Successful Blog

Be a Good Citizen

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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Like it or not, it’s political season in the United States. We must sort through the debates, talking heads, and town halls, and do our duty as citizens.

There are clear rules to being a good citizen of the US. Obey the law and vote, and you’re pretty much good. Throw in some volunteering, and that’s even better.

Online, in the social world, it’s a different story. Depending on where you are, the rules are different, and often unwritten. It can be tricky.

But don’t fear, I’m here to give you some simple tips that will keep you out of the Internet version of Turkish prison. We’ll cover Twitter and LinkedIn today:

Twitter

  • Fill out your bio – it’s the equivalent of politely introducing yourself.
  • Replace the “egg” with an avatar – you don’t walk around town with a mask on, do you?
  • Don’t use auto-direct messages – unless you’re getting hundreds of new followers every day, you can spare 5 minutes to send a personal greeting.
  • Don’t order people to “like” you on Facebook – need I say that this is rude?
  • Vary your stream – don’t just be all retweets, all quotes, all broadcast. Throw in some mentions, replies, original thoughts.
  • Don’t follow hundreds of people at once – it’s best to grow your following organically, over time. Get to know them first, then add more. Also, if your ratio of following to followers is way out of whack, you look desperate.
  • Help people – if you see a Tweet like, “can anyone recommend a good Chinese restaurant in Phoenix” and you know one, jump on it!

LinkedIn

  • Go in with a plan, are you open or not – if you decide to accept invitations from people you haven’t actually met, you are a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker); most people do not accept invitations from strangers, so tread carefully.
  • Be a contributor – when you first join a group, don’t make your first post a “promotion.”
  • Webinar spam – likewise, don’t make your first contribution a webinar announcement.
  • Don’t direct-link your Twitter stream to your activity stream – if I see you in both places, I want different content; come on, it’s not that much work!
  • Answer questions – go to the Answer section and help where you can; remember your manners and thank people who answer your questions as well.
  • Be generous with your recommendations – this falls into the “good karma” category. Spread your good recommendations where they’re appropriate, without expectations. Trust me, it’s good.

If you keep these guidelines in mind, you’re well on your way to being a solid social citizen. And don’t forget to vote.

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Time is Money!

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While the old adage of “Time is Money!” still holds true, is your small business accurately tracking employee time in order to get the most out of your workers?

In today’s day and age where companies scramble to keep up with customer requirements and maintain revenues in the black and not the red, worker productivity is critical to meeting those needs.

Even though all businesses want to have the services of productive workers, certain lines of work stand out in such a need, including areas like manufacturing, accounting, law firms, auto repair shops, medical services and more.

If your small business is not up to date on keeping employee hours through the various applications available on the market or you’re about to open a business and need some guidance on such matters, keep several things in mind.

First, do you understand the importance of keeping employee time?

The main reasons are to track payroll, expenses for an employee’s time that is directly charged to a customer, and when your employee’s time is tied to the expense of a product.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, business owners can monitor their employees’ hours however they deem necessary, provided it is correct and complete. Employers are required to maintain timekeeping records for two years at the workplace or at a central records locale.

Time tracking is also important due to:

Attention to Detail – Those employees who arrive and leave on time daily are more likely to be your better disciplined workers. Those who test the boundaries by arriving or leaving early may lead to problems down the road;

Accountability – Tracking employee time forces them to be accountable for their actions. While all employees should be adults about this matter, sometimes a little electronic reinforcement doesn’t hurt;

Cost Effectiveness – Employees who are productive are also going to provide your business with more cost efficiency. Having an automated system in place allows your administrative personnel to focus on other matters and not tracking who is coming and going and when they’re doing it;

More Production – When employees are aware that their time is being tracked, they are more apt to provide you with better production results. Not only will your product offerings be improved, but you are likely to see better customer service too.

 

Clocking Better Efforts in the Workplace

In the event your small business is in need of tracking metrics, there are different options available.

Among them are: Punch cards, paper forms, wall mount biometric or swipe clocks and web clocks.

Not only can time and attendance systems monitor in-house employees, but they can also be used for your employees who telecommute and/or are on the road a large portion of time.

Businesses that assign time-based tasks which require monitoring can utilize time tracking systems and job scheduling software to be sure their employees are hitting their requirements.

Managers, meantime, can use job scheduling software to map out timelines for different prospect jobs which generally utilize the data recorded from in-place time and attendance systems.

No matter which form of time and attendance software you decide to employ, take the time to make sure it is the one that fits best for your small business.

Photo credit: sodahead.com

Dave Thomas, who covers topics like securing small business loans, writes extensively for Business.com , an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Living Life: The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

Do You Have It Backwards?

Every day we wake up to the time of our lives.

