Google+ - Grow your profile

So Google+ is a growing social media platform that is mainly taken up by people who know a little bit about SEO or marketing. There is a much heavier usage of businesses on Google+ than on other social media platforms as it allows quick integration with listings on Google maps and other Google products.

Google+ Power to Your Content

But one aspect you may not know is that your Google profile can act as a great advert for your content. Google want to use the platform to find what the best content is on the net and a great indicator is those interactions with the content, and the people who are generating that great content.

If you set up your profile correctly you should have listed all the blogs you contribute too, this is part of the standard process of setting up authorship mark up so will help your search rankings aswell. The other thing is to include your links in your introduction to add weight to your blog or website. 

Did You Know?

Many people claim that Google will automatically index any content that is shared on their social media platform, which would make sense as they want the fastest and best content to be on their search engine for users. This means any content you post you should automatically get in the habit of posting on Google+ and communities are a great way of getting real organic traffic of engaged users in your niche.

A good tool to discover how you rank against other users is Circlecount


No Substitute for Quality

There is no quick fix to this. There is not black hat techniques to buy followers that will generate you any better results for your content you will only improve by adding quality and the communities and followers your connected with will make the final judgement as to whether you are worthy of a +1 share or comment. Google+ like twitter doesn't have a reciprocal add logic to it, so you won't find that even if thousands of people follow you that you need to follow them back, I mean after all your feed would look like a sushi bar on warp speed. What you need to do is engage with people you like who generate content you enjoy, don't be tempted to add people just for the sake of attempting to get a follow back it's a pointless endevaour.

Other Social Media

So while twitter and Facebook are currently trying desperately to monetise their systems with product advertisement at a cost (paid messaging to celebs, sponsored posts, ads, Sponsored tweets etc) Google+ can happily generate a social media platform which does what it says on the tin and makes it a platform for people to socialise and share ideas......for now.

If you wish to discuss anything or would like to commission any articles feel free to contact me on Google+

Online Privacy - EU Law

The internet has given risen to a wealth of opportunity and ability of users to find anything, buy anything and do anything they like. People can connect to other like minded individuals and they can express their own views easily to the world. This may seem like the ultimate freedom but with any freedom comes responsibility. To ensure everything you put onto the internet is the kind of information you want to be associated with your life is important, your views may change but if you have expressed opinions online it may still exist for people to see.

Job prospects

Recruiters are well aware of facebook and other social media, in fact most companies have a privacy agreement in their terms of employment (you know that document you signed when you took the job). To ensure they have recourse when an employee tarnishes their companies name. With the rapid increase in employee misbehaviour online it has been deemed more neccessary to establish background checks that incorporate an internet search to ensure the person is fit for purpose. This may throw up all kinds of antics from a persons past and reveal a lot about their personality. For instance an employee may come across as tempremental or opinionated which could be off putting from an employes perspective.

There have been some high profile cases of employees being sacked, as well as some rather comedic ones. Using a two year old picture as an excuse to claim you are snowed in, claiming to be ill then revealing on social media you are hungover and slating your boss are all ways in which people are caught out. So ensure that firstly you know who you are speaking to when posting on social media, your profile may not be as hidden as you think.

Nudity

There is a huge amount of nudity on the internet, from the porn sites to the car enthusiast forums there is naked pictures everywhere. People have really taken to 'Sexting' the practice of sending rude pictures to people using smartphones. Partly this is due to the ease of use of digital cameras now with most phones having a great resolution camera built in. It is also something attractive to younger people, often they regret this decision later in life as that person is no longer their partner or friend. Sending naked pictures is no neccessarily something you should be sacked for, in fact often managers will not ever see these pictures unless they themselves are using adult websites, which simply creates that awkward scenario of them knowing but unable to say without giving away their own sordid internet history.

But if you do partake in internet nudity, whether it be a picture on a RATE ME website or some other forum or a video you did at college for some beer money you should always know it is permanent and should never be done in a uniform. Companies do not want their brand tarnished by porn. Another example would be considering your chosen career, if you are working in the public arena, with children or other vulnerable people having a sordid past can be grounds for dismissal and will certainly be something that parents or interested parties will frown upon. It is easy to have images removed from most larger websites by simply putting in a copyright request which states the model has not given permission, this is something you should definitely consider doing.

