How to Avoid Work-at-Home Scams

There are genuine work-at-home business ventures and, unfortunately, there are work-at-home scams. It’s vital to be able to tell the difference between the two. Although it's difficult to tell with absolute certainty which opportunities are fraudulent and which are authentic, there are warning signs that scream “SCAM.” Here's how to spot the scams while finding legitimate opportunities.

Do your research

Before embarking on any business enterprise, do the necessary background research. It’s time consuming, but crucial to avoiding a costly mistake.

• Verify that the company truly exists.
• Is there readily available contact information including a physical location, email address, and phone number?
• Is the company legally registered as a corporation, LLC, or other type of business entity?

Assess the company’s stability. A firm that has been in operation for two years or more is more likely to be stable than a fresh startup. Explore their reputation; check with the local Better Business Bureau or the National Fraud Information Center. If the company has a lot of negative publicity, there’s likely a reason. A few complaints are expected; a pattern of unresolved complaints is not.

Be cautious about investing money

An up-front fee required just to discover details about a business venture is highly suspect. Information should be provided free of charge so an informed decision about whether or not to pursue the prospect can be made. Legitimate companies are interested in partnering with people who can be successful; scammers, on the other hand, are only interested in money.

Be wary of unbelievable claims

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Be wary of claims of easy money with little or no effort. Starting a home-based business is just like starting any other kind of business. It requires time and effort. Claims of “guaranteed money” are also an indication of a scam. No company can guarantee profitability.

Understand the nature of the business

A legitimate work-at-home business, whether it’s selling a product or service, or freelance work, should be able to explain clearly what they do and how they do it. Also, make sure there is an actual product, service, or task involved. If the only way to make money is by recruiting other people, it’s most likely a pyramid scheme.

The ability to work from home should be secondary to the actual business. If the headline screams "WORK AT HOME," it’s most likely a scam. Legitimate opportunities tend to list the nature of the job or business first. They disclose specifics, not just the promise of working in your pajamas.

Some legitimate options

Whether you choose to be an entrepreneurial business owner, or do contract work for another company, certain types of businesses are more easily conducted at home.

Sales, whether creating or re-selling your own products or selling another company’s products or services, is a good option. Customer service, inbound sales, and telemarketing are also viable alternatives.

Virtual assistance, data processing, and transcription are popular options. Bookkeeping, tax preparation, and other financial services, as well as insurance claim processing and medical billing, are also good candidates.

Freelance writing, content creation and blog posting can be done on a contractual basis and are excellent possibilities for a self-employed writer. Some lesser-known opportunities, such as writing for greeting card companies or creating grant proposals, are often overlooked. For those with a background in a design field, opportunities exist in graphic design, website creation and illustration.

Finding work-at-home jobs

Job search engines such as LinkUp and Simply Hired search for jobs on company web sites, while Monster, CareerBuilder, and Yahoo! Careers compile vast job databases. Sifting through the massive numbers of job postings can be time-consuming, use keyword such as "telecommute" “freelance,” or “work from home” to narrow your search.

A successful home-based business is certainly possible. Make sure you research each opportunity thoroughly, screen carefully and consider which opportunities are a good fit. You’re less likely to be successful if you lack the necessary skills or dislike the work involved.

Source:http://www.openforum.com

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Content Marketing Trends for 2012: What's in and What's Out

No doubt about it: 2011 was a big year for content marketing. A recent survey conducted by my company, HiveFire, found that 82% of B2B marketers today use content marketing. And twice the number of marketers implement content marketing vs. the number of those who use print, television, and radio advertising.

Those numbers speak for themselves. Marketers have taken note, and are recognizing content marketing as a valuable component of their overall strategy.

With so much attention focused on the progress that content marketers have made over the past year, it's impossible not to ask what 2012 might bring. Because the content marketing space is moving so fast, here is a quick look at what's in and what's out in 2012. Messaging
What's Out: Passing Off Marketing Materials as Content 


Companies that were new to content marketing last year have learned that to attract customer interest, they have to be prepared to offer relevant and engaging content, not just marketing materials. Gone will be the days of marketers singularly promoting their brands without also keeping an eye on industry news and trends.
What's In: Incorporating Your Brand's Message Into a Larger Story
More and more, marketers will incorporate their brands' messages into a larger, overall story. Content produced by companies will begin to take on a more journalistic feel, and those marketers that are really getting it right won't shy away from curating content from their competitors as well.
Channels
What's Out: Traditional Content Channels
In 2011, we saw the decline of existing content channels (e.g., RSS feeds) and the shift to new content vehicles (e.g., Twitter). Increasingly, readers who seek content are moving away from sites, such as traditional news websites, in favor of more real-time social media channels.
What's In: The Next Big Thing
My prediction for 2012 is that we will continue to see emerging content channels steal the spotlight from more-established news media. A new online channel (think the Google+ of 2012), a new physical channel (2012's answer to the tablet), and a new medium for content (the next infographic) are all on the calendar for the next 12 months.
Curated Content
What's Out: Stealing Content From Other Sources Without Proper Attribution
Companies that repurpose third-party content as their own without properly citing the source aren't reaping the full benefits of content marketing. Linking to the original source may drive traffic away from you momentarily, but doing so makes you more credible for identifying relevant content in other well-known publications.
What's In: Curating Content From Multiple Sources, Including Your Competitors

