Mobile Websites: Strategy Plus Tactics Equal Success

This is an article I wrote for the Five Q blog. Enjoy!

With the rise of mobile devices–laptops, tablets, and smart phones–having a clear mobile strategy is a must. If “strategy” is doing the right things, and tactics are “doing things right”, then there are multiple things to consider when creating a mobile strategy.

Data Analysis

Good decisions are made with good data. Reviewing your mobile trends in your web analytics tool will help you see trends as well as learn more about your mobile audience.

Key items to review in your analytics for mobile:

• Mobile traffic on your website
• Mobile devices used: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, etc.
• Mobile browser usage
• Top entry pages
• Top exit pages
• Bounce rate and more

Having a good understanding of how mobile users are accessing and viewing your web content will help you better set the direction for your goals and metrics.

Goals and Metrics

All good strategies begin by identifying your key goals for building and delivering your mobile brand. Some examples could include:

• Expanding your reach
• Increasing sales/donations
• Usability for mobile users
• New market outreach

Once your goals are established, then you can set your clear and concrete metrics for success. Some metrics for success could include:

• 50% increase in page views for the website
• 100% increase in time on website site
• 25% increase in donations
• 20% increase in contact form inquiries
• Adding 1,000 new Twitter followers
• Increase to 5,000 new Facebook fans

Remember that your goals and metrics should be grounded in data as well as flexible enough to adjust to keep pace with the activity your users are experiencing on their mobile devices.

Best Practices

Now that your goals and metrics have been established, you can consider some best practices in developing your comprehensive mobile strategy:

• Mobile Visitor Goals and Mobile Surfing:
  • Visitor’s goals will be different when visiting the mobile website than when visiting the desktop website.
  • A Nielsen study from May 2010 showed that Americans spend the bulk of their time on their mobile phones checking email, visiting social networks, and reading the news.
  • Mobile users will often be interacting with mobile websites in 5-7 minute chunks of time.
  • Therefore, they will have less time and desire to read content.
• Mobile Content:
  • The best mobile websites do not simply make the original website viewable in a mobile browser, but restructure the website to meet the needs and goals of the mobile user.
  • Content blocks need to be shorter than they are on the desktop version of a website.
  • Navigation needs to be limited to meet the immediate information needs of mobile users and should be action oriented.
• Mobile Donations:
  • Making a donation may not be the first thing a mobile user thinks to do, but if the timing and ask are appropriate to the channel, increasing donations via mobile is an attainable goal.
  • For text message donations, you are limited to $5 or $10 per gift.
    • This may not be strategically aligned with your ministry/organization’s objectives to further develop donors who are able to give more or those who would be willing to donate more if approached properly.
    • The dollar limit may likely cause someone who would be willing to donate a larger amount to settle for donating $5 or $10 since it is the path of least resistance.
  • If using a donation form, make it as easy to use as possible, including pre-populating it with the visitor’s information when they access the link from email on their mobile device.

Responsive Design & Progressive Enhancement

A trending discussion about mobile design revolves around Responsive Design and Progressive Enhancement.

Responsive Design allows your site to be designed to perfectly fit a specific platform/environment–smart phone, tablet, or desktop–with a single design. Through specific adjustments to the website code and style sheets, the design scales and responds accordingly per the device. Here is additional information about responsible web design and its adaptations for mobile.

Progressive Enhancement, on the other hand, “is a way of designing web pages so that the more features a user agent supports, the more features the web page will have. It is the opposite of the design strategy graceful degradation that builds pages for the most modern browsers first and then converts them to work with less functional browsers.” (About.com) A how-to guide for progressive enhancement is provided by Webdesigner Depot.

Knowing that the design is also part of the user experience is something to consider when crafting your mobile strategy.

Deliverables for Your Mobile Strategy

Keeping the goals, metrics, data, and best practices in mind when developing your mobile strategy will lead to success. You will also want to include in your strategy:

• Audience Analysis: clear definitions of your mobile users, trends for different demographics, and usage patterns
• Mobile Sitemap: defining the core website navigation and pages for your mobile offering.
• Mobile Wireframes: taking into careful consideration that your mobile audience will interact with your mobile website differently than on a desktop, establishing a clear information architecture for mobile will be key to ensuring no gaps exist in the user experience.
• Mobile Design: with the information design complete, you can elevate your wireframes to life through your mobile design.

Be sure to work closely with your web team to ensure that your goals and metrics are clearly being met throughout the mobile production process. As technology continues to evolve, you want to be sure that your mobile strategic efforts grow with your brand.

Comment Below:

• Have you started thinking through a mobile strategy yet? Why or why not?
• What about a mobile website vs a mobile app? Are you seeing your organization lean more toward one or the other?

eBooks and eLearning – Finally!

By E. Brown

Now, a group who “gets it!” CourseSmart has released this movie of how eBooks are going to change and adapt — they have to — for the next generation of reader and learner. Also, the rumors of the Apple “iSlate” make this reality a lot closer than you might think. So, where might this leave the Kindle? You be the judge.

