Monthly Archives: September 2008

Consultancy, Social Media Sites, Work Connexions SMO

Blogging to Assess an Employees Performance

A couple of years ago I was applying for a job by a company in the UK. After the usual first get to know you meeting. They asked me to write a report about their website and what I thought about it.

I knew that this was a part of the job interview process so I wrote as honestly and as diplomatically as I could. Back then, I did not blog at all. Writing is not an obvious choice for me, I am much better orally speaking. I know why that is so, having kept a blog for over a year now. I am beginning to understand why writing is entirely different from speaking. It uses different parts of the brain. Which parts I am not entirely sure, but the more you activate a brain center the better it will perform. It is not as easy as it looks, but then again neither is it that hard. Without doubt, it does wonders for any plan to be able to take the effort to set it out on paper before you take any steps to put a plan into action. In fact I would even go so far to say that if we to do that with all important decisions in our life we would probably have a very different view point and live very different and probably richer lives, qualitatively speaking. If you are going to assess your employees on their writing skills you will have to create the right atmosphere. A free mind can develop very quickly (in children) unfortunately somewhat slower as an adult. So it is important that the employees do not feel that they have to write in certain way. Indeed that would be against the very essence of blogging. Forget having brain storming sessions, ask each employee to write something for you instead, that is a least the ones that cannot justify a better use of there of time than picking their nose. You will be amazed what you find…. this of course assuming that you have the more or less total confidence of your staff.

business, Consultancy

Republish and Publishing

One of the great things with online media and publishing is that you can change it at any moment you would like to. You can go back and update it, give it a revamp. If the blog post you wrote a year go seems out of date, go back and change it.

Revamping is not just limited to wanting to update your blog posts. It can be used also when inspiration does not strike as a filler while you are preparing a new blog post.

Here some tips you can look at when updating material: 

  • New perspectives: If the blog post is over a year old. Think about new angles that you can bring to the content.
  • Check your links: Make sure that pages you have linked to are still there.
  • Add internal links: What better way to build traffic. Link and link to your other blog posts.
  • Keywords: As time has passed hopefully your understanding of keywords and meta tags and the relevance it has with search engines has increased. Make sure your blog post is optimally balanced.
  • Blog about your updates: If you have updated an old blog post make sure that you publish it on the front page of your website and let people know through twitter etc. This will probably also mean updating the date.
  • Blog post series: A series is a really good way to keep your visitors coming back. It generates interest and allows you to write about more complex subjects.
  • Past the sale by date: Sometimes a blog post  is not possible to fix and pruning it will not help either. For a number reason you might  feel the material is not relevant. Maybe you have changed your views, maybe the company is no longer selling the product. That is when the time has come to delete that blog post.

 

That is this byte seize post. Any others you would add?

Consultancy, Uncategorized

10 Ways To Make Work Fun

We can make work fun, enjoyable and emotionally satisfying. Don’t dread certain tasks, use these 10 ways to turn even the most challenging tasks into a game. Find the psychological rewards of doing good work.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. -Mark Twain

With all due respect to Mark Twain, I think there is a better way. Work can be fun. Any work can be turned into a game.

Here are a few ideas to help you find the fun in any job:

Play music. Turn on your CD player, MP3 player or even the radio. Music has the ability to draw our minds away from the more disheartening aspects of any job.

Make your work a competition. If you are working with someone else, make it a race to see who can get it done soonest. Or who can complete the most of each task.

Just dive in. Most of our feelings of dread disappear once we become immersed in a project. Whatever it was that made us put it off or want to avoid it, just goes away once we get started.

Ask yourself, what can I find to enjoy about this? Few jobs are totally devoid of any feelings of satisfaction that comes from just doing it. Psychologically, we need work in order to be happy. Work itself is often its own reward. Make an effort to find what gives you satisfaction in the job at hand.

Keep score. If your job is to make cold calls all day, keep records of how many calls you make. Break down how many you make before noon, how many you make each hour and how many you make for the entire day. Then on subsequent days, see if you can beat your previous day’s numbers. This builds a challenge into the job instead of it being one huge objective.

Can you make your job a team effort? Involve a friend or work side by side with someone whose company you enjoy. Companionship can make most experiences more enjoyable.

Take breaks. Don’t let fatigue rob you of any joy that comes from doing good, honest work. Stop occasionally and stretch or walk around. Come back to the job when you feel refreshed.

Break the job down into more manageable tasks. Big jobs tend to overwhelm us and demoralize our will. By making a big job several smaller jobs, you can enjoy that feeling of satisfaction sooner and more often as you cross each small job off your list.

Do quality work. Sloppy, get it done work feeds no one’s ego. There are tremendous psychological rewards that come when we know we just produced good work. This sounds silly, but I have gone back into a clean garage, after spending my entire Saturday morning straightening it out, just to look at and appreciate my own workmanship.

