Author Archives: 123outsource

The benefits of commenting on other people’s Twitter accounts

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

This is very ironic, but on my outsourcing blog, we get almost no intelligent commentary. Those who comment, use spammy generic comments about how intelligently written my blog was and then a link to their site. Unfortunately, this is foolish, and doesn’t work. I will hardly ever publish this type of comment because it is obvious that they didn’t read the actual article and have nothing of value to say. However, if someone who had a link to share did publish something of value in response to my blog, then I would publish their comment along with the link which would have a good SEO value for them. Why is it that there are almost no intelligent people commenting on my outsource blog?

In any case, good blog commenting is a great way to share a link. But, what about good Twitter comments? Commenting on Twitter has many advantages.

(1) Your comment might get retweeted if it is gracefully written. But, even some dumb comments like TYFF (thanks for following) can get favorited and retweeted. Some people ain’t got no class if you ask me! Beautifully written intelligent comments are a lot more likely to gain you new followers and get retweeted multiple time which in turn gets you more exposure and more followers. If you do Twitter, you need at least 10,000 followers to make any dent in your SEO, so start accumulating!

(2) The person who the comment is addressed to might follow you. In my experience, for every ten people I write an intelligent comment to, I will get about two or three new followers. Those odds are not that bad. I might be able to sort through several hundred tweets and write about fifteen good responses per hour which translates into about four new followers for me. Getting followers manually is hard work, so make sure that the people you are contacting are a very well optimized match for your business. Make sure they have the same interests and retweet people regularly or you are wasting your time buddy!

(3) Learning value? By commenting on other people’s twitter, I learn what people like to read that I wrote. If I write a witty whimsical comment and it gets retweeted a few times, I learn that whatever I wrote is popular. I could tweet my comment as a regular tweet if it is so popular. I could even tweet it on a regular basis if it reels in the audience!

(4) If the person you wrote to writes back to you, your Twitter address will show up on their feed. You might get new followers just be being seen. Additionally, commenting gets your icon in the other person’s twitter account if people click the expand link. You can see all of the favorites, retweets, and comments by clicking expand.

I hope this article has expanded your consciousness about twitter. If not, click the expand link!

Should your blog be very industry focused, or more general?

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

It is a common issue among bloggers whether to focus their content only on those in their immediate industry, or whether to try to appeal to a wider audience. Programming blogs are notorious for having only geek-oriented content that no normal human being would want to even look at. There are other blogs that do a little of everything. I believe that a blogging strategy or blog management strategy should be to have a very well thought out mix of articles.

Be industry specific
If your blog focuses only on your immediate industry, the readership will be very limited and you won’t get enough traffic to boost your SEO significantly. You need a healthy percentage of your content to be very industry specific to appeal to your core readers who might be very loyal to you, especially if you publish knowledgeable and useful content regularly. You really need to establish yourself as a reliable source of information.

Appeal to a somewhat wider “related” audience too
My directory is about outsourcing. I could write about outsourcing all day long, but there are relatively few people interested in the topic or involved in it. However, there are industries that are related to outsourcing such as call center, social media, programming, and general business which constitute my related audience, which is not always my primary audience. Going too wide and blogging about Justin Beiber might be a mistake, unless I can tie him in to outsourcing his legal services for all the trouble he’s in.

Appeal to the layperson interested in your business
Don’t write only for the benefit of service providers. Write articles that inform the layperson who is interested in your industry. Tone down the technical language and explain how the customer could find the best service provider or have a good experience by using the right techniques to conduct their business.

Stories & humor
Our most popular blog entries on our notary site don’t employ any particular writing skills. They just have some type of industry specific information or tips that people really want to know. But, there is a limited amount of industry information that I can publish in a month without “running out.” So, I publish stories and humorous articles as well. My team of writers wrote episodes of sitcoms where notaries were featured. Charlie Sheen got notarized in the blog entry: two and a half notaries. We had a Seinfeld episode about a notarization as well as a Cheers episode where Sammy needed to have a notarized name change. Although our humorous blogs never get the same traffic as our hot industry specific content, the crowd loves these articles and it provides a huge boost to our traffic and makes the blog fun for me as well as for them!