Do you think there will be a market for this product? How do you think it will revolutionize learning?

Related Articles
- Kindles For Kids

Why You Do Not Want A Job

By E. Brown (Repost)

Did you know that many people use the words, job, career, and vocation synonymously? Are you one of them? These words are actually very distinct with distinct definitions.

The Dictionary says of these:

Job – A paid position, responsibility, or piece of work.

Career – Time spent in an occupation for a significant period of one’s life.

Vocation – A strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or a person’s main occupation.

When thinking about your work, how do you see yourself positioned? Many newbies to the workforce see themselves in particular jobs for the money. Yet studies have shown that after 5 to 10 years, money is not the prime motivator many thought it was. Many lack passion in what they do, but it pays the bills so they stick it out in an environment they dread returning to each Monday morning. Today, employees are asking themselves if they are truly making a difference with their lives in regard to work. After all, in the western world, work is such a big part of one’s life, you cannot help but wonder if there is any lasting impact. “Is this all there is?” many are asking.

So, how about you? Are you in a job, a career, or a vocation?

Dan Miller offers the following definitions as you think about your life and its purpose as related to work. Read on.

Job - A job is the most specific and immediate of the three terms. It has to do with one’s daily activities that produce income. The average job is 3.2 years in length, meaning the average person will have 14 to 16 different jobs in his/her working lifetime. Jobs will come and go….

Career - Career comes originally from the Latin word for “cart” and later from the Middle French word for “racetrack.” In other words, you can go real fast for a long time but never get anywhere. That is why in today’s work environment, even physicians, attorneys, CPAs, and engineers may choose to get off the expected track and choose another career. You can have different careers at different points in your life.

Vocation - Vocation is the most profound of the three, incorporating calling, purpose, mission, and destiny. This is the big picture many people never identify for themselves. It’s what you’re doing in life that makes a difference and builds meaning for you, which you can review in your later years to see the impact you’ve made on the world. Stephen Covey says that we all want “to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy.” Our vocation will leave a legacy. The word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, which means “to call.” It suggests that you are listening for something that is calling out to you. Everyone has a vocation or calling. (48 Days To The Work You Love, pages 38-40)

Anyone can do a job. The question is, have you been listening for your vocation? Are you fulfilling a purpose beyond the weekly grind? Are you proud and excited about the legacy you are leaving?

These are not easy questions to answer. They will take some introspection but in the end you will find the time you took was worthwhile. You will approach work with exuberance.

You will have fun.

You will find yourself content.

Contentment is not a word used much anymore. Yet, isn’t that something we all want at the end of the day - contentment?

Go. Pursue your vocation and at the end of your life you will find contentment!

Now tell me about you — are you in a job or vocation?

Share This With Others

Are You A Dreamer?

Do you feel misunderstood?

Do you have trouble remembering details and instructions?

Do you love positive feedback, yet not desire to conform to the cultural mold of expectations?

You are not alone.

Lately, I have been doing reading about cognitive styles. Primarily, there is plenty of information about strong-willed children/adults and High-D personalities as well as compliant children/adults. Yet, there is little information out about “Dreamers.”

Dr. Dana Spears and Dr. Ron Braund have a very interesting book on Dreamers, the passionate-creative-culture-changers of the world. Join me soon for a more in depth look at this type of individual and see if you are a mold breaker.

Kindle’s For Kids

By E. Brown

How many of you have kids in school? How many of you have kids carrying HUGE backpacks to school? How many of you are paying doctor bills for your child’s back problems because of lugging around heavy books? Even the packs with wheels are a pain – literally. Ever seen a child try to roll one over a curb on his way to school? Not a pretty sight.

Here’s an idea for Amazon — why not work with the National Education Association, State Departments of Education, or the U.S. Department of Education and give K-12 school kids Kindles with all these “heavy books” loaded into them? The schools own the Kindle’s and when the child graduates, he or she will certainly want to have one of their own. Did someone say, next generation adopters/consumers?

I’ll bet, once parents see the Kindle up close and in action, they will want to buy one for themselves. Talk about market share and saturation. I hear the distant sounds of Ka-ching!

Let me see, off the top of my head here are some ways this could be of benefit:

1. Less paper consumed
2. Less trees cut
3. Easier to update published content
4. Less trash from out-dated school books
5. Lighter pack backs
6. Less stress on children’s backs and bodies
7. Lower family medical bills
8. RSS feeds to teacher assignments
9. Bookmarks to teacher blogs
10. Exposure to Kindle eReaders
11. Create raving fans

I am sure the list could go on. Also, if you’re an Amazon employee, this is another opportunity for you to help out your local community. School administrators will thank you and parents will love you.

If you think this is a worthwhile idea, let Jeff Bezos know. Send him a quick email and let’s see what happens.

Feel free to comment here as well and let me know your thoughts or if there is anything missing on the list of benefits. If you do not see an upside to this idea, let me know that too.

The Economics Of Social Media

This provocative clip gives you some data to chew on if you are wondering about the ROE and ROI of Social Media. Thanks Socialnomics – Social Media Blog.

