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Tips

Get Past The Roadblocks To Creative Concepts

Sometimes the ideas just don’t come. You don’t have to be a cartoonist or a novelist to need fresh ideas; every job calls on us to find creative solutions from time to time. When you’re not feeling the magic, look for these common causes of “imagination block”:

Inside the box thinking
You may be looking for familiar solutions to the same old problems. Get into the habit of questioning all your assumptions and looking at situations from different angles.

For instance, instead of asking, “How can we sell this product to our customers?” try, “What would make a customer reject this product?” and build your solution around eliminating that objection.

Fear of…
Maybe you’re afraid of failure. Or the commitment a solution might call for. Or perhaps you’re aware that the best idea will require you to do things you’re not comfortable with.

Confront your fears head on, and identify why they’re paralyzing you. Most of the time you can overcome them if you break them down into manageable elements.

Lack of knowledge
Take a look at your subject. If it’s unfamiliar, you may not know enough detail to generate any relevant ideas. Do more homework.

Or if you’re casting about for a completely new idea, devote time to studying something outside your usual area of expertise without looking for a flash of inspiration. Often, exploring a new field will generate unexpected connections between existing projects.

Overabundance
Sometimes the problem is that you’ve got so many partial ideas that you can’t choose just one to develop.

Try picking one at random and working on that alone until you’ve either got a solid project or you reject it for being unworkable. Or step back and look at your priorities so you can choose the option that suits your needs best.

Twitter Writing Tips

Writing on Twitter is by necessity an exercise in brevity, and it may surprise you to find out that B2B marketing can actually be quite effective even when you can use a maximum of only 120 characters.

Here is an important tip: just stick to the facts. Long titles may be SEO friendly, but more than likely they will just get lost on Twitter, where they simply do not work. Titles need to be short, to the point and appealing.

On Twitter it is not a bad thing to be familiar; messages with a famous quote, a hit song or a piece of pop culture often resonate.

Tweets that carry with them some kind of positive connotation will give your message extra impact.

This does not mean, however, that you can just copy text outright, so exercise some discretion.

Being timely is also important on Twitter. You are writing for a real-time audience, and any message needs to be in tandem with the current interests of your followers. Remember, he who hesitates on Twitter is truly lost.

Plan Your Workday’s Start For Maximum Efficiency

Your first few minutes at work can set the tone for the entire day, so don’t waste them. Here are some tips for launching a productive day from the very start:

• Arrive on time. Nothing throws you off your game like having to catch up with everyone else. Get the rest you need, and give yourself plenty of time to show up when you need to be there.

• Settle in smoothly. Don’t take too much time for this. Spend just a few minutes reviewing your to-do list (updated the night before!) and checking in with your boss and employees. Plan your day, but be ready for interruptions as they arise.

• Check messages—briefly. Don’t bother answering every email and phone message you’ve received since yesterday. Review them quickly, deal with any that require immediate attention, and then move on.
• Think. Your brain is fresh in the morning, so use it to make plans. Review your long-term goals as well as your most urgent tasks for the day, and spend a little time analyzing your priorities so you can put your energy where it will do the most good.

• Choose your most important task first. This may be the task you least want to do, but putting it off will only distract you and drain your energy. Look over your to-do list and pick the job that will have the biggest impact, and take it on while you’ve got maximum energy and the fewest interruptions.

• Plan a break. Don’t push yourself to stay at peak energy all day. Schedule a quick break at some point in the morning so you can double-check your priorities, revise your plans, and get a little rest to prepare for the rest of the day. Enjoy a “brain snack” such as trail mix, peanut butter and toast, or hummus and vegetables.

Easy Tips To Secure Windows 8 Devices

With cybercrime on the rise, even the brand-new Windows 8 can leave a person vulnerable – which means it is important to know how to protect your devices from the moment you get them.

The good news is that this is not difficult if you follow a few simple tips.

You should commit to security from the very beginning; password-protect your new device immediately, connect to a Wi-Fi network you know is secure and register your device.

A number of companies such as NortonLive PC Quick Start will enable you to get your brand-new device up and running, easily and safely.

