From the Soapbox: Management Style and Morale Improvement

I read this article this morning, and because it is so closely describes the situation for someone close to me, I just had to put out this "gentle nudge". If you're a business owner/supervisor, I urge you to take a good look at how you manage people and how it affects productivity.

Can you do better in 2008?

Management Style and Morale Improvement

Thu, 12/20/2007 - 14:26 — Wayne Hurlbert

You have probably heard the old office threat, "The beatings will continue until morale improves". Many people smile a bit when they hear it.

At the same time, there is an urge to cringe, as all too often, that destructive management practice is a bit too familiar for comfort. Is this archaic threat part of your company's management style?

Fear is not a good motivator over the long term. While many managers will point to a time when a