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Are you scrambling. I hope this helps.
What's the point of all those check-ins your friends inundate you with? Who cares that they checked in at a boutique liquor store or Korean taco truck? Two days before gift-giving zero-hour, you should. Use check-ins as a last-minute gift guide.
Commenter prb dropped off this idea in our #tips box, and it's a good, timely bit of advanced common sense. Ask people, or friends of those people, what they'd like, and they'll often draw a blank. Look at where they actually go each day, or where they semi-publicly brag about going, and you'll get some workable ideas for last-minute gift certificates. Facebook Places is the easy way in for people already friends on Facebook; if you have to sign up for Foursquare and ask for a friend approval, it's not too much of an effort for the pay-off.
Smiles, Sales and Leadership
Want to know who created wealth and who destroyed it and how/why they did it?
I thought so.
2010 CEO Wealth Creation Index Shows a Few Surprises
The third annual ranking of the Chief Executive magazine/Applied Finance Group wealth creators—and destroyers—sees new contenders surface and several that sustained performance through tough times.
By Drew Morris and Michael Burdi
Now in its third year, the CEO wealth creation index developed by Chief Executive magazine, Applied Finance Group and Great Numbers! attempts to identify those business leaders who have performed best in creating true economic value—as opposed to mere accounting value—as measured by GAAP metrics. Creating value is, after all, why CEOs do what they do. The WCI leans heavily on the concept of economic margin (EM). (EM measures the degree to which a company makes money in excess of its risk-adjusted cost of capital.) While there is no single metric that is perfect, EM comes close, in that it isn't dependent on share price in assessing management's impact on value creation. (The rankings do not include REITs among the S&P 500 and only assess companies whose CEO has been in the job for at least three years in order to get a fair appraisal of CEO actions under varying conditions. For more details on methodology, see "Ranking CEO Wealth Creation".)
The past 12 months have not been an easy time to grow—or for companies with high levels of EM to maintain them. The more profitable a company is, the more difficult it is to maintain high levels of profitability when competitors step up and target market leaders. Some companies find that the "easy money"—high margins on a product or market—ultimately dries up. Also, if a business model is successful and a company is making healthy profits, it becomes a target.
Similarly, the regulatory environment can make it difficult for companies to maneuver. Both financial and healthcare companies have become the worst-performing sectors over the last 12 months. Even the well-managed ones struggle with maintaining past success. For example, Master- Card, which led the rankings last year, couldn't maintain its change in EM momentum and slipped to No. 24, still a respectable score. Federated Investors, however, has consistently stayed in the top three since the WCI's inception.
In entering the S&P 500 this year, Priceline.com vaulted to the top of this year's rankings. The company's EM had been dragged down in earlier years, but was consistently high in more recent years. It has also had tremendous success in moving its U.S. business model to international markets, with non-U.S. revenue doubling last year to top U.S. revenue. In addition, Priceline kept its operating costs in check, limiting them to 20 percent of year-on-year growth while pursuing an industry-leading growth in revenues of 27 percent. This allowed the firm to take market share from Expedia, another high scorer. Because the company offers a commodity product in a cutthroat industry marked by extreme ease of entry, it's difficult to assess whether Priceline can maintain its high-wire act. CEO Jeffrey Boyd says, "The most important metric we use is gross bookings growth, which refers to the overall value of all the travel products we sell. The Internet and online travel are still in their infancy in many parts of the world. As a global business, our focus is on increasing overall sales and building our market share. We also look to maintain or improve our net operating margins so we can grow profitably. When interim results don't match expectations, our management team evaluates whether it is a supply, marketing or cost issue and makes adjustments accordingly."
As the online travel market grows more saturated it will be more difficult to differentiate. But Priceline enjoys a healthy balance sheet and has slightly less cash than debt, so it gets high marks for managing growth and profitability.
Other stellar wealth creators include Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon and Douglas Baker of Ecolab, both of whom return to the top 10 from last year, showing that strong execution skills translate into wealth-creating staying power. Daniel Amos of Aflac, Steve Jobs of Apple, Ian Cook of Colgate-Palmolive, John Wiehoff of C.H. Robinson Worldwide and Daniel Hambuger of DeVry return in 2010 among the high scorers. David Yost of Amerisource Bergen, Theodore Solso of Cummins, Gregory Johnson of Franklin Resources, Mark Templeton of Citrix Systems, Chris Begley of Hospira and James Rohr of PNC Financial were among the leaders who advanced at least 100 positions in ranks since 2009.