It is also important to be careful when choosing apps. All apps are allowed a certain level of access to private information, but some may use this in a malicious manner.

Make sure you read the user agreement to prevent giving the manufacturer rights you aren’t comfortable with, such as letting it into your social network and accessing a friend list. All your apps, email, bank accounts and social networks should be protected with complex passwords that you do not share with anyone.

Avoid Vexing Your Boss With These Workplace Fouls

You don’t have to be a toady to get ahead at work, but staying on your boss’s good side is a positive strategy. Smart employees do their best to steer clear of these management pet peeves:

• Tardiness/excessive absenteeism. Managers can’t make plans if they don’t know when—or if—you’re going to show up for work. Do your best to be on time and stay healthy.

• Procrastination. Don’t waste time. Managers depend on you to get timely results, not make excuses for lateness. If you run into a problem, tell your manager right away so he or she can plan accordingly.

• Drama. This can include gossip, turf battles, and constant sniping between employees. Stay focused on getting your job done in a professional manner no matter what personal issues might intrude.

• Dishonesty. If a manager can’t trust you to tell the truth, your whole working relationship is likely to crash and burn. Tell your boss what’s going on, even if it’s bad news. A good manager will appreciate your truthfulness.

• Insubordination. Few managers will tolerate an employee who openly challenges him or her for very long. Learn the difference between raising issues and making trouble. Even when you disagree with your manager, do it with tact.

• Negativity. An employee who’s constantly complaining, or always pointing out the down side of every decision, isn’t helping his or her boss. You don’t have to put on a Pollyanna act, but do your best to be positive about what’s happening in your workplace to show your boss that you’re a team player and that you can get along well with coworkers.

Business To Business Sales: Listening Is Key

One of the best pieces of advice when it comes to the world of B2B is for salespeople to actually listen to their customers.

At present, this is not always the case. But clients and customers really want you to listen to them and gain a real understanding of their needs, situation and requirements, and it is your job to do that by listening actively to what they have to say.

Many B2B salespeople have a particular behavioral style or may even have been trained to focus on presentation and talking.

Unfortunately, sometimes this style actually prevents them from listening to what their customers are really trying to tell them.

Listening as a sales skill is taken for granted far too often. Some people may even believe they have a natural gift for it – a perspective that can mean they put very little effort or time into learning how to listen properly.

While it is important to listen to the customer first, when it comes time for your pitch, engaging the customer with your storytelling skills is one of the most crucial tools in a salesperson’s skill set.

Being able to capture the imagination of your customers and to engross them in your tale can very quickly give you an enormous competitive edge over your rivals.

It’s Time To Get Your Business Ready For 2013!

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Thankfully, black Friday and cyber Monday are over. As we settle in for the rest of the holiday rush and start looking toward 2013, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and miss out on some important, year-end activities.

Here are a few reminders to help you stay on top of your IT needs and systems in the new year.

Set Goals
Now is the time to get your team together and set achievable goals for 2013. Discuss issues and successes that happened in the last year and how you are going to use this information to make things run smoother in the coming year.

It makes sense to have your IT consultant participate in these meetings – we have insight into what’s coming up in the networking, cloud and server spaces, as well as practical expertise on getting the most from your IT investment.

Promote open communication so your team members can voice their ideas, concerns, suggestions, and feedback. This way, everyone will be part of the goal-setting process and know their responsibilities for the year ahead.

Update your website
Is your site ready for the New Year? This means that you need to update the copyright dates to 2013 on the appropriate content, install current updates to your software applications, check terms and privacy conditions, and more.

These are little things that are easy to forget, but they can mean a huge difference in the message you send to customers and advertisers. Plus, they can help protect your legal rights too.

Communicate
As the business owner, it’s important to keep your entire organization aware of upcoming plans and changes.

Inform all staff members what is going on with technology, your plans for the upcoming year and what they can do to help.

Keeping everyone in the loop avoids unnecessary issues from escalating into major problems. Share information to improve processes and increase working relationships throughout the entire organization.

Are you ready for 2013?
It’s a busy time of year for everyone, but don’t let that get in the way of your IT and business planning for 2013.

