LinkedIn- No Irish Jobs
43 LinkedIn Business Groups with over 150,000 members but less than 300 jobs.
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Wednesday, 10 September 2014
Facebook made $200 billion with Mobile Advertising
 |
| Facebook logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
With special reports, Facebook market value increases with
position 22nd largest corporation. Mobile advertising boosts revenue of Facebook with all devices.
Founder of Facebook wealth has increased by $34.5 billion
with stake & stock raised by 81% in last 12 months.
With mobile marketing, every product & services take
speed booking, launching, delivered like snapdeals, flip-kart, jabong etc. In
Advertising on Facebook charge minimum $10 but for, it’s questionable….
Facebook makes display ads, banner advertising with condition
of your search in box or you have already seen pages on a different subject. Mostly small
business giving first preferences to Ad-words for budget start from 500 to onward, but Facebook charge $10, LinkedIn as per region-target size etc.
LinkedIn is business network but Facebook it a personal
chatting center, founder earn from shopping, business, promote a post.
Promote a post:
On a Facebook, when you post they ask you want promote this?
With advertising power. It’s true!
Congrats Mark
Zuckerberg
Refer : DNA
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Metrics for E-commerce Retailer with Content Marketing
Online retail marketers spend a significant amount of time and money attracting visitors to their stores, converting these visitors to customers and retaining them as customers over time. Content marketing helps at each stage of the marketing funnel.
Right at the top of the funnel, content marketing in the form of blogging, visuals, videos, guides, articles and media engagement all work to drive relevant traffic through to a store as well as kick off brand awareness. When visitors start to browse through products in your store, content marketing in the form of product videos, quality reviews (user generated content), FAQs, product description and images come to play with converting traffic to sales. Finally, customer loyalty efforts geared to generating more repeat customers are largely fueled by an email marketing strategy that imperatively connects with your brands overarching content marketing strategy.
It is vital to measure the effectiveness of these measures as a guide to future efforts.
The word “metrics” is on everyone’s lips in the content marketing world, as metrics are a gauge on the effectiveness of marketing spend. There is, however, a slew of different metrics available to marketers. Which ones merit scrutiny?
1. Returning visitors
This is an important metric from a content marketing viewpoint because visitors who return to your site directly — who aren’t funnelled there by other marketing channels — are a guide to how useful people found content from your site the last time they came. In other words, it’s a measure of how good your content is!
The quality of your content matters because it increases the “stickiness” of your site, and because it increases the likelihood of turning visitors into customers. Furthermore, high quality content that delivers return visitors is one of the means by which you can build relationships with your “top 1 percent” customers.
Ideally, what you want is your top 1 percent customers returning often, rather than many “bottom 90 percent” customers returning once or twice. That’s about targeted content and fragmented phased-out content that stimulates audience suspense similar to TV sitcoms.
2. Pages per visit
The average number of pages a visitor looks at during a browsing session. This figure provides some indication of site engagement in broad terms. If visitors read only one page, it indicates they aren’t finding the site very useful. If they stay and read 10 pages, they’re obviously seeing value in what your site has to offer. In e-commerce, this is a vital metric because visitors are most likely “window-shopping” on your site. The longer a visitor spends on your site, the more engaged they are and more likely they are to buying.
A vital part of this is bounce rate – how many visitors simply bounce right off the site after viewing only one page? Factors known to increase bounce rate include page load times, as well as a poor connection between content marketing and site content. If your content marketing attracts visitors who are basically uninterested in what you do, they’ll bounce. This is worth looking at in isolation as well as part of the whole picture provided by pages per visit metrics.
3. Time on site
Time on site indicates the amount of time a visitor spent doing anything at all on your site. As such, it indicates interest, engagement and likely purchase. As a general indicator of site performance, this is key. It’s also important because more engaged customers are usually better customers. Comparatively high time on site is an indicator of commitment to your brand – a feature of the “top 1 percent” customer. You can break down the time on site figures to see which people are spending more time with you, allowing you to optimize your content for the customers who make the biggest difference to your company.
4. Increased traffic
Increased traffic is the basic aim of content marketers. From social media to your blog to your sales pages, good content marketing should increase your traffic.
For e-commerce, more people coming in through the door means more sales and more revenue. Again though, it’s wise to differentiate between more traffic and more useful traffic. More visitors who display lower secondary conversion, lower pages per visit and so on, are not necessarily what you should be looking for. Boosting traffic should be seen as a way to increase the number of potential top 1 percent and top 10 percent customers coming to your e-commerce store. That’s about targeted content.
Engagement Metrics
5. Sharing content
How much of your content gets shared across social networks? That’s a key metric for content marketers in any sphere: it’s a measurement of how many people think your material is good enough to show their friends or pass on to professional contacts. It also feeds into your social marketing strategy: knowing which channels your content is shared on lets you know which channels to concentrate on, and which to optimize your content for.
From an e-commerce standpoint, sharing content is another indicator of the engagement of your top 1 percent customers. Higher engagement from this group is disproportionately rewarding in terms of sales and per-sale revenue. called “comments per post,” and it measures the number of times visitors post responses, feedback, reviews or any other form of commentary. This is a key metric for content marketing because it’s a measurement of engagement. This can provide insight into the topics that customers want to engage with.
Specifically for e-commerce, a reviews section provides an important guide for future customers. Customers and prospective customers take reviews extremely seriously, and they make a major difference to sales. From personal experience buying running shoes online, I value reviews from customers in specialist running online stores against reviews from behemoths such as Amazon or eBay because my inclination is that specialist store customers would be more discerning and knowledgeable. Online retailers should create a stimulating experience that encourages reviews and user-generated content in general — there is so much value to be had here.
