahem.)
3. No social media. (Risk being out of the ‘loop’.  Ah heck, my relationship with it is conflicted anyway.)
4. No movies. (But movies are pleasurable and harmless, right?)
5. No TV. (But you’re an actor, that’s blasphemous and absurd.)
6. No email. (Say what?  But I couldn’t possibly…insert extremely valid reason here.)
7. No surfing the web. (But I HAVE to book my holiday flights and I don’t have a P.A. to pass the buck to.)
8. No talk radio, no music with lyrics!  (Now we’re just getting puritan.)

Day One:

I am feeling liberated and empowered as if I am on holiday and I wonder is this the real reason I love going on holiday?  When I was in Mallorca earlier this year the info overload in my inbox and career concerns were blissfully irrelevant when breaking a croissant in the village. 

It was quite satisfying to announce to my Facebook community and regular email chains that I am “out of the office”.  Relieved, I am not available for any agendas and demands other than my own.  A downside seems I have to be present on the bus.  

First hurdle: I meet my friend for coffee to chat dreams of Bali and she has written a wonderful two-week itinerary for me.  Ah.  How do I engage gratefully with her and avert my eyes for fear of the Word Devil?  OK, OK, I looked at it.  I could have confessed to my current challenge but chose to smile sweetly.

Day Two:

I’ve spotted The 50 Shades of Grey Classical Soundtrack on Spotify.  Strictly instrumental and in foreign languages that for once I am glad I don’t understand, it is connecting me to a touch of the epic whilst I work.  I am overcome with the drive to write and organise and I like it. 

Sometimes writing feels flowing or like I am jamming with a jazz band and sometimes it feels excruciatingly muscular like how I imagine childbirth to be.  Whatever the nature of this particular surge it just must be done.  I am starting to see how much material I consume produced by other interesting people and the balance needs to be redressed.  It’s time for me to produce into this vacuum.  Out of the numerous procrastination shaving strategies, I might have just struck gold.

Day Three:

What’s going on?  I haven’t woken up on the wrong side of the bed or given up caffeine so why do I feel like a raging bull?  This is so unfair I was enjoying the pink cloud but now I just want to go on iPlayer!  Just 3 minutes of instant gratification please Mr. Commitment Policeman…

I invoke Goethe (whether he did in fact write this or not according to the academics): "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." 


Day Four:

News of a death of a loved one in the evening sends me thinking I deserve a little late night internet-love.  It’s not as creepy as it sounds.  This unpredictable turn of events shows me just how zoning out through media is an established coping mechanism.  Timely.  I crumble in bed about 11pm and watch an “it’s so bad it’s so good” reality TV show set in a certain South West London borough.  As if that’s going to assuage the sadness or bring the person back?  Hey, we all have our vices, right?  Anyway, when did this become a moral issue as well as a health and creativity issue?  I’m cutting myself some slack.   

Day Five:

Day five already?  I still haven’t touched movies, books, newspapers, and social media but now I’ve broken the camel’s back once…you know how it is; I start to negotiate terms.  Apparently this could be a reflection on my relationship with authority. 

The Oprah Winfrey Network TV hosting leading spiritual thought conversations and documenting healing breakthroughs in Chicago now doesn’t count.  Or even if it’s a lapse in the mission, it’s my dirty secret.  Eckhart Tolle proceeded to expound the merits of being “in the moment”.  It was an ironic waste of my time since I was putting down media infiltration precisely to be more available to creative inspiration “in the moment”.  I must voice my moments not consume someone else’s or I will never be on Oprah!

Day Six:

My nervous system is recalibrating and thanking me for the breathing space.  I am convinced that this is an excellent cost effective form of “stress-management”; one of the key mindset skills of a top stock-market trader according to Alistair Crooks, author of ‘The Madness of Money’.  I may not be a top trader but I want to be a ‘top performer’ in my life not burying myself in books about other people’s lives.

Day Seven:

It’s funny how depriving myself of media input has made me streamline my time into really useful and fun avenues like a trip to the osteopath or seeing Franko B’s Performance Art festival ‘Untouchable’ in deepest darkest Camberwell; or ‘hanging out’ with treasured friends as in ye olden days at university when social experience was valued higher than reading or getting ahead.

Today:

I have been instant-chat-happy on F-book complete with flirty emoticons and I am wondering if it’s affecting my ability to write complete sentences.  Much is the woe of the current English language evolution. 

