10 Tips for Giving Effective Feedback

As a manager or leader, part of your role is to give feedback to your team. Feedback is incredibly important to individuals and teams. They want to know what they are doing well and where they need to develop. Sadly, managers and leaders are often poor at giving feedback or worse still, don't give it at all. So what are my 10 top tips for giving feedback?
Tip 1: Catch people doing things right
It is so easy to fall into the trap of only giving feedback when things have gone wrong. In reality people get more right than they do wrong in the work place. Make a point of noticing when people do things right like hitting sales targets, dealing with an angry customer or hitting deadlines.
Tip 2: Look for the signals that the employee wants feedback
People are sometimes a little hesitant to ask directly for feedback. They may ask in a much more subtle way by asking:
* How they are doing in the job
* Whether they are living up to expectations
Be alert to these signals.
Tip 3: Feedback as early as possible
You don't have to wait for an appraisal or meeting to feedback. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, give it at the earliest opportunity.
Tip 4: Focus on behaviours
It is important to focus on the behaviours that are helping or getting in the way of achievement when giving feedback. For example:
* I notice you were behaving aggressively in your dealing with x
* I saw you take decisive action when it was clear we might slip on the timetable
In the first scenario you are referring to aggression as the behaviour in your feedback. In the second scenario the behaviour you are drawing attention to is decisiveness.
Tip 5: Avoid feedback that cannot be acted upon
The purpose of giving the feedback is to facilitate action. Make sure is can be acted upon. For example, there is no point is telling someone who has a stammer or stutter to get their message across quicker.
Tip 6: Check the feedback is understood
The quickest and often most effective way of doing this is to ask the other person to tell you to play back to them what they understand they heard. This lets you deal with ambiguity there and then.
Tip 7: Give the opportunity to the other party to discuss how the feedback might be improved
If you ask people how you could improve the way you give feedback and allow them to respond authentically, truthfully and openly, you will learn and improve.
Tip 8: Use non threatening language
When giving negative feedback, choose your words carefully. While you have to make clear the consequences if improvement is not achieved you don't need to do it in a threatening way.
Tip 9: Be a role model
One of the most effective ways of demonstrating that you are open to feedback is to actively seek it. Many organisations have formal 360 degree feedback processes. One organisation I worked for did not have a formal 360 degree process so I simply sent out an e-mail to a mixture of subordinates, peers and superiors asking them:
* What I did well
* What I did not do so well
* Where I needed to develop
If you are worried that people will be reluctant to respond, ask them to send their responses to your boss and ask your boss to feedback key themes anonymously.

Tip 10: Set up a date for follow up
The final thing to do after giving feedback is to set up a follow up appointment. This lets the other party know that you are committed to supporting them and to making the necessary change.
Giving feedback will always be a challenge but you can greatly enhance your performance by following these simple but effective tips.