7. Time
Most social media management tools offer metrics that let you find out what time of day and which days your posts see the most engagement. Obviously, you’d expect different demographics to have different engagement profiles – if you sell products aimed at middle-aged fishermen you’d expect to see a lot less action at 2 a.m. than if you sold concert tickets to youth-oriented events, for instance. Checking out when your audience is active lets you build your posting schedule around those times. You can take that information and measure it against your conversions at your store.
Suppose you get the most social media engagement at 9 a.m. on Thursdays, and most of your sales are at 9:30 on Thursdays. A link that fast seems unlikely to be causal. But what about secondary conversions? A spike in social engagement, followed by a spike in traffic, followed by a spike in sign-ups, all suggests that your social and other content marketing is working extremely effectively.
Business Metrics
8. Conversion rate
In online retail, sales are primary conversion metrics. Drawing a direct link between content that you create at each stage of the marketing funnel and your sales can be tricky, but multi-attribution modeling helps establish a link to sales conversions more easily. Also consider measuring “secondary conversions” such as email list subscriptions, buyer guide downloads and any form of engagement that requires commitment on the part of the visitor. Growing an email list is a vital conversion metric to measure.
It is a vital metric because it indicates a wider spread of visitors who might not be buying yet, but they’re interested enough to download material, to sign up or to otherwise indicate their interest. Additionally, higher engagement is a characteristic of the top 1 percent of your customers – the ones who actually contribute the most to your success.
9. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value is a measure of how much a customer is worth to your company overall, across the time of their association with your company. The average customer is going to make around two purchases throughout their association with you. The top 1 percent of your customers will, measured across their CLV, be worth around 30 times more than the average – reason enough to concentrate on these high-value customers.
Analyzing customer lifetime value lets you see whether you’re getting the customers you want. It’s actually more efficient to appeal strongly to a smaller number of customers than to appeal weakly to a larger number of less engaged, less interested customers who will, ultimately, spend far less with you. If you’re appealing to high value customers, your content marketing strategy is working!
10. Revenue
Finally, what it’s all about. Revenue is the most important metric, for obvious reasons: you can’t pay your employees with click-through, or make a house payment with secondary conversions. But how do we look at revenue from a content marketing perspective?
One way is to track purchases through the whole process, and see what content they viewed prior to the purchase decision. If a visitor viewed three pieces of content on your website and then made a €90 purchase, each piece of content is worth €30, right? Sort of. But that’s too simplistic for such a complex picture. It doesn’t take into account social marketing, or repeat customers – in their case, you’d need to factor in the content they looked at last time too. Use purchase value/pieces of content viewed as a rule of thumb, but remember how vague it is. It will give you an average at best.
Another way of looking at revenue is to measure conversion value. It’s a broader approach that looks at all the costs involved against the sales value and it usually means looking at the mass of sales.
Conclusion
The most useful metric for tracking success overall is customer lifetime value measured against the aggregate cost of customer acquisition. Customer acquisition costs include all marketing costs, not just content marketing. But content marketing costs will be significantly reduced per customer if those customers have high lifetime value, because high lifetime value customers are interested in more of your content, so less of it “misses.”
{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B., Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
Inbound Marketing Plans for Understanding Customer Pain Points
Part 1: Product Grouping
Part 2: Upselling and Cross-Selling
Part 3: Maintaining Visitors’ Attention
Part 4: Human Element
One of the sad truths of life is that nothing motivates a person like pain. In this context, we’re not talking about physical pain; we’re talking about the emotional pain we experience every day. This pain can be related to time pressures, social issues, work-related problems or family concerns. We naturally gravitate toward products or services that promise us a resolution from that pain. For example, if your daughter is failing at math, you get a math tutor. If you’re struggling with scheduling resources at work, you purchase and install project-tracking software. If you’re too busy to mow the lawn this weekend, there’s a kid down the street who would happily do it for ten bucks. In every case, you sense a problem – a pain point – and automatically search for a solution.
An effective salesperson understands customers’ pain points and positions products to address those points. Website designers should incorporate some of the same thinking in their designs. More specifically, as a web designer, you need to position your solution and product pages in a way that shows you understand your viewer’s pain points. This article focuses on how you can understand and use your knowledge about customer pain points while designing web pages.
Identifying the Pain Points
A well-trained salesperson understands how to find pain points. He accomplishes this task by briefly introducing himself and his company, providing a few anecdotes on how his products have helped other customers, and then – most importantly – he pivots the conversation toward the customer and asks open-ended questions. If the salesperson has done his job well enough, the customer comfortably divulges the pain points and asks the salesperson for help. The salesperson then merely needs to show how his products directly address those points.
Unfortunately, this is considerably more difficult for you, because your interaction with potential customers is limited to online activities. Your website is generally a one-way communication medium, so it is impossible to have these types of two-way conversations. Your search for customer pain points therefore becomes an online information search. Fortunately, there are several ways to acquire this information.
1. Launch a Blog Patrol – Identify a list of blogs related to your products or industry. Google has a blog search engine that can assist you. Create your own top-ten list of blogs and peruse them several times each week. This is an excellent way to find out what your potential customers are saying about their pain points.
Let’s say, for example, you sell camping gear. You search on Google’s blog site and immediately find a site for the American Camp Association. The first article you see is entitled, “Summer Camp: The Social Supplement for Modern Society.” Upon analyzing this blog post, you immediately see a pain point: Kids are not spending enough time outdoors, and their lack of exercise is jeopardizing their health and education. That’s a pain point! So what can you do with this information? Analyze your own product line in light of this pain point and see how it might mitigate the pain. Prepare a story around the pain point and create blog articles of your own.
