Crowd-Sourcing - cartoon

We don't sell products; we sell the marketplace. And by 'sell the marketplace' we mean 'play shooters, sometimes for upwards of 20 hours straight.'

Read more: xkcd Cartoons

Lessons on teamwork from really bad team members

The best managers understand that effective leaders are also solid team players. The workplace is filled with capable teammates, even some who take initiative, overdeliver and inspire colleagues.

Unfortunately, there’s also the occasional employee who has no idea how to collaborate or communicate effectively.

Such poor performers aren’t entirely useless, though. They offer some of the most poignant lessons on teamwork and leadership.

Here are seven things failing team members do and what you can learn from them.

1. Complain about everyone and everything. The worst co-workers are often the most negative ones. Employees who complain regularly about others — or about circumstances in general — do little to help the team and much to hurt it. The most effective team members stay positive and find good ways to provide feedback.
2. Gossip regularly (about work or personal issues). Nothing breeds distrust and paranoia like gossiping in the workplace. Team members who spread — or worse, start — rumors are literally sowing the seeds of discord. The best team members and leaders express an interest in colleagues’ personal life bust respect everyone’s privacy and dignity.
3. Hoard knowledge. There’s nothing wrong with a lust for learning, but ineffective team members often accumulate as many secrets as possible and are loath to share helpful information with co-workers. Hoarders think their unique knowledge is valuable, but they don’t realize that unshared knowledge is useless. The best team members establish themselves as experts by becoming go-to resources in their field of specialization.
4. Talk almost completely about themselves. There’s nothing wrong with self-promotion and increasing your visibility at work, but poor team members take this quality to a fault. They’re especially likely to use words such as “I” and “me” and take individual credit for their team’s success. On the other hand, the best teammates promote their team’s success, ask lots of questions, know when to listen and use words such as “we” and “us.”
5. Play the blame game. Every team member — from executive to entry-level employee — should learn to take responsibility for his or her actions. By casting blame, workers actually diminish their sphere of influence, personal autonomy, others’ trust in them and colleagues’ respect. The most successful team members take responsibility for success and failure and right any mistake if possible.
6. Look for reasons to exclude people. Some teammates try to create small, insular groups and find every reason to limit the size and definition of their team. Such focus on exclusivity only limits the team’s perspective and options. High-performing teams cast the widest net possible and examine every reasonable solution or resource.
7. Lack empathy. It might be easy for some workers to lose sight of their teammates’ feelings, but there’s almost never a good excuse for doing so. The worst team members show an actively callous disregard for colleagues’ well-being. On the other hand, the most successful ones keep lines of communication open, pay attention to colleagues and make themselves as approachable.

If you want to become an effective, brilliant team member, take a look at your poorest-performing teammates and do the opposite.

Once you master the skills of clear and effective communication, building positive relationships at work, promoting yourself and teammates, and taking responsibility for your actions, you’ll be on your way to becoming a highly effective team leader.

Managing water - YouTube

Social sciences have given us a new understanding of how societies are managing natural resources such as water supply.

A research project under the Sustainable Practices Research Group, led by Professor Mark Harvey, is exploring our management and consumption of drinking water in the UK and across the globe.

Facebook Contest Ideas to Benefit Small Businesses

Facebook contests are becoming good marketing strategies for businesses of any size. You’ve probably heard Facebook success stories from big brands with large budgets.

They often have elaborate landing pages, TV commercials, paid blog posts and celebrity endorsements.

What about the small business that doesn’t have thousands to spend? This list is for you.

1.  Tie your contest into current events
Clothing company PLNDR gave a unique twist to the NCAA. Instead of basketball teams facing off against each other, they had brands submit T-shirt designs and let them battle on Facebook.

The designer with the most “likes” moved to the next round. As a result, PLNDR's Facebook page grew 800 percent—look at their chart on this blog post.

TimetoPlayMag.com tied their contest into a holiday with a virtual Easter Egg hunt. They hid five Easter eggs on their website each day, for a total of 15 days.

The first player to find an egg and click on it won a $20 Toys"R"Us gift card. All of the clues and hints to find the eggs were posted on Facebook—smart way to drive people to your site.

