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Guest Blog by Curtis L. Odom, Ed.D.         Recruiters are on the front lines of the workforce, trying to bring talent into organizations; there are a lot of qualified people out there from a credential standpoint. Fit is where the true challenge lies. Will this person fit our organization? There are many meanings to that. Does the person look and feel to others like they belong here? The answers to those questions play a huge role in the talent acquisition success. Unfortunately, recruiting and staffing is seen by the organization as an easy thing, as a lower level skill. On the contrary, it is probably one of the hardest things under the umbrella of talent management to find the right match of talent to the organization and the hiring manager that needs that talent. Organizations sometimes shy away from being very definitive about the type of person they want, commonly because they don’t want to be viewed as being biased in some way. Personall...

Jan. 29 WATERFORD TWP. — The Oakland County Business Center presents Legal and Financial Basics for Small Business. 9 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, Jan. 29 at the Oakland County Executive Office Building Conference Center, 2100 Pontiac Lake Road, west of Telegraph in Waterford Township. This workshop outlines the key legal considerations for entrepreneurs operating Michigan businesses. This workshop is free, but registration is required. For registration, visit www.AdvantageOakland.com/expand or call 248-858-0783. Jan. 29 TROY — Miller Canfield is hosting “What Does Right-to-Work Mean for Michigan Employers?” 7:30 to 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 29 at MSU Management Center, 811 W. Square Lake Road, Troy. This program has been approved for 1.50 (General) recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. The cost is $25. For information, visit Virginia Herrick at 313-496-7548. Jan. 30 ROCHESTER HILLS — SBIR/STTR 101: Intr...

Google Adwords can be a great advertising channel to boost your online sales. Purchasing ads through Google is a viable option to get your website to the top of Google search results by successfully bidding on keywords. Let us quickly take a look at some effective tips on how to efficiently use Google Adwords for your local business to generate more leads and improve your online sales. Track your conversions As Return On Investment (ROI) is going to be at the top of your list, you need to ensure that you keep track of what is giving you the highest conversion in your website. Although monitoring the click-through rates in your website is an important step, you need to realize that it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you are going to monitor only the click-through rates, then it means you’re not utilizing your resources properly. Use Google Adwords to monitor all the e-commerce transactions in your website. Take a detailed look at which area of service or keyword combination is getting...

Quite frequently, we see business managers and their subordinates using CRM tools to report numbers rather than use them as tools for what they were primarily meant to accomplish – build great relationships to bring in more business and revenue for the enterprise. Although the number of tools available is vast, there is still something that only humans can accomplish. Giving a personal touch and understanding your customers is very important and that you can do by using Social Media. Sending out messages and pieces of messages is not all that is to CRM. In fact, there is a vast array of to-dos that will help your business maintain good relationships with customers, and that is not the end to all either. The other use for Social Media is retaining customers. The most anathematic thing that one can do to Social Media is high pressure selling. Experienced Social Media veterans will vouch for that in no uncertain terms. In addition to using Social Media for marketing there are many other t...

Social Media Sites provide an ideal platform for businesses to interact with their consumers, on a more direct note. If you look at it from another angle, the consumers for the first time in ages will be able to talk to the suits and bosses of the company whose products they are using in their day-to-day life. The Social media sites have given them that freedom and you as a business owner have to respect that. There are three things of note here: Learn Respond Market First things first, get to know your customer. Read what they have to say. It is a feedback that’s worth millions served to you for free straight from the horse’s mouth. Look for a trend, there is always a pattern. The same set of feedbacks and same set of grievances, when they pile up, make a note of them and pass it on to your respective departments. Make sure to tell them that you have noted their grievances and you are going to respond. Now, respond. Definitely, do. When you do that, you earn reputation and trust, whic...