American Camp Association
Tip: You can help drive business to your site by leaving comments on your target blogs. Be very careful, however, because overt advertising through blog comments can quickly get you banned from commenting on blogs. Learn the proper etiquette for blogging before attempting to blog and / or leave comments on existing blogs.
2. Appeal Directly Online – Similar to patrolling blogs, you can peruse through online organizations and forums. LinkedIn, for example, hosts hundreds of online groups, where each group consists of hundreds – if not thousands – of like-minded professionals dealing with similar problems. The barrier to entry is fairly low, and you can either silently monitor these groups or post pain-point-seeking questions of your own. For example, you can join the Business Analytics group and ask an open-ended question like, “Has anyone experienced issues trying to analyze customer surveys?” Over the course of a few days, you’ll get many responses, each related to pain points.
Tip: You can start up your own online forum, hosted directly from your company, via a third party forum provider like Comm100. A hosted forum allows you to communicate directly with your customers and identify their pain points.
3. Analyze Your Competitors – Is your competition causing pain? Look for online complaints regarding your competition. Make a list of the top 10 complaints. Inevitably, price will be one of them, but price is always going to be a complaint, so don’t be so quick to put it on your list. Instead, look deeper for fundamental issues like customer service, quality and reliability issues. Look for shortcomings in product features, like limited battery life or a confusing user interface. Online, people are especially honest – brutally honest – and you can use that honesty to get an idea of your competitor’s pain points, and then use that information to help position your own product or service.
Tip: Don’t forget to look for complaints about your own products or services as well! You can bet that your competitors are analyzing complaints against your company, and they will try to use those pain points to position their product or service against yours.
4. Talk to Your Salespeople – This may sound obvious, but many companies are so vertically organized that the web designer doesn't even know any of the salespeople. If you have salespeople in your company, make a point to engage with the best ones at least once every quarter. Salespeople are full of front-line information, and after a short interview, you should have a sizable list of customer pain points.
Tip: If your company is big enough to host annual sales meetings, get yourself scheduled to attend. At the meeting, you can run a focus group with the best performing salespeople, where over the course of an hour, the group compiles a top-ten list of customer pain points.
Now What? ---- Now that you've identified the pain points that your products or services will address, summarize them into short sentences. It is very important to compile this summary, because these sentences will form the basis of your website content that speaks directly to the pain points.
For example, one issue with backup power supplies is that they fail silently. In other words, you plug your computer into the backup supply, and you plug the backup supply into the wall power outlet. As long as the power company supplies power, you’ll never know the difference. The backup supply is supposed to kick in and keep your computers running when the power company fails. There is a critical pain point in this solution, however. The power company may be reliable for a year or more, and all the while, the batteries in your backup supply are slowly fading and wearing out, even though they’re not being used. But you won’t know the batteries are failing until that inevitable moment when the power company fails. At that time, your batteries also fail, and your computer will crash. Had you known the batteries were failing beforehand, you would have replaced them and avoided the pain.
So if you were selling a superior backup power supply, how would you use this pain point to position your product?
You can probably make the summary even shorter, but you get the point. You’ve crystalized the pain point and shown – in one sentence – how your products make a difference. This sentence immediately resonates with your online visitors and lets them know that you “get it” and understand the pain point.
These one-sentence summaries constitute the basis for all your solution pages on your website. They should be featured prominently on each solution page, at the top, where people will see them right away and immediately identify with your solution.
See the Taradata solution page for Data-Driven Marketing below. What are the pain points? Loyalty and profitability. The one-sentence summary on this page is deceptively short, but it directly addresses two pain points and sets the tone for the rest of the page.
in the Ends, People are naturally pain-averse and will therefore look for ways to avoid pain. Companies must understand their customers’ pain points and look for ways to address the pain through their products. Locating and understanding customers’ pain points was traditionally performed during face-to-face sales meetings; however, this is not possible online. This article suggests some ways to find customer pain points and briefly discusses how you can use this knowledge to enhance your website.
Thursday, 29 May 2014
B2B Lead Generation Companies by Relationships of Creative Management
The entire business scenario has changed over the past few decades and B2B lead generation companies need to adopt new innovative methods and techniques to stay ahead of their competitors. The fact is that the decision makers virtually live on the edge today with so many fires to put out, B2B lead generation companies cannot hope to win them over using the same old cold calling techniques. The entire process of getting to that all important people has become far more complex now with the technology and the habits of the key decision makers undergoing a sea change. Traditional cold calling techniques need a significant make over in the present day business scenario in order to make an entry into the sales cycle.
To make a meaningful contact with the key decision makers in the present day sales environment, cold calling requires a creative management of relationships and building of thoughtful approaches based on innovative sales strategies.
Some of the basic fundamentals of cold calling that B2B lead generation companies can adopt in today’s complex and maddening business environment are as follows:
Moving slowly up the hierarchy ladder:
The top level decision makers are so busy putting out a thousand fires of their own everyday, they put up several layers of barriers around themselves in call screeners and administrative assistants. It’s best to start from the lower level executives in an organization and be known to the top bosses before you actually approach them.
Don’t be too greedy:
Don’t be in a hurry to grab a sales opportunity, decision makers have a natural aversion to greedy salespersons. Make your call sound like a business intelligence call, not a sales call. Try to strengthen your social networking with every call and prepare the groundwork for the sales cycle to follow. Empathize with the prospect, know about their needs and pain points, so that you can offer them a good solution.