How to Generate Amazing Traffic from Blogging

Blogging has become such a craze that every Tom, Dick and Harry is trying a hand at it. Many of these Toms are fools spamming internet sites, but these are the fools who have mastered the art of exploiting the benefits of blogging. Blogging no longer is just associated with the term personal. The transition of blogging from personal to corporate world has been amazing. Now-a-days even personal blogging websites have provided many ways to create income online. Corporate and business world is exploiting blogging to drive traffic of viewers to their websites who could become their potential customers for the products and services they provide. The search engine optimizers consider blogging to be a very effective strategy for their search engine ranking optimization. Gizmodo, a small blog launched to create awareness about gadgets and gizmos some time back, generates such high traffic to its website that you can't even imagine. Anyone can do it. All you need to learn is how to generate traffic from the blogs you create. Originals Live, Copy-Cats Doom
You read a topic from somewhere. You copy and paste it with some modifications in grammar and styling in your blog. Do not even hope for traffic on such blogs. Readers are smart now-a-days. Consider the example above quoted about Gizmodo. There are hundreds of blogs and pages talking about gadgets and gizmos. Not every blog achieved what Gizmodo achieved. The only thing that distinguished it was originality.
Some may argue that duplicate content can be marketed by applying blog marketing techniques which we will discuss. But there is a difference between generating traffic and sustaining the same traffic permanently with your blog. Think over it!
Promote your Posts with Promotional Sites
There are some great sites which provide you free access to promote the Blog posts. Psd.tutsplus.com, design-newz.com, noupe.com, net.tutsplus.com and devsnippets.com are some of the popular promotional sites. Your posts will enjoy great exposure to traffic here. Divert this traffic to your website by embedding the blog on the website itself.
Follow the Blogs sharing the same niche
Follow the blogs sharing the same field of interest. Comments can garner huge traffic. Enter discussions in comments and forum section. Post your point of view and encourage in a subtle way other comments and forum section people, to get on to your blog and read your views.
Get Business Blogs on Popular Blogging Platforms
Blogging platforms like Hub pages, squidoo lenses, type-pad etc have millions of visitors, everyday. Post your product or service blogs on these platforms with outgoing links to your websites. Lot of traffic can be diverted to your services or products through such blogs.
Stretch Yourself
Time your articles well. Always keep a track of hot keywords that are associated with your products or services. Post blogs using these keywords and relate them to your needs. Such blogs can spread rapidly and a lot of traffic can be generated on them by relating to hot topics. Technorati needs a Ping
Technorati is the undisputed king for searching blogs. Millions of blogs are registered with it. Get on with the necessary widgets and register with them. Technorati will ping your posts to all the hungry blog reading traffic.
Social Networking world
Get your blogs to be visible on social networking sites. Embed videos and slide shares in them. Social networking websites have a strong constant traffic flow and a really good blog can garner traffic instantly in huge numbers. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn are among the top social networking sites available for your blogs to enchant traffic.
Blogs need marketing and originality to garner traffic. Both parameters can't out do each other. Try these few steps and generate amazing traffic flow through your blogs.

How to Market With Your Blog

A blog, in its simplest form, can be described as a weblog, website or an online journal that can be used to add regular content through entries. Since it is very easy to add regular entries to a blog, almost anyone can build one to publish and share their thoughts, ideas and opinions every now & then.
Blogs are Great Marketing Tools
Are you a talented writer with interesting writing tips to offer? Do you enjoy travel writing and want to become a trusted travelogue writer? Have a product or service that you would like to promote and popularise? Blogs are great to fulfil all your marketing goals!
Tips for Marketing with your Blog
If done right, blogs can be of tremendous help to market yourself or your business well.
- Choose a Theme for Your Blog: The first and foremost thing to do is to ask yourself the purpose behind starting off your blog. Do you want to establish yourself as an expert on a particular topic or would you like to use your blog to promote your business and brand name? A clear goal will help you to move ahead in a logical manner and also help in choosing the right theme / look for your blog
- Blog Regularly: Don't start your blog and leave it in the middle. To reap the benefits of a blog, you must add well written, informational and interesting new entries at least 2-3 times a week, if not more. This will make your readers come back for more.
- Optimise Your Blog: It pays to follow SEO tactics when building up your blog. Include relevant keywords in your post titles, blog title etc.
- Link to Useful Resources: Your aim should be to make your blog a brilliant resource. Link back to important pages of your main website, if you have one. Don't shy away from linking to other websites that offer interesting information. Your readers will appreciate your unbiased approach.
- Publish News, Press Releases and Other Co Information: Use your blog to get the message out to your blog readers about important events in your Company. This will help to build their trust in your business.
- Submit your Blog to Blog Directories: Improve the popularity of your blog and earn valuable link backs by submitting your blog to Blog Directories of repute.
- Comment on Other Blog Posts: If you come across a blog post that is related to your own blog's topic, you can consider leaving an intelligent and useful comment. This will establish you as another player in the field and help to get a link back.
- Allow Visitors to Subscribe to Your Blog Feeds: RSS Feeds are in! You can consider activating a service such as Feedburner so that your blog visitors can subscribe to your blog entries and stay updated.
Your blog is a wonderful resource that can add tremendous value to your online presence. Start utilising it well so that you can benefit from its true potential.

