It’s been a while since I have written anything on this blog (last post was in February I think), so I thought it was about time I put some of my thoughts up here and also update everyone as to my comings and goings over the past couple months.

Firstly, I have been quite busy lately. I started my second degree at the beginning of this year and it has been going quite well actually (thanks for asking). I also decided to take a job offer from a really awesome IT company based in Johannesburg (as their General Manager). I started working for Intdev Internet Technologies in June, and have been absolutely loving it! We’re an ISP with a lot of potential and a great culture, and we’re looking to grow quite rapidly over the next couple of years, so keep a look out for us!

So, what happened to my own ventures? Well, for now I am simply loving what I am doing, and this I believe is the most important thing…it doesn’t really matter to me at this stage whether or not I work for myself or for someone else, aslong as I am learning something and enjoying it. This view may change at some point in the future but it seems to be working for now . I will also still be available for questions and advice regarding your design and business problems (it’s usually free advice) and would love to hear from you.

Right, so now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can deal with an interesting question…what I am going to blog about? This blog has been positioned as a design blog and I have been relatively successful in terms of attracting attention to it through the really cool header that I designed, thus I think I will still try to keep up with web design theme here, but to a lesser extent. I will, however, be using this particular platform to build my personal brand and share my day-to-day experiences of running a dynamic IT business as well as managing people in a fast paced and rather energetic environment, and who knows…. I might even entertain and excite you in the process

Stay tuned for more soon….

The last post I wrote was about starting a business and then building it in such a way that you are geniunely interested in creating value for your customers. As I mentioned… your customers are not stupid, they know when you are geniune about wanting what’s best for them. Now, I have been a big fan of Adii for a couple months and I just read a post where he described this very situation.

With his business dealings, he receives a lot of emails with varying degrees or importance and relevence, however, he makes sure that he replies to each and everyone in a professional manner and places his customers first! What a great way to do business! Is it any wonder that he has such loyal customers and readers? Ofcourse not.

I can recommend to anyone who wants to start an online business to go check out Adii.co.za and read what he has to say, you might learn a thing or two!

Companies take out insurance policies to protect themselves against fires, theft and acts of God. They make sure that their employees are well looked after and try to keep employee retention high.  When you consider all the effort undertaken to protect these important assets of the company, then the question must be asked… “Why don’t companies look after their reputation?”

If you think your building or your employees are important to your business, then you are correct. A financial or natural disaster can really affect a company negatively, but it is very possible to recover from these, however, a reputational disaster is almost impossible to recover from. There is plenty of evidence to support this and many companies have been ruined due to bad reputation management.  The purpose of this post is to help business owners to understand that money is not everything and that sometimes it is more important to make sure that the reputation of the company remains intact even if it means that you have to go above and beyond what is expected from the customer.

By making sure that your image and reputation are intact and that your company is actually investing in the improvement of its image you can make sure your company is on track to success. Yes, I did say investing… I said investing because it will require effort, time and sometimes money to build your reputation. A good reputation does not guarantee financial success but there is no reported incidence of a good reputation having a negative effect on a company.

You need to make sure that everything you do and say does not harm your reputation because a single bad move can ruin the image of your organization, built up over years and years. A fantastic innovation by an interent marketing company called Quirk is called BrandsEye which is sophisticated software which tracks your online reputation and how your brand is perceived on the internet. If you want to monitor your online reputation then I highly recommend checking out BrandsEye.

I hope that this information is useful to you and that you found it interesting. If you have any opinions or would like to comment, please feel free to do so.