Social Media Summit Day 2 – Take Aways

By E. Brown

Day 2 is down but not out. In today’s line up was Mari Smith, Jason Alba, and Ann Handley. Mari covered the in’s and out’s of using Facebook for business while Jason revealed the power and reach of using LinkedIn. Finally, Ann ended the day with her Top 5 reasons to be on Twitter and listed some of the tools she uses.

My take aways from the today’s Summit are listed below. I have broken then down by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Facebook
Create a loyal following by:

1. Optimizing your profile
2. Choosing your core message
3. Creating a fan page
4. Adding “friends” strategically
5. Thinking about relationships first
6. Creating viral visibility
7. Running tests with social ads
8. Adding Facebook to your overall marketing strategy

Also, use Friendfeed.com as another means to networking and creating community. You can pull your Twitter tweeps, Facebook friends, and Google contacts in as well.

LinkedIn

• Create a comprehensive and complimentary Social Strategy for your organization
• Tie your Twitter tweets to your LinkedIn status updates
• Use keyword phrases in your profile summary
• Export your LinkedIn contacts to a personal database for backup and mining
• Use the Slideshare app for displaying presentations
• 2-Minute Per Week Strategy = accepting/rejecting connections and asking/answering questions

Twitter
Why use Twitter? Here are several reasons:

• Create a strong community of followers
• Use it to provide Customer Service
• Stronger brand awareness
• Networking
• Monitoring the online community conversation in regard to your organization

Tools to use:
- search.twitter.com
- backtweets.com
- bit.ly
- Tweetie (iPhone app)

Related Links
- Social Media Summit Day 1
- Social Media Summit Day 2

Why Do You Use Twitter?

You may remember when I first started writing about Twitter and then when I started using it. I have found it fun and interesting using the micro-blog format. It is certainly faster than writing a 200-250 word blog article.

So how about you? Why do you Twitter? Do you like to keep up with friends and family? Do you view it as a “game” wanting to see how many followers you can gain? Do you use it as a form of self-expression or do you think of it as a way of developing community?

Let me know here in the comment section below. Enjoy!

Related Articles
- Jeffrey Veen Taps Into eLearning Via Twitter
- Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Twitter!
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 1
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 2
- Twitter For The ADD Generation – Response
- Now, Some Possible Value In Using Twitter

Strengthen Your Mantle for Greatness

By Dan Coughlin

Assume success.

Assume that all of your hard work over all these years has suddenly paid off in the form of you achieving what you’ve always wanted. You now have the income, title, responsibilities, authority, scope of influence, skills, reputation, clients, and flow of opportunities that you’ve always dreamed of having.

Now the real work begins.

It is far harder to handle success successfully than it is to persevere through tough times. Are you really ready to demonstrate long-term greatness if great success suddenly comes your way?

A Brief History of Being Good with Bad Times and Bad with Good Times

Over the past one hundred years, Americans have demonstrated they are very good at dealing with bad times and very bad at dealing with good times.

During the U.S. involvement in World War I (1915-1918) Americans pulled together and demonstrated extraordinary levels of sacrifice, commitment, and teamwork to pull through the country’s worst catastrophe since the Civil War. This was followed by the Roaring 20s when many Americans thought they had discovered the secret to wealth in the stock market and danced their hearts away.

That was followed by the Great Depression and World War II, a time once again marked by long-term sacrifice, focus, commitment, and teamwork. In the relatively affluent 50s, American companies flourished and Americans bought toasters, washing machines, televisions, cars, and refrigerators like they were going out of style, which they often did. This was followed by the tumultuous late 60s and the economic recession throughout much of the 70s.

The materialism and economic growth of the 80s were followed by the recession of the early 90s. The wild prosperity fueled by the dot com craze of the late 90s was followed by the dot com bubble burst in March 2000 and the ensuing recession that marked those years. U.S. citizens bonded together after the terrorist attack of September 11th 2001 in ways many people had never seen before. The rise in home prices and the stock market in 2003-2006 were followed by the prolonged recession from December 2007 through today. Once again Americans are becoming good at sacrifice, commitment, and teamwork.

But why are we so bad at handling good times in ways that could allow us to continually improve our results? Why are we so often are own worst enemy when we are in the best position to generate long-term sustainable success? And what lessons can be learned from history that an individual can apply in his or her own career to sustain greatness when success finally arrives?

Lesson #1: Remember there ain’t no free lunch, no silver bullets, and no secret fountains of money.

During good times, Americans have consistently thought they had it all figured out. Somehow we forget that we’ve had short-term success in the past that didn’t work out very well.

In the mid-1920s, mid-1980s, late 1990s, and mid-2000s, many Americans thought buying stocks would automatically move them up the economic ladder. The greatest piece of business advice I’ve ever learned is “there ain’t no free lunch.” In the late 1890s people thought finding gold was the key and in the late 1990s people thought buying dot-com “gold” was the answer. Don’t ever assume that a stock purchase, a good relationship with your boss, a degree from the “right” university, or employment at a “great” company will ensure your long-term greatness. It won’t. The stock market collapses in 1929, 1987, 2000, and 2008 have shown what goes up doesn’t necessarily always continue to go up.