When life is going well, it’s easy to take the day with a flying start. But that second that the ground starts to freeze over. The bed starts to seem warmer and our feet can get a little cold. That’s when we need to be invested. We need a meaningful reason to get up and make progress.

It takes a strategy to live a life that isn’t just passing time.

  • Don’t try to rule the climate, but use the opportunities it holds. Enjoy when the sun is warm. Fill your sails when the wind is going your way.
  • Study the terrain to choose the most efficient, least dangerous roads. Highways weren’t made for bikes. Cars don’t belong on train tracks.
  • Enlist help and advice from those who have gone before us. Ask the people who’ve been where you’re going.
  • Employ systems that keep things going without reinventing what works. Maintain what supports you.
  • Have a mission to reach a vision on the horizon. Decide where you’re going before you go.

The last one is critical to a life strategy.

We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

    • who we are.
    • what we’ll do.
    where we will end up.

Somehow we have it backwards. We’re supposed to decide those things first. Then we can start down our path.

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance by leveraging opportunity over time. In order to advance you have to know who you are where you’re advancing to.
Like any business, a life with a strategy has a better chance to succeed.

What Other People Don’t Know

If you ask opinions about what you should do, other people will have plenty of them. Don’t wait for other people to tell you. They don’t have to live your life. They won’t lose if you waste time chasing down a future that isn’t yours, and they won’t mind if you give up your life living it for them. Even the most well-meaning people run the risk of giving you advice better suited to them than to you.

Who knows more about you than you? Who ever will? You know what you think, dream, desire, and need. You know what you fear. You know what it would take to move you from here to there. Listen to that inner guidance system that tells you when you’re doing well, you’re learning, you’re doing something well. The one person who has a vested interest in how your life turns out is you.

Vision and mission are critical to living life. They are identity, intention, and direction. Without them, how will you wisely invest your time? It’s a shame to waste a whole life.

How do you know? How do you decide?

Rarely is the problem not knowing where we want to be. It’s admitting that we’ll have to make a commitment to get there.

Decide and Commit

Decide. It matters less what you decide than that YOU decide and that you make a commitment to that decision. Listen to the truth you know about yourself, decide what the purpose of your life will be, and know why that’s meaningful to you. Pick a vision the future that would be the best use of what’s been given you — your talents, your skills, your personality. What should you be doing more of to use them well? What life that would use your skills, the problems you can solve, and the value you have always brought to the world? Decide on a future – a vision — and make it your quest — your mission — to get there. In other words, choose to be your best self and make a commitment to that.

You can always decide to adjust your decision.

Vision is who we’ll be and where we want to go. Vision is the context that gives each life decision intention, direction, and identity. Mission is the compelling reason that will get us there. Mission makes every minute and every decision worth getting up and investing in. Vision and mission turn living into a meaningful cause worth a life’s campaign.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere you never intended to be.
If you don’t know why you’re going, you’ll give up when the smallest obstacle appears.
Set your intention on a vision that describes your best identity — down to your DNA.
Put your head, heart, and feet into your mission. Make it a quest. Nothing will stop you.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Every day, every hour, every minute will keep passing whether you know where you’re going or not. Wouldn’t you rather own the hourglass than sit on the sand as it drops through? You have to live your life. Shouldn’t you be the one who decides what it will be about?

Have you got a strategy to live a life a that isn’t just passing time?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I was researching in my archives when I came across this post. I thought I’d update it. But it was hours later and I’d almost rewritten it totally. So on that note. I offer you this new, old post — published once, in another form, January 30, 2010.

Business Travel Set to Take Flight This Year

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We all know recent years have not exactly been stellar for the business community, especially many smaller companies who have had to fight tooth and nail to keep their heads above water.

That being said, a recent report from the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) indicates that spending for business travel, a portion of which is done through the airlines, is forecast to increase over the next 12 months.

According to the latest Business Travel Quarterly Outlook, spending on business travel is forecast to exceed $263 billion in 2012, a jump of 4.6 percent from a year ago. According to a GBTA spokesman, businesses nationwide have hit the reset button from where it was pre-recession. Essentially, businesses are back to the 2007 level when it comes to spending money for traveling.

 

Travel Expenses, Amount of Trips Prove Impactful

In breaking down the report a little closer, the bulk of the increase is forecast to be derived from growing travel expenses as opposed to an uptick in the number of trips undertaken. Even though the number of trips business travelers participated in last year was up 2.1 percent over the prior year, it is predicted they will post a small drop of 0.8 percent in 2012.

The big factor to remember is that business travelers are at or near the front of the bus when it comes to driving the U.S. economy. If business travel is substantially up, then it is rather safe to say that the health of the nation’s economy is doing pretty good overall.

