A proactive effort

Instead of just posting your resume in a job portal and sitting back in a relaxed mind why don’t you become little proactive and design a website or online portfolio blog of yours, where recruiters can come and take a look of your work, get an idea of your skills, goals and personal contact information.

Narrow your options of search

Make sure you upload resume and look for a job only in a website which has good narrowing options by criteria like – by region, by industry and experience, by job titles. You may super narrow your search by criteria like – salary expected, job designation, company names etc. Filtering and refining job search will help you to find better job offers.

Visit company websites directly

Instead of just applying to a given job opening and sending resume, get little proactive. Shortlist some best companies where you would love to work. Now visit that company’s website, target that company and check their career/job opening page. Check out the current vacancies. In case the company is hiring send your resume to the given address. Else, you may write to the human resource manager. Company pages may ask you to fill up a form, detailing your profile for their future reference. If the company is not hiring at present, keep coming back to it again and again to keep a watch.

Industry related websites

You may refine your job search by registering and following the desired industry related websites. You may find national or regional jobs posted in industry related websites, which you may not come to know otherwise. Individuals may post such jobs, hoping for getting response from a bigger pool of qualified applicants.

Job portals can be helpful

Online job portals can solve your problem by doing an extensive search. Recruiters will help you by matching your skills and experience with related jobs and bringing the same to you. You may refer to job portals like recruiterlink.com, onlinerecruitersdirectory.com, searchfirm.com and i-recruit.com.

Subscribe to job alerts

Most of the job portals have this feature of subscribing to their job alerts. You need to sign up in the site to receive email alerts about latest job openings. Or you may subscribe to RSS feeds. This way, even if you forget to visit the job portal regularly and look for relevant jobs, you will be reminded by frequent job alerts.

What are you waiting for? Get started, today!

Make clothes appear detailed, and real

Most of the people who hesitate to buy from internet fear clothes given in the picture will be somewhat different from the original product in terms of color, texture, stitches, design. Make sure photographs of your clothing offerings are of superior quality, offer three dimensional view allowing super zooming; miniscule detail of the fabric’s texture, design, color, stitches, cuts etc. Allow people to zoom at maximum possible level and see the clothing from every angle – front, back, left side, right side.

Solve the size worry

Many times people fear about fitting of the clothing; i.e.; its size. Such worry is valid, since an ill fit garment is sheer disappointing. Make sure you give a size chart below your product, elaborating measurement of different body parts and respective size chart like XXS, XS, S, M, L, XL, and XXL etc. You may also use numerical. Follow the standard size chart, as people often blindly quote their size without seeing the size chart. To win people’s trust and trial, assure them with money back offer, if the garment bought does not fit well.

Don’t let the clothing hang from air

It looks very unrealistic and unappealing when sites display their clothing line, hanging from air. It doesn’t show off clothes’ textures, patterns, and cuts properly. Make sure, you display your clothes only worn by a real model or mannequin. Clothes do not display their proper texture, design, fit and cut unless cling to body.

Relevant recommendations

To hike up your sales when a viewer selects a product to see it in detail or orders for purchase, recommend few more relevant or similar choices below in thumbnails. Suppose the viewer is checking out backless blouses for women, you may recommend some open shoulder blouses too below. If a person is checking out stripe patters on shirts, you may recommend checks too. You never know, viewer may like it too and end up buying more than only the one he thought of initially.

Apart from these strategic/tactical issues which you need to handle when starting an online cloth store, you also need to think about the technical side of the business, like the quality of webhosting, bandwidth, disk space, domain name, database, website uptime, etc.

To draw an analogy from the real world, these things are akin to brick, mortar, gate, windows, and ceiling of your store. You need to have these things in place before you can execute any strategy. To put together technical aspects of running an online business at an affordable price, you can visit Gossimer.com, it offer’s affordable webhosting solutions.