Learn to use referrals:
Making a short list of useful referrals is very handy while cold calling. Use these referrals while approaching the key decision makers, this can open a few gates for you and let you in with minimum resistance.
The realities of the business world have changed, so B2B lead generation companies should also adopt new methods and approaches if they want to succeed in this fiercely competitive world.
Biggest Networking Mistakes that Salespeople Make
Sales people often are natural networkers – after all, we tend to be “people persons” who love to meet new people, build relationships, and create conversations, both in “real life” and on social media. But many sales people, without realizing it, are making some big mistakes with their business networking.
Business networking is one of the sales person’s oldest tools. We use our network of relationships and contacts to get in touch with decision makers, get advice, and get connected with new opportunities. But if you’re making some of these networking mistakes, you might not be reaching your full potential as a sales professional.
Here are a few of the most common networking mistakes – and how to avoid them:
Mistake #1: Networking without a strategy. Building relationships is a long-term activity. You can’t just expect to run out and immediately find the contacts or opportunities you’re looking for without investing some time and effort. Just as you would develop a marketing plan or a sales strategy to land a big client, spend some time mapping out some short-term and long-term goals for your sales networking.
How to avoid: Spend some time asking (and answering) some “big questions” that can guide your networking activity. For example, who are you trying to meet? Which types of companies would you love to get connected with? Who do you already know who works at these companies or knows some of these higher-level people, and how can you strengthen your relationships with your existing circle of influence?
Mistake #2: Networking only to “get,” never to “give.” Too many sales people only look at networking as a way to get what they want. Too many sales people only network in order to get closer to a decision maker, or get their foot in the door at a company where they’re trying to make a sale, or to get in front of someone who might offer them a new job. This is the biggest networking mistake of all. If people feel that you are in it only for yourself, they will be reluctant to trust you or help you. Networking is a two-way street – and some of the most successful sales people are also the most generous with their time and with their contacts.
How to avoid: When networking, always look for opportunities to “give” more than you “get.” Examples of “giving” might be as simple as sharing a timely article about a prospect’s business or industry, or connecting a contact with an opportunity that is valuable to them (even if it is unrelated to your business). Your generosity might not always be rewarded immediately, but in the long run you will build a reputation as someone who can be trusted, and someone who is willing to help others and connect others with opportunities.
Mistake #3: Networking only with the “usual suspects.” Especially if you sell a complex B2B solution, it can be understandably tempting to spend most of your time focused on networking with people in your niche market. But if you spend all of your time connecting only with a small circle of people, you might miss out on opportunities that could come from connecting with people from other facets of your life.
How to avoid: Remember that everyone you know, and everyone they know, can potentially be a valuable contact for you. Take a look at all of your social circles – work, family, community activities, social organizations – and see how you can become more of a connector. Someone you know from church or from your kids’ school might have a friend or relative who works in a business that needs your help.
Networking is the constant, never-ending work of the sales professional. Sometimes networking feels like trying to navigate a maze – lots of blind corners and uncertainty and wrong turns. But at its best, networking is not a maze, it’s a safety net.
One of the comforting truths about networking is that we are all supported by our own “safety nets” of contacts and all of their combined expertise, experience and relationships. If sales people can learn to network with planning and purpose (instead of just impulsively grasping around with no sense of direction), if sales people can learn to broaden their networks and connect other people within their networks (instead of only talking to the “usual suspects”), and if sales people can use networking as a way to deepen their relationships and build trust (rather than only trying to get what they need), networking will become a more purposeful and helpful tool – and a better way to operate as a sales professional.
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Work For Apple, Microsoft, Or Google - Join this School
For all the talk of "cognitive ability" and "behavioral interviewing," tech firms like Microsoft and Google have a similar hiring pattern to just about any other business: proximity.
That's according to Wired, which found that recruitment is typically tied to how close a college campus is to the corporate campus, with a few notable exceptions.
To find this out, Wired did a little poking around LinkedIn to find the top five "donating" schools for seven tech firms. The magazine's mission was "to see if non-Stanford grads have a chance at Silicon Valley firms (they do) and whether Ivy Leagues dominate (they don’t)."
Take Microsoft, for instance. Bill Gates's empire is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Correspondingly, lots of recruits come from that state. Judging by Wired's infographic, Microsoft employs approximately:
- 5,000 University of Washington grads
- 1,000 Washington State grads
- 800 Western Washington University grads
- Then there's Apple. The house that Steve Jobs built has this employee breakdown:
- 900 University of California, Berkeley, grads
- 800 San Jose State grads
- 300 University of Texas, Austin, grads
- Lastly, let's look at Google. The prestigious search giant has loads of California connections, with some East Coast schools thrown in. The approximate numbers are:
- 2,500 Stanford grads
- 2,000 University of California, Berkeley, grads
- 800 Carnegie Mellon grads
- 800 University of California, Los Angeles, grads
Why would big, global companies hire from their nearby colleges? While we don't have anyone in HR at Microsoft, we do know hiring trends. Namely, people hire people they know, and it's easiest to know the folks who are nearby.
And if you didn't go to Stanford, fret not; you can still end up at Google. Just spend a stint at Microsoft: Wired reports it's the top feeder company to Google.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Thursday, 15 May 2014
FIA future beyond the Web - venturebeat
The virtual future beyond the Internet is known as FIA.
At least it is to the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency in Washington, D.C. It’s funding that intriguing topic (FIA stands for the Future Internet Architecture program) with $15 million in research grants to some of the nation’s strongest tech leaning universities.