Relationships

People who meet in bars or in social settings used to have this process called dating that took a few weeks to learn all about their personality, likes and dislikes. Now you can download the information to a handy summary using social media. This is the first port of call for most prospective daters so making sure you remove all the pictures of ex's from your profile can turn into a full time job, and all those ones you didn't put up but have to untag yourself from. The dating landscape may seem like great fun but it is decidely more complicated now than in previous generations.

Attracting the right people is about ensuring you portray your personality well, often difficult in short hand status updates or tweets. Angry ex's and spurned lovers may also see what your up to and attempt to sabotage so being honest is something you may need to consider.

Sudden Fame

The argument for not doing everything to hide your history is because lets face it who cares your just a normal person yea? Well that may be true at the moment but there is a myriad of ways the press may take an interest in your life. For instance winning the lottery is a sure fire way of someone finding out who you are and doing an internet search using any found images (usually the worst) to print your great news. Even if you do not go public the chances of keeping it secret are slim as a neighbour or friend is surely to reveal your identity. You may become embroiled in a political or social story, victim of crime, inventor or even just internet sensation. All these are ways in which someone out there may start to dig up your past and publish what they find. The sudden fame aspect is also unfortunately a sure fire way to have individuals from your past come out and either speak about you or blackmail you. Be careful who you trust and do not ever fall victim to blackmail, the law will protect you.

If your wondering who the bloke with all that gold is try a Google search on Michael Carroll, you will be astonished at the stories they have on this lotto winner.

EU Law

So the EU have come up with a nice law that allows you to ask a company to delete all your history relating to yourself from their servers. They oblige of course but what may be more of a worry is where that information went, other websites that have copied the text or images or even individuals who have kept a record. In the case of Paris Brown the Kent Youth PCC, who was in her £17,000 per year role for a total of a week before the media managed to create such a fuss about her past rants that she resigned, is now facing investigation for alleged racism and homophobia. This shows you that the world waits for no one, is a week long enough to get everything in order or should you start now?

In essence you can never keep all your opinions sensible but you must ensure that anything you share is not going to damage your reputation. It may also be good to check the privacy settings of any social media, picture content is something that should always be set to private. So spend some time searching for yourself and clean up any profiles or old commentary that you no longer want associated with yourself. It may also be a good idea to set up new email accounts and completely remove any reference to old ones.

Paying for Guest Posts

Google consistently looks to punish websites that exploit their search results for financial gain. Amazingly there are literally thousands of SEO 'experts' offering you the kind of advice that is likely to get your site punished in the next Google update, by then of course you will have noticed a surge in your impressions and therefore been happy to give them the money. Of course if the site that they have linking to your website is found to be in breach of any of Google's myriad of rules and regulations, which of course they would never spell out for fear of people getting round them with black hat techniques, then you will find any of the benefit from that link be removed. There will not necessarily be any action taken against your site but in essence the service you have paid for will be worthless.

The move away from links as a strategy to more content marketing it seems has now become awash with those wishing to get your hands on your cash for doing very little. Traditional Content Marketing was a marketplace for good quality writers to connect with companies and websites that wish to have some content written by an experienced writer. This was a great market and led to many top websites investing millions in content to ensure their brand was well known but also had content that was useful for the user.


Getting Content - Paid writing services

The practice of hiring writers to write content is traditional but very popular way for companies and websites to achieve better rankings by having quality content. Google values the content because they see themselves as being on the side of the user, they want the user of Google to have the best time and find the best information. This often means that webmasters get furious with Google about any downgrades or falls in impressions, but you must remember Google is not the provider of a service to a webmaster they are a service for the searcher. This kind of financial transaction is not frowned upon by Google and can be a great way to boost your blog, or product website by having professionally written content. 