If your company's goal is to establish thought leadership in your industry by providing your customers with the most compelling and relevant content available, it will be impossible to do so without occasionally curating your competitors' content.
Search Engine Optimization
What's Out: Driving SEO by Content Alone
If 2011 taught marketers anything, it is that SEO is not driven solely by including highly searched terms in the content that they create and curate. Marketers that try to optimize SEO by writing their content based on search queries alone will see a decline in viewership. Practices like that frequently police themselves, and customers will search elsewhere to find meaningful content that is not obviously marketing focused.
What's In: Viewing Your Social Media Presence as an Extension of Your Overall SEO Strategy
SEO will continue to be a major goal for marketers in 2012, but marketers will start taking into consideration how their presence on social media channels can affect SEO. Search engines are starting to rely on social signals more when they generate results. So a company that is not generating content on a variety of platforms will be missing out.
* * *
If some people have referred to 2011 as the "year of content marketing," then 2012 will be the "year of specialization within content marketing." As content marketing continues to prove itself as a successful marketing strategy, the methods of implementing it will become more focused. Though content curation—the process of finding, organizing, and sharing online content—is one approach, it is not the only one, and new practices will continue to emerge.
Given the growth of content marketing in 2011, it might be hard to accurately predict where it will be a year from now. However, one thing is clear: Content marketing is not going away any time soon.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2012/6827/content-marketing-trends-for-2012-whats-in-and-whats-out#ixzz1jnWJWJ2Z

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Tiga Cara untuk Meningkatkan SEO Dengan Twitter

"Meskipun Google telah berakhir Pencarian Pembaruan yang berurusan dengan Twitter, mesin pencari masih menggunakan situs media sosial untuk tujuan peringkat," kata Jillian Stira di blog Pemasaran Scholes.

Dan Twitter tetap menjadi bagian penting dari strategi pencarian Anda, ia mencatat: "Twitter telah menarik di depan banyak platform media sosial lainnya, menjadi sumber penting untuk optimasi mesin pencari (SEO)."

Stira menawarkan nasihat khusus untuk membuat akun Twitter Anda mesin SEO. Berikut adalah beberapa takeaways kunci:


Pilih nama Anda dengan mesin pencari dalam pikiran. Saat membuat account, Twitter akan meminta dua nama. Yang pertama adalah nama-nyata Anda atau perusahaan Anda-dan Anda diperbolehkan hingga 20 karakter, itu penting untuk memilih orang-orang besar akan pencarian nama mungkin. Yang kedua adalah username didahului oleh simbol @. Anda terbatas pada 15 karakter di sini, sehingga Anda mungkin harus melakukan beberapa pemangkasan. "Jika nama perusahaan Anda panjang," menyarankan Sitra, "mempertimbangkan menggunakan singkatan, menjaga seluruh kata yang paling relevan."

Buat konten yang relevan dan dicari. Ketika tweeting dalam kapasitas profesional, pengamatan pribadi sesekali baik-baik saja. Tapi aturan umum Anda harus tetap berpegang pada konten profesional. Itu adalah konten pengikut Anda akan ingin berbagi dalam jaringan sosial. "[Saya] t adalah penting bahwa Anda menggunakan kata kunci yang relevan dan # hashtags untuk menjamin visibilitas yang lebih pada hasil pencarian untuk istilah penting bagi bisnis Anda," saran dia.

Sertakan link ke URL Anda. Link twitter tidak memberikan otoritas SEO, Stira catatan, tetapi mereka mengirim pengikut ke website Anda dan pencarian Google meminta untuk tindak lanjut penelitian. Itu adalah di mana kata kunci dalam menciak Anda juga ikut bermain-karena Anda telah memberi pengikut istilah yang mereka harus pencarian.

Point: Anda benar-benar dapat menciak untuk dolar. Ketika dijalankan dengan benar, Anda keberadaan Twitter dapat pak pukulan yang kuat SEO

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Facebook Top Search Term and Top Website of 2011

Facebook was the most popular search term and the most popular website in the US in 2011, according to an Experian Hitwise analysis of the top 1,000 search terms for 2011.

In the search-term category, Facebook took top honors for the third consecutive year, accounting for 3.10% of all searches conducted in the US, up 46% from 2010.

Below, other findings from Experian Hitwise.

