Category Archives: Websites

Consultancy, Websites

15 Essential Common Sense Communication Tips for Technologists

Mike Lynn has worked at a number of businesses ranging from very small to extremely large. he has the pleasure of doing business with some of the best and brightest minds in technology in the financial services industry. However, He is amazed on at some of the things I see on a regular basis. Whether your a manager or a single-contributor, I’m sure you can appreciate this refresher course in communication common sense.

Conversations with Clients

  1. Never answer an unqualified question. As technologists, we’re often called upon to provide additional information about the products we review or projects with which we are involved. NEVER ANSWER WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THE QUESTION.
  2. Never commit to ANY additional work without thoroughly understanding your existing task list and the implications of the additional work.
    If you’re uncertain – defer and give a date for when you can supply an estimated delivery… a date for a date.
  3. Never answer if you’re uncertain. It’s not only ok – but admirable to say “I don’t know – but I’ll find out.”
  4. Know your audience. Recognize that we’re very technical people and we are sometimes invited to meetings with people of varying degrees of technical knowledge. When this is the case, be certain that you’re NOT dragging these folks into a technical ditch and thereby grinding the meeting to a halt. It sometimes helps to verbally check with meeting participants after an initial discussion to ensure that you’re all ok with the technical depth at which you are speaking.
  5. Respect other’s time. Always schedule time for conversations you feel may take more than a single sentence response. If you’ve called someone directly to save the time of typing an email or scheduling a meeting, consider that the person you’re calling may have other activities scheduled or in flight for this time slot.
  6. Understand your role. You are a technologist, responsible for providing solutions to technological problems. Never ask a client or partner to solve a problem for you unless the problem falls outside the realm of your responsibility.
  7. Never answer a question before you’re certain you’ve considered the implications of your response and the perspective of the person asking the question. I’m not telling you to ask a question for every question asked – but understand the perspective of the person asking the question and either a) ask a discovery question to clarify or b) tailor the answer to suit the asker’s perspective.

    Demonstrations to Clients

  8. NEVER stray from your script. Never perform an action for the first time in front of a client or in any demo. Never yield to a request from a demonstratee to introduce significant changes to the planned demonstration. If a person you’re demonstrating to wants more information that may take you from your script, politely note the request and tell them that you’ll be happy to schedule another time to get deeper or to do further investigation.
  9. When a demo breaks or a bug occurs (and it will!), don’t sweat it – be prepared with discussion notes in the event you need to reboot or reconfigure the environment. Don’t take it too lightly because after all – the time you’re taking to present it important. Have support ready at the back-end if at all possible – this can be in the form of a colleague who knows how to reset the demo environment.
  10. Include links to the webex or meeting collateral in the meeting request rather than distributing separately so that attendees don’t have to search through the mailbox to find it.
  11. When securing a room, secure the half-hour prior to the meeting to ensure that you have time to prepare… and remember if you’re using OUTLOOK and Exchange email to change the invitee type to RESOURCE OR ROOM to ensure that you secure the room’s availability.
  12. Prepare! Pre-load/pre-configure your environment. If you’re demonstrating several separate web pages, have them loaded in separate windows or tabs to avoid delays while loading. Prepare notes and practice the demonstration until you don’t need notes any longer.

    General Email Correspondence

  13. Enable Spell-check on emails. If it’s not turned on now – stop reading and do it now.
  14. Consider using reply instead of reply-all – not everyone on the cc list cares intimately about every detail.
  15. See 4. Understand your audience and tailor your written, as well as verbal communications to suit.

Visit the authors weblog at: http://blog.mlynn.org

Consultancy, Starting your business, Websites

Work At Home, How To Choose A Home Based Business And Make Money

With rising costs of living, employee downsizing, corporate layoffs, constantly increasing gas prices and long commutes to work, more and more people find it now necessary to find a work at home job or to start a home based business. A vast majority of these individuals turn to the internet for their work at home salvation. There are literally thousands of work at home and home based business opportunities out there on the World Wide Web but of course all that glitters is not gold. Upwards of 90% of the marketed home based businesses I would say are scams. These are schemes designed with the sole purpose of making the individual marketing the product to you rich, while you are left holding the bag as it were. Having said this however there are many legitimate home based business opportunities on the internet. The problem then is weeding out the good from the bad. Unfortunately this is a matter if trial and error and a LOT of research.

