- Published on
The freelancing industry enjoyed impressive growth in the past several years.
In 2011, the Financial Times (UK) reported a 12% growth in the number of freelancers from 2008. Popular freelance broker site Elance enjoyed consistent growth in past years, with the number of jobs posted rising from around 200,000 in the first quarter of 2012 to 300,000 in the same period in 2013.
In addition to a more flexible work schedule, freelancers tend to be happy. According to the 2012 Freelance Industry Report, 90% of freelancers are happier now than they were before going solo, and nearly half felt no impact from the economic downturn. Perhaps most tellingly, 77% of freelancers were optimistic about their business prospects over the following 12 months.
With freelance work being such an enticing prospect, no one would blame you for giving it some serious thought. However, a common issue is simply not knowing how to start. Fortunately, building a successful freelancing career is easier than it seems — just follow the steps below.
1. Choose Your Craft
Just about everything can be outsourced these days. That's why there's a strong likelihood that the skills on your résumé contain one or more freelancing opportunities.
You may be required to think outside of the box — we're not all graphic designers or programmers. However, you may find that your "secondary" skills can offer up freelancing opportunities. For instance, if you are a strong writer, then you have the potential to develop a freelance writing business.
Don't be paralyzed by a preconception that you do not have the necessary skills or experience — you would be surprised how little experience you need in order to get started. A little faith in your abilities will take you a long way.
2. Create a Brand
If you plan to succeed in the world of freelancing, you will need to create a strong brand that sets you apart from the competition. Your brand is your identity (i.e. your website, blog and social media accounts) and it should clearly communicate your unique selling proposition — what you do that makes you special.
With that in mind, you should narrow down your focus to a specific industry. For instance, as a graphic designer you might choose to do branding work for digital startup businesses only. This form of specialization will make you far more attractive to a specific set of prospective clients and give you a greater chance of success. You can try to cater to all and sundry, but you will probably only provoke indifference.
3. Build a Portfolio and Source Testimonials
The world of freelancing lacks the red tape of the corporate world. Many prospective clients are not concerned with qualifications; they simply want to see what you have done in the past and judge whether it is the right fit for them.
Therefore, if you are good at what you do and can demonstrate your skill through a quality portfolio and positive client testimonials, you have every chance of success. The conundrum, however, is in building a portfolio without experience.
Many freelancers will react to this by picking up the smallest and least lucrative jobs around, but that puts them into a vicious cycle of bargain-basement work. To work for high-paying clients, you need to demonstrate that you are worth big money by doing good work.
So don't be afraid to do pro bono work for the right clients when you are first starting out. The free work you do at this stage can ultimately be priceless when it clearly communicates your worth to future potential clients via an extensive portfolio and glowing testimonials. Also, offering your services at no cost is a gentle introduction into the world of freelancing where you do not feel the pressure of having to deliver a service of requisite value.
4. Start Pitching
You should only seek paying clients when you are able to demonstrate your abilities (and your reputation) with a quality portfolio and testimonials. Once you have done so by working on pro bono jobs, it's time to start pitching.
But whom should you pitch? Well, if you branded yourself correctly then you should know exactly whom to pitch. By having such a narrow focus, potential clients are far more likely to take you seriously than if you offered a generic service. Businesses want to work with freelancers who seemingly came into existence to serve them specifically — you can create this illusion through specialization.
Potential clients can be found everywhere: from Google to social media to your doorstep. The possibilities are endless.
The two keys to successful pitching are relevance and volume. Only pitch those clients who fit the mold of your brand and pitch a lot of them. Ruth Zive of Marketing Wise, a content marketing firm based in Canada, had a "ten before ten" rule when she first started out as a freelance writer — she would make sure to pitch ten prospective clients before 10 a.m. every working day. Those numbers add up quickly.
5. Play the OddsUltimately, securing freelance work is a numbers game — the more prospective clients you contact, the more likely you are to find work. That is the equation you should keep in mind. If you have a reasonable skill set and create a quality brand, there is no reason why you cannot succeed in the world of freelancing like so many others have before you.
By Tom Ewer
In 2011, the Financial Times (UK) reported a 12% growth in the number of freelancers from 2008. Popular freelance broker site Elance enjoyed consistent growth in past years, with the number of jobs posted rising from around 200,000 in the first quarter of 2012 to 300,000 in the same period in 2013.
In addition to a more flexible work schedule, freelancers tend to be happy. According to the 2012 Freelance Industry Report, 90% of freelancers are happier now than they were before going solo, and nearly half felt no impact from the economic downturn. Perhaps most tellingly, 77% of freelancers were optimistic about their business prospects over the following 12 months.
With freelance work being such an enticing prospect, no one would blame you for giving it some serious thought. However, a common issue is simply not knowing how to start. Fortunately, building a successful freelancing career is easier than it seems — just follow the steps below.
1. Choose Your Craft
Just about everything can be outsourced these days. That's why there's a strong likelihood that the skills on your résumé contain one or more freelancing opportunities.
You may be required to think outside of the box — we're not all graphic designers or programmers. However, you may find that your "secondary" skills can offer up freelancing opportunities. For instance, if you are a strong writer, then you have the potential to develop a freelance writing business.
Don't be paralyzed by a preconception that you do not have the necessary skills or experience — you would be surprised how little experience you need in order to get started. A little faith in your abilities will take you a long way.
2. Create a Brand
If you plan to succeed in the world of freelancing, you will need to create a strong brand that sets you apart from the competition. Your brand is your identity (i.e. your website, blog and social media accounts) and it should clearly communicate your unique selling proposition — what you do that makes you special.
With that in mind, you should narrow down your focus to a specific industry. For instance, as a graphic designer you might choose to do branding work for digital startup businesses only. This form of specialization will make you far more attractive to a specific set of prospective clients and give you a greater chance of success. You can try to cater to all and sundry, but you will probably only provoke indifference.
3. Build a Portfolio and Source Testimonials
The world of freelancing lacks the red tape of the corporate world. Many prospective clients are not concerned with qualifications; they simply want to see what you have done in the past and judge whether it is the right fit for them.
Therefore, if you are good at what you do and can demonstrate your skill through a quality portfolio and positive client testimonials, you have every chance of success. The conundrum, however, is in building a portfolio without experience.
Many freelancers will react to this by picking up the smallest and least lucrative jobs around, but that puts them into a vicious cycle of bargain-basement work. To work for high-paying clients, you need to demonstrate that you are worth big money by doing good work.
So don't be afraid to do pro bono work for the right clients when you are first starting out. The free work you do at this stage can ultimately be priceless when it clearly communicates your worth to future potential clients via an extensive portfolio and glowing testimonials. Also, offering your services at no cost is a gentle introduction into the world of freelancing where you do not feel the pressure of having to deliver a service of requisite value.
4. Start Pitching
You should only seek paying clients when you are able to demonstrate your abilities (and your reputation) with a quality portfolio and testimonials. Once you have done so by working on pro bono jobs, it's time to start pitching.
But whom should you pitch? Well, if you branded yourself correctly then you should know exactly whom to pitch. By having such a narrow focus, potential clients are far more likely to take you seriously than if you offered a generic service. Businesses want to work with freelancers who seemingly came into existence to serve them specifically — you can create this illusion through specialization.
Potential clients can be found everywhere: from Google to social media to your doorstep. The possibilities are endless.
The two keys to successful pitching are relevance and volume. Only pitch those clients who fit the mold of your brand and pitch a lot of them. Ruth Zive of Marketing Wise, a content marketing firm based in Canada, had a "ten before ten" rule when she first started out as a freelance writer — she would make sure to pitch ten prospective clients before 10 a.m. every working day. Those numbers add up quickly.
5. Play the OddsUltimately, securing freelance work is a numbers game — the more prospective clients you contact, the more likely you are to find work. That is the equation you should keep in mind. If you have a reasonable skill set and create a quality brand, there is no reason why you cannot succeed in the world of freelancing like so many others have before you.
By Tom Ewer
- Published on
Who to Look?
According to recent research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), corporate businesses looking to hire working professionals for new jobs find 10 new talents and skills to be defining traits amongst high performers.
Just one problem: The organization notes that this particular skill set is “scarce” and that most “employees lack the ideal mix of skills and competencies to achieve employers’ desired outcome.” This news is hardly reassuring for upper management or your HR department.
Increasingly, lower levels of management are making more hiring and strategic decisions that affect key stakeholders. Therefore, the workplace needs to make major shifts in corporate culture and strategic thinking amongst new hires.
Happily, certain types of job seekers looking to more meaningfully contribute to their organization and grow their careers may be better predisposed to mastering these new success skills and rules of engagement.
Keep the following seven traits in mind when interviewing new hires, to determine whether they’ve got what it takes to be defining members of your team.
1. Communication Skills
The umbrella term “communication skills” includes a trifecta of abilities, including the capacity to listen, write and speak. This is one of the top qualities employers look for in modern-day hires; it's essential for receiving, interpreting and giving direction. Likewise, a sense of social intelligence is also vital: Employees need to be able to understand where peers, colleagues and strategic partners are coming from, not just the words they’re saying, so they can better empathize and act on this information.
2. Multi-Tasking
Chances are your employees will be simultaneously involved in several projects, tasks or initiatives. Therefore, the ability to juggle all with aplomb is a highly-valued skill. Effective multi-tasking is achieved when work is completed both efficiently and correctly, with a minimum of stress. Tomorrow’s workers must be well-equipped to juggle multiple tasks.
3. Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is a valuable asset in new hires, as it shows the employee in question is passionate about the tasks he or she is performing for the organization. It goes hand in hand with positivity, and both can make a noticeable difference in what’s often a stressed, strained and/or hectic work environment. Plus, according to Sigal Barsade, professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, positivity is not only contagious, but also has an impact on overall job performance, decision-making, creativity and turnover. A winning attitude can be invaluable and contagious.
4. Decision-Making
Problem solving is a skill that sits somewhere at the nexus of creativity, level-headedness and logic. Those who exhibit it demonstrate a proven ability to objectively interpret incoming signals, and act both thoughtfully and with grace when a solution is needed. Workers with solid problem-solving skills aren’t just strategic thinkers; they should be able to keep a cool head when a situation arises and stay on task without the need for micro-management.
5. Organization
While not a single defining trait, solid organizational skills can be an asset to any worker. They indicate an employee is self-disciplined enough to gather the necessary information and data to keep his or her tasks both well-managed and on schedule — important traits for any leader. Powerful organizational skills alone do not great managers make, but they do help drive job candidates to be more professional, efficient and productive.
6. Integrity
Integrity means being true and honest to oneself and others. It shows that someone knows his or her strengths and weaknesses, isn’t afraid to make mistakes or accept responsibility for doing so, and possesses a high degree of loyalty. Someone with strong integrity can be trusted to show respect, take responsibility and stand by the old adage “honesty is the best policy” — all a boon to your enterprises.
7. Likeability
Chances are your open positions will require employees to cooperate and collaborate seamlessly with others. Therefore, you’ll want someone warm, friendly, easygoing and genuine — a solid team player can help bolster any winning lineup. With teamwork key to business success, look for candidates who are ready and willing to become a meaningful part of your organization.
Scott Steinberg
- Ability to Prioritize
- Works well in teams
- Organizational Awareness
- Effective Problem Solving
- Self-Awareness
- Pro-activite
- Ability to Influence
- Effective Decision Making
- Learning Agility
- Technical savvy
Just one problem: The organization notes that this particular skill set is “scarce” and that most “employees lack the ideal mix of skills and competencies to achieve employers’ desired outcome.” This news is hardly reassuring for upper management or your HR department.
Increasingly, lower levels of management are making more hiring and strategic decisions that affect key stakeholders. Therefore, the workplace needs to make major shifts in corporate culture and strategic thinking amongst new hires.
Happily, certain types of job seekers looking to more meaningfully contribute to their organization and grow their careers may be better predisposed to mastering these new success skills and rules of engagement.
Keep the following seven traits in mind when interviewing new hires, to determine whether they’ve got what it takes to be defining members of your team.
1. Communication Skills
The umbrella term “communication skills” includes a trifecta of abilities, including the capacity to listen, write and speak. This is one of the top qualities employers look for in modern-day hires; it's essential for receiving, interpreting and giving direction. Likewise, a sense of social intelligence is also vital: Employees need to be able to understand where peers, colleagues and strategic partners are coming from, not just the words they’re saying, so they can better empathize and act on this information.
2. Multi-Tasking
Chances are your employees will be simultaneously involved in several projects, tasks or initiatives. Therefore, the ability to juggle all with aplomb is a highly-valued skill. Effective multi-tasking is achieved when work is completed both efficiently and correctly, with a minimum of stress. Tomorrow’s workers must be well-equipped to juggle multiple tasks.
3. Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is a valuable asset in new hires, as it shows the employee in question is passionate about the tasks he or she is performing for the organization. It goes hand in hand with positivity, and both can make a noticeable difference in what’s often a stressed, strained and/or hectic work environment. Plus, according to Sigal Barsade, professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, positivity is not only contagious, but also has an impact on overall job performance, decision-making, creativity and turnover. A winning attitude can be invaluable and contagious.
4. Decision-Making
Problem solving is a skill that sits somewhere at the nexus of creativity, level-headedness and logic. Those who exhibit it demonstrate a proven ability to objectively interpret incoming signals, and act both thoughtfully and with grace when a solution is needed. Workers with solid problem-solving skills aren’t just strategic thinkers; they should be able to keep a cool head when a situation arises and stay on task without the need for micro-management.
5. Organization
While not a single defining trait, solid organizational skills can be an asset to any worker. They indicate an employee is self-disciplined enough to gather the necessary information and data to keep his or her tasks both well-managed and on schedule — important traits for any leader. Powerful organizational skills alone do not great managers make, but they do help drive job candidates to be more professional, efficient and productive.
