Evaluated: Paper.li & my daily

March 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

About a month ago I wrote a post called “everyone created their own daily, so I did it too“. The title is pretty revealing, I used paper.li to create a daily paper sharing various online material in a newspaper format. I choose it to be based on my tweets and the people I follow on twitter, which seems to be the most common set up.

My plan with the creation of “What’s up?” as I called it was to investigate the opportunities with the service and what I could use if for. Unfortunately now, a month later I shut it down until later on. The reason is mostly because I think that it is currently to generic. I am usually all about beta product that I can test and see developed, but here the options for customization are to small for me to find it worth while.

For some, it might still be useful, Nikki Stephan have a few good suggestions on how to use it, but until I do I want to see at least the following customizations possibilities until I will join again:

  • Option to add more than one filter, my followers and this hashtag for example.
  • Option to choose the top featured story every day.
  • Option to choose how many categories and posts that it should contain
  • Option to have post open in the paper or in a new tab
  • Option to add facebook comments, or other comments in the articles to make it more interactive
  • Option to choice to update and republish (today it publish a new paper daily at a set time)

In other words, with more possibilities I might return, but for now on, I will continue reading the people I follows tweets on twitter.

Filed Under: Reviews, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Why do some companies succeed without a hint of customer care?

March 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I just read an article about a Facebook privacy, which was referring to a girl who found out that someone was impersonating her on Facebook. The girl reported it to Facebook in the way that they want you to report an impostor profile but that she never heard back from them.

I have also reported things to Facebook, smaller things, such as groups who are misleading, such as the fake Facebook pages I wrote about before. But I did not hear back from them either.

Now in my cases, I understand that they cannot report back to each individual, but when it comes to people being impersonated etc, I think they should. Sure they have to make judgments and possibly they get tons of reports daily. But for an individual this does not mater. They still feel mistreated.

However, big companies seem to be too untouchable. I’ve been planning to write share a friends experience with the Apple customer care. He tried to contact them about his account constantly resetting and got the same autoreply 3 times, which did not even relate to his question. But there was not much more he could to about it, and as far as I know the problems still exist.

What is it that makes some companies so untouchable? And what is it that make us want their products even though we know that if we have problems it is up to us?

We all want what we cannot have?

 

Filed Under: Business development Tagged With: , ,

Bring sales in to the phone with mobile webpages!

February 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sweden, and many other parts of the world, seems to have caught app-fever a while back. When even the banks are competing about who’s application is most user-friendly, that says something. Though I love apps, and have got quite a few, I’m still a bit surprised by this, at least when I look at how many more have apps than a mobile page.

After all, mobile pages will bring more sales to new customers than mobile apps.

Why? It’s simple, when you are looking into buying something, you will Google to find the company website or a place to buy the product. You won’t go and download the app, to see if the app even offers a store only to see it’s not and then go to find the website. Maybe someone will, maybe in the future more of us will, but we are not there yet.

Then we find the company website in our phones, so we checking out, zooming in and out, scrolling around, waiting for the page to load, only to find out that no, I really do not want to buy anything in my cellphone on this page because there is to much of a hassle.

But once in a while, we find those mobile webpages, that sure has a link to the main page, but mostly are shaved down to the most necessary functionality to fit easy in the phone, and we get tempted into buying, right there, on the metro or where ever we might be.

The only problem is that most companies want us to buy with credit card instead of pay pal, and in Sweden this mean that most have to go through “verified by visa”, and when do we ever have that little extra thing for security banking in the bag. Never! Screwed again.
Companies are really making it difficult to bring sales into the cellphones, and it could be so easy!

  • A mobile page & a easy/portable pay option. (Maybe – book now, pay with your email confirmation)

Example; where would you prefer to buy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Business development Tagged With: , ,

Why you should always make career choices based on having fun

February 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When you come to crossroads in you career it easy to start to questioning your focus. Because there are many reasons to take a job, leave a job or switch jobs. But in the end there is only one that matters, having fun.

Thus, here are (to start with) 5 reasons to always choose fun!

  1. First, and obviously, you will have fun 40 hours/week (At least!)
  2. You never know what will happen tomorrow, so make sure you have fun today.
  3. Enjoying what you do (aka having fun) often equalizes a higher performance
  4. Your colleagues will like to work with you, as you are passionate about what you do.
  5. Taking the “normal” or “planned” route could lead you to the top,
    but it might not and then you might have spent your time not having fun while finding out.
Filed Under: Career development Tagged With:

Stop saying that it is not part of your job – and learn something new!

February 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

For most of us parts of our job includes developing, using and taking decisions about things that does not belong to our main specialty. If could be anything from ordering IT systems to defining how to profile a product in the market or something completely different.

In these situations we have two choices. We can either try to limit the situation down to what we do know and decide from there.  People who think like this often say “I don’t know about this, and this is not part of my job.” Or we can try to understand the situation to the extent that we feel confident about what we take a decision about.

I argue that it cannot come much good from the first alternative. It might be the simple solution and if we’re lucky, it might even turn in to good things But most of the time I think that making decisions this way will only come back to haunt us. With things that need to be changed or fixed, and many times cost us more than what the time to fully understand would have.

The other way is far better in the long run I say. But it does take a lot more effort, time and energy. As it expect you to constantly wider your knowledge. However, by always trying to think everything trough and understand the whole picture you will probably end up saving time in the end.

So please people, stop saying that it is not part of you job, you might actually end up learning something from it. And that is when inspiration strikes!

