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Todd Jamieson Articles

Guest post by: Todd Jamieson

How Bob lost the sale and didn’t even know it. - Click To Read Article
With the multitude of social opportunities available on the world wide web these days it is sometimes easy to lose sight of your output. From your latest Twitter or LinkedIn review to your most recent Facebook update, many of us are striving to be noticed. After all, according to a new study, you only have a small amount of time to be relevant (80 minutes to be exact); so more is more, right? Not exactly. While you may only have a limited time to be relevant in the social media world, in the search engine world, you can technically be visible forever. In other words, that old company bio you had the intern write back in 2004 could still be floating around in 2011.

So What Exactly is the Cloud? (Part 1 of 3) - Click To Read Article
Ah, the Cloud, that serene place floating high in the sky that happily holds all our data, tracks our e-mails, and provides servers on demand. In the past few years, this newly minted buzzword has been pushed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace, and soon even the all mighty Apple. Suspiciously absent (well not absent, but certainly well hidden) from all the television spots, the ads, and promotional material are the answers to the basic questions: “How can it help you?”, “what’s so new about it? and frankly “just what is this cloud thing anyway?”

Is Your Routine Making You Stupid? - Click To Read Article
What did you do this morning? Chances are you ingested some caffeine, (hopefully) brushed your teeth, and set upon your inbox before you even crossed the office threshold. Chances are also that you repeat this routine most every day. Daily routines or “rituals” are extremely common for the average working professional. As author and businessman Tony Schwartz points out “rituals … (are) highly specific behaviors, done at precise times, so they eventually become automatic and no longer require conscious will or discipline.” Certain rituals (like kissing your wife goodbye or locking your door when you leave the house) are innocuous, but some behaviors are doing you more harm than good.

Social Media: Set Your Employees Free - Click To Read Article
Every morning while I’m getting ready for work, my two little boys get to watch some TV. My wife and I have decided that a little Disney Channel in the morning is not going to rot their brains, and we limit their TV time to 30 minutes each morning and evening. Today, I asked my three year old son what his favorite show was, and I was a little surprised to find out that Phineas and Ferb had replaced his previous favorite, Mickey Mouse. However, it quickly dawned on me that this Disney snub was hardly the result of the fickleness of youth. Since his exposure to television is quite limited, my son only watches five shows in total. Of the five shows he watches, two of them had already been “favorites” leaving him with only 3 actual choices (so Mickey shouldn’t take it personally).

Fork It Over: The DOs & DON’Ts of Data Collections - Click To Read Article
In the digital age many of us are inundated on a daily basis with requests for information. From mailing lists to client surveys, everybody wants to beef up their customer data. Getting customers to fork over sensitive information is no small feat, and (as with anything) some ways are better than others. Take Starbucks for example. This year, just like last year, I received my annual Starbucks “Happy Birthday Free Drink Card”. As we always do my wife and I searched up and down the extensive Starbucks’ menu for the priciest drink. Eventually we settled on some sort of fruit-coffee-ice cream concoction for the whopping price of $7 (CDN). We drank about half of it. So how did Starbucks even know it was my birthday and why was I entitled to a free drink?

Write What You Know and Watch Your Influence Grow - Click To Read Article
How many times have you thought about doing something only to shoot yourself down with the old “I’m not good enough” rhetoric? The fear of failure or not being the “best” at something can sometimes paralyze even the best laid plans. This is especially true in the field of technology where stars are born virtually overnight. Do yourself a favor and get over it. Write what you know. Focus on the quality of your online engagement and not the quantity of your “fan base”.

Is Your Business Thinking the “Right” Way? - Click To Read Article
Most companies traditionally view their bottom line as a statistical or numerical value. They typically measure success based on quantitative data like sales, while qualitative data like documents or words (while useful), are not generally what CEO’s are looking for. But what if this focus on the analytic was not only insufficient but potentially outdated? Spearheaded by the success of Xerox’s holistic approach to service documentation, a new focus on “right brain thinking” (and what it means for the future of business) is on the horizon.

Are You Losing Your Crowd by Being Too Technical? - Click To Read Article
In our quest to make everything ‘better’ we sometimes manage to muddle up a perfectly good design or over complicate an easy to grasp concept. While it is somewhat natural to want to “show-off”, it is important to ask yourself if you are catering to your ego, or your audience. With all of the options that the advancement of knowledge and technology brings, for many business professionals it can sometimes be hard to keep accessibility and usability in perspective.

There is no such thing as a home page - Click To Read Article
As children we are taught to see beyond first impressions and give everyone a chance. The old “don’t judge a book by its cover” still plays in my ears as I enter a less than pristine restaurant or a new acquaintance’s messy home. Still, in everyday life and especially in business, first impressions mean everything. From the polish of your shoes to the make of your phone, we are constantly being judged by our peers based on outward appearances; and a professional website is no exception. In an online world your website is more than just your storefront, it’s your brand identity.

World of Turk: How Millions are Helping Billions - Click To Read Article
In the 1960’s, the Beatles’ famously sang about getting by “With A Little Help from My Friends”. Today websites like Wikipedia, Word Press, and Amazon are bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of relying on others to help you reach your goals. In the digital age friends are not so much “friends” as they are collaborators, and these collaborators are generally anonymous strangers motivated by either a small sum of money or a desire to contribute to a shared project. From a massive online encyclopedia to secretive government initiatives, people around the world are facilitating a digital phenomenon.