Getting Guest Posts - Paid Guest posting

Instead of traditional content marketing Guest Posting paid services now offer you the content and also the placement of the article on a website that will link back to yours. Sounds like even better idea than content marketing right? not only are you getting the content but your getting exposure and a handy back link to boost your Google rank. This may be true in some cases but unfortunately a lot of these paid services are actually placing your content and links onto either useless websites, article farms, spinner websites or no where at all. The reason for this is that real guest posting is a long and laborious task, to find quality websites, write articles for them that they want to use and then having them published can be a process that takes a few weeks, not a couple of hours. So ask yourself why would someone want to do all that work for $20? Perhaps they have a well established network of contacts to have your work published on, or perhaps they have a number of well established blogs of their own that they would place it on. My advice would always be wary of this type of offer. Consider the time it takes and the value it generates, always check where they will publish the guest post prior to payment of any money and make sure that website is something you think is appropriate for your brand. As with the hiring of anyone ensure you have done a sufficient background check before engaging in a financial transaction with them. There is a massive difference in subcontracted work and work done directly by the person you are paying. Sub contracted Content Marketing is huge business, essentially someone sets up a website offering paid writing jobs, offering typically $2 per article and then have a team of people paid $2 per hour to post your articles on websites. So your $20 payment is in fact only 20% to those writers and placer but a massive 80% for the middle man who has a nice website. If you thought it was a lot of work for $20 then it certainly is a lot of work for $2 so you can imagine the output you get.

If you wish to discuss any points feel free to leave a comment, or if you are looking for reputable Content Marketing then leave your details and I'll get back to you.

The Clothes do not maketh the man!

Depending on your industry you will find there is a set dress code for the types of clothes that are deemed acceptable and normal. Obviously for women this list is a lot more complex than for men. The types can be broken down into four main categories:

Formal Business Attire

Most office based companies insist on smart formal business wear from both genders meaning suit and a tie for the men and a smart pant suit or skirt and blouse for the women. But how important is this really? Why do companies bother? Its an interesting question and considering many employees only conduct internal interviews so have no external client face time you can understand the frustration but there is a purpose for it. Those who dress smartly are effectively putting on not only clothes but a mindset. That mindset will be professional and smart. It is easier to speak with authority, improves engagement by ensuring everyone speaks eloquently and also creates a tone that will mean your office may be a more sombre and professional work space.

Tips on guidelines:
For men ensure shirt is ironed and top button is fastened with Tie on show.
For Women ensure covered up (no short skirts or low tops) and colours are not too vibrant.

Some examples of good and bad:

MEN'S

Good Suit

Bad Suit

 WOMEN'S

Good Work wear

 

Bad Work wear

 Smart Casual

A lot of modern offices have now adopted the smart casual approach where shirt and shoes are still expected but ties and suit jackets can be left out. The bad part of this approach is that it leads to a lot of confusion especially for your female workers, they already have a difficult choice when it comes to office wear and this can often lead to an environment where some still apply formal business attire rules and others really go to town with the casual element.


Tips on guidelines:
For men ensure shoes worn and shirt collar visible, jumpers should be without slogans.
For Women ensure covered up (no short skirts or low tops) and no open toed sandals.

Casual

For modern and art type industries you find the choice is mainly casual, jeans and a tshirt are deemed everyday staples for those working in a more creative environment. This breeds a culture of comfort, engagement and innovation. Allowing your staff more freedom with their clothing lets them express themselves which should be encouraged when working in a creative field. Comfort is also important if they are spending long periods of time at a desk, workbench or other 


PJ's

For the rise in homeworking this has become the office wear of the blogger. Wearing your PJ's is comfortable easy and quick, but it does present some issues, for instance you miss that lovely feeling of getting into your PJs after a long day at work. Also with the rise in the use of skype for meetings the 101 Dalmations onesie may be viewed as slightly peculiar when speaking to a potential client. Also when working with webcams ensure you wear something which has a high neckline, all too often people forget that the other user can only see your head and shoulders so may think you are naked!

The choice of work wear for a business is essential in setting a tone and not a decision that should be chopped and changed, also ensuring that there is a blanket code for all is important to not create a clothing hierarchy. If you supply staff with uniforms then to improve engagement you may wish to take feedback on the uniforms and let the staff have input into the design.

Google Authorship - A Must for Guest Posting?

Google likes to display results with a nice little picture of the author, it has been proven to improve the amount of traffic generated on a Google search as it somehow invokes trust and intrigue. Another aspect to Google authorship is of course that the website you are writing on needs to have a Bio of the author and even perhaps an author page to reference to ensure the Authorship works. If you wish to improve traffic to your articles it makes sense to use Google Authorship, not to mention the chance that your authorship will generate cross article traffic if a person likes your work.

