A Blogging carnival is a world web phenomena where bloggers that are doing interesting or exceptional blogging can get free publicity within their own work sphere. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks links to other blog articles on a particular topic. If you would like to participate in the next Work Connexions blog carnival or synchroblog then click to read more …

If you would like to participate in the next Work Connexions blog carnival or synchroblog (Synchronised Blogging, or synchroblog, where a group of bloggers agree to post on their own blogs on the same broad topic on the same day.) then drop us an email or leave a comment in the blog entry of this news.

When your company is developing and growing it is too easy to overlook some of the less exciting elements of being in business. However, my experience has shown that paying attention to these elements will help your business be more stable, more profitable and easier to run. At the beginning of this year (2007) I sat down to write up the official KDR-EBusiness Top 10 Business Resolutions, and the reasons why you should consider them. If you would like our assistance with putting some of the ideas below into action, then please get in touch.

1. Have a backup plan

Vital business information is stored on your computers. Make a point of checking that your backup plan is up to date and that you perform a recovery test at least once this year. When your computer hardware fails, you need to know that recovery is possible.

2. Update your business plan

Once a year, revisit your business plan - if you don’t have one you’ll find it is worth the effort to make one. There’s a good starting point here

3. Streamline your administration

Well run administration can make a huge difference to a company. You can always find room for improvement. Examine the way that work flows through your company, find and remove the roadblocks first, employ IT technology second.

4. Sort out your email

Make plans to deal with timewasting SPAM. Depending on your business sector, there are legal aspects to email use and storage that must be considered. Create an email management plan.
Oh, and sort out your inbox, you know you need to.

5. Watch the cash flow - carefully

get your accounts up to date, and keep them as close to real time as you can. If you don’t have an accounts package, then you should consider purchasing one this year - but don’t do it without skilled support and advice.

6. Train your staff

Focused training for staff will contribute to the success of your business, but make sure that the training matches a business goal.

7. Don’t maintain the status quo

The business environment changes all the time, your business needs to change to match it.

8. Update your website

If you do, make sure that it is standards compliant this time around. Your old website probably doesn’t work in many of the new browsers that have been released since it was last updated. A well planned Search Engine Marketing campaign might also help to improve the effectiveness of your website.

9. Don’t ask how much it costs, ask what value it adds

Work out the value to your business before making a purchase. If the value is greater than the purchase cost, then go ahead.

10. Tidy Up the workplace

Because you know you should.

And finally, please let us know what your top ten business resolutions are…

About the Author:

Rob Mercer is a Director of KDR E-Business Limited, which provides IT Management services to small and medium sized enterprises. Rob has a Masters Degree in IT and is also a member of the British Computer Society. He has over 25 years experience in a variety of IT roles and industry sectors. Despite this he can still converse in English, a fact much appreciated by his customers.

Writing on your blog is not gossip. While you could get plenty of traffic from your industry by spreading juicy titbits about your competitors and colleagues you will more likely grab yourself a bad reputation rather than more work or industry profile. Language can be an issue. I am not talking about swearing and such, most business people would know better than to drop bad language into a marketing tool. What I mean is tone and sophistication. You have to fit the voice to the audience. Of course I am pretty laid back here on this blog, while there are quite a few CEOs reading they tend to not be the stuffy stiff necked types (I know, I get emails from them!). You have to tune the language you use appropriately.

The best type of posts you can make, particularly in a service industry, is successful case studies.

• What was their situation like before?
• What were their goals or problem?
• How did you work with them?
• How did everything work out?
• …

Most clients would be glad of the publicity, you just need to speak to them and get permission. Obviously some will not want specifics mentioning (particularly figures) or even to be named. That’s all fine. What matters is results and that you provide enough detail to be believable.

Talk to your clients about it and you won’t get into trouble. Going behind their backs is when you start getting into the sticky stuff.

The same is true when you want to write about exciting happenings in your own business. I imagine bloggers at Apple and Microsoft have a real hard time keeping mouths shut. There will be policies on what can and can not be talked about. If not, get some. Fast.

Many companies have footers on their emails

• NOT to be repeated or reproduced
• OK to email to company
• OK to email outside company to specified individuals
• Freely distribute

You can do the same and add a tick box for blogging if freely distribute doesn’t cover that.

Most business niches have news, tactics and events that are safe to blog about. This though is mostly filler. You can get that stuff anywhere. To make it more valuable you need to dig deep and find your hook or angle on it.

The best solution, if you haven’t already got a rich source of content to draw on, is to create some news. Could you run a competition? A survey? Interview some industry figures?

