Change In Your Small Business: Everyone Will NOT Make The Leap |  |
- Change In Your Small Business: Everyone Will NOT Make The Leap
- Don’t Ignore Career Realism
- The 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors Report Is In
- Vizio Reinvents the PC Ahead of Game-Changing Tech Innovations
| Change In Your Small Business: Everyone Will NOT Make The Leap Posted: 19 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT So what happens when you decide to make a change in the way you handle your business? What if you choose to move toward a more customer focused marketing strategy? Or you decide to train your floor staff to actually know something about your services and products?
Will everyone make the cut and are you prepared to deal with the fall out—i.e. retraining, repositioning, or in some cases, firing? As you make changes in your business, six things are key to making those upgrades stick: 1) For The Greatest Impact, The CEO Needs To Champion The New DirectionKristin Zhivago, author of Roadmap to Revenue says,
Zhivago is speaking of creating a company that "sells the way your customers want to buy." But it's true for any aspect of your business — if the boss doesn't believe, then you have a hard row to hoe. 2) There Must Be A Manager For The ChangeThere must be someone assigned to navigate the team through the process. I don't care how simple it seems. Changes tend to require more focus and effort than initially expected. 3) Each Department Must Focus On One Thing At A TimeImplementing everything at once is: 1.) Chaos waiting to break loose 2.) Overwhelm waiting to take over 3.) In the end, you DON'T get what you want So focus on one step at a time. Complete it, celebrate it, then move on to the next. 4) You Have To Build In The Space And Time For Ongoing Evaluation And UpdatesWhether it's a 30 minute weekly meeting or an hour long monthly meeting, there has to be a consistent system for touching base — because people only do what you inspect. This scheduled meeting serves as that inspection. The manager knows that the CEO expects an update. The team knows that the manager expects to see progress and to hear any concerns (not excuses) that may require immediate attention. 5) Your Team Needs Time Frames And DeadlinesTelling someone that they can get the report or results to you "whenever you can" is the same as saying never-mind. Deadlines create a sense of importance and urgency. While you don't want overwhelming urgency in your brainstorming (because you want more creativity in that setting), you do want a sense of importance so that all that creative thought turn into a livable and scalable reality. 6) Pay Attention To Your TeamThe entire team will need to be briefed on the coming changes, involved in making them happen, and then trained and retrained. But for some it still won't workout. Repositioning is an option for people who believe in your mission. There may be another place in the company that works better for their skill sets. For those who can handle the change but tend to sabotage the progress, you will have to let them leave. If their heart isn't in it, they will rip your team apart or slow your progress down from the inside. If you don't pay attention, you will never see it coming. Change Is Good, If It’s SmartYou can change because you see where your industry is headed and you want to lead your company in that direction. Or you can wait for a new reality to hit you upside the head. Either way you will have to adjust. Being proactive just feels better. Anybody in the middle of a shift? If so, how are you keeping the overwhelm at bay and the team focused — including you?
From Small Business Trends |
| Posted: 19 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT “Realism is a philosophical state of mind that professes that truth consists in the mind’s correspondence to reality” ~ Wikipedia
I remember the first time one of my mentors told me I had to accept that things were not as I wanted them to be. They went on to encourage me to always take reality and use all of my skills, talents and intangibles to make things happen within it. Some of the best advice I ever received. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” ~ Seneca We can’t change many of the external circumstances that we live with, but we can change the way we manage and work with those circumstances. I sometimes feel like there’s been kind of a ‘career armageddon’ with so much radical change in a relatively short time. There is so much to keep pace with and resilience and perseverance are key qualities to survive. The great news is there is always much opportunity in change. No one can afford to be too idealistic or too subjective about their careers or business. Better to adopt a realistic, pragmatic activism that you can make your own and make work for you now. Change Is The New Norm Get used to, and become, better at things moving at a fast pace, continually shifting and changing. Keep up, don’t fall behind. What are the things you need to be keeping up with better? Prepare For An Extended Job Search If you are out of work or looking to change careers, get used to a longer search process. The hiring process operates on a whole new set of rules that extend how companies qualify people. Be prepared for multiple interviews. Become A Master Marketer And Networker Hone and develop your personal marketing, branding and networking skills both online and, more importantly, in person. Relationships lead to introductions and connections. You Can Be More Fulfilled And Happy In Your Career If you want to be more fulfilled, happier and inspired in your work, you can be. It’s up to you to move your career in the direction you want it to go. Build, Use And Bolster New Communication Bridges How we find, engage and interact with each other is the new frontier for jobs, careers and work. Building strong networks and connections with the right people can open doors both directly and indirectly. Get more comfortable with and use social media and especially LinkedIn to build your connections and recommendations. In a reversal of traditional gender roles, young women now surpass young men in the importance they place on having a high-paying career or profession, according to survey findings from the Pew Research Center. Among married couples with their own children under 18 at home, the share with a working wife and unemployed husband went up in 41 states in 2009, compared with the year before, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey. More than three dozen companies, non-profits, foundations and individuals have donated more than $580,000 to fund The Work Place’s initiative, called Platform to Employment. The AARP Foundation kicked in another $200,000 to assist the jobless over age 50. These are some examples of today’s career realism that become the new trends that emerge that all of us can take advantage of. Time to roll up our sleeves, accept radical reality, get into radical action, and watch radical results happen.