Set achievable goals with your team, and review all of the key issues from the past year. Make updates to your Website so that you protect your information legally and present current messaging to your customers.

And be sure to communicate your plans with everyone in your organization. This way, you’ll save time and money, as well as avoid confusion. Starting the year with a firm plan will put your business on the road to success in 2013.

What Your Company Can Do To Cook Up New Ideas

Most companies recognize that innovation and creativity are vital to their survival, but they don’t know how to plan projects that will bring the quantum leaps they’re looking for.

Design specialist Heather M. A. Fraser, in her book Design Works (Rotman-UTP Publishing), describes three essentials every business needs to generate productive innovation:

Empathy
To create products or improve services, you need to understand what your customers (or even your employees) want.

They won’t always tell you; sometimes they don’t know themselves. That means you’ve got to develop your knowledge from the inside out.

Learn everything you can about their business needs, their personal goals, their failures, and their successes, regardless of whether any of those data seem to apply to your areas of expertise at first.

What you collect can lead your organization’s imagination in unexpected directions. Before the introduction of the iPod, for example, few people realized they wanted “a thousand songs in their pocket.”

Visualization
Take what you’ve learned and add it to what your organization can do.

Brainstorm as many ideas as you can, in practical terms but without limiting yourself to what’s easy or what you’ve done before. Combine ideas and concepts that don’t obviously go together, and look for ways to maximize your strengths—always with an eye on what your customers really want.

Strategy
This is where innovation can bog down unless you’re careful to select ideas that fit with your overall business objectives and strategy. Some companies pursue too many promising ideas at once, never perfecting any of them. Others design a great new product that doesn’t apply to their market and that they don’t know how to sell.

Be creative, but be rigorous in your analysis of what the market needs and what you’re capable of delivering. Then get to work.

Healthy Aging Tips From WebMD

A recent poll of centenarians, grouped with people who are over 65, conducted by WebMD found that there were a number of tips that they believed were very important to aging in a healthy manner and maintaining a youthful outlook on life.

One of those tips is to maintain strong relationships with family and friends, and another is to keep learning new things throughout your life and ensure that your mind stays active in the process.

Centenarians also believe that it is important to maintain a sense of humor and laugh a lot as well as to look forward to each and every new day with a sense of optimism and purpose.

Exercising, keeping moving and staying active were also viewed as vital, as were making healthy nutritional choices in terms of food consumption, keeping up with the latest news and current events, and maintaining a sense of independence.

This Thanksgiving, Pass The “Storytelling Fork”

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Plan on getting together with friends and family this Thanksgiving? Then pass the “storytelling fork” and you’ll create incredible memories that no one will forget!

This tradition is a variation of the “talking stick,” which is an old Native American tradition used in council circles to give everyone a chance to speak.

When matters of great concern came before the council, the leading elder would hold the talking stick and begin the discussion. When he finished, he would hold out the talking stick, and whoever wished to speak after him would take it.

In this manner, the stick was passed from one individual to another until all who wished to speak had done so.

The stick was then passed back to the leading elder for safe keeping. They believe that whomever holds the stick is imparted with the sacred power of words.

So how can you use this as a fun Thanksgiving tradition for your family?

Before everyone leaves the dinner table, bring out your “storytelling fork” and request that everyone tell a story as a small payment for the meal they’ve just enjoyed.

To make it fun, tie a red ribbon around a silver serving fork and hold it up for everyone to see.

Say, “This is a magic Thanksgiving fork. Although it seems like an ordinary serving fork, it has special powers that will imbue the holder with amazing storytelling ability. When you hold this fork, memories and fun stories of people and places you’ve seen will come flooding into your mind. When you hold this fork, everyone will listen.”

Start by giving them a story of your own. Maybe you can talk about the day your children were born. Tell stories of your childhood or previous Thanksgiving meals.

Talk about how you met your spouse or an old friend, teacher, or mentor who had a big impact on your life.

Or talk about the funny habits or quirks of family members who have passed away. Then, pass the fork for others to do the same.

Kids will love the attention they get when telling a story, and you’ll have several memories that will last forever!