Use twitter search to find the right people

This is as important as conducing a Google search. Twitter search will not only help you find people to network with, but it will also help you search for jobs. Just type in the keyword or hash tag to find the right person to network with. Do not add just anyone because you can. You will not want to get 1000s of useless tweets every single day.

Do not follow everyone back

This is a classic mistake. Most of the newbie do exactly that and end up becoming frustrated of twitter because of the low quality tweets in the timeline. You should follow people back, but only those whose tweets you want to receive. Do not follow everyone. You start doing that and you will start getting more invites. Spammers love this, so do not be the love interest of a spammer.

Follow your friends’ connections

Check out whom your friends are sending DM (direct message) to. These people could be the potential target of your networking effort. Keep a close watch on whom your friends are talking to, and follow those whom you deem suitable.

Promote Yourself

Promoting yourself is an important part of networking. Tell people who you are, and what you stand for. They will not know this if you do not tell them. Tweet links to your work, and add call to action in the tweet. This way you will be seeding your expertise in the community, which definitely will fetch desired result.

Networking takes time and effort, but the return is always good, so do not hesitate in putting time into it. I want you to start working on above suggestions now. You will see the difference.

Question 1: How performance is measured

You need to ask your interviewer about the criteria on which you will be judged when taken for the job. It will give you a target to match in order to get promoted or rewarded. A good company will have a set practice for employee evaluation, and HR people will not shy away from telling you that.

Question 2: Why previous employee left the job

This is a tricky question, but you need to know why the place became vacant. There could be a genuine reason for the previous employee to leave, and office politics or unfair boos could also be a reason, which you can only find by asking about it. The answer to this question will give you good idea about the existence and complicacy if office politics.

Question 3: Remuneration

You need to know about your salary, perks, performance bonus, etc. After all, it is the money that you are working for. You also need to ask about the salary date, deductions, etc. You will not want surprises here, so do not hesitate in talking about your remuneration. If you find the package offered below your expectation then tell the interviewer what you were expecting. Interview is the best place to talk about your salary and other benefits.

Answers to these questions will help you understand whether your personal goals will be met in the company or not. This will help you weigh the job opportunity properly.

I had only this to say, what else do you think should one ask during an interview?

Or is it so?

I don’t care what you are told, but as far as I am concerned, this is not going to happen. It is always the small business that has an upper hand while dealing with customers or fulfilling their need, or even when fighting with big giants.

Why?

Because…

• It is the David who always wins the battle.
• It is the David who clicks with the masses.
• It is the David who knows to connect.
• It is the David who does not underestimate the competitor, and prepare the strategy accordingly.
• It is the David who does not become myopic.
• It is the David who tries harder.
• It is the David whose life is at stake.

Goliaths (big corporations) are managed by managers, they are not owned by them. And the distance f ownership from those who runs it plays a big role in deciding how much power one exerts.

The small business owners understand that if he loses his livelihood will go for a toss, so he fights. Contrary to this, a manager thinks: how does it matter if his corporation wins or loses now or in the long term. Neither losing nor winning is going to affect the paycheck he is drawing every month. The manager feels satisfied as long as the target set for him by his superior is met.

It is about the target, not about the customers or their satisfaction.

This is not so with small business owners. Go to a neighborhood shop, and he will cordially greet you and will ask for your well-being. You will not receive the same warmth from big giants. Indeed, they will greet you, but you also know how superficial and greed-dipped it is.

Small business do have a chance to stand against big business, but for them they have to stop pretending that they are big, and start behaving what they are. They will have to connect with the audience, and give personal touch to all the interaction with every customer.

Follow this and you will defeat the goliath (giant company) sooner than you ever expected.

Whatever! The answer is all the same, which is: as many as you can handle. Do not chew more than you can digest. It will give you an upset stomach.

What’s the benchmark?

There is no external benchmark; the benchmark is the quality of work you produce. The moment your quality starts deteriorating you should put a stop sign outside your home office. You would not like to risk producing second-rate content, articles, or whatever it is that you write for your clients.

Then…

How many should I keep?

