Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 367 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Designing Your Office for Increased Productivity

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by
Alex Summers

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Designing Your Office for Increased Productivity

Office design affects employee morale and productivity. Unfortunately, much of the time not enough thought goes into planning an office. Someone sets up a few cubicles and desks, along with some office equipment, and employees are given some little area to call their workstation. It is functional and little more. Companies that really want to boost productivity, however, should know that making certain additions to an office could make a big difference.

Open the Space

Workers packed in tight, cramped areas may feel stressed and easily distracted, just as one would if living in a small home with too many people. Considering how many hours most people spend at a job, the office really is a home away from home. Plan your office space with this in mind. An open floor plan, with greater space between desks or cubicles, allows employees more breathing room and invites calm and focus.

Remove clutter and unnecessary equipment, which may detract from the beauty of the office. Place copiers and similar machinery in their own area, close enough to easily get to but not so close that the machine sounds will be distracting.

Office Furniture

The best office furniture is both comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Luxurious executive furniture subtly creates a sense of prestige. This facilitates an employee’s appreciation and respect for their job, which leads to better attitude and productivity. Purchase beautiful leather office chairs for your office, as well as high quality, attractive desks. Add a beautiful hardwood table for meetings. The furniture may cost extra, but the increase in employee morale will eventually offset that extra cost.

Plants

The air in most building contains traces of pollutants, caused by the off gassing of chemicals used in building materials, carpeting and furniture. Plants help purify the air, creating a healthier environment for employees. Plants also have a calming effect on most people and can make the office feel more like a home and less like an institution. The relaxed focus simple additions like plants can bring naturally leads to happier employees, fewer errors, and increased productivity.

Natural Lighting

Evidence suggests that natural lighting increases focus, mood and productivity. The body responds to natural lighting with increased alertness and feelings of well being. Replace traditional lights with full-spectrum lights.

If your office has windows, avoid covering them. If you must use curtains, use only thin ones so that you still allow some natural sunlight into the room.

Internet and Office Equipment

Slow internet speeds waste company time and may lower productivity. Find ways to boost internet speed for the whole office. In addition, all office equipment should be kept well functioning to avoid breakdowns and delays. Replace old copiers, computers and other equipment with new machines that function quickly and efficiently.

Ergonomic keyboards and mouse pads aid proper wrist alignment and may reduce instances of carpal tunnel. An uncomfortable employee is generally not as productive an employee. By taking measures to increase the emotional and physical well being of employees, office work will be done more quickly and effectively.

Author’s Bio:
Alex is a blogger, freelance writer and recent college graduate. She currently performs market research for an online marketing firm when she is not contributing her own thoughts and observations to the online community.

Follow Through is Everything

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by
Rosemary O’Neill

Follow-Through is Everything

There are two kinds of people in the world. People who are good at following through, and people who are frustrated, wondering why their plans never work out. If you can master the follow-through, you have already put yourself ten steps ahead of everyone else.

Consistent Practice

When I was first learning to golf, one of the hardest things was learning to move the club “through” the ball and take a complete swing. A lot of dirt was flung before I got the idea. And the muscle memory is part of the art.

The more you practice following through, the easier it gets.

Action Items to Practice Following Through

  • After conferences and events, record all of the contacts you made, and for each one, find a way to reinforce the connection within one week after the event. Ideally, you can find one small action you can do that will help move your contact’s project along.
  • When you say you’re going to do something, do it. Make this an ironclad, “prime directive.”
  • Create a tickler file with reminders. Use the technology at hand to give yourself automatic reminders. With “reminders” now built in on Mac OS, and thousands of Android apps, you almost have no excuse.
  • Maintain contact information. Whether you prefer a stack of paper business cards or you pull them in with CardMunch, keep your contact information up-to-date and include notes about where you met the person.
  • Close the loop. We already discussed having your “ask” ready in case an opportunity arises. Get practiced at making that next phone call or sending that next email that will seal the deal. Don’t just leave it out there hanging, and don’t be the one waiting for your contact to call you back. Go get it.
  • Return your phone calls and emails. A good practice is to save some period of time (maybe at the end of the day) when you clear out the messages. Just delete the ones that are unsolicited and not of interest to you—they’re just mental clutter.
  • Don’t take on projects you don’t intend to finish. Practice saying “no” as well! It’s easier to follow through when you are focused on commitments that align with your goals.

How do you build your “follow-through” muscle? Do you use any tricks to support your practice?

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 the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Improve Integration & Communication in Your SMB with Document Management

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by
Samantha McCollough

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Improve Integration & Communication in Your SMB with Document Management

According to a research report by Solgenia, the amount of unstructured data and the volume of documents is growing more than 30% per year within small and medium-sized businesses. So it is not surprising that over 60% of SMB’s have adopted document management of some kind. Unfortunately, these companies are often missing greater opportunities for integration and communication that this technology provides.

This research should be a wake-up call for small business owners who think document management software is only for larger corporations. Rowe stated that big statistics make a good impression, but there’s no telling the size of each digital document project. Many companies may have great document management programs but are not properly trained on it or perhaps haven’t integrated it well enough.

“Almost one-quarter of the companies in the SMB category are researching new document management technologies,” Rowe said. “Major consideration is being given to collaboration tools and automation. Collaboration is important because of the traditional silos of information that make sharing difficult. It prevents information accessibility to various departments that own a portion of the business process. It can take a long time to gain access to some of those silos.”