2.  Run a photo contest
During the summer, pizza company Fresh Brothers runs contests using their mascot, the Slice (a giant slice of pizza).

They tell fans where and when Slice will be at events, and if they snap a picture with the Slice and post it, they get a gift certificate as a thank you.

Wine website Snooth.com created a Facebook landing page on their Fan page using the Wildfire app. Facebook guidelines say brands should run contests like this through an app.

To promote one of the Australian brand wines, they asked people to submit pictures of people showing their Australian pride.

Fans posted pictures of themselves enjoying the wine and using the Australian recipes from their website.

People voted on the photos, driving new exposure, and as a result, traffic continued even after the contest ended.

3.  Play simple guessing games with your fans
PR firm Sammis & Ochoa runs promotions for two restaurants in Texas. The contests run every Friday at 4 p.m. CDT, which gives them a chance to prep and tell others.

“When we run late, we hear about it,” says CEO Mario Ochoa.

Other game examples:

• A Word Jumble of a local landmark.
• Post a local picture for people to guess where it was taken.
• Guess how many almonds are in the cup.
• Ask a weekly question then randomly choose a fan to reward with a prize.

4.  Ask fans to share their best tips
Hiatus Spa is running a “Be Green and Be Good; Earth Month 2011” Contest. They asked fans to share tips on how to use less resources through this Web page.

The tip with the most unique comments and "likes" wins three Hiatus Spa services. “The great thing is that this has really been fun and people are sharing wonderful, useful information,” said Jordan Harbinger who helped run the contest.

5.  Collect your fan’s favorite quotes
This is simple and can be applied to just about any business. Laura Ann Allahverdi is a Personal Life Coach who asked her fans to submit their favourite quotes.

The person who got the most likes on their quote got a free session with Laura. She loved how people filled her Wall with inspirational posts and fans got their friends involved in the contest, increasing her exposure to new networks.

6.  Name the local celebrity game
Maia Yogurt said one of their most successful contests was a "local celebrity ID" game. They posted a picture of a local "celebrity", they chose a popular and well-known independent grocery store owner so it helped garner some good will with the people they hoped to contact, and asked their Facebook fans to guess the person’s name to win a free MAIA T-shirt.

7.  Reward “likes”
Again, you must be careful how you do this to fall within Facebook guidelines, but there are many ways to reward people for becoming fans.

Snack and Munch ships boxes of snacks to hungry office workers and college students so they’re ready for the munchies.

To enter their contest, they ask people to “like” their page. They choose a weekly winner who gets a free box of 24 snacks. In the process, they get great feedback about their product.

The company has some solid advice about expectations: “You have to be patient because the success doesn’t come overnight, it takes time and persistent. Persistence is the key, you have to keep on moving forward and not stop.”

LinkedIn Marketing: 7 Tips for the Small Business

LinkedIn has over 135 million members, the majority of whom are professionals, in 200 countries.

For businesses looking to connect with particular industries or specific business demographics, its powerful search facilities and networking opportunities make the most out of a limited marketing budget.

The following LinkedIn tips will help you focus on the network’s potential;

1. Listen to your market
LinkedIn Groups can essentially provide you with free market research if you spend time browsing in the right places.

Once you have identified your target market, you can search for the groups in which people are discussing the sorts of problems or challenges they are facing, or learn more about how they would like to do business.

2. Maximize your profile
Make the most of your company profile by filling in all the sections, including the keywords, which will help others find you.

Be sure to keep all links current and customize what you can. For instance, you can change the URL to be your company name rather than a string of numbers and letters.

You can also upgrade your account to allow you to do more, such as using the InMail service to contact members, get introductions to companies and see more information on potential contacts.

3. Make the most of what you already have
You can use LinkedIn apps to link your blog, portfolio and other content directly into your LinkedIn feed.

You can also upload YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations and other media. Or you can set your Twitter or Facebook updates to post automatically to LinkedIn.

If you do this, however, beware of how you would like your business to be portrayed; frivolous Facebook or Twitter remarks may seem out of place on LinkedIn.