Among key findings related to the top 10 most-searched terms of 2011:

    Four variations of the term "facebook" were among the top 10 terms during the year, accounting for 4.42% of searches overall, up 24% from 2010.
    "Youtube" moved up to the No. 2 spot in 2011, from No. 3 in the previous year.
    "Facebook login" was the third most-searched term, followed by "craigslist" and "facebook.com."
    "Facebook.com" moved up one spot in 2011 to rank among the top five search terms. 

Social networking-related terms dominated the results in 2011, accounting for 4.18% of the top 50 searches, up 12% year over year (YOY). When combined, common search terms for Facebook (e.g., facebook and facebook.com) accounted for 3.48% of all searches in the US among the top 50 terms, up 33% YOY.

YouTube terms accounted for 1.36% of search result during the year, up 21% YOY, while Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.59% (up 27%) and Yahoo terms accounted for 0.59% (up 15%).

New terms that entered the top 50 search terms for 2011 were: Addicting games, amazon.com, cnn, chase online, face, facebook sign up, hotmail, lowes, pandora, twitter, and you.

Top Websites

Facebook was the most-visited website for the second consecutive year, accounting for 10.29% of all US visits from January to November, up 15% YOY. Google was second with 7.70% of visits (up 7% YOY) followed by YouTube with 3.17%, Yahoo Mail with 2.95%, and Yahoo with 2.47%.

The combination of Google properties accounted for 11.98% of all US visits, up 22% YOY. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93%, and Yahoo properties accounted for 6.81%.

In total, the top 10 websites accounted for 32% of all US visits between January and November, roughly the same proportion recorded in 2010.

The fastest-moving search terms based on absolute change in 2011 were: Hurricane irene, bin laden wives, osama bin laden dead, les paul, nick ashford dies, apophis asteroid, sheen dumped, osama bin laden dead, hurricane irene path, and amber cole.

Top Searches Across Key Categories

In 2011, Justin Bieber was the top-searched public figure and Kim Kardashian was the top-searched personality.

Below, top searches across various categories:

Public Figures

1. Justin Bieber 
2. Casey Anthony 
3. Kim Kardashian 
4. Nicki Minaj 
5. Selena Gomez 
6. Charlie Sheen 

Personalities (Celebrities and Stars)

1. Kim Kardashian
2. Glenn Beck
3. Rush Limbaugh
4. Robert Pattinson
5. Khloe Kardashian 

Fastest-Moving Movie Titles

1. Star Wars
2. Transformers 3
3. (Twilight) Breaking Dawn
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
5. Fast Five 

Music (Artists and Bands)

1. Lady Gaga
2. Justin Beiber
3. Beyonce
4. Taylor Swift
5. Chris Brown 

Branded Destinations

1. Disney World
2. Disneyland
3. Great Wolf Lodge
4. Walt Disney World
5. Universal Studios Orlando 

TV Shows

1. American Idol
2. Young and the Restless
3. Dora the Explorer
4. Dancing with the Stars
5. Days of our Lives 

About the report: Data are based on the top 500 unfiltered US search terms and US market share of visits for January to November 2011, excluding mobile searches or mobile traffic.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/6738/facebook-top-search-term-and-top-website-of-2011#ixzz1jnXqtWQ1

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11 Cloud Apps to Make Your Small Business Run Like a Big Business

Building Your Business on the Cloud

Today's cloud computing applications give small businesses access to technology that only enterprises could afford in the past. Part of this is a matter of cost: Cloud subscriptions are typically much cheaper than traditional software licensing fees. And since the application and data live on the cloud provider's systems, subscribers don't need anything more than a Web browser to access and use them. That makes expensive IT staffing, hardware, maintenance, and upgrade costs a thing of the past.

With so many cloud-based services available, however, you still have to tackle one tough question: Where should you start? That's why we've sifted through the options to identify 11 cloud-based applications that allow small businesses to run like big ones. We also filtered out cloud providers that played coy about their service plans and pricing -- small business owners shouldn't have to field sales calls just to find out how much these things cost.

From helping you identify and track customers to managing inventory and improving your website, these cloud applications will give your business the boost it needs. Better yet, they'll do it at a great price.

1. Salesforce.com Sales Cloud

Perhaps the granddaddy of business-oriented cloud services, Salesforce.com's Sales Cloud provides real-time information to support your company's sales efforts. The core of the offering is its suite of customer relationship management tools for recording and sharing information about customers and contacts, allowing you to update deal information, record interactions, and so on. It also includes Salesforce.com's Chatter collaboration platform, a way for team members to keep up with each other's activities. If that's not enough, the Salesforce.com AppExchange makes more than a thousand applications available to extend its native features.
The basic Sales Cloud Contact Manager version, which supports up to five users, costs $5 per user per month; the Group version adds opportunity tracking, the ability to capture leads from your website, and dashboards for $25 per user per month. Finally, for $65 per user per month, you can step up to a version that offers contract management, analytics, and more.

2. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is another CRM tool, this one from a well-known provider of cloud productivity applications. Zoho CRM tracks your contacts and accounts, and it stores a complete relationship history, including any deals completed. It also provides tools for generating leads from email campaigns, visits to your website, and trade show contacts, along with the ability to assign follow-up activities to sales personnel.
The free version of Zoho CRM supports up to three users with lead and contact management and website lead capture; the Professional version, intended for SMBs, adds inventory management, sales quotes, invoices, and other features for $12 per user per month.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool for tracking website performance, letting you monitor traffic and analyze it according to a variety of criteria. You can see where your visitors are coming from and how they navigate your site, enabling you to assess whether your advertising and site design are working to drive visitors to the pages (and business opportunities!) you want them to see.

4. Constant Contact

Don't believe the email-is-dead hype; email remains one of the most common, and most cost-effective, ways to generate leads and drive customers to your website. That makes email campaign management a vital business activity -- and it also makes Constant Contact, one of the oldest and best-known email marketing services, one of our top cloud software picks.
Constant Contact lets you manage mailing lists with templates for creating attractive and attention-getting messages. The service also provides tools for conducting online surveys and marketing events, letting you issue invitations and track responses. Pricing is by service: Send an unlimited number of emails to up to 500 addresses a month for $15 per month, or up to 5,000 addresses for $50 per month. (Intermediate plans are also available.) Surveys cost $15 per month for unlimited surveys with up to 5,000 responses, and you can run up to five open events per month for $15 (with unlimited invitations) or up to 10 events per month for $30.

5. LoopFuse OneView

Like Constant Contact, LoopFuse manages email campaigns, but it also offers a good deal more. The service provides tools to support inbound marketing, which is the process of analyzing where visitors to your site are coming from and which search engine keywords are driving the most traffic. LoopFuse also provides a lead scoring system with rules to qualify how "live" a lead is according to criteria you set up, such as how much time they spend on your site. In addition, LoopFuse integrates with third-party software such as Web publishing and CRM systems (including Salesforce.com).
A free LoopFuse account lets you manage up to 1,000 prospects and 25,000 users, while the $350-per-month plan manages up to 10,000 prospects. Other plans go up in number and price from there. All of the plans include the same set of features.

6. InstantPresenter

One good way to grow your business and generate leads is to host your own online events. InstantPresenter provides a Web conferencing system that covers all the bases. It supports event promotion through Facebook and Twitter, handles registration (including payment processing with PayPal), provides a shared whiteboard for annotating slides during the presentation, and stores your webcasts and webinars for online access or purchase later. It also offers various mechanism for soliciting feedback from attendees, including emoticons for during the presentation and surveys for afterward.
For $48 per month, you'll get the ability to host meetings with up to 25 attendees. You can bump that up to 50 attendees for $78 per month, with additional service levels and pricing that go up from there. InstantPresenter also offers less expensive voice-only conferencing plans.

7. Google Apps for Business

The basic Google Apps suite is a familiar set of online productivity applications: a calendar, an office suite, and a collaborative website builder. But what really makes Google Apps for Business a worthwhile investment is that it's a platform for a host of other business applications from other vendors. In the Google Apps Marketplace, you can find third-party document management tools, CRM and marketing tools, accounting, project management, and much more. In fact, you could (and some folks do) pretty much run an entire business with software built on the Google Apps platform.
Google Apps for Business costs $50 per user account per year. Expect to pay a bit more, however, for most add-on services or expert support available from the Apps Marketplace.

8. SEO Chat Tools

This is an odd one -- it's not a single application like the others on this list. Rather, it's a collection of free (ad-supported) tools to help you get your website recognized by search engines. In other words, these apps are search engine optimization tools. Examples include the Advanced Meta Tag Generator, which generates a list of meta tags based on information you provide about your site, formatted and ready to paste into your site's code, as well as the Keyword Typo Generator, which gives a list of likely human misspellings for your keywords so you can buy those, too. This set of tools will help you fine-tune your site for maximum performance. And did we mention they're free?

9. Egnyte Hybrid Cloud Solution

There are lots of online storage and backup options out there -- Carbonite and Mozy are probably the best known for online backup, while Dropbox is popular as a file server and syncing solution. Egnyte handles all three of those tasks itself, providing an online file server and automatic backup from local computers. But Egnyte goes a step further by adding the Office Local Cloud, which lets you set up a Netgear ReadyNAS network-attached storage device as a speedy local server and have it automatically sync with the cloud.
The Egnyte online backup and file server starts at $10 per month, but that gives you a mere 20GB of storage space and licenses to automatically back up two computers; for $25 per month, you get 150GB and backup for 10 computers. The Office Local Cloud is an additional $40 per month per NAS -- and, of course, the NAS hardware will cost extra.