By: Penny Carnathan Creative Director/Lead Writer at EMSI Public Relations ( www.emsincorporated.com ), in Tampa, Fla.     Professionals share t ips Writing a how-to business book or CEO memoir has become a recognized tool for business professionals to market and brand themselves and their companies. It helps them establish their expertise while sharing useful information appreciated by readers. Plus, it can introduce them to a vast new audience of potential customers. It’s a phenomenon public relations professional Marsha Friedman first noticed years ago. Friedman wrote her own book, “Celebritize Yourself,” explaining her three-step process for developing and using a book to get publicity. Today, more than 11,000 business books alone are published each year - and that doesn't include self-published e-books, according to the authors of “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.” "Whether you're using your book to generate media, speaking opportunities or new cu...

The writer and their bloc are ever at war with each other as the writer tries to maintain a flow of good content despite stalls in creativity, newsworthy topics, or insightful takes on situations. Today’s trends in SEO with Google Author ranks and a consumer base that is looking for more and more specific content mean that quality content is at a premium for bloggers. Maintaining readers means giving them something to hold their attention before they dart away to another site. However, the Internet is providing more and more aids for the blogger in fueling creativity and providing content while old standby methods for writers in the pre-interweb world can also offer some assistance. Here are five strategies for keeping your blog fresh with good content. 1). Be an informed expert in the topics your blog handles Find the major blogs, writers, and news sources on your blog’s topics and dutifully follow their sites and Twitter accounts. For a blogger, it’s actually important to budget time...

If you've been practicing any type of internet marketing for any period of time, then you probably already know about the importance of quality. You need to deliver high quality in your content, in your web design, in your ad campaigns, and in your social media efforts. With all of this focus on producing quality, however, have you stopped to ask yourself if you’re offering anything of value? It’s easy to think that quality and value go hand-in-hand, but this isn't necessarily true. For example, WebpageFXSEO could decide to offer a high-quality car detailing service to their list of services, but it’s not going to have much value for their clients, who are looking for superior web design. Defining Value Value is simple to define yet difficult to pinpoint. It’s almost an abstract concept and differs from one person to another. In simplest terms, value is something that fulfills a desire or need adequately enough that a person feels his or her investment of time or mo...

  Jan. 22 BIRMINGHAM — The Community House has assembled a group of subject matter experts for seminars. The first seminar, “Fundamentals of Michigan Entrepreneurship” is 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 22 at The Community House, 380 South Bates St., Birmingham. Michael Witzke and John Carter, Witzke Berry Carter & Wander, PLLC and franchise placement specialist Mark Cory, FranNet of Michigan will offer to help entrepreneurs deliver their products and services to various customers, help them identify and secure their intellectual property and teach them how to minimize the many risks associated with hiring employees and independent contractors. There is no charge to attend, light refreshments will be served. To register, contact The Community House, 380 South Bates Street, Birmingham, 248-644-5832, or www.tchserves.org. Jan. 22,23,24 BIRMINGHAM/TROY — Steven Case of Financial Independence, LLC in Bloomfield Hills will give presentations on Social Security income plan...

Let’s say you have a beautifully designed website and have implemented both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques with a lot of planning. And it is showing some results in the form of increased online sales. Have you measured whether the methods are producing the anticipated returns? And how do you measure the efficacy of social media techniques? As far as your knowledge goes, there are no set parameters to check the success of social media techniques for business enterprises. Measuring the success of any advertising strategy can be very complicated and may not necessarily give accurate answers. Knowing whether the SMO tools you have employed are influencing minds and creating brand value for your goods and services may be difficult to quantify. So here are some expert tips for measuring social media success: What you should measure When you want to create brand value for your products rather than just sell, a new approach is essential when imp...

One of the biggest advantages of online marketing is that you don’t have to carry a physical inventory. Carrying physical inventories also mean investing in goods, a warehouse and an office. There are however better ways to make money; just like so many affiliate marketers have discovered. As an affiliate marketer, you are relieved from receiving stocks, manufacturing and even distributing goods that you have managed to sell online. The other benefit is you can run a one-man show sitting in the comforts of your home. The profits you will make, though small in percentage terms, can collectively be big enough in the long run. The key to success therefore is to ramp up sales as much as you can. Not everyone who set their hearts on affiliate marketing succeed though. The reasons for failure are many, but chief among them are failure to see marketing trends, improper selection of products, inadequate margins from affiliates and a general failure to entice buyers into availing your services....