Less stellar performances were logged by Windstream's Jeffrey Gardner, ConAgra's Gary Rodkin and FirstEnergy's Anthony Alexander, who are all among those who dropped more than 100 places since last year.Click here to view complete list of companies and their respective rankings
Image via CrunchBase
I am super excited to see the financial world engaging socially with their clients and prospects. I have spoken to many insurance and financial professionals about them feeling handcuffed by laws and regulations prohibitting them from using these tools.
Perspectives about Insurance Products and Services
official LinkedIn page with a new feature titled “LinkedIn Company
Pages,” which, for the first time ever, allows businesses to highlight
their products and services to LinkedIn’s 80 million-member community.
Through its new LinkedIn
Company Page, Liberty Mutual is providing LinkedIn users with
in-depth descriptions, images and video content about its insurance
solutions for individuals and businesses. In turn, LinkedIn users who
experience Liberty Mutual’s page now have the opportunity to share their
perspectives – and start word-of-mouth conversations – about the
insurer’s products, within their own networks of LinkedIn connections.
Liberty Mutual’s LinkedIn
Company Page, found at http://www.linkedin.com/company/liberty-mutual-insurance/products,
now features information about:
“As one of the first businesses to create a Company Page, we see this as
an opportunity to spark a meaningful dialogue among LinkedIn
professionals about our products,” said Paul Alexander, senior vice
president, communications, Liberty Mutual Insurance. “Through our
interactive content, LinkedIn members will find the tools they need to
make responsible insurance purchase decisions for their businesses,
employees and families. Through their feedback, we will gain valuable
insight about the role our products play in people’s lives, whether at
work, at home, or on the road.”
Auto, home and renters insurance products for individuals and
families, as well as details on Accident Forgiveness, 24-hour Claims
Assistance, and exclusive savings for individuals who belong to one of
more than 13,000 Liberty Mutual member groups, which include
companies, credit unions, professional associations and alumni groups.
Commercial insurance products for mid-sized and large businesses,
including workers compensation, general liability and commercial auto
and property coverage. Liberty Mutual’s LinkedIn page also highlights
its risk management services and employee group benefits products and
services, including life, AD&D and disability insurance, as well as
integrated disability solutions and leave services.
Specialty lines insurance delivered by Liberty International
Underwriters®, the global specialty lines division of Liberty Mutual.
LIU’s expert underwriters work directly with brokers, agents and
program administrators to offer environmental liability, global crisis
management, ocean marine, primary and excess casualty, professional
liability, management liability, construction, energy, excess &
surplus property.
To further enhance its LinkedIn Company Page, Liberty Mutual will add
additional content in coming months, including more business-to-business
product details.
interactive content, LinkedIn members will find the tools they need to
make responsible insurance purchase decisions for their businesses,
employees and families. Through their feedback, we will gain valuable
insight about the role our products play in people’s lives, whether at
work, at home, or on the road.”
Were you wondering how this works? Me too, well this explains it if your interested.
Read more at www.allfacebook.com
As Facebook grows to integrate with more and more consumer and search sites, they are probably realizing their users are getting confused about what this means, and how these sites know what restaurant their ex-neighbor recently visited.
In an effort to clear the air on what Instant Personalization means, and as a way of making their users feel in control despite the lack of an opt-in policy within Facebook as we’ve suggested in the past, Facebook launched a page to explain what instant personalization is around the web and how you can control what others see.
On the site since September, they wrote:
“How it works: Partners adhere to Facebook’s guidelines and may only use your public information to serve you a personalized experience. Public information includes your name, profile picture, gender, networks, and other information shared with everyone.
When you first arrive on a participating site, you will see a notification and a way to turn off the customized experience in one click. Your information can only be used to present you with a more personalized experience and cannot be transferred to advertisers or used for any other purposes.”
Facebook is addressing some concerns users have that they are sharing private data with third-party websites without permission. What actually happens is only publically available information and data is shared with outside sites.
Now, when you check out your privacy settings within Applications and Websites, a window pops up with that same Facebook informational video displayed on their new page explaining to users how their experience is being personalized on the web. You are forced to watch or close the video before you can change your settings.
All you need to do to turn off Instant Personalization on all Facebook’s partner sites is uncheck the box within the Instant Personalization tab in the Applications and Websites privacy settings. Also, you can opt-out of third-party websites (and search engines) which are now all supposed to give you the option like Pandora trail blazed earlier this spring.
Do Facebook’s new efforts to explain Instant Personalization make you more comfortable sharing your social information on third-party sites?
Why is this a Hot topic on Linkedin? So many viewpoints were shared (see link to linkedIn)
We all want to be productive and therefore the search for answers to making the best use of our time is crucial to our financial and personal success and lifestyle.
Have you found a way to make this happen for yourself?
What do you think of meetings? Mostly useful or mostly useless?
