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.

Networking & PR Planning

Public Relations are very important no matter one’s profession. Especially in sales, PR is really crucial. The most successful sale process involves making one stranger as an acquaintance, then transforming him/her into a friend and then into a customer. Sales from people that you have not transformed into friends are not repeated. You need to be remarkably good and in order to achieve that you need a loyal clientele. Another thing you need to bare in mind is the fact that you may not be a salesman but you always sell. If you are a doctor you sell health services, if you are a lawyer you sell legal services if you are a writer you sell books and thoughts, etc. Every job involves selling so every professional needs a customer base. Such a base can be build through networking and a good PR plan. So organize yourself and start: building connections, strengthening your weak relations (people you haven’t spoken for months), reinforcing your current affairs and acquainting new ones.

I have recently come to realize that a good pr planning actually requires having a specific list of contacts that you need to communicate each day. So, I sorted each of my contacts into groups based on a scale of significance and then I set a communication frequency for each group according to that scale. From that point it’s easy to organize whom you are going to call or email or meet each day of the week.

Back Again

Finally I am finished with the army. My military obligations are now almost fulfilled. There are a few days left and some typical paperwork and I am done. Freedom again! I hope I will start blogging dynamically again. I have some things to do and some goals that I want to pursuit as regards blogging. First I want to increase my readership: more readers, more loyalty. I want to blog more and be more frequent and consistent in my posts. I will also consider migrating into my own hosting “room”, changing blog title, template & design and making big changes in general. To be honest I have a good idea about that (it includes title, the design and the whole blog), but I will have to re-evaluate the necessity because that will involve a lot of work, effort and costs.

Being free again is great but I think that I have already too many irons into fire. So many things were postponed because of the army and catching up with everything and making amends for the lost time (1 whole year of my life) is really very difficult. So, actually, my claims to be free are only theoretically correct as I am already pursuing too many things and having too many commitments.

Blogger Member for 2 Years!

Wow!!! I just realized that this June I celebrate being a member of Blogger community for 2 years (since June of 2005)! At the same time, since that was my first blog, that means that I am doing this hobby for that long.

I hope I will continue with more frequency, better posts and more readers!

Understanding and Perceiving life

You understand and perceive life through your goals. The goals you set and try to implement. Without these goals life goes by before your eyes and you don’t even realize it. Time goes by and you stay still. I came to realize this the last period in which I am not doing something useful and I don’t contribute to the accomplishment of any goal of mine. Time during that period goes by very quickly and days seem to be almost the same. I do the almost the same things, I relax and rest. Even when I am working without doing something useful, times goes by very quickly too. Only through goals and the progress of them I can conceive time, combine the facts of my life with the respective days and understand advancement and life in general.

How to use traffic exchange to earn money on the internet

Traffic is the most precious thing on the internet. Traffic can generate impressions, sales, can promote ideas, thoughts, can connect people, teams, etc. Traffic exchange is the mutual surfing of other people webpages. Someone sees the content of other people and in exchange other people see what he/she display on his/her website. One can utilize the traffic generated by traffic exchange and earn money through the internet. In this post I will show you some ways to do that.

Sales through traffic
Provided that you surf a lot you get lots of credits to use. Once a credit is used one people visits your website. More traffic leads to more visits. More visits can potentially lead to more sales. If you have a website where you sell products and services you need traffic in order to build sales. If more people visit your online mall, it is more likely that you find people interested in what you sell. So more traffic means more potential customers.

Impressions through traffic
You can use traffic exchange to share ideas, thoughts, to exhibit your talents and your services. If you are an expert in something, you may utilize increased traffic to “sell” yourself. By doing so you may reap potential future benefits. Suppose for example you are a consultant in a specific business area. You can advertise yourself through the net and gain more visibility and recognition. Visibility and recognition will eventually lead to more demand of your services and whatever you have to offer – give – say – etc.

Earning though advertising
On fine and very popular way to monetize on a website is by selling advertising space. There are many web services providing every website owner the opportunity to host ads of their clients. Traffic Exchange may boost the traffic of such a site. If the visits to a website that hosts ads will increase so will the advertising earnings. One can either earn through the visits of other traffic exchange users or through any clicks to the ads (that are more likely to be clicked when the traffic is increased).

