The Work-From-Home Issue

There are a number of businesses which strongly debate on whether or not it is a good idea to let employees work from home. While my current company allows it (although with a certain restrictions), many still don't prefer their employees working from home.

There are positives and negatives of this subject. You need to make sure that you are informed about the employee before letting him or her work from home. Here is an awesome infographic from Column Five in that regards. Have a look!

So, what are your thoughts regarding this? Share with us! 

Is Your Blog Ready? 5 Handy Tips

There are probably hundreds and thousands of bloggers who are writing on what you are writing right now. What is there in them which you would love to surpass? One simple question - 

Is your blog ready to handle a sudden burst of traffic?

Leave No Stone Unturned

There are a number of bloggers who unknowingly do something that suddenly results in hundreds and thousands of blog-hits. They don't what have they written but it's for sure that they have written about something that everyone needed to know. Well, for the starters, you can never know what is THAT one thing you will do that will suddenly see your website clicks jump. But what you can do instead is be prepared to welcome all those visitors. 

Here is what you must do before you have that huge stroke of luck and have thousands of people visiting your blog. You wouldn't want them to be disappointed now, would you?

Never Compromise on Content 
That's right. Make sure that whatever you do, your post(s) must make others subscribe to your blog. You wouldn't want one-time visitors because it is the dedicated ones who really make the difference and publicize your blog later on. 

Know what Suits You the Best
If you write a sports blog, don't just focus on sports. Make your blog highly focused. If you are focusing on cricket, then don't talk on the things that others talk. Bring out some new stuffs about the game which no one else would know. Make your blog unique, a place where a visitor will find everything related to the topic that your blog is on. 

Keep a Tab on Subscriptions
Make sure that you keep a tab on the subscriptions. If you are employing newer ways and means to improve your blogging style, may be the designs, and yet you aren't finding any substantial growth in the subscription, then there is some problem that you just don't know. And if you find the numbers slowly coming down, then there are some serious problems with your blog. 

Design 
I have talked about this for a very long time. If your blog's design is not professional enough, then you can't expect readers to take your blog seriously. Make sure that the blog reflect's your style, your attitude, and more over, your company's attitude in this regard.

Sell 
Ultimately, we are blogging to earn money, right? Make sure that you are offering your readers something that they want. Possibly an eBook, or a Podcast link. Make sure to take advantage of Google Adsense and Adwords if you are a rookie blogger. But for small business owners, make sure that your blog sells your products and creates that "need" in your customers.

If you like what I wrote, then please feel kind to take a look at my lovely sponsors. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest in the world of Social media and small business. 

Cheers!


image courtesy - businessweek.com

A few weeks ago my friend Liz Henry posed a question on twitter questioning the trend of "personal branding." I responded with my opinion and later a link to a blog post Geoff Livingston filed ages ago; Liz included both in her blog post on the topic.

I finally had a chance to read her post and reader's comments and they prodded me to share more of my thinking on the topic than 140 characters provides.

By and large, I don't believe in personal branding. And I think that professionals who believe in personal branding are a detriment to the companies and brands with which they partner or service.

Allow me to explain.

If a business person, free agent, or corporate employee is branding themselves, that means they're competing with your Brand. Think about how much time is required to market something. If that person is working for you, they could have spent that time working on your business. How many opportunities for your business did they miss as they shilled themselves?

Liz's post examined the question for mom bloggers. I'd argue that a blog isn't always a personal brand. A blog is a product and potentially a revenue stream, just like other media companies such as the NY Times or AOL. Marketing a blog isn't personal branding. The blog may be personal in nature and content, but it's not necessarily a personal brand. It's just a brand. And a product that you make. And yes, you should market it.

The person behind the blog, the writer or reporter, is not the product. And if you spend your time building up that person as the product, you're putting your Brand and business at risk. Remember what happened to Wendy's marketing when Dave died? KFC and the Colonel? Have you noticed that Johnson baby products fall under a different "brand name" than other J&J products like Tylenol or Neutrogena? A benefit to that strategy is that the revered Baby brand remains isolated and therefore (hopefully) untainted, should anything happen to the company's other products.