This is the third phase of a protracted study that began in 2006. The University of Wisconsin, Madison; Boston University; and the University of California at Berkeley are among others, are the newest recipients of the research cash, which the NSF hallmarked into three categories: “Deployment-Driven Evaluation and Evolution of the eXpressive Internet Architecture”; “Named Data Networking Next Phase”; and the third, “Next-Phase Mobility First Project.”
According to the NSF:
“The objective of the new awards is to move the FIA efforts from the design stage to piloted deployments that assess how the designs work at large-scale and within challenging, realistic environments. Cities, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and industrial partners across the nation will collaborate with researchers to test the new designs.”
The NSF, which has $800 million to fund research (tech or otherwise), told VentureBeat the research and beta-testing of systems designed under its purview aim to take the architecture of the current state of the Internet to the next level. Richard Byrne Reilly
“Each of these projects has their own versions of what the future looks like,” said NSF program director Darleen Fisher.
At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers are using the money to further develop a failsafe system that will enable cars to transfer data to one another about road conditions and traffic bottlenecks, for example, while simultaneously allowing vehicle occupants unfettered access to the Internet.
This facet provides a unique challenge to researchers because, as Fisher said, “there is no fixed infrastructure” as cars continually move from place to place.
According to CMU:
“Vehicles can use wireless communications channels called dedicated short-range communications, or DSRC, that are similar to Wi-Fi. Creating DSRC networks is challenging, however, because cars and trucks quickly pass from one DSRC access point to the next. XIA enables computer users to directly access content wherever it might be on the network, rather than always accessing a host website, so it should enable vehicles to obtain needed information from neighboring access points.”
Researchers said the myriad studies aim to propel technology beyond the current state of the ‘Net, as it were, relying less on existing technologies like routers and transmission points.
“The whole point is that existing infrastructures have a network to fall back on,” Fisher said.
The NSF said that based on the ultimate findings of computer scientists and their students involved in the research, the feds ultimately believe that new systems will be built, tested, and brought to market.
“It’s hard to say what the specific outcomes will be. Some of these systems may be adapted by enterprise. [The program] has also spurned interest with other government agencies. As they demonstrate what they do, it will naturally get more visibility,” Fisher said.
Platforms that effectively eliminate bottlenecks between video transmissions and further enhancements to security architecture and encryption are also key points of research for all teams involved in the multimillion dollar series of studies.
CMU professor Peter Steenkiste is leading the storied university’s FIA team. His teams focus is on mobile data transmissions and Internet security.
“These deployments will leverage, and enable us to deepen, our work on secure network operations, including providing a highly available infrastructure and secure authentication mechanisms,” he said.
Some reasons have why cover letters are not even close - Bjarne Viken
At Digital Mined we frequently use freelance platforms like oDesk and Elance, and therefore we are used to reading through hundreds of applications from freelancers. Despite all that experience, we still get surprised when, at times, really good freelancers lose out on jobs because of the way they apply.
We have written a lot about what can be done with this particular problem (just read the brief carefully and reply to everything in it), however this time we will try to look into why it happens. To explain possible reasons, we will try to give a few practical examples based on things we have experienced.
Here are a few possible reasons why cover letters are not even close;
Bad English. It is possible a lot of freelancers know they have limited skills in English, and therefore choose to write, and send, generic cover letters hoping that 1 in 10, or 1 in a 100, will lead to work. On oDesk this can be supported by the fact that often about 10% of applications get withdrawn by the applicant 1-3 days after being posted. The freelancer know they have a limit of how many application they can have at any given time, and therefore withdraw if they do not get a speedy reply.
Lacking skills. oDesk has recently introduced the possibility of asking targeted questions to each applicant, as part of the application process. Some freelancers might be frustrated by that, however as a client we love it! It allows us to ask difficult targeted questions, which immediately unmasks if the freelancer is qualified, and can save us hours.
Low ethical standard. There are bad clients out there who treat freelancers badly, however there are also freelancers who care more about making money than pleasing the clients needs. As a client, I see it as downright disrespectful if I politely ask the freelancer in the brief to answer a particular question, and there is no hint of a reply to it in the response to the brief.
Not understanding the process. Some freelancers blame clients, or their platform of choice, if they do not get work. We would suggest those freelancers get an external evaluation of their profile using Freelyzer, evaluate the market value of their work, and how they apply. Most clients deal with 30-150 applications for every job post they put in. When we hire, usually no more than 2 minutes is spent per application.
Preferring to chat on Skype. A lot of freelancers know that they will have a higher chance of landing the job, if they have the opportunity of interacting with their clients on Skype. Clients however, do not want to spend time chatting with someone, unless they are sure there is a good chance of the candidate being a good fit for their job, before they chat. We have interviewed candidates where just the first question was enough to unveil the lacking fit.
Thinking it is all about them. A lot of cover letters almost give the impression of being an ad, when they really should be more like replies to a conversation. Clients are thinking; “Did they get the brief?”, “Did they understand what I want?”, “Are they able to come up with a thoughtful reply that show they are qualified?”. Some of the best replies we have received are short, but clearly show that the applicant has read, understood and replied with a brain. source : Linkedin
Quality of clients. It is very possible that clients get a taste of their own medicine, when they price the work they want done so low that the applicants who would give good replies simply will not apply. Often it can be worth asking yourself, as a client, what you have done to deserve your team. Both in good times, and in bad. Having a clear defined process, and being willing to pay above market price, can ensure you get the best people.
If you are a freelancer that think most of the points above was hard medicine, please take it with love. Yesterday I flickered through 60 applications for a position and shortlisted 3. That is 5%. There is nothing I want more than to increase that percentage so freelancers make my job hard.