Based on the amazing sales of American manufactured products and the extraordinary rise in the standard of living for Americans in the 1950s, many people thought that U.S. managers had discovered a silver bullet and would continue to generate incredible economic growth forever. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Many key U.S. executives in the 1960s focused more on profits than on constantly improving the quality and safety of what their companies were producing and they made their companies and industries vulnerable to attacks from a host of other companies.

They quickly learned through the painful 70s that customers don’t care about their profits. They also learned that customers do care about quality, safety, and value. Many executives in the financial industry from 2003-2007 thought they had figured out a way to turn bad loans into great products until one day they found out that wasn’t a secret fountain of money either.

When your great day of success shows up, don’t waste any energy thinking you have it all figured out. Keep striving to get better. Success just means you have a better foundation to work off of for the future. It doesn’t mean you have a guaranteed incredible future.

Lesson #2: Great performance creates great value, and poor performance ruins it.

Jason Jennings has written a tremendous new book called, Hit The Ground Running: A Manual for New Leaders (Portfolio 2009). I’ve decided to rename the subtitle: A Manual for Leaders Who Aspire for Greatness because I believe any executive or manager in any for-profit or not-for-profit organization would benefit tremendously from this remarkably powerful book.

Jason Jennings is the rare person who has the energy to climb the massive mountain of research necessary to really understand an issue and the patience to climb down the mountain and explain what he has learned in practical ways that people can actually use. He and his research team took the 1,000 largest publicly-owned U.S. companies and searched for the best performers from 2001-2007. He wanted the whole focus to be on performance that occurred in the 21st century. Through a series of extraordinarily stringent filters, he narrowed his list to the nine best-performing American companies in this century. He then personally interviewed the ten CEOs (one company has co-CEOs) of these companies. What he found re-energized me. These ten CEOs did, and did not do, some very unusual things.

They were clearly anti-fancy. When they inherited large personal offices, they got rid of the fancy furniture, brought in conference tables and whiteboards, and created working functional spaces for themselves and their team members. One took out his private bathroom and asked why in the world he would need his own bathroom.

They were anti-buzzwords. None of them talked about six-month strategic development processes, stated lofty and complicated visions, spent insane amounts of money for big-name consulting firms to tell them what to do, or hung posters with catchy themes at every one of their business locations.

They talked with employees, board members, managers, and past CEOs. These high-performing CEOs are very down-to-earth individuals. Consistently, they said they didn’t have all the answers and wanted to get to know and learn from as many people connected with their organizations as they could. They were not acting like the proverbial superhero action figures ready to save people from peril. They were genuine individuals who simply wanted to learn anything they could to help their companies succeed in the short and long term.

They clarified a destination and practical steps to achieve that destination in a reasonable time frame. They simply refused to get caught up in making wild predictions to drive their stock price higher. They were maniacal about establishing practical plans and continually monitoring progress to make sure those plans were on track. They remained flexible in making adjustments to hit their desired destination. They kept their businesses as simple as they possibly could in order to optimize efficiency and productivity.

The single biggest takeaway for me from the very best CEOs and their companies is that they maintained a singular focus on improving the performance they felt would benefit their customers the most in terms of creating real value for them.

If you want to be able to strengthen your mantle for greatness, the absolute key is to always improve your performance, which is the actual creation of value that other people will want to use and will benefit from in a meaningful way. If you develop the ability to always do exactly that in good economic and bad economic times, you will be able to handle success and maintain the capacity for greatness over the long term.

Lesson #3: Avoid the “So what are you up to lately?” dilemma.

I think this is the most subtle and pervasive problem in the history of U.S. economics. No matter how successful a company or an individual becomes, the first question asked of him or her by friends and family is, “So what are you up to lately?” In other words, “What have you achieved lately, what is your salary, what new homes are you buying, what vacation homes are you building, and where is the next fancy resort you’re going to visit?” The problem isn’t with the question or the questioners. The problem is the distraction that individuals allow it to create.

This obsession with more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger, and faster, faster, faster throws out of whack the steady, plain, simple, consistent, and boring process of creating greater value that customers will want to purchase at reasonable fees that will generate long-term growth. This is not a modern phenomenon. At least since the 1920s, and then repeated at least every couple of decades, Americans have become maniacal about taking some short-term success and wanting to convert it immediately into much greater success. Whatever happened to the tortoise beating the hare?

I encourage you to improve, create greater value, achieve some success, and then repeat that formula consistently over the entire period of your working life. It is what made you successful once and it is what will consistently make you successful in the future. Just don’t force the future into today’s envelope. Be patient and let your improvements generate greater success when the time is right.

Lesson #4: Values matter and so do lack of values.