What was the cost of this deprivation?  I nearly missed out on a surprise birthday party via F-book but was alerted just in time.  The only ‘loss’ has been beneficial: I have unsubscribed from multiple cheap flight mailing lists and other such colourful and unnecessary sells on how to live and consequently re-claimed the valuable headspace and confidence that I can do just fine without them.  

When I suggested the 7 Day Media Detox to a friend she responded with ‘I would love to but I just can't do it unfortunately! As I just have to be online.’ 

Consider yourself well and truly dared.

STOP READING NOW!

Emma Laird Craig is a British actress, freelance writer, and Co-Founder of The LabRats Theatre, a New York City based company of multi-dispilinary artists developing new work for theatre and film.  Their third theatrical season is fast approaching in February 2013 with "The Rise and Fall of a Teenaged CyberQueen" by Lindsay Joy; the story of a flawed American family uprooted and unhinged by the rapid pace of online chat rooms and video feeds.

Emma trained at Central School of Speech & Drama and the Moscow Arts Theatre after reading English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.  In London she is developing "The Venus Show" for TV drawing on the trials and tribulations of professional young women brought up on Jane Austen, brit-pop, and dreams.  You can follow her on Twitter @MissLeFlay.

www.thelabratsnyc.com

www.theprivatetheatre.org

Leanne MacDuff of 'Tailor Made Social' - How Social Media Changed My Life...

How social media changed my life... 

From the way I communicate my friends, family and the community around me, the format of which I write, and the level of communication I make on a daily basis has increased dramatically.

 My first social networking account was with Bebo, back in 2005, which was the year they launched. My first blog was with blogspot, or blogger as its known now, which I started in 2006; Sharing photographs, writing posts, and checking out friends profiles skins to make sure I stood up to the test of coolness that had become the norm for me.

 Social media wasn’t a phrase I was aware of back then. Bebo was very much in its boom time, and particularly popular within my Scottish Community.

  After spending a few years in the North of England, I finally succumbed to Facebook’s way as it became the growing trend with all my English friends, and very soon it would have all my Scottish friends too.

 Twitter came a few years later for me, although I had opened an account back then, it pretty much lay dormant for a year or so before I picked it up again. So you can see, it was natural and gradual movement, one that changed a lot of how I think and view the world. As each network updated and changed it opened up more untapped pockets of information and insight to people that you would have never before got access to, unless you were close friends with them.

  The most intriguing aspect of social media for me is the ability to reach a world beyond your community and build your own, with video, photographs, your own content and a layering of various network sites.

 My first blog reached over 10 countries, in a few short months with over 2000 views without any SEO or PR behind it at all. I had no clue what SEO was back then. My only interest was sharing relevant and helpful content that people could gain encouragement, or inspiration from should they find my blog.

 In 2011, I was given my first paid role as blogger, which quickly grew to sole social media strategist and copywriter for an international marketing company.

 For the first five months I pretty much studied every waking hour, finding an underlying passion for branding, business and marketing only stirring me on to commit and know more. I learnt a lot in that time, and over the next year began teaching some of those ideas both to clients, and in-house staff as we began to take more help on board. 

 One of the biggest challenges for people was understanding what social media meant for their business. Many understood they had to have a blog now, and some social presence, but time and losing the purse strings of speech within their organization has continued to be a sensitive subject.

 I believe social media marketing is so fundamental to any business that it should be taken care of by the business itself, and as my life was radically changed by it I knew there were ways I could help them do this too without robbing the bank, and essentially giving away the heart of their business to an outside source, with no contingency plan.

 A year later, I set up Tailor Made Social as a cost-efficient solution to social media marketing using my own online and offline programme. I believe I can teach businesses to focus on bridging the gap between their business, their consumer and their employees, which at the moment there is still a real disconnect between all three.

 The reality is, within the marketplace today, we are spoilt for choice. To survive in today’s market you must offer something completely unique, or much cheaper than anyone else and you must be able to build a relationship with your customer before they even hit your shop floor. In my own opinion, there is a real opportunity to connect with people in places we were never able to reach before on our own, or without a rather large bank account; in a nutshell that is how social media has changed my life.

Writer, blogger and passionate business woman, Leanne MacDuff is helping businesses in the UK bridge the gap between their consumers, and their employees online and offline via her social media training business, Tailor Made Social. 