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Career development Tagged With: , ,

No more multitasking – just answering is the key to productivity

February 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Multitasking or doing one thing at the time. Working early in the morning or working-out before work. The theories on how to be most productive are many and sure you can try all of them to see which makes you most productive. However, it is my firm believe that everyone has their own way of accomplishing their highest degree of productivity and it this does not necessarily mean that it won’t change depending on the circumstances.

Having that said, I thought I would share one of the thing that many people ask me about. “How the h**l do you have time for everything?” I’m believe in completing one task at the time to do them at the fullest, but I also believe that you should never let your team members wait for an answer of a question you can answer in less than 15 minutes. (Which might be why a colleague one’s reminded me to answer an email I’ve received 8 hours earlier)

My theory is this: If I am focused on one thing and trying to fix this and I get stuck because I need information or knowledge from one of my team members, I tend to want it as soon as possible rather than the next day. That might mean that my colleagues have a similar idea.

Giving is getting – or what do they say? If I learn how to answer their questions while still focus on my bigger task, I can help them stay focused and the processes can continue while I’m not focusing on the exact same thing as they do. As an example, imagine that you have two project running parallel with different people on them. If I can answer a quick question for project B, that one can keep going while I’m focusing on project A.

Thinking like this have made risen my level of productivity significantly for a number of reasons:

1. Projects I work on rarley “get stuck”

2. People tend to answer my questions fast as I do the same for them

3. I can have many things running parallel

Sure this have it’s down-sides as well. As an example, people tend to ask me questions they know that others can answer as well, simply because they know that I’m likely to answer faster.

Either way, try once or twice to think like this when you are really focused on what you’re doing and “you” might be able to get even more things done.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Time to focus on native traffic?

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When learning about social media and SEO, while blogging a lot, it is easy to focus on how to optimes post to work for these media. Writing titles what people react on and want to read more about on twitter as well as tagging the post with the proper tags for SEO, you’ve probably read all the tips.

But thinking about it, too little time is spend on how to get people to return to your blog and coming back because they recognize the name and the look. Maybe they don’t begin to subscribe the first time they read something they like, maybe not the second either. But if I find a blog three times that is producing material I enjoy, I will begin to follow it.

I’m writing about subject that a lot of other bloggers do too (though, I guess most topics are frequently blogged now) but add to that that the field is marketing and business development, then most of the authors have skills in these fields and know how to spread their blog. This means that both search terms and followers are difficult to compete with if you don’t create unique content.

Therefore I believe that more time should be spent on getting native traffic. How do you get people to return to you blog? Quality content, unique content, curiosity. You name it! I will try to focus on those things when I blog this year, we will see how it goes.

Filed Under: Web development Tagged With: , , ,

Thoughts on transparency

February 7, 2011 By 2 Comments

Tonight I sat down with miss Sara Öhman and discussed a few social media topics as a preparation for tomorrow’s lecture. One of the things mentioned (ofcourse!) was transparency and eventhough we decided not to continue discussing it,  it got me thinking.

What does it really mean to be transparent? The first thing I think about is sharing and full-disclosure. But more than that you also have to think about the amount. Am I more transparent if I update everything I do during the day? Or am I more transparent if I occasionally share everything? Can I say that I am transparent if I don’t share everything all the time?

For me transparency is about not hiding things. If someone feeds me their every step it might even be more difficult to see who they really are, because of the information overload. Regardless of what some might say, there is something called too much information!

My conclusion is that if you are totally transparent: you allow yourself to share anything but you don’t share everything.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Social Media Tagged With: ,

Introverted leaders doesn’t have proactive workers, good listeners do!

February 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

I just finished reading an article from the December issue of Harvard Business Review called “The hidden advantages of quiet bosses”. The article discusses the benefits of introverted leaders compared to extraverted leaders and focuses on who will have the most proactive workers.

The author Adam M. Grant argues that introverted leaders makes better leaders as they have more proactive workers. While extraverted leaders have less proactive workers as they tend to feel threatened by them. I cannot help but find this quite a strange claim because in my mind, workers do not become proactive because they have the room to be proactive. They do it because they feel encouraged and inspired to do so. Sure leader who feels threatened will not have proactive workers but I do not think being extraverted means feeling threatened by proactivity. I find that a big generalization.

Instead I want to argue that leaders that are good listeners are those who will have the most proactive workers. Because they will not only allow a worker to be proactive but they have a higher chance of encouraging their workers to be proactive as they will feel that they are noticed for it. Leaders which are good listeners will give workers the space and attention necessary to become proactive.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , ,

The one rule that must apply to all web stores

February 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I cannot help but wonder sometimes how website administrators cannot spend more time on usability for the customers. I now that many bigger developments takes time, but how come I visited at least 5 different webstores selling curtains the other day without one sorting on length.

I started to think about this and how many websites there are that seems to over look things like this, they miss some of these functions that would make all the difference. I also though how seldom it is that you go in to the webstore you’re working with and actually try to make a purchase from the eyes of a customer and even more how you always know to much to be blank.

So how are you supposed to know what they will be looking for when it is obvious to you? There is one simple rule that has to be counted for.

Every feature that identifies a product should also be included in the way that you sort or search for products.

For clothes it can be size, fit, colour, gender, style, occation, lable, fabric and so on.
For  curtains, it should defiantly be type, length, colour, fabric and maybe lable.

If you will find these categorizations when you go in to the specific product, you also have to be able to find that product by sorting it out. If you want to benchmark to something look at technical specifications of a product such as a computer and a camera and to the same for what every product you are selling. I assure you it will help your customers find what they are looking for.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , ,
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