CSR and True Devotion…

Here is a tough question: Is it really possible for a firm to show real devotion to a cause or social initiative? I mean real and authentic interest. Do you believe that this can be the case? Most of the companies that have implemented a CSR program claim that they are truly interested in solving or contributing to a social problem. They do not cite as their main reason for a CSR campaign the branding and marketing benefits that by all means seek. I personally believe that almost all the companies that are involved in a corporate social responsibility initiative and cause have as their prime goal branding and marketing benefits. However, in this pursuit for differentiation and advantage they can make a truly great impact in the society. I also hold the opinion that there might be a very small percentage of corporations that are devoted to a cause because of the cause itself and not for all the potential (marketing and branding) benefits that they may reap.

Blogging for Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Blogs can disclose information about the firm’s social responsibility campaigns and initiatives. Such actions deliver very effective messages to a greatly wide range of stakeholders. Social Responsibility Initiatives and Programs add a really great value in a brand name. The whole process may be done with a formal or an informal way of blogging and the disclosure of information may be delivered with the same style.


Some examples

• Regular posting on everyday initiatives’ progress

• Posting about some major and minor events

• Posting about new initiatives undertaken

• Posting about weekly – monthly aims / goals and their results

• Posting thoughts and ideas for new initiatives or improving old campaigns

• Posting meetings’ outcomes

• Posting self-assessment on how one is contributing on a CSR initiative

• Posting about how a team devoted to a social cause works together

• Posting about tough problems and challenges that appear and need solutions

Interactivity

A blog about corporate social responsibility enable great interactivity and feedback from every potential stakeholder group and that can become a strategic competitive advantage that will take a corporation a step ahead of even the most innovative and creative (in terms of CSR and marketing) competitors.

Input

There is a great increase in the recent number of posts on my blog. I realize that this is the outcome of a lot of input in the last few weeks. I also realize that this input comes from the fact that the camp that I am transferred now is near a city while my previous camp was on a very small village. While I am out of the camp and wandering around the city I see a lot of things and these things may trigger my thoughts. Even the most trivial thing or fact can lead to a chain of thoughts and ideas which may gradually evolve to something bigger. On the other hand, living in a small village can greatly restrain your thought, outcome and your potentials; unfortunately that’s a very dangerous situation for one’s personal development.

Professional blogging

Blogging for money or fame? There are two types of professional bloggers: Those who blog for money and those who blog to brand their businesses or themselves.

The former earn money mainly from advertising and sales. They advertise through an advertising network such as google Adsense, BlogAds, etc, or they manually arrange advertising deals.
The later blog about products, services and information that they sell through their blog or another linked site. The sales model may be consisted of their own made products or affiliate products.

Welcome to the free world

Welcome to the new world of free products, services and information. This is the concept that governs the web 2.0 and the new media. It has started being implemented in the offline world too. This is the outcome of too much production and offer and a modern sales technique. Actually all those free stuff eventually lead to the generation of more sales. This may sound somehow contradictory but as soon as the reasoning is explained it is obvious. Free stuff works as a lure. All that wealth of information can help a potential customer to decide if a product or service is suitable for him/her. Moreover it can be a dynamic presentation on the salesman toolbox.

Examples
Let’s give two examples to make the above statement more clear and comprehensible; one concerning an online business and one concerning the regular offline business. The online example: suppose you want to market / sell a new piece of software, you can write an ebook or a series of posts, videos, podcasts, etc. about the procedure or the function that the software you sell does. Then you can connect the written procedure or function with your software (via link or reference) and have an effective sales and marketing tool. The offline example (just to show that this technique is exactly as efficient as in the online world) might be the following: you have a marketing firm specialized in public relations, you can provide a sort of free services as a starting series of PR campaigns and in order to start a potential client base and to create a relationship with them.

Future Predictions
The trend of “everything is free” will continue to grow rapidly in terms of customer consumption and marketing technique. Each of those products, services and pieces of information will have a referring part that is the underlying hidden marketing / sales message.