10. Intuit QuickBooks Online

As a small business, you're probably already familiar with Intuit QuickBooks accounting software. Intuit also has a cloud version of QuickBooks, which offers the benefit of not needing to install or maintain the software in your office. And since your data is being stored securely in the cloud, Intuit also takes care of daily backups. Customer support is included, as is access from multiple locations and even from mobile devices.
The QuickBooks Online Essential plan costs $25 per month; it covers three users and your accountant. The $40 per month plan covers five users and your accountant, and it adds budgeting, time and inventory tracking, and purchase order support.

11. Intuit QuickBase

Sooner or later, a successful business outgrows the spreadsheet approach to maintaining business data. QuickBase is a relatively inexpensive and easy way to move up to a real database that not only gives you many more ways to manage your data (generating charts, graphs, and other reports), but also makes it accessible remotely. QuickBase comes with hundreds of templates for common database applications and provides tools to build your own, if need be. For $300 per month you get room for up to 25,000 database records and access for up to 10 users, with more capable (and more expensive) plans available.

Source : 11 Cloud Apps to Make Your Small Business Run Like a Big Business

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Strategic Tips for New Managers

Whether you've just been hired into your first supervisory position or you've got years of experience and recently changed jobs, it's important that you spend time thinking about your plan for success. If you don't know it already, managing people is the hardest part of your job. The effort you make when you start in your new role will set the tone for months and years to come.

Regardless of the substantive work you do, how you manage your teams must be a priority. First and foremost, recognize that whatever management strategies you pursue, you and your team members need to learn from each other throughout your relationships. It's up to you to establish that sort of give and take, and the amount of experience you bring to the table does not matter.

If you aren't sponsoring a joint effort with your team to learn and grow together, you need to reassess your priorities. With any luck, you have employees who are smarter than you and know their jobs better than you do. Don't consider this to be threat; it is actually an opportunity. After all, your success is based on the quality of the work done by your teams.

Many a supervisor has failed for not recognizing the value in being educated by their employees. Authority or control was more important to them than recognizing what could be gained from a mutual and continual learning process. When you share the learning experience, relationships based on respect are easier to sustain. Work relationships based on respect lead to improved performance.

Your strategic focus should be on the quality of your communications and your accessibility as a manager. Here are a few ideas to consider as you design your plan for your first year with your team:

1. Use and Teach Effective Communications. The quality of your leadership depends on the effectiveness of your communications. This may sound easy but it's not. Communication is much more than the spoken word. It's also about being able to convey an accurate message through tone and body language and to understand the real message you are receiving in return. Ongoing open communication, active listening, the ability to adapt your style to the audience, and the steps you take to be sure that everyone is on the same page are critical. If you spend time honing your communication skills, everyone will reap the benefit.
2. Link Strategic Priorities. Make sure you communicate the company's strategic plan and how that is linked to your strategic priorities for your department. Articulate strategies clearly and often, and explain how each person's role is related to those strategies. The more your teams know about the bigger picture, the better able they are to shape their performance to meet those goals.
3. Explain Performance Expectations. Open communication about your performance expectations and metrics for measuring performance is vital. All too often, the first time employees hear they are not meeting expectations is in a quarterly or annual performance review. This is counterproductive and disrespectful to your team members. Many employees who don't meet expectations were perfectly capable of becoming valued performers if only they had the feedback they needed. Your failure to engage in regular and ongoing communications about performance expectations and metrics can result in high turnover, decreased productivity, and ineffective relationships.
4. Articulate Your Management Style. Employees need to know whether you are someone who prefers frequent status updates or you are only interested in timely results. They need to know, for example, your preferred method of tactical communications, what sorts of issues you consider to be priorities, and the level of reporting, detail, and documentation that interests you. They need to know what you expect from them at one-on-one and team meetings. These are just a few examples but the point is that while you are adapting to your new role, your employees are also adapting to you. Communicating your style and delegating effectively will help the process.
5. Get to Know Your Teams. The more you know about your employees, the better you are able to communicate, support their work, and develop strong relationships. Find out about their career goals and the skill sets they'd like to learn. Assign work and establish project teams to support those aspirations. Show that you care about the quality of their work lives and value their input and feedback. Employees who feel valued are more likely to be creative in their jobs and motivated to succeed.
6. Focus on Training and Development. In today's global economy, every employee must be able to turn on a dime to address ever-changing priorities. Ongoing training and development for you and your teams results in agility and prepares you to adapt to change more quickly. Look for training courses and development opportunities that prepare employees to meet future business needs. Instead of focusing on mistakes, figure out what you can learn from the mistakes and share that knowledge. If you take the lead to show you are dedicated to continual learning and development, your teams will follow suit.
7. Engage in Transparent Decision-Making. You will need to make important decisions on a daily basis and you should be able to articulate the legitimate business reasoning behind those decisions. All too often, managers don't take time to think about how they would explain the decision-making process and therefore aren't capable of articulating it clearly. This detracts from your trustworthiness in the eyes of your team. If you truly have engaged in sound business reasoning, you should be able to explain your criteria even before you are asked. Sharing this information lets employees feel included in the process, even if they don't agree with the result. 
8. Learn from Your Peers. Your colleagues are a great resource for you, regardless of whether they have more or less experience than you. Diversity of thinking, analyzing, and problem solving leads to creativity and growth. If you tap into that wealth of knowledge, you will learn more that can help you and your teams to succeed. And if you model this sort behavior for your teams, they are better positioned to emulate the same with each other.
9. Be a Visible Leader. Don't let your own workload stop you from interacting with your teams on a regular and ongoing basis. Hunkering down in your office means that you are disconnected and unaware of the work environment of your employees. You need to be accessible, and part of that is being present in their work space. Make it a habit to walk around, stop by people's desks, have casual team lunches, and check in to see if anyone needs anything from you. Ask them for input and feedback and then give it appropriate consideration. If this sort of visible management is not a part of your personality, you have an opportunity to change for the better of your organization.
10. Leave Your Ego at Home. There's nothing more frustrating than working for a manager whose ego is always present. You don't need to know the answers to everything. It's okay to acknowledge that you don't know as long as you take a constructive role in helping to get the answers. This shows that you value the learning process. You also don't need to take credit for all the good work done. Your teams need the recognition more than you do because it's a great motivator. And, in the end, their increased performance reflects positively on you anyway. If you can engage with your teams in a way that invites their participation, work can be accomplished in partnership with each other.