Overview of Blogging

What is blogging? At face value this question is very easy to answer but when you really dig into the subject matter, you find it is much more complex than it seems. We hear the terms blog, blogger and blogging all the time but not everyone really understands what they mean. Perhaps an overview of blogging should begin with a definition of a blog. This is important because bloggers are simply writers who create blogs and blogging is the process of creating a blog. So once you understand what a blog is, the other terms are easy to define.



In the absolute simplest form, a blog is a series of brief online statements presented in a reverse chronological fashion. The term blog comes from weblog which was essential a diary or journal of the day's events. However, blogs have taken a drastic departure from a diary or a journal. These days blogs are so much more than that. There are still many blogs which take on this form but many blogs offer so much more than that. Let's look at an example that offers both sides of the coin. Consider a blog about training for a marathon. In this case the blogger may enter information on his training and nutrition on a daily basis. These blog entries will lead up to the day of his race.



Now consider a blog written as a guide to marathons. While the previous blog focused on one person's journey to completing a marathon, this type of blog may highlight marathons offered around the world by providing information on when they take place, where they are located, the terrain of the course and unique features of the event. Unlike the other blog which was more of a diary, the guide to marathons blog exists to provide useful information but is not necessary relevant to day to day events in the life of the blogger.



There are all kinds of blogs. The most common type of blog provides content in the form of text. However, there are also video blogs, audio blogs, blogs which provide links to other information, blogs that provide coupons and countless other options. Blogs may provide entertainment, political sounding boards, educational information or anything else. Many blogs are written to attract regular visitors and include an area for visitors to comment on the blog postings. This helps to make the blog more interactive.



Blogging is a useful tool for internet marketers because it can provide a place for them to embed links to their website. These embedded links will help to increase traffic. The blogs can also be used to promote the products or services offered on their website.

10 Best Practices of Social Media Marketing

We've recently been working with We Want It All, a women's talk show based in Miami Beach that is getting a lot of attention. Because there are many people involved and some were relatively new to the social scene I had decided to put together a list - really more of a framework if I think about it - of best practices for success in social media marketing.
OK. Ready? Here it goes...
1. Always respond. To the good and the bad. Let your audience know that you're there with them. Let them feel like they have a direct line to the show hosts.
2. Listen Intently. This is a huge mistake most people make. They want to push their own agenda and it doesn't work. This audience is the key to success, and they're telling you exactly what they want. "Give the people what they want!"
3. Be consistent. So many who have failed did so because they didn't adhere to this rule. Update consistently and produce fresh content on a schedule. People come back when they know they could be missing something. Humans are creatures of habit. Help your audience create a habit out of you.
4. Content is King. Today, he/she who has the gold does not make the rules. They simply have more money to create more content! Status updates, photos, blog posts, events, episodes, shout outs, discussion boards, press releases and articles (like how to guides). All of it is content, and you should always be adding more.
5. Create Value in Everything. This especially applies to rules two and four. Always be sure what you're posting has some type of appeal to your audience. Find out what they want and tailor your content accordingly. When people find value in what you're saying they post comments, share it and make it viral, and that's the goal!
6. Make it special. Create incentives for people to join your network and tune into the shows. Make them feel like they're a part of something exclusive and fun, even though anyone can join.
7. Stand out. The average Facebook user is connected to 80 fan pages, and Facebook has over 30 billion pieces of new content posted EACH MONTH. You're competing for attention, how are you going to get it?
8. Create Evangelists. Get your audience to promote your brand. Truly understanding your audience will allow you to appeal to them so well that they will take ownership of your brand (think Apple fans) and sell your brand for you. Nothing sells products faster than your own customers (through comments, testimonies, sharing content, etc.)
9. Measure results. Look at your inputs and correlate them with the outputs. In other words, see if what you're doing is working, and identify which things generate the biggest buzz.
10. Have (a lot) of fun and love what you do. It may not always be smooth sailing, but when you're audience sees the genuine passion for what you're doing you can be sure they'll listen up.