Finding legitimate opportunities to make money from home can become an extremely time consuming and ultimately a very expensive undertaking. There are a few things one must look for when searching for a legitimate work at home job or home based business opportunity. Any aspiring web entrepreneur must look for these important factors before selecting any work at home business opportunity, work at home job or affiliate program.

The first thing you should do is to review their standing with the various Business Regulation Agencies such as the Better Business Bureau. You should check on any complaints that may have been filed by consumers and whether or not it was satisfactorily resolved. In most cases this can be done online at the agencies web site.

They must have very good products and or services to promote. No matter their claims, if no one finds it useful no one will buy. On this note beware of any “opportunity” where you have to buy-in before you know exactly what you will be getting for you hard earned cash. As you can imagine there are many of these out there with a slick sales letter but absolutely no mention of what the product or service is.

There must be a reliable support system in place with training and good leadership. Any program that just hands you the material and expects you to just figure it out on your own isn’t worth your time and money.

Paychecks should be sent out on time and at least once per month. Some home based business opportunities make you wait until your account reaches a preset limit before you get paid. Others let you choose your own limit and or frequency, you be the judge of what is acceptable for your individual needs.

Longevity is most important, so they should have been in business for at least three years. The scammers and con-artist usually cannot stick around this long with any individual program. They pack up and leave to return with something new. If a company is around this long on the internet I would say they must be doing something good.

I must also add here a simple rule to follow; if it sounds too good to be true it probably isn’t. We’ve all seen those ads with claims such as you can make $8,000 a day or in a few hours, just a little common sense goes a long way with these. While I’m not saying that it’s impossible to make thousands of dollars a day, it’s impractical to think it will just happen over night.

Any home based business venture you get into will take time and effort; there will be a learning curve. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so take your time and learn the ropes. There is no such thing as a get rich quick scheme or we would all be millionaires.

For more information about articles like this please visit: http://www.myddnetwork.com

Traffic, Websites

Don’t Be Afriad To Follow

4 Comments

Just this morning I subscribed to comments from a couple of blogs. One in closed club called triiibes the other was a blog post from Dosh Dosh. Yesterday I commented on Sherrlynnes blog. Over the last couple of years some of us may feel the need to use the internet with caution. While there is some truth in this in relation to certain sites and money transfers. Most of the inter net is very safe.

For example if you subscribe to diffent blog/topics that you find interesting you can always with in 2 clicks unsubscribe. Rss is even safer where no personal information is being exchanged.

Considering that the Internet provides a wealth of largely free information it is a great pity not to benefit from this by using safe and standard tools. Follow your heart and see where it leads. 🙂

development, Traffic, Websites

Top Trick to Increase Page Rank

3 Comments

Owen a colleague of mine , has posted a rather interesting blog post about Page Rank. Where he discusses the latest changes in page rank. His idea is that a large part of the page rank is for Googles own use. I am not convinced myself. I think that is does represent the true importance of websites or at least is Googles attempt to do that. Anyway it is an interesting discussion. Which prompted me to share how I raised my page rank.

So How do you increase page rank?

When I started this site in April of this year under the whooah.biz domain. I had a page rank of 0 it then when to 4 in a couple of weeks, and now it has gone down again. How did I do it so quickly?

Comment, commenting, and comments.

I read and visited lots of other peoples blogs and commented and joined the discussion. Now there is something important to keep in mind here. Commenting on well known sites like Tech Crunch, Marketing Pilgrim is not going to help your page rank. Why? Becuase these sites run a No follow policy. Which basically tells the google search engine not to index your comment or link. If your comments is not indexed than you have no link back to your site hence no gain in page rank.

With that I will say happy commenting. Any queastions ask away.

Guest Bloggers, Marketing, Websites, Work Connexions SMO

What they didn’t tell you about blogging – A few more items

Not only is blogging addictive, blogging stats are addictive too… Blogging can be addictive. Checking blogging stats can be addictive too. Imagine you were fascinated with a video game. At first, it is hard to clear level one. Once you clear level one, you want to go to the next level. After that, to another level. Then to another level. Blogging game is similar but except there is no clear top level. You can keep on going for a long time – fascinated by the growth (or no growth) of the traffic on your blog. There are many things to be fascinated about blog traffic * where are the visitors coming from * what are they reading
This blog posts provides a sneak preview of what will be covered in the book. Of course, as you all know, the book will take a life of its own. I have a dream team of friends who have offered to help with all aspects of publishing the book. So I am quite excited. I would love to hear your ideas, thoughts, inputs related to the blog posts or the book. You can click on the email link on my blog and send me an email. Please mention whether you want to be notified about the progress of the book or when the book is published or both.