6. Integrity
Integrity means being true and honest to oneself and others. It shows that someone knows his or her strengths and weaknesses, isn’t afraid to make mistakes or accept responsibility for doing so, and possesses a high degree of loyalty. Someone with strong integrity can be trusted to show respect, take responsibility and stand by the old adage “honesty is the best policy” — all a boon to your enterprises.
7. Likeability
Chances are your open positions will require employees to cooperate and collaborate seamlessly with others. Therefore, you’ll want someone warm, friendly, easygoing and genuine — a solid team player can help bolster any winning lineup. With teamwork key to business success, look for candidates who are ready and willing to become a meaningful part of your organization.
Scott Steinberg
- Published on
Keyboard Shorcuts (Microsoft Windows)
1. CTRL+C (Copy)
2. CTRL+X (Cut)
3. CTRL+V (Paste)
4. CTRL+Z (Undo)
5. DELETE (Delete)
6. SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
7. CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
8. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
9. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
10. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
11. CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
12. CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
13. CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
14. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text) - SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than 1 item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
15. CTRL+A (Select all)
16. F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
17. ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
18. ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
19. ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
20. ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
21. CTRL+F4 (Close active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)
22. ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
23. ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
24. F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
25. F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
26. SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
27. ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
28. CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
29. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu) Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
30. F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
31. RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
32. LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
33. F5 key (Update the active window)
34. BACKSPACE (View the folder onelevel up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
35. ESC (Cancel the current task)
36. SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROMinto the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)
Dialog Box - Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+TAB (Move forward through the tabs)
2. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the tabs)
3. TAB (Move forward through the options)
4. SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the options)
5. ALT+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command or select the corresponding option)
6. ENTER (Perform the command for the active option or button)
7. SPACEBAR (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box)
8. Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons)
9. F1 key (Display Help)
10. F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
11. BACKSPACE (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box)
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Shortcuts
1. Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
2. Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
3. Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
4. Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
5. Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restorethe minimized windows)
6. Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
7. Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
8. CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
9. Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
10. Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
11. Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
12. Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)
13. Accessibility Keyboard Shortcuts
14. Right SHIFT for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys either on or off)
15. Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN (Switch High Contrast either on or off)
16. Left ALT+left SHIFT+NUM LOCK (Switch the MouseKeys either on or off)
17. SHIFT five times (Switch the StickyKeys either on or off)
18. NUM LOCK for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off)
19. Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)
20. Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
21. END (Display the bottom of the active window)
22. HOME (Display the top of the active window)
23. NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder)
24. NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)
25. NUM LOCK+Minus sign (-) (Collapse the selected folder)
26. LEFT ARROW (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder)
27. RIGHT ARROW (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder)
Shortcut Keys for Character Map
After you double-click a character on the grid of characters, you can move through the grid by using the keyboard shortcuts:
1. RIGHT ARROW (Move to the rightor to the beginning of the next line)
2. LEFT ARROW (Move to the left orto the end of the previous line)
3. UP ARROW (Move up one row)
4. DOWN ARROW (Move down one row)
5. PAGE UP (Move up one screen at a time)
6. PAGE DOWN (Move down one screen at a time)
7. HOME (Move to the beginning of the line)
8. END (Move to the end of the line)
9. CTRL+HOME (Move to the first character)
10. CTRL+END (Move to the last character)
11. SPACEBAR (Switch between Enlarged and Normal mode when a character is selected)
Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
Main Window Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+O (Open a saved console)
2. CTRL+N (Open a new console)
3. CTRL+S (Save the open console)
4. CTRL+M (Add or remove a console item)
5. CTRL+W (Open a new window)
6. F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
7. ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the MMC window menu)
8. ALT+F4 (Close the console)
9. ALT+A (Display the Action menu)
10. ALT+V (Display the View menu)
11. ALT+F (Display the File menu)
12. ALT+O (Display the Favorites menu)
MMC Console Window Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+P (Print the current page or active pane)
2. ALT+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console window)
3. SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
4. F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
5. F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
6. CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
7. CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
8. ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the selected item)
9. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
10. CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)
Remote Desktop Connection Navigation
1. CTRL+ALT+END (Open the Microsoft Windows NT Security dialog box)
2. ALT+PAGE UP (Switch between programs from left to right)
3. ALT+PAGE DOWN (Switch between programs from right to left)
4. ALT+INSERT (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
5. ALT+HOME (Display the Start menu)
6. CTRL+ALT+BREAK (Switch the client computer between a window and a full screen)
7. ALT+DELETE (Display the Windows menu)
8. CTRL+ALT+Minus sign (-) (Place a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
9. CTRL+ALT+Plus sign (+) (Place asnapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboardand provide the same functionality aspressing ALT+PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
Microsoft Internet Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favourites dialog box)
2. CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
3. CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
4. CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
5. CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
6. CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
7. CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web address)
8. CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box,the same as CTRL+L)
9. CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
10. CTRL+R (Update the current Web )
1. CTRL+C (Copy)
2. CTRL+X (Cut)
3. CTRL+V (Paste)
4. CTRL+Z (Undo)
5. DELETE (Delete)
6. SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
7. CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
8. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
9. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
10. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
11. CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
12. CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
13. CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
14. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text) - SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than 1 item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
15. CTRL+A (Select all)
16. F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
17. ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
18. ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
19. ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
20. ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
21. CTRL+F4 (Close active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)
22. ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
23. ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
24. F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
25. F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
26. SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
27. ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
28. CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
29. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu) Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
30. F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
31. RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
32. LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
33. F5 key (Update the active window)
34. BACKSPACE (View the folder onelevel up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
35. ESC (Cancel the current task)
36. SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROMinto the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)
Dialog Box - Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+TAB (Move forward through the tabs)
2. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the tabs)
3. TAB (Move forward through the options)
4. SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the options)
5. ALT+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command or select the corresponding option)
6. ENTER (Perform the command for the active option or button)
7. SPACEBAR (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box)
8. Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons)
9. F1 key (Display Help)
10. F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
11. BACKSPACE (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box)
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Shortcuts
1. Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
2. Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
3. Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
4. Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
5. Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restorethe minimized windows)
6. Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
7. Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
8. CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
9. Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
10. Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
11. Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
12. Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)
13. Accessibility Keyboard Shortcuts
14. Right SHIFT for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys either on or off)
15. Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN (Switch High Contrast either on or off)
16. Left ALT+left SHIFT+NUM LOCK (Switch the MouseKeys either on or off)
17. SHIFT five times (Switch the StickyKeys either on or off)
18. NUM LOCK for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off)
19. Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)
20. Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
21. END (Display the bottom of the active window)
22. HOME (Display the top of the active window)
23. NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder)
24. NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)
25. NUM LOCK+Minus sign (-) (Collapse the selected folder)
26. LEFT ARROW (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder)
27. RIGHT ARROW (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder)
Shortcut Keys for Character Map
After you double-click a character on the grid of characters, you can move through the grid by using the keyboard shortcuts:
1. RIGHT ARROW (Move to the rightor to the beginning of the next line)
2. LEFT ARROW (Move to the left orto the end of the previous line)
3. UP ARROW (Move up one row)
4. DOWN ARROW (Move down one row)
5. PAGE UP (Move up one screen at a time)
6. PAGE DOWN (Move down one screen at a time)
7. HOME (Move to the beginning of the line)
8. END (Move to the end of the line)
9. CTRL+HOME (Move to the first character)
10. CTRL+END (Move to the last character)
11. SPACEBAR (Switch between Enlarged and Normal mode when a character is selected)
Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
Main Window Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+O (Open a saved console)
2. CTRL+N (Open a new console)
3. CTRL+S (Save the open console)
4. CTRL+M (Add or remove a console item)
5. CTRL+W (Open a new window)
6. F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
7. ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the MMC window menu)
8. ALT+F4 (Close the console)
9. ALT+A (Display the Action menu)
10. ALT+V (Display the View menu)
11. ALT+F (Display the File menu)
12. ALT+O (Display the Favorites menu)
MMC Console Window Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+P (Print the current page or active pane)
2. ALT+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console window)
3. SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
4. F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
5. F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
6. CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
7. CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
8. ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the selected item)
9. F2 key (Rename the selected item)
10. CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)
Remote Desktop Connection Navigation
1. CTRL+ALT+END (Open the Microsoft Windows NT Security dialog box)
2. ALT+PAGE UP (Switch between programs from left to right)
3. ALT+PAGE DOWN (Switch between programs from right to left)
4. ALT+INSERT (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
5. ALT+HOME (Display the Start menu)
6. CTRL+ALT+BREAK (Switch the client computer between a window and a full screen)
7. ALT+DELETE (Display the Windows menu)
8. CTRL+ALT+Minus sign (-) (Place a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
9. CTRL+ALT+Plus sign (+) (Place asnapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboardand provide the same functionality aspressing ALT+PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
Microsoft Internet Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
1. CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favourites dialog box)
2. CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
3. CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
4. CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
5. CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
6. CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
7. CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web address)
8. CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box,the same as CTRL+L)
9. CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
10. CTRL+R (Update the current Web )
- Published on
The marketing mix is made up of the following elements, often referred to as “the four Ps”:
For a business to succeed, you need to:
Differentiation of your business from your competitors can be achieved through adjusting the elements to make your product/business more attractive. For example, if you wanted to market a high profile brand, you would focus on promotion rather than price.
Product
Satisfying the customer’s needs or wants and in turn making a profit is your aim in providing a product/service. It is essential therefore that you get your product/service right.
There are various ways in which you can make your product stand out and be appealing. Use your senses in evaluating the product: ask yourself how does it feel and look.
Key questions:
Place
‘Place’ is the mechanism through which goods and/or services are moved from the manufacturer/ service provider to the user or consumer. It is also referred to as distribution, channel or intermediary.
Successful distribution of your product/service is not only dependent on the delivery mechanism. You must also consider your customers – where is it that they would expect to go to find products/services like yours? It is therefore essential that you choose the correct distribution channel(s).
Key questions:
Price
You need to know what your customers would be prepared to pay in order to price something effectively.
Compare your products/services with similar ones belonging to your competitors. This should give you some idea of typical prices in the market.
You will then need to decide upon a pricing strategy. For example, you might use cost based pricing where total costs are calculated and a mark up is added to give the required profit. Or you might consider differential pricing, where you charge different segments of your market different prices for the same service. The strategy you choose will have an effect on the success of the product. (For a further discussion of pricing strategies see the link at the bottom of the page.)
Whichever strategy you choose, you need to distinguish between cost and price. To maximise your profits, you should aim to charge the maximum amount that people will pay, while seeking to reduce costs and increase productivity.
Promotion
Promotion is about effectively communicating with your customers so that they are encouraged to buy from you. You need to promote to both existing customers and prospective ones, which may involve promoting to each in different ways.
To promote successfully, you need to take the following into account:
When you have answers to the above, you are in a stronger position to decide what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and which promotional method(s) to use.
Promotions mix
The ‘promotions mix’ is the combination of promotional elements you use to promote your product/service.
The various elements which can make up the promotions mix include:
You would choose the appropriate elements for your product/service and integrate them to form a promotional campaign.
Note: Sometimes you might see the marketing mix described in terms of the 'five Ps', to includePeople. Alternatively, the ‘seven Ps' also include Physical evidence (eg uniforms) and Process(the whole customer experience).
Summary:
PRODUCT
The business has to produce a product that people want to buy. They have to decide which ‘market segment’ they are aiming at – age, income, geographical location etc. They then have to differentiate their product so that it is slightly different from what is on offer at present so that people can be persuaded to ‘give them a try’.
PROMOTION
Customers have to be made aware of the product. The two main considerations are target market and cost. A new business will not be able to afford to advertise on national television, for instance and would not wish to because its market will be local to start with. Leaflets, billboards, advertisements in local newspapers, Yellow Pages and ‘word of mouth’ would be more appropriate.
PRICE
The price must be high enough to cover costs and make a profit but low enough to attract customers. There are a number of possible pricing strategies. The most commonly used are:
PLACE
The business must have a location that it can afford, and that is convenient and suitable for customers and any supplier.
- Product (or service)
- Place (location and distribution)
- Price
- Promotion
For a business to succeed, you need to:
- get all of the elements right
- strike a balance between the elements
Differentiation of your business from your competitors can be achieved through adjusting the elements to make your product/business more attractive. For example, if you wanted to market a high profile brand, you would focus on promotion rather than price.
Product
Satisfying the customer’s needs or wants and in turn making a profit is your aim in providing a product/service. It is essential therefore that you get your product/service right.
There are various ways in which you can make your product stand out and be appealing. Use your senses in evaluating the product: ask yourself how does it feel and look.
Key questions:
- Attractiveness - is the packaging and the product itself visually appealing?
- Expectations - does the product meet customer’s expectations? For instance, they may have expectations in terms of product quality.
- Benefits - does the product have benefits a customer wants or needs? Benefits describe what it is that a customer gets out of a product, and differ from features.
- Functionality – how well does it do the job it’s supposed to?
- Competition - how does it fair compared to other similar products?
- Reliability – is it reliable?
Place
‘Place’ is the mechanism through which goods and/or services are moved from the manufacturer/ service provider to the user or consumer. It is also referred to as distribution, channel or intermediary.
Successful distribution of your product/service is not only dependent on the delivery mechanism. You must also consider your customers – where is it that they would expect to go to find products/services like yours? It is therefore essential that you choose the correct distribution channel(s).
Key questions:
- From where do your customers expect, or prefer, to buy the product or service?
- What are the existing distribution channels in your chosen market?
- Do you want to use direct or indirect channels? (eg 'direct' to a consumer, 'indirect' via an intermediary)
- Do you want to use single or multiple channels?
- If using an intermediary:
Is the intermediary familiar with your target consumers?
Is the intermediary appropriate for your business?
- wholesalers
- agents
- retailers
- the Internet
- overseas distributors
Price
You need to know what your customers would be prepared to pay in order to price something effectively.
Compare your products/services with similar ones belonging to your competitors. This should give you some idea of typical prices in the market.