4. Use LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads can offer a low-cost alternative to traditional advertising, with a potentially wider and more targeted reach, including CEOs or senior decision makers. Because of the detail in LinkedIn accounts, LinkedIn Ads can specifically target your demographic by industry, geographic location, seniority, age or LinkedIn Group.

5. LinkedIn recommendations
One of the best ways to build your business’s reputation on LinkedIn is to ask for recommendations from customers, clients or business partners.

Recommendations from others will show up in their profile, meaning that their own network will see it, which gives you a much wider reach than your own network.

You can also use LinkedIn’s Recommendation Ads to have your recommendations placed strategically on your customers’ profiles.

6. Make the most of LinkedIn’s search feature
LinkedIn has detailed search criteria in their Advanced Search, which can help you target your efforts and reach contacts or other networking opportunities in a more focused way.

In addition to keywords, names, location and company, you can also search industries, groups, seniority, experience, function, company size and several other categories.

7. Manage your goals
It is important to realize that, as with any social network, LinkedIn is a tool for connecting but it is only as good as the way you use it.

You can maximize your effort by having clear goals of what you want to achieve, whether it is numbers of client connections, hits to your website, recommendation targets or an increased exposure with a particular demographic.

Keeping your goals in mind can help you focus on where to concentrate your resources and create a more successful outcome.

Being Human - The Anatomy of Boredom

Firstly, Boredom is adaptive as a transient state, but dangerous as a chronic condition.

To tell the difference between the two, psychologists designed this test, known as the Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS) and devised in 1986, as a way of distinguishing between a) those who suffer transient boredom and b) from those who suffer chronic boredom.

The following statements should be answered using a 7-point scale — from ’1′ (highly disagree), to ’4′ (neutral), to ’7 ‘(highly agree).

1. It is easy for me to concentrate on my activities.
2. Frequently when I am working I find myself worrying about other things.
3. Time always seems to be passing slowly.
4. I often find myself at “loose ends”, not knowing what to do.
5. I am often trapped in situations where I have to do meaningless things.
6. Having to look at someone’s home movies or travel slides bores me tremendously.
7. I have projects in mind all the time, things to do.
8. I find it easy to entertain myself.
9. Many things I have to do are repetitive and monotonous.
10. It takes more stimulation to get me going than most people.
11. I get a kick out of most things I do.
12. I am seldom excited about my work.
13. In any situation I can usually find something to do or see to keep me interested.
14. Much of the time I just sit around doing nothing.
15. I am good at waiting patiently.
16. I often find myself with nothing to do, time on my hands.
17. In situations where I have to wait, such as a line I get very restless.
18. I often wake up with a new idea.
19. It would be very hard for me to find a job that is exciting enough.
20. I would like more challenging things to do in life.
21. I feel that I am working below my abilities most of the time.
22. Many people would say that I am a creative or imaginative person.
23. I have so many interests, I don’t have time to do everything.
24. Among my friends, I am the one who keeps doing something the longest.
25. Unless I am doing something exciting, even dangerous, I feel half-dead and dull.
26. It takes a lot of change and variety to keep me really happy.
27. It seems that the same things are on television or the movies all the time; it’s getting old.
28. When I was young, I was often in monotonous and tiresome situations.

To find out your own proneness to boredom, add up the total of the scores you gave each question.

The average score is 99, and the average range 81-117. If you scored above 117, you become bored easily, and if you scored below 81, your boredom threshold is very high.

Researchers have found that some people have a metabolic proneness to chronic boredom, correlated with neurotransmitter imbalances and higher risks for depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, gambling, hostility, low academic performance, and more.

NB: Be cautious in assuming causality; chronic boredom can be just a symptom of these chemical imbalances, along with risk-taking and sensation-seeking, rather than a causative agent.

Meanwhile, those who suffer only transient boredom have been found to perform better in various aspects of life, including work, education, and personal autonomy.

More information
By looking at everything from body language in classical paintings to studies from some of the world’s best neuroscience labs, a book written by Peter Toohey: Boredom: A Lively History, examines boredom as an adaptive mechanism.

It goes on to paint a portrait of boredom that is at once a sweeping cultural observation across time and space and a deeply relatable, personal lens on this most unglamorous yet most universal aspect of what it means to be human.