When Leanne is not working on the business she can be found speaking, or writing on motivational topics that include, leadership, customer service, social media marketing, and woman in business. Recent speaking engagements include the Scottish Ruby Conference 2012, and other top agencies in UK where she works as a freelance social media trainer. 

You can connect with Leanne on Twitter @leemac85, or over at The Social Exchange. 

Drew Benvie, social media expert and UK group managing director of Hotwire, Skywrite and 33 Digital, blogs about digital trends in 2012

DIGITAL TRENDS 2012

Between drawing some things, checking in for my discount and skimming through a stream of tweets to get the day’s news, I try my best to step away from the fire hose every now and then and reflect on the broader trends in social media for marketing and communications and think about what’s coming up for the year ahead.

This year I worked with our UK team in 33 Digital to author our third annual trends report looking at what we think will be the big plays for the year ahead, based on our experiences at the coalface. From almost mainstream to bleeding edge, here is our top 10:

1. The Interest Graph: Think Pinterest and think the Like button becoming the ‘Read’, ‘Bought’ or ‘Listened’ button. This is what all the information that advertisers, brands and marketers want from you. Yet, unlike before when this required customer research and questionnaires, now it gathers information about what you buy when you shop online, what you search for, who retweetsyou, who you share or interact with on social networks, the types of content you enjoy reading and much more.

2. Putting businesses on the map: Location-based services have been expanding a lot over the past few years. Foursquare has emerged as a clear leader, doubling in size in the last six months, and Facebook check-ins from your mobile will want to say where you are too. The integration of location-based services and business will expand in 2012: this means anything from free gifts and discounts to other location-based offers and services.

3. Tablets are changing communications: It started with the iPad but now the tablet revolution is not only changing how we surf, it’s affecting how we share, shop and consume media too. People have been putting aside their netbooks and newspapers as tablets allow brands and companies to publish and market information in completely different ways. Think beyond the app to how your brand can be more relevant in the tablet economy.

4. Social media celebrities: These are people that are experts in their own field, influencers, communicators, and people who provide feedback to marketers about whatever it is they are into. Your CEO or brand ambassador is your potential loose cannon but also your secret weapon.

5. The socialising of TV and music: 70 percent of trending topics on Twitter in the UK are about what’s on TV. Chelsea beating Barcelona in April has become the most Tweeted event in history. Hashtags appear at the top of TV shows all the time now to help engage the traditional users, but we will start to see next generation TVs that feature social channels as an engraved and inbuilt part of modern television.

6. Social media & internal comms: We are beginning to see the third type of media. There is earned and there is paid-for. Now there is employed. Find out how to mobilise your workforce to maximize every opportunity whether that is to spread the word on a new initiative or product, or to hire the best talent. A social platform such as Yammer, Ning or Posterous give brands the ability to engage with their most powerful audience: their staff.

7. Cashless payments could unlock a wave of innovation: This is the ability to pay for things without the need to hand over cash or pay online in the traditional way. The recent announcement of Barclays’ PayTag technology, which allows you to pay for items using a sticker than can be connected to anything, is a great example of this.

8. Gamification: Game dynamics offer a low-cost way to enhance some of even the most basic products. Everyone needs to unwind and this is a great chance for brands, companies, developers or publishers to be innovative in the way they deliver information and let us play at the same time.

9. Forums: Forums have existed almost since the advent of the Internet and in 2012, we will continue to see the natural evolution of forums – whether that means a topic discussion on a website, or a Facebook community page debate. New platforms such as Quora are joined by an ever strengthening presence of traditional such as Money Saving Expert, Mumsnet, Pistonheads and so on.

10. Automotive app stores: The next wave of innovation in social media is on perhaps the most underutilised portable computer – the car dashboard. Auto brands are bringing out their own app stores, social networks and location-based services. Watch out for innovation and opportunities in this space.

It really is an exciting time in social media, where the only thing holding brands back is their imagination.


Drew Benvie is UK group managing director of Hotwire, Skywrite and 33 Digital. Drew is a seasoned agency MD and digital and social media PR specialist. Drew was named #1 most respected individual in New Media Age's 2011 Reputation Online survey, one of PR Week magazine's 29 under 29 (a long time ago now), named in the PR Power Book, and has picked up awards for his campaigns including PR Week, The Holmes Report and Reputation Online. Drew also first wrote the Wikipedia page on social media. Drew's background is in corporate, digital, technology and social media PR, having worked agency and client side for over 12 years. As one of the earliest UK PR and marketing practitioners to foster social media and use it in mainstream campaigns, Drew has represented brands and organisations across all sectors throughout his career.

