The New Blog

This blog has moved at: http://braincharger.net/blog. Finally, I am happy to announce my new blog's address after some days of existence and trial. This blog will still remain online -as a monument ;) - but I will not write new posts here. Click on the next image to visit my brand new blog:

moving....

This blog is in the process of moving to its own domain. This is a move that I was planning long time ago although commitments delayed the project a lot. It's a great step for me that also has a cost (such as a good number of visits that come from organic searches of marketing and CSR related topics). I hope the new blog will gain better results over time. Stay tuned to find out more.

Environmentally speaking…

This is a special post because it responds to the request of BlogActionDay for a blog post in every blog around the world that will cite an environmental issue (of the bloggers’ choice) for today: Monday 15 of October of 2007.

Because of the fact that my blog is related with business issues, I will discuss about CSR initiatives. Corporate Social Responsibility can take many and various forms; one very important aspect of CSR can relate to corporate environmental “sensitivity”. Many corporations globally choose to focus their corporate social initiatives and programs in the protection and sustainability of the environment. Some very common environmental initiatives may be the following:

• Recycling various materials (print paper, glass, plastic)
• Reduction of Energy consumption (power saving policies, use of technological innovations)
• Reforestation (of burned forests)
• Cleaning of the sea and the coastline
• Fighting global warming (reduction of CO2 emissions, etc.)

Environmental initiatives are most likely to be undertaken by large corporations with industrial activities. This is because such corporations usually pollute or deteriorate the environment and they now realize the outcome of their actions and the future impact they will have on the lives of all living beings. Large industrial corporations take on these initiatives to improve their brand name by “compensating society for their deeds”. These corporations start to use air filters that decrease air pollution and toxic gas emissions, they implement power saving tactics such as low energy consumption devices, they use recycled raw materials e.g. recycled paper, glass, etc. Moreover they infuse that environmental friendly philosophy in their employees to act respectively both in their workplace and in their private lives.

On the other hand there is a great number of heavy industrial units that do not compromise with laws and environmental policies. They often evade law procedures and engage into lobbying tactics to avoid acts against them. Sometimes the only powerful weapon against those kind of corporations is branding. People are getting more concerned about environmental issues in recent times and they start to demand firms not to pollute and act in accordance with nature. The consumer has great power and should start boycotting the former type of corporations. Only then top management in these unethical corporations will realize the deterioration in their brand name and may start implementing environmental friendly policies.

What a leader is…

A leader is someone completely different from a manager. Manager is the person who uses technical and scientific knowledge to govern and rule an organization or handle a situation / project. Leader is actually the most inspiring and influencing person of a company. Leaders are people that motivate others to work better and improve in all aspects of their lives. Leaders can effectively unite different kinds of: people, working habits, trends and goals.


Leader is the supervising – managerial person that when he/she leaves his/her working floor, the employees there, keep working!

When corporations deny free advertising…

I wonder why sometimes –well, actually many times, corporations deny free advertising. This happens all the time when a university or post-graduate student chooses a corporation as a case study for a subject. They deny to give information about the company and its activities. I certainly understand that some information is confidential and classified and they cannot reveal it but there are many things that they can pass to a student or a group which chooses that corporation as their assignment.

This is the way I think, correct me if I am wrong:

When a student or a group approach me I would at least be kind enough to listen to them. When they say that they chose me as their assignment that would be a great occasion for my company because they know my company and they respect it. They chose ME! They prefer to study me because either I have conquered their hearts or at least I have an impact (even a negative one) on them. That is publicity; and it’s free. By all means I don’t want to waste it! I will release the information that is not confidential and with great pleasure, as a matter of fact. That information will not go to the competition; that would be presented in a class full of potential customers. Many students will hear about me, they will get aware of me, they will learn about my tactics, they will remember me when they purchase relevant products and ideally they will switch brands. Actually the student or the group of students, with this assignment may switch brand because they will inevitably get highly involved. Even if they are already buying my products now, at least I have that information available and I have built some relations.