The 5 Main Types of Facebook Fans and How to Encourage Them

Here are the 5 most common types of Facebook fans that we've all seen while managing communities, and how you can tailor your content to keep them.

1. The Potential Client/Customer
   The potential client or customer is a fan who has heard of your business through something like word of mouth or an advertising campaign, and is intrigued by what you're all about. This type of fan is like a hawk waiting to swoop; the more relevant, interesting, and personal your content, the more likely this fan is to stay on your page and make a purchase - or contact you for business, if you're B2B.
   
   How to Encourage them: Strike a healthy balance with your content that services their needs/wants with a bit of personality. B2C companies can do things like showcase fan reviews, while B2B companies can showcase in-house talent, or show off a "behind the scenes" look at what the office environment is like. Be fun and approachable, and work on exhibiting a voice that mixes thought leadership with friendliness.
   
   
2. The Friend/Employee
   The friend/employee is someone who has liked your page either because they want to support your business, business venture or work with your company. These fans are dangerous because while they raise the quantitative count of your audience, they qualitatively reduce the value of your audience. Employees and supportive friends are less likely to engage with your content, simply because they typically view the "Like" as the end of their transaction.
   
   How to Encourage them: The more important piece of this question isn't how to retain them, but how to engage with them. Borrowing a few tactics from pleasing the Potential Customer/Client can help - B2Cs can highlight certain locations that provide excellent service, and B2Bs can make things personal by recognizing individual employees. Since they already have a personal connection, you can play on it and, if it works out, your other fans will enjoy seeing the faces behind the logo talking about things that are happening.
   
   
3. The Sweepstaker
   Did your page feature an exclusive contest recently? If so, it's a pretty safe bet that some of the newbies to your audience simply liked your page so they could have a chance at winning your giveaway. Often, Sweepstakers have a "one and done" mentality, and once the contest is over, may unlike the page and move on. Other times, these fans might forget they've liked your page until an irrelevant piece of content appears in their newsfeeds, and then they'll purge your page. 
   How to Encourage them: You may be wondering why you'd want to keep such a specific group of people, but the Sweepstakers are more likely to vocalize their excitement for your promotions, and that's free marketing for your page. Don't just post a contest and then forget about it - support it with content they can like. And, as one contest is winding down, hype up others that may be launching soon, or focus on promotions you have outside of Facebook. Provide exclusive deals, like coupon codes, through posts made on random days to increase the chances they'll stick around.
   
4. The Happy Camper
   The Happy Camper is a great fan to have, and most brands see them interact with their Facebook pages regularly. Happy Campers have positive brand sentiments based on great purchases they've made, wonderful customer experiences, and/or childhood memories. If your community is more support-based, they're on your page because they want to come together with other fans to get that feeling of community. They come to your page because your brand or business has already enhanced a part of their lives, and they're passionate about sharing that with you (and other fans) so they get some recognition.
   
   How to Encourage them: Keep their conversations flowing! Thank them, ask them questions, and respond to them when they take it upon themselves to post content to your Timeline without a call to action. Work conversational posts into your content that ask for opinions that these die-hards will be eager to give. Tease upcoming work or new products/promotions with photos, polls, and links to keep their excitement flowing and, if they ever post really unique content to your wall, ask if you can share it from the brand's voice. People love to be recognized and reinforced.
   
   
5. The Fairweather Friend
   The Fairweather Friend is a fan who may like your brand, its services, or a recent product they've purchased, but isn't driven to shout that from the rooftops. They usually like your page to stay current on brand/business news, or to remember your brand/business for a later date, when they'll be seeking what you have to offer. Unlike the Happy Campers and the Potential Client/Customers, though, they're more likely to leave negative feedback if your brand does something they don't like.
   
   How to Encourage them: If they leave concerns or comments on your page, address them head-on. Transparency is key. Understand and embrace what makes them different: they're looking for information, so give it to them. Make relevant appeals, and much like you do for the Potential Client/Customer, show the value of your services to encourage engagement and business transactions outside of Facebook.