I cannot say for sure how many you should keep, but I can tell you about how many I keep and how you can decide how many you should keep. Generally, I keep 2-3 fulltime clients—depending upon the volume of work given— and work 1-2 one-off projects that do not have too tight deadline.

How you can decide how many?

How much you want: Say what you may, but you are doing freelance writing to pay your bills, be it your fulltime venture or part-time juggle. Therefore, you need to keep in mind your monetary target for a month.

How many hours can you devote: You also need to find out how many hours in week you can put aside for your freelance writing job.

How many articles can you produce in an hour: I understand this sound like absurd, but bear with me because I know people who can produce two articles of 500 words in one hour. Initially, you will not be able to write more than 40-50% of an article in an hour, but soon you will improve.

Do the math

Use the number you got from the above and calculate to find how many articles you need to write in a month to meet your monthly monetary target. The number you will thus get is the amount of work you need per month. If one client can fulfill this requirement then you do not need a second client—which is unlikely.

So, how many clients do you need at a time to fulfill your goal? Post the number you get after doing the math. I am eagerly waiting to hear from you.

-Using too many keywords is one of the number one mistakes that many Adwords users make.  You want to stay away from generic keywords, and stick only to keywords that directly pertain to your ad.  Otherwise you’ll have a lot of clicks from readers that were misled, that don’t amount to anything.

-Remember to use your relevant keywords in your ad title and description.  A big mistake is forgetting to do this, and then you have an ad that doesn’t seem to pertain to what a reader is currently surfing.  The whole point of Adwords is to hitch onto keywords on other sites for your ads.  Leaving those keywords out means that your ad is less likely to be noticed.

-Walk that fine line between clarity and keyword density.  Your keyword should be prevalent so that any searchers have no trouble running into your ad, but don’t overload your statements so that the keyword is senselessly repeated too many times.

-Always track your results, if one keyword set up isn’t working switch to a different one.  There’s no sense in continuing a campaign that hasn’t been fruitful.  That’s just beating a dead horse.  Instead, try different things if you’re not seeing the results you want.

One of the best tactics to do that, is the use of sites like tweetlater.com, which allows you to set up tweets at any future date, time, etc that you choose.  Sites like these are a great tool to keep your tweets regular.  So if you know you’re going to be busy later, or if you have a great idea now, you can always save them to use at a different time.  Keeping your tweets coming regularly, and keeping them all stellar, is the best way to keep interest.

Other tools like Twazzup lets you track hashtags, allowing you to see what’s going on in relation to your tweets.  This is extremely useful so that you can see who is re-tweeting your hashtags, and what context they’re being reused.  This can help you formulate strategies by sticking to campaigns that tend to be more successful than others.

Don’t forget to make use of tools that asses the market you’re trying to reach as well.  Services like the Forrester Profile Calculator help you find where and how potential customers are looking for information.  Making use of these can really help you grow your page, because you’ll know just how to target that demographic that’s most important to your page.

Finding them is easy enough, but remember that you have to keep writing interesting and engaging tweets to keep them there.  Holding attention in the long run is much more difficult that gaining attention at first.

In this article, I have tried to provide a workable “feedback seeking system” which you can use to get a proper feedback. You can also modify the system, if you feel something is missing.

Step 1: Define your feedback goal

Why you want a feedback and on what? The answer to this question matters a lot. A generic feedback like, “all is good” or “there is some problem here and there, but the rest is good” will not do any good. Set a target for why you want a feedback. If you have written something then the feedback you can seek could be related to your writing style, coherence, grammatical and punctuation errors, or overall understandability. You can subdivide your work in this way and ask for feedback about the particular thing you want to know.

Step 2: Qualify your feedback source

Do not seek feedback from anyone and everyone. It will do no good. A proper feedback should come from a qualified source. Ask your senior, your client, your boss, your teacher, or anyone who is more qualified than you are on the subject for the feedback. A washerwoman’s feedback on the structure of your SQL database will serve nothing.