You will then need to decide upon a pricing strategy. For example, you might use cost based pricing where total costs are calculated and a mark up is added to give the required profit. Or you might consider differential pricing, where you charge different segments of your market different prices for the same service. The strategy you choose will have an effect on the success of the product. (For a further discussion of pricing strategies see the link at the bottom of the page.)
Whichever strategy you choose, you need to distinguish between cost and price. To maximise your profits, you should aim to charge the maximum amount that people will pay, while seeking to reduce costs and increase productivity.
Promotion
Promotion is about effectively communicating with your customers so that they are encouraged to buy from you. You need to promote to both existing customers and prospective ones, which may involve promoting to each in different ways.
To promote successfully, you need to take the following into account:
- You need to know as much as possible about your customers and their buying habits.
- You need to identify which are the important questions customers could have about your product/service, eg is this a reliable product? Your promotional activities should answer these questions.
- You need to identify your unique selling point (USP) and communicate it effectively to your customers.
- You need to identify the style of your promotional activities
- You need to decide when you are going to promote.
When you have answers to the above, you are in a stronger position to decide what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and which promotional method(s) to use.
Promotions mix
The ‘promotions mix’ is the combination of promotional elements you use to promote your product/service.
The various elements which can make up the promotions mix include:
- Personal Selling
- Sales Promotion
- Public Relations
- Direct Mail
- Trade Fairs and Exhibitions
- Advertising
- Sponsorship
You would choose the appropriate elements for your product/service and integrate them to form a promotional campaign.
Note: Sometimes you might see the marketing mix described in terms of the 'five Ps', to includePeople. Alternatively, the ‘seven Ps' also include Physical evidence (eg uniforms) and Process(the whole customer experience).
Summary:
PRODUCT
The business has to produce a product that people want to buy. They have to decide which ‘market segment’ they are aiming at – age, income, geographical location etc. They then have to differentiate their product so that it is slightly different from what is on offer at present so that people can be persuaded to ‘give them a try’.
PROMOTION
Customers have to be made aware of the product. The two main considerations are target market and cost. A new business will not be able to afford to advertise on national television, for instance and would not wish to because its market will be local to start with. Leaflets, billboards, advertisements in local newspapers, Yellow Pages and ‘word of mouth’ would be more appropriate.
PRICE
The price must be high enough to cover costs and make a profit but low enough to attract customers. There are a number of possible pricing strategies. The most commonly used are:
- PENETRATION PRICING – charging a low price, possibly not quite covering costs, to gain a position in the market. This is quite popular with new businesses trying to get a ‘toehold’.
- CREAMING – the opposite to penetration pricing, this involves charging a deliberately high price to persuade people that the product is of high quality. Luxury car makers often use this strategy
- COST PLUS PRICING – this is the most common form of pricing. Costs are totalled and a margin is added on for profit to make the total price.
PLACE
The business must have a location that it can afford, and that is convenient and suitable for customers and any supplier.
- Published on
When you ask a freelancer why he or she started freelancing, you’ll get answers like ‘I wanted to work for myself’, ‘I love being my own boss’, ‘I freelance for the flexibility it provides’ etc. At the heart of it, all those answers mean the same thing: they wanted to escape the cubicle nation.
While freelancers may indeed have escaped ‘imprisonment’ in a cubicle, they can’t completely escape all the things that made their corporate life difficult. Actually because you’re out on your own now (in freelancing), you have to do all the things that your colleagues in their respective departments do on behalf of the company.
In any case, you should know that there are elements that remain the same in both the corporate working life and when you are out of it, and prepare accordingly.
1. Salary/Rate Negotiations
In a corporate job, 9-to-5′ers get a fixed salary and structured pay raise. On the surface, freelancers are the exact opposite. They set their own rates and can raise them whenever they want. In reality however, regular employees negotiate their salary much like how freelancers negotiate their rates with clients.
The only difference is that 9-to-5′ers only do it when accepting a job or negotiating a raise; freelancers do it on a regular, client-by-client basis. So unless you have fixed rates stated on your website, you’re actually negotiating more on your rates than you ever did over your full-time job salary.
2. Accountability
Freelancers boast of not having to be accountable to anyone but themselves. I beg to differ. We’re accountable to our clients. Sure, no one asks us what we’re doing with our time, or checks in on us throughout the day, but on the day of the deadline, the client expect to get their results from you.
Ultimately, a freelancer is accountable to his/her client. Miss a deadline and you can’t simply say ‘Oh sorry, I wasn’t able to meet the deadline.’ Explanations must be given and in most cases, a client is well has the right to dock pay due to your tardiness.
While full-timers report to their superiors, freelancers report to their clients. The accountability cycle is there – it’s just the names and designation of who we report to that has changed.
3. Responsibility
While you might not be completely responsible for a single project or deadline, working in a company gives you a bit of a safety net as far as taking the blame is concerned, when things go wrong. In a corporate setting, the manager takes the rap for a failed project regardless of which of his or her subordinates made the fluke.
In freelancing, congratulations, you get to shoulder ALL the blame regardless of your job function, when things go wrong.
4. Office Politics
Office workers deal with office politics and the different behaviours and personalities of their colleagues on a daily basis. From the passive aggressive co-worker to the know-it-all colleague, the limelight hogger to the boss’ pet. If you have ever worked in an office setting, chances are you have seen them all.
Freelancers see these characters every day too – only instead of co-workers, they experience them in their clients. Gather two or more freelancers together and the topic of client personalities invariably comes up.
5. Working After Hours
If you started freelancing because you wanted the flexibility of working your own hours or less hours, then it probably didn’t take you long to discover that you actually work more hours as a freelancer than you did as a full timer.
Even though plenty of people work after-hours in a corporate job, for freelancers, it’s basically a must. Freelancers often find themselves working nights and even weekends to meet deadlines. If they want to make a success of their freelance business, working long, hard hours is a requirement.
6. Getting A Promotion
In a corporate setting employees get promotions as recognition of their hard work and dedication. For freelancers, it’s pretty much the same, except they give themselves the promotion, or a break, or a raise, or a new gadget etc. Getting a raise in their rates, and handling bigger clients, etc are all part of that promotion.
7. Bigger & Better Opportunities
Whether it’s within the company or with another, corporate employees are always on the lookout for their next big break – be it a new designation, job, benefits or environment. Freelancers are the same.
We’re always on the lookout for our next big client. We’re always looking for bigger and better opportunities that’ll help us earn more. Just as no employee sticks to one company for his entire life, a freelancer doesn’t stick to that one client. It’s simply not in the nature of how a freelance business is done. Sure, every freelancer has clients who retain them but that partnership is not indefinite. Eventually they will move on to other clients.
======================================================================================
So What’s The Difference? If there are so many similarities, are we just fooling ourselves into believing we’re better off as freelancers? Is making the switch from a corporate full-time job to a freelancing business just a change in the scenery?
The answer is no. There is a big difference between a full time corporate job and a freelance one: flexibility and control. In a full-time job, you don’t have flexibility. You can’t start work later if you want to go to the gym in the morning, you can’t take the random afternoon off and you certainly can’t just turn off your computer and leave work to go pick up your kids in the middle of the day.
By Samar Owais
While freelancers may indeed have escaped ‘imprisonment’ in a cubicle, they can’t completely escape all the things that made their corporate life difficult. Actually because you’re out on your own now (in freelancing), you have to do all the things that your colleagues in their respective departments do on behalf of the company.
In any case, you should know that there are elements that remain the same in both the corporate working life and when you are out of it, and prepare accordingly.
1. Salary/Rate Negotiations
In a corporate job, 9-to-5′ers get a fixed salary and structured pay raise. On the surface, freelancers are the exact opposite. They set their own rates and can raise them whenever they want. In reality however, regular employees negotiate their salary much like how freelancers negotiate their rates with clients.
The only difference is that 9-to-5′ers only do it when accepting a job or negotiating a raise; freelancers do it on a regular, client-by-client basis. So unless you have fixed rates stated on your website, you’re actually negotiating more on your rates than you ever did over your full-time job salary.
2. Accountability
Freelancers boast of not having to be accountable to anyone but themselves. I beg to differ. We’re accountable to our clients. Sure, no one asks us what we’re doing with our time, or checks in on us throughout the day, but on the day of the deadline, the client expect to get their results from you.
Ultimately, a freelancer is accountable to his/her client. Miss a deadline and you can’t simply say ‘Oh sorry, I wasn’t able to meet the deadline.’ Explanations must be given and in most cases, a client is well has the right to dock pay due to your tardiness.
While full-timers report to their superiors, freelancers report to their clients. The accountability cycle is there – it’s just the names and designation of who we report to that has changed.
3. Responsibility
While you might not be completely responsible for a single project or deadline, working in a company gives you a bit of a safety net as far as taking the blame is concerned, when things go wrong. In a corporate setting, the manager takes the rap for a failed project regardless of which of his or her subordinates made the fluke.
In freelancing, congratulations, you get to shoulder ALL the blame regardless of your job function, when things go wrong.
4. Office Politics
Office workers deal with office politics and the different behaviours and personalities of their colleagues on a daily basis. From the passive aggressive co-worker to the know-it-all colleague, the limelight hogger to the boss’ pet. If you have ever worked in an office setting, chances are you have seen them all.
Freelancers see these characters every day too – only instead of co-workers, they experience them in their clients. Gather two or more freelancers together and the topic of client personalities invariably comes up.
5. Working After Hours
If you started freelancing because you wanted the flexibility of working your own hours or less hours, then it probably didn’t take you long to discover that you actually work more hours as a freelancer than you did as a full timer.
Even though plenty of people work after-hours in a corporate job, for freelancers, it’s basically a must. Freelancers often find themselves working nights and even weekends to meet deadlines. If they want to make a success of their freelance business, working long, hard hours is a requirement.
6. Getting A Promotion
In a corporate setting employees get promotions as recognition of their hard work and dedication. For freelancers, it’s pretty much the same, except they give themselves the promotion, or a break, or a raise, or a new gadget etc. Getting a raise in their rates, and handling bigger clients, etc are all part of that promotion.
7. Bigger & Better Opportunities
Whether it’s within the company or with another, corporate employees are always on the lookout for their next big break – be it a new designation, job, benefits or environment. Freelancers are the same.
We’re always on the lookout for our next big client. We’re always looking for bigger and better opportunities that’ll help us earn more. Just as no employee sticks to one company for his entire life, a freelancer doesn’t stick to that one client. It’s simply not in the nature of how a freelance business is done. Sure, every freelancer has clients who retain them but that partnership is not indefinite. Eventually they will move on to other clients.
======================================================================================
So What’s The Difference? If there are so many similarities, are we just fooling ourselves into believing we’re better off as freelancers? Is making the switch from a corporate full-time job to a freelancing business just a change in the scenery?
The answer is no. There is a big difference between a full time corporate job and a freelance one: flexibility and control. In a full-time job, you don’t have flexibility. You can’t start work later if you want to go to the gym in the morning, you can’t take the random afternoon off and you certainly can’t just turn off your computer and leave work to go pick up your kids in the middle of the day.
By Samar Owais
- Published on
The best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. See what they get right.
A few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the "best of the best" tend to share the following eight core beliefs.
1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of "troops" to order about, demonize competitors as "enemies," and treat customers as "territory" to be conquered.
Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers ... and even competitors.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by "pulling levers" and "steering the ship."
Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.
3. Management is service, not control.
Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they're told. They're hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the "wait and see what the boss says" mentality.
Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can't be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.
Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
Average bosses see fear--of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege--as a crucial way to motivate people. As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.
Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they'll be a part of it. As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization's goals, truly enjoy what they're doing and (of course) know they'll share in the rewards.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change ... until it's too late.
Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don't value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.
Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.
Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.
Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.
Recommended Video 1 >> Click Here
Recommended Video 2 >> Click Here
Recommended Video 3 >> Click Here
A few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the "best of the best" tend to share the following eight core beliefs.
1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of "troops" to order about, demonize competitors as "enemies," and treat customers as "territory" to be conquered.
Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers ... and even competitors.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by "pulling levers" and "steering the ship."
Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.
3. Management is service, not control.
Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they're told. They're hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the "wait and see what the boss says" mentality.
Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can't be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.
Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
Average bosses see fear--of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege--as a crucial way to motivate people. As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.
Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they'll be a part of it. As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization's goals, truly enjoy what they're doing and (of course) know they'll share in the rewards.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change ... until it's too late.
Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don't value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.
Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.
Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.
Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.
Recommended Video 1 >> Click Here
Recommended Video 2 >> Click Here
Recommended Video 3 >> Click Here
By SALES SOURCE | Geoffrey James
- Published on
Every day someone asks me how much it costs to build a mobile phone application, a website, or an e-commerce site. As a co-owner of Crowd Interactive, and the CEO of an online 360º performance review service called ClearGears, I'm acutely aware of the costs associated with building and running online businesses.
Here are a few guidelines to help get your head around your overhead:
Informational websites are cheap, often free: You're in luck if your site is informative rather than interactive. You can build a Wordpress site in a matter of hours if you're not picky about design, and in weeks if you hire a designer. You probably do not need a web development company to build an informational site. You can probably hire one person to design and build your site.
Development is expensive: Mobile and web applications and stores are interactive and more expensive. Smart web development companies will bill for their services like a law firm--for time and materials. The more time it takes and the more people involved in building your system, the more it costs. Some companies will charge a fixed fee--and then they deliver late and lose money.
To build an online store or application from scratch expect a team of 4 developers to spend at least 6 months designing, implementing, testing and launching it. At $50 per person per hour, working full time each month, the monthly cost is $32,000 per month. In this case you would pay $196,000 over six months.
Development doesn't end: Development costs don't decrease after launching. They can actually increase. Consider Amazon.com, Zappos.com, or even Facebook. All of these companies spend millions each year on innovating and changing their site. Innovation aside, the changing nature of Internet--and how we access it--forces companies to constantly update their sites. As browsers and hardware change, your site must also change.