A blogger can be a personality. And yes, you can pair and market a personality with a brand - to support the brand, to help shape the brand voice. Think William Shatner for Priceline. Suzanne Sommers for Thighmaster. Martha Stewart for Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart cookbooks, or Martha Stewart bedding. Gary Vaynerchuk for Wine Library.

The exception to the rule, are the handful of household names (often entertainers) who rise above their product to become a personal brand. This elite group includes names such as: Madonna, Cher, Oprah, and Britney. However, even these people started selling a product, creating a personality and then transcended to become the product.

My advice? Make something. Sell that. But never sell yourself.

Where should you be on Social Media?

We are all constantly debating the benefits and drawbacks of social networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (Sorry! MySpace). This may get daunting for those who are looking for ways and means to find the perfect social network for themselves. For example, if you are looking for a more selective way of saying stuffs to your audience, then Twitter isn't the place to be, Google+ is.

So, where should you be on social media for making the most of your online life? Here is an awesome infographic I found out at Mashable. Enjoy!

So, where do YOU want to be and why?

Business Blogging Tips Part - 2

In my previous blog post, I had mentioned some of the points that need to be kept in mind while writing a business blog. Well, here are the rest of them.

No Flash!

Who keeps flash these days? Do you? Are you planning to? Well! Don't! The more you keep flash content in your blog, the longer it takes to get downloaded on your visitor's computer. Also, web spiders don't really like flash. 

Writing style 

The write up of your business blog must be based on the kind of image you want to project to your customers. If you are a software manufacturing company, or a hardware company, then it is a good idea to keep the tone as professional as possible. Similarly, if you are one of those T-Shirt manufacturing companies, then regardless to say, you can be as informal as possible. Including pictures, videos, event notifications should be done judiciously.

Writing Quality

The difference between quality and style? Well, with quality, there can be NO COMPROMISE. There shouldn't be absolutely any grammatical errors and the blog should be as brief as possible. If you keep deviating from this important characteristics, then you will be ticking readers off like nothing. 

Interval

Write judiciously. Timing is pretty damn important. Generally, people read blogs on their way to office or just when they have reached office to get their "minds racing". Also, don't be irregular with your postings. Your readers will slowly come up to speed and will regularly hit on your blog on that particular time to "check up on what's new".

If you have anything to share, do let us in the comments section below! Thanks!

Image courtesy - idaconcpts

Business Blogging Tips Part - 1

Business blogging is different than average blogging. There are certain issues that need to be kept in mind before a person can go ahead with starting a blog for his/her business. 

The following are some of the points that need to be kept in mind -

No Shortcuts

There are a number of Internet Marketers who are making thousands of dollars (or atleast that's what they claim!) However, even they would admit that is was not an easy task. There is a lot of stuff that you have to do in order to ensure that your blog, your website and your business hits off at the right foot. There are a whole range of issues that need to be sorted out before you can even think of taking your blog on air.

Domain

When you are buying a domain for your blog, instead of creating a separate domain for it, simply add it to your main website. Instead of "www.xyzblog.com" go for "www.xyz.com/blog". This not only does a world of good for your site's SEO aspects but also your website's user-friendliness.

Design

This is the first consideration that you need to make in order to ensure that more and more people find it interesting and different than the rest. Hire a good web designer and keep the look of the blog as professional as possible. Make sure that the look and feel of the blog follows that of your brand logo.

Blog SEO

Many of us believe that spreading links far and wide and getting hits is always welcome. WRONG! What you need to do first is to "clean your house". Make your blog as crawler-friendly as possible. If they like your blog with its proper meta-tags as well as meta-desc and find that the image-alt has been specified for all images, you have a good chances of being in the right side of the search engine law.

There are tons of things that you can do. For further information, please hang around in this blog. For latest in the world of Social Media, like us in Twitter and Facebook. 

Cheers!

Image Courtesy - www.maples.com

What the Bible can teach us about Personal Learning Networks: Spermalogos & Twitter birds

Yesterday, while reading Acts 17:18, I stumbled upon the rather intriguing term "spermalogos."If you're not up on your New Testament Bible stories, let me briefly set the scene for you. In this verse, the apostle Paul has just arrived in Athens and finds himself in the Greek agora preaching the gospel of Christ to a bunch of philosophers. The reaction from the philosophers? A baffled "What is this spermalogos trying to say?"