Summary
In short, a well balanced blog should cater to many audiences if you want to get some good traffic. Blogs should be formatted in a way that is easy to read and blog entries need to be promoted heavily on social media and newsletters to get exposure. Play your cards right, and you will have a successful blog!

Willingness to work should be the high on your list of criteria

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing, Of Interest | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

If you are hiring a company, look for willingness
 
I had to look for programmers this year, and I had not gone shopping for programmers since 2005.  Back then, I sort of knew what I was doing, but there is always more to know about who to hire and why.  In any case, shopping around for American programming companies was the worst nightmare I have ever had.
 
The first tricky point was told to me by one of the programming bosses I spoke to. He was by far the most professional, but too short-staffed to be able to help me out.  He liked to keep his operation lean and mean. He told me that many American companies hire Indian companies to do the work without telling their clients here.  This turned out to be an issue many times.  I told each company I wanted to hire, that I wanted to communicate directly with the programmer. I ran into all types of excuses and frustrations.  Several companies told me that I was not a “good fit” for them, since I wanted to interact more, and since I was not a multi-million dollar company.  Another company told me that it would be frustrating talking directly to the programmers, and had tremendous difficulty telling me where all his programmers were. The story kept changing as we kept talking.
 
I hired a good programmer… but…
Finally, I found a company with a good programmer who knew all the languages that he needed to know.  We signed a contract and started work.  I was to visit them for two weeks starting in October.  After the contract was signed, and right before I was to come, they announced that they would not be available on the Monday and Tuesday of week two.  I came anyway hoping for the best.  Little did I know that while I was giving them time on Wednesday of week two to finish up what we started on week one, that they would completely blow me off and work on someone else’s project since I wasn’t physically watching them…. A lesson to be learned.  Thursday I was there, and work got done, and Friday I showed up late to allow them time to finish work up, but work never began until I was in their office.  The moral of the story is that the minute you stop watching people, they might start slacking off.  Also, don’t book a two week trip with a company with an unknown track record.  Make them prove themselves before you invest your time in them.
 
American companies who refused to work
The bottom line is that I found one company who slacked off, and all of the other companies I talked to REFUSED to work for me.  Americans are complaining bitterly about outsourcing, but when you try to hire American companies, most of them say, “Gee, I’m sorry, but you are not a good fit for us”.  I have come to the conclusion, that if you want any serious type of programming work to happen, you are forced to hire an Indian programming company. 
 
So, I went back to my trusty company who I have been using in India for years.  Communication is hard since calling them is difficult and visiting them involves 36 hours of travel.  Other than that, they are wonderful.  So, now they have started the project and done a lot of work in a short time.
 
Willingness
What I learned, is that skills are an important factor in hiring a programmer, but willingness to work, and availability to work are equally, or perhaps more important.  If you hire a company that doesn’t want to work, or a company with only one programmer who suddenly gets busy, your project will be permanently on hold.   My experience is that if you want any type of serious programming work to happen, hire a company with at least four programmers, and make sure they are willing.  I would not judge a company based on what country they are in, but based on the attitude of the boss and the workers, and how good their work is.  The quality of a company is on an individual basis!

Vaastu & Feng Shui for your Business

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Vaastu Feng Shui | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Feng Shui (Vaastu) and Your Business

Definition
Feng Shui is the Chinese equivalent of Vaastu Shastra. But, what do these terms really mean, and how does it effect your business and your life? I have no studied Vaastu and am not qualified to talk about it, but the part of your house where particular rooms are located is critical and which direction certain rooms or doors face is an important factor too.

Misconceptions
Misconceptions of Feng Shui are common. People think its about interior design or where you place your furnishings, and that is a small part of this gargantuan study. Just for the record, there are more than five prominent schools of Feng Shui and they all overlap with each other in some ways, disagree with each other in some ways, and emphasize completely different aspects of feng shui too. So, which school is right?

Classical Style
Classical Chinese Feng Shui is what I studied for a few years during the weekends. We learned how the year a building was built combined with its exact “sitting” direction was the most important factor to consider. There are 24 directions total, and NW has three subcomponents in our style of feng-shui. From the sitting direction and construction year, a chart can be made of the house. The chart can emphasize which PART of the house has good energies, and which part of the house should be avoided. The consensus is that where you spend most your time is the part of your house that is most critical. So, for me I sleep too much, so my bed’s position really matters. For certain females I know who spend six hours a day in the bathroom, that would be their critical room.
 

Remedies.
There are all types of superstitious remedies in Feng Shui that don’t get results in real life. Those who have read many feng shui books are often unaware that feng shui can be TESTED, and if you are using a remedy, you can take notes to see if there are any changes in your life which constitutes a form of evidence even though its not conclusive. Classical style remedies use the five elements, and sometimes you need a big round chunk of metal in your room, sometimes water, wood, fire (use a small red bulb), or earth. The main thing to consider is that if you are in an unlucky building or an unlucky room, the remedy is like a bandaid on a bullet wound. Finding the perfect building is key.
 

Karma and Feng Shui
If something dramatic happened in a building in its history, its karma rubs off on the current residents. The man who lived in my room had lung cancer, and I have developed lung issues (not cancer) while living here. A building that had a murder
or suicide will carry a bad vibration. An area where yogi’s did their spiritual work can carry a spiritual vibe for thousands of years after the fact according to many spiritualists. So, if your building has the right chart, but the wrong karma, you are in trouble. Smart Chinese people go for a building where someone went from middle class to riches.

My Personal Study
I did many readings for people and found that classical feng shui charts reflected the reality of the residents of these buildings in a vague way. If their chart was good overall, most did well, or better than they did in their previous residences. If the chart was bad, then the residents generally had problems. I found that the room was more critical than the house in my readings, but our feng shui Master says its the house. My new interest is in neighborhoods and not houses. I want to take analytics on areas and how those areas effect my business.

Feng Shui Neighborhoods
I have taken over 50 feng shui readings during my travel on hotels and neighborhoods. I sometimes stay at different hotels in a similar neighborhood and see how my business analytics do while I’m there. The results were beyond amazing. Certain areas tripled my new sales, while other areas killed my new sales. Some areas were good for social networks, others for my acupuncture directory, others for my outsourcing directory, etc. Each neighborhood has its own blend of energies which support certain types of businesses and activities. Some places were good for working, while others were good for socializing, or sleeping. Some areas I could concentrate well, while other areas made me feel healthy or happy. The endless variety of characteristics in places is fascinating.

What did I Learn?
I used to think that a lucky room is more important than a lucky house. Now, I think that a lucky neighborhood is more important than a lucky house or room. My business analytics were very similar in different hotels that were within a few blocks of each
other. I found that there are certain energies that pertain to certain areas that are several blocks in diameter, while there are other larger expanses of energies that can go for miles and carry certain types of tendencies. Certain general areas were good for expanding existing business, while particular neighborhoods within those areas were better than others.

Specifics?
Although my actual business is online, and no actual sales made pertained to where I was, the effects of my physical body being in particular areas was staggering:

Downtown Los Angeles, CA was good for renewing existing business, but terrible for gaining new business.
Koreatown in Los Angeles, CA was wonderful for attaining new business as well as renewing and expanding existing business
Santa Monica, CA was great for getting new acupuncture listings on my directory and social media
Ukiah, CA was amazing for attracting new business, getting work done, and staying healthy.
Santa Cruz, CA was great for keeping healthy, but had a stifling effect on how my business functioned.
Napa, CA was positive for contacting those involved with our outsourcing directory. We were able to do
more calls, and have better calls on an hour per hour basis.

 

Feng Shui Hot Spots
Staying in these areas, helped my business and life in particular ways, but what I learned was that there are hot spots that were even more helpful. If I stayed in a hot spot which is an auspicious area, for 90-180 minutes, I would experience an increase
in certain types of sales over the next 24 hours. Of course results would vary day by day, but if you average the results, the findings were amazing. I calculated, that spending an hour in Koreatown was worth $150 in new sales. However, if I spent more than two and a half or three hours, the benefit would be reduced down to nothing. Its sort of like having a battery that can be charged every day, and once it reaches its capacity, it can no longer absorb anything else.

How Does Feng Shui Work?
Feng shui is occult. It works on supernatural metaphysical principles. It can not be explained in Newtonian physics and it doesn’t make sense to a “logical” person, unless that logical person analyzes stats and has an open mind. If your physical body is in a particular place, you absorb certain energies or karma from that place, and that effects your whole organization. If you have 20 people who work for you, and the boss (you) is in an auspicious location, that good luck will effect the whole organization. The luckiness of where the workers are ALSO matters, but not as much as the HEAD of the organization. Many businesses choose to have offices downtown even though rents are much higher than in other places. Those businesses stay there enough for the buildings to have a high occupancy rate. Why is this? Workers get more done downtown because of the energies there. Downtown Los Angeles has a strong productivity energy. When I’m there, I work around the clock and only stop to eat my power-lunch and power-dinner.

How Fast Does Feng Shui Work?
The well meaning folks at the feng shui school always claim that they don’t know how fast a lucky location will help you have good luck in your life. I have answers for this since I track it. Wherever you are effects what happens over the next 20-30 hours
or so. There are residual effects that last longer than that too, and effects of the good luck that could help you years after the fact. I had my friend move to his lucky back room which had a good chart. He was out of work, not getting offers, and he got a job offer THE NEXT DAY. I’m not joking. If I stay at a hotel that has good feng shui on a particular night, the energy will help me the next day ONLY. Sure, residual effects happen, but for my tracking purposes, I see that 90%+ of the effect (rough estimate) of the feng shui manifest itsself the following day.

How Does This Help You?
Whether you live in India, New York, or Kathmando, you need good feng shui. If you have an office filled with call center workers, you could go out of business and lose everything you have no matter how good a businessman you are — do to feng shui. You need to be in a lucky building in a lucky area and you will get better results in a lot that you do.

Wealth consciousness and why it is essential

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Success | Tagged | Leave a comment

There was a wise man who lived in Hardwar in India.

The wise man himself did not have money simply because he didn’t desire it. He had all he needed. He had a cave to meditate in, and a cloth to wrap around himself — he was happy.

One day, a pauper came to visit this wise man. The pauper said that he was so poor, yet desired to be wealthy. He asked what he must do to become wealthy. The wise yogi retorted that he must develop wealth consciousness to attain wealth, and without this consciousness, no real lasting wealth could ever be attained.

The pauper gave the yogi a strange look and said, “I don’t have time for this consciousness nonsense. I am poor and need to find a way to solve my problem of how I lack money”. The wise yogi told the pauper that even his method of describing his problem of poverty clearly displayed the problem of the consciousness. The yogi explained that when you subconsiously feel that you lack money — you will attract more lack of money. When you have a thought — the thought attracts a particular type of reality.

The pauper just looked at the wise man and said, “What does having a thought have to do with reality?”. The wise man said that thoughts have everything to do with reality. Without thoughts, there would be no reality. God had a thought of a beautiful planet, and it manifested itself over time: no thought — no reality– no planet — simple! When you lift your arm up, the movement can not start before your mind has the thought of the movement. All actions begin with starts. When an engine’s piston moves, it all starts with a spark of a spark plug — and the spark is very similar karmically to the thought that commences an action.

The pauper, looked skeptically once again at this long haired simple meditative yogi and said, “So, you mean, that if I think that I will have money, then I will have money?” The yogi said that it was not quite so simple as that. The yogi explained that through the pauper’s entire lifespan of 32 years, he had thought about poverty the whole time. Imagine how many thoughts of lack that gentleman could have had in 32 years — perhaps millions of impovrished thoughts. To turn the poverty around, it might take a million opposing thoughts — thoughts of wealth.

The question is — how do you develop the wealth consciousness?

I will address this in other blog entries!

The new complicated shifting caste system in America

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged | Leave a comment

In a sense, the entire world has a caste system. But, America’s is more complicated. Certain established populations in the United States have certain types of jobs they typically do. The Jewish community is very active in Accounting, Legal, Arts, Education, and Entertainment type jobs. The black community is very active in government jobs. Whites are a little more complicated as they do most types of jobs except for things like hard outdoor labor, and a lot of high tech jobs. Jobs that are too physically or mentally hard are not often done by whites while more “average” jobs typically are.

Then, there are more complicated caste groups like Asians and Hispanics who have a shorter history in the United States (with the exception of New Mexico where they have a longer history.) 1st generation Asians will often have a nail salon, market, or do laborious jobs, while they push their children (often at gun point) to study hard and do something better when they grow up.

Although it looks like we have a caste system, it is more complicated in the case of Asians and Hispanics. The nail salon caste is Vietnamese and Korean, at least temporarily. But, it isn’t a permanent caste since their children will not be caught dead doing those types of jobs. 1st generation Hispanics will often do very hard physical labor jobs under the worst conditions often in factories or in the hot sun. However, their children tend to work indoors as shop clerks, administrators, or frequently as nurses.

What America lacks (and France as the case may be) is a caste that will do the hard jobs. The problem is that nobody born on American soil wants to work hard, and most people born on local soil are too dumb to do technical jobs. The technical and physically difficult tasks are normally done by immigrants. Immigrants do these jobs, but their children can’t or won’t do those types of jobs. So, then in twenty years we need to import another round of immigrants whose children will also not be able to do the jobs that they were brought here to do. This cycle won’t end until America has 2 billion people, there won’t be any more land, trees, or clean water, and yet there still will be nobody to do the hard work. What will we do?

300 years ago America had the same problem. In those days they brought slaves over. This is not a very moral solution to the problem. However, upon hindsight, they were able to get these slaves to do backbreaking work for more than one generation which would be impossible in modern circumstances.

Perhaps if America attached a value to honest hard work, it might be possible for American born people to actually do a little. Or if all Americans were encouraged to do a few years of physical work before graduating into a more sophisticated form of work that might help. America glamorizes education, and higher level jobs. But, we can’t all be brain surgeons. Someone has to clean the sewers. So, we might as well take pride in this type of work. In any case. I have to go. I have a sewer to clean.

But, the future of our behavior of depending on immigrants to do the hard jobs, and then having their kids (or anyone else’s kids) being willing to do those jobs is that our country will grow to a population of 1 billion, with very few being highly educated. This will make it easier for doctors and other higher level people to have a huge salary, and servants in the future. There will be little competition for higher level jobs as American will be more and more a land of paupers. The people immigrating to the United States in large numbers, and the people having the most children in America are desperately poor, and their descendants sometimes make it to the middle class, although most do not. The future is an escalation of poverty growing and growing and growing.

How to test a software company

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Software Development | Tagged | Leave a comment

How to test out a software company!
 
If you have important projects, you can not put them in the hands of strangers without taking a huge risk. Interviewing companies will only let you know how well a company presents themselves, and background checking companies may get you inconclusive information.  One problem is that you have to give your FTP codes to new software companies, but what if they are not reputable?  What if they take two months to do a week of work after a lot of cracking the whip to get them to do something?  What if they won’t let your site function without paying them some unreasonable sum of money? It is risky hiring programmers.   Additionally, once a company has your FTP codes, it takes time to have server admin people change the FTP codes and send it to the new party.  Many things can go wrong and the process that should have taken a day or two took close to two weeks to have the new party able to login with the server codes. 
 
So, what can you do?
I interviewed many software companies.  The problem is that when you talk to the salesperson, they always put on a good front, so that you will feel confident about their company when they might not even be able or willing to work with you. Salespeople will tell you any type of lie to get you on board, and then once you are involved, you will be talking to the technical manager, and will never hear from the salesperson again. 
 
Lesson #1 – never believe anything the salesperson tells you — no matter what.
 
The technical managers will tell you what they can’t do, and will tell you all of the limitations, and will very happy to reject you as a client.  Also, technical managers typically do not like people like me talking directly to their programmers.  My projects are complicated, and without direct communication, we will have a mess that you can’t believe.  It is better if I am sitting side by side with the programmer during the tricky part so we can get it right the first time, but programming folks like to keep their clients as distant as possible — why?
 
Lesson #2 – dig by asking questions.. see if their staff is really in America or somewhere else?
Even if you are in India, you need to know if you are dealing with a real company.  Visiting them before you hire them makes sense. If you see a big office with dozens of very busy looking people, that is a good sign.  If it is a small office, and there are only a few people who look sluggish, or are absent a lot of the time — watch out!  If they are hiding their office and don’t want you to come — AVOID these people.   Many American companies have back office workers in Vietnam, India, China, or somewhere else, but want to charge an American price.  You might as well deal directly with India yourself unless that company is a great intermediary.
 
Lesson #3 – don’t believe a company that says they want you as a client
I was told by a few companies that they were willing to work with me as a client.  Many were anxious to set up interviews, but the interviews led to them asking me lots of questions and me not knowing who they REALLY were.  I only knew how they presented themselves.  I was flat out rejected by the most expensive company I interviews during the interview.  It was insulting, but at least they didn’t play games.  Another company said they wanted to work with me.  However, when I called for more information there were problems.  I could only get the information from Amanda, but whenever I called, Amanda was either out for the day, at lunch or at a meeting. This company refused to let anyone else answer my questions.  Finally after trying Amanda four times, I was told that I was not “A good fit” for the company.  I spent half a million in programming in the last decade. I’m not sure which part of half a million is not a good fit even for a fancy company.
 
Lesson #4 – Test them out on the phone
Many people at software companies are lazy and unresponsive by phone.  Call people and ask them to call you back and see what happens.  If they leave you high and dry now, you can rest assured that you will be left high and dry after you hire them and they have your FTP codes.  Call companies up and ask for information — see how fast they get back to you if at all.  Ask for an appointment to work on a small project to test them out.  See how long it takes them to call back.  Or, better yet, ask for the programmer to personally call you at a specific date and time.  Most programmers would not pick up a phone if they had a gun pointed at their head.  You can learn a lot by asking people to lift a finger and putting the ball in their court.
 
Lesson #5 – Have them do a small project
You don’t really know someone unless you have done activities with them. You can find out people’s quirks, and how cooperative or helpful they are if you do a mini-project with them.  If they are reliable on a small project, then try them out on a bigger project, and keep it growing.  You are in trouble if you have a huge project that you are desperate to finish, because programmers are typically busy and don’t have time to give you more than a few hours per week.
 
Lesson #6 – Consult a psychic
It is hard to know who to use.  Sometimes a good psychic can steer you away from a bad situation.
 
Good luck — you’ll need it!

A new technique for content & blog title optimization strategy

September 10, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I’ve read a million blog articles about content strategy and they are all interesting. I like the articles that teach you to appeal to the emotion of your readers if you want to get shared. That is so true. I try to appeal to the interest of people, by picking unusual points of view. But, here is a new strategy that is easy to implement, but actually a little bit complicated to do correctly.

The process of content creation & marketing
Blog writers typically brainstorm to find a great topic. Then, they will often put a lot of time into writing a great article. Next, the article will be promoted on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and a few others. It sounds very standard and predictable, and it is. The problem is that not all of the stuff you write will be appreciated by your users. I find that only 1% of my content has become super popular. 1% is better than 0%, but I would love to improve my batting average.

My little social experiment
So, I underwent an experiment. When I publish my own content on Twitter, I might average a little less than a single retweet. I wanted to see what happened when I tweeted content from the masters. Would I get retweeted a hundred times, or would it be about the same as my content? The results were surprising. I got a slightly better batting average tweeting content from the professionals which baffled me. Why is my content only a little less popular than theirs? Maybe because I am unique and original despite my poor writing skills and lack of graphics in my blog. The next thing that bamboozled me was that content that was in the top 10% of popularity on their blog didn’t do any better than their average content on my Twitter. I couldn’t figure out why.

Crowdsourcing and what matters
It is not predictable to try to understand what does well on Twitter and why. If you publish the same content twice, it rarely does as well the second time. If you use different tags, or adjust the text in the tweet a little bit, the results can change dramatically. So, the quality of the content is actually only 30% of what is important on Twitter. Subtle changes in wording, elaborations, a little punch or twist can make all the difference. What really matters is not what did well on someone else’s Twitter, but what my crowd likes! Even if the other crowd is one that is heavily engaged in business, marketing, and social media, their posts might not do well with my crowd which is also interested in social media and business (international business mostly.)

A spiritual element: crowdsourcing’s metaphysical realities
Never ignore the metaphysical element in social media marketing. There is a lot more than what time of the day you post, how good your images are, and how optimal your titles are. There is a spiritual connection you have with your followers on a deeper level. They are tuned into you in a way that they are not tuned into others. You jive with them and so does content that means something to you. If you publish something that is quality material that meets the niche requirements of your followers, but your heart isn’t in it — your followers might not like it either. If you publish something that means something to you — and is just you, you might be surprised at how well it does although it still needs to be tuned to the interests of your followers.

Identifying the best content
After posting a lot of other people’s material on several of my twitter accounts, I learned that roughly 7% of the material I published was super popular, and that was after I manually filtered out 70% of the posts I look through. So, if I had published every article I scanned, it would be only 3% that got retweeted or favorited more than five times on my account. My goal was to identify what the most popular Titles are, and then to create my own original content using similar titles and see if those blog entries would be more popular. Using topics that are winners might boost my batting average so that 20% of my blogs become super popular. Instead of quantity, I could focus on targeting.

The results
After finding out what was popular on my Twitter, I republished the material on my Google+ profile, and the content did fairly well on Google+ as well. I am going to write a few blog articles using the winning content ideas and see what happens. That will take longer. I can only identify one winning idea per day on a busy day, so my system for identifying semi-viral content is slow. The fact is that there just isn’t a lot of material out there that will do super well on Twitter! Good luck!

How many people should answer your phones?

September 10, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Sales | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Philosophers have been asking this question for ages. How many people should you hire to answer your business lines? What do you think Socrates would say?

Socrates – First of all, I need to tell you that my time machine is parked in the back, and I can’t spend too long here, because I have things to do back in ancient Greece. You understand, right?

Business owner – Okay: How many people should be trained to answer my phones?

Socrates – What do you have to lose if you don’t answer a phone call?
Business owner – Potentially, I could lose a million dollar sale.

Socrates – Wow, I am in the wrong business. What is it that you do again?

Business owner – I am in the call center business. We are very good on the phone handling our clients’ customers. However, when clients call us about OUR service, we seem to never be able to answer the phone. How ironic. A call center that can’t find a way to answer their own phone! It sounds like good material for a Seinfeld episode.

Socrates – Hmmm. You mean you use those little plastic devices with the wires, and you can talk to people across the world. I never could figure out how those worked. We didn’t have them in my time in ancient Greece you know. We just yelled really loud when we wanted to communicate with someone far away — or sent a messenger. To answer your question, it is that important that you answer your phone, so you don’t lose any sales, I would recommend this philosophy:

Train a dozen people to answer phones. Train them everything they need to know to answer many different types of questions. It doesn’t matter if they ever use their skills or not. The point is that they will be ready, just in case the phone rings with that million dollar client. It is sort of like a security system in your modern houses. In ancient Greece we just bought a mean looking dog to scare away burglers. But, in your world, you need an electronic security system with motion detectors. The system very rarely gets put to use, but when it does, you save yourself from losing all of your priceless art work, jewelry, etc. If you find that some of the lucky dozen are not so good at phone answering, then you narrow it down to a few. But, take the training seriously, because you can lose clients that would revolutionize your business. And it’s not only about the money, it is about prestige as well. What if you got a famous multi-national company on board? You could brag about it to all of your other prospective clients (whose calls you are currently failing to answer) and impress them.

Business owner – That sounds like a great philosophy of business. You are right when you said you are in the wrong business. You should open a messenger service back in ancient Greece. You will become the richest philosopher in all of the Mediterranian. You will accumulate so much money that you have time to be idle all day long and entertain yourself by asking your students ridiculous and meaningless questions.

Socrates – That is an interesting point you make — because, that is what I am doing all day long right now on a philospher’s salary — and loving it too I might add.

Business owner — Well, if I took your advice and hired people to answer the phone, I would accumulate so much business that we wouldn’t know how to handle it. And, we would be so busy that we wouldn’t have time to answer the phone — which incidentally is exactly the position that we are in right now!

You might also like:

Call centers who don’t answer their phone
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/08/call-centers-who-dont-answer-their-phone/

Better training for call center workers
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/05/how-to-get-more-business-for-your-call-center-better-training/

Medical Transcriptions and Errors

September 10, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Medical Transcriptions | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Medical Transcriptions and Errors

Outsourcing medical transcriptions
The medical transcription business is a tough one. Jobs get outsourced from the United States to the Philippines. Americans lose their jobs and get mad. Then the client company suddenly realizes that the rate of mistakes is much higher overseas and brings the job back to America even though it costs five times as much for labor. At my company we are also terrified to hire anyone at any price, because errors are disasterous to us. Our clients get mad when you make an error with their listings, and fixing the problem and dealing with irate customers is not worth the savings in our personal time to do the work ourselves. Sometimes its less work to do something yourself.

Indian medical transcription
Many Indian medical transcription companies sprung up over night a few years ago and then lost the majority of their business. The level of experience was just not the same as what it is in America, and the level of mistakes was higher.

What do accuracy figures mean?
So, what does 99.9% accuracy mean in any case? One blog I read describes it in these terms: 99.9% accuracy means that on a form with 5000 entries, you will have an average of five errors, and the chance of having no errors is only four percnt. So, 99.9% accuracy means 4% accuracy.

In my words, 99.9% accuracy means that only one field in one-thousand will have erroneous information, assuming the company boasting this level of accuracy is telling the truth. So, you need to figure out what the cost is in having an error.

The cost of errors
If each error costs you $100, and you save $200 on labor, to fill out one-thousand fields, and get one error that costs you $100, you are ahead of the game. On the other hand, what if you can find a company overseas which has a comparable rate of accuracy that U.S. companies have? Then, outsourcing medical transcriptions is the correct thing to do.

Test medical transcription companies out.
The main point to remember is that new companies have to be tested. You can’t really believe their references, although some references are better than none. You can test out a well reputed company and see how they really are to work with in real life. If your experience is good, then you can offer them a little more work, and gradually over a year or two, give them the majority of the work.

It is done — said the outsourced programmer

September 10, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Software Development | Tagged , | Leave a comment

It is done — have you heard these words recently?

In America, when you say something is done, it is generally done.. But, I have had many experiences in India where an Indian programmer completely sabotages their entire career future (and their boss’ future) by saying, “It is done”, when it is not done.  I am baffled by how dishonest and careless some people are. Maybe they yearn to be fired. What other explanation can you give.  Keep notes on people you hire for outsourcing. If they say, “It is done” more than once when something is not done, then you say, “You are fired!”, or “No, YOU are done!”.

Communication could be part of the picture assuming that dishonesty is anything less than 100% of the problem. There are many tricksters in India, but blatantly obvious tricks won’t fly unless YOU are paying less than 100% attention, right?  And if you are not paying attention, then you will be the one who is done regardless of who you hire.

Don’t be done — and don’t hire others who lie through their teeth or who are incapable of communication.  Choose your programmers with care and tolerate nothing less than substandard mediocracy!  Why not set your standards high? Because really good programmers charge US$150 per hour minimum and you might not be able to afford such good workers.

The trick in outsourcing is to find people who can slog through projects in a clunky way and keep moving..  If you can hand pick really talented people, then you are in a very unusual position and might prosper beyond expectation. But, for the rest of us, we need to find bare functionality — expecting more will leave you disappointed if you engage in outsourcing.

Twitter’s algorithm for “people” under keyword search doesn’t add up!

September 10, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Dormant accounts galore!

Suggestions for Twitter’s algorithm

Twitter’s algorithm for who shows up under “People” in a given keyword query has some serious drawbacks. Results include many dormant profiles that haven’t posted in months. I’m not sure what the other components of the algorithm are. It might include how many posts they made with the tag / keyword in question along with how many relevant followers they have. It is complicated indeed.

I think that what makes more sense is to see who has been the most active in the last month. For those who have been active, then another layer of how well they have been doing in the last six months, and how many relevant followers they have might compliment the algorithm.

I think they should hire Janet Jackson to put her 2 cents worth in when creating a new algorithm. Her suggestion might be — what have you done for me lately?