In most cases corporate managers deny that information either out of luck of time -customer acquisition and public relations seems to them like a waste of time!!!- Or they just don’t care! They usually don’t even deny that information kindly; they just ignore you like they want to irritate you as much as possible. Well Done! You turn your prospective customers into enemies which will never buy again from you and furthermore they will spread negative publicity about you!

Bits of Knowledge Post Series (less than 100 words)

Post 1: Blog Monetization
There are three main ways to monetize on your blog. Firstly, you can put advertising from a major advertising network (such as Google Adsense, Adbrite, BlogAds, etc.) and earn by clicks or impressions. Secondly, you can sell affiliate products, that is other people products and services and earn a commission. Thirdly you can sell your own products and services.

Bits of Knowledge Post Series (less than 100 words)

“Bits of knowledge” are a new type of blog posts that I will initiate. They are small posts with less than 100 words and they have an educational purpose. There is a lot of knowledge out there but one can easily get confused with all that education super-supply; “bits of knowledge” cut that clutter with condensed valuable information. I find that this new concept of mine is very useful, because one can learn something new or revise something already known, very easy, fast and mostly effortless. I hope you will find them useful too!

Networking

This is a call for comments post!!!

I have found many networking sites and webservices and I guess that they all have great features and services. Some of most distinguished are: LinkedIn, Facebook, Ryze, ZeroDegrees, Tagged, Orkut, Ziki, etc. I realize that it is almost impossible to register and be active to all of those. You may have to register to 2-3 but you cannot cope with more. Moreover I guess it’s extremely time consuming and requires a lot of effort to try all of these and find the best so I would like some feedback out of your experiences about the above and other networking webservices. Which do you prefer and why? Are there any special features in one of them that the rest are lacking? I am looking forward to building my profile into a professional way and I would like to know your educated views and opinions. Please leave your comments (which of the above do you personally use and why).

BusinessBalls

I have discovered a great site that I wanted to share with you. It’s called Business Balls (visit it at: businessballs.com). You will find there a great collection of articles about sales, marketing, management, HR and other business topics. Moreover there are lots of downloadable business tools and resources like PDF documents and MS office documents like word, excel and powerpoint. That collection is really huge and great. You can find a lot of templates, matrices and other cool stuff for business organization, better planning, reporting and feedback. Do pay a visit there and you will be really amazed like I was!

Why Second Life is a great marketing tool?

Note: This is not a thorough list but some quick thoughts that just occurred to me.

Because it is very unlikely that someone will randomly visit an unknown site (that is yours) to him/her. In second life someone may wander around and come across your virtual office or home.

Because it can be suited both for high and low involvement products and services: It can generate sales of products and services that are usually bought on an impulse (commodities, low involvement, etc). On the other hand it can create increased brand loyalty and preference (even brand awareness) for high involvement products (When someone visits one major brand’s store, a real shopping experience may be simulated).

Because everyone could freely network, join groups, make connections with others. In real world and even in other forms of online communication, sometimes things are more (not difficult but) complicated.

Some thoughts about salesmen

Salesmen should be ethical and moral; they should conduct business with integrity. They need to be communicative, to be good listeners, that is to be truly listening to the customer’s needs and to try to fulfill them; they need to be proactive and real costumer’s advisors. I can go on and keep typing salesmen must have traits and characteristics for ever… However the point that I want to make here is the following: Most of these things, the things that a salesmen must have and that without these one is almost bound to fail are not taught or learned in universities and business schools. These are not knowledge and education but personality characteristics and qualities that one should have or at least try to cultivate. I really don’t know in which degree sales can be taught and universities can train successful salespeople. I think that not everyone can become a salesman since not all people have the necessary personality traits and characteristics that are critical for such a job. One may learn all the sales techniques (from the basic to the most advanced) and still fail, while another one may not even attend a seminar about sales and be a brilliant salesman.