Do not ask your family or the closest friend who knows everything about your project for the feedback. Good or bad, it will never give you the feedback that you can use.

Step 3: Ask targeted question

Ask questions relevant to the feedback goal you set in step one. Do not pose generic question, as it will not fetch desired answer. Ask a targeted question and listen patiently for the answer.

Step 4: Promise anonymity

If feedback sought is for something or someone else then assure your source that his or her identity will be kept hidden if he or she wishes to do that. And if the feedback is about you then tell the feedback source that his or her honest opinion will not tarnish your relationship. This is very important.

Conclusion

Do not lose heart if you do not get positive feedback from all quarters. No matter how smart your source is, he or she can still be short-sighted or wrong. Show confidence in your ability.

Always have a complete list of every client and contribution you’ve made in your career.  These come in handy so that you can have a comprehensive guide to tailor a resume to any given position.  If it’s a job writing about entertainment, you want to have your entertainment examples handy, and so on and so forth.  Always have a complete list for your reference, but limit what you put on the resume to the best examples of your work, as they relate to that job.

Practically everyone is going to ask for a brief summary of your writing experience, and usually about yourself personally.  This serves as a guide to your experience, as well as the sort of writer you are.  Usually you’ll end up writing a few paragraphs to satisfy both, and these will serve to give them a taste of your writing style.  So make sure they are concise, easily read, and reflective of the style in which you write.

Try to make the information about you as interesting as possible.  Think of an interesting professional story that you can tell, that defines your character and ability.  Then tell the story in a riveting way.  Something that keeps your target engaged in what you written.  You want them to be dying to talk to you more about the job, and certain that you’ll be a great fit.

Definition of Marketing

“Meeting needs profitably” is the core on which the gigantic frame of marketing is standing. And when I say, marketing meets everyone’s needs profitably then I mean it for every stake holder. For consumer it is to buy solution at the best possible price, for organization it is to grow at rapid pace, for investor it means to maximize the return on Investment, and for marketer it means meeting their goals.

How can we achieve this goal

All these needs are not mutually exclusive; they can be met all at once. But for this one need to broaden one’s horizon to include other’s point of view as well. To achieve this we need to consider the following:

• Marketers need to be honest when assessing consumer’s need and/or when selling their products to meet their monthly, quarterly, or yearly target.
• Investor needs to empathize with the consumer, and marketer who are interacting in the market. They should not just focus on more and more and even more return. Being too greedy is not the answer to their problem.
• A business should understand that the number of consumers will always be limited, so they should avoid getting trapped in “perennial growth” cycle. Growth in market share, sales volume, profit, etc., should be chased but not as fiercely as companies are doing. Too much greed is not good.
• Consumers should learn to trust the marketers, and should tell them about their needs, desires, ambitions, values, etc.
• Consumers need to understand that they need marketing and marketer to search for the solutions to their problems. Marketers are not some crooked wizard.
• Consumers need to understand that for them marketer is a time-saving device, a need analyzer, and a search engine that help them find what they need.
• Regulator should see if everything is going all right. Regulator should be honest in analyzing the market condition, and if everyone is doing what he or she is required to do.
• Businesses, marketers, and investor need to be more socially responsible. They need to care for the well-being of consumers. They should think of how they can make a world a better place.

Do not think that I am someone else. I, myself is a marketer, but like most of my fellow, I do not take people for a ride.

First off, ensure that you know the situation.  If your company is basically on fire and jobs are falling left and right, and not even your boss seems to be safe, probably not the best place for a raise.  But if things seem fairly comfortable, with a few worries here and there, you could have a good shot.  Just make sure you don’t paint a target on your back by asking for more than the company will think you deserve.

Asses your worth to the company before asking for a raise.  If you find people have been laid off or fired in your department, but you have survived the scrutiny, there has to be a reason for that.  Asses your accomplishments and your skill set, so that you can see why the company values you.  This will give you good groundwork to make use of in an argument for why you deserve a raise.

