Business is My Passion...

While I do enjoy talking about business, I realized something very important about two weeks ago.

I’m just not that passionate about social media.

Let me explain further. I know a lot about social media, and my clients would have to agree. They’re very happy with the service that I’m providing and have continued to bring me new business. What I mean by business is my passion, as opposed to social media, is that I could talk about business all day long, 24X7 and never get tired about it. On the other hand, I could only keep up this blog for a few months before I didn’t feel like doing it anymore.

Again, I see the value of social media and using my knowledge to help bring out my clients passion wakes me up in the morning and keeps me going all day. It’s just that I can’t talk about this subject for that long.

Not every week, at least.

So as of today, I bought a new domain and a website that I’m going to be writing on: Pinstripearmor.com. It’s going to be a blog where I discuss issues about business and power in the world today. I don’t know where it’s going to go, or if it’s going to be wildly successful or a flop, but all I know is that every since I’ve come up with the idea I’ve wanted to do it and can’t stop thinking about subjects I want to talk about.

I will occasionally update this site when I find something interesting about social media (about every two weeks or so), but I’ll be moving most of my information to pinstripesrmor.com

See you there,

Brian

LinkedIn Answers: The Best Business Advice on the ...

Part of my job as a Small Business consultant (or social media consultant) is just informing people on what’s available on the web. There’s so much background noise on the internet that, at times, it’s hard to distinguish what’s useful and what’s simply SPAM. That being said, LinkedIn Answers is one of the worst sites as far as SPAM is concerned, but also one of the most valuable when trying to find great, honest people. What I am referring to, of course, is LinkedIn Answers. Hidden after the ‘more’ tab on the top of the screen, it’s a little known tool that can get you more eyes on your LinkedIn account and real questions answered by experts in the field.

Whenever I post a question, my LinkedIn account gets a 100% increase in the number of daily visitors. More importantly, when internet research fails, I have a source of experts to turn to. Try it out next week: you will not be disappointed.

www.linkedin.com/answers

Dead Blog Gem: Five Ways to Prevent the Outsourcin...

Dead Blog Gem is a weekly post that looks to find Internet blogs that have been abandoned by their owner (not updated in over 6 months), yet still have valuable information posted on it. This week, I have discovered a blog from IT Toolbox (From an author known as author unknown) that talks about the follies of outsourcing. Today in the IT world (with a lot of small businesses in the market), it’s hard to find a way to not be outsourced. Many times, it’s easier to switch the position you’re called then to outwork the competition. IT Toolbox has five jobs that are outsource proof in the IT field:

1. Positions Dependent Upon Constant Communication - Off-shoring is not suitable for IT positions that are dependent upon constant communication – Business Intelligence and Reporting is one such area. Constant communication and changes are the norm rather than exceptions. This may not be because the business users are fickle. It’s just the nature of Business Intelligence and Reporting.

2. Positions That Involve Lots of Internal and External Touchpoints - A good example might be IT careers in Consulting Companies that require interactions with customers here. More touchpoints mean bodies that are in the same time zones as yourself. They may try offshoring those positions but they will not work in the longer run.

3. Positions where Requirements are Changing Fast all the time - Fast growing businesses do these to you. Requirements cannot be frozen long enough for them to follow any process. That may also mean you need to be nimble on your feet, be familiar with Rapid Prototyping and faster release cycles if you are in software development. Good examples might be fast growing online companies.

4. Positions where Technology is the Core Set of Products - For Intellectual Property reasons as well as speed with which you need to do things (not very mature companies but younger ones) IT positions within such companies cannot be outsourced easily without pain. If you join a Retailer in their IT department, IT is a support process. It is subject more to outsourcing as it is not a core competency.

5. IT Careers that involve fast changing technologies - RFID, Wireless are all examples of fast changing technologies that cannot step outside the U.S simply for availability reasons. Wireless standards (Wide-area, telecom not local area) vary from country to country and is resistant to outsourcing simply for the reason that it cannot be done elsewhere. Fast changing technologies like RFID may require resources – people, knowledge, access to information, capital, etc that are very localized. They cannot be simply outsourced.