Nothing has ever destroyed future greatness faster than a breakdown in personal values. Values are beliefs that determine behaviors. You get to choose six. What six values do you want guiding your behaviors? Ok, if you really want, you can choose eight, but that’s it. Here are mine: integrity, curiosity, friendliness, open-mindedness, innovation, and empathy. OK, two more: tenacity and accountability. That’s it.

Choose your values carefully. If you want to build a personal mantle that can handle success and sustain itself for a lifetime of greatness, then you have to live by the values you’ve chosen carefully. I’ve never met the person who chose cheating, lying, and stealing to be the values that would guide his or her life. For some people, those things snuck in when they weren’t watching their values. Watch your values carefully and let greatness sneak in when you’re not looking.

If you lie about little things, you’ll lie about big things. If you’ll take more money than your company can realistically afford to pay you just because you can get away with it, you’ve shown where your priorities are for the long term. Don’t reward yourself today based on dreams for tomorrow. If you’re honest in little things, you will be in big things as well. Values have a way of repeating themselves.

Be ready for success. It can happen at any moment.

About Dan Coughlin

He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, and author of ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum. He speaks on leadership, branding, sales, and innovation. His next book, The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success, which is about practical management lessons from the history of professional auto racing, will be published in May 2009.

How To Improve Your Learning

Kendra has some good insights about being a learner. Here she shares some effective ways to enhance your personal learning. I liked number ten. I think you’ll like this too. Enjoy!

By Kendra Van Wagner, About.com

I’m always interested in finding new ways to learn better and faster. As a graduate student who is also a full-time science writer, the amount of time I have to spend learning new things is limited. It’s important to get the most educational value out of my time as possible. However, retention, recall and transfer are also critical. I need to be able to accurately remember the information I learn, recall it at a later time and utilize it effectively in a wide variety of situations.

1. Memory Improvement Basics
I’ve written before about some of the best ways to improve memory. Basic tips such as improving focus, avoiding cram sessions and structuring your study time are a good place to start, but there are even more lessons from psychology that can dramatically improve your learning efficiency.

2. Keep Learning (and Practicing) New Things
One sure-fire way to become a more effective learner is to simply keep learning. A 2004 Nature article reported that people who learned how to juggle increased the amount of gray matter in their occipital lobes, the area of the brain is associated with visual memory. When these individuals stopped practicing their new skill, this gray matter vanished.

So if you’re learning a new language, it is important to keep practicing the language in order to maintain the gains you have achieved. This “use-it-or-lose-it” phenomenon involves a brain process known as “pruning.” Certain pathways in the brain are maintained, while other are eliminated. If you want the new information you just learned to stay put, keep practicing and rehearsing it.

3. Learn in Multiple Ways
Focus on learning in more than one way. Instead of just listening to a podcast, which involves auditory learning, find a way to rehearse the information both verbally and visually. This might involve describing what you learned to a friend, taking notes or drawing a mind map. By learning in more than one way, you’re further cementing the knowledge in your mind. According to Judy Willis, “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is. This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all of those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue. This cross-referencing of data means we have learned, rather than just memorized.”

4. Teach What You’ve Learned to Another Person
Educators have long noted that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Remember your seventh-grade presentation on Costa Rica? By teaching to the rest of the class, your teacher hoped you would gain even more from the assignment. You can apply the same principle today by sharing your newly learned skills and knowledge with others.

Start by translating the information into your own words. This process alone helps solidify new knowledge in your brain. Next, find some way to share what you’ve learned. Some ideas include writing a blog post, creating a podcast or participating in a group discussion.

5. Utilize Previous Learning to Promote New Learning
Another great way to become a more effective learner is to use relational learning, which involves relating new information to things that you already know. For example, if you are learning about Romeo and Juliet, you might associate what you learn about the play with prior knowledge you have about Shakespeare, the historical period in which the author lived and other relevant information.

Read More…

5 Tips To Quickly Brand Yourself Online

By Kirsten Dixson

If you haven’t figured out that you are being Googled in your job search just as frequently as you are Googling your business contacts, then it is time to enter the world of modern career management. Whether you want to or not, you must develop and maintain some kind of professional online profile and recognize that people are forming opinions about you based on what they find after typing your name into a search engine.

Your own approach to online reputation management will be dependent on your career goals and personal comfort level with becoming visible online. Ideally, everyone would invest in a customized online portal for his or her personal brand (see examples). When you have your own blog or website designed, you have total control over how you present yourself. However, if you have limited time or funds, you may be wondering what you can do to establish or extend your online brand quickly and economically. Here are five free resources (some also have paid services):

1. www.Naymz.com. Think of Naymz as the 411 to your online identity. Not only can you create a profile, but you can also point people to all the other online content that you want them to see. This includes your other social media profiles (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), websites, articles and relevant links. You can upgrade your account to have Naymz buy your name in the paid search results so that you get guaranteed first page placement on the leading search engines. A paid listing can be especially helpful if you have a common name, digital dirt or are impatient to show up in the natural listings.

2. www.BusinessCard2.com. BusinessCard2 is a virtual business card that is designed to show up in your search results. In addition to a downloadable vCard with contact information, you can include a bio, recommendations and attachments such as a resume, presentations, articles and photos.