Difficulty of Google Authorship

A Lot of webmasters don't allow their guest posts to have Google Authorship which means that your work is not being accredited where it should be and it is not been given the exposure that perhaps it should be. This is down to the design of many websites making google authorship difficult to do without code. Most Webmasters offering guest posting want to be able to publish the work with the minimum amount of effort necessary. Another complexity is that if you own the publishing and you have access to your Google+ Profile then it means you can quickly check it is all working. If when publishing an article you need to check it is working then you will have to rely on the author adding this to their contributor list. This has led to a rise in the number of websites that prefer to have article series, weekly contribution or a long term relationship with authors, those which continue to run a one article guest post opportunity run the risk of being caught up in spam activity and penalised.

Benefits of Google Authorship - Video

Be Careful

Like anything on the internet you do not want to be affiliated with anything that is spammy or black hat so by giving authorship status to your guest posters you are in effect creating a link from your website to that individual. Whilst checking the links in a guest post are suitable is an obvious step when publishing you may also have cause to check out the author, ensure they are not going to be bad press for your website. Essentially Google wants to use Authorship ranking to eventually get web searches that are impacted by the trustworthy nature of the author. If for instance the author has three followers and only posted two bits of content this might be viewed as having less weight than someone who posts regularly and is well established on social media. This may sound unfair but what it will do is ensure that spammers are not given coverage and that is the ultimate aim in Google's plan. Identifying websites that are spam or black hat is a constant battle for Google and a tool in their arsenal is that most spammers do not have 'real' social media accounts, they have lots of links from bots or fake profiles (Something with social media is constantly looking to rid from their sites) and so authorship will play a vital role in not only ensuring good quality is recognised it will also be a valid tool for Google to get rid of more spam.

Forecasting Workload - Beginners Guide

The first question a business has when it expands is how do I know the amount of work there is and how many staff that requires. It is a tricky subject is your new into the employment game. Up till now you will have relied on yourself to do the activities and depending on your type of work this could be skilled or unskilled labour. You may think resource planning is an activity on required for big business or the corporates and you would be wrong. Correct application of resource planning will maximise your potential output, improve efficiency and also help with marketing. There are companies that will offer you all this for a nice price, but in essence all you need are a spreadsheet and a stopwatch.

Give clear instructions
This is the most important aspect of hitting the ground running by giving clear guides you are saving yourself a lot of rework and mistakes. Unfortunately a lot of companies take the approach of learning on the job, the old you watch me doing it, then you do it while I watch you, then your on your own. This means that bad habits, shortcuts and scenarios may be missed and will lead to panic and confusion later. A well prepared manual is essential if you wish to have a productive employee. But remember they will be behind the average time taken for at least the first 3 months, if not productive by 6 months you should consider further training or performance observations. Well written guides to the work you are done should not be complete in one sitting, always leave them as working documents as often a scenario will prompt an addition, so don't go out and get them laminated for the wall.

Break workload into defined tasks
When you do everything for a business you can get so wrapped up into your own little rituals and ways of doing things that it all blends into one. But you must break each activity down into work items, this will allow optimised scheduling of activity but more importantly measurement of that activity. For instance you may think that the task of waiting tables is all one job but it isn't, the tasks involved are: Greeting and seating, drinks order, drinks deliver, started/main order, cutlery and sauce setting, food delivery, courtesy check on happiness, food clearing, desert ordering, desert delivery, table clearing, bill delivery, bill collection, table setting. You can see how a job like waiting tables may seem to be something anyone could do, but without instructions they miss one of the 14 steps listed out and you will have angry customers. You may also think you could put waiting table takes on average 1hour but then you are actually measuring the time the people take to complete meal and not the time the waiter spends working, are you OK that they simply stand and watch as the customers eat? do you think they could be fulfilling another role at the same time?

Measure time of each task - SMV (Standard Minute Value)
Take a stop watch and time yourself doing the activity, just a normal pace not rush or too slow. If the activity involved lots of different scenarios then take the most common one you do and time that. Do this for at least 10 observations and take the average time. More than this would be beneficial but unnecessary for your purposes. Mark the task description and the time taken on each observation on an excel spreadsheet, you can use the function =average(cell array) to give you the average of the ten.

Allow for down time
Factor in between 10 and 20% wastage on each timing, this is time for sneezing, errors, toilets breaks and other comfort breaks. It is important to do this otherwise your timings will be unattainable Your own discretion should be used for idle time because it varies depending on the industry. You find those who work with customers directly have far more idle time due to interactions that may be unexpected however those in a manufacturing setting will simply utilise breaks.