That said, already Computer Science enrollments are shrinking in schools. This may drastically alter the demand-supply equation in local IT workers favor soon. Hang in there, hide out for a while and the sun will come out. Hype machines work both ways, very optimistic and very pessimistic. Currently it is painting an unwarranted pessimistic picture. I don’t believe it at all, if not for any reason other than simply what experience teaches you.

You can read more from this ancient relic of internet’s past at http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/

The State of Social Media in 2010...

And interesting graph that gives almost every major player in the social media sphere…

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

Flickr: Four Steps to Finding Great Pictures for y...

This is probably one of the most useful tools that I use (and recommend my clients to use) in order to get great looking photos on their website. Many times, people fall into the habit of buying bad stock photos to use on their website and end up paying more than they needed to. This technique will help you get the photos you need without the hassel (thanks to Tim Ferris for recommending this tip):

1. Go to Flickr and search for something you might need for your website.
2. After this, go to the advanced search on the next screen
3. Go to the bottom of this screen and search for the Creative Commons button and mark the box, as seen below.
4. Click search, then sort by Interesting.

This will give you a lot of great photos for your website. Just remember to give credit.

Brian

Dead Blog Gem: Watch Out for the Snake Oil...

Dead Blog Gem is a weekly post that looks to find internet blogs that have been abandoned by their owner (not updated in over 6 months), yet still have valuable information posted on it. This week, I have discovered a blog from 100 Daily Payments (From an author known as Tristan) that talks something most people on the internet are very concerned about: Snake Oil Salesmen. You know the site I’m talking about, the one that has four or five pop ups asking you if you want to make $5,000 a day working at home. Here’s another person’s opinion on this issue:

This post is made out of a little bit of frustration and anger because of all the confusion and helplessness I come across from people who are desperate to make money online.

I get a little bit annoyed when I see other people who claim to be experts misleading people who are new to making money online just so they can attempt to make money online themselves.

The truth is most of these people who are not honest and try and trick you into believing that their product is the be all and end all of making money online are not making any money themselves, so they are desperately seeking to try and make some money so they are prepared to lie to do it.

Which is disappointing for two reasons.

1. It makes people give up and forget their dream of working from home and having the lifestyle they really want which is extremely sad because it is possible for everyone to quit their 9 -5 and be financially free.

2. It gives the legit, honest people a bad name and makes it hard for the “good” to get through all the rubbish and lies and scams. It gives making money online a bad name when in reality the ability to make an exceptional income from the Internet is one of the most amazingly opportunities imaginable.

Here is my advice, look to the people who you know ARE successful. Follow those who don’t hide and do misleading things but the people who are up front and open with you and tell you the truth and not tell you things for their own gain.

Because theses are the people who really know how to make money online because they know they can be honest and tell the truth because their business model is a successful one and doesn’t rely on scams, lies and deception.

I know it is very hard to try and sort through all the rubbish online, but let me tell you that it is a very real reality that you can make a living online and all you need to do is find the people who are already doing it and model yourself after them.

You can read more from this ancient relic of internet’s past at http://100dailypayments.blogspot.com/

What is Social Media Good for? Maybe It Isn’...

Social media might help you earn some money, but the goal should be increasing the success of your business.

What do I mean? Let’s start from the beginning…lets say you have started a small business and you would like to increase your sales. You have heard about social media and would like to give it a try. After registering for a Facebook account, you are not really sure what to do and you end up just waiting for the money to flow. Well unfortunately, the money is probably never going to start pouring in.

Good things need time to develop and social media is not excluded from this. Social media offers you an amazing, worldwide audience to present your ideas and (most importantly) to listen to what the audience has to say to you! Try to not get caught up in the idea of an instant payout. Instead, concentrate on the social part. You need to socialize with other people all over the world, get to know them, learn more about their needs, problems and preferences, try to look at the world from their point of view.

Traditional Branding it Dying

Try to be open to change and new ideas regarding your business. Try to set your company policies according to the preferences of your customers – current and future. This is not only a process of receiving, but also of giving.  You should invest not only money, but also time, thought, and the will to learn about and perfect yourself.