Of course, a healthy Facebook page that sees an upward trend of engagement and growth combines all of these content pieces into an overarching strategy. 

But, unless you understand who you're speaking to, you may not know where to begin. Use these profiles as a starting point, and then dive into the analytic tools to get a closer look.

Language: How we gave colours names, and it messed with our brains

Imagine that you had a rainbow-coloured piece of paper that smoothly blends from one colour to the other. This will be our map of colour space.

Now just as you would on a real map, we draw boundaries on it. This bit here is pink, that part is orange, and that’s yellow.

Here is what such a map might look like to a native English speaker.

If you think about it, there’s a real puzzle here.  

Why should different cultures draw the same boundaries?

If we speak different languages with largely independent histories, shouldn’t our ancestors have carved up the visual atlas rather differently?

This question was first addressed by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in the late 1960s.  

They wanted to know if there are universal, guiding laws that govern how cultures arrive at their colour atlas.


Here’s what they found. Languages have differing numbers of colour words, ranging from two to about eleven. Yet after looking at 98 different languages, they saw a pattern.

It was a pretty radical idea, that there is a certain fixed order in which these colour names arise. This was a common path that languages seem to follow, a road towards increasing visual diversity and they suggested that the road looked like this:

The figure above is really telling a story. What it says is this. If a language has just two colour terms, they will be a light and a dark shade – blacks and whites.

Add a third colour, and it’s going to be red. Add another, and it will be either green or yellow – you need five colors to have both and when you get to six colours, the green splits into two, and you now have a blue.

What we’re seeing here is a deeply trodden road that most languages seem to follow, towards greater visual discernment (92 of their 98 languages seemed to follow this basic route).

Critics of Kay and Berlin said they were reading too much from too little. Some argued that their study was too small, that they surveyed too few people from each language.

They also said that study was skewed, as most the languages were from industrialized societies with written scripts. And to top it off, their methods weren’t very quantitative.

To respond to these criticisms, the authors launched what they called the World Colour Survey, a project that started collecting data in the late 1970s. This was a survey of 110 languages, all spoken by pre-industrial societies, many that have no written script.

Read more of this article here: Empirical Zeal

Costs associated with Effective Social Media

There are two ways to execute effective social media marketing:

1. Stand-alone as a distinct separate silo within the company or marketing department
2. Integrated as part of a holistic marketing strategy

The first method – stand-alone Facebook or Twitter marketing – is good for companies with limited resources, who want to drive a small group of customers to take action.

Investing in a small stand alone social program can be $1,500-5,000 a month.

The biggest bang for the buck is from Facebook and Twitter updates which drive traffic to a value-add blog.

Knowing your audience and the different buyers you have, then writing a blog aimed at them once or twice a week is the most effective way to leverage Facebook or Twitter. You can also add a teaser, with a high quality photo on your Facebook site, and Tweet about the blog.

Using Facebook and Twitter to amplify a blog is a long-term strategy that can take 6-12 months to become effective, but once you have the machine working it is very valuable marketing. You build loyal followers and create an advantage not easily taken away.

To jump-start a stand-alone program, Facebook ads drives traffic to your brand page, and Google Ads drives people directly to the blog. These are the quickest way to get some return on your investment, in a short time i.e. a week or two .

For $30-100 a day you can use Facebook, Twitter or Google Ads to amplify your message. Be sure to set dedicated URL’s to analyze traffic using something like Google Analytics, and make sure you try three or four slightly different ads.

This allows you to measure the response rate to the different wording and determine the most effective.

If you are a Fortune 1000 company and have dedicated web and online staff, then Facebook and Social Media marketing should be thoughtfully integrated into your event marketing, product launches and customer service.