The links to the earlier posts in the same series are here

Here are ten more:

31. Not only is blogging addictive, blogging stats are addictive too…

Blogging can be addictive. Checking blogging stats can be addictive too.

Imagine you were fascinated with a video game. At first, it is hard to clear level one. Once you clear level one, you want to go to the next level. After that, to another level. Then to another level.

Blogging game is similar but except there is no clear top level. You can keep on going for a long time – fascinated by the growth (or no growth) of the traffic on your blog. There are many things to be fascinated about blog traffic

* where are the visitors coming from
* what are they reading
* where are they clicking through (as they go out)
* how are they finding your blog (search terms)

One clear reason you can be carried away with blogging stats is the “surprise” factor associated with it. Think about it –

* Which of your posts get popular?
* Which posts get linked most?
* Which posts get the most number of comments?

There is no way to predict the above or a dozen other questions. You can be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. Nothing is certain. The only way to find out is to keep watching the traffic 🙂

32. Barring exceptions, older posts are considered dead

Posts in a news site have a short shelf-life for obvious reasons.

I have been a big proponent of creating “timeless” content – meaning content that stays relevant for quite some time. That is only the first step. Just as you won’t go past a few pages of search results when you are searching something, don’t expect your audience to keep browsing back to the day you wrote the first blog post. Posts go dead faster than you think.

There is hope though. Think about what you can do creatively to ensure that some of your best posts stay alive. Here are a few ideas:

1. Create a section for the most popular posts and highlight them

2. Create categories to organize your posts

3. Create a series of posts and number them. If some posts in the series create an interest, chances are that readers will seek out other posts in the series.

4. Create lenses with a topic where you are an expert and link to all relevant posts on your blog.

5. Publish a manifesto on changethis.com with excerpts from your favorite posts for a topic.

Invent your own ways to keep the posts alive.

Fair warning: Don’t try to trick your readers by linking to posts that waste their time. Link back to high-quality posts only. Otherwise, it will hurt you more than it will help you.


33. Variety helps; too much variety hurts

Imagine a speaker who speaks with a monotonous voice from beginning to end of his speech. That can be boring. That won’t work, right?

You seek some variety.

On another extreme, imagine a speaker who, in the middle of his speech starts dancing and singing that have no connection to his speech. That won’t work either

Some variety is good. Too much variety (especially if it is incoherent) hurts.

Blogging is no different. When you blog, think that you are on a stage and talking to a set of people. They need variety. But not too much.


34. Blogging is personal

Blogging is more personal than creating a book. The audience expect to discover your personality through your blog. If the content is the king, the emotions associated with every post will be the queen. A good combination is desired.

Look at the last few posts. Do they represent you – do they say who you are. If not, go back and add some emotions into them. Bring out your personality in each of you posts.

Consider the act of writing a blog post – it may take you only a few minutes from start to finish. Contrast this with the publication of a book. A decent effort with the book is at least an year-long affair. It goes through several rounds of changes and editing before the script is finalized.

Which one is more personal – you be the judge.



35. Traffic is not the only metric of success in blogging.

Actually, if you just go after traffic, you may do some things that you might regret later. Your have to define your goals for blogging based on your needs not based on what someone else has done.

Here are some reasons why people are blogging:
* get more leads for their business
* to secure speaking engagements
* to promote their books
* to park their thoughts for future books
* to extend their personal brands
* to build new relationships
* to extend their company’s reach
* to share their expertise to the world
and so on.

Think about your own life goals and see how blogging fits in it. If it does not, but you are just trying to fit it in – because everyone around you are doing it, at least know that this is what you are doing 🙂

36. Name of your blog matters

Not much if you are celebrity. Otherwise, choosing the wrong name may “box” your blog.

For example, it is hard to write about anything other than Java if the name of your blog is “Java Only” or “Java Unleashed”. It would be out of place to write about training cats on a blog titled “All about Dogs”.

You can always change the name of the blog. However, it costs to make a name change (be it a company or a person or a blog) and you should be willing to pay that price. Rather than that, think carefully before you pick the name and the associated URL for your blog.

Here are two simple steps:

1. Assume that you won’t be changing the name of your blog for the rest of your life.
2. Once you decide on a name, think about what will people think when they hear the name of your blog.