Business growth requires more development: When you first launch an online store the volume of sales might be low enough to handle sales with an email sent to one or two people. But once you start handling hundreds or thousands of orders and returns, you'll need a custom solution.
Customer service is expensive: The best online sites also have the best customer service. In fact, customer service may help you grow faster than a sleek design or adword marketing. Customer service is also people-intensive, so you will need to pay staff to answer phones, respond on the Facebook wall, and even write hand-written notes to new customers.
Success is expensive: By some estimates, Facebook spends over $1 million per month on electricity. While your business may not become as large as Facebook, you will have to consider the extraordinary people, hosting, power, and equipment costs that come with running a popular site.
With all these expenses, you're going to need to get resourceful.
Some strategies to reduce costs:
Some cost-reduction strategies to avoid:
Arshad Chowdhury, a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about improving life at work, is CEO of ClearGears, a software as a service business that replaces traditional reviews with real-time, social feedback. Prior to developing ClearGears, Chowdhury led two culture-first ventures: a web-consulting firm called Crowd Interactive, and a fatigue-management company called MetroNaps. For more insights, read Arshad's blog and follow him on Twitter.
BY ARSHAD CHOWDHURY
This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.
Here are a few guidelines to help get your head around your overhead:
Informational websites are cheap, often free: You're in luck if your site is informative rather than interactive. You can build a Wordpress site in a matter of hours if you're not picky about design, and in weeks if you hire a designer. You probably do not need a web development company to build an informational site. You can probably hire one person to design and build your site.
Development is expensive: Mobile and web applications and stores are interactive and more expensive. Smart web development companies will bill for their services like a law firm--for time and materials. The more time it takes and the more people involved in building your system, the more it costs. Some companies will charge a fixed fee--and then they deliver late and lose money.
To build an online store or application from scratch expect a team of 4 developers to spend at least 6 months designing, implementing, testing and launching it. At $50 per person per hour, working full time each month, the monthly cost is $32,000 per month. In this case you would pay $196,000 over six months.
Development doesn't end: Development costs don't decrease after launching. They can actually increase. Consider Amazon.com, Zappos.com, or even Facebook. All of these companies spend millions each year on innovating and changing their site. Innovation aside, the changing nature of Internet--and how we access it--forces companies to constantly update their sites. As browsers and hardware change, your site must also change.
Business growth requires more development: When you first launch an online store the volume of sales might be low enough to handle sales with an email sent to one or two people. But once you start handling hundreds or thousands of orders and returns, you'll need a custom solution.
Customer service is expensive: The best online sites also have the best customer service. In fact, customer service may help you grow faster than a sleek design or adword marketing. Customer service is also people-intensive, so you will need to pay staff to answer phones, respond on the Facebook wall, and even write hand-written notes to new customers.
Success is expensive: By some estimates, Facebook spends over $1 million per month on electricity. While your business may not become as large as Facebook, you will have to consider the extraordinary people, hosting, power, and equipment costs that come with running a popular site.
With all these expenses, you're going to need to get resourceful.
Some strategies to reduce costs:
- If you're just starting out online, use a templated system like Magento, Shopify.com and BigCommerce.com. Implement custom designs on top of those. Use the templated system until you've established a following, great customer service, and business viability. Build a custom site from scratch later.
- Build a following through blogs and real customer service. Winning business is not about SEO, paid search, or a glitzy ad campaign. Early on, it's all about connecting with and impressing one customer at a time. In practice this means hand-written thank you notes, sending people info that you think they'd enjoy, and reaching out to them for advice.
- Don't spend on traditional print marketing. Spend on online marketing exclusively. When you do think it's time to advertise, skip the posters, radio ads, and other traditional marketing. Instead try to get in front of customers with helpful blog posts, paid online search, and Facebook.
Some cost-reduction strategies to avoid:
- Don't have your friend/husband/neighbor who is a designer build it for you for free. Building an online business is a massive endeavor. Unless you're formally becoming business partners, don't ask friends and family to build your site or application, because you'll probably ruin both your business and your relationship at the same time.
- Don't rely on unpaid interns to build your online business. You want three things in your technical partners: competence, stability, and accountability. You may have a really sharp intern, but if you're not paying them and they plan to leave at the end of the summer, then you won't have stability or accountability.
- Don't put the cart before the horse. If you're selling stuff, don't load up on inventory until you have traffic to your site. The great thing about the Internet is that you can sell inventory you don't even have yet. You can measure clicks and orders to determine how much of each product you should carry, and only after collecting some real data should you start holding much inventory.
Arshad Chowdhury, a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about improving life at work, is CEO of ClearGears, a software as a service business that replaces traditional reviews with real-time, social feedback. Prior to developing ClearGears, Chowdhury led two culture-first ventures: a web-consulting firm called Crowd Interactive, and a fatigue-management company called MetroNaps. For more insights, read Arshad's blog and follow him on Twitter.
BY ARSHAD CHOWDHURY
This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.
- Published on
Mashable’s new video series, Behind the Launch, follows Vungle on its startup journey toward a launch later this month. Each week on Mashable, the Vungle team offers our readers some tips and lessons learned from their own startup experience. This week, Vungle is approaching launch, and the team is making sure the business and product sides are working together to close deals and recruit publishers and advertisers. Watch the episode above, and be sure to tune in to Behind the Launch on Monday — you’ll see the startup officially launch.
There’s no need to be scared of selling; it’s something that should be an integral part of every business. Startups are often focused on creating a great product. This is crucial to the success of any business. However, it is equally important to be able to convey the greatness of your product and company to the right people, in a way that makes them want to do business with you. Fail to sell your product effectively, and you sell your business short. If you have a solid product, it is important to be talking to the right people. Here are seven tips for closing deals.
1. Identify Your Targets
It’s easy to get carried away when promoting a product that you’re passionate about. It’s important to first identify those individuals whose organizations will get you the most traction. Creating a list prevents you from spending time chasing targets who will do little to help you. Remember, it’s easy to get distracted, so stick to your goals, and be strategic.
2. Make a Plan
Make sure you know your targets thoroughly and understand what drives them. You need to have a proposal in mind that you think will fit in with their motivations and concerns, so try to predict their needs. If necessary, talk to people who are in the same industry or close to the decision makers to get a feel for what will move the needle for them.
Sketch out a deal structure that will pander to their motivations and dull their concerns. This needn’t deviate from your own plans. For example, lengthening deal contracts in return for a larger sign-up bonus is one way of compromising. You’ll be surprised at how framing your deal differently can affect your target’s perception.
3. Network
Now that you’ve identified your targets and know what motivates them, you need to get close. On a basic level, start with LinkedIn to see whether you have mutual connections who may be able to introduce you. If you’re lucky and you have strong connections, you’ll get a good head start. However, the more face time you have, the easier it is to build rapport and trust. As such, find out where you can best approach your targets — at events, in Starbucks or even on the beach. Wherever they are, you need to know and you need to be there (no stalking, though!).
4. Pick Up the Phone
Face time is better than a telephone call, and telephone calls are better than emails. It’s easier to convey your message and capture your target’s attention verbally than in written form. Emails are easy to ignore and discard — particularly if you receive hundreds of them per day. Make sure to set aside enough time to hit the phones and cold call. After all, a cold call is still much more effective than a cold email.
5. ListenEpictetus wisely said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” The most common mistake in sales is to talk without listening. Not only do people appreciate being listened to, but you can use your target’s response to craft a pitch that addresses them directly. Watch out for negative responses, such as “I’m not sure” or “I’ll have to think about it” — such responses indicate uncertainty and should be avoided. Take a second to craft a more careful response.
6. Don’t Be Afraid
Don’t be afraid to challenge — this shows you’re thoughtful and resourceful. If you’re pitch is responded to with negativity, don’t be afraid to ask why. Unless you ask, you won’t know what’s wrong. Often you’ll be surprised by the answer and be able to address the concern before it becomes a rejection.
Don’t be afraid to close. You need to let your target know what you want, or your conversation may become confusing. Feel free to be direct if you feel your message has been received positively. A short statement or summary confirming how future progress will be defined sets goals and puts you both on same page. For example, “Great! All I need now from you is a check for $9,000 and we can get started right away!” This way your target has understood what is required of them and will respond in a way that lets you know where you stand.
7. Follow Up
Nothing happens without a pipeline. Even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson has to build a pipeline; it’s just a simple fact of sales. You need to stay on top of your contacts and make sure you stay in touch on a regular basis. Regular contact ensures that a target thinks about you when he’s ready to proceed with the deal, or you may be alerted to changes in circumstances that provide an opportunity for you.
Make sure that you remember the details — “How was Paris? I bet it was amazing!” These details are conversation starters and show that you really care about the person beyond closing the deal. The more frequently you call or email, the more important it is to stay on top of the details.
Have any else tips for closing deals? Please leave your comment :)
by Colin Behr
There’s no need to be scared of selling; it’s something that should be an integral part of every business. Startups are often focused on creating a great product. This is crucial to the success of any business. However, it is equally important to be able to convey the greatness of your product and company to the right people, in a way that makes them want to do business with you. Fail to sell your product effectively, and you sell your business short. If you have a solid product, it is important to be talking to the right people. Here are seven tips for closing deals.
1. Identify Your Targets
It’s easy to get carried away when promoting a product that you’re passionate about. It’s important to first identify those individuals whose organizations will get you the most traction. Creating a list prevents you from spending time chasing targets who will do little to help you. Remember, it’s easy to get distracted, so stick to your goals, and be strategic.
2. Make a Plan
Make sure you know your targets thoroughly and understand what drives them. You need to have a proposal in mind that you think will fit in with their motivations and concerns, so try to predict their needs. If necessary, talk to people who are in the same industry or close to the decision makers to get a feel for what will move the needle for them.
Sketch out a deal structure that will pander to their motivations and dull their concerns. This needn’t deviate from your own plans. For example, lengthening deal contracts in return for a larger sign-up bonus is one way of compromising. You’ll be surprised at how framing your deal differently can affect your target’s perception.
3. Network
Now that you’ve identified your targets and know what motivates them, you need to get close. On a basic level, start with LinkedIn to see whether you have mutual connections who may be able to introduce you. If you’re lucky and you have strong connections, you’ll get a good head start. However, the more face time you have, the easier it is to build rapport and trust. As such, find out where you can best approach your targets — at events, in Starbucks or even on the beach. Wherever they are, you need to know and you need to be there (no stalking, though!).
4. Pick Up the Phone
Face time is better than a telephone call, and telephone calls are better than emails. It’s easier to convey your message and capture your target’s attention verbally than in written form. Emails are easy to ignore and discard — particularly if you receive hundreds of them per day. Make sure to set aside enough time to hit the phones and cold call. After all, a cold call is still much more effective than a cold email.
5. ListenEpictetus wisely said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” The most common mistake in sales is to talk without listening. Not only do people appreciate being listened to, but you can use your target’s response to craft a pitch that addresses them directly. Watch out for negative responses, such as “I’m not sure” or “I’ll have to think about it” — such responses indicate uncertainty and should be avoided. Take a second to craft a more careful response.
6. Don’t Be Afraid
Don’t be afraid to challenge — this shows you’re thoughtful and resourceful. If you’re pitch is responded to with negativity, don’t be afraid to ask why. Unless you ask, you won’t know what’s wrong. Often you’ll be surprised by the answer and be able to address the concern before it becomes a rejection.
Don’t be afraid to close. You need to let your target know what you want, or your conversation may become confusing. Feel free to be direct if you feel your message has been received positively. A short statement or summary confirming how future progress will be defined sets goals and puts you both on same page. For example, “Great! All I need now from you is a check for $9,000 and we can get started right away!” This way your target has understood what is required of them and will respond in a way that lets you know where you stand.
7. Follow Up
Nothing happens without a pipeline. Even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson has to build a pipeline; it’s just a simple fact of sales. You need to stay on top of your contacts and make sure you stay in touch on a regular basis. Regular contact ensures that a target thinks about you when he’s ready to proceed with the deal, or you may be alerted to changes in circumstances that provide an opportunity for you.
Make sure that you remember the details — “How was Paris? I bet it was amazing!” These details are conversation starters and show that you really care about the person beyond closing the deal. The more frequently you call or email, the more important it is to stay on top of the details.
Have any else tips for closing deals? Please leave your comment :)
by Colin Behr
- Published on
Whether your company is just getting its social sea legs or excelling in the digital world, there is a niche and opportunity for every brand on social media.
OMD, one of the top media agencies in the world, works with clients of various size and social media exposure. Within the agency, OMD Word is the social intelligence arm that helps amplify clients through social media. The department ensures the client’s social channels are leveraged and optimized to support traditional and digital solutions.
According to Word’s U.S. Director Colin Sutton, your level of understanding impacts your brand’s ability to perform on social media. Generally, this is the first thing that brands should be thinking about when they want to launch a social campaign.
“Social is touching so many pieces of a business these days that I’d be remiss to say it’s just about the person we’re interfacing with,” says Sutton. “Even at the CMO or CEO level, we’ve started to see examples of how the level of understanding can really change how businesses are thinking about their product all the way down to the marketing.”
Depending on the brand’s social media know-how, Sutton says that Facebook and Twitter are the building blocks that a brand should start with in the social sphere.
Setting goals ahead of time is another important factor. Sutton says that brands just starting out on social media should focus on acquisition and filling their channels with the appropriate community. Meanwhile, more savvy brands should look for engagement, awareness and advocacy.
1. Don’t Be an Island
If you’re planning a social campaign that’s not connected to the rest of your communications, marketing and media plans, then rethink it. Traditional and digital media need to support an integrated campaign that has social media at its core.
2. It’s a Brave New World — Accept It
Don’t try to approach, execute or measure campaigns or strategies like traditional planners. More data is available than ever. The opportunity now is to connect through two-way communications with your customers across devices and media, and to time your messages accordingly.
Your content can, should and will be your ad. Is it strong enough to break through the clutter?
3. Listen Up — and Not Just at the End of the Campaign
Social listening can and should impact planning, execution, optimization and results measurement. Automated tools and reliance upon technology is not enough.