Everything You Want to Know About E-Cigarettes

A few years back, China introduced a new form of cigarettes called “Electronic Cigarettes” and it hit the market all over the world in no time. It came out as an alternative to the old traditional tobacco cigarettes and with a purpose to help smokers to quit their smoking habit.
The electronic cigarette has attracted millions of people around the world who have switched from traditional cigarettes to the e-cigarette, also referred to as the “safe cigarette, the e-cigarette, and the smokeless cigarette”.
Having said that;
According to WHO (World Health Organization) any device that delivers nicotine is not good for you, even if it’s electronic. The World Health Organization has also said that so-called “electronic cigarettes” are not effective and may even be fatal, as reported in US News.

Let’s see what is E-Cigarette? What are its advantages or disadvantages?
Definition
An Electronic Cigarette (also known as E-Cigarette or simply E-Cig) looks like a traditional cigarette made from tobacco but actually has just one main thing in common with the real thing: nicotine.
It is believed that the e-cigarettes are healthier than the old tobacco cigarette, the reason is simple it does not produce any harmful materials as there is no combustion which was present in the traditional cigarettes.
Advantages
1. It gives smokers the same feeling as traditional cigarettes do, furthermore, it Satisfies smoker’s addiction.
2. Helpful for quitting smoking without suffering.
3. Long life time, continuous use by charging the battery and replacing the cartridge.
4. No combustion, No tar, CO and other carcinogenic materials generated by tobacco cigarette.
5. No potential danger of causing fire.
6. Can be used in most of non-smoking place, for no damage of passive smoking.
7. Convenient, No need to light, start to smoke once take it out.
8. Clean, No cigarette smell, No stained teeth.
Disadvantages
1. There is no such thing as healthy smoking because you are still inhaling nicotine!
2. It is totally false that it will help in quitting smoking, because one would agree, you have to quit smoking entirely not gradually if you want to become free of cigarettes and nicotine.
Conclusion
E-cigarettes are not healthy because you will still be addicted to nicotine, but on other hand they have some advantage over the traditional ones like: No combustion, No tar, CO and other carcinogenic materials are present and they are less toxic, no smell, no bad mouth smell, no damage of passive smoking.
Note: People who are allergic or has sensitivity to nicotine, pregnant or breastfeeding, or with unstable heart conditions should discuss the use of an electronic cigarette device with a doctor before using one.

7 Reasons – Why You Should Not Buy iPad

Apple iPad is official now and there is a lot of murmur around the specifications and whispering about who should buy Apple iPad or who should not. Well there can be ample of reasons to go for Apple iPad. However, before you make a decision in regards to buying it, you should look at some reasons why you should not go for Apple iPad. There is no doubt that Apple iPad is one of the most hyped and much anticipated device.
So here’s a list of reasons why you should not buy Apple iPad:

1. The Name – iPad

What’s wrong with Apple? What kind of a name ‘iPad’ is? Some one who is not familiar with ‘iPad’ may think it as a ‘Maxi Pad’ you know… due to the word Pad. Apple could have come up with a nice and a better name but I don’t know what they were thinking?

2. Flash is not supported

What? The new Apple iPad is designed to give you a better gaming, browsing and a rich graphical experience on the other hand it doesn’t allow video streaming? You’re offering something that will replace Netbooks and laptops and that “something” can NOT run videos and flash based graphics? And what is the use of unlimited data packages then?

3. There is NO Extended Memory and NO Extension Ports/Adapters

Question arises what if someone wanted to plug in a digital camera, external HDD or even a card reader? But there is no way you could do this with iPad. There’s even NO USB port in iPad that even an average Netbook or a cell phone would have. This means you will NOT be able to expand your Apple iPad memory, now this seems like a huge deal breaker to me.