Follow Drew on Twitter: @drewb  

All Voices Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Technology has given each of us the opportunity to share our thoughts and feelings with a potential audience of millions, without the inconvenience of having to convince publishers or editors of the worth of our words. Our wise and witty screeds may be ignored, but at least we are expressing ourselves. Isn’t getting into our own grove what it has all come down to online? Mid flickr and blog, I will vodcast my barbaric yawp across the YouTubes of the world.

Whether on blog or social networking page, by user-generated text or image, our view, our take, our opinion is what moves us. Text in. Tweet. Phone in. Email. What do you think? Tell us your story. It may be that you tried a new recipe for shepherd’s pie for dinner last night that involved actual shepherds, or that you recently escaped, under gunfire, from a violent corner of the Maghreb. No matter. Each tale is equal, each teller equally equipped with the means to tell it.

What a load of Simon Cowell. Being witness to a drama doesn’t necessarily mean that we possess an ability to stage it. We each have a story to tell, of course, but it doesn’t automatically follow that we have an ability to tell it. Don’t get stuck with my grandmother whatever you do.

The idea of collective creative parity online is a romantic one, which fools us into believing that we are being listened to, that we matter now more than we ever have before. But the world remains a place in which some have and some have not, some will and some won’t, some can and some can’t. It is not flat, whatever Thomas Friedman and other professional exaggerators would have us believe. We are babbling away like never before, but some voices are more equal than others. The authorities, social, political, economic and cultural, still exist, and these authorities are being influenced by the new priestly caste, the evangelists for the democratic possibilities of technology. Power isn't being challenged. It is simply learning to pretend that it is just like you.

Too Much Information

Norbert Wiener

There was a time when the phrase "too much information" referred to a friend's unusual propensity to reveal a superabundance of intimate detail regarding recent amorous encounters. However, at the beginning of the second decade of the third millennium the cliché has been restored to its primary meaning. But the mere act of expressing the fact that there is too much information now puts us all in something of a fix. In order to make the point that there is too much information we only add to the information. It is surely time to return the words 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' to a central place in our culture. And time is what both of those words require.

The father of modern cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, whose work on the study of feedback helped popularise the idea of the information loop, and hence that most fashionable of notions of being 'in the loop', believed, in the way that only a scientist truly can, in the improvement of the species. This story, as told in James Harkin's compelling book Cyburbia, needs to be read. We would adjust and adapt in response to a continuing stream of information Wiener suggested, improve our direction, evade capture or destruction, move ever onwards with an improved sense of momentum and purpose.

However, in our age of global information witness, when we are all looking at, commenting upon and sharing the same information, the space for the radical, the surprise that refashions a conception of where we are going, unsettles our conviction as to why we are going there and challenges our assumptions as to what we will find if ever we are to arrive at our destination, is shrinking. Perhaps it is now only to be found offline.

According to the OED 'cybernetics' comes from the Greek word kubernetes meaning 'steersman,' 'helmsman' or 'pilot'. The internet, in its current form, encourages us to pilot ourselves in the same direction, towards one another, in a carnival of communality. In the glorious rush of digital feedback, the automatic input and output, who is keeping a look out to check that we are not steering ourselves into an abyss? '

The Conformity of Crowds

In our social networking playgrounds we are fearful to be different least we offend or contravene the rules. The new heresy is not only to have an alternative perspective, but to communicate that perspective. Dispute an online fashion or a beloved digital authority and you are labelled a hater. Where is the love of argument? Why the rush to consensus? Why sign up to the utopian celebration of social media's endless updating of its possibilities without questioning our need for the service provided?

Social networking supports the contemporary myth that we each have voice a worth attending to, while simultaneously seeking to deny the uniqueness and originality of all our voices by trapping us within systems, databases and pre-ordained templates. We are free only to be the same as everyone else.

Were Descartes alive and fiddling with the ends of his moustache in the second decade of the twenty-first century, he might be tempted into a new metaphysical formulation: Others are therefore I am. What’s thinking got to do with it René?