Friday, 9 May 2014
Creating Your Own White Lab Coat Moment in Your Professional Life
Size Matters When You Want to Expose Yourself to the Market
The words you say in a professional situation are an important thing. But what you wear while you say it is also very important. If you aren’t careful, you might be saying the wrong things at the wrong time with your wardrobe. A question we should all be asking as men when we look in the mirror is, “Does this suit suit me?”
For men, there is no question that a suit makes a statement. This is also true for women. But when it comes to women’s fashion, I don’t have much to offer in the way of insight. So for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on menswear with the caveat that I would love to hear any insight women can give for women’s apparel and professionalism in the comments section. Fair enough?
The items he recommends are considered the essentials of a professional wardrobe. But I would add that these wardrobe pieces are for working professionals clothing that creates White Lab Coat Moments and communicates all kinds of information about the wearer whether they are conscious of it or not.
I talked to a hiring manager about suits and things he observes in interviews with job candidates. He was honest about what he thought about a candidate as a result of certain qualities of appearance.
Good Qualities:
High Quality, Dark Tone Neutral: Classy, experienced, high-quality professional
Quality Silk Tie: Detail-oriented, fashion-conscious
Nice Black Belt: Successful
Three-Piece Suit: Lawyer, Banker (I found this one particularly interesting!)
Two-Piece Suit: Professional
Good Tailoring: Able to finish a project all the way to the end
Bad Qualities:
Double-Breasted Suit: Clueless, not up-to-date
Wrinkled Suit: Unprepared, procrastinator, Bad with details
Short Socks: Sloppy, unprofessional
No Tie: Arrogant, not a team player
Character Ties: Tacky, poor judgement skills for a professional situation
Cheap Suit: Inexperienced
Short-Sleeve: Clueless, dorky
Scuffed Shoes: Poor attention to detail
Mismatched Accessories: Disorganized
Clearly this is one person’s opinion and hardly a scientific study. But reading through the list, you likely have many of the same impressions based on the description. Even if you don’t have the same thoughts as what are listed here, you do have an interpretation. All of us do.
Interpreting appearance is always a part of a professional exchange and it will color your opinion of the wearer – even if it happens unconsciously.
Suits Create White Lab Coat Moments
In field of customer experience, we talk about the White Lab Coat moments of an experience. White Lab coat moments describe how the appearance of a person helps you make a judgment about the person’s ability and personality.
The phrase was coined in association with the famous Milgram study where participants were encouraged to administer electric shocks to fellow participants up to fatal levels when they answered questions incorrectly. Most participants hesitated when they heard the distress of their fellow participants, but continued at the urging of the study proctor, who was wearing a white lab coat.
In this case the white lab coat signified that the proctor had authority as a scientist and that they participant should continue with the experiment at his urging. For those of you that are not familiar with the Milgram study, the second participant was a plant, was not being shocked and any communications of distress were recorded.
White Lab Coat moments can also be a branding image for an organization. For Apple, it’s the blue Genius shirt, the glowing white apple on the aluminum cover of its computers, and the white clean background in advertising. For Disney, the magic castle and the swirly loopy font they use for their name. For you, it can be how you dress at the job interview. The idea behind the concept is that the image creates a certain feeling and interpretation in the mind of the beholder, either good or bad.
Creating Your Own White Lab Coat Moment in Your Professional Life
Men’s suits have been a part of appearance for centuries. In more recent history, the word “Suit” is associate with management or professionals, although the connotation of this term is usually intended as an insult by someone who is under the control of the “Suit’s” authority. But for good or ill over time, the suit has created a White Lab Coat moment of its own.
You can’t control all the associations that are made with what you wear, to be sure, but there are some generalities that mostly apply across the board in a professional situation. You can do your best, whether it’s a job interview, a client presentation, or a conference in Vegas to 500 people in your industry, by making sure that your suit suits you.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Outside of the Search Engines want traffic - Explaination
Build Traffic Sources Outside of the Search Engines Nick Stamoulis
When it comes to marketing your business online and generating traffic to your website, the search engines should be a primary driver of traffic. After all, when people are looking for a product, service, or information that is typically the first place that they turn to which is why an SEO program is so important today. However, even as an SEO firm we will be the first to admit that the search engines shouldn't be the only source of traffic to your website. Putting all of your eggs in one basket like that can be risky which is why it’s best to have a presence in many places across the web that can generate traffic to your website.
Build Traffic Sources Outside of the Search Engines
It’s important to consider where your target audience is spending time on the web (outside of the search engines) and seek out opportunities to build a brand presence (and a link) on those sites. Typically these sites are sites that are in some way related to the products or services that you sell. If you sell computer software, it might be a popular computer software industry blog.
There could be advertising opportunities on the blog, or even better- guest blog posting opportunities. Getting a guest blog post published on an industry blog is ideal because it’s a way to share your expertise and gain attention in the industry. Niche sites like these can be the best source of traffic because the visitors are highly targeted and it’s likely that what your site offers correlates with their needs. In addition to industry blogs, industry forums, directories, and message boards are also great spots.
Social media is another important outlet to build up a brand presence today. People are visiting social media sites for a variety of reasons. Like the search engines, the major social networking sites all include search features. Those that are social media savvy might be more likely to conduct a search in social media as opposed to the search engines, to get insights from users or to find additional content outside of the static pages that exist on your site.
For B2Bs, LinkedIn can be a great source of referral traffic as long as you are using the medium correctly. It’s important to join groups that attract like minded people and share any informational content that you create with these groups. It’s a significant source of traffic and again, these visitors are highly targeted. There are many opportunities within social media to share links that will deliver traffic back to your site.