These don’t need to be massive ventures, scale to fit. While one past client of mine had a terrific success year on year with a global survey that was mentioned in television and newspapers around the world, another simply surveyed their own clients and as well as producing an excellent PR story also learned a great deal about what their customers look for and feel.

Bottom line you need to answer the question; “Could this have appeared on a competitors blog with no major changes?“. If the answer is yes you have a bland post and you need to work on it some more.

Just remember you can be interesting without being unprofessional. Focus on your reader. What is useful to them? How have you or your products helped people and businesses just like them?

Most of all, what makes you different to all the other businesses they could go to?

Visit Chris at http://www.chrisg.com/

Having a mentor is essential to your success. A mentor who has done what you want to do, has the lifestyle that you want to have and has been where you are before. Mentors have learned what works, what doesn’t work, and know the fastest and most efficient path to where they are today…They have made the mistakes…and learned what not to do…Since you want to be where they are, learning from them is like reading 1000 books on the same topic.

The reason mentors are important to have in your life is because they have the experience to guide you to your destination. They are a person to fall back on…to pick you up when you are down or are there to support you when faced with some type of adversity working to achieve your goal.

I have many mentors of my own in all different industries. They have helped me so much in showing me what books to read, how to do certain things that most people don’t know about, and really have told me, “Scott if you need anything don’t hesitate to ask.”

Knowing I have these mentors to always go to gives me peace of mind as I head into graduating next year. While most people are worried where they are going, and how they are going to get there…I personally feel like with all the mentors that I do have…I have nothing to worry about…

Now…I know nothing is going to be handed to me on a silver platter…nothing is ever that easy…but what I do know is this…If I ever need any advice, or guidance, I have the confidence in the mentors that I have to help me along the way.

So you are probably sitting there thinking….Ok Scott…You have all these mentors, but HOW DO I start building my network of mentors.

I would like to share with you what I did, starting the summer after my freshmen year.

1. The first thing that I did was write down all of the business people, and influential people that had some sort of influence over a particular industry that I knew I wanted to be involved in. I chose the industries of Real Estate, Entrepreneurship, Network Marketing, and Creative Ways Of Investing. These were contacts that my father and mother knew.

2. The second thing I did was either call them or send them an e-mail that sounded something like this. “Hi Mr. _____ I hope you are having a great day. I wanted to contact you because I know you are in ___________ industry. I think I may have an interest in being a part in that industry down the road and wanted to talk to you about your past experience in it. I know you are a very busy person, but would appreciate any time you could give me to talk about how you got to where you are today.
I am also in the process of creating a group of mentors to help and guide me along my life path and was wondering if you would have any interest in helping me in my journey.

3. After sending that e-mail I let the powers at be take control. Now you don’t have to use this e-mail word for word…even though you have my permission…but really speak from the heart when writing e-mails to those who you plan to contact.

4. The reason an e-mail like this is so key is because 1) You are being REAL with them…2)By you going to THEM and asking THEM you are stroking their ego…3)More likely than not they will want to help you because THEY KNOW exactly where you are because they have been there BEFORE.

5. When you schedule a time to get together be sure to be presentable, but comfortable at the same time. A mentor in my opinion is just a real specialized friend…you don’t have to show up in a suit…just a collared shirt or something dressy casual. I know it sounds kind of corny but thats just how I see it. When talking with them, remember my post about how people LOVE to talk about themselves. I believe it was the post about Essential Keys To Networking Effectively

Ask them everything about them…How long they have been in the industry they are in, how long they have done it, what did they do before? Etc Etc.

You will find as the conversation progresses you will be starting to ask questions like…
How did you overcome this obstacle.
What do you attribute your past success to? Do you have any guidance for me as an up and coming _____________.

What books would you reccommend that I read to help me along my journey.

Trust me they will want to help you! You just have to have enough guts to ask them.

Think about it…If you were in their position wouldn’t you want to help someone who reached out to you?

If any of you need any help whatsoever in contacting potential mentors I would be happy to help you. Just contact me by eamil at CaliforniaEagle@cox.net

Seth Godin is the author of six bestsellers, including Permission Marketing, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller for a year and a Fortune Best Business Book. His newest book,The Dip, has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired its own blog. Seth is also a renowned speaker, and was recently chosen as one of “21 Speakers for the Next Century” by Successful Meetings Magazine and is consistently rated among the best speakers by the audiences he addresses.

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, is a contributing editor to Fast Company magazine, and was called “the Ultimate… (more)

He is also one of our recommended resources.