If you own a website and realize that it is your gateway to make your business bigger and better then you really need to work on improving the visibility of your website. If this is done, it will automatically enhance the visibility of your local business. Although some serious and expensive strategies could be adopted, there are other easy ways too and let’s look at five ways that will help you achieve this. Take advantage of Google Maps Google Maps is a popular tool and it is available for mobile platforms too. Although the tool is designed for finding your way through suburbs, it is great for mining information about local businesses too. Listing your business on Google Maps is easy and the best part is that it is free. When someone searches for or navigates to a particular area, Google lists the local businesses in that particular area and drops a pin on the geographical location too. By briefing about your business and the services you offer, you can improve the visibility and att...

Proper etiquette does not end with real-world interactions alone. With the rapid growth of the internet and popularity of social networking sites, good manners stretch out to virtual world interactions as well. While most of us understand and comply to the commandments of social media etiquette, some others still prove that they have yet to learn what behavior is acceptable and what is not. The following tips are common sense, social media practices every netizen should abide. Think before you click. Before hitting the post, tweet, share, or send button, ask yourself these questions: Does it have spelling or grammar errors? Is it appropriate? Will it offend anyone? Will I feel alright with anyone seeing this? Will anyone else care? Once you hit that button, make sure you’ve thought it over more than once. Editing published posts or retrieving sent mails lessen your credibility. Reply accordingly. When someone comments on your post, reply accordingly - especially if it’s a question. Don...

First let us define what a landing page is. IT is the first page that a user or a search engine crawler sees when they try to access your URL. It is either an HTML page or a static page. In the early days, just about any page would be the landing page, including animations, greetings or other messages, disclaimers or even redirects. But with web 2.0 that has changed and landing pages are more or less standard, and optimizing them has become all important. This is where it will be determined whether you will beat your competition when it comes to the SERPs. A landing page is expected to contain the important information regarding your website; what products or services you are dealing in and so on. Scanning the landing page is the best way to learn about your business, and that is why they are considered of prime importance by search engines. So how will you ensure that your landing page is SEO effective? First off you need to recognize your target audience and understand how you can co...

Jan. 16 WATERFORD TWP. — The Oakland County Business Center presents Fundamentals of Writing a Business Plan, 9 a.m. to noon, Jan. 16 at the Oakland County Executive Office Building Conference Center, 2100 Pontiac Lake Road, west of Telegraph in Waterford Township. This workshop is $40. For registration, visit www.AdvantageOakland.com/expand or call 248-858-0783. Jan. 16 TROY — Automation Alley’s lunch 'n' learn session “Improving Your Trade Show Performance,” is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 16 at Automation Alley in Troy. To register to attend or exhibit at IMPACT 2013, or to sponsor the event, contact Events Manager Jennifer Chinn at chinnj@automationalley.com or 248-457-3228. Jan. 17 STERLING HEIGHTS —  To kick off the Macomb-OU INCubator's Lunch and Launch series in 2013, Lori Bianco, CPA and CGMA with BiancoCPA, will present "Are All Your Ducks in a Row?: How to Set Up a Bookkeeping System to Efficiently Communicate with Your CPA,"  noon ...

There are almost 40 million bloggers typing away in the U.S. every day and with a number this enormous it seems overwhelming to view so many bloggers as competition. Instead of pushing other blogs in our niche out of the way to get a higher domain authority, what if we collaborated and grew together as communities of bloggers who write about similar topics? Idealistic? Perhaps. However, collaborative marketing gives us different sources for link backs, a new crowd of viewers and another blogger who we can bounce ideas off of. Skeptic or inspired, try out one or some of these 5 unique collaborative marketing tips and see how a collaborative marketing campaign boosts your site’s traffic. To make the most out of your collaborative marketing outreach campaign, consider an outreach tool like Group High which allows you to search for blogs in your genre and it puts those site’s metrics and contact info in to an easy to read spreadsheet. 1. Reach out and Make the Intro Keep it short and swee...