For an incremental $100,000 a year you can start to get a much higher ROI from your events and sponsorships. If you allocate $5-10 million to social marketing and have dedicated staff for the social media function you should follow five best practices:

1. Integrate social media with product launch, events, and customer service. (Read more about using social media to drive revenue in a recent blog.)
2. Respond within minutes or hours (not days) to any comments on social media about customer service, product capability, sales locations etc. You need to track your company or product name to do this.
3. Tell a continual story through social media. There should be an ongoing thread, trend and voice to your efforts. This includes showing pictures from your events to give your Facebook fans a sneak-peak at videos and don't forget to use the power of 'crowd sourcing'.
4. Measure and Analyze everything. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Getting great amplification from events through social media  experiences should be compared with direct response from Google Ads and money spent on SEO.
5. Stay educated – Facebook has it’s EdgeRank, Google has it’s SEO algorithm, Twitter has GroupTweet - multi-grouping and all these things change. This will change your strategy on a regular basis. Read a lot about it and attend seminars or find peer groups to keep up to date on best practices.

Some companies are spending $10million plus on social media. They are getting phenomenal returns in part because many of their competitors have not figured it out yet.

Be the first ones in your industry to really leverage it and figure it out and you will reap the rewards but raise your awareness and measure the risks carefully.

7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse

Here are 7 ways to enhance the copy on your profile to ensure that you get everything you want from LinkedIn:

1. It’s all about the headline

Headlines are everything in newspapers, magazines, and on blogs.
They are just as important on your LinkedIn profile, because the headline is the first thing that shows up anytime someone does a search online. A simple way to ensure your headline doesn’t suck is to follow a simple formula.
Tell people specifically:

• Who you are
• Who you help, and
• How you help them

Tell them in the fewest words possible. Make your headline compelling and you’ll increase your chances of more meaningful profile views.

2. Get personal

Although LinkedIn is the “professional” social networking site, you want to reserve the first part of your “Summary” to add a personal note about yourself.

People don’t want to look at a resume with bullet points of past sales achievements (barf!), they want to know a little bit about your background. They want to know who you are.

To achieve this, add a personal intro about your goals, what you’re passionate about, and what you love to do in life.

This small touch of transparency will help you connect on a personal level with anyone who views your profile.

3. Spell check. And then check again.

You probably have no clue how many deals are happening day in and day out on LinkedIn.

I hear success stories all of the time about people landing their dream job, getting hired for a major consulting deal, finding 7 figure investors, receiving major sponsorships, selling out tickets to live events, and more.

The potential for what you can accomplish on LinkedIn is nearly unlimited.

However, I also hear about people who are completely turned off by a prospect with a bare-bones profile, or worse — spelling mistakes. Make sure to spell check everything and have others review it to give you their feedback.

This small step could make all the difference in your interactions on LinkedIn. You know what they say about those first impressions.

4. Make a call to action

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not having a call to action on your LinkedIn profile.

If you spend all of this time crafting a great message but don’t lead the viewer anywhere, all your work will have been for nothing.

In your “Summary”, or in your LinkedIn welcome video make sure to tell people what site they should go to for more information, what number to call to get a free consultation, or the best way to email you.

Don’t leave your potential customers and clients hanging. Give them a place to go next (and a reason to go there).

5. Social proof is powerful proof

Social proof helps influence others into making a “buying” decision.
LinkedIn makes this step easy by providing 3 primary sections to add social proof:

• Education. Adding the college or university you attended provides your education credentials, and increases the value of your personal brand.
• Awards. This section is the one place you can brag about yourself a little. Include any past accomplishments or industry awards you can think of that will increase the value of your profile.
• Recommendations. The more recommendations you have on your profile the better. This is the best form of social proof, as it conveys credibility and authority. The best way to receive recommendations is to give them first.

6. Improve your search rankings

If you want to get more leads and sales, then the easiest thing you can do is become easily found on LinkedIn for keywords in your niche.

Think about what people would be searching for on Google to find your business, service, or product (for example, mine would be “sports” or “LinkedIn Tips”). Make sure you add your keywords throughout your LinkedIn profile in five main places.

Learn more about where to include your keywords and increase your LinkedIn SEO here.

7. Stand out from the crowd

With close to 130 million LinkedIn profiles, many of them look the same.

Don’t join the herd of boring “glamour shot” profiles. Instead, do something creative in your copy to market yourself on LinkedIn, stand out, and keep people coming back for more.

Add LinkedIn’s blog application, sync it with your twitter updates, or include other advanced applications to help your profile stand out from the rest.

