October 31, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Being a business team leader can be a very daunting task. Almost always you will find that your team consists of very diverse individuals. As a team leader it is your responsibility to motivate your team members towards a common goal. This can be very difficult when your team members each have their very own strengths, weaknesses and conflicts. In this article we will discuss how to recognize the four main personality types by color so that you can better understand the needs of your team members on an individual basis.
As a leader you will quickly notice how well your team works together once you have identified the individual strengths of each team member. Also, by recognizing each individual’s strengths you will know which task they will naturally excel in. This will lead to better delegation on your part which will ultimately build a stronger, more efficient, stream lined team. You will also find that you are able to communicate better once you recognize each team member’s needs, work ethics and values. Your team members will notice the change in how you are leading them and in turn be even more motivated to reach their goals.
Below is a short overview of the four main personality colors Orange, Blue, Gold and Green. Each color will be listed with the working styles, personality types and values attributed to it.
The Orange personality works well with other people in a healthy team work environment encouraging competition and camaraderie. They are very creative and highly energetic and do well with action oriented tasks. They love having the freedom to use their skills and show off their abilities. An Orange personality does have a difficult time dealing with too much structure or management. They tend to feel blocked and have a difficult time functioning if they feel they are being micro-managed. Time consuming and prolonged administrative tasks can difficult for the Orange where they may feel impatient and bored.
The Blue personality is a very social type. They love making friends and having a strong social network is very important to them. This makes them very good at building relationships with clients, customers, coworkers and employers. The Blue personality can be very sensitive to conflicts or strong competition but will thrive in any positive, service orientated atmosphere.
The Gold personality is a very serious individual and is so with their work responsibilities. They like to be part of a successful and productive team where they can continually contribute. They love receiving rewards, incentives and positive recognition. The Gold personality tends to need a great deal of structure where time lines should be enforced and expectations made very clear. They look to their leaders for constant reassurance on how well they are doing.
A Green personality lacks in people skills. They love facts, data, research, and anything analytical. You will find that they are almost always seen as an expert in whatever interests them. Most of those interests will be complex systems, data analysis, statistics, or design. The Green personality’s weakness can be the lack of follow through and tend to be quite rude in some social scenes.
By recognizing the personality colors of each of your team members you will have the ability to meld your team into a well coordinated, unified group. Your leadership skills will shine as you delegate tasks to each team member according to their strengths and expertise. Remember, a well harmonized team is a team made for nothing but success.
Carrie Krishnek
October 29, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
We all know CAPTCHAs. We have all times succumbed to some of its more twisted and messy forms at least a dozen times. You know the drill, try to guess the text shown in the image box with the squiggly letters, type it in a text box, hit the submit button, realize you submitted the wrong text, redo everything until you get it right. Yeah, I bet you know what Im talking about.
Nevertheless, we all have learned to live with this short and recurring e-torture given its apparent use.
CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. As it name implies the main function of a CAPTCHA is to distinguish Humans and Computers Apart. All the squiggly letters, weird sizes, color meshes and overall lost of user time are made to prevent bots and/or automated scripts to post content were only real users are supposed to post.
So we deal with the pain of typing and retyping the CAPTCHA texts over and over again to avoid the even greater pain of having a web page overran by marketing accounts and unsolicited messages trying to sell products. So this way it would be hard for bots to bypass the initial account creation procedures and preventing the Black Hat Marketers from creating hundreds and even thousands of accounts. Now we can all use our blogs, social networks and other web 2.0 services in peace without being interrupted by unsolicited messages.
A short term victory that didnt last very long
It turns out that the Black Hat Marketers are sneaky and some of them have very advanced programming skills, so they started to create methods to bypass CAPTCHAs. So at first they began creating CAPTCHA OCR (Optical Character Recognition) systems and other CAPTCHA recognition methods to effectively become masters of CAPTCHA bypass. They took away the funny colors, put filters to take away unwanted lines and trained neural network applications to recognize the characters in spite of the funky fonts that were in use.
Again, a short term victory for the Black Hat Marketers
The internet community back lashed with CAPTCHAs that were much more difficult to bypass. The effectiveness of CAPTCHA OCR went down to around 30% for the best automated CAPTCHA recognition systems. The web 2.0 sites were cheering; there was final victory against massive automated marketers. Toasts were made, babies kissed, the new CAPTCHAs were here to save us!
Not so fast
Lets go back to the beginning and reference a piece of text 300 words back: CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Wait, so in the end this test is only to tell Computers and Humans Apart, right? Some crazy Black Marketing fella might have suggested Hey, lets just use Humans then. Now we can Bypass CAPTCHAs since were using humans and not computers. I believed that anyone that heard this just laughed out really loud. Who in their right mind would spend long hours in front of a computer screen inserting the text they see in CAPTCHAs over and over again? Not only that. What would be the costs of having a person sitting down all day long inserting CAPTCHAs into a computer?