Document management can-and should-be more than just a document repository. But too often SMB’s lack the knowledge or skills to take full use of the software. Many companies are not fully aware of the hidden benefits such a system can provide. A common problem is a lack of tight integration with other systems, so collaboration, communication and workflow all suffer.

The key to improving integration and communication is to properly define your processes before implementation, connect the workflow across the organization and separate systems and choose a solution that will be powerful enough to achieve this but simple and flexible enough to be managed. Training is also key, if employees aren’t utilizing the system or are finding ways around it, then the company will not realize the benefits associated with the system.

Author’s Bio:
Samantha McCollough write about business and technology at http://www.idatix.com. You can find her on twitter @smccollo.

Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

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by
Kenneth Javellana

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Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

Every small business has a chance to become a bigger fish in a bigger pond, but this opportunity is always tied in with your ability to take full advantage of social media. Unlike other marketing platforms, social media consists of numerous ways to advertise about your business effectively but without paying a single penny for such services. More importantly, social media is a platform in which you rarely require third party services like an advertising firm or a marketing consultant to create and handle your company’s online marketing campaign. Social media is yours to conquer but only if you are willing to work hard at learning its fundamental principles and continuously hone the skills required by online marketing.

Always have a specific goal in mind.

When people talk about social media, you often hear people say it’s incredibly important to be “creative” and “unique”. That’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, social media marketing is still about making money. You still need to establish goals that would result into higher profit margins. As such, the same principles for goal setting still apply. The best goals are still SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Prepare a solid foundation.

At present, every small business should have a consistently active account on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Having your own private-domain website and blog are also critical components of the foundation of your social media campaign.

Be where your market is.

You also hear a lot of people saying that Facebook should be the hub of your social media campaign. That may be true for most markets, but it’s not always so. In the end, you should focus on the websites which your target market spends most of its time in. Are they really active on Facebook or do they prefer LinkedIn?

Knowing which websites your target market frequents allows you to allocate your time and resources more effectively. Of course, this does not mean you should ignore other aspects of your social media campaign. Rather, it just helps make your priorities clear.

Make good use of feedback.

Feedback is incredibly important in social media. It’s the best basis for determining whether a particular technique is successful or not. You can create opportunities for receiving feedback by inviting readers to comment on your posts or email you their opinions. As for unsolicited feedback, you can configure search settings of Google so that it will notify you every time the name of your business crops up in the Internet.

Prioritize quality over quantity.

It’s been said over and over again, but it’s remarkable how so many small business owners still ignore this all-important social media tip. If you want your presence to matter online, then you need to give people a very good reason to follow you on Twitter, like your page on Facebook, and link to your website or blog. For that to happen, you need to consistently provide them with high-quality posts instead of simply maintaining a specific number of posts each week.

Social media success is ultimately dependent on the consistency of your efforts. As such, it is important that you spend as much time online as needed. For this to happen, you may want to contact a broadband expert about upgrading your current Internet service plan.

Author’s Bio:
Kenneth Javellana is a writer on technology, lifestyle and businesses at Broadband Expert. During his free time, Kenneth writes for relevant blogs in order to share his ideas on his favorite niches.

Know Yourself … as a Strategy

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Does the Unexpected Undo Your Best-Laid Plans?

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We can’t plan the people.
We can’t plan the surprises.
We can’t plan the creative solutions to problems that we never expected.
Planning too tightly removes our chance to leverage those rare opportunities that is the serendipity of new adventures and new people.

Rather than planning out every possibility, know yourself and you’ll have a strategy for work and for life.

Have a Strategy for Your Work and Your Life

So don’t just plan. Have a strategy. Know yourself as well as you want to know your business. Have a strategy for yourself in work and life as you do for your business. A strategy is a realistic framework that moves you forward over time by leveraging opportunities that are uniquely yours. A strategy leaves room for opportunities you might not see when you first start a plan. To build a great, working, living strategy you need to know a few things.

  1. Know who you are, what you’re building, how you’ll build it, and why you’re building it. That way you’ll know which people share your values and which opportunities will help you move forward.
  2. Know where you’re standing and where you’re going, so that you know which direction to focus on. That way you’ll understand which choices are detours on the path to your golden destination. Besides knowing where you’re going is irresistible. People who are drawn to your goals will figure you’ll know how to help them achieve theirs too.
  3. Know your own cycles and patterns of behavior and those of the people you care to about. That way you’ll be able to make some predictions, choose the behaviors that keep you winning, and learn how to lose those that don’t.
  4. Know how to make decisions based on your experience, goals, and values. Then you will know how to kill off the stuff that gets in the way of your successful mission without killing off yourself, your relationships. A great decision will keep you from wasting time that you could spend on a world of choices that are more fun and alive.
  5. Know who you include in your personal development, care, and support systems. Make a list of who truly cares about your life, your goals, and your dreams for the future. That way you’ll be able to always show them their importance in your life.

The key to leveraging opportunity is knowing that who you are and where you stand has as much to do with what can move you forward as where you want to go. Get know yourself deeply and you’ll be aware of what work and life opportunities fit your best strengths, when they’ll be coming, and how you might best incorporate them into your plans.

Know yourself and you’ll know how you can move forward.
Know yourself and you’ll know how you can help others.
Know yourself and you’ll be able to see how our goals align so that we can make things we could never make alone.

Take a few minutes now to go through the list and find out …
what do you need to find out about yourself?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss