I spilled lemon tea on my keyboard

January 18, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest | Leave a comment

Three days ago was a day of accidents. I was making tea, but spilled the tea water on the floor in the kitchen. Then, I cut up lemon rinds to make lemon rind tea. This tea helps eliminate cancer cells. I’m not aware that I have any cancer cells, but I’d rather have less than more and lemons are the most natural cure. So, I brought back my tea to my computer desk. But, the tea was so hot, I couldn’t hold the cup. I foolishly put it next to my keyboard. Then, I had a premonition — a thought raced through my head. I thought the tea would spill, and then within half a second my hand involuntarily jerked and the tea spilled all over my Dell keyboard. I was so upset. I used so many paper towels to clean up the mess and had to turn the keyboard upside down to get the water out.

All I can say is thank God the tea had no sugar in it otherwise I’d be screwed. But, on a daily basis I drink canned Starbucks coffee in front of my computer. The coffee is cold, but has milk and sugar. In ten years, I never spilled a can. But, I always keep it right of the mouse, so it is actually far from the danger of the keyboard. It’s interesting to pay closer attention to your daily habits which you don’t even notice.

In any case, my keyboard was a bit sticky for two days. The zero key was the worst. But, miraculously it is all back to normal now — at least almost. I guess whatever was there dried up completely and my keyboard springs are back to normal.

The moral of the story is.
1. If God gives you lemons, make lemon rind tea
2. If your tea is too hot, dilute it a bit and then drink it.
3. Drink tea in the kitchen, not the computer room.
4. Be aware that astrology influences your life, and one particular days, you might experience lots of things spilling. It happened to me, and it can happen to you. On other days the stars have it so you’ll have a car accident. Wear your seatbelt on those days.

Should your blog include quizzes?

January 18, 2015 by admin
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

Want to really capture people’s attention? Most people write boring blogs and have third rate photos infused into their blog. But, having an interesting quiz takes the cake! I just was visiting Bill Gate’s site and he had a quiz about superpowers which was really more about gender equality. I think he tricked me.

But, after the gender questions, I learned about some energy related questions. 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity in the world. That was the one question I got right. I also learned that only 5% of energy production is from solar and wind. But, I digress…

Quizzes are a great way to boost engagement which is the most important analytic in social media. What good is followers if they aren’t involved with your account or visit much, click on anything or care? Just a quick note, it is not always possible to measure the total impact of engagement. An engaged follower who is always thinking about you, reading your materials, and clicking on things might not be so easy to completely measure. You can see when someone retweeted you, but do you know when someone is visiting your page every other day?

Perhaps new analytics will create lists of your followers in order of engagement with histories of each one — when they became more engaged with you, when they became more regular visiting your Twitter account, and how often they interact or share your tweets. Analytics are getting more sophisticated by the day, so these analytics might be available before you know it.

Find winning ideas for blogging by using good analytical methods

January 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Leave a comment

I have written thousands of blog articles in my career. I am by no means a professional or even close. But, if you write for a small blog, you need to be interesting, not professional. The other skill you need is analytics. If you can figure out which blog topics are popular, you are far ahead of the game. The next level of sophistication is figuring out which blog articles are popular on particular social networks and what tweet or post titles made them popular. Finally, you need to keep track of when a particular post’s popularity fades. There are many layers of sophistication in blogalytics, but they are not that hard to master. You just need to understand what is important to understand.

The rule of 1000 impressions
Some people feel that if you get retweeted on Twitter, then you are in good shape. Getting your content shared is helpful. However, the bottom line for me is if someone reads my article. A click is worth more than a retweet to me. Getting retweeted can help you grow your following on Twitter. But, a click helps to grow your blog following. Both analytics are important, but one seems more like a final result to me. The problem is that clicks on Twitter are not so easy to get. A click could be worth its weight in gold if it is from someone new who will become a regular follower. But, getting that click and figuring out where your best clicks come from involves some technique. If you post a blog entry on your Twitter account and nobody clicks on it, what did you learn? My best blog entries get clicked roughly once per 25,000 impressions. That means if your account has 6000 followers, and you post your blog entry four times during the day, and you get one click, you achieved something similar to my 1:25,000 impressions stat. I have another Twitter account with fewer followers which has a much better click ratio just because the followers are more engaged and much more connected to the industry I write about.

How do you establish a stat?
For each blog entry you write, you should have a “Twitter click stat.” You might need to publish each tweet multiple times to get an average. If you have 10,000 followers and publish each tweet ten times at intervals of twenty or more minutes apart, you will get a rate per 100,000. You might see that particular entries get five clicks per 100K while others don’t get clicked at all. If you waste every day of the week tweeting content that nobody wants to read, you are wasting your time. But, what if you spend your time identifying what they want to read and then post more of that, and write more of that. Then you are using your Twitter and blogging time more efficiently. You are finding winning ideas and you will win the game.

Outsourcing relationships never end the way they begin

January 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Leave a comment

You know how dating relationships go? It is exciting, there is suspense. Will she like me you think? You are so relieved when she not only likes you but wants to see you — regularly. Then, you go out, you learn about each other and fall in love. Then issues creep up, the family doesn’t like certain things about you and you can’t stand them. Sound familiar? Unless you’ve had an arranged marriage, you are probably familiar with all of these issues. With an arranged marriage, the family basically chooses you, so it is less likely they will have issues about who you are as a person as far as the big things go.

Outsourcing relationships are similar. We start out being wowed by the salesperson. We are excited that someone will be able to do our work. We like something about the company and forget that doing business is not that simple and that most companies are just not that responsible and just not at all loyal to the little guy. You get involved, they start doing work and all is well. Then, you find that they don’t do the work with the care you want. Your prized worker Sylvia quit and was replaced by Samantha who never emails you and just doesn’t care. The boss is no longer getting back to you unless you bombard him with emails. What happened to the love?

You have to understand that outsourcing relationships go through phases. You will go through different call center reps, different programmers, and different medical transcriptionists all under the same roof at the outsourcing company you chose. The critical point is that the boss has good standards for who he hires not some of the time but all the time. The next critical point is that you got to know the workers and technical manager instead of getting to know the salesman who will be out of the picture the minute you sign the contract. It is also critical that the boss is on your side when you start having trouble with one of his workers.

In all honesty, it might be easier to hire a freelancer directly rather than an outsourcing company. You will not get good care from most companies unless you offer them a huge contract — and even then there are no guarantees. But, try your luck and remember my point. Six months later after you have gone through a few workers and seen the outsourcing company at their worst, do you still like them? Are you still impressed by the salesperson or do you think that he and all other salesmen are full of it? Just remember — it never ends the way it begins!

Do you hire based on current needs or future needs?

January 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Leave a comment

When you hire someone, you don’t know exactly what they can do for you (other than what they promise) or how long they’ll stay with you.

I wanted to hire people to help me write tweets. I realized that it is hard to write interesting tweets and that someone who doesn’t have a writing background won’t be able to do a good enough job. But, they could learn. Then, I thought that even if someone learned on their own time, by the time they learned, my Twitter account would be much bigger and my standards would be much higher.

Then it dawned on me that I need to think about the future in a new way. I need to behave as if the future is already here. I need to think that my Twitter account already has a million engaging followers and that my tweet writer needs to be the best in the business. With this attitude, my whole hiring strategy is completely different. Someone who is merely “good enough” now is not going to cut it. They need to have amazing talent. Even writers don’t produce perfect results on Twitter because they are daunted by the 140 character limit and tags. But, you can easily spot talent early on, and if someone has the talent, they might be your ideal future employee.

Then I thought about my sales needs. My sales needs have changed in the last seven years, but my salesperson has not. I’m trying to put hard pressure on her to adapt to my “new” needs. She is complaining every step of the way. I’m realizing that I need a salesperson who is versatile and can do inbound as well as outbound sales, not to mention be able to do other tasks. So, now I’m trying to hire multi-taskers and believe me that isn’t easy.

It’s hard to picture your future needs. You’ll probably be wrong if you try. But, by trying to predict what you’ll need, you’ll be closer to target than if you don’t. So, try to be in tune, and envision your future. You should do this anyway as the mind is your most powerful asset for your future success!

When and how long your breaks should be… it depends…

January 16, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

I wrote another article entitled:

“The length of your break time determines your success” which has not been published yet.

However, upon further introspection, I learned that how often you take breaks depends. Sometimes, I can go four or five hours without a break. If I am charged up after a vacation in the desert, I typically have lots of energy. Other times I am sleepy, and can only do thirty minutes without a break. The physical fatigue factor is one serious issue in break frequency, but there is also mental fatigue.

Physical fatigue
If I am really tired, perhaps late at night, I can only work a little bit before taking a rest. I am an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word. I innovated, and created a business based on my innovative search tools that I use in my online directories. I work around the clock and observe my fatigue patterns. If I go for a hike the day before, I might need to sleep an extra hour, but I will feel much better and be able to withstand longer work sessions without breaks than if I had not hiked. If I recently took a vacation, I often come back recharged as well which can help me do work marathons!

Mental fatigue
Researchers showed that the ideal break is 17 minutes long and should be taken after about 51 minutes of work. I have found this sometimes to be true of highly focused work. If you are doing work that requires a lot of close mental attention, you need to be at your best. Taking breaks can help you achieve that optimal mental state for efficient work. However, for creative work, sometimes the creative process, or the act of working closely with others who are fun or stimulating can eliminate the need for regular breaks. A fun coworker can recharge your batteries in many cases for creative work. However, for drudgery work that can be done with a very tired mind, sometimes working late at night for hours in a row is possible. If I take a break, upon returning from that break, it might be better to do mentally challenging tasks for the first forty-five minutes. But, after that period, it might be good to do repetitive non-thinking type tasks from then until my next break.

So, there are different types of fatigue, and different types of work that a manager might do ranging from repetitive data entry, calls, decision making, and creative writing. Each use a different part of the brain, and each have their own fatigue schedule if you want to call it that.

What separates “A” quality marketers from the flock

January 16, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Leave a comment

In reality, marketers don’t travel in flocks, they travel in packs — or they prowl around at night solo. After all, marketers are either wolves or tigers, not sheep — at least the highest level of marketers are. But, putting semantic and zoological considerations aside, let’s hit upon some key factors of what separates the tigers from the cubs.

A good understanding of social media is an identifying characteristic
I’m more familiar with social media marketing, but any type of marketing has the same goal. You have a product or service and want to get the most people using it at a profitable price for you. I have met many mediocre social media marketers in my life. They go through the motions. It is sort of like an uninspired eight year old practicing the violin. He keeps playing the same piece over and over with the same mistakes and it is always out of tune. The mediocre social media marketer posts the same type of posts on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other platforms are involved. If you ask them what makes a post get traffic they will be evasive and say, “It depends, there are so many factors.” What they are saying is true, and the fact that they express the complexity with such simplicity proves their mediocrity. The good social media marketer can explain with some degree of detail how the different factors can influence a post’s success and what experiments they did to try to fine tune their understanding of what makes a good post good.

Limited knowledge seems to identify everyone in marketing
I talk to different people in Marketing from time to time. I have communicated with some of the leaders in the field. The surprising factor that seems to be a constant is that most social media marketers do not understand all the mediums and don’t have a very thorough knowledge of social media as a whole. I spoke to one expert who charges $250 per hour to help people get set up on social media. He told me that he was unable to help me with Google+ which is the #2 most commonly used network! I wrote to another team of experts who have one of the most sophisticated blogs on social media on the net. They also were unable to tell me anything about Google+ other than to read their several blogs on the subject (which were very helpful, but limited.)

What I learned is that some people have knowledge of Facebook and Twitter. There are others who specialize more in Linked In. It is tough to find someone who really understands Google+ or Stumbleupon, and I can’t say anything about the other networks of which there are many. It seems that there are no absolute experts in this field. However, there are some who have a general knowledge of social media which might be good enough for them to trudge through unknown territory.

The jugular
A good marketer finds a way to reach high goals and keeps finding ways to achieve more and more. They constantly refine their techniques, and strive to see deeper into the analytics on a daily basis. If you find a marketer who has nothing to say about how he is trying to refine their techniques or broaden their horizon, they are more likely to be marketers on the “C” list than the “A” list.

Long term goals
A good marketer needs to not only be good at generating constant new leads and mastering the new mediums out there. They need to make their efforts lead to a long term attainment of higher business goals rather than just short term sales. What does that mean for your business? Only you can say!

Communication
The highest level marketers engage in more communication with their higher ups, clients, and co-workers. They realize that they can learn something from their interactions with others, even if it is just bits and pieces. They might need to interact with sales, finance, management, or people in a number of other departments to do a more fine tuned job. Lower level workers tend to avoid interacting with others, especially if they don’t like others.

Performance management
The best marketers have written plans for how they plan to improve their performance over time more than the slackers do. If you have ever taken a course in success, you will probably remember where they told you about two guys from very similar backgrounds. One became a billionaire while the other one just made an average income twenty years after they graduated from high school. What is the difference between these two guys? The one who was successful wrote down their goals. The same applies to the highest level marketers. They have written goals too.

Analysis paralysis
Top level marketers tend to spend more time analyzing performance and trying to figure out what they did right and what they did wrong, not to mention what they can experiment with to see if they can do better than before. Analysis is an interesting word, because a good analyst can look deeper into the numbers and derive more meaningful information while a novice might only see some top-line numbers of how many clicks or visitors a blog got.

Hiring people who help your customers “open up” can work wonders

January 16, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged , | Leave a comment

If you talk to your clients about business, that is good. But, to really have a good relationship with them you need to really interact with them and figure out what they really want. You can sell much more to them if you really understand them. But, you might not be the best person to chat with them. It might make sense to hire someone with a really good personality who is sharp to feel them out. If you hire Janice and Janice talk to your clients one by one for a few minutes, or maybe up to twenty minutes, she might get more of their feelings to surface than you because of her personality, or how she talks to them. Her gender might be a factor as people interact differently with men than they do with women.

Having a source of information about your clients might be useless unless you can also figure out what to do with the information. If Clint wants you to get back to him more often and you don’t do it — the information is useless. If Mary wants monthly progress reports, you wasted your time hiring Janice unless you act on that tip.

Smart businesses know they need to customize their offerings to their clients. Each client should be treated differently. Some hotels keep databases on what their clients like. When I call Choice, they know I want a single king, non-smoking room and no newspaper. They know I like the second floor, and they know I do not like room service. They know I am single and have no pets other than the spirit of my departed cat who comes to visit me in spirit form during my dreams. The bottom line is, how smart is your business, and how well do you know your customers? Find phone staff that can help them open up, and you might know a lot more about them.

You might also like:
Facebook knows you better than your mama. But, how much do you know about your clients?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/10/03/facebook-knows-you-better-than-your-mama-but-how-well-do-you-know-your-customers/

Is Amazon too tough on their workers?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/06/10/is-amazon-too-tough-on-their-workers/

The ideal structure for a social media company

January 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Most social media marketing companies out there have very limited know-how, but charge an arm and a leg. I believe that if some smarter companies would get out there and grow like crazy, most of the mediocre companies would be quickly put out of business. It is all about having the right structure.

Do you have replacements?
It is common for a social media company to have a boss, and a bunch of workers doing their thing. Each person has different specialties. If your LinkedIn guy drops out, the next person in line might not be very good at it. It is tricky, because there are so many channels, so much to know, and so many things changing in the industry. The way you used LinkedIn five years ago might not be as effective today!

Brew masters and social sauces
In my mind you need a good boss. The boss should have a solid understanding of all of the channels. That way he can teach others when the need arises. If the boss spends all of his time wheeling and dealing he won’t have time to specialize in the “sauce” which is social media knowledge. The only way around this is if the boss has a partner who is the “brew master.” In breweries, the brew master is often more powerful than the owner. But, such a person has to be on equal footing with the boss otherwise they will quit for sure.

Fluidity is key
If you have only a handful of workers, when one quits, replacing them will be hard. If you have some outsourced people overseas who do mundane tasks for pennies on the dollar, if you need more labor, you will have a flexible pool. Additionally, you need multiple people for each specialty in case someone drops out. As you test new people out, they become part of your labor pool. It is hard to grow a company if you don’t have a handle on your labor, so you need to have more labor than you can handle. As part time new people impress you with their good work and loyalty, you could promote them by giving them more hours and higher pay.

Analysts and checkers
You need staff members who check on the other members. You need to see how they are doing on projects and take notes. You also need to see how effective their work is and if they need to be taught something new. In some cases, checking people regularly is how you get accurate data on when to fire someone. If their work is bad for long enough — fire them. And conversely, if your new people aren’t proving themselves well, then fire them as well.

Customer Support
Should the people interacting with your clients be the same as the ones doing the work? It might be easier to have everything separate. Have customer support managers who interact with the analysts, salespeople, and workers. A team of people working seamlessly together with multiple specialties might be the best way to structure a social media company for the future.

Growth Contracts
It is easy for social media workers to not feel a sense of ownership. But, if they don’t get paid until they reach certain goals, their mentality will change quickly. It might make more sense to have goal milestones, because personally, I don’t want to waste my time with anyone who can’t accomplish anything of value!

My blog audience wants to be stimulated, not lectured

January 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

There are lots of blog articles out there, and most don’t get much attention. This is for various reasons. Some are on blogs that are virtually unknown. Others are just too boring, while many are too serious. Most people who read blogs are not scholars and are not reading blogs to learn. Consequently, most blogs out there are not that intellectual (except for Harvard Business Review and the New York Times.) The main thing to understand as a blogger is that you need to really learn your audience and become an expert at what they like to read about. Since you will write thousands of blog articles in your career and each one is different, it is hard to know which theme and variations they will like — but, studying your audience will help you refine this ability.

The main thing I learned on Twitter is not to give advice, especially not nagging dentist type advice. People don’t want to know what they should be doing. They want interesting facts that are presented in a fun way. People don’t want to know what they are doing wrong in their business. They want fun things that can help them do better.

I always have advice for Indian outsourcing companies. To date, I have not seen more than a few outsourcers in India who answer the phone professionally. If I were a client, I wouldn’t hire someone who has a receptionist who doesn’t communicate properly. I tell them they are losing business, but they don’t want to listen. People don’t want to know about what bad habits that they have that lose them business. They want quick and fun tips to get more business. Of course in real life, they will lose all of their leads once the leads talk to their receptionist — but, I can’t control that especially if nobody listens to my best advice.

So, my best advice goes completely to waste, but my jokes and fun tips are appreciated. The main thing is to stimulate, entertain, interact and have fun on social media. Don’t take social too seriously as it is not normally used that way. If you want a formal education buy a text book and if you want a serious consultation hire a consultant.

There are no perfect times to start a business. But, here are the signs.

January 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Startups | Leave a comment

A Hindu point of view
Some people want to wait for a perfect time to start a business. I will approach this dilemma from a Hindu point of view. Westerners see history as progressive going from simplicity to an evolved state. Hindus see history as being cyclical. Hindus think that in ancient times there was technology that exceeds the technology of today. Apparantly their literature has information that Western literature does not. My point here is that there are times in an industry where there are booms and easy money. There are also lean parts of the cycle where it is harder to survive.

Boom or bust?
If you are an idiot who starts their business during a boom, you might be able to get a foot in the door where you otherwise would not be able to. But, when the bust comes, will you know how to survive? Conversely, if you start your empire during a bust, and learn the ropes, when things start doing better you might make a fortune that exceeds what you could have made if you had started in good times. If you perfect your skills in business, then when good times come, you can really milk it for what it is worth.

A slowly rising tide
Another thing I should note is that starting a business in a field that is slowly declining is a very bad idea. There are cycles in the business world. Real Estate has an 18 year cycle. But, there are other cycles like the industrial cycle. Industry got started in the 1600’s, hit its peak in the 1800’s, and then died down in America in the 1900’s to be replaced by technology. If you trying to start a traditional manufacturing business in 2015, you might have trouble. But, what if you were an expert at robotics and incorporated that knowledge into manufacturing? You might have a winner. Or bettter yet, what if you did consulting to help other people with money use robots for their manufacturing? That might be even better as it would require less capital to get started.

Mastering what is new
I started online directories around 1999. I didn’t know much about technology, but was determined to master the art. Sixteen years later I am still struggling to figure it all out. But, I was forced to learn a lot of brand new skills. I had to learn the basics of SEO which was not easy as I didn’t have a clue. However, I had a great teacher, so I learned what I needed to learn. Next, I had to learn blogging and social media. This took me much longer even thought it was not very technical. It took me six years to get a handle on social media. But, the success of my business wouldn’t exist without having an edge using Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs. So, perhaps it is not about when you should start your business, but more about what you should decide to learn about in 2015.

Here is what is hot in 2015
Crowdsourcing, Mobile Applications, Facebook, mastering newer social networks, creating your own social network (risky, but could have a huge return,) medical technology, robotics, marketing networking such as Amazon, nd last but not least — mastering the art of managing millenials! (sorry for the joke that is really a non-joke.)
Putting aside what your love is, becoming an expert at what is hot and growing could help you become very successful in the future. Even if you don’t love social media, it could help to promote something that you do love. If you love the beaches of Thailand, your Facebook account could get you millions of clicks to your blog about Phuket. If you love widgets, understanding crowdsourcing might help you market your widgets more effectively. Although these new skills may not be applicable to a business like a grocery store, the skills you learn will cross-apply in many ways you are not even thinking of. So, gain some new skills today, and good luck with your business — whenever you decide to start it.

How do you handle your business when times are lean?

January 14, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Leave a comment

In business, we all dream about boom times where even a new guy can make it big and quick. But, in real life, success in business depends on how you handle the lean times. Lean times are times when labor is not readily available, or when customers are hard to come by. Do you learn more efficient ways of retaining customers? Do you find ways to give your customer better service or a better deal? Do you find better ways of attracting talent?

In my personal business, I think I learned a lot more when times were tough. In my Notary directory career, I started in a boom time. Everyone made money without even trying. As a result, I didn’t learn the maximally efficient ways to get clients, or what the best pricing strategy was. As I went along, and business was rough, I got more and more intricate and complicated in my pricing strategy by really taking a closer look. I also learned that having a successful directory depends on having great listings. If you have a bad service provider, even if the listing looks good on cyber-paper, it will still be a bad listing. So, I learned to be good at assessing people’s personality, their work, and other factors using analytics and click tracking. The result of all of the things I learned was that I now know how to run a much better directory than I did seven years ago, and I am getting four times the traffic as well! But, the point I’m trying to make is that my best learning took place when business was horrible.

So, when business is bad, don’t cry. Don’t say, “if only the market would pick up.” Learn to create the right strategies for different market conditions and just ride whatever wave you are on!