This article is targeted to help first-time managers or managers in new roles to consider some important management strategies. But as you can see, the content applies to anyone in a management role. Positioning yourself as a leader by using effective communications to enhance performance is appropriate for all managers, regardless of the length of your management career. It's never too late to be self-regulatory and figure out what you can change so you are more effective in your role.

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Eight Ways to Cut Business Energy Costs

Here are some proven ways to reduce energy use at your company that not only save money but help preserve the environment as well:

1. Conduct an energy audit: This will help you identify and prioritize the best energy-saving opportunities for your business. Local utility companies may provide this service at no cost. Otherwise find a company that specializes in conducting energy audits for a fee.
2. Establish benchmarks: Once you evaluate your current energy use through an audit, establish goals for cutting costs and monitor them. Several online tools can help, including Portfolio Manager from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program.
3. Shut down at night: Leaving equipment, computers, and lights turned on overnight uses more energy than you think, not only from the equipment itself but also from the heat it emits, which raises air conditioning costs.
4. Change lights simultaneously: Light bulbs start operating inefficiently once they reach 80 percent of their rated life. So instead of changing bulbs one at a time when they burn out, change all of the bulbs in your office at the same time on a uniform schedule. Replacing fluorescent lights with T8 tubes and upgrading to electric ballasts can reduce your electrical load by up to 40 percent.
5. Keep the sun out: Unshaded windows are a huge energy waster. Fixing this problem is as easy as installing window shades, blinds, or curtains or tinting windows with film that’s designed to keep the heat out and the cool in.
6. Retrofit your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system: Newer, more energy-efficient heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems can reduce a building’s overall energy consumption by as much as 40 percent. You can receive a federal tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost (up to $1,500) of a new HVAC system if it is purchased and installed before December 31, 2010. A number of other energy-efficiency upgrades also qualify for this credit, including new windows, doors, insulation, roofs, and renewable energy systems.
7. Install a cool roof or solar panels: Using highly reflective materials, a cool roof can drastically lower surface temperatures, which can significantly reduce the workload of your HVAC system. Perform your own cost-benefit analysis to determine the potential breakeven point and whether the upfront expense is feasible for your company. Solar panels may also require a large upfront expense and a potentially long-term breakeven point. However, you may be able to cushion this by “renting to own” the panels. These programs allow businesses to pay no upfront or maintenance costs but purchase their electricity from the panel provider, often at a discounted rate.
8. Start a telecommuting program: Telecommuting has become more common in recent years as more companies recognize that employees don’t have to be onsite to do their jobs. With fewer employees present in your building, your company will use less energy. You’ll also be doing your part to reduce carbon emissions by lowering the number of commuters on the road.

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7 Secrets for Increasing Internet Banner Ad Click-Through Rates

Increasing the performance of your online banner ads is essential for improving your Internet marketing ROI. By following these simple steps, you can optimize the performance of your banner ads and improve that rate at which prospective buyers take action.

1. Design Your Banner for Specific Sites.

Targeted marketing outperforms mass marketing 2 to 1. If you’re planning a specific banner advertising campaign, then chose a specific website where your prospects are visiting and design your banner for that website.

Banner ads that closely mirror the look and feel of the site upon which your ad is placed usually have the highest click-through rates. However, you may also try a design that is of stark contrast, to see if it produces greater results.