3. www.LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn is a must for every business professional, and it’s not just a networking tool. Create your profile at LinkedIn, and make it public. Chances are that you already have a LinkedIn profile, but you haven’t gotten it ready for public consumption. LinkedIn has good “Google juice,” so your public profile will typically rank high in the results when someone searches for your name. (If you have a common name, be sure to include qualifiers as keywords in your profiles. When people type your name into the search box and they get millions of results, they will begin to narrow down their search by the name of your latest employer or MBA program, your specialty, job title or location.) You can control what elements appear on the public Internet versus the content that only gets displayed to your LinkedIn contacts. Write a keyword-rich, easy-to-digest profile that showcases your value to your target audience and request endorsements from contacts that support your claims. The best way to get endorsements from people is to go ahead and endorse them. LinkedIn will prompt them to return the favor so you don’t have to. Recruiters value LinkedIn endorsements because you cannot edit them (but you can decide not to use them). Also keep in mind that the size of your network will display as part of your public profile and judgments may be made about having too many or too few connections. The right quantity for you is purely subjective, but know that the intention of LinkedIn is to connect with only those you actually know and would recommend to others in your network.

4. www.VisualCV.com. VisualCV takes having your resume online to the next level by allowing you to back up your achievements with proof of your performance. Think of it as an online, multimedia executive portfolio that is template-like in design (your site looks like all the other VisualCVs). You can upload or link to relevant content that supports your claims and also control who sees what.

5. www.Alltop.com. I strongly advocate publishing articles or posting thoughtful blog comments related to your area of expertise. Searching Alltop will help you find the websites and blogs that would be effective in reaching your target audience.

To avoid possible confusion and more work later, don’t start using any of these online identity management resources before you take the important first steps of discovering and articulating your personal brand. Ask yourself, what is my unique promise of value or value proposition, and how can I differentiate myself from others who are vying for the same opportunities? Write one compelling social networking bio that you copy and paste consistently across all of your online profiles. To make a great first impression, you will also want to get a professional headshot since people are often meeting you online before they meet you in person.

The 10 “Cannots”

Don’t know what you may think of Dave Ramsey, but there is no doubt he has helped many people become financially free. Here is a list Dave has recently been using on his daily radio program . Enjoy!

By William J. H. Boetcker (wrongfully attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
3. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
4. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
5. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
6. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
7. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
8. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
9. You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
10. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

How To Find Out About A Company Culture Before You Choose To Join Their Ranks

By Barbara Safani

I often remind my clients that when they are interviewing for an open position, they are interviewing the employer as much as the employer is interviewing them. By paying attention to the subtle clues in the office environment, job seekers can gain a better perspective on the culture of the company or division. This way candidates can make more informed decisions regarding fit. Here are a few tips to help you size up the work environment of the company you are interviewing with.

1. If possible, schedule your interview early in the morning, late in the day, or during lunchtime. When you arrive look around and see who else is there at that time. If you have an early morning or early evening appointment and the office is packed, chances are that the culture is one that necessitates coming in early or staying late. If you interview during lunch and everyone seems to be eating at their desk, that could be a clue about the culture of the organization. If you are interviewing with a company that has a company parking lot, observe how full the lot is during these hours to determine if late nights or early mornings are part of the culture of the entire organization.

2. Ask to do a walk-through of the office. If you have made it to the second round of interviews, consider asking to see the office space. This allows you to canvas the physical space, but again gives you important clues about the office culture. Is the set up cubicle style, big open spaces, windowed offices, or a lot of closed doors? Does the space appear clean, well maintained and feel like a place where you would feel comfortable and safe?

3. Make small talk with the receptionist. This is important for several reasons. Many hiring authorities ask the receptionist their impressions of candidates that come in to apply for jobs. Make sure their first impression of you is positive. Through your conversation, you may gain valuable tidbits of information or see firsthand what types of people come through the reception area and how they interact with each other.

Note any interruptions during the interview. Again, this could be a sign of what it’s like to work in that particular environment. Did your interview start on time or were you kept waiting? Is the interview conducted in a quiet environment behind closed doors? Does the person interviewing you interrupt the flow of the meeting to take phone calls? Does the interview end abruptly due to some sort of office crisis? While there are some hiring authorities that “stage” interruptions to see how you deal with them, I truly believe that for the most part these are not planned. Instead, this can be indicative of the department’s culture or the hiring manager’s style.

4. Observe preferred communication styles. How were the interview and follow-up meetings arranged? Were they set-up by email, phone, or snail mail? Does the company prefer one-on-one or group interview formats? Did the hiring manager give you any technical tests or assessments as part of the interview process? By observing the different ways companies interview and gather information, job seekers can begin to uncover how information is managed and validated by members of the organization.

Of course, no interview scenario is perfect and I’m not suggesting that you penalize a company or hiring authority if a glitch occurs during the interview. But it is important to observe the rhythm of the office and factor that information into the final decision making process. What have you observed during your interviews and how has that information influenced your feelings about a company or a job?

Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, (www.careersolvers.com), has over twelve years of experience in career management, recruiting, executive coaching, and organizational development.

Top 12 Poor Excuses Not To Go In To Work

I saw this collection of humorous excuses that Patrick Erwin put together on the CareerBuilder Job Blog. Do not try these at home unless you want to spend time looking for a new job at CareerBuilder :)

What are some of the most outrageous excuses (and by excuses, we mean ‘lies’) that an employee has give as a reason for their absence? Here’s the best of the best:

• Employee didn’t want to lose the parking space in front of his house.
• Employee hit a turkey while riding a bike.
• Employee said he had a heart attack early that morning, but that he was “all better now.”
• Employee donated too much blood.
• Employee’s dog was stressed out after a family reunion.
• Employee was kicked by a deer.
• Employee contracted mono after kissing a mailroom intern at the company holiday party and suggested the company post some sort of notice to warn others who may have kissed him.
• Employee swallowed too much mouthwash.
• Employee’s wife burned all his clothes and he had nothing to wear to work.
• Employee’s toe was injured when a soda can fell out of the refrigerator.
• Employee was up all night because the police were investigating the death of someone discovered behind her house.
• Employee’s psychic told her to stay home.

Vodcasts Free Up Classroom Time and Raise Performance

Saw this. Loved it. Wanted to share.

Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Twitter!

By E. Brown

Really? Who says, blogging is dead? Maybe it was Jason Calacanis. Well, if you’re Jason and your tired of writing lengthy content…yeh, blogging is probably dead for you. Twitter is short, sweet, and to the point. And, it doesn’t hurt if you have a following or are seen as a bit of a celebrity.

Well…it makes all the difference!

If you’re an average person, what do you care? If you’re blogging for your family and friends, then guess what? Blogging is not dead. If you’re tweeting for family and friends, good for you. Although, I question whether your family is reallt interested in where you are at any given time or how many times cute-little-Suzy rolled peas up into her 8-month-old mouth (See Twitter Is For The ADD Generation).

Sorry Jason, blogging is not dead. Twitter is fun for some, but it will soon be replaced by a type of video tweeting and live friend0finder mash-ups.

What do you think? Take the poll or make a comment.

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Some Guiding Questions To See If Your Organization Is Ready For Online Learning

By E. Brown

I was reminded of this just the other day while presenting to a client: Had they assessed their readiness to commit to online learning or had they derived a fanciful idea to move to e-Learning without counting the cost?

If you’re considering putting your content online for learning and training, I suggest you do a little homework and become familiar with what it will take to get there. Migrating to online learning is a journey, not a single event. Based on what your business and training goals are, you need to put together a plan or ask someone to help you put together a plan.

For instance, if you desired to build a house, what would you do? You would not buy a truckload of lumber and expect to have a house built in 2 weeks. No — first you would need a plan. During this phase of the project you must ask and answer a lot of questions that allow you to assess your readiness to build. It is much the same with online learning.

Here are some guiding questions to ask of yourself and your team as you get started:

Is your leadership willing to explore this innovative approach? You will need the support of your organization’s leaders to obtain the funding, technology, staffing, and other resources necessary to begin and maintain any new approach to education.

Is your competition already taking advantage of this new option on the corporate training menu? Although most new ideas take time to gain wide acceptance, some –online learning, for example–take off like a rocket. If your organization hasn’t yet made the leap, you may not be alone, but you soon will be.

Is your workforce ready to buy in? A Readiness Assessment may be the way to find out. This usually covers audience expectations, technology requirements, policies and processes, change management, and end-user support.

Is your workforce prepared to commit the time? The amount of development time will depend on your technology needs, the sophistication of your current training programs, the interest and comfort level of your leadership and workforce, and other factors.

Does your workforce have the literacy level and writing skills needed to contribute in a meaningful way to online dialog? Sure, cyberspace has pictures and sound, but it is primarily a world of written communication. Online learning for adults is mostly a matter of interaction via the written word, and online classes consist mostly of “living letters” written back and forth among students and facilitators. Is your workforce up to it?

Do you and your team have a rudimentary understanding of how online learning works? This is usually a basic introduction to the equipment and procedures involved in online education.

- Source: These particular sample questions came from FutureU

These are only a few of the questions to get you thinking. I hope this helps. Feel free to contact me for more information or visit TiER1 Performance.

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Branding You – Why Personal Branding Is So Important In Today’s World

By Scott Lahde

Remember all the talk in the late 90s of the “brand called you?” Well, much has changed in the past 10 years – including the way we conduct a job search and the way we network with each other. But the original concept of branding yourself, especially in today’s competitive marketplace for plum roles and positions, is more relevant than ever.

Sure, you have a LinkedIn page. Perhaps you’ve signed up for Naymz and one of your colleagues invited you to join NotchUp or even one of the newer business social networks like Ryze. More and more online business networking opportunities are sprouting up every day. You may have even designed a personal web page with your professional credentials.