Take your profile to the next level

As LinkedIn continues to grow in numbers and gain more media attention, it will prove to add more value to your brand and business.

If you want to get the most out of your efforts with LinkedIn, take the time right now to implement these 7 steps and watch your profile take off.

Innovation: TED Video - DIY Rocket Science Project

Dark Matter Explained - Animation video

The Marmalade: Making Hi-Speed Slo-Mo videos

Creativity: Everything is a Re-mix

How to Use YouTube for Marketing Your Business

Now that Google has purchased YouTube, the benefit of adding video content has increased for nearly any business large or small.

The difference between a website with videos and one without is a characteristic that is weighed heavily within Google’s search engine algorithm.

Including video content will increase the perceived quality of your website and also move your site further up in Google’s search results.

Remember also that in today’s social media circles, most companies include videos, images, maps, and blogs in their profile and posts.

Another reason for creating videos for your company is the simple fact that videos are much more likely to "go viral" than text-only social media posts.

Therefore, make sure that your company doesn't get left behind with video advertising and marketing.

The best part about using YouTube for your company videos is that embedding the YouTube link on your site saves bandwidth, meaning a faster download time for customers when they visit your page.

However, make sure that you take full advantage of the SEO and branding options available through YouTube by following the simple tips below.

Connect Your Content

The key is to help Google, and readers, connect the video with your content. In the description of your video, ALWAYS include a link to your website even if you only place it at the end of your text. This helps both Google and your readers find you.

By the end of the video, give viewers a direction to take. Tell them to give you a call, stop on by, or view your website. Be creative and keep in mind you should tailor the production of your video to the needs and desires of your customer base.

Invest Time Exploring the YouTube Community

Internet users constantly upload YouTube. Find ways to establish your business within the YouTube community through commenting on other videos within your fields of interest.

Add links to videos on your website. Tweet videos or share them on Facebook or Google+, both your own videos and those of fellow YouTube users.

Utilise the Social Media Infrastructure

Create a personal YouTube Channel. Upload videos to your account each time you post a video. This will allow users to subscribe to your account and permit your business to send emails to those who subscribed.

As mentioned before, put your website’s address within the description of each video and link your videos to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or any other site that will increase exposure.

Maintain a Philosophy of Brand Recognition

At the beginning or end of each video, be sure to include your logo. Establish a "voice" or personality for your videos and make sure that this tone matches your branded tone you have already established with other marketing materials.

When possible, use fonts and colours associated with your brand (corporate image). Any opportunity to be unique or stand out should not be over looked.

By the end of the video, give viewers a direction to take. Tell them to give you a call, stop on by, or view your website.

Be creative and keep in mind you should tailor the production of your video to the needs and desires of your customer base.

Remember, it is just as important to not only sell your product but to build your brand as well.

Incorporate the Correct Production Value

Be cost effective through prioritising your investment in your video’s quality. Invest just enough resources to get your point across.

The method behind constructing your video is more important than the quality or excess of equipment.

Maintain a balance. Something extremely polished may distract from your message or the authenticity of your product or service, but too low of a quality can also have an adverse affect on viewers.

Be aware and respectful of the attention span of your audience. Be sure to keep the length of your video within a reasonable amount of time an individual would want to spend watching it. The less scripted the better.

One area of videography that you should never cheapen is the sound. Your video’s audio quality is very important.

If viewers have to strain to hear you or are distracted by background noisess, they probably will never listen long enough to hear your call to action at the end. Therefore, strongly consider acquiring a high quality microphone for recording.

Keywords Matter

Beside seeing your video on social media sites and your website, how else will your target audience find your videos?

Most Internet surfers will use keywords on a search engine, including YouTube’s search engine.

Strategically place keywords within your video description without compromising the quality of your content.

Add keywords into the tag section when uploading a video. Use a keyword in your title as well. Stick to only one main keyword per video.

The content of your videos is just as important as the content on your website. Make sure to create videos that relate to your business.

For instance, if you design direct mail postcards, post a video of your process in speed mode and the awesome end result. At the end of the day, you are hoping to gain clients, not necessarily viewers.

Take Every Opportunity to Make a Video

Create tutorial videos on how to operate your product or use your service. General how-to videos and training videos can benefit both customers and employees as well as increase exposure online.