What are some tips for having very productive meetings?
Clarification added 1 day ago:
Jason Fried says that there are 2 problems with meetings:
1) we schedule them in increments of time as designed by software we use, like 15 minutes, 30 mins, an hour. We never schedule an 8-minute meeting when often this is how much time we need.
2) when we schedule an hour meeting with 10 people in it, it's not a 1-hour meeting, it's a 10-hour meeting. That's expensive to the company. So the productivity gains from that meeting need to be significant to justify the cost.
posted 1 day ago in Planning, Project Management
Personally I love stories like this. A grandma, using Facebook to stay in touch with her grand kids. It teaches a great business lesson.
Grandma does what I recommend for all businesses, entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers, heck you.
MEET your people, clients, on their terms.
Read more at www.allfacebook.com
Mature adults are driving the most recent growth in Facebook’s membership, so it makes perfect sense that even the eldest are joining the site. The oldest user appears to be 103-year-old Lillian Lowe of Tenby England.
She became the eldest on Facebook after the previous record oldest member died in July at age 104. Said individual, Ivy Bean, also hailed from England, interestingly enough.
The 103-year-old Lowe told United Press International that she has 34 friends on Facebook, including seven grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren. She accesses the site on her iPad, and enthuses:
I love it — it’s very exciting. It’s a wonderful way of finding out about things. I recommend it for any grandparents to keep in touch with family.
Apparently, Facebook spokespeople haven’t confirmed whether Lowe is in fact the eldest. But the way she uses the site appears to be catching on, at least based on what I see happening among my own friends there. Grandparents have been figuring out that their grandkids are logging on daily, or almost that frequently.
Readers, have you seen anyone older than 103 years on Facebook? Who’s the oldest person on your friend list?
Want to integrate your email list with your social list. This is how you do it with Facebook. Great article by Kipp Bodnar.
If your business is using Facebook as a part of its inbound marketing strategy, then it is likely that a goal of your marketing team is to expand your reach by attracting more people to like your Facebook page. For a long time marketers have faced a challenge in inviting new users through Facebook. While they have been encouraging people to visit their Facebook Fan Pages, it hasn't been easy to do the reverse--get email addresses into Facebook and send invitations through Facebook's messaging system.
This process has now changed. This week, Facebook has enabled business page administrators to import email addresses into Facebook to invite people to like their page. Check out the rest of this post for a walkthrough of these process!
Step 1: Go to your Facebook Business Page and click "Edit Page"
Step 2: Click on "Marketing" and then select "Tell your Fans."
Step 3: Upload your email list and invite fans.
Have you used this feature to tell more people about your Facebook page?
Image via Wikipedia
Manage projects on LinkedIn with the Manymoon app
- Utility – we know your time is valuable. The app actually helps get work done with your LinkedIn connections: complete tasks, track projects and review documents
- Security – you need full control of what you share and with whom. The application lets you see exactly what is being shared with which team members.
- Sales – Projects and Teamspaces is a great way to track each opportunity in conjunction with the customer. It’s a great way to keep them engaged during the sales process and securely share quotes, meeting notes and discussions.
- Track Candidates – as a recruiter, it’s difficult to use email to keep track of all the applicants for job openings. Instead, you can create one project for each job opening, invite the hiring manager and create a task for each candidate. Attach the appropriate resume and cover letter to each task.
- Consulting – engage with clients and track proposals, all within LinkedIn. Projects and Teamspaces provides 25 MB of online storage for free and you can upgrade for more.
- Track Jobs – as a job seeker you don’t want to miss that important follow-up with companies you’re eager to join. Just create a task for when to follow up with each company you’re interviewing with.
- Google Apps Sharing – want to share a Google Doc with one of your LinkedIn connection? Just do within Projects and Teamspaces and the sharing permissions will automatically be handled for you.
Image by ShashiBellamkonda via Flickr
Increasing Evidence That Small Business Owners Are Hunkering Down
Jeff Cornwall
EmailSubscribe to his Twitter feed
Jeff Cornwall is a serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship at Belmont University.
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Cindy King and Ron Capps recommended this.
Surprise I do as well.
It will be interesting to see how Google handles this in their limited testing in Portland, OR and other test markets. It has tremendous potential for local marketplaces and hyper-local marketing. Monitor the ways it is used and any potential impact you can detect on local brands or markets where it is in use.
Google already have Places that provide a local business with the opportunity to get found online by potential customers. Places can be set up for free and Google also have a few related products that a local business needs to pay attention to - particularly Google Hotpot
PS. If this was helpful show some love and hit the "Like" Button
Google Places, Tags & Hotpot