And even though this process of customer service will occupy a lot of time, you should learn to be patient and wait for the results of your hard work within online social communities.

There are many companies that gained amazing success by using social media. It’s high time for you to check whether or not you will need to represent your business through social media

If you do decide to try, please remember – do it without your eyes focused only on the money. Just try to socialize with and learn more about your customers. Eventually, as time goes by (and your ratings increase) your investment will begin to pay off financially.  In the end, you will reap the benefits of investing your time and money in socializing your business on the internet.

Need a Free Website? Google (Sites) has an App for...

Google never ceases to amaze me. Two weeks ago, I mentioned a website known as remindo.com that allows you to have a company intranet. Having coffee this week, a friend of mine showed me an intranet his company was using… under google sites. I was speechless. Not only can you use google sites to create intranets and other similar sites, but you can format them and create different looks, colors and functionality. I haven’t played around with it a whole lot, but I do like what that possibilities.

You can find it here at http://sites.google.com/.

Dead Blog Gem: Four Tips on Getting More Eyes on Y...

Dead Blog Gem is a weekly post that looks to find internet blogs that have been abandoned by their owner (not updated in over 6 months), yet still have valuable information posted on it. This week, I have discovered a blog from Advice On Wealth (No author mentioned on website) that talks about more online revenue streams. I have found an interesting post on how to increase SEO to your website, which helps in making your website more attractive to search engines and other sites:

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well-SEO‘ed website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, SEO-ing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are such a newbie on this field.

But to tell you the truth, you can essentially get information on low cost SEO anywhere in the Internet. But only several really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.

1. Link exchanges

One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you nothing at all. Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.

2. Write or acquire key word rich articles

Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It’s either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author’s byline in tact. Just don’t stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bore of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.

3. Catchy Domain Name

What better will make your target visitors remember your website but with a very easy-to-recall domain name. Something sweet and short will prove to be very invaluable. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is.

4. Organize your site navigation

Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website.

Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you on the top ten rankings of Google or on any other search engines. Some may cost a lot but there are methods that can give you the same results at a low price or you can even do on your own such as those mentioned above.

You can read more from this ancient relic of internet’s past at http://adviceonwealth.blogspot.com/

The Social Power to Boost Your Company’s Suc...

Social media will help your business if you are able to motivate your workers to cooperate and enjoy working together – this is the only successful way to avoid any inner problems.

But in reality most companies are often just the opposite – managers not only let workers compete with each other but they even enjoy the arising disagreements between employees.

It’s a tragedy if you don’t realize social power or you are afraid to use it in the proper way. The company I used to work for does not attempt to follow this – my boss was trying to separate all employees because his main worry is that we could join forces and quit working for him, establishing a rival company of our own. If he takes some time to think it over, he might see that people work best when they are motivated and collaborating with each other. Maybe this change would require much time and I bet so as for some people, especially managers, it’s a matter of making up their mind and keeping themselves open to their employees the same way that they are open to customers’ preferences.

Your business’ success is determined both by your customers and your employees. There is no way to reach your goal with customers without your first-rate resource. Motivation is vital and it reflects directly to the quality of work your workers provide. It’s a process of give and take – treat your workers well and in return you will receive success.

People are afraid of taking responsibilities. Most people avoid making decisions and making changes in their every day life. Most of us prefer the old status quo than any attempt to change – as each change comes along with some risk or issue to be pointed out by our managers. Employees have the closest view of the business and its inner problems and if they are not heard, this is a huge communication problem – I believe this is one of the reasons why so many managers don’t see the proper ideas for improvement as easily as their employees. The only way to perfect your business in detail is listening to your employees the way you listen to your customer’s preferences, needs and tastes – with the adequate respect and willingness to cooperate.

Social media comes along to help managers learn more about their workers, how to listen to them, how to involve them in the company policy, and make them feel like they contribute to the company success. I will say that social media should be the main company tool for organization and planning.

Integrating social media within your business depends on your readiness to listen to your surroundings– the more flexible and adaptive you are, the easier it will be for you to communicate, collaborate with, and motivate your workers. Once you realize the social power of your employees and customers, you will be ready to enjoy your guaranteed success in a world of changes.