As a solo-professional or small business owner, you have many responsibilities. Not only do you have to run your business and manage all the tasks associated with that, you also have to market that business. But just how should you divvy up your day? How much time should you spend on marketing? I believe you need to spend at least half of your time on marketing. In fact, as a business owner, I believe you really only have two main responsibilities:

1) Spending your time on revenue-producing activities

2) Marketing your business

Your time is valuable, so you shouldn’t waste it on mundane tasks that someone else could easily do.

You should be spending half your time generating income for your business. This might include things like servicing your clients and creating products.

The other half of your time should be spent on marketing to grow your business. That might include activities like writing articles and press releases, doing speaking engagements, writing and publishing an ezine or newsletter, advertising, relationship marketing, networking or Internet marketing. Any activity that is designed to bring you more clients or more sales.

But what about “all those other things” that have to get done?

All those administrative business tasks like paying bills, invoicing clients, going to the bank, picking up office supplies, fulfilling orders, monthly bookkeeping and clerical tasks like filing?

Or all of those household tasks like grocery shopping, cleaning your house, and doing laundry?

Find a way to delegate “all those other things”

…so you can focus your time on your top two priorities. If your time is worth $50 an hour or $150 an hour and you are spending it on $10 an hour tasks, it just doesn’t make sense.

What if you can’t afford to hire help?

I was in this boat for a long time myself. My mentors kept telling me to create a team and delegate. But I thought I couldn’t afford to. When I finally took the leap of faith and began assembling a team, my entire business and life changed.

I went from being a lone ranger doing everything in my businesses (yes, it was very tiring!) to a team that includes a bookkeeper, CPA, attorney, virtual assistant, writer, art director and production artist, media buyer, web developer, product manufacturer, fulfillment house, computer technician, real estate partners, property management company and others I’m sure I’m forgetting about right now.

No, I don’t have an office with all these people on staff.

I am still a “company of one.” These people are partners that I pay for specific services when I need them.

And I’ve enlisted the help of my family with the household tasks and hired housekeepers so I don’t have to spend my valuable work hours or my precious free time on these activities.

Yes, I still do some things I probably shouldn’t.

But the point is, over the past two years, I’ve learned to find experts and utilize their services to help me grow my business.

And even though I thought I couldn’t afford to hire a team…

Now I can’t imagine running my business (or my life) any other way. And paying for this help has never been an issue. Because the time they have freed up allows me to focus on my top two priorities, which has grown my businesses.

Your Marketing Step

Look around. Are you trying to do it all yourself? Are you running your business as a lone ranger? Are you spending time on activities that someone else could be doing?

If you are, I encourage you to step back and re-evaluate how your business is structured. And create a structure and a team that will allow you to spend your time on marketing and revenue-producing activities. And then watch your business grow!

Want to see how I spend my time? Visit my blog to find out!

Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to make marketing your own business as simple as answering 10 questions. Learn more about this unique, step-by-step system and get a free Marketing E-Course when you subscribe to the free, weekly 10stepmarketing Ezine at http://www.10stepmarketing.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debbie_LaChusa

Among the questions executives ask about social media is where should it be located? Who should launch, manage and publish the blog(s), vlog(s) and/or podcast(s)? The obvious choices are marketing, public relations, human resources or communications. However, making the right decision is both critical and complex.

To some extent, the answer lies within the internal structure of the business. Taking the org. chart into acount, to determine where social media should live, a business might ask questions such as these:

1. Who is most likely to understand the use of social media and then to use it in ways that benefit our customers, our employees and our business most?
2. Who has the time, budget and expertise to create engaging communications?
3. Who is least likely to use social media to market and sell products?
4. Who is most likely to use social media to draw customers into conversation with us; thereby, developing loyal customers, brand evangelists and new customers who appreciate our efforts to give them a voice?

These questions are the basis for the internal discussion. Whoever the business chooses to host social media, they must be excellent writers, they must be creative, they must have access to everyone within the business, they must be familiar with the customers and the communities in which the business has locations, and they must be trusted as open and honest communicators. Furthermore, they must have the courage and the ability to challenge managers and executives who want to turn social media into a bottom line tool.

Yes, social media, if done correctly, will result in return on investment in a variety of forms, including an increase in loyal customers who buy more and who talk positively about the company; an increase in the ability to produce more innovative and better products and services based on customer feedback; the ability to improve the company at every level, again based on customer feedback; and an increase in new customers as they learn about and come to trust the company.

That is the 10,000-foot view of where social media should reside and what to expect from social media. But like any strategy, before launching social media as part of your communications mix, every business should analyze the tools to understand what they do and how they may be used and how social media is and is not the right fit for your business. Using these communications tools is not to be done lightly.

My best advice is to study every detail and discuss all the pros and cons. And then if you decide social media is a good fit for your business, launch the tools internally first. Get employees from every functional area involved, and ask them to be your sounding boards. As in most things, employees know your customers best, and they will contribute incredibly good suggestions and recommendations, if you engage them and give them buy in.

For more information about Lewis Green visit him at http://lgbusinesssolutions.typepad.com/solutions_to_grow_your_bu/

The web has made all forms of communication more informal. People have forged relationships with others that they never see, through a constant stream of messages. The decreased formality of the language used was a natural progression, as more people gained access to e-mail and used it as a casual method of staying in contact with family far away.

We have been working for some time on launching a new site focused on Business Development. We our now throwing the doors open and inviting old and new users to join our community and grow your business. Over the next weeks we will be moving data and users over to the new site, ready for a new spring campaign. So come and try it out at www.workconnexions.net

The buzz in the search marketing media and increasingly, the business press, on the importance of unified or universal search is gaining momentum and is unavoidable. Small and medium sized business web site owners and webmasters are now presented with the challenge of making sense out of the recent rash of search engine interface and functional improvements and how to adjust their online marketing efforts accordingly. Many are not sure what to do. Hopefully this short guide will shed light on the fundamentals and give some basic direction on next steps.

Early this summer Google rolled out one of the most significant changes to its search engine ever called Universal search. This update was followed a week or so later by Ask.com announcing Ask 3D. After a leak and then a more official announcement late September, Microsoft Live officially announced the 2.0 version of it’s search engine to include universal search features and Now Yahoo and has followed suit with their version of Unified search, being called the “new Yahoo! search“. What does all this mean for most businesses marketing online?

What is Universal Search?

First, I should explain what Google Universal, Ask 3D, Live Search and the new Yahoo! Search are, and how they’re different from the way search engines have traditionally retrieved and displayed search results. As an overview, the latest and greatest versions of the popular search engines include more than the text based web pages in the search results that we’ve all been used to the past 10+ years.

These “upgraded” search features from the major search engines now also find and bring back results in varying media formats including: images, news, local listings, video, blog posts, products and more depending on the particular search engine. But let’s break it down a bit further.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Ask 3D means bringing in three dimensions of search into one set of search results, i.e. the three columns in the search results page. For example, if you search for “Shrek 3″, on the left are additional suggested search terms and related searches to other movies. In the middle are paid listings with regular text based results below. On the right are search results from images, video, Wikipedia and other sources depending on the query.

click for large view

One of the big challenges in making search a positive experience for users is to deliver the right answers according to the searcher’s intent. Searching more content sources than just web pages allows the search engine to deliver extra sets of relevant content that people may be looking for rather than making them sort through the typical web page results to find the content they’re looking for or worse, have to perform yet another search on another specific type of search engine.

Ask 3D is unique compared to Google Universal, Live Search and the new Yahoo! search because it most distinctly separates the different data sources on the page.

Google’s New Universe

Google Universal blends Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into the standard search results page. If we use the “Shrek 3” query again as an example, you’ll see listings from YouTube mixed in with the web pages including a preview image and the option to watch the movie trailer right within the search results. Normally, you’d have to click and visit another web page to do that.

click for large view

So rather than having to perform unique queries on Google, Google News, Google Images, etc individually, Google Universal searches all of those databases and returns the best matches in one set of search results. Findings reported in a recent study by Enquiro show that searchers are more engaged with content throughout the unified search results page rather than just the top 3 listings.

That makes sense because if you search for something and see a video thumbnail in the middle of the search results page, it will draw your attention - provided the title and description text are relevant of course.

Microsoft Search is A-Live!

The new Live Search promises better relevance, speed and look/feel enhancements as well as enhanced search results for queries related to “high interest” categories like: Health, Entertainment, Shopping, Celeberaties, Local, and Video. When a search is performed, like our favorite “shrek 3″, you’ll see video thumbnails displayed near the top of the standard search results with related searches suggested on the right. One neat, and surprising to me, was that the video clips play when you put your cursor over them. No clicking necessary.

click for large view

It’s A New Yahoo

With the new Yahoo! search, the same unified search characteristics apply. Yahoo searches it’s various databases or indexes of content and brings them back into one set of search results as you can see in this “shrek 3” example search. One interesting feature is that when you search for something location/event oriented, you get a set of results at the top of the page sorted by category, date and most popular. That information comes from Yahoo site, Upcoming.org. The other more notable feature of Yahoo’s new search is the “search assist” feature that suggest phrases as you type.

click for large view

While each version of “unified search” is slightly different, they all share the same characteristics of bringing back content from multiple data sources with the intention of providing a better user experience.

Why do these changes with the search engines matter to search marketers and web site owners?