Is this what you want? If not, go and re-visit the name again

If you already have a blog name but you are not happy about it, better change it today. The longer you operate a blog with a wrong name, harder it gets to change it.


37. Create tipping points for your blog

Unless you have a huge personal brand before you started the blog, don’t expect your blog to be an instant success. Every time you hear an “instant success” story for a blog, look at who was behind that blog and how long they worked hard to create their identity before they started the blog.

For the rest of us, we got to create our own tipping points for our blogs. In simple terms, the tipping points are those circumstances that will lead to the proverbial hockey stick growth for the blog.

Personally, for the first few months, my blog would get only a few hundred page views a day – most of them from my friends and family. Here are a few things that helped me take my blog to the next level (not in any order)

1. Publication of the book “Beyond Code” (foreword by Tom Peters)
2. Reviews of my book in online and offline outlets
3. Publishing a free eBook “When you can’t earn an MBA…” (downloaded more than 80,000 times)
4. Publishing a free eBook “Personal Branding for Technology Professionals” (downloaded more than 100,000 times)
5. Publishing a manifesto on ChangeThis – 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself (one of the top 10 manifestos at ChangeThis)
6. Publishing a free eBook “Lasting Relationships”
7. Squidoo lens (especially: Blogging Starter Checklist)
8. Help from many many friends (too many to list) online and offline.

What could be the tipping points for your blog in the next few weeks or months?

38. You can get carried away sometimes

When you are just getting started, you have a ton of ideas. Ideas are easy as long as you don’t have to execute on them. Execution is the real culprit. Here are some examples:

* You might want to start a separate blog for every area of your expertise
* You might want to start a separate blog for every book of yours
* You might want a separate audio-blog
* You might want a separate video-blog

You get the point. If you don’t play the full scenario – for the next few years, you might be setting yourself up for failure. Any new initiative takes time. And, blogging – it takes more time as you go along. If you are successful, it takes you more time than ever – as you have to live up to progressively higher standards that the marketplace sets for you.

So, before you get carried away on the multitude of blogging initiatives, think again!


39. Set time aside for your blog fans

When you speak in public, at the end of the talk (provided you spoke well) people will come and talk to you – ask you questions, clarify things and share their personal experiences. It is your time to interact with your fans.

Blogging is different. Some people are not comfortable writing comments on your blog. They may send you an email or two. Unless the request is unreasonable, you are expected to interact with them. If you don’t have time to respond, people will think you are a operating a broadcasting station rather than a blog.

All it requires is to add a small percentage of time that you are setting aside for your blogging activities. If you are spending 50 minutes in a week to blog, make it 60. If you are spending 300 minutes per week on your blog, make it 330.


40. You can join the discussion but you got have something original to say

One way to get attention is to join an on-going discussion related to a hot topic. Chime in and link to the other relevant blog posts. Trackbacks from those posts will bring you some traffic. However, if you don’t have something original to say to add to the ongoing discussion in a meaningful way, it will hurt you more than it will help you.

Imagine giving free tickets to a movie you know is bad. You make the person feel good for sometime but if he knows that you knew the movie was bad, he or she won’t like you anymore.

Before you invite anyone to your blog, get your house in order. That way, you not only make a good first impression, you will get them to visit again soon.

When you add some original thought to the discussion and raise the level of thinking, you will get noticed. If you just say things like – “What a great post” or “You got to read this” you are not adding much to what is happening.

Remember, when someone “discovers” your blog by some means, it is only “relevant and remarkable” content that will bring them back.

Websites

Triond You Write They Publish

I Just come across this site as an advertisement on my biz devlopment site. It has come up with a novel idea. They will pay you so that they can publish your content. A bit like a book publisher. I guess if you write material they thought they could sell. You may well end up having a book deal.

The site at the moment is a bit sparse and there is no affiliate deal. Having said that though navigation is logical.

The advantage of this site is that it takes work out of promoting your writing. I am going to give it a go and see if i can earn a few dollars or more. http://www.triond.com/

Ok an update here, I have just submitted an article to the website only to be told because I have submitted it on www.workconnexions.com they are not interested. As they explain below

“We regret to inform you that your content item, “An Easy Personal Backup Plan”, has been declined for publication for the following reason: Duplicate content. Identical content has been previously published on http://workconnexions.com/node/730. You may only submit content that has not been previously published in whole or in part, on the Internet..”

Which is shame as most of the content I generate does tend to get published elsewhere. I would imagine that any serious writer would have several outlets. I do think they are limiting their market.