Make funny behind the scenes videos to show a personal side and further expose your brand to social media users.

If you plan on hosting an event, creating a new line of products and consider addressing these new developments in a video blog.

You may even want to give an overview of your business or service process. Always try to be as creative as possible to keep viewers interested, engaged, and coming back for more.

Inside the mind of one of today’s finest visual communicators

Christoph Niemann — LEGO-lover, dispenser of irreverent wisdom on creativity, author of the excellent Abstract City and That’s How! — is one of my favorite illustrators. In this short video from Gestalten, Niemann discusses his philosophy on design, the state of visual language today, his creative process, his adorable non-neuroses, and more.

‘Business Continuity Manager’ software enters the market

LockPath, a provider of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) applications, has announced the launch of ‘Business Continuity Manager’.

The tool, part of Keylight 2.4, the latest version of the company’s GRC platform, enables organizations to manage business continuity in a simple and effective way, empowering them to create unified business continuity strategies.

Leveraging the flexibility of the Keylight platform, Business Continuity Manager lets businesses create custom business continuity plans, manage the associated risks and minimize potential losses.

Unlike traditional GRC tools, Business Continuity Manager provides common forms for business continuity right out of the box and lets customers use any standard web browser to quickly match Keylight to the company’s distinct business continuity processes and needs.

Key features of Business Continuity Manager include:

• Business impact analysis: Through detailed analysis, users can easily organize complex information, determine the impacts of a loss, and prioritize the recovery function of multiple business components.
• Business continuity plans: Users can leverage pre-built forms, workflows and notifications to quickly build a business continuity plan or create a fully customized plan down to individual fields, field types, field visibility and forms.
• Teams and contacts: The tool enables the appointment of a team leader, identification of a team of essential personnel, and definition of critical vendors so if a disaster occurs, users can immediately locate them and make contact.
• Tabletop exercises: To ensure a plan will be effective, Business Continuity Manager supports exercises to test a plan against a simulated situation and collect valuable information about its application.
• Assessments: Users can launch business continuity plan assessments or tabletop exercises and create reports to gather valuable insight about the plan and its execution.
• Workflow: Custom workflows allow a simplified review of plans and exercises by appropriate experts across the organization. Users can create a custom set of stages that the document will be routed through based on certain criteria.
• Document management: Users can easily export business continuity plan content with all supporting documents (Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Visio files) into one comprehensive Adobe PDF document.
• Extensibility: Users can add lookup references to policies, controls and resources in other Keylight application records to enhance their organization’s ability to proactively prepare for and react to events.

Chasing Venus: When the World Came Together to Measure the Heavens

In 1716, sixty-year old Sir Edmund Halley called on astronomers all over the world to leave their cozy observatories, travel to the edges of the known world, set up their telescopes, and turn their eyes toward the sunrise on the morning of June 6th, 1761, when the first Transit of Venus of the scientific age would march across the face of the sun.

In the eighteenth century, the solar system had a shape but not a size.

Captain Cook's 1792 Drawing

By timing the entrance and the exit of Venus across the sun from latitudes all over the world, Halley explained, astronomers could roughly calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun — a “celestial yardstick” for measuring the universe, as Andrea Wulf calls it in her excellent book Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens.

1882 Film of Venus transit

 It was the first worldwide scientific collaboration of its kind, a mathematical olympiad six hours in duration, with years of planning and seconds that counted.

Today, more than 250 years after this grand experiment that required astronomers all over the world to gather together and look to the sky at the exact same moment, we will experience the last transit of our lifetime (unless modern medicine makes us survive to December 2117, when the next one will take place).

Sir Ken Robinson on How Finding Your Element Changes Everything

Ken Robinson on Passion from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Sir Ken Robinson has previously challenged and delighted us with his vision for changing educational paradigms to better optimize a broken system for creativity.

In this wonderful talk from The School of Life, Robinson articulates the ethos at the heart of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything — one of 7 essential books on education — and echoes, with his signature blend of wit and wisdom, many of the insights in this indispensable collection of advice on how to find your purpose and do what you love.