First, it creates an online marketing challenge. A web site might have enjoyed certain positions on key terms within a search engine only now to find that their ranked web pages have been pushed down by video, image or local search results.

To address the situation, web site owners are faced with the proposition of making the effort to optimize their video, image, blog, local, news and product content. That’s easier said than done, because in most cases, small businesses have but a smattering of those content types at their disposal. If you don’t have the content format, you certainly can’t optimize for it. Even if you did, optimizing video for example, is a different thing than optimizing for news search.

The business of optimizing content for search engines just got a lot more complex.

With Challenges Come Opportunities

Many businesses won’t even notice why their search visibility has changed until it’s far into the game. Some will resort to beefing up their paid search campaigns, which you’d think might be an objective for the search engines, and some will roll up their sleeves and tackle the opportunity head on. With unified search results, there exist additional, high profile exposure opportunities where none of that type previously existed. The way for smart marketers to approach these opportunities is with a holistic perspective.

Optimizing holistically starts with an inventory of a company’s digital assets. Text, images, audio and video are all considered along with the incorporation of keyword messaging across company communications. Matching digital assets with channels of distribution provides marketers with even more opportunity to reach customers since each channel (blogging, email, media relations, social networking, forums, etc) can drive traffic independently as well as improve standard search visibility.

If a small business is not in the habit of creating content in multiple formats, then it will mean change. In fact, substantial changes may be necessary with content creation, approval and publishing processes along with the need for ongoing education. The key is to identify those content creation processes that are already occurring that could be altered or leveraged for the purpose of publishing more media content online. Process changes will still be necessary, but if a business can use some of what they’re already doing with other marketing promotions to improve their search visibility in a world of universal search, it will save effort, money and enable results more quickly.

Optimizing for Universal Search in Action

An example might be a situation where a new product is being released. In such a situation, many small businesses will post a new product page with a photo on the web site and email their list of industry publications and local reporters the announcement. They might even post a press release.

To take advantage of such a situation where unified search results can be leveraged might include the same process of updating the company web site with the product content. Such an effort would also include creating content in additional media formats, such as shooting a short video with an engineer or product manager explaining some of the features/benefits of the product. Just about all digital cameras can take a few minutes of video. The video can be edited with free video editing software like Windows Movie Maker to add credits or even add background music.

Promoting a Good Image

To leverage image search, the image file names could use keywords relevant to the product. Alt text used in the coding of the web page describing the image could do the same as well as a short text caption beneath the image. The image(s) can be submitted to image sharing web sites like Flickr.com with relevant keywords in the image category, title, description and tags. The description of the product on the image sharing site can include a link back to the product web page on the company web site.

Associating relevant keywords with the image will help media or image search engines understand what the image is, and subsequently categorize and rank it. The link from the image description on the image sharing site can send both visitors and search engines to the product page.

Video is the New Rock Star of Search

The product page on the company web site can also include the short video to give visitors another way in which to learn about the product. Embedding the video in the product web page also gives search engines another media format to index and display in unified search results. Submitting the product video to video sharing web sites such as YouTube.com with a relevant, keyword-rich description will make it even easier for the video to appear in video search and unified search results.

To take it a step further, you could upload screen captures of the video to image sharing sites and link back to the video from the description. The image and video could also be packaged with the press release to provide the media more interesting and engaging ways to learn about the new product. Submitting the press release via wire services can also leverage new search visibility. There are many more steps possible in promoting such content ranging from social bookmarking to blogger relations to the creation of viral linking campaigns, but this is a start, a foundation.

Making Universal Search Easier is Hard Work

The overall idea is to create, optimize and promote the kinds of media formats (text, images and video in this example) that both customers and search engines will respond to. Making it easy for search engines to find your text, images and video means it will be easier for those representations of your product to show up in unified search results.

It may sound like a lot of work but this is the reality of the new search. Optimizing relevant media formats to meet the information channel and format consumption preferences of customers is what will allow small businesses to continue competing against the “big guys” on the web.

The upside is that a substantial increase in media types being indexed by the new search engines all linking to a company web site will provide the kind of advantage standard search engine optimization no longer offers. In other words, optimizing for the different media types provides a competitive advantage.

The Work Will Never End But the Benefits Are Long Term

As long as there are search engines, there will be some kind of optimization for improving search engine visibility. What small business marketers need to consider are all the digital assets they have to work with and enable content creation, optimization and promotion processes to give both search engines and customers the information they’re looking for in the formats they’ll respond to.

About The Author:
Lee Odden is President and Founder of TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering daily news, interviews and best practices.

Comment or start a discussion in our forums: http://www.workconnexions.com/forums/Regional/UK.aspx