Perhaps, the best thing about social media is that is gives an opportunity for everyone to raise their voice. And the worst thing is that it gives everyone an opportunity.
There are literally millions of blogs on web and the number is growing stronger each and every day, which means that it is becoming harder to find reliable information online.
Alltop, founded by Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens, and Guy Kawasaki in early 2008 aggregates and organizes content across the web. It simply acts as an online library for users looking for information online.
Alltop filters and provides the best reliable information on any topic. For example, if you want to find out latest news on sports, it has a dedicated page that pulls out all the latest information or news on sports from authority news sites and blogs.
Alltop is a valuable tool for marketers. Marketers can benefit from it in the below ways.
1. Stay on top of the news: Interested in what’s happening in real industry industry? Just go to http://real-estate.alltop.com/ and get all the latest information. With Alltop, you can get the latest information aggregated from reliable sources on the web.
It instantly lets you identify the hottest trends in the industry which in-turn helps you design better strategies for your marketing plans.
2. Research tool: If you are planning to switch into a new product division, Alltop lets you quickly get up to the speed on new product divisions and discover about the marketing efforts being invested to promote those products.
You can track development in your industry. For example, if you belong to software industry, by quickly checking the top sites in Alltop, it gives you an idea of marketing trends in software industry and marketing efforts of your competitors.
3. Improve your writing skills: You can judge the writing style of top bloggers by quickly scanning how they position their content, the length of their posts, different plugins they use to attract visitors, how they spread their content across social networking sites etc.
You can quickly improve the quality of your titles by scanning dozens of titles in Alltop. You’ll get an idea of what makes an effective headline.
Additionally, you can keep an eye on what’s working for top bloggers in your industry. For example, if most of the top bloggers are advicing on video marketing, then that’s probably what you need to concentrate on in future.
4. Include your blog and get extra traffic: You can get your blog included in Alltop directory here http://alltop.com/submission/ . This not only sends you more traffic to your site but also raises its visibility, awareness and exposes your skill set to a large number of people.
But there is a trick here. Before you submit your blog to Alltop, familiarize yourself with Alltop so that you can better “sell” your blog. Also make sure that your blog has a feed so that Alltop can pull in your content regularly.
5. As a Feed reader: Alltop lets you create your own page where you can populate the page with the sites and blogs you want to track. It also lets you share the page with others.
Guy Kawasaki explains that Alltop aggregates the five most recent stories from each feed, helping marketers to quickly scan for stories that interest them.
6. Source of Information for Twitter: If you have launched a Twitter account and struggling to decide what to tweet about, then Alltop helps you. You can browse variety of categories and tweet them. Every topic in Alltop has an RSS feed. Using Twitterfeed, you can grab the RSS feed and insert into your Twitter stream. You can also create a personalized Alltop page with the selected RSS feed and insert into your Twitterfeed.
I am an online marketer and always look for better filters to find the relevant information I need. If you are like me, give Alltop a try. It may not disappoint you.
Author : Indu Priya is a traffic expert and blogs at blog.theideashome.com. Get her free guide on driving 100+ traffic per day to a brand new site.
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Managers often make the mistake of assuming that once a change is started, that employees will see that it is going to take place, and get on side. This is rarely the case. Because change causes fear, a sense of loss of the familiar, etc., it takes some time for employees to a) understand the meaning of the change and b) commit to the change in a meaningful way. It is important to understand that people tend to go through stages in their attempts to cope with change. Understanding that there are normal progressions helps change leaders avoid under-managing change or over-reacting to resistance.
As we go through the stages, you will probably find many similarities with the process a person goes through with the loss of a loved one.
Stage I: Denial
An early strategy that people use to cope with change is to deny that it is happening, or to deny that it will continue or last. Common responses during this stage are:
“I’ve heard these things before. Remember last year they announced the new customer initiative? Nothing ever happened, and this will pass.”
“It’s just another hair-brained idea from the top.”
“I bet this will be like everything else. The head honcho will be real gung-ho but in about six months everything will be back to normal. You’ll see.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
People in the denial stage are trying to avoid dealing with the fear and uncertainty of prospective change. They are hoping they won’t have to adapt.
The denial stage is difficult because it is hard to involve people in planning for the future, when they will not acknowledge that the future is going to be any different than the present.
People tend to move out of the denial stage when they see solid, tangible indicators that things ARE different. Even with these indicators some people can remain in denial for some time.
Stage II: Anger & Resistance
When people can no longer deny that something is or has happened, they tend to move into a state of anger, accompanied by covert and/or over resistance. This stage is the most critical with respect to the success of the change implementation. Leadership is needed to help work through the anger, and to move people to the next stage. If leadership is poor, the anger at this stage may last indefinitely, perhaps much longer than even the memory of the change itself.
People in this stage tend to say things like:
“Who do they think they are? Jerking us around”
“Why are they picking on us?”
“What’s so damned bad about the way things are?
“How could [you] the boss allow this to happen?
Actually people say far stronger things, but we need to be polite.
Stage III: Exploration & Acceptance
This is the stage where people begin to get over the hump. They have stopped denying, and while they may be somewhat angry, the anger has moved out of the spotlight. They have a better understanding of the meaning of the change and are more willing to explore further, and to accept the change. They act more open-mindedly, and are now more interested in planning around the change and being participants in the process.
People in this stage say things like:
“Well, I guess we have to make the best of it.”
“Maybe we can get through this.”
“We need to get on with business.”
Stage IV: Commitment
This is the payoff stage, where people commit to the change, and are willing to work towards making it succeed. They know it is a reality, and at this point people have adapted sufficiently to make it work. While some changes will never get endorsement from employees (downsizing, for example) employees at this stage will commit to making the organization effective within the constraints that have resulted from the change.
Concluding Points
Let’s conclude with some key points:
1) The change process takes a considerable amount of time to stabilize and to work. Don’t undermanage by assuming it will “work itself out” and don’t over-react when faced with reasonable resistance.
2) Worry if there is no resistance. If the change is significant it means that people are hiding their reactions. Eventually the reactions that are not dealt with will fester and can destroy the organization. Likewise with anger.
About Author : Robert Bacal is a noted author, keynote speaker, and management consultant.
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Starting and running your own business can be exciting and rewarding, but it can also be very stressful. For most of our almost 40 year marriage my husband has been an entrepreneur and I have sometimes worked with him. Having built my own business as a Stress Reduction Coach I have been reflecting on the stresses of being an entrepreneur. (more…)
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