According to research last fall from Deloitte LLP from 1,000 business travelers, more than 80 percent of them indicated they expected to take the same amount or even more business trips in 2012 as they did in 2011. In breaking down the numbers more closely, 16 percent of respondents ages 45 and older are planning additional trips in 2012, while 27 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 44 planned on traveling for work.

While it is not set in stone, it is genuinely a factor that as businesses start to witness signs of economic growth, they will feel better include to resume sending employees back out on the road.

Meantime, international outbound business travel is forecast to remain doing better than domestic trips.

Over recent quarters, international business travel has done better than domestic given the fact the cost of travel is higher and there has been a steady increase in the number of trips.

While there remains uncertainty about the economies at home and abroad, one thing is for sure. No business will dare give up the competitive advantage of in-person meetings, given the fact that all sales will become even more important.

So, is your business planning on increasing travel, keeping it at much the same level as of 2011, or decreasing such expenditures over the next 12 months?

Photo credit: latierraprometida.net

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items small business loans, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

 

How to Set Up Your First (Or Your Next) Office

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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Remember when you moved into your first apartment and you realized that toilet paper didn’t magically appear anymore? That’s what it’s like when you set up your first physical office as an entrepreneur.

If you’re ready to move from your kitchen table to some real corporate space, here are some basic tips that will smooth the transition.

  • Consider creative space sharing – there are incubators, shared spaces, and professional suites that come pre-furnished and ready to go. For a fee, some will include a receptionist or admin support. Regus.com is one company that provides meeting rooms and pre-configured offices around the world. You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch.
  • Bring-your-own computer policy – you may not have to make a capital outlay for computer equipment these days. Many employees prefer using their own laptop, and it facilitates occasionally working from home. Additional considerations include:
    • Look at providing larger screens or keyboards as peripherals at the office; laptops are not great for ergonomics in extended use.
    • Establish a written policy of how you will handle data storage and transfer, especially when an employee leaves the company.
    • Consider what sort of upgrade or maintenance you will offer for employees who bring their own device.
  • You might not need an expensive phone system – similar to the computer scenario above, many companies are allowing employees to use their own smartphones for business calls, with a virtual phone system. Services like Google Voice and Grasshopper allow you to have a business telephone number that’s portable across devices.
  • Costco (or Sam’s Club) is your friend – paper clips, coffee filters, beverages, paper, pens, snacks, all these things can be bought in bulk. They will even deliver.
  • Legal signage – once you have employees, you need to ensure that you’ve posted the required Federal and State signage (which varies according to location and type of business). This will include safety information, workers comp, and minimum wage requirements (see examples here: http://www.laborlawcenter.com/c-3-state-only-labor-law-posters.aspx?gclid=CPbt_Pa3160CFcuP7Qod2i4jlA)
  • Decor – if you’ll be receiving clients at your new location, be sure to set up a welcoming entry with a couple of chairs and a small table for coffee. This can be overlooked as you focus on your employee work environment, and you want to create a nice first impression for visitors. This is also a good place to display a little personality!

Moving from the virtual office to a “bricks and mortar” office space can be challenging, but it’s also fun. Roll up your sleeves, keep the pointers above in mind, and create a space that inspires you and your team.

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Make Your Own Opportunities

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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The only way to know for certain that you won’t win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse is to
not enter the sweepstakes.

The same principle applies to just about every opportunity out there. The successful
entrepreneurs, A-list bloggers, and business leaders all made it because of two things:
?rst, they had radar for opportunities, and second, they seized them.

Think about it. What might have passed you by in the last week or so because you
thought it was too dif?cult, you didn’t have time, you didn’t have the skills, or you just
plain thought “I’ll never make it.” Instead, you should be opportunistic in a good way.

Here are some tips:

  • Recognize your little voice – when it starts telling you why you can’t grasp that chance, don’t listen. Tell it to take a break while you submit that guest post inquiry.
  • Train yourself to see opportunities – you need ?nely tuned opportunity radar. Notice the call for speaker submissions and recognize it as a chance for you to shine.
  • Remember that if you don’t ask, you don’t get – the only reason I am blogging here right now is because I summoned up the guts to ask. Take a deep breath and do it.
  • Don’t get discouraged – the other differentiator for successful people is that they use every rejection as a springboard to the next opportunity. They move on quickly to the next one until they are successful.
  • Always have “lines in the ocean” – you can add so much excitement to your life if you have several things out there, waiting for a response. Will you get accepted to that course? Will your panel proposal be accepted for the conference? Will your photograph win the contest? How much fun to go through life waiting for exciting news!

How about an assignment this week? Go right now and ?nd an opportunity, then just go for it without fear. Tell them Rosemary and Liz sent you.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss