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Monday, February 8th, 2010

If Facebook Were a Country It Would be the 3rd Largest in the World

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Numbers are so fascinating — I just realized that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world (see rankings below).

For your business, it begs some of the following questions:

  • Are you and your business prioritizing Facebook high enough?
  • If you’re a U.S. business, should Facebook be your third priority (after China & India) in terms of emerging markets?)
  • Who’s got more Internet users: Facebook or China or India?
  • Who would you rather have as your customer-base: every person in the United States or every member of Facebook?
  • Will Facebook rival China & India as a supplier to Walmart?
  • Facebook is often described as closed — will Google face the same challenge of indexing Facebook content as it has indexing content of China?

Top 20 Countries in the World (by population)

  1. China[5] 1,335,720,000
  2. India 1,176,791,000
  3. facebook_logoFacebook? 400,000,000

  4. United States 308,639,000
  5. Indonesia 231,369,500
  6. Brazil 192,449,000
  7. Pakistan 168,679,000
  8. Bangladesh 162,221,000
  9. Nigeria
  10. Russia
  11. Japan 127,470,000
  12. Mexico 107,550,697
  13. Philippines 92,226,600
  14. Vietnam 85,789,573
  15. Germany 81,757,600
  16. Ethiopia 79,221,000
  17. Egypt 77,834,000
  18. Iran 74,196,000
  19. Turkey 72,561,312
  20. Dem. Rep. of Congo 66,020,000

Source: Wikipedia & Facebook reports

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Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Everyone Will Relate To This: Twitter Tips for Beginners

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You’ve likely heard of Twitter by now…seeing as 50 million+ people have signed up to try this service that let’s you type in 140 character messages (tweets).

I signed up for Twitter almost a year ago but have only recently started to get the swing of it (you can see  my profile at RobDunsonKelly).

Here are some answers to basic questions you might have as you get started on Twitter:

Twitter Tips for Beginners

Who Sees Your Twitter Posts?

Anyone can — whatever you type into the “What’s Happening?” field can be seen by anyone who is “following” you (see below) or even a stranger who finds your posting by browsing and searching Twitter (unless you send a “direct message” (see below).

How Do People “Follow” You on Twitter?

People may follow you simply because they saw your Twitter address in your auto-signature, on your LinkedIn or on your blog or you told them about it by phone or in person.

But most important is that people will follow you on Twitter through the valuable tweets you contribute.

As mentioned above, strangers will follow you as they find your tweets — so Twitter is a great way to meet new people.

Here’s a good Top-10 list of Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

How Do You Follow Other People on Twitter?

You can follow anyone on Twitter you want as long as you can find their Twitter name (which you can do by clicking “Find People” from the upper right hand of the Twitter home page and searching them by name (even if their Twitter name is not their actual name).

When you first sign up for Twitter, it will ask you if you’d like to import your email addresses into Twitter and see who of your contacts is on Twitter (and then you can automatically follow them all or just select ones).

You can also follow people you don’t know whether it be a celebrity like Britney Spears or Bill Gates – go to TwitterHolics to find the most popular Tweeters — or a random stranger you find browsing through some of the Twitter lists.

Is All This Following Mutual — Can I Unfollow Someone Any Time?

Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, Twitter does not require that two people follow each other. In other words, you can follow a celebrity like Bill Gates and he does not have to follow you.

How Do You Send a Private Twitter Message (also called a Direct Message)?

If you want to type a message to someone on Twitter (and have only them see it), you type the letter “d” (for “direct”) immediately before their Twitter name (note: you can only do this to someone who is following you).

Check out here for more on How You Send a Private Message.

How Does ReTweeting Work?

If you see a tweet that you think your followers will find valuable, then you can retweet it by clicking the Retweet icon next to the tweet (that Tweet will now show up on the list of tweets that your followers will see).

Check out this link for more on How ReTweeting Works.

Hash-Tagging Your Tweets (or How To Get Your Tweets Grouped With Other Like-Tweets)

The Twitter community came up with its own way to categorize Tweets called “hash-tagging.”

So, if you want your Tweet to be grouped with other like Tweets (so that they can be found by Twitter’s search engine or by other sites such as HashTags.org, you simply add a “#” symbol before a word in your Tweet.

For example, if you were going to an industry conference called the “Awesome Summit,” you could do a tweet that says: “I’m headed over to the #AwesomeSummit” and then your tweet will be grouped with anyone else’s tweet that also tagged “AwesomeSummit.”

That way, you and the other folks who have that hash-tag in common can more easily find each other.

Twitter provides lists of popular hash-tagged terms.

Here’s a list of tweets about the subject Warren Buffett.

The Main Things I Use Twitter For in Business:

To Mention or Praise Someone Else on Twitter

To mention someone, you simple type the @ sign before their Twitter name into the “What’s Happening?” field on Twitter

So, for example, if you wanted to refer to me in your Twitter post, you would say something like: “Congrats to @RobDunsonKelly on his useful blog.” 😉

If one of your followers clicks on the “@RobDunsonKelly” then they will see my Twitter page with all my most recent posts

note: the person you mention can see that you mentioned them through the right-hand side of their Twitter home page (or by using one of a number of tools such as TweetDeck).

To Share Links to Web Pages

Twitter can be a more efficient way to reference a Web page than the traditional method of email since it’s faster for you to do (you don’t have to type in the recipients names into Twitter) and it is then searchable by the Twitter community (your email isn’t searchable by others).

To reference a page on the Web using Twitter, you can: A) Paste in the URL into the “What’s Happening?” field on Twitter (e.g. @RobDunsonKelly wrote an interesting article on Twitter Tips at https://robdkelly.com/blog/social-media/twitter-tips-for-beginners).

This is a fine approach but since Twitter allows you only 140 characters (including spaces), you won’t be able to fit some URls in (my previous example is 134 characters so it just made it).

How to Shorten a URL

To shorten a URL, you can use a URL shortening service such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com. I prefer bit.ly since its URLs are shorter and it also provides analytics (so you can see how many people click on the URL you put up on Twitter).

To shorten a URL on bit.ly, for example, just go to http://bit.ly and type the URL you want shortened into the field at the top and then bit.ly will provide you with a shorter URL (which will forever point to the original URL you wanted to share (unless bit.ly were to go out of business and screw the people who have shortened hundreds of millions of link).

There are also services such as TweetDeck which will automatically shorten a URL for you (you just type in the original URL and TweetDeck will shorten for you using bit.ly, TinyURL or another URL shortening service you choose).

I Post Links to Jobs Using Twitter & bit.ly

I’ve found it super-useful to refer to job postings I know about using Twitter/bit.ly — it’s quick and I can then see how many people clicked on the URL and where they came from (Twitter versus LinkedIn or Facebook (assuming I posted the job there too which I often do).

Cool Way To Read (or Post) All Your Status Updates/Streams From One Place

Finally, if you use more than one of the following social networks: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace, you may want to try one a tool such as TweetDeck or HootSuite or Seesmic.

These tools can allow you to both read and post through multiple social networks at once!

I use TweetDeck which requires you to download software to your hard drive. HootSuite is a competing tool that offers a little less functionality than TweetDeck but it is Web-based so it can be used by you on any computer that has Web access.

Check out this video that gives you a quick demo of TweetDeck, HootSuite as well as two other related tools called NetVibes and Ping.fm…Seesmic is another player in this space though they’re not in the video.

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, just go to RobDunsonKelly and click “follow.”

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Thursday, February 4th, 2010

The 8 Mistakes To Avoid When Transforming Your Business

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Is part or all of your business in the need of a transformation — A truly radical change?

My smart friend Daniel Neukomm riffed on Harvard Professor John Kotter’s theories on mistakes commonly made in corporate transformations (hint: if you AVOID these mistakes, you can indeed transform your business) —  enjoy!

Introduction

While a professor at Harvard Business School, John Kotter had the opportunity to gain valuable insight into an array of companies ranging in both size and scope.

In doing so, he identified eight key stages of transformational development in which companies failed to manage the change process. He theorized that those companies that had been successful did so only by effectively negotiating all eight steps.

He further noted that those firms who skipped any of those steps, or failed to recognize the importance of them were sacrificing quality and effect for speed of change, giving the illusion of being quick but in realty building a platform for failure.

In addition to illustrating a series of opportunities to fail, Kotter also provides some insight as to how to overcome these commonly experienced errors.

The Eight Mistakes To Avoid When Transforming Your Business

Transformation Mistake #1: Not Establishing a Great Sense of Urgency

The lack of a sense of urgency of transformation is the leading cause of why, and the primary stage of where business fail at effectively managing change.

Many companies struggle simply to be able to identify the need to change when circumstances arise that warrant doing so. Firms are constantly exposed to the need for change, from the emergence of new foreign markets to the presence of new, more powerful competition in the marketplace.

Kotter notes that more then 50% of companies fail at this initial stage for numerous reasons. Most notable of those significant reasons of failure at this early stage is the gross overestimation of current and prior efforts of urgency by corporate executives.

Many senior managers feel that they have already recognized and leveraged the existing need for urgent transformation and as such lack the necessary motivation to shift the rate of change into high gear.

Another important factor is the imbalance between those who dictate change and those who simply implement change. Firms with too many managers and not enough leaders often experience this dynamic and it adversely affects the ability to change efficiently.

Kotter’s Tips on Establishing A Sense of Urgency

Kotter offers the relatively simple solution of implementing mechanisms that establish a sense of urgency among employees. He further states that the need to aggressively achieve cooperation is essential as this impacts a firms ability to identify and discuss potential threats and pending crisis. The need to be able to clearly identify the market, and its competitive realities is also mentioned as a key solution to lack of urgency.

Transformation Mistake #2: Not Creating a Powerful Enough Guiding Coalition

Creating a powerful coalition is essential to guiding practical and effective transformation within a firm. The lack of importance placed on the need to achieve collective support is the second stage of error as cited by Kotter.

He states that in both large and small firms alike there is an increasing need to build support across a wide range of people involved in both the decision making and implementation process. Many firms believe that just having the senior management team on board with new ideas for change is enough.

In fact, there are many moving variable in the dynamic for change and as such many different roles, and the people who fill them, are required to achieve efficient transformational change.

For example, large firms undergoing aggressive transformation into a new market require the support of investors, board members and product development staff, but perhaps key customers as well.

Furthermore, due to the broad scope of support often needed to implement dramatic and effective change standard hierarchical structures are not enough to ensure success. (Kotter, 1995)

Kotter’s Tips on Creating a Powerful Coalition

Solutions to this stage of error range from instilling more power in those who already hold leadership roles, to the simplicity behind creating a more team oriented environment. (Kotter, 1995)

Transformation Mistake #3: Lacking a Vision

Lacking a vision can be an obstacle in almost any process, and most certainly in a corporate environment. Without a clear and defined vision it is not hard to imagine the difficulty experienced in trying to convey instructions and instill motivation in others to perform.

Furthermore, the lack of a clear and concise vision can be equally de‐habilitating, as broad sweeping goals can be difficult to break down into measurable achievements.

This lack of clarity can also trickle down into incompatible projects stemming from misdirected resources and undefined goals. (Kotter, 1995)

Kotter’s Tips on Strengthening Your Vision

Kotter offers some relatively straightforward and simple solutions to the absence of a clear and concise vision. Ensuring the existence of a vision is obviously at the top of the list as this is the source of the problem.

Many companies have visions that are bland and generic, often open to interpretation which in turn leads to misunderstanding.

Kotter suggests that having a vision that can be communicated clearly, to anyone, in less than five minutes is essential to having that vision realized.

Transformation Mistake #4: Under­communicating Your Vision

The absence of an easily understandable vision can cause confusion in the workplace and hinder fluid change in any organization.

Even with a clear and concise vision, the ability to communicate it effectively to everyone in the company can is vital to facilitate its purpose.

Kotter points out three patterns in which companies fail to effectively communicate the vision.

  1. Many firms often attempt to utilize a single communication to instill a new vision in every employee, such as a meeting or an intra‐company memo.
  2. Corporate directors continuously repeat the vision through speeches to employees who often do not have a clear understanding of what is being stated.
  3. Both the vision and the corporate officers who communicate it to the employees can be clear and concise however those very same senior officers do not act in accordance with the vision. This combined effect often leads to the breakdown of implementation of the companies overall objectives, resulting in broad inconsistencies throughout the organization. (Kotter, 1995)
Kotter’s Tips to Effectively Communicating Your Vision

The most obvious solution to this issue is to implement a system whereby directors not only communicate the vision but also lead by example and execute the stated vision consistently.

Furthermore, all available vehicles should be utilized to deliver the vision to all stakeholders of the organization.

The solution to this potential issue seems rather elementary yet still is not widely practiced. (Kotter, 1995)

Transformation Mistake #5: Not Removing Obstacles To Your New Vision

Communication itself is not enough on its own to instill the goals laid out by the visions of the company to encourage and facilitate change. Numerous obstacles exist for corporate officers in their quest to see their visions brought to fruition through the actions of employees.

Major contradiction of interests seems to present the greatest barrier for progress, most notably incentive based performance pay structures. Many of these incentive programs reward individual performance over the performance of the company, presenting a difficult position for managers. (Kotter, 1995)

Carter’s Tips for Removing Obstacles To Your New Vision

Solutions for this problem lay in the design and structure of the system as it pertains to the vision of the company. No longer can a corporation have an aggressive vision and an incentive based pay structure that does not reflect the long‐term goals of that vision.

Designers of corporate incentives must take into account how the system may derail the likelihood of integrating the vision. (Kotter, 1995)

For example, if the vision of a health company is to provide medical treatment, incentive programs cannot be structured to reward saving the company money and reducing the bottom line by paying more to those employees who refuse to provide medical services.

Unfortunately, this is largely the practice of US medical insurance firms.

Transformation Mistake# 6: Not Systematically Planning And Creating Short­-term Wins

Many companies experience turbulence in the transformation process by not creating short‐term goals. More firms have trouble in keeping employees motivated to achieve long‐term goals due to the lack of immediate return on efforts being made in the short‐term.

Kotter mentions that most people will not commit to the entirety of the project if there are not results in some measurable returns within the first 12 to 24 months.

If results are not seen within this immediate period, employees will often loose the drive necessary to achieve the long‐term goal. Managers who dissect such big picture goals into smaller more manageable tasks will often see greater results from their employees efforts implying that this may be an effective solution to the problems arising form lacking short‐term structure in the change process. (Kotter, 1995)

Kotter’s Tips on Planning & Creating Wins

Kotter offers some simple yet valuable insight yet again in this stage of transformational change by suggesting that managers break up longer‐term, more complex goals into short‐term, more manageable targets.

The creation of the short‐ term wins in this context so long enables a more momentum driven process, typically allowing for more accurate achievement of the longer‐term goal.

Establishing visible and more measurable performance improvements and then rewarding employees for achieving those milestones will enhance the corporation’s ability to implement change and realize transformational fluidity.

Transformation Mistake #7: Declaring Victory Too Soon

While establishing short‐term wins is key to the success of managing change there are also some disadvantages which can arise form this strategy as well. Kotter points out while short‐term wins are encouraged there is some danger in give incentives to employees to reach a larger volume of small scale project achievements.

This danger arises from employees and managers alike striving for accomplishments that have emotional and financial bonuses attached because there will be a need to declare victory sooner than what is best for the organization.

There is an ironic relationship between those who resist change and those who support stated in Kotter’s theory. He mentions that while change initiators are quick to declare themselves victorious in their ability to effectively manage change is often the change resistors who step in an solidify a failure.

This is due to the fact that such resistors are looking for any opportunity to stop the change process and declaring victory provides that opportunity.

Kotter’s Tips on Declaring Victory

In an effort to solve the issues surrounded by premature victory celebrations Kotter points out that managers should focus instead on their increased credibility to implement change into systems, structures and policies.

Moreover, managers should promote those employees who recognize and implement the vision of the organization, establishing a momentum driven transformation process and achieving long terms goals rather then racking up points on a project score board.

He further states that the transformational process needs to be constantly reinvigorated with new projects, themes and new agents to implement them in order to capitalize on momentum.

Transformation Mistake #8: Not Anchoring Changes in Your Corporate Culture

Perhaps the most interesting error mentioned by Kotter is the inability of a corporation to solidify whichever new process of change deemed effective.

Many firms fail to ensure that years of efforts not be flushed away by a lack of recognition by all employees, including top managers of reasons why change has been
successful.

On many occasions companies failed to ensure that new behaviors were integrated and relied on in the future.

Two important factors are noted for this lack of integration.

  1. Many firms fail to show exactly how the previous change efforts have lead to enhanced performance, leaving the many to make this connection on their own. This can lead to assumptions, or worse, lack of recognition all together as to what aspect of the transformational process were successful and why.
  2. The second factor rests arises when successful change management is not integrated into new management successors. If a successor does not fully grasp the importance, understanding and simple foundations of how and why transformational efforts where successful within the organization he/she can wipe out much if not all of the progress generated under previous management.
Kotter’s Tips on Anchoring Change

Solutions to this problem are readily available to managers.

In the former, simple efforts to communicate the reasons for successful transformation should be made to ensure a clear, broad, company wide understanding of the reasons for success.

An example of this would be the use of company newsletters outlining the relevant information necessary to understand achievements and why they were possible so that al employees can identify opportunities for future success.

In the latter, ensuring that the board of directors understands the reasons behind why a company leader was able to enhance performance through successful change is imperative to ensure that effective processes of change continue under new management. (Kotter, 1995)

Bibliography and References
  • Change Management Class Notes. (June, 2008). International School of Management. Paris, France.
  • Kotter, John P. (1995, April). Why Transformational Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review.
  • Senge, Peter M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. , Random House Publishing, USA.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to check out Daniel Neukomm’s other pieces such as: Why The Home Page Is Dying and Porter’s Five Forces.

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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

What You Ought To Know About Buffett & Munger’s Four Filters Invention

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You guys know I love Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett… I consider them American hereos.

I read an interesting book called The Four Filters Invention of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (by Bud Labitan) the other day — if you like business, investing or Buffett or Munger, you should buy this book.

I thought I’d briefly summarize their “Four Filters” below — I paraphrase Bud Labitan’s book at times and add in a dose of quotes I’ve collected (see my past postings on Charlie Munger Quotes or Warren Buffett Quotes) as well as some quotes and insights from other folks.

The Four Filters Invention

1) Understandable First-Class Businesses

  • Use The “Scuttlebutt Approach” — Go out and talk to a company’s customers, suppliers and competitors to find out how the industry really works (Philip Fisher wrote about this in Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (thanks for correcting me, Santosh!)
  • Treat Any Investment As If You Owned Only That The Rest of Your Life
  • “To understand a business, figure out what results it is achieving, why it is getting those results, and what could happen to change what is causing those results.” — Charlie Munger
  • Keep it Simple — Charlie Munger is fond of saying: “We just throw some decisions into the ‘too hard’ file and go onto the others.”
  • Read as much as you can about businesses — Buffett and Munger recommend reading annual reports and The New York Times Century of Business by Floyd Norris and Christine Bockelmann)
  • “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” — Charlie Munger

Circle of Competence

Buffet advises investors to focus on their “circle of competence” (that which they know the most about).

“Draw a circle around the businesses you understand and then eliminate those that fail to qualify on the basis of value, good management and limited exposure to hard times.” — Warren Buffett

2) Enduring Competitive Advantages (Favorable long-term economics) (aka “A Protective Moat Around Their Economic Castles”)

Michael Porter suggests that there are two major types of competitive advantages:

1. A Cost Advantage

2. A Differentiation Advantage

“Something Special in People’s Minds”

Buffett and Munger have simplified this to “something special in people’s minds.”

“American Express has financial integrity; there’s worldwide acceptance of its name. It holds two-thirds of the market while charging more for its product…you have something special in people’s minds.” — Buffett at Berkshire’s 2000 Annual Meeting

“A Moat Around Their Economic Castles.”

“We look for moats around the castle. We think in terms of moats and the impossibility of crossing it — we want it widened every year. If it’s too narrow, we leave it alone.” Buffett at Berkshire’s 2000 Annual Meeting

The strong consumer brands of CocaCola and Gilette (later bought by Proctor and Gamble) were examples that Buffett gave in his 1993 Letter to Shareholders: “The might of their brand names, the attributes of their products and the strength of their distribution systems give them an enormous competitive advantage…”

Here’s another classic Buffett quote on the topic: “I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they’re going to look like in ten to fifteen years time. Take Wrigley’s chewing gum. I don’t the think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.”

3) First-Class Management

  • Only Work With Good People — “You can’t make a good deal with a bad person” — The Tao of Warren Buffett
  • They Should Be Able & Trustworthy — “Ability will get you to the top, but takes character to keep you there.” — Abraham Lincoln
  • Good Question To Answer: Does Management Have “Skin in the Game — A CEO should have at least one year’s salary worth of his own money in stock in the company they are running, according to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett by J.K.Lasser.
  • Management Should Have Their Own “Checklist” — “No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist.” — Munger

4) A Bargain Price

“We look for a horse with a one in two chance of winning and which pays you three to one. You’re looking for a mispriced gamble. That’s what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That’s value investing. Charlie Munger from Poor Charlie’s Almanack.

Margin of Safety — Benjamin Graham called this “margin of safety” — that is, the difference between the intrinsic value of a business versus what the asking price is.

How do you calculate intrinsic value?

Well, I recommend digging into Ben Graham’s Intelligent Investor book for the real details…but if you want a neat little formula than check out this Warren Buffett Intrinsic Value Calculator.

Patience For A Sensible Price Tag — Munger & Buffett refer to waiting for the “fat pitch.” Be very patient, but be very aggressive when it’s time.

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Sunday, January 31st, 2010

How To Have X-Ray Vision About Your Competition

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Imagine if you had x-ray vision about your competitors…and even your partners and clients!?

Well, lately, I feel like I do.

I’ve been using a free tool for a month now and it allows me to instantly see the following things about almost any Web site:

  • How relevant Google thinks they are in their space
  • How Many Web Pages They Have Built
  • How Many Other Web Sites Link To Them
  • How Much Traffic They Receive
  • Their Ranking by Traffic
  • How many of the social networking sites (such as Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc.) link to them
  • What organic position they appear (on Google) when people search certain keywords

Screen shot 2010-01-31 at 1.43.28 PM

It’s called the SEO Toolbar (instructions on downloading it are below); it provides you a toolbar on your Firefox Browser that you can turn on or off while you’re using the Web.

Let me explain a few of the top ways I’m using this SEO Toolbar (using eBay as an example)

In the first screenshot, I hit the blue info button in the upper left-hand corner to get the pop-up yellow screen of information about eBay).

Doing so tells me the following about eBay (I’m going to pick highlights):

  • In the first column (of the yellow pop-up in the screenshot above):
    • Page PR and Site PR (both of which are 8) — This represents a 1 to 10 Page Rank score that Google is providing on eBay (Google’s Page Rank represents how relevant Google thinks the Web page and Web site you’re on is (the higher the score (out of 1 to 10) the better).
    • Site Age — This is when the Web site was first launched (e.g. useful to know if this is a veteran Web site or the new kid on the block (eBay’s been around since June of 1997).
    • G Pages indexed — This is the number of eBay Web pages that Google indexes (I tend to use this to measure how serious a Web site is about producing content)
  • In the second column (of the yellow pop-up in the screenshot above):
    • Compete.com Uniques — This represents an estimate by Compete.com of how many unique visitors visit this Web site per month (e.g. 89 Million in eBay’s case)
    • Alexa — This is the ranking of eBay by traffic (e.g. it’s the 23 largest Web site in the world)
  • In the third column (of the yellow pop-up in the screenshot above):
    • del.icio.us — This is the number of bookmarks that members of the Delicious Web Site have made of eBay’s Web site (Delicious is a site that allows members to bookmark their favorite sites and Web pages and share them with friends). So, in this case, Delicious members bookmarked eBay 16,000 times.
    • Diggs — Digg is a Web site that allows its members to “Digg” articles or Web pages they enjoy; and then the most Dugg Web pages are shown on Digg’s popular home page (so, 826 of eBay’s pages have been “Dugg”).
    • Twitter — This is the number of times that members of Twitter have linked to a Web site (e.g. 100 times in eBay’s case).

In the next screenshot, I’m showing the Rank Checker feature which allows us to type in any keyword (search term that people type into Google) and see where any given Web site ranks on the search results for that keyword.

Screen shot 2010-01-31 at 2.15.28 PM

So, as you can see in the screenshot, ebay would rank in the following position on Google (on the left-hand “organic results” if you searched those terms):

  • 1st for the term “eBay” (this makes sense (though if the name of your business does not rank first when someone searches it, please comment below so that we can help you out!)
  • 2nd for the term “Auctions” (eBay is the dominant auction provider on the Web (the company that ranks 1st is a Live Auction proider called Auction Zip).
  • No Ranking for “Make Money From Home” — This means that eBay probably didn’t crack the top 200 positions on the Google search results
  • 50th for “Businesses for Sale”
  • 39th for “Pez Dispensers” (I thought I’d give this a try since Pez Dispensers is supposedly the first item ever sold on eBay)
  • 46th for “Michael Jackson Memorabilla”
  • 44th for “Bernie Madoff Memorabilla”

Rank Checker allows many keywords (at least 100 at a time) to be ranked.

Now, I highly recommend you couple this Rank Checker tool with Google’s Keyword Tool (which tells you how much any keyword is searched on Google) which SEO Toolbar also includes.

So now you can tell how well a Web site is doing in terms of its relevancy on the most popular keywords in your business!

If you use Google Analytics on your own Web site, you can simply copy and paste your top keywords from your Analytics account into Rank Checker and see where you’re ranking on Google.

The Rank Checker also shows you where a Web site ranks on Yahoo and Microsoft Bing — I just didn’t have room in the screenshot to show it!

There’s a lot more to the SEO Toolbar than this, but those are some highlights for me.

Here’s how you get SEO Toolbar:

Go to SEO Book Tools and download all three of the tools:

  1. Keyword Tool
  2. SEO for Firefox (if you don’t use the Firefox Browser, it’s worth it just to have the SEO Toolbar’s functionality)
  3. Rank Checker

And if you have questions on any of this, feel free to post comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

If you like this article, you may want to check out my Got Googlejuice? posting.

Best of luck!

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Saturday, January 30th, 2010

3 Easy Ways For Building Teamwork

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Here’s the 3 best ways of building teamwork my friend James learned  from watching his coach…

They include some teamwork exercises that can easily be applied to business.

3 Easy Ways For Building Teamwork

1) Sparring, Then Sharing

In training after two athletes have competed against each other (sparring) it is very important to him that they both sit down and share what they learned with each other.

He facilitates the conversation and asks both what is one thing your opponent did well and one thing that you think they could do better?

**Important distinction he gets the athletes to speak to each other NOT him…

After they are done sharing with each other he will tie it all together, praise each of them and reinforce that if they keep working together and talking to each other they will both get better faster.

Having had many of these conversations I find there is something different when I get feedback directly from an opponent or a teammate than from my coach.

Applying to business: We have started doing this on our team through daily huddle calls. Sharing with each other what’s working, what’s not, etc. Very effective and creates great bonding opportunities.

2) Make Success = EVERYBODY Hitting A Team Goal

Let me give you an example:

Typical boxing coach would have each individual athlete do separate drills on a heavy bag. Since it’s an individual sport the athlete will be focused on what they doing and not really have an interest in anybody else. In that situation some will work harder than others with no real consequence.

Coach Grant will sometimes set an environment where each individual participating in the drill is apart of the whole and he judges the result as a “team effort”. Therefore if somebody on the team isn’t trying their hardest or “fades” (gives up at the end or slows down)

EVERYBODY does the round again even if individually they were working as hard as they could.

What makes this really interesting is he typically saves a situation like this for the END of a work out when everybody is physically exhausted and just wants the work out to end!!! He doesn’t take any pity or make it easy. Instead he gives a challenging drill.

He does this intentionally because it’s how he gets us to develop the habit of “finishing strong” and develop superior mental toughness because at this point in the work out its ALL mental.

VERY Vince Lombardi like.

As you can imagine this creates an environment where EVERYBODY works together because if one of us doesn’t do our best everybody suffers the consequence. Trust me at this stage of the work out nobody wants to do another round.

So you can see how this plays out. Instead of just focusing on yourself everybody is now encouraging each other to do their best! Coach Grant will monitor and prompt us when somebody is performing below his standards…

“Looks like Johnny is fading on me… If he doesn’t pick it up everybody is going to be doing this round again”

EVERYBODY then starts encouraging and coaching Johnny…

“You can do it Johnny, Let’s go… only 30 seconds left, don’t give up… keep going…”

Incredible seeing this happen.

When the drill is complete the team naturally bonds because we ALL just helped each other push ourselves beyond what we thought possible.

If you are into football I read Coach Belichick once used a similar strategy. It was Friday the team was exhausted and wanted to get off early. He said everybody can get off early if one of of the offensive linemen could catch a punt successfully….

Only once chance and if he doesn’t catch it everybody has to do laps.

Offensive linemen never catch footballs so it was a huge challenge.

What happened is all the wide receivers were coaching him, the punter was coaching him. Everybody was working together and bonded. He caught it and the team got off early because they all worked together.

3) Let Others Lead Teamwork Exercises

Despite being the clear leader of the gym and head instructor during training Coach Grant frequently let’s OTHER coaches or students lead drills or give feedback.

Example: Bridget is going to lead the warm up today…

or

After doing some technical drills he won’t give feedback he’ll get another coach to share.

or

Sometimes during sparring he’ll get another student to “work the corner” and coach.

During competition or critical times of course he leads the whole time..

It’s very impressive how in a subtle way once again he gets EVERYBODY involved and does 3 things in the process: creates an incredible team atmosphere, helps others develop leadership skills and creates multiple feedback channels.

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Saturday, January 30th, 2010

5 Tips On How To Be A Better Leader (From The Protege!)

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I was speaking to colleague James the other day and he was praising his VP of Sales as an amazing leader.

I asked James to outline what leadership skills he appreciated about his boss, and he shared the five tips below.

These leadership tips apply to any team situation you’re in:

Top Five Tips For Leadership

Leadership Tip #1:  Shout Praise & Whisper Criticism

This is #1 by far: he REALLY gets how to shout praise and whisper criticism.

On a daily basis he ALWAYS tells us “great job”, “good work”, “I like what you did there”.

Praise has such an impact!!!

What’s very interesting is even when I don’t get the desired outcome (In my case a sale) he STILL finds a way to praise me for what I did do great.

He’s so good I let him know and asked him about it. He mentioned his mindset is: “I’m always looking for when people are winning”

Leadership Tip #2:  Lead By Example

He’s out there selling just like I am…

Even if that isn’t the case in the future as things expand, I know he’s capable of it and he is speaking form a place of experience.

Leadership Tip #3:  Check Your Ego at the Door

He is genuinely interested in hearing ideas or thoughts from our team that might help him or others get better.

This = our opinions are valued.

Leadership Tip #4:  Encourage Teamwork

This item is so in-depth that we’re dedicating a 3 Easy Ways For Building Teamwork posting to it.

Leadership Tip #5:  Be Transparent

He keeps us informed what he is working on and what is coming up. Example:

“Hey guys the marketing pieces I’m working on are coming along great we’ll probably send those out next week to get us some leads.”

This = Makes me feel involved, helps me see the vision and be apart of it.

Note: If you enjoy the subject of leadership skills, check out these articles on leadership tips that I and others have written for you.

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Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Discover How To Network Like This Top Web Site CEO

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I chatted with DocStoc Founder & CEO Jason Nazar the other day.

You should know abut Jason and DocStoc because Jason is an amazing networker (among other things) and DocStoc has been one of the fastest growing Web sites in the last few years (ranked 407th by Quantcast with 15 million unique visitors per month, according to DocStoc).

Jason and I had a little chat in which I asked him a few questions. He agreed to let me share it with you.

Q: Hi Jason, you really value business networking — tell me your philosophies.

I personally enjoy networking. I like meeting smart, interesting successful people.

From a professional standpoint, I believe the principal of it’s “who you know not what you know” is very true.

One thing about the Internet is that we spend a lot of time behind our computers…you’ve got to get out there and meet people.

Typically the larger the network you have, the more opportunities you have.

We spend a lot of time behind our computers…but business still gets done in person.

People want to work with other people they like, trust and respect.

And you don’t do that by just sending emails and sending IMs…you have to get out and meet people.

And if you want to have opportunities such as getting hired, raising money, building your company, and hiring the right people…you need to have a large network.

Typically, the larger your network is the more opportunities you have.

The business we’re building is a consumer-facing Internet company – we’re trying to get pretty much everyone in the world to use DocStoc.

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