4. HD Video Output Not Supported

Apple iPad could have been a wonderful tool for presentations provided there was HD video out support. This could also enable users to watch videos in HD on bigger screens.

5. NO Support for Handwriting Recognition

It would have been nice to have handwriting recognition in Apple iPad. Emphasis has been on artists and students, both would have loved the handwriting recognition in iPad but …

6. NOT Favorable

I have a Laptop and an iPhone, now you tell me why should I buy an iPad? Is there a single reason for spending more then $500 on that “revolutionary” device?

7. Just an E-Book Reader for $500

So, iBook seems to be the good reason to buy an iPad. But for whopping $500, why shouldn’t you rather go for Amazon Kindle then. At least Kindle’s got E-Ink, which is so easy on eyes and so light on battery. Not to mention that Amazon Kindle has battery time of one week.
Apple iPad seems to be just another iPod, the bigger one that can’t multitask, doesn’t support flash, have no room for expandable memory, doesn’t let you attach your devices to it and list goes on. All this comes with an “unbelievable” price of minimum $500 doesn’t sound like a fair deal to me.

RSS - A Marketing Tool To Improve Search Ranking

More and more online applications are being built to extend the potentials of online content media. RSS plays a daring role, to be one of the most widely used syndication tools, to promote content at different levels of the internet. Learn about RSS, and how you can make it work for you.
If you're the type of person who loves to skim through tidbits of news or read about short and up-to-date announcements online, then chances are you've run into RSS. RSS or Really Short Syndication is a very potent marketing strategy used by webmasters and online marketers for better online exposure of their articles and to improve search engine placement for their websites. RSS makes news and information accessible wherever RSS can be applied or RSS readers can be used. Several blog providers like http://Blogger.com, Wordpress and Livejournal offer RSS for their member's content. More and more users, who are catching on the blogging craze, are putting importance on the relatively fast and reliable RSS.
Users often keep their blogs as an online organizer. RSS come in as a handy tool in keeping all the information from different websites all under one little corner of your blog or webpage. RSS is really a convenient option for those who tend to visit a lot of websites, and who wish to be updated about certain site activities or articles. Online users also use RSS to check out the latest news or sports update. RSS is a great tool to improve search engine ranking as well as to organize data from different sources.
RSS displays a short summary of your articles, around two or three lines of text, which the RSS readers will then display over websites, or through applications. Your articles can now be seen on different parts of the globe through different RSS portals or websites that display categorically related RSS content.
There are many directories and websites that accept and promote RSS data. If you're in the market to promote your articles, then submitting your content to RSS directories and websites can help bring you very good exposure. Several websites run updated copies of your RSS data over their main page at certain intervals to help promote your website to those who would otherwise have problems seeing your updated content. People download RSS information for news, stock and trading updates, article submissions and marketing and to improve search engine ranking, among others.
With the right articles or marketing copies, webmasters and web marketers say that RSS do help a lot in passing their message across to their clients and other online visitors. Promoting the RSS data over targeted channels can greatly boost your websites exposure online. Choosing categorically related websites and marketing RSS information on them can have huge benefits on your online business. The whole concept of the RSS is to make information readily accessible to end users, as well as help promote content online. In both areas, I believe RSS has greatly excelled to become one of the top web marketing tools.
So if you're planning to promote your content online, better avail of RSS. It can greatly simplify your work. Plus a lot of websites offer free RSS promotion service. With RSS, you're sure to be able to get wider reach for your targeted online users. But one thing you should put in mind when doing RSS is that too much RSS data coming from other sites can cause your website to get penalized due to duplicate content. The lines are still scratchy on how duplicate content is checked even though a person is using RSS, but the basic idea of having 30-50% of your content originating from RSS information from other related websites can get you into trouble with the search engines, and not to mention those websites where your data or content is coming from.