2. Animate Your Banner.

Research supports the fact that animated banners outperform static ones by a significant margin. This is because an animated banner is more likely to get noticed. There are various techniques you can employ such as blinking or movement when designing your banner. Try to stay away from static banners that only change when the page is reloaded.

3. Keep Copy Brief and Provocative.

Using words like “Free”, “Act Now”, “Click Here”, and so on are effective at getting a browser’s attention and encouraging them to click through to your offer. Try a number of different headlines or action verbs and see which results in the highest click-through rate.

4. Test multiple Design formats.

Create more than one version of your banner and numerous version types. The most complex banners (those which resemble Windows dialog boxes, scroll bars, submit buttons or blue-colored underlined hyperlinks) generally get the highest click-through rates. Some have even been known to receive more than 7%.

Test each banner for a period of 72 hours and see which has the greatest click through rate. Use this as your control and continue to experiment in an attempt to enhance your click-through rate by changing one element of the banner at a time. If you change multiple elements, and a change in click-through rate results, you won't know which element had the most significant impact. This is why it is important to take a slow and deliberate approach to updating your banner ad.

5. Use a Professional Graphic Artist.

Creating a banner ad today is much more complex than 3 years ago. You really want to source the creation of banners to a professional graphic artist. You can also visit some helpful sites with searchable databases of Marketing Experts like MarketingScoop.com or Elance.com to find a designer who can design a banner in the size you need it. It should cost you no more than $100 per banner and the results will be worth it.

6. Reduce The Graphic Weight of Your Banner.

If your banner is too heavy, it can reduce the speed at which a webpage loads. As a result, you can lose potential browsers of your banner ad. Attempt to make your banner file size less than 15k. Although this weight is a bit unrealistic for rotating banners, it’s a good benchmark.

7. Evaluate Performance Daily

Review the stats of your banner on a daily basis. Most banners show an average click-through rate of about .5%. These days, a traditional click-through rate of 2.0% is good, but sometimes difficult to achieve. If after 3 days, your banner hasn’t produced an acceptable return rate, then switch it out with another version.

Continue to optimize your banner by changing only one element at a time as discussed above. Also, be sure to advertise on multiple sites to see which produce the highest click-through but also the highest ROI. Some sites generate a lot of clicks but no-one buys. Obviously you want to reallocate your spend to those that show the highest click-through rate AND conversion.

Summary

By leveraging these simple banner secrets, you can make your web banners really perform. Be sure to use these techniques for online advertising buys as well as affiliate advertising. Wherever your message is posted, get prospective customers to click-through and take action.

In addition to optimizing your banners, focus on optimizing your landing pages. Just as banners benefit from compelling copy and design, so do landing (offer) pages. As described above, begin by measuring your conversion rates and change your landing page elements one at a time to increase your overall conversion percentage.

Source : www.marketingscoop.com

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The Five Basic Methods of Market Research

While there are many ways to perform market research, most businesses use one or more of five basic methods: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, observation, and field trials. The type of data you need and how much money you’re willing to spend will determine which techniques you choose for your business.

1. Surveys. With concise and straightforward questionnaires, you can analyze a sample group that represents your target market. The larger the sample, the more reliable your results will be.

• In-person surveys are one-on-one interviews typically conducted in high-traffic locations such as shopping malls. They allow you to present people with samples of products, packaging, or advertising and gather immediate feedback. In-person surveys can generate response rates of more than 90 percent, but they are costly. With the time and labor involved, the tab for an in-person survey can run as high as $100 per interview.
  
• Telephone surveys are less expensive than in-person surveys, but costlier than mail. However, due to consumer resistance to relentless telemarketing, convincing people to participate in phone surveys has grown increasingly difficult. Telephone surveys generally yield response rates of 50 to 60 percent.
  
• Mail surveys are a relatively inexpensive way to reach a broad audience. They're much cheaper than in-person and phone surveys, but they only generate response rates of 3 percent to 15 percent. Despite the low return, mail surveys remain a cost-effective choice for small businesses.
  
• Online surveys usually generate unpredictable response rates and unreliable data, because you have no control over the pool of respondents. But an online survey is a simple, inexpensive way to collect anecdotal evidence and gather customer opinions and preferences.

2. Focus groups. In focus groups, a moderator uses a scripted series of questions or topics to lead a discussion among a group of people. These sessions take place at neutral locations, usually at facilities with videotaping equipment and an observation room with one-way mirrors. A focus group usually lasts one to two hours, and it takes at least three groups to get balanced results.

3. Personal interviews. Like focus groups, personal interviews include unstructured, open-ended questions. They usually last for about an hour and are typically recorded.

Focus groups and personal interviews provide more subjective data than surveys. The results are not statistically reliable, which means that they usually don't represent a large enough segment of the population. Nevertheless, focus groups and interviews yield valuable insights into customer attitudes and are excellent ways to uncover issues related to new products or service development.