Finally, using your track record as a resource, go in and ask for a raise with your previous accomplishments as your foundation.  Be prepared to get rejected, after all it’s recession, and this is more of a long shot than anything else.  But be courteous and stay positive, and illustrate this isn’t a deal breaker for you, as to whether or not you’ll stay with the company.  You’d just like a raise or a promotion for your continuing efforts in helping the team strive for success.  Make that point evident, and you’ll be fine.

Look around you for starters.  Try to find helpful books at your local bookstore.  Even look to the colleges in the area and see if anybody teaches a course related to your field.  Anything that helps you become a better seller is a plus.  This career is dependant upon your ability, so it only makes sense that you would strive to have all the education that you can muster.

Of course a path such as college or career coaching will require an investment of money and time on your part, but having the info is much better than the alternative.  An education is never a bad thing.  The accolades might not guarantee a good job, but the knowledge will.  You’ll still have to work hard at what you do, but you’ll know where to put your efforts.  That information is invaluable.

Finally, try to find an entry level job that affords you the chance to work with a real industry professional.  Whether the job doesn’t pay well, or even just an unpaid internship, take advantage of either.  As long as there’s room for advancement, or a good training manager, either will be beneficial.  Remember, it’s okay to give a job a shot, if you aren’t offered the salary you want.  Take advantage of the quick experience, the knowledge you can gain, and the opportunity for advancement.  As long as you work hard to sell, you are guaranteed to be successful.

But if you want to be a writer, the first step is making sure you have the skills.  I’m not necessarily talking about the degrees you think you need, but rather the knowledge.  If you want to be a freelancer you absolutely need the Associated Press Stylebook.  It’s a listing of everything you need to know for journalism trends concerning grammar, spelling, and how you should write a journalistic article for any topic.  It’s your writing bible, so keep it with you while you write until you know the facts inside and out.

Start up a personal blog.  This will serve for a resume of sorts, where you can continually update your personal accomplishments and day to day musings.  Your blog will serve as a good introduction to employers, and could even earn you extra money in the process, from advertising.  Not to mention it’s a free and easy way to hone your writing techniques, something you desperately need to do at all times.

Keep a list of your goals around your work area, so that you can keep sight of your target.  That way whenever you’re feeling less than motivated to be a successful writer, you have constant motivation.  Never stop working toward those goals, and keep them close to your heart.  Anything is possible if you’re willing to work for what you want.

Finally, now that you’re set to really get started, look for work.  Submit your writing to websites, there are a plethora available for freelance writers.  In the beginning be prepared to work for low money to develop a good work history, or even free at times.  But once your history is more reputable, the better jobs will consider you.  The more of a name you can make for yourself, the more valuable and expensive your services will become.

Firstly, do what research you can about your potential client.  Find out what you can about them, before making your approach, so that you can formulate a strategy specific to them.  By doing your research you already know what parts of your business apply to them, and you can focus on highlighting those positives.  Tailoring a pitch to each potential client gives you a better chance of getting their attention, and capturing their interest.

Whether you are approaching through a phone call, or an in person meeting, make sure that you stay professional.  Keep positive and courteous, through your speech and demeanor.  That will reflect in your pitch, and the potential client is more likely to respond positively in return.  Never underestimate the power of positivity.

Finally, make sure that you know your stuff, concerning your own business.  It’s not enough to highlight the points that apply to a potential client, you also need to know the answers to their questions.  You never know what they’re going to think of, so keep a broad range of knowledge on hand about your business.  By knowing the facts, and even having a guide for yourself, you can quickly supply the answer to any questions they may have.  This helps to show that your business is organized, and helpful in working with a client to get them the solution that they need.

Good writing should be as concise and always to the point as possible.  When you write too much fluff your readers tend to shut off their brains, or worse, get bored and stop reading altogether.  You first edit should focus on how you can take what you’ve written, and formulate it into a shorter piece of work that tells the same story.  Nobody wants to read over inflated paragraphs or multiple sentences that make the same point.