Building links on industry sites and within social media is going to improve your SEO, but that is really just an added benefit. The main benefit is that these links will generate traffic to your site from those that are most interested in what you have to offer. The search engines are an important source of traffic, but the search engines are also unpredictable. You never know when an algorithm change could affect your placement for certain keywords. That’s why it’s important to build traffic from a variety of sources. If for some reason your SEO takes a hit, your business will still be able to survive because targeted traffic is still finding your site in other ways.
Social Signals and Their Impact on Link Building - Brickmarketing
Social Signals and Their Impact on Link Building - Shawna Wright
There is no denying that traditional link building is getting harder and harder. Earning “natural” or “editorial” links relies heavily on your content marketing and content promotion efforts. But site owners and bloggers may be more likely to link to established industry sites and authority figures than the new kid on the block, simply because they don’t want to link out to an un-trusted and untested source. In order to earn that social credibility and authority, websites need to start building their own online community of loyal fans and followers and establish themselves as a real player in their niche.
While many search marketers are on the fence as to whether social signals will completely replace traditional links, many are confident that social Social Signals and Their Impact on Link Buildingsignals will impact the value of a natural link. As Erin Everhart pointed out, “Links will always matter, but links without social signals could easily be coming under scrutiny.” The search engines are looking to reward websites that are transparent, honest, and forthcoming with their link building efforts and a link from a website with no social presence could very easily been an unnatural link. That is not the kind of link the search engines want to place a lot of value on.
Search marketer Marios Alexandrou says that “social signals, voting in particular, allow a broader set of people to weigh in on what is good content. This isn’t a new concept and was actually described back in 2009 by Mike Grehan in New Signals To Search Engines, ‘Signals from end users who previously couldn’t vote for content via links from web pages are now able to vote for content with their clicks, bookmarks, tags and ratings.’”
While it’s getting harder and harder to fake your link profile (and not get pegged for it), it’s much harder to fake true social engagement. The search engines aren’t just looking at how many followers you have, but how many followers your followers have. Are they real people with real social presences of their own? Do they share other content, have their own opinions and points of view, or do they only exist to regurgitate your brand’s information? A real social figure sharing your content, even one with a relatively small social footprint, is worth a lot more than a bot account doing all the dirty work.
The reason that Google and Bing have relied on links for so long is links were supposed to be how one website gave their stamp of approval on another. Unfortunately the spammers took link building to the extreme and just looked for any link without regards for the quality of the site they were getting that link from. The search engines have since learned that just because a website has a lot of links it doesn’t mean it provides a lot of value. By adding social signals into the mix the search engines can weed out spam sites that just care about links for links sake and reward those sites that are providing real value to their audiences.
While a tweeted link or a link from a LinkedIn group might not carry the same weight as a traditional link from an industry website or citation (and who knows, someday it might!), those social signals do add credibility to your online presence overall because they tell the search engines you are a real brand with a real personality and a real commitment to growing your overall online presence.
Friday, 25 April 2014
Kat Cole - Address Women in Transportation
Kat Cole, Cinnabon, to Address Women in Transportation
Kat Cole, the 35-year-old president of the cinnamon roll brand, Cinnabon, has been confirmed as a keynote speaker for the 2014 annual conference of WTS International, the association for the professional advancement of women in transportation that will take place May 14 - 16, 2014, in Portland, Oregon.
“Kat Cole is an incredible role model for business leaders in any industry, particularly for women. What she has done for the companies she’s worked for since a young age and the odds she’s defied as a woman in business make her story and the lessons she’s learned universally appealing,” said Margaret Mullins, director of the WTS Annual Conference. “Ms. Cole’s presentation is sure to resonate with each of the conference attendees, both women and men, from those just beginning a transportation career to our executive-level members.”
Read Kat Cole's Blogs -
“WTS helps its members develop professionally and climb through the ranks of the transportation industry in both the public and private sectors, and we take pride in knowing that we are helping to build the world’s infrastructure through the advancement of women, and shaping future generations of transportation leaders,” said Marcia Ferranto, WTS International’s President and CEO. “Ms. Cole’s leadership in business is representative of WTS International’s guiding principles that are the tenants of how we work to achieve our goals; WTS is committed to ethical leadership, integrity and respect for all. The WTS spirit of community, inclusiveness, and mutual support is one of our greatest assets.”
The Annual Conference is WTS International’s flagship event. It attracts corporate and governmental industry leaders worldwide, including executives, CEOs, government administrators, and leading transportation authorities. Attendees at the conference gather to network, discuss the state of the world’s transportation infrastructure, strategize on advancing professionally through glass ceilings, and explore the local city’s successful municipal and private transportation and transit projects. For the full duration of this year’s Portland conference, private corporations, public agencies and government officials invested in every transportation mode will exhibit, present, learn, and network.
Kat Cole is the president of Cinnabon, Inc., where she is accountable for leading, evolving, and building the team and multi-channel brand. Her story is often shared for inspiration as she moved up from working as a hostess at 17 years old in restaurants to traveling globally to help open new franchises. At the age of 19, she dropped out of college, advanced to various management and leadership positions, and at 26 became a Vice President at Hooters making her one of the youngest executives in the hospitality industry.