SEO Tips that will help you with ranking

Have you tried any and everything to get the search engines to give your site a higher ranking? How come you're not seeing any results then? There are quite a few webmasters just starting out that try to get their websites to climb when it comes to search engines yet they fail to recall what they need to do. The ranking rules search engines use are always being reworked and so the ways to get websites optimized for ranking well are never the same. If you are aiming to beat your competitors and maintain the first listing for Google, it's best not to make the mistakes you're about to read about. Avoiding these mistakes will increase your chances for success, even if you don' t have money to invest.
The most common blunder is neglecting on-site SEO. This is one of the only elements of SEO that you have complete control over. On-page SEO is how you arrange the elements on your site to rank well in the search engines. The main components of on-site SEO are your heading tags, ALT tags, navigation, and file names. All of these should have your targeted keywords mentioned in them. On-site SEO makes your site easier for your visitor to navigate and easier for you to manage. These are very basic on-page SEO methods that will be implemented by your competing sites, so it's always good to stay ahead. You should never commit the blunder of taking text that's not yours from various other sites, as that's not morally correct. If you copy content, you won't get far. It may appear as though there are no repercussions at first, but it will hurt you once someone discovers that you've stolen your content. The main reason you don't want to do this is because search engines are smarter these days and they can easily pick out content that's been copied. Search engines use filters to quarantine sites that use copied content, and if your site gets stuck in there, you won't rank very high. This is why it's important to use content that both visitors and the search engines will like.
Never commit a big mistake which is overlooking the search engine guide lines.
You should go through these guidelines very carefully to make sure that you avoid any bad SEO practices that will get you punished by the search engine. The search engines are constantly altering their rues so it's important to look them up as often as you can so that you never incur a penalty. One example you can look at is Google, which changes the algorithm is uses all the time, and that's why you must look at these changes whenever they occur so your site doesn't lose its rank.
See, SEO isn't as complicated as it seems, just stick to the basics and you will be doing better than most. Don't forget to keep adding quality content and getting relevant backlinks to point back to the pages for even better ranking. So, now you have it; quality backlinks, internally linking related pages, on-site optimization, and patience.

How To Unlock Phones

A GSM phone is designed to be used by any network in the world that supports GSM technology. However there are some providers that will electronically lock these phones especially when they are giving special offers or discounts and this is to ensure that the customer sticks with that provider. This is sometimes a disadvantage since you can pay high roaming charges when you take the phone out of their network range. Fortunately these phones can be unlocked as the copyright office has given the green light to so. Unlocking your phone will vary depending on the model of the phone as well as the phone carrier. There are several things that you will need in order to do so and this will include:
Your mobile phone number
The manufacturer
The model number
The network and country where the phone is locked
The IMEI number for the phone which is a 15 digit serial number and you can find this by typing *#06# on your phone's keypad.
There are several techniques that you can use for unlocking your phone and these will include:
Unlocking your phone using a phone unlocking service company - There are several companies as well as websites that are capable of unlocking your phone and this will be at a small fee. Most of these companies will require you to send them an email containing your IMEI number and they will be able to generate your unlock code and email it back to you. With this technique you must be cautious since there are various fraudulent companies. There also other phones especially the new ones that can not be unlocked using the IMEI numbers.
Unlocking your phone using equipment - there are some companies that also offer unlocking equipment as well as products that are mostly phone specific. These equipments are usually very useful although they are sometimes quite costly.
Unlocking your phone with help from your operator - in this technique you will need to call your service provider and you will be asked to give a few weeks notice. Other companies may charge you for this service depending on the circumstances that you got the phone under as there might be some requirements that you have not met. An example is having been with the company for not less 12 months.
Unlocking your phone without help from your operator - incase the operator does not give you the unlock code you can go through various phone unlocking forums where you can get the code. Another way will be to calculate the code yourself and this will require you to have a data cable and a special software.
Unlocking by sending your phone in - in this technique you are supposed to send your phone to a company that deals with locked phones and they will return it to you when it is unlocked. These companies will require a small fee for their services.
After unlocking your phone you will now be free to move to a network of your choice.