Does Your Business Still Believe in Unicorns? - Click To Read Article
As the great Albert Einstein often mused “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Now I’m not questioning anyone’s lucidity, but sometimes (for whatever reason), people just can’t seem to recognize that change is essential. Like the turbulent lovers who just can’t seem to quit each other, businesses often fail to recognize when their business practices aren’t working.

Ten Tips for Working Remotely with Your Clients - Click To Read Article
A few years ago, I decided that if we wanted to grow our business, we’d have to look for clients outside of Ottawa. I am fortunate enough to work in a business where it is not always necessary for me to meet my clients in person, so I decided to take advantage of some of the great tools out there and try to have more remote meetings.

What if you Have no Style? - Click To Read Article
It’s been a long five months. Your web site designers have mapped out the perfect layout. The content team has analyzed your user groups, and written killer copy that will definitely convert. Now is the day: web site launch day. Your baby is finally ready to leave home! You may have the keys to your new website, but you also have a problem. You have no style. Now, I mean this in the nicest way! You can update content, but you can’t easily keep up the beautiful font styles your designer created for you, or even know when and how to use them.

MDR & CRM: Like Two Peas in a Pod - Click To Read Article
In the age of “likes”, “plus ones” and “tweets” it’s certainly not hard to find out what your friends are up to. Not only are you instantly able to observe what Andy had for breakfast, you can also see where he had it, and (more importantly) if he liked it. People are increasingly relying on information gathered from their social networks (and more specifically their friends).

It’s A Battle Out There: Retail Conscription and CX - Click To Read Article
What do South Korea, Brazil, and Singapore all have in common? If you said booming economies you wouldn’t be wrong, in fact, all three have enjoyed steady growth within the past 10 years. However, there is something else these countries share that is slightly less glamorous than power lunches and billion dollar deals. Military conscription. For those of you lucky enough to grow up in the peace loving bubble of Canada, that means a government regulated amount of mandatory military service for all males (and sometimes females) of a certain age.

Robots Want Us To Be Happy. How CRM’s Can Improve Productivity & Job Satisfaction. - Click To Read Article
“Humans are not horses”, Daniel Pink smugly proclaims to an engrossed audience during his popular TED talk “What Really Motivates Workers”. On stage and in his famous book “Drive”, Pink explains the differences between algorithmic and heuristic tasks and concludes that workers need different motivations for different types of tasks. He asserts that humans tend to thrive naturally in work environments where the majority of tasks are heuristic, and thus require fewer incentives.

Don’t Hire a Web Developer to Build Your Website! - Click To Read Article
I was a meeting with a client recently and he mentioned that he was considering hiring a programmer from overseas to help complete a small web project. He felt it just made more sense financially. I asked him, “who will be doing the project management, design, information architecture and testing?”. He looked puzzled. “Can’t the web developer do all of this?”.

“Control” At The Top While Permitting Autonomy At The Bottom - Click To Read Article
Shortly after Lou Gerstner became CEO of IBM in 1993, he made one of the most significant decisions of his entire career. At a time when many people were calling for the IT giant to decentralize and dismantle into smaller, more flexible companies, Gertsner chose to do the opposite. He instead used IBM’s large size (and subsequent capabilities) to help customers integrate the diverse components of their information technology (IT) systems. In other words, by keeping IBM’s decision-making centralized and integrated, IBM was able to help customers with IT decisions they would have otherwise been forced to make on their own.

Five Things Every Business Owner Must Know About Google - Click To Read Article
Google is still one of the biggest drivers of business online. Getting that number one ranking is a goal for many business owners. How do you get to the top of the search results? Here are five things I’ve learned in my 11 years of working with clients that I feel business owners need to understand about how Google rankings work.

Five Tips to Avoid an Email Avalanche - Click To Read Article
A few years back the NY Times published an article on the negative impact email is having on our economy. According to an Intel funded study, a typical office worker checks their email more than 50 times a day and that the annual cost on lost productivity in the US is $650 Billion! There have been many other similar studies commissioned with almost identical findings. Are you in the trap like so many other office workers? Are you an email, iPhone/Blackberry addict? Can you go 45 minutes or longer without checking your email even once? If not, here are a few tips I’ve tried that might also work for you and bring some sanity to your work day.

How Strong is your Web Brand? - Click To Read Article
You’ve built a strong brand. Your office is professional, every piece of collateral you give to prospects is designed with a specific purpose. Your greeting area is strategically designed to match your corporate colours and your magazines for guests are continually replaced. You go crazy when the cleaners miss a spec of dust or things are left out of place. You believe a good first impression means everything. Or do you?

Are Negative Tweets Pecking Away at Sears’ Reputation? - Click To Read Article
In the age of social media many companies have had to adjust their business models rather hastily, and in order to appease to the masses on twitter and satisfy the netizens on Facebook, most corporations have had to put customer service at the forefront of this new model. When one dissatisfied customer can virtually blast a business instantaneously and extensively, the advent of multiple dissatisfied customers can quickly become a veritable PR nightmare. The old adage “any publicity is good publicity” may or may not hold true in the virtual age, something that Sears.com is surely to soon find out.

Referred by: http://www.brymarkpromostore.com



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