That’s a good start, but is that enough to build your own personal brand? No.

Focus on Number One
As executives in marketing, advertising and sales can certainly attest, marketing a company’s product or service, generating sales leads and enhancing the brand is paramount to company success. So why wouldn’t you use that same approach for yourself? Sound too self-serving? Think again.

Really successful executives, the ones that are consistently written about, quoted as experts, and asked to partner with top executives and companies, do one thing and do it well. They promote themselves and their expert opinions.

Creating an online profile in a number of places and monitoring your online presence is definitely important, but if you ignore your real world presence, you’re cutting your own legs. Busy executives pour through hundreds of emails and view scores of web pages each day. Will your digital communication or web presence stand out among the deluge of daily digital information? Well, it’s a big challenge.
What will be remembered is poignant, real world interaction.

Make it Real
You can generate this sort of interaction and attention for the “brand called you” in a dozen different ways. However, the three ways that have had the biggest impact and are often a catalyst for more opportunities are:

1. Participating in industry trade groups and associations
2. Speaking at prominent industry events
3. Writing well-crafted, by-lined articles in trade publications

In a sense, think back to basics. Some may scoff at the notion of participation at the trade level. Whether it’s engineering, finance or technology, the trades are not nearly as glamorous as being featured in Forbes or Fortune or speaking at Davos. But let’s be realistic, only a very small handful of people are invited to participate at those high levels.

So don’t scoff at them – embrace your trades! It will be your entrance to bigger and better things. Everything is cyclical – a trade article could lead to being selected for a speaking engagement, which leads to being quoted in a news article, which leads to a panel opportunity, which leads to being interviewed on television as an industry expert. You never know. Your participation with Beer Advocate magazine six months ago could have led to being asked to comment on the mammoth Anheuser-Busch/InBev merger.

Be Memorable
The same holds true for conferences, conventions and industry association events. You certainly don’t need to attend every single one in your industry, but select a few key events and really focus on your personal interactions. You may be a sales person for your organization, so of course one of your goals might be generating sales leads, but don’t make the mistake of ignoring your other goal – selling YOU.

Focus on real world interaction with people. Have the kind of conversations that will make people remember you, not run the other direction because you are hounding them. Be genuine. Be thoughtful. Find ways you can help people as much as they can help you. These tenets may seem natural to some, foreign to others, but in any case, they will go a long way in building your brand.

In Short
Create this simple litmus test: Is what I am doing improving my brand, both online and off-line?

Remember: Networking is not about collecting as many business cards as you can. It’s about quality over quantity.

I recently attended a conference and during the networking portion I was approached by a gentleman who quite frankly told me that his boss told him to attend the conference and hand out his business cards. He then offered me his business card and walked away.

Obviously, his business card was immediately circular filed the same way I file random online invites when I receive them. Do yourself a favor – don’t be that person.

Scott Lahde is a 15-year veteran of the communications industry and is Vice President, Associate Director of Corporate Communications at Deutsch Inc., a $2.5 billion top-ten, bi-coastal communications agency.

Web Working Team Work Just Got A Whole Lot Easier With Wiggio

Are you on a virtual team? Are you amongst the next generation web workers of the world? Then Wiggio is for you!

From Wiggio’s About Page
As seniors at Cornell, we started wiggio out of our own frustrations with unnecessarily clogged inboxes, using five different websites for five different functions, and all the other hassles associated with working in groups. We were tired of sending eleven emails back and forth just to set a meeting time. We were tired of that guy who just never knows where and when to be there. We were tired of list-servs, contact lists, phone-chains and incompatibilities. We wanted everything to be in one place, and we wanted it simple. So we created wiggio.

Wiggio lets you use the following group tools, and it’s all for free!

• Messages— send mass text messages, voice messages and emails from wiggio
• Calendar— keep a shared group calendar that will send you text message reminders before all your meetings, practices, rehearsals, games and other events
• Poll—survey your entire group and get their responses as they answer
• Folder— dump all your groups’ files into one folder and never send another attachment
• Meetings— never walk 15 minutes through the snow to get to a 10 minute meeting again… setup free conference calls and web chats on Wiggio
• Links— keep a shared favorites folder

Hall Davidson Talks About Cell Phones In Education – NECC 2008

By Mark van’t Hooft

It’s in your pocket: teaching spectacularly with cell phones. Great speech by Hall Davidson from Discovery Education Network about using mobile phones in education, the kind of talk many teachers and administrators need to hear. The first thing Hall said was to take out and turn on our cell phones

There is a large potential for cell phones in education, but current best practices are small. Mobiles have lots of functionality, including:

• Telephone
• Text messenger
• Still camera
• Video camera
• Video player
• GPS device
• Podcaster
• Music player

Are we really going to ignore a device this powerful? Can we, when it has all kinds of applications for teaching, learning, school-to-home, administration?

In general, we still take cell phones away, and school districts ban them (e.g. during school hours). However, if this is a tool for adults, we need to teach kids how to use it.

Read more…

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