Change the setting. Can you take the job outside? If you have a back deck on your house, take some jobs outside and enjoy a beautiful day while you work. Do you remember those beautiful Spring days when a teacher might have occasionally taken the entire class outside to teach outdoors? Try to do that with your own work.

Work is what you make it. Few jobs are as boring or agonizing as we sometimes make them. If you can turn work into fun, how much more enjoyable would your entire life be?

COPYRIGHT(C) 2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

Download your free copy of 99 Ideas For Writing Irresistible Web Content, written by Charles Brown, a Dallas, Texas based freelance copywriter who writes web copy, advertisements, white papers and direct mail. Subscribe to his “Freelance Copywriter Secrets” at http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com or contact him at 817.715.3852 or **charbrow@gmail.com**.

development, Personal, Relationship, Uncategorized

Brainstorming Call it Personal Development

We have been doing quite bit of debating at www.Wcx.me about the future. It is good to keep developing and brain storming ideas.

The more you brainstorm the more you are able to do it.

Blogging is a form of brain storming. As is debating a subject. With debating one can develop many more ideas and understanding of events that happen around us.

I recommend setting an hour per week to brainstorm, call it personal development.

development, Personal, Quality, work

Blogging to Assess an Employees Performance

A couple of years ago I was applying for a job by a company in the UK. After the usual first get to know you meeting. They asked me to write a report about their website and what I thought about it.

I knew that this was a part of the job interview process so I wrote as honestly and as diplomatically as I could. Back then, I did not blog at all. Writing is not an obvious choice for me, I am much better orally speaking. I know why that is so, having kept a blog for over a year now. I am beginning to understand why writing is entirely different from speaking. It uses different parts of the brain. Which parts I am not entirely sure, but the more you activate a brain center the better it will perform. It is not as easy as it looks, but then again neither is it that hard. Without doubt, it does wonders for any plan to be able to take the effort to set it out on paper before you take any steps to put a plan into action. In fact I would even go so far to say that if we to do that with all important decisions in our life we would probably have a very different view point and live very different and probably richer lives, qualitatively speaking. If you are going to assess your employees on their writing skills you will have to create the right atmosphere. A free mind can develop very quickly (in children) unfortunately somewhat slower as an adult. So it is important that the employees do not feel that they have to write in certain way. Indeed that would be against the very essence of blogging. Forget having brain storming sessions, ask each employee to write something for you instead, that is a least the ones that cannot justify a better use of there of time than picking their nose. You will be amazed what you find…. this of course assuming that you have the more or less total confidence of your staff.

Ask a Question, Finance, money, Relationship

Borrowing Money

Why do politicians think that spending more money is going to save the economy? Does George Bush or any other world leader think that they can remotely buck/control the economy.

If your economy is already broken and by that I mean that is it has stopped making money. Why borrow? The current trend in the world is than to spend more money to solve it.

Let me see if I understand it correctly? 

You do not have any money,

the companies are not making any money but you want to borrow money to supposedly solve it.
I can understand the theory about borrowing money to grow a business, but borrowing money to prop up badly run companies does not sound like a business plan to me. Especially when it is Tax payer’s money. I know which way I will vote.

 
What would be your advice to the government?

Ask a Question

Answer: What can Social Media do for my company?

2 Comments

The short answer is anything that you want and there are not any other media forms that you can say that of in this day and age where companies are considering hiring a social media manager. To look after conversations within and outside the company, you know are starting to hit home. Most multi national companies? invest serious amounts of money into influencing conversations online. As an example Dell employs a number of people to keep tabs on what is happening in their forums and related ones on the internet.

Social media is subtle though. You cannot write big headlines saying:- buy this computer at half price, it is much more about managing the relationship in a world where traditional advertising is losing it impact. How and why? We have seen so much advertising before that we just do not buy it. It is about being genuine. So people form relationships with people who have the time. That is expensive. Time is money. That is social media. I am not suggesting that companies try to sell one to one on the internet. But they do need to think about how they a can influence the conversation. An example of this is a ferry company in the Isle of Man who runs a blog written by its MD. At first glance this might seem like a step in the right direction. But there are already mutterings in private and public places online and “off” about the fact that this is corporate gloss, unless he truly engages people in two way conversation. They will talk and complain about him elsewhere, in their own private forums and communications (email).

So what is the point?

People are going to talk about your company weather you want them to or not and in the future those conversation are going to take place more and more on the internet

What can you do?

Participate.

It is better to have that conversation on your website where you can influence it.

Allowing for user and customer interaction on your site will reduce the threat it may pose.

Manage you social media profile by hiring a expert or a third party.

What are your thoughts?