Cole’s personal story, business approach and perspective on leadership has been the subject of feature articles in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and many other business publications and she has been a featured guest on CBS, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and more. She was recently featured on the show Undercover Boss and was named one of Fortune’s “40 under 40.” She’s a speaker and consultant on leadership development, women in business, change management, and brand innovation and growth, and she is widely known for legacy business-model innovation, building brands, humanitarian work in the U.S. and Eastern Africa and mentorship and development of emerging leaders.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) March 06, 2014
For more information on the 2014 Annual WTS Conference, contact Margaret Mullins, Operations Director, at 202-955-5085.
Expertise And Exploration Can Serve You Well in Business And in Life - Kat Cole
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| Kat Cole, Cinnabon, to Address Women in Transportation |
The answers to these questions and others like them surround around having a focus on expertise and exploration. These two attributes, when present in an individual, a team or a company culture, drive personal, professional and brand resilience and innovation.
Let’s take the Healthy/Gluten Free Topic for example. If you look through the Linked In post discussions or check out my twitter feed – you’ll see all kinds of contradictory preferences. Some people want fat free, some want vegan; others say, “hey, you’re Cinnabon – I don’t come to you for low cal – I come to you for something so delicious, that the indulgence is worth it”. Here’s what you can take from that, you can’t please everyone. (And remember, this is as true for each of us as people as it is for a company or brand).
In fact, the attempt to be all things to all people can be pretty destructive over time. You have to know who you are, be true to that core (expertise), but understand how to evolve in order to remain differentiated and relevant (exploration). For Cinnabon, that means staying ooey gooey, totally delicious, and incredibly indulgent (expertise). But it also means creating smaller and broader variety of portion sizes and treats and indulgences and listening to our fans who say they want more portable products (exploration). And yes, it could even mean a delicious gluten free version someday.
Even though we have broadened variety and created smaller, more portable versions of our product so we have smaller sweet treats, we have also made a choice not to make our core cinnamon rolls fat free, because of the tradeoff in real ingredients and yumminess that would be required.
While we have a few indulgent but fat free items in our bakeries such as our delicious Orange Mango frozen Lemonade Chillatta, we have many fat free options in retail like our Cinnabon Green Mountain Coffee, our Cinnabon Vodka and Cinnabon Airwick scents for your home – yummy! Of course, Kellogg’s Cinnabon Cereal or Cinnabon Cream of Wheat are a little healthier versions of our famous flavors, too. If we didn’t have these other channels and partners, we would not be able to provide the variety necessary to connect with as many people as we do. It’s this openness to risk and change and the discipline to work with great partners allows us the variety and accessibility to fans with all kinds of preferences can enjoy some version of our ingredients or products. When entrepreneurs or leaders ask for advice or mentorship, I often share this perspective to encourage them to branch out.
As an example of our exploration mindset, we tried “lite” MiniBon Cinnamon rolls once, reduced fat and reduced calorie. You know what happened? People bought it, like 2 people – no, maybe 4 (exaggerating only slightly). Our fans end up deciding if they want to control calories in their indulgence, they’ll just get one of our smaller options and not trade off one bit of deliciousness for a lower calorie version – it wasn’t worth saving the 100 or 200 calories (to stay with the bigger portion size when the smaller one is just as yummy) for something that is an occasional treat any way.
It’s not that we don’t want to make our awesome famous products many different ways (in fact we do), it’s that in a small business that is a fresh bakery, you have to actually sell enough of what you make for it to be worth it, otherwise, it hurts the business and takes the focus off the core.
At some point, each leader, brand and company learns they can’t chase every option that people request. There are a limited amount of resources in any given business and situation. We have to leverage our expertise and stay true to that, while still exploring and being open to the additional opportunities we have to be relevant to an evolving customer base. We can’t be afraid to try new things or be too stubborn to provide variety and options our guests may love or that could create new fans.
This is just one example, and I could share countless more where answers to questions around how we make decisions, grow and evolve to build a global multi-channel brand center around a combination of expertise and exploration, but the real secret behind embracing expertise and exploration at Cinnabon is our team.
One of our executives often says we are a team of entrepreneurs functioning in a slightly corporate environment. That is so right on. We have leaders and contributors in our brand, our employees and franchisees and the awesome people at our parent company (FOCUS Brands) who make up that culture. I never forget how lucky I am to work with people who are disciplined enough to strengthen our expertise, but creative, vulnerable and flexible enough to be true explorers and take risks. We live by our mantra “Life Needs Frosting” and don’t take ourselves too seriously, staying open to new opportunities that are as fun for the brand as they may be good for the business. These are the kind of people we choose to work with, hire and promote and that I learn the most from.
Personally, I’ve also found that being a student of your functionality, industry and work not only helps hone your expertise, but exposes you to new thinking, so you can be as solid of a team player or leader as possible. Don’t get complacent if you’ve had success or have been in a role or company for a while. Use the hot-shot rule, and constantly imagine what a new person taking over your job today might do, and challenge yourself to see your opportunities with fresh eyes and fire in the belly just as that new person would.
In addition, by channeling your inner explorer, branching out, trying new things and helping others do the same, you find new ways to add value and new opportunities to take. If I had not been focused on being the best I could be (expertise), open to working every job possible as an hourly employee (server, bartender, cook, hostess) and doing the same as a I moved up in professional management roles (explorer), I know I would not have had the privilege to learn from many mistakes and awesome people and therefore would not be where I am today. Being an expert and being an explorer at the same time (as an individual, as a team, or as a company) may seem contradictory, but it’s not. It’s complementary and necessary in today’s fast paced, easily disrupted environment.
Kat Cole ( )
President, Cinnabon, Inc. at Focus Brands
Greater Atlanta Area - Hospitality
Keep your excitement alive to continue to learn and hone your expertise, but embrace opportunities to explore, learn and grow – you won’t regret it.
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