Forecasting workload - arrival rates
To measure the arrival rate of each task you can look over historical data. For manufacturing businesses this will be order fulfillment and stock ledgers, if you are a retail business then you can look at the customers and categorise these into a time destinction you wish to measure. It may be daily to begin with but if your operation is over 6 days it may be more beneficial to do this hourly as you will need to do shift rotas for staff. Half hourly is the lowest level you should go down to, other options would be half daily split into morning and afternoon, third daily morning, afternoon and evening.

Once you have captured your historic data (if you do not have historic data then measure it over the next 4 weeks, you may begin to use averaging after 2 weeks but it will be more volatile due to the lack of observations). You can then take average of previous four week periods to future forecast foot flow. But this is not the final step. You should consider any premiums that need to be applied onto specific dates, local fairs, markets, events, holidays or seasonality. The gut feel is the only way you can measure this to begin with unless you have historic data from previous three years. Seasonality will be a small uplift to reflect perhaps a surge in winter or summer, specific daily adjustors would be that you may be busier on the first of the month because that is traditionally pay day locally.

Testing against actuals

Continue to capture your arrival rates and compare these with forecast, this will be the best way to capture any alterations you may need to make.


Overall Workload
You are now in a position to determine the workload requirement for the specific operating days, hours or half hour periods of your operation. This will assist scheduling new staff at times when others may be present but also allow you to see any likely dips in workload that you could focus marketing on to attract business to those quiet times, offers or deals are a way restaurants fill their orders at quiet times e.g. Early bird deals, pre theatre meal deals, etc. The calculation is simple:

Arrival Rates * SMV = Workload minutes
Workload minutes /time period(e.g. within 1 hour would equal 60) = staff requirement

Where staff requirement is below 1 then you can take the following actions:

•  Migrate workload from other time periods that is not event specific e.g. general cleaning, training
• encourage customer migration to that time with incentives, remember that you will be paying higher than usual staff costs during those periods so some money off to ensure productivity may be more prudent financially.
• Create new tasks or take on new work streams
• Diversify your staff to be able to perform more than one role
• Close business during these hours, if the work does not exist to maintain one staff member is it really worth opening the doors?

If this is your first experience of resource planning I wish you luck should you wish to discuss these techniques or require support on documents, templates or other material feel free to leave a comment and I will contact you.

This is an introduction for small operations the complexity of this gets more as your business expands and you will find automation is the only way to go if you want decent analysis of workload.

Click ads - Good or Bad for eCommerce Websites

For many businesses the world of Google ads is seen as something that is perhaps not the best idea. Why would you want an ad for a competitor on your website? Well there is many reasons to have ads placed on your website but make sure you do your homework.

Passive Income

The reason so many bloggers and article based websites use Google ads is because they provide an income in perpetuity and involve absolutely no effort. For blogs advertising is the only way to drive income so Google ads offers an easy to use income generator. Passive income streams are the golden goose for many home based writers allowing them time to pursue other interests with a background income.

Issue with eCommerce

The ads are driven by the content on the page picking up keywords to provide the reader with a valid  impression that may be tempting to click on. Of course if you have a page with your products listed featuring these ads it will likely feature competitors ads on your page. This may be off putting as customers may think you are also selling those products, but it can also be useful. Imagine the scenario where you have a really good quality item at a very competitive price, the ad would show a less favorable option and could drive up your sales, after all comparison prices are one of the biggest improvements that is driving customers online. If you have done your homework and know you are selling great items then you should not fear ads. If however you are a small operation or a very niche product you may find ads are either detrimental to your business or simply not appropriate.

Make Sure they Perform

The key to any ads is to check what they are showing on each page, ensure you can see that the ad is appropriate and if your not happy you may need to spend some time in your ad account setting this up. If you find you are getting more clicks but your sales have increased then you may want to keep them on your site, if however your sales fall and your clicks increase you have a competition problem and need to check it out. Maybe your price is too high, images not clear enough or your quality is not as high as others.

Of course the income from ad revenue is nice to have for small retailers but you need to do a full market research review before you embark on this. Keep an eye on your customers behaviour noting any changes in terms of conversion rate of sales or particular products that recieve higher click through