True value from listening data comes from your analysts, so make sure they are involved and prioritize what you are listening for, how you are going to capture it and how you are going to share the results.
4. Connect the Dots to Win
Content is king and media is amplification. Make sure your teams are connected and working together on the same agreed-upon goals.
5. Goals Can Unite and Ignite Your Efforts
Agree to goals across agencies and confirm how you are going to measure them. Listen again to make sure they make sense.
Volume is an important goal, but not the only one. Engagement as a goal is nebulous, so identify the most desired social actions, and design the user flow and related metrics accordingly.
6. Benchmark
Relentlessly Data is available. Find it and ensure your media teams and clients are working towards realistic goals. Past campaigns are the best way to set benchmarks.
If this is the first campaign, look to the publishing partner and find out what other campaigns have been run in a similar field or with a comparable objective.
7. Long-Term Value Exchange Is Paramount
Quick hits are good, but meaningful experiences drive long-term relationships and build advocacy and love. It’s okay for campaigns to have disparate goals, but overall there should be a guiding principle that governs your efforts.
8. Understand All of the Social Channels You Are Targeting, or Get Familiar With Them Fast
Nuances exist everywhere, so if you don’t understand how each channel works and how your customers live and breathe there, make sure you ask someone who does.
9. Optimize Ruthlessly and Intelligently
Data should be consistently understood and learned. Know its availability and optimize it with each campaign not only in real-time, but also over the long term.
10. Think About Eyes, Minds and Wallet When You’re Evaluating Success
A lot of clients put a media or dollar valuation against earned media. Generating $100,000 worth of value through monthly engagement on Facebook is putting a media value on what’s earned.
Think about what customers have seen. There’s a lot of value in that, but it doesn’t help measure perception. Consider the consumer’s minds, brand health, net promoter score and measurements to gain a more complete understanding of your perception.
What social media advice does your company go by? Let us know in the comments.
Series presented by IDG
OMD, one of the top media agencies in the world, works with clients of various size and social media exposure. Within the agency, OMD Word is the social intelligence arm that helps amplify clients through social media. The department ensures the client’s social channels are leveraged and optimized to support traditional and digital solutions.
According to Word’s U.S. Director Colin Sutton, your level of understanding impacts your brand’s ability to perform on social media. Generally, this is the first thing that brands should be thinking about when they want to launch a social campaign.
“Social is touching so many pieces of a business these days that I’d be remiss to say it’s just about the person we’re interfacing with,” says Sutton. “Even at the CMO or CEO level, we’ve started to see examples of how the level of understanding can really change how businesses are thinking about their product all the way down to the marketing.”
Depending on the brand’s social media know-how, Sutton says that Facebook and Twitter are the building blocks that a brand should start with in the social sphere.
Setting goals ahead of time is another important factor. Sutton says that brands just starting out on social media should focus on acquisition and filling their channels with the appropriate community. Meanwhile, more savvy brands should look for engagement, awareness and advocacy.
1. Don’t Be an Island
If you’re planning a social campaign that’s not connected to the rest of your communications, marketing and media plans, then rethink it. Traditional and digital media need to support an integrated campaign that has social media at its core.
2. It’s a Brave New World — Accept It
Don’t try to approach, execute or measure campaigns or strategies like traditional planners. More data is available than ever. The opportunity now is to connect through two-way communications with your customers across devices and media, and to time your messages accordingly.
Your content can, should and will be your ad. Is it strong enough to break through the clutter?
3. Listen Up — and Not Just at the End of the Campaign
Social listening can and should impact planning, execution, optimization and results measurement. Automated tools and reliance upon technology is not enough.
True value from listening data comes from your analysts, so make sure they are involved and prioritize what you are listening for, how you are going to capture it and how you are going to share the results.
4. Connect the Dots to Win
Content is king and media is amplification. Make sure your teams are connected and working together on the same agreed-upon goals.
5. Goals Can Unite and Ignite Your Efforts
Agree to goals across agencies and confirm how you are going to measure them. Listen again to make sure they make sense.
Volume is an important goal, but not the only one. Engagement as a goal is nebulous, so identify the most desired social actions, and design the user flow and related metrics accordingly.
6. Benchmark
Relentlessly Data is available. Find it and ensure your media teams and clients are working towards realistic goals. Past campaigns are the best way to set benchmarks.
If this is the first campaign, look to the publishing partner and find out what other campaigns have been run in a similar field or with a comparable objective.
7. Long-Term Value Exchange Is Paramount
Quick hits are good, but meaningful experiences drive long-term relationships and build advocacy and love. It’s okay for campaigns to have disparate goals, but overall there should be a guiding principle that governs your efforts.
8. Understand All of the Social Channels You Are Targeting, or Get Familiar With Them Fast
Nuances exist everywhere, so if you don’t understand how each channel works and how your customers live and breathe there, make sure you ask someone who does.
9. Optimize Ruthlessly and Intelligently
Data should be consistently understood and learned. Know its availability and optimize it with each campaign not only in real-time, but also over the long term.
10. Think About Eyes, Minds and Wallet When You’re Evaluating Success
A lot of clients put a media or dollar valuation against earned media. Generating $100,000 worth of value through monthly engagement on Facebook is putting a media value on what’s earned.
Think about what customers have seen. There’s a lot of value in that, but it doesn’t help measure perception. Consider the consumer’s minds, brand health, net promoter score and measurements to gain a more complete understanding of your perception.
What social media advice does your company go by? Let us know in the comments.
Series presented by IDG
- Published on
David Nour is the thought leader on relationship economics, the quantifiable value of business relationships. The Nour Group, Inc. helps organizations drive growth through unique return on their strategic relationships.
By now, you have a robust profile on LinkedIn, you tweet several times a day with hashtags, you have a Facebook Page, several videos on YouTube, and you’ve even created several clever boards on Pinterest. You attend a handful of networking events every month, and you venture out to interesting events like SXSW a couple of times every year. But after all that, how do you build your social circle and influential contacts in key centers of influence?
How do you maintain, nurture, and ideally, bridge the gap between relationship creation and relationship capitalization? How do you turn friends and followers into active, interested social currency. How do you foster engagement to create valuable, lasting relationships?
Well, it has to do with the evolution of our on- and off-line business relationships. How do our business relationships evolve, why do we screw some up, and how can we repair them? Why do some partner, client, investor, supplier or even colleague relationships tend to accelerate naturally, while others fizzle and never fully materialize as you had hoped?
Quite simply, the manner in which we build business relationships has evolved. Find out how to keep the pace.
Initial Contact
You meet someone or, ideally, are referred through a trusted introduction. Tossing an unsolicited email over the wall is a losing proposition. Online and in-person relationships are getting more sophisticated, better protected and constantly pressured for efficiency and effectiveness.
The critical focus here is to add value in every interaction, to provoke, or to provide a contrarian perspective. In other words, if you want to elevate yourself above the noise, ensure that a person remembers your conversation. I recommend that you become well-read in a variety of topics, listen intently, question constantly, and capitalize on the value of brevity (aka Twitter etiquette). Finally, get to the point without pontificating.
Additional Interaction
If, during the initial contact, you made a strong, positive and value-centric impression, people will begin to seek you out. The conversation was impactful enough to warrant immediate action on their behalf.
Their follow-up email starts, “I left our visit excited about the conversation on X topic,” or “I enjoyed meeting you and discussing X technology.” The timeliness of their response should communicate that your interaction was a priority.
But what if the roles are reversed, and you’re the one following up? Here are my recommendations.
Never lose sight of the fact that your performance, execution and results rely on fostering relationships. Lack thereof will dilute your credibility and relevance. Remain competent within your industry and among your peers, and the resulting value will match the effort.
By now, you have a robust profile on LinkedIn, you tweet several times a day with hashtags, you have a Facebook Page, several videos on YouTube, and you’ve even created several clever boards on Pinterest. You attend a handful of networking events every month, and you venture out to interesting events like SXSW a couple of times every year. But after all that, how do you build your social circle and influential contacts in key centers of influence?
How do you maintain, nurture, and ideally, bridge the gap between relationship creation and relationship capitalization? How do you turn friends and followers into active, interested social currency. How do you foster engagement to create valuable, lasting relationships?
Well, it has to do with the evolution of our on- and off-line business relationships. How do our business relationships evolve, why do we screw some up, and how can we repair them? Why do some partner, client, investor, supplier or even colleague relationships tend to accelerate naturally, while others fizzle and never fully materialize as you had hoped?
Quite simply, the manner in which we build business relationships has evolved. Find out how to keep the pace.
Initial Contact
You meet someone or, ideally, are referred through a trusted introduction. Tossing an unsolicited email over the wall is a losing proposition. Online and in-person relationships are getting more sophisticated, better protected and constantly pressured for efficiency and effectiveness.
The critical focus here is to add value in every interaction, to provoke, or to provide a contrarian perspective. In other words, if you want to elevate yourself above the noise, ensure that a person remembers your conversation. I recommend that you become well-read in a variety of topics, listen intently, question constantly, and capitalize on the value of brevity (aka Twitter etiquette). Finally, get to the point without pontificating.
Additional Interaction
If, during the initial contact, you made a strong, positive and value-centric impression, people will begin to seek you out. The conversation was impactful enough to warrant immediate action on their behalf.
Their follow-up email starts, “I left our visit excited about the conversation on X topic,” or “I enjoyed meeting you and discussing X technology.” The timeliness of their response should communicate that your interaction was a priority.
But what if the roles are reversed, and you’re the one following up? Here are my recommendations.
- Pre-Initial Contact: Research the event, the topic of discussion, potential attendees, industry trends, topical conversation starters and recent similar events. And get there early! If you’ve already been introduced online to the person you’re targeting, reinforce credibility by association. If you were engaged around an interesting topic, bring up a question to jump-start the next interaction.
- During the Event: Engage proactively, be present in each conversation, add value, don’t be a conversation hog, and don’t distribute business cards excessively. After speaking, immediately capture a couple of notes about the conversation. Be as diligent disengaging from conversations as you were proactive in initiating them. Finally, anticipate their needs; simply meeting their current or articulated needs is not enough. Don’t let them ask you for more.
- Immediately After: Send a brief follow-up note the same day, and include something of value, for example, a link to relevant data, a PDF of an article, a couple bullet points of interest, or an introduction to an influential relationship. Finally, proactively suggest a next step.Be interested but casual. Pace yourself — too much, too fast turns most people off. Be poignant, practical and pragmatic and always give them options, for example, “Can we meet or Skype next Tuesday or Thursday at these times? If next week is bad for you, let me know what the following week looks like on your calendar.”
- If the person’s business stature is higher, position yourself as a peer and don’t get delegated to others down the food chain. If the business stature is same or lower, be humble and make time. Most importantly, be candid: “Apologies in advance. I travel extensively, so please don’t take my unavailability as a lack of interest — it’s simply a lack of immediate bandwidth.”
- A Week Later: If you haven’t heard anything in a week, call and email to make sure they received your follow-up. Be professional and polished, and remember to add value at every interaction.If you don’t get any response, ask yourself whether you could have done anything differently. If you didn’t add sufficient value in your early interactions, pestering them won’t do much good. Move on and focus on working with, helping and adding value to relevant, responsive contacts.
Never lose sight of the fact that your performance, execution and results rely on fostering relationships. Lack thereof will dilute your credibility and relevance. Remain competent within your industry and among your peers, and the resulting value will match the effort.
- Published on
The four marketing P (product, price, place and promotion) is important in developing the entire marketing process for your home based business or small business. The 4Ps will be discussed in details in the following points in order to ensure a good marketing plan is developed.
i) Product
There are several aspect that the business owner should take into consideration for the product or service provided in relation to the marketing strategy. The business owner have to consider the benefit for the consumer or customer if they purchase the product or service and detail research in this area is a must. The business owner have to think of creating a outstanding packaging that it could be separated from the competitors’ packaging. The business owner also have to consider the warranty use of the product and how to make the customer feel that they are staying in the comfortable zone after they buy your product.
ii) Price
The next important P is the pricing strategy, if you set the price for a product high you will be facing a great resistance in pursuing people to purchase your product, if you set the price for a product low you will generate a perception of low quality for the product. The business owner have to do some home works to find out what is the best price to charge in order to convince the customer that they have a perception that they are not buying an expensive product with the same product quality which the competitors are able to provide.
iii) Promotion
The business owner have to think on how to promote the product or service provided in order to generate great sales projection. The activities that the business owner would go through includes identify the type of advertising medium that is to be used, the marketing effort that is to be carried out, discuss about public relation, describe the promotional and the plan for using advertising specialties or premium items such as pencil, flower and so on.
iv) Place
The word place means by itself indicate that where your product should be sell at and where your customer can purchase your products. Most of the home based business or small business are selling their product through website, auction or direct mail order. For example, if you own a SEO company and where you sell your SEO product should be through online marketplace like forum, online classifieds, webcart and so on. Place is not determined as where the product originated but is best determined as where you should sell your product.
i) Product
There are several aspect that the business owner should take into consideration for the product or service provided in relation to the marketing strategy. The business owner have to consider the benefit for the consumer or customer if they purchase the product or service and detail research in this area is a must. The business owner have to think of creating a outstanding packaging that it could be separated from the competitors’ packaging. The business owner also have to consider the warranty use of the product and how to make the customer feel that they are staying in the comfortable zone after they buy your product.
ii) Price
The next important P is the pricing strategy, if you set the price for a product high you will be facing a great resistance in pursuing people to purchase your product, if you set the price for a product low you will generate a perception of low quality for the product. The business owner have to do some home works to find out what is the best price to charge in order to convince the customer that they have a perception that they are not buying an expensive product with the same product quality which the competitors are able to provide.
iii) Promotion
The business owner have to think on how to promote the product or service provided in order to generate great sales projection. The activities that the business owner would go through includes identify the type of advertising medium that is to be used, the marketing effort that is to be carried out, discuss about public relation, describe the promotional and the plan for using advertising specialties or premium items such as pencil, flower and so on.
iv) Place
The word place means by itself indicate that where your product should be sell at and where your customer can purchase your products. Most of the home based business or small business are selling their product through website, auction or direct mail order. For example, if you own a SEO company and where you sell your SEO product should be through online marketplace like forum, online classifieds, webcart and so on. Place is not determined as where the product originated but is best determined as where you should sell your product.