From Small Business Trends |
| The 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors Report Is In Posted: 19 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT It's that time again! It's the time when David Mihm and his crew release a brand new edition of the annual Local Search Ranking Factors report, causing all of us to go over it with a fine toothed comb to understand which tactics hurt, help or don't even affect our site's ranking. It's a year's worth of local search education packed into one document! This year David brought together more than 40 local search experts and got their take on what they think are the most important ranking factors in local search, what's changed, and where small business owners should be focusing their attention.
While the survey was completed before the colossal Google+ Local Pages update, there are still a lot of important takeaways here and is more than worth of a look. If you're not familiar with the report, David explains that participants were asked to rank 90 possible positive factors and 18 possible negative factors that drive Google’s Local Search algorithms. Positive factors were ranked based on the following question:
Results were then tabulated via inverse scoring and were weighted to create a comprehensive look at the relative importance for each factor, based on the participants' responses. Regardless of where you are in your local search optimization, if you're still mastering the basics or are expanding in social/mobile, this report is still packed with gems that can help you create a smarter, more targeted campaign. This year's Ranking Factors report analyzes the most important factors as related to:
While there are insights to be gleaned from each category, I thought it was particularly interested that even as the local search ecosystem is in constant flux, many of the basics have not changed. Participants all agreed that factors like having your physical address in the city of search, proximately of address to the centroid, consistency of information, and proper category association are all in the top ten for specific factors for overall ranking. For me (and I’d think for many small business owners), there's a small degree in comfort in that and something SMBs can take to the bank. Even though we all need to adjust to the always-changing Google algorithm and incorporate things like Google+ and Google+ Local Pages into our strategies, many of the fundamentals are still present. Get those down and you set yourself up on the right foot. Something else worth noting – make sure to pay special attention to the section that looks at Place Page Factors. As we all move from Google Places to Google+ Local Pages, knowing the factors that are important to ranking in Google Place Pages will help ensure that you set your new page up correctly and that you're focusing on the metrics that Google is most interested in. If you haven't yet looked over the 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors report, I'd highly recommend you dedicate some time today to doing so. It's not often you'll be able to benefit from the combined experience of more than 40 local search experts. Take advantage! If you don't have time to take in the full report, at least read David Mihm's recap. From Small Business Trends |
| Vizio Reinvents the PC Ahead of Game-Changing Tech Innovations Posted: 19 Jun 2012 02:30 AM PDT It’s a great time to be on the lookout for game changing technology for your business, tech that can make you more mobile, flexible, and innovative in your approach to what you do. From reinventions of the PC, laptop, and smartphone to new apps and tools to improve productivity and access new markets, here are some of the big tech revolutions you should be watching. PC EvolutionsVizio reinvents the PC. The company known for its low-cost HDTVs is entering the PC market with some amazing results. The new computers have a slim design, clean Windows build, and are promising low prices. This could be an inexpensive alternative to Apple for business computing needs. PC Magazine And if you’re a Dell fan. This more established PC and laptop company, also popular with business users, is back with a sneak peak at its XPS 15. The device may not be revolutionary, but does exemplify where mid-size performance laptops are now, a consideration for your next business purchase. Engadget How Smart is Your Phone?Cheap but smart. The Intel-powered San Diego smartphone is available only in the UK at the moment, but does show what is possible with the first phones to utilize an Intel processor. Similar phones were tested in China and India, and though not available in the US market yet, give a first glimpse of higher mobile processing at a reasonable cost. The Verge Split business from pleasure. Companies concerned about letting employees access work applications from their personal mobile devices because of security threats can now rest easy. A new virtualization usable on Android and iPhone helps keep work and personal applications in their own separate containers. Ars Technica Waiting in the WingsEntering the fray. Microsoft may prove a big player in the tablet market popularized by companies like Apple, with the introduction of its new “Surface” tablets and PCs, available with the upcoming release of Windows 8 and Windows RT. It is the beginning of a new era, as the company enters the hardware industry for the first time. Would your business buy a Microsoft tablet? Microsoft Are you ready for Windows 8? Release of the latest version of Windows is imminent, and with it there is speculation about how users will find the experience. Don’t forget Windows Vista and the many people who even now are still running the 10-year-old Windows XP, writes technology consultant Sean Ludwig. The last Windows update was the company’s most successful ever, but what’s in store? VentureBeat New Samsung tablet shows Galaxy of possibilities. There’s yet another player poised to dive in to the tablet market. New leaked video shows the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 in action. A recent publication on Amazon suggested the tablet might be available in three to five weeks, but the company has since said that announcement was in error. Gigaom Gadgets & AppsHere comes the sun. Two devices will add to your mobility, thanks to the power of the sun. This video reviews the Solio Bolt and Powermonkey Explorer. Both allow you to charge up your favorite mobile device using solar power. Mobile workers with access to sunlight can use these devices while out of the office. All Things Digital Ready to wear. When you dress for success, it could soon be with wearable technology like the Sony Smartwatch or the Pebble, that can keep you constantly in touch. And how about a pair of glasses developed by Google for release next year, containing all the functionality of a smartphone squeezed into fashionable eye wear. It may prove a headache for the FAA, but for business people on the move, the possibilities seem endless. Bits Socialize your TV. A new app called Zeebox will make TV more social. Anthony Rose, former CTO of the BBC iPlayer, talks about the app’s trial in the UK and how it will change the face of both television and social media by merging the two experiences, telling others what you are watching. Given the market research already going into social media trends as they relate to television viewing, the new app is bound to have implications in social media marketing. TechCrunch From Small Business Trends |
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