Answer to first question: People from very poor countries.
Answer to second question: Very Low.
Black Hat Marketers are the big winners for now. Human-based CAPTCHA bypass services have been established for as low as $1.75 for 1000 solved CAPTCHAs (yes, not a scam) and there is even a new market created for this activity. These Human-based CAPTCHA solving services hire a small army of decoders or operators that are happy to insert text for endless hours in exchange of a small pay. All the web 2.0 sites now have to create additional filters and employ extra tactics to keep automated unsolicited messages away and use CAPTCHAs only to keep away the rookie marketers.
Currently, some new companies have invented some other ways to increase difficulty for Human-based systems to decode a CAPTCHA. We now have audio CAPTCHAs, video CAPTCHAs, puzzle CAPTCHAs, math CAPTCHAs, etc. But none of these CAPTCHA systems has grown in a wide scale or have been deployed to any of the main web 2.0 sites. Either way, Im pretty sure that the Human-based CAPTCHA bypass services will find a way to get over these obstacles and keep the marketers in business.
In the end, site owners and marketers will always be playing the cat and mouse game. CAPTCHAs work partially, but as users we will always have to input them. And with the new increase of mobile traffic, were still to see a standardized multi-platform method from stopping unsolicited marketing messages in web 2.0 sites.
By: William Jardain
October 23, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
A good business name is necessary to help you to build a strong brand and market your services successfully. A strong brand will give your business an identity in the market place, help you to make a good first impression on people and help to build a positive reputation among customers in the long run.
Below we have set out a number of tips and ideas for you to consider as you proceed to think suitable painting company names.
Don’t Limit Future Opportunities
Effective business names give potential customers a clear message about what products or services a company offers. This is one sensible approach but it is important not to pigeon hole your business too much as you may want to change direction, sell the business or introduce new services at a later date. Your name should indicate what you do while still being general enough to offer flexibility.
By all means include the word ‘painting’ in your name, but don’t be too specific about the market that you are targeting or the exact services that you offer. If you feel that you will branch out into other areas in the future then the word ‘contractor’ may be more suitable.
You should also think twice before including the owners name in the business name. This can offer a nice personal touch and give customers the impression that they are dealing with somebody who has a good reputation. However, this approach can make it hard for you to sell your business if you want to do so at some point in the future.
Including the name of the area or region where you are doing business is also an option that usually works well. However, if you ever want to offer services outside of this zone then such a name can become irrelevant or confusing.
Memorable and Unique
A great name for a business is one that can be easily remembered. People should be able to recall it after hearing it only once or twice and they should be able to pronounce it correctly. Once you have a short list you can run some tests on family and friends. See which ones they were able to hear clearly over the phone and which ones they were able to remember a week later. If you can think of a name that will stick in peoples minds then you will really have their attention.
A great name should be unique and professional at the same time. If you look in The Yellow Pages or online you will find plenty of clever, catchy and creative painting business names. While names that are funny can sometimes get more attention, you may find that some sectors of the market don’t relate to them, misunderstand them or even find them offensive. The best choice is often to go with a more conservative sounding name. This will come across as being much more professional and appeal to a wider market.
Originality and Usage Rights
While you can look to other industries for inspiration, dont imitate the names of other local businesses too closely or you will risk confusing consumers. You need something that is truly original if you want your business to stand out.
Make sure that no other companies are already using the name that you would like to use. Search The Yellow Pages, the Internet and the database at your county clerks office to make sure that you dont infringe on the intellectual property of other companies or individuals.
Domain Name Registration
Check that there is a suitable domain name available and register it at the same time as you finalize your business name. You will need to get a website up at some time and it is nice to have a domain that matches your name.
Preferential Listings
Many people name their business ‘A Plus Painting’ or something similar because they want to be among the first listings in The Yellow Pages. This is becoming less important these days though as popular search engines on the Internet don’t display search results alphabetically.
Acronyms
Give some thought to acronyms. If done right they can be an easy way for customers and business associates to refer to your business by using the first letter of each word. Just make sure that you stay away from embarrassing or weird acronyms.
Expert Advice
Many people underestimate the importance of a business name. It is one of the elements that will help your company to win the hearts and minds of the marketplace over many years. Some smart entrepreneurs are now starting to hire naming experts to help them make this crucial decision. While it is unlikely that a small painting startup would go to such expense it wouldn’t hurt to run your ideas past someone with a decent level of experience in business.
Avoid a Name Change at All Costs
Sometimes it becomes necessary for businesses to change their names because they have become old fashioned or irrelevant. This may become necessary for you at some point in the future but you should do your best to avoid this. The costs associated with such a change can be extensive so your selection should be able to stand the test of time.