- Published on
I long admired his entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen and was in sheer awe of his natural instincts for what appeals to consumers. On the other hand I bristled at what I saw as his — and by extension Apple’s — occasionally capricious and even contradictory actions (App store products in or out, inability to get in front of product issues, antennae gate) and super-secretive nature.
Now, having finished the 600-plus page Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, I think I finally understand Steve Jobs. Like most of us, his personality had many sides. He could be aloof, super-intense, odd, gross, passionate, creative, driven, unfair, conciliatory and deeply introspective. He lived a rich and unique life.
Here is the highlighted interesting, surprising and relevant passages.
Don’t Wait
When the young Steve Jobs wanted to build something and needed a piece of equipment, he went straight to the source.
“He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts.”
Make Your Own Reality
Steve Jobs learned early that when you don’t like how things are in your life or in your world, change them, either through action or sheer force of will.
“As Hoffman later lamented, “The reality distortion field can serve as a spur, but then reality itself hits.” – Joanna Hoffman, part of Apple’s early Macintosh team.
“I didn’t want to be a father, so I wasn’t,” Jobs later said, with only a touch of remorse in his voice.
Control Everything You Can
Steve Jobs was, to a certain degree, a hippie. However, unlike most free spirits of the 1960s-to-1970s love-in era, Jobs was a detail-oriented control freak.
“He wants to control his environment, and he sees the product as an extension of himself.”
Own Your Mistakes
Jobs could be harsh and even thoughtless. Perhaps nowhere was that more in evidence than with his first daughter. Still, as Jobs grew older and began to face mortality, he more readily admitted his mistakes.
“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty-three and the way I handled that,” Jobs said.”
Know Yourself
While not always aware of how those around him were reacting to his appearance or demeanor, Jobs had no illusions about his own formidable intellectual skills.
“Then a more disconcerting discovery began to dawn on him: He was smarter than his parents.”
Leave the Door Open for the Fantastic
Jobs was a seeker, pursuing spiritual enlightenment and body purification throughout his life. He wasn’t a particularly religious person, but did not dismiss the existence or something beyond our earth-bound realm.
“I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.” — Steve Jobs
Don’t Hold Back
Apple’s founder was famous for his outbursts and sometimes over-emotional responses. In product development, things were often amazing or sh_t.
“He was an enlightened being who was cruel,” she recalled. “That’s a strange combination.”– former girlfriend and mother of Jobs’ first daughter, Chrisann Brennan
Surround Yourself with Brilliance
Whether he was willing to admit it or not, Steve Jobs could not do everything. Yes, he could have a huge impact on every product and marketing campaign, but he also knew that there were others in the world with skills he did not possess. Jobs’ early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak perfectly illustrated this fact. His early success with Wozniak provided the template for future collaborations.
“After a couple of months he was ready to test it. ‘I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen.’ It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. “It was the first time in history,” Wozniak later said, “anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
Build a Team of A Players
Far too often, companies and managers settle for average employees. Steve Jobs recognized talent and decided that any conflict that might arise from a company full of “A”-level players would be counterbalanced by awesome output. He may have been right.
“For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said they wouldn’t get along, they’d hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn’t like working with C players.”– Steve Jobs
“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.”
Be Yourself
Steve Jobs was often so busy being himself that he had no idea how people saw him, especially in his early, dirty-hippie days.
“At meetings we had to look at his dirty feet. Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues.”—Mike Markkula, Apple’s first chairman.
Be Persuasive
While it’s true that early Steve Jobs was a somewhat smelly and unpleasant person to be around, this same Steve Jobs also trained himself to stare without blinking for long periods of time and found that he could persuade people to do the seemingly impossible.
“If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year.”
Show Others the Way
Jobs wasn’t truly a programmer or technologist, certainly not in the way that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is, yet he had an intuitive understanding for technology and design that ended up altering the world’s expectations for computers and, more importantly, consumer electronics.
“To be honest, we didn’t know what it meant for a computer to be ‘friendly’ until Steve told us.” — Terry Oyama, part of the early Macintosh design team.
Trust Your Instincts
I have, in my own career, navigated by gut on more than one occasion. Steve Jobs, though, had a deep and abiding belief in his own tastes and believed with utter certainty that if he liked something, the public would as well. He was almost invariably right.
“Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?” — Steve Jobs
Take Risks
Throughout his career, Steve Jobs took chances, first with the launch of Apple, then in walking away from it and then returning in 1997. In an era when most companies were figuring out ways to diversify, Apple — under Job’s leadership — shed businesses and products, and focused on relatively few areas. He was also willing to steer the entire Apple ship (or at least some aspects of it) in a single direction if he thought it would generate future success.
“One of Jobs’ management philosophies was that it is crucial, every now and then, to roll the dice and ‘bet the company’ on some new idea or technology.”
“I had this crazy idea that we could sell just as many Macs by advertising the iPod. In addition, the iPod would position Apple as evoking innovation and youth. So I moved $75 million of advertising money to the iPod, even though the category didn’t justify one hundredth of that. That meant that we completely dominated the market for music players. We outspent everybody by a factor of about a hundred.” — Steve Jobs.
Follow Great with Great
In everything from products to movies (under Pixar), Steve Jobs sought to create great follow-ups. He wasn’t so successful in the early part of his career (see Lisa), but his third acts to Pixar and Apple proved he had the sequel touch.
“There’s a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome,” Jobs later said. It comes from not understanding what made your first product so successful. “I lived through that at Apple. My feeling was, if we got through our second film, we’d make it.”
Make Tough Decisions
Good managers and leaders are willing to do hard work and, often, make unpopular decisions. Jobs apparently had little concern about being liked and therefore was well-equipped to make tough choices.
“The most visible decision he made was to kill, once and for all, the Newton, the personal digital assistant with the almost-good handwriting-recognition system.”
Presentation Can Make a World of Difference
The Apple founder hated PowerPoint presentations, but perhaps somewhat uncharacteristically, believed elegant product presentation was critical.
“Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.” — Jony Ive, Apple designer.
Find a Way to Balance Your Intensity
It’s unclear if Steve Jobs ever truly mellowed, but he did learn that a buffer between him and the rest of Apple could be useful.
“In a company that was led by a CEO prone to tantrums and withering blasts, Cook commanded situations with a calm demeanor, a soothing Alabama accent, and silent stares.”
Live for Today
Even as Steve Jobs struggled with cancer, he rarely slowed down. If anything, the disease helped him focus his efforts and pursue some of his grandest dreams.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” — Steve Jobs
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs
Share Your Wisdom
Steve Jobs was not a philanthropic soul. He had a passion for products and success, but it wasn’t until he became quite ill that he started reaching out and offering his wisdom to others in the tech community.
“I will continue to do that with people like Mark Zuckerberg too. That’s how I’m going to spend part of the time I have left. I can help the next generation remember the lineage of great companies here and how to continue the tradition. The Valley has been very supportive of me. I should do my best to repay.” — Steve Jobs
by Lance Ulanoff
Now, having finished the 600-plus page Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, I think I finally understand Steve Jobs. Like most of us, his personality had many sides. He could be aloof, super-intense, odd, gross, passionate, creative, driven, unfair, conciliatory and deeply introspective. He lived a rich and unique life.
Here is the highlighted interesting, surprising and relevant passages.
Don’t Wait
When the young Steve Jobs wanted to build something and needed a piece of equipment, he went straight to the source.
“He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts.”
Make Your Own Reality
Steve Jobs learned early that when you don’t like how things are in your life or in your world, change them, either through action or sheer force of will.
“As Hoffman later lamented, “The reality distortion field can serve as a spur, but then reality itself hits.” – Joanna Hoffman, part of Apple’s early Macintosh team.
“I didn’t want to be a father, so I wasn’t,” Jobs later said, with only a touch of remorse in his voice.
Control Everything You Can
Steve Jobs was, to a certain degree, a hippie. However, unlike most free spirits of the 1960s-to-1970s love-in era, Jobs was a detail-oriented control freak.
“He wants to control his environment, and he sees the product as an extension of himself.”
Own Your Mistakes
Jobs could be harsh and even thoughtless. Perhaps nowhere was that more in evidence than with his first daughter. Still, as Jobs grew older and began to face mortality, he more readily admitted his mistakes.
“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty-three and the way I handled that,” Jobs said.”
Know Yourself
While not always aware of how those around him were reacting to his appearance or demeanor, Jobs had no illusions about his own formidable intellectual skills.
“Then a more disconcerting discovery began to dawn on him: He was smarter than his parents.”
Leave the Door Open for the Fantastic
Jobs was a seeker, pursuing spiritual enlightenment and body purification throughout his life. He wasn’t a particularly religious person, but did not dismiss the existence or something beyond our earth-bound realm.
“I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.” — Steve Jobs
Don’t Hold Back
Apple’s founder was famous for his outbursts and sometimes over-emotional responses. In product development, things were often amazing or sh_t.
“He was an enlightened being who was cruel,” she recalled. “That’s a strange combination.”– former girlfriend and mother of Jobs’ first daughter, Chrisann Brennan
Surround Yourself with Brilliance
Whether he was willing to admit it or not, Steve Jobs could not do everything. Yes, he could have a huge impact on every product and marketing campaign, but he also knew that there were others in the world with skills he did not possess. Jobs’ early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak perfectly illustrated this fact. His early success with Wozniak provided the template for future collaborations.
“After a couple of months he was ready to test it. ‘I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen.’ It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. “It was the first time in history,” Wozniak later said, “anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
Build a Team of A Players
Far too often, companies and managers settle for average employees. Steve Jobs recognized talent and decided that any conflict that might arise from a company full of “A”-level players would be counterbalanced by awesome output. He may have been right.
“For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said they wouldn’t get along, they’d hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn’t like working with C players.”– Steve Jobs
“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.”
Be Yourself
Steve Jobs was often so busy being himself that he had no idea how people saw him, especially in his early, dirty-hippie days.
“At meetings we had to look at his dirty feet. Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues.”—Mike Markkula, Apple’s first chairman.
Be Persuasive
While it’s true that early Steve Jobs was a somewhat smelly and unpleasant person to be around, this same Steve Jobs also trained himself to stare without blinking for long periods of time and found that he could persuade people to do the seemingly impossible.
“If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year.”
Show Others the Way
Jobs wasn’t truly a programmer or technologist, certainly not in the way that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is, yet he had an intuitive understanding for technology and design that ended up altering the world’s expectations for computers and, more importantly, consumer electronics.
“To be honest, we didn’t know what it meant for a computer to be ‘friendly’ until Steve told us.” — Terry Oyama, part of the early Macintosh design team.
Trust Your Instincts
I have, in my own career, navigated by gut on more than one occasion. Steve Jobs, though, had a deep and abiding belief in his own tastes and believed with utter certainty that if he liked something, the public would as well. He was almost invariably right.
“Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?” — Steve Jobs
Take Risks
Throughout his career, Steve Jobs took chances, first with the launch of Apple, then in walking away from it and then returning in 1997. In an era when most companies were figuring out ways to diversify, Apple — under Job’s leadership — shed businesses and products, and focused on relatively few areas. He was also willing to steer the entire Apple ship (or at least some aspects of it) in a single direction if he thought it would generate future success.
“One of Jobs’ management philosophies was that it is crucial, every now and then, to roll the dice and ‘bet the company’ on some new idea or technology.”
“I had this crazy idea that we could sell just as many Macs by advertising the iPod. In addition, the iPod would position Apple as evoking innovation and youth. So I moved $75 million of advertising money to the iPod, even though the category didn’t justify one hundredth of that. That meant that we completely dominated the market for music players. We outspent everybody by a factor of about a hundred.” — Steve Jobs.
Follow Great with Great
In everything from products to movies (under Pixar), Steve Jobs sought to create great follow-ups. He wasn’t so successful in the early part of his career (see Lisa), but his third acts to Pixar and Apple proved he had the sequel touch.
“There’s a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome,” Jobs later said. It comes from not understanding what made your first product so successful. “I lived through that at Apple. My feeling was, if we got through our second film, we’d make it.”
Make Tough Decisions
Good managers and leaders are willing to do hard work and, often, make unpopular decisions. Jobs apparently had little concern about being liked and therefore was well-equipped to make tough choices.
“The most visible decision he made was to kill, once and for all, the Newton, the personal digital assistant with the almost-good handwriting-recognition system.”
Presentation Can Make a World of Difference
The Apple founder hated PowerPoint presentations, but perhaps somewhat uncharacteristically, believed elegant product presentation was critical.
“Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.” — Jony Ive, Apple designer.
Find a Way to Balance Your Intensity
It’s unclear if Steve Jobs ever truly mellowed, but he did learn that a buffer between him and the rest of Apple could be useful.
“In a company that was led by a CEO prone to tantrums and withering blasts, Cook commanded situations with a calm demeanor, a soothing Alabama accent, and silent stares.”
Live for Today
Even as Steve Jobs struggled with cancer, he rarely slowed down. If anything, the disease helped him focus his efforts and pursue some of his grandest dreams.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” — Steve Jobs
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs
Share Your Wisdom
Steve Jobs was not a philanthropic soul. He had a passion for products and success, but it wasn’t until he became quite ill that he started reaching out and offering his wisdom to others in the tech community.
“I will continue to do that with people like Mark Zuckerberg too. That’s how I’m going to spend part of the time I have left. I can help the next generation remember the lineage of great companies here and how to continue the tradition. The Valley has been very supportive of me. I should do my best to repay.” — Steve Jobs
by Lance Ulanoff
- Published on
Nowadays, with Internet spreading its wings all over the globe, more and more people are switching from physical mediums of business promotion to online marketing. Email marketing is one of the best means of promoting your products and services online. It is also one of the oldest sources of business-to-business marketing used by virtually everyone.
A well planned effective email marketing campaign can help your business products and services gain maximum visibility and recognition, not only locally but all over the world. With this direct marketing procedure you start getting quick response once your email reaches your targeted customers.
The Importance
In today’s world of cut-throat business competition, companies and enterprises are making use of only the most effective means of business promotion, and email marketing is one of these mediums. Businesses find email marketing beneficial because of its ability to be highly adaptable to today’s constantly changing business world.
Other factor that adds to the inevitable importance of email marketing is its aspect of being highly inexpensive and affordable. It can also easily be built into existing marketing systems of any organization seeking promotion at international level. Moreover, online marketing can make business promotion more efficiently, short, and real time in terms of delivering something to your clients and customers.
Benefit Of Email Marketing
Rightly executed email marketing can compliment all other marketing initiatives and reap you many benefits, some of which are as follows:
Cost-Effectiveness
No matter how inexpensive the conventional mediums of marketing and business promotion can get, they can never be compared to the cost-effectiveness of email marketing. Marketing collateral, like press advertisements, brochures, flyers and posters require a significant financial outlay. On the other hand, email marketing is live, constantly changing and is easy to implement, along with being inexpensive.
Global Approach
A good advantage of email marketing comes with the globalism of the Internet. No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, email marketing paves the way to a global approach of business promotion. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.
A Personalized Medium
Email marketing is a personalized medium of advertising and business promotion. It enables you to create a special bond with the prospects. Unlike other mediums of marketing and promotions, email marketing can be segmented in terms of its target audience, meaning that you can split people off into smaller, more focused lists. This too gives a more personalized approach to your marketing messages.
Gauge Results
Any marketing campaign needs to be gauged in terms of its results and feedback from the target market. With email marketing as a tool of business promotion, you can easily carry out litmus tests on your target audience regarding different campaigns.
You can accurately measure click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person arrived at your website, and more, through readily available tools on the Internet, and assess the success of different email campaigns.
Quicker Response
Time Another advantage of email marketing over the conventional means of business promotion is that it has a quicker response time. The average response time of email marketing is one to three days at max and you get the most responses on the first day itself, while a direct mail campaign would take minimum two weeks to generate any responses.
Ease of UseEmail marketing comes with an ease of use for both the sender and the receiver. Executing an email marketing campaign is simple and anyone can do it without any extensive resources.
6 Tips To Do It Well
For every effective marketing campaign, doing it right matters a lot. Following are certain tips which will help you execute better and more effective email marketing campaigns.
1. Pre-determine Your Campaign’s Objectives
Before executing any campaign, its objectives and targets need to be pre-determined in order to get the maximum out of it. A general email marketing campaign can have two basic objectives i.e. to strengthen customer loyalty and ongoing relationships and to drive direct response of the customers. Whichever of these two are your campaign objectives, it is important that you plan it out and then set it for execution.
2. Avoid Spamming
No matter how easy, affordable and responsive it gets, the biggest hurdle in the way of a successful email marketing campaign is the spam filters. When more and more people started misusing email marketing, email service providers all over the world introduced spam filters, which were a great setback for this mode of business promotion. Therefore, when the successful marketing practitioners realized that people’s dislike to spam destroyed the customer loyalty they worked so hard to address the problem with best practices that revolved around the aspect of ‘permission’.
Permission is best and the only authentic way to avoid spamming in the process of email marketing. This may sound a tedious process to you, however, in actual getting permission is not much difficult. Offer something useful to your customers (a coupon or special discounts, a research related to your product or perhaps an informational newsletter) in return as if the person agrees on receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information.
Never underestimate the power of "free" and use the same in taking customer’s permission for email marketing. When you will give them something free, build the relationship and then recommend products or services, they are likely to buy from you and will stay loyal to your brand.
3. Opt-in Option
An opt-in option is a perfect way of taking permission and carrying out an effective email marketing campaign. Adding an opt-in form to your email marketing message is the best practice in terms of marketing ethics and effectiveness.
Considering the importance of an opt-in option, larger organizations even go for a ‘double opt-in’ option i.e. after the receiver of their marketing message firstly enters his/her email address to subscribe to their list, they send them a confirmation email which contains a special link back to their email marketing campaign, which verifies that this visitor did indeed sign up to their mailing list. This way they easily avoid spamming and their customers develop a sense of respect for them.
4. Creating the Message
Once you plan out your campaign objectives and also get permissions of your customers, the next step is to create the actual message that needs to be sent out. There are some points to be remembered while creating your email marketing message:
Before sending out the actual campaign in execution, it is better to test its different aspects with trial and error method. Try out different fonts for both content and links, re-positioning images such as logos and buttons and experiment with different emailing patterns (including the greeting and sign off).
Send three different patterns of your email, compare their click-thru stats and see which one works best. This way you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract more visitors, and ultimately more sales.
6. Develop and Maintain the Email List
As mentioned earlier, in order for your email marketing campaign to be successful, it is important to be focused in every aspect of execution. Similar is the case with email list. You need to develop a proper and well-searched email list for your campaign (probably of the people who are interested or have opted-in for your marketing initiatives).
Also, email list is not a one-time thing. It needs to be trimmed and maintained according to the circumstances. Longer lists should be broken down into smaller segments, targeting the consumer and personalizing the message. Also, after every three months, shed off the people in your list who do not rear or respond to your messages.
The Conclusion
Email marketing is a fully grown and well-used tactic for business promotion via emails. It is cost-effective, easily executed and gives a good impact to your campaigns. Email marketing does not replace your other marketing activities but compliments them extremely well. A well run and good email marketing campaign can grow your customer pool and add to customer’s loyalty.
Hearing from your brand repeatedly, with good content reminds readers of your business’ value, especially if they take your advice and find it works for them. Although email marketing comes with lower risks and higher profitability, however, this can only be achieved through proper planning and execution tuning into higher success rates for your business.
By Arfa Mirza
A well planned effective email marketing campaign can help your business products and services gain maximum visibility and recognition, not only locally but all over the world. With this direct marketing procedure you start getting quick response once your email reaches your targeted customers.
The Importance
In today’s world of cut-throat business competition, companies and enterprises are making use of only the most effective means of business promotion, and email marketing is one of these mediums. Businesses find email marketing beneficial because of its ability to be highly adaptable to today’s constantly changing business world.
Other factor that adds to the inevitable importance of email marketing is its aspect of being highly inexpensive and affordable. It can also easily be built into existing marketing systems of any organization seeking promotion at international level. Moreover, online marketing can make business promotion more efficiently, short, and real time in terms of delivering something to your clients and customers.
Benefit Of Email Marketing
Rightly executed email marketing can compliment all other marketing initiatives and reap you many benefits, some of which are as follows:
Cost-Effectiveness
No matter how inexpensive the conventional mediums of marketing and business promotion can get, they can never be compared to the cost-effectiveness of email marketing. Marketing collateral, like press advertisements, brochures, flyers and posters require a significant financial outlay. On the other hand, email marketing is live, constantly changing and is easy to implement, along with being inexpensive.
Global Approach
A good advantage of email marketing comes with the globalism of the Internet. No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, email marketing paves the way to a global approach of business promotion. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.
A Personalized Medium
Email marketing is a personalized medium of advertising and business promotion. It enables you to create a special bond with the prospects. Unlike other mediums of marketing and promotions, email marketing can be segmented in terms of its target audience, meaning that you can split people off into smaller, more focused lists. This too gives a more personalized approach to your marketing messages.
Gauge Results
Any marketing campaign needs to be gauged in terms of its results and feedback from the target market. With email marketing as a tool of business promotion, you can easily carry out litmus tests on your target audience regarding different campaigns.
You can accurately measure click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person arrived at your website, and more, through readily available tools on the Internet, and assess the success of different email campaigns.
Quicker Response
Time Another advantage of email marketing over the conventional means of business promotion is that it has a quicker response time. The average response time of email marketing is one to three days at max and you get the most responses on the first day itself, while a direct mail campaign would take minimum two weeks to generate any responses.
Ease of UseEmail marketing comes with an ease of use for both the sender and the receiver. Executing an email marketing campaign is simple and anyone can do it without any extensive resources.
6 Tips To Do It Well
For every effective marketing campaign, doing it right matters a lot. Following are certain tips which will help you execute better and more effective email marketing campaigns.
1. Pre-determine Your Campaign’s Objectives
Before executing any campaign, its objectives and targets need to be pre-determined in order to get the maximum out of it. A general email marketing campaign can have two basic objectives i.e. to strengthen customer loyalty and ongoing relationships and to drive direct response of the customers. Whichever of these two are your campaign objectives, it is important that you plan it out and then set it for execution.
2. Avoid Spamming
No matter how easy, affordable and responsive it gets, the biggest hurdle in the way of a successful email marketing campaign is the spam filters. When more and more people started misusing email marketing, email service providers all over the world introduced spam filters, which were a great setback for this mode of business promotion. Therefore, when the successful marketing practitioners realized that people’s dislike to spam destroyed the customer loyalty they worked so hard to address the problem with best practices that revolved around the aspect of ‘permission’.
Permission is best and the only authentic way to avoid spamming in the process of email marketing. This may sound a tedious process to you, however, in actual getting permission is not much difficult. Offer something useful to your customers (a coupon or special discounts, a research related to your product or perhaps an informational newsletter) in return as if the person agrees on receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information.
Never underestimate the power of "free" and use the same in taking customer’s permission for email marketing. When you will give them something free, build the relationship and then recommend products or services, they are likely to buy from you and will stay loyal to your brand.
3. Opt-in Option
An opt-in option is a perfect way of taking permission and carrying out an effective email marketing campaign. Adding an opt-in form to your email marketing message is the best practice in terms of marketing ethics and effectiveness.
Considering the importance of an opt-in option, larger organizations even go for a ‘double opt-in’ option i.e. after the receiver of their marketing message firstly enters his/her email address to subscribe to their list, they send them a confirmation email which contains a special link back to their email marketing campaign, which verifies that this visitor did indeed sign up to their mailing list. This way they easily avoid spamming and their customers develop a sense of respect for them.
4. Creating the Message
Once you plan out your campaign objectives and also get permissions of your customers, the next step is to create the actual message that needs to be sent out. There are some points to be remembered while creating your email marketing message:
- The subject line is the most essential element of email message content. The subject line should always make sense and should standout.
- Create the content of your message absolutely clear and easily readable.
- Go for the ‘inverted pyramid model of message construction i.e. start from ‘most important’ information to ‘less important’ one
- Web readers have very less time and are always in a hurry so keep your message short, to-the-point and ensure its relevance.
- There are certain essential elements of an email message content i.e. the ‘to’ line and ‘from’ line, the subject line, the offer, the format, the body copy, the message category, message personalization and targeting.
- Like the subject line, signature has a crucial importance in an email message. Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it is a good way to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an opt-out link.
Before sending out the actual campaign in execution, it is better to test its different aspects with trial and error method. Try out different fonts for both content and links, re-positioning images such as logos and buttons and experiment with different emailing patterns (including the greeting and sign off).
Send three different patterns of your email, compare their click-thru stats and see which one works best. This way you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract more visitors, and ultimately more sales.
6. Develop and Maintain the Email List
As mentioned earlier, in order for your email marketing campaign to be successful, it is important to be focused in every aspect of execution. Similar is the case with email list. You need to develop a proper and well-searched email list for your campaign (probably of the people who are interested or have opted-in for your marketing initiatives).
Also, email list is not a one-time thing. It needs to be trimmed and maintained according to the circumstances. Longer lists should be broken down into smaller segments, targeting the consumer and personalizing the message. Also, after every three months, shed off the people in your list who do not rear or respond to your messages.
The Conclusion
Email marketing is a fully grown and well-used tactic for business promotion via emails. It is cost-effective, easily executed and gives a good impact to your campaigns. Email marketing does not replace your other marketing activities but compliments them extremely well. A well run and good email marketing campaign can grow your customer pool and add to customer’s loyalty.
Hearing from your brand repeatedly, with good content reminds readers of your business’ value, especially if they take your advice and find it works for them. Although email marketing comes with lower risks and higher profitability, however, this can only be achieved through proper planning and execution tuning into higher success rates for your business.
By Arfa Mirza
- Published on
1. Desktop: With your desktop you can search your computer. You can retrieve email, files and much more very easily and more efficiently.
2. Toolbar: The toolbar of Fire fox find suggestions for your searches, you can add buttons which provide you quick access to different web sites. You can also share web pages.
3. Google Health: This application is for those writers who manage their own health insurance. They can use it in order to organize their records, and they can learn about their health issues and much more.
4. Calendar: You can use this web-based calendar for document sharing and collaboration
5. Reader: Easily get latest information coming from your favorite blogs & feeds with the help of Google Reader.
6. Google Sync for Blackberry: Specially made for such writers on the road: they can sync up your Google calendars and Blackberry calendar.
7. Maps: You can use maps in order to get directions to your next meeting or look up a vendor’s location.
8. Product Search: Using this product search you can shop for home office supplies and much more.
9. Ride Finder: Finding taxis or any other transportation is no more any issue. So now it doesn’t matter weather you are flying to Atlanta, San Francisco or Washington DC for an interview or meeting. You should take services of ride finder.
10. Notebook: Use new Google Notebook far taking down ideas and get rid from all other sticky notes.
11. Docs: Online word processor which you can access any time and you can share changes in real time
12. Sketch Up: SketchUp is used for brainstorm and mock up a project with a co-worker.
13. Lively: Now chat in 3D virtual world with co-workers and design a project visually.
14.Blogger: With Blogger you can refer your client to your blog so that he can get updates on how you’re progressing with their project.
15.Pack: Google Pack is providing free services like Picasa uploader, Notifier for the Mac, Desktop, Google Earth etc.
Tools for your Website or Blog
Blog of a writer is indeed vital to expanding his or her brand, where he can advertise services and other updates. You can use these apps to make the most of your online space.
16. Google Code Search: You can use this search engine if you’re looking for code licenses and public source files.
17. Blogger Mobile: With this app you can post to your Blogger blog from your phone.
18. Feedburner: Make money by using FeedBurner Ad Network. It will help you to market your content, analyze your blog’s traffic and audience.
19. Sites: Create your own website for your own organization by using sites.
20. OpenSocial: Create developer-friendly social applications for your websites you can use Open Social apps.
21.Google Checkout: It’s a payment service which you can add to your site. It makes easier for your clients to pay your invoices.
22.Trends: Use trend and compare search terms and figure out what people are looking for online. After that, you can customize your site according to those trends..
Time Savers: These applications are made to save your precious time while searching and when you’re on the go.
24. Google Chrome: You will find this beta browser more speedy and more secure than before. So while using Google Chrome you can connect to your favorite sites at a faster rate.
25. SMS for your phone: Get your business listings, stock quotes and all other random information which would be sent to your phone by text message.
26.Special Searches: Use special searches in order to save your time on research & find only what you want.
Creativity
Following Google apps are designed to boost up your creativity.
27. Picasa: Picasa is a photo manager and organizer that would be used for inspiration, It provide more dimension to your written pieces and you can also share photos with friends and family.
28.Photos Screensaver: Use Photos screensavers to inspire your current projects. Your projects will pop up whenever you go idle.
Communication:
Want to stay connected with colleagues, clients, editors, agents and even friends and family, use following Google apps and makes your communication easier.
29. Talk: Now get connected around all over the world.Google Talk supports IM and VoIP so you can connect with contacts all over the world very easily.
30. Google Groups: Keep track of your projects or keep up with your family via Google Groups.
31. Orkut: Orkut is a social media web site where you can share videos and photos and get connect with your co-workers or friends. It also provide facility of instant messaging.
32. Grand Central: Syncs up all your communication tools with Grand Central. Now only with one number rings all your phones, just one voicemail box keeps your messages organized; you can also save all your contacts in address book.
33. Language Tools: With this application you can translate text from primary sources. Language tools also play an important role in order to expand your customer and vendor base.
34. GOOG 411: Use Goog411 and get Connected with businesses and vendors without wasting your phone minutes.
35. Gmail: Google Gmail is the mail service with tons of space available for your files and they are easily searchable.
36.Google Mobile: Those writers who have to visit different places or who are not always at home and can not always site near there computer should use this Google mobile tool.
37.Friend Connect: This app allows you to implement social tools inside your website.This encourage visitors to comment and hence become more engaged.
38.Transit: With the help of Google Transit, it is easier for you to get connected with vendors, clients, editors and even more. It also enables you to find public transportation stops in your area and across all over the country.
Branding and Business
Use Google apps to increase your business and develop your own brand.
39. AdWords: AdWords is an online advertising tool made for your blog.
40. Alerts: You cab set Google Alerts for yourself in order to keep tabs on who is publishing you and similarly who is reviewing you.
41. Google Grants: If you qualify for this system of in-kind advertising or if you are doing little writing for a non profit on the side then use Google Grants.
42.Knol: Share and build up authoritative posts and reviews at Knol, it is a way to market yourself.
43. Base: Use Base to submit content or services. It works on the slogan “make them as easy as possible for people to find when they search.”
Reference
Reference tools are free to use and you can connect with the information you need at a faster rate.
44. Blog Search: Use this tool and narrow your search to find material from blogs.
45. Book Search: Now there is no need to do your research in a library. Book Search enables you to find quotations, inspiration and much more in fiction and non-fiction books.
46. Scholar: Use this tool and limit your searches to scholarly material
47. Video: Search online videos on a very simple and clear platform with this application.
48. Finance: Google Finance is a great social, political and economic indicator which gives inspiration and also works as fact checker. This tool can also be used for organizing your own investments.
49. News Archive Search: Google News Archive Search display results in a time line. Better organize your research results.
50. Google Buzz: Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos and more with your friends.
51. Google +1 Button: The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out."Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.
52. Google Plus +: The Google+ project makes sharing online more like sharing in real life. Take the interactive tour for a quick look at five of the first key features.
2. Toolbar: The toolbar of Fire fox find suggestions for your searches, you can add buttons which provide you quick access to different web sites. You can also share web pages.
3. Google Health: This application is for those writers who manage their own health insurance. They can use it in order to organize their records, and they can learn about their health issues and much more.
4. Calendar: You can use this web-based calendar for document sharing and collaboration
5. Reader: Easily get latest information coming from your favorite blogs & feeds with the help of Google Reader.
6. Google Sync for Blackberry: Specially made for such writers on the road: they can sync up your Google calendars and Blackberry calendar.
7. Maps: You can use maps in order to get directions to your next meeting or look up a vendor’s location.
8. Product Search: Using this product search you can shop for home office supplies and much more.
9. Ride Finder: Finding taxis or any other transportation is no more any issue. So now it doesn’t matter weather you are flying to Atlanta, San Francisco or Washington DC for an interview or meeting. You should take services of ride finder.
10. Notebook: Use new Google Notebook far taking down ideas and get rid from all other sticky notes.
11. Docs: Online word processor which you can access any time and you can share changes in real time
12. Sketch Up: SketchUp is used for brainstorm and mock up a project with a co-worker.
13. Lively: Now chat in 3D virtual world with co-workers and design a project visually.
14.Blogger: With Blogger you can refer your client to your blog so that he can get updates on how you’re progressing with their project.
15.Pack: Google Pack is providing free services like Picasa uploader, Notifier for the Mac, Desktop, Google Earth etc.
Tools for your Website or Blog
Blog of a writer is indeed vital to expanding his or her brand, where he can advertise services and other updates. You can use these apps to make the most of your online space.
16. Google Code Search: You can use this search engine if you’re looking for code licenses and public source files.
17. Blogger Mobile: With this app you can post to your Blogger blog from your phone.
18. Feedburner: Make money by using FeedBurner Ad Network. It will help you to market your content, analyze your blog’s traffic and audience.
19. Sites: Create your own website for your own organization by using sites.
20. OpenSocial: Create developer-friendly social applications for your websites you can use Open Social apps.
21.Google Checkout: It’s a payment service which you can add to your site. It makes easier for your clients to pay your invoices.
22.Trends: Use trend and compare search terms and figure out what people are looking for online. After that, you can customize your site according to those trends..
Time Savers: These applications are made to save your precious time while searching and when you’re on the go.
24. Google Chrome: You will find this beta browser more speedy and more secure than before. So while using Google Chrome you can connect to your favorite sites at a faster rate.
25. SMS for your phone: Get your business listings, stock quotes and all other random information which would be sent to your phone by text message.
26.Special Searches: Use special searches in order to save your time on research & find only what you want.
Creativity
Following Google apps are designed to boost up your creativity.
27. Picasa: Picasa is a photo manager and organizer that would be used for inspiration, It provide more dimension to your written pieces and you can also share photos with friends and family.
28.Photos Screensaver: Use Photos screensavers to inspire your current projects. Your projects will pop up whenever you go idle.
Communication:
Want to stay connected with colleagues, clients, editors, agents and even friends and family, use following Google apps and makes your communication easier.
29. Talk: Now get connected around all over the world.Google Talk supports IM and VoIP so you can connect with contacts all over the world very easily.
30. Google Groups: Keep track of your projects or keep up with your family via Google Groups.
31. Orkut: Orkut is a social media web site where you can share videos and photos and get connect with your co-workers or friends. It also provide facility of instant messaging.
32. Grand Central: Syncs up all your communication tools with Grand Central. Now only with one number rings all your phones, just one voicemail box keeps your messages organized; you can also save all your contacts in address book.
33. Language Tools: With this application you can translate text from primary sources. Language tools also play an important role in order to expand your customer and vendor base.
34. GOOG 411: Use Goog411 and get Connected with businesses and vendors without wasting your phone minutes.
35. Gmail: Google Gmail is the mail service with tons of space available for your files and they are easily searchable.
36.Google Mobile: Those writers who have to visit different places or who are not always at home and can not always site near there computer should use this Google mobile tool.
37.Friend Connect: This app allows you to implement social tools inside your website.This encourage visitors to comment and hence become more engaged.
38.Transit: With the help of Google Transit, it is easier for you to get connected with vendors, clients, editors and even more. It also enables you to find public transportation stops in your area and across all over the country.
Branding and Business
Use Google apps to increase your business and develop your own brand.
39. AdWords: AdWords is an online advertising tool made for your blog.
40. Alerts: You cab set Google Alerts for yourself in order to keep tabs on who is publishing you and similarly who is reviewing you.
41. Google Grants: If you qualify for this system of in-kind advertising or if you are doing little writing for a non profit on the side then use Google Grants.
42.Knol: Share and build up authoritative posts and reviews at Knol, it is a way to market yourself.
43. Base: Use Base to submit content or services. It works on the slogan “make them as easy as possible for people to find when they search.”
Reference
Reference tools are free to use and you can connect with the information you need at a faster rate.
44. Blog Search: Use this tool and narrow your search to find material from blogs.
45. Book Search: Now there is no need to do your research in a library. Book Search enables you to find quotations, inspiration and much more in fiction and non-fiction books.
46. Scholar: Use this tool and limit your searches to scholarly material
47. Video: Search online videos on a very simple and clear platform with this application.
48. Finance: Google Finance is a great social, political and economic indicator which gives inspiration and also works as fact checker. This tool can also be used for organizing your own investments.
49. News Archive Search: Google News Archive Search display results in a time line. Better organize your research results.
50. Google Buzz: Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos and more with your friends.
51. Google +1 Button: The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out."Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.
52. Google Plus +: The Google+ project makes sharing online more like sharing in real life. Take the interactive tour for a quick look at five of the first key features.
- Published on
Search engine optimization or SEO is actually a complete package of services that every website needs to have these days.
The competition is such that if you are seriously focusing on internet as a means of marketing and making money, then you cannot do without an SEO strategy.
With search engine optimization, everything about the website, that is, on and off the page, can be improved.
Through SEO, the web traffic to the website can be increased and search engines will also find the website good enough to be ranked high. But all this is done in an effort to make the website more visible and be able to generate more sales.
For any business, every visitor viewing its website is a potential buyer. More potential buyers are brought in with SEO and this means that there are more sales.
SEO is also not a process which can be forgotten at any point or can be achieved fully only once. You need to always improve and improvise the SEO methods so that your website is always ranked high and is seen by more and more people.
Remember that nothing in the internet world is static. There is always movement and changes so you need to stay updated.
A good SEO strategy can be broadly broken up into four steps. Each of these is important and integral to the whole, as the whole thing can only provide the desired results.
The first of these steps is the website analysis.
1. During this phase you should do a detailed study of your website, analyze it point by point, its structure, layout, content, SEO details, visitor reactions and appeal.
2. You should be able to see what keywords are being used, how effective these are depending on the ranking of the website on search engines.
3. Then, you will see if the visitors are allowed to post their feedback, what the feed backs say, how good and relevant is the content, what follow-up procedures are done to keep a client, the RSS feeds on your page and links.
4. You should also be able to check which search engines your site appears on and check the effectiveness of your search engine marketing (SEM).
The second phase is to analyze your rivals or competitors in the same way.
While each detail is noted as for your site, a comparative study is also conducted. The competitors are first identified according to the audience and then every detail is noted starting from ranking to website structure and even links. These services will help to put your links on these sites on a sharing basis.
The third step is to define what needs to be done after studying your website and comparing it to your competitors' websites.
The three steps above should provide you with ideas on how to improve the web traffic to your page and in effect, increase your sales.
The fourth step is the implementation plan and the assessment of the results achieved.
Please note achievements do not happen overnight, they are a gradual process... so be patient ~~~
By Author: M. Moume
The competition is such that if you are seriously focusing on internet as a means of marketing and making money, then you cannot do without an SEO strategy.
With search engine optimization, everything about the website, that is, on and off the page, can be improved.
Through SEO, the web traffic to the website can be increased and search engines will also find the website good enough to be ranked high. But all this is done in an effort to make the website more visible and be able to generate more sales.
For any business, every visitor viewing its website is a potential buyer. More potential buyers are brought in with SEO and this means that there are more sales.
SEO is also not a process which can be forgotten at any point or can be achieved fully only once. You need to always improve and improvise the SEO methods so that your website is always ranked high and is seen by more and more people.
Remember that nothing in the internet world is static. There is always movement and changes so you need to stay updated.
A good SEO strategy can be broadly broken up into four steps. Each of these is important and integral to the whole, as the whole thing can only provide the desired results.
The first of these steps is the website analysis.
1. During this phase you should do a detailed study of your website, analyze it point by point, its structure, layout, content, SEO details, visitor reactions and appeal.
2. You should be able to see what keywords are being used, how effective these are depending on the ranking of the website on search engines.
3. Then, you will see if the visitors are allowed to post their feedback, what the feed backs say, how good and relevant is the content, what follow-up procedures are done to keep a client, the RSS feeds on your page and links.
4. You should also be able to check which search engines your site appears on and check the effectiveness of your search engine marketing (SEM).
The second phase is to analyze your rivals or competitors in the same way.
While each detail is noted as for your site, a comparative study is also conducted. The competitors are first identified according to the audience and then every detail is noted starting from ranking to website structure and even links. These services will help to put your links on these sites on a sharing basis.
The third step is to define what needs to be done after studying your website and comparing it to your competitors' websites.
The three steps above should provide you with ideas on how to improve the web traffic to your page and in effect, increase your sales.
The fourth step is the implementation plan and the assessment of the results achieved.
Please note achievements do not happen overnight, they are a gradual process... so be patient ~~~
By Author: M. Moume