4. Observation. Individual responses to surveys and focus groups are sometimes at odds with people's actual behavior. When you observe consumers in action by videotaping them in stores, at work, or at home, you can observe how they buy or use a product. This gives you a more accurate picture of customers' usage habits and shopping patterns.

5. Field trials. Placing a new product in selected stores to test customer response under real-life selling conditions can help you make product modifications, adjust prices, or improve packaging. Small business owners should try to establish rapport with local store owners and Web sites that can help them test their products.

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10 Ways to Build Social Media Expertise Using Personal Web Projects

When Timex sponsored a Twitter party in late 2009, it leaned on the social media expertise of Stefania Pomponi Butler and her partners in Clever Girls Collective to deliver a conversation that would engage women consumers with the Timex brand.

But Stefania's social media smarts weren't born from a corporate campaign or formal training: this former marketing pro got her start in social media by blogging about life as an urban mom. The success of her personal blog brought forth paid blogging gigs, which turned into editing gigs and then production gigs. Eventually, she had enough experience to start her own company connecting big brands to online influencers. A personal web project turned into full-fledged social media career.

Many social media experts and professionals started their current careers like Stefania did, with a personal web site or project. As I reflected this week on a recent personal project that had me testing out new WordPress plugins, Twitter tools and Excel macros, I was reminded of how valuable personal projects are in building social media expertise.
 

If you're involved in social media efforts within your company, are trying to carve out a niche as a social media pro, or just want to understand what this new space is all about, personal web projects are crucial to honing your skills. Here are some tips for making your personal web efforts an effective part of your ongoing professional development:

Keep it personal. Choose a subject or focus that is completely (and I mean completely) unrelated to your work. That could mean creating a collection of nature photos on Flickr, a blog about local restaurants, or a Twitter roundup of the latest beauty products — unless you work for an ecological organization, a food distributor or, say, Revlon. It's great to have passions that intersect with your professional life, but if you do a social media project that is even vaguely related to your job, your employer (or their customers) may hold you accountable for the results. And that's not a safe sandbox to play in.

Be cautious. Personal doesn't mean intimate. If you're thinking about a project that involves your family, think carefully about the safety implications and especially before posting your kids' photos online. Until you are really fluent in social media, err on the side of caution by keeping private your family stories private or at least anonymous.

Start simple. Create your social media project on a fully hosted service so that you don't have to sort out the complexities of setting up your own site. WordPress.com , Flickr and Twitter are all good starting options.

Give yourself room to grow. Choose a platform that will let you extend your project in new ways and try out new tools. Get going with Flickr or Twitter, and you can explore a world of tools and applications that complement those services. If you start with a WordPress blog, you can move your blog onto a web host that gives you more control over your blog's set up.
 

Give yourself a budget. While you can do lots of great stuff for free online, you'll have more possibilities — and perhaps more fun — if you give yourself a modest budget. You might want to spend ten or twenty dollars a month buying stock images to illustrate your blog; pay for a service that gives you more information about your Twittering efforts; or upgrade your blog to a custom URL.

Go easy on yourself. The social web can be a great place to get support or enforce your commitment to a personal goal like losing weight, building your own log cabin or reading all of Proust. But if you focus on a challenge that is already daunting, you're less likely to stick with it. You'll find most of your energy is focused on sticking to your resolve, rather than exploring and learning.

Be a night owl (or an early bird). You'll learn the most from your social media experiment if you're prepared to make a few mistakes — installing widgets that don't work right, making design changes that look terrible, embedding multimedia content that doesn't display. It's a lot less scary to make those mistakes early in the morning or late at night, when fewer people are likely to be visiting your site.

Find a community. Explore the sites and web presences of other hobbyists (or experts) in your space to see what they are talking about and what online tools they use. Introduce yourself and comment on their photos, videos or posts — and encourage them to take a look at what you're up to, too.

Balance tech with content

Some people use their personal web projects as a chance to geek out and try specialized tools and software, and upgrade their tech knowledge. Others focus on the content — shooting the perfect video, writing the world's most articulate blog post, snapping the greatest high-speed photos. But you'll learn the most if you divide your attention between content and technology, and develop both your creative and technical skills.

Be prepared to own your project.

Even if you've created a totally anonymous personal project, assume that sooner or later you could be unmasked. Make sure that whatever you post online, you're prepared to live up to it at Monday's staff meeting.

Follow these guidelines and your personal web projects will become an effective and ongoing part of your professional development. Who knows? It may even become your full-time gig.

Written by Alexandra Samuel

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter as awsamuel or her blog at alexandrasamuel.com.

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How Social Networking Has Changed Business

Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

A year ago, many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of — or because of — its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.

Leaders like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voicemail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering.

Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work — designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services — to step up and lead without a hierarchy.

Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here.

Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.

Written by Bill George 

 Bill George is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School.

Source :http://blogs.hbr.org/

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