A Name That You Like
Above all, you, as the owner of a painting business have to have a name that you like. There is no point in using a name that sounds embarrassing or makes you cringe every time you say it. Your business name should inspire you and make you feel proud to be a painting contractor.
Dont treat the selection of your painting company name too lightly. Give this important decision the time that it deserves and come up with something that can carry your painting business forward to future success.
October 23, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
The full advantages of forum marketing strategy are mostly enjoyed by forum veterans. This are people how have over a long period of time gained credibility and positive online image. They are individuals how have proved their savvy by sharing their experience and expertise in a tactful and consistent manner. It is for this reason that forum marketing is considered a crucial long term online marketing arsenal.
What happens mostly is that these forum veterans, with the express permission of business community moderators are allowed to initiate intensive advertising campaigns. Proper forum marketing strategy advocates that, you seize this opportunity to add value to the forum business community. A good approach would be to offer community members special price cuts on products, free sampling of products and services or start fun promotion contests.
When it comes to forum marketing strategy, it is imperative to avoid spamming. Outsourcing for online marketing firms can lead to them using inexperienced staff to send spam to online forums. Therefore, if you have to outsource for this service do your research well and only work with credible organizations with a proven track record.
Some may argue that spamming business communities helps generate traffic. This may be true to some extent but in the long run it will only contribute to you seriously denting your online image thus people shunning your marketing campaigns. It is undeniable that forum marketing strategy is more about building a good online reputation which in turn results to generating free business sales leads.
The best approach to online marketing is building a good online image thus gain credibility. This will sure take time before to begining cashing in but it is worth you effort in the long run. Getting online business sales leads is not a one day affair but a continues process until you become an expert.
To study more insightful forum internet marketing strategies click the links below.
October 15, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
A business success dashboard is a computer based reporting application that displays your key business metrics in gorgeous colourful graphs that all but smack you in the face with startlingly practical insights about how to boost your business success.
No longer do we need to rely on black and white printed sales reports choking with numbers arranged in columns and rows. Ick! You can’t get powerful insights from looking at numbers arranged in tables – it’s scientifically proven, so don’t bother arguing! 😉
The really exciting and cool thing about business success dashboards is that they take the guesswork out of your decision making.
Dashboards put right in front of you the bare facts about show-stopping results like how well your marketing is attracting profitable leads, how easily you can convert a lead into a customer, what your customers like and don’t like, where you’re wasting time in your business and how healthy your cash flow is.
But as a small business owner or entreprenuer, you’ll only give your time to setting up your business success dashboard if it’s fun, fast and profit-building. So here are 7 dos and don’ts to make sure your dashboard is:
1. DO start with just a few business metrics, like profit, revenue, cash flow, new leads, website visitors – whatever you’re measuring and tracking now. DON’T wait until you have worked out all the measures that matter for your business: it will take forever, you’ll get bored with it and you’ll be missing profit pumping opportunities from the measures you already use.
2. DO use basic tools you already have – like Microsoft Excel – until you get into the groove of dashboarding and using your business metrics to manage your business. DON’T invest in flashy software until you know how you want your dashboard to serve you.
3. DO use simple line charts to display your measures so you can see trends over time – the trends are more important than the points. DON’T compare this month to last month, or do any other two-point comparisons like this – you never see the real trends or get any real insights this way.
4. DO include Pareto charts to dig into your data, such as to show you the 20% of marketing campaigns that bring 80% of your customers, or the 20% of sales that bring 80% of the revenue. DON’T ever use pie charts – they absolutely suck when it comes to giving you any kind of useful information from your data.
5. DO let form follow function, and only include the measures that matter to your business, and the graphs that best reveal those measures’ trends and insights. DON’T go all Picasso on it – limit your creativity to choice of colours, not to find out how many forms of bling you can build into it.
6. DO use your dashboard weekly, to look for clues about the best ways to ramp up your business results. DON’T lose the discipline of regularly tracking, testing and tuning your business – sure, the dashboard will only be one input to managing your business but it’s an essential input.
7. DO get help from someone who’s really ofay with Excel and graphs, or someone who is experienced with measuring and tracking. DON’T rely on dashboard software people who can’t demonstrate skills in choosing meaningful measures and displaying them appropriately (they usually get carried away with pretty but useless guages and dials). DON’T freak out trying to do it yourself either – the difference that a business dashboard will make to your success and sanity is too valuable.
TAKE ACTION:
If the Dashboard Fairy granted you a wish to instantly dashboard 3 measures of your business success, which 3 measures would you choose? What are the 3 most important results that have the most leverage to increase your profits, and improve your work-life balance? Now set up the world’s simplest dashboard using Excel, to start tracking those measures. And finally, commit to taking at least one action to improve the results those measures reveal to you.