After that, learn your strengths and weaknesses.  If you’re not very descriptive, make sure you spend extra editing time ensuring that your moments of description are fleshed out well enough.  You can’t be too vague, but you also don’t want to over describe to make up for your weakness.  Also learning the areas that you tend to need work on will allow you to target where you should go first when editing a piece.

Get as much feedback from third party sources as possible.  Get a friend to read what you’ve written, or a coworker, or even a family member.  Someone that will provide you with good honest criticism.  We all need honest criticism so that we can grow as people, and writing is no different.  In fact writing ability hinges on your ability to get effective criticism, and incorporate it into your style to become a better writer on the whole.

Finally, always give your piece a read through backwards.  This is especially helpful for noticing little grammatical errors, or punctuation mistakes.  By reading backwards your brain doesn’t concentrate on what the writing means, but just on the words and characters themselves.  This affords you the opportunity to avoid being engaged in what your writing says, instead focusing on how you’ve written each individual portion.

My goal with this article is not to argue about utility of link finding. Well, this can be a worthy goal, and I might choose to write on it in the next article, but for now, the goal is to tell you how to write a good advertising copy. Let us being on that:

Why you want to communicate?

Asking this question will tell you why you want to advertise. This will tell you about the goal and the purpose of the ad you are going to write.

Whom are you writing for?

The answer to this question will help you find the right tone, vocabulary and message for the ad copy. The way you will communicate with a student will not be same, as you will communicate with business executives of the same age.

What the consumer wants?

This is another critical question. Always remember, no one buys products or its features. One buys benefits and solutions.

Have you touched her tonight?

Do not get me wrong. This heading was written in the fashion to stir emotional corner of your mind. Tell me one thing, using the comment box below, if I had used some bland heading like, “target emotion of the consumer not the reason,” would you have reacted?

We all are emotion-led people. No one understands data, if it lacks connectivity.

Can your house cleaner comprehend it?

If she can then anyone can. The idea is to keep the copy as simple as you can.

What reaction do you expect?

You should tell your readers what you expect from them, once they are through with the advertisement. Include call to action. If you do not to so, you should not expect the audience to do anything.

I am sure you must be budding with many ideas about the above discussion. Please use the comment box to share some of them with rest of us.

1. Communication
2. Involvement
3. Setting Goals
4. Manage Poor Performances
5. Celebrating Performances

Communication is an essential element to any employee team, as it’s the most important aspect of working together to complete a project.  Keep communication channels open through team meetings, email, and conference calls.  This way everyone’s voice is heard, and nobody will feel as though they can’t get through if something is frustrating them.  Proper support will help that morale stay on the up.

Involve everyone as much as possible with every aspect of the project.  Listen to your team, and let them communicate ideas and suggestions into the development of your projects.  This way they stay motivated to always strive to be successful, as they know you’ll listen to their ideas for innovations.

Set lofty goals that your team can be proud to shoot for.  Don’t set them ridiculously high obviously, but find a comfortable middle ground above the standard, but not impossible to achieve.  This way you’re keeping your team motivated to be better and better, but not overworking them to the point they lose the faith.

Manage your poorer performers.  Not everyone on your team can excel like you would want them to, and some people will turn in a substandard performance from time to time.  But that’s where you take the time to personally manage them.  Work with them to help resolve any issues reflected in their performance, this way you can get them going on producing the quality of work you want them too, and their attitude will get better as they receive the help they need to achieve the goals you set.

And finally, celebrating individual and team achievement is crucial.  One of the oldest archetypes throughout nature, is doing work for a reward.  Yes your team receives a paycheck for their effort, yes technically this is their reward for their hard work, but that’s no reason not to throw in a thank you here and there.  Recognize your top performers, and make sure to congratulate your team when they work together the way you would like them to, as this will keep them upbeat, and motivated to keep your compliments true to their ability.