The NIV translation says they called him a "babbler" and explains that the term refers to a "bird picking up seeds here and there" and that it eventually "came to refer to the loafer in the marketplace who picked up whatever scraps of learning he could find." A bird picking up scraps of information from others? Maybe it's just me, and I'm ripe for another social media fast, but when I read this, I couldn't strike this picture from my mind of a little blue Twitter bird flying around the social web, occasionally picking up a seed of wisdom from its personal learning network (PLN). Kind of like this:

I love that metaphor! But there's more to it. The NIV study notes further clarify that a spermalogos picks up these scraps of learning and then parades them around without digesting them himself. What a great way to depict the limits of a personal learning network. There is no learning without digestion. Okay, strike that - that didn't sound so good. Let's try again: In order to learn from the seeds of wisdom provided by our PLN, we have to carefully examine them, question them, absorb them. We can't just skim over information in a superficial attempt to digest it.

Unfortunately, the fast paced nature of the social web might be priming us to do just that (see Nicolas Carr's book The Shallows for a very grim view on this issue). Even if you don't quite buy Carr's argument that we are losing our ability to read and think deeply, raise your hand if you have ever retweeted information from your PLN without having (fully) read the information contained in it! As much as I hate to admit it, I know I have. And I know it happens quite a bit - especially when you see a tweet retweeted in your timeline seconds after the original tweet went out. Parading scraps of information around without digesting them first? Sounds a lot like the practice of retweeting without first studying the information contained in a tweeted link, doesn't it?

It also reminds me of the practice of bundling tweets and repackaging them in newspaper style format through services such as Paper.li or Scoop.it. Although these sites refer to themselves as content curation services, I wonder if what they are being used for should really be called curation. Aggregation maybe, but curation? If all we do is bundle undigested pieces of wisdom together to share with others, have we really curated anything? A true curator adds a point of view and contextualizes the scraps of information s/he is culling together thereby framing the message. In order to curate then, we need to provide a frame to hold each precious little piece of wisdom, but in order to develop that frame, we first need to digest the information (for an excellent read on the topic of frames & curation, I suggest Maria Popova's piece on curation as a new kind of authorship). Aggregation may be possible without digestion, but curation sure isn't.

Back to Paul though. So these philosophers who according to Acts spent their time hanging out doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas, just called him a spermalogos (or in my version of the story, a blue Twitter bird). Although this may sound like an insult, some people have pointed out that that's not necessarily the case. These idea hungry philosophers saw him as someone who having picked up bits and pieces of wisdom here and there, could "make a significant contribution to their understanding."And there's a lesson in that as well. As we travel around the social web, we need to remember that we can gather scraps of wisdom from the people we encounter there. In a way we're all spermalogos traveling around the Internet. Or maybe we're Athenians picking up the bits and pieces of wisdom our PLN leaves behind everyday around the market place of ideas which is Twitter. For us to learn from these ideas though, let's not forget to take the time to truly absorb and digest them.

Trust and Business

Trust is one of the key factors which drive businesses. When customers don't trust you enough, when investors don't speak highly of you, then regardless to say, your business will go downhill.  

Build trust. Drive business

Building quality trust is absolutely vital in the long run. Be it a B2C or B2B business, trust plays a significant factor in the long run. This post will attempt at discussing what drives trust and how businesses can actually make the most of it. 

Trust Customers
Modern customers always give feedback. You have to scout for various ways and means to get those feedback through social media presence across various networks. Customers can really help you detect huge problems that have the potentials to turn the shape of your business.

Trust Employees 
Employees always must feel that they are a part of the organization. When you trust your employees, you give/share with the them the responsibility. In a way, your employees feel it obligatory to work towards the benefit of your company. However, be sure to keep them in confidence. If your employees feel alienated, your company has a serious problem.

Why Trust?

Trust brings Confidence 
When you trust your fellow people, when you trust your customers, you can always bank on them in times of crisis. Don't think of your business as something that entirely depends on hard core sales-strategy. Learn to connect with your customers and investors from time to time. Make them a party to your company's growth.

Confidence brings Sales 
When your employees feel that their company loves and appreciates a job well done, then they will work more. It's a sort of motivation which surpasses other forms of motivational measures like appraisals.

If you like this piece, be sure to follow us at Twitter or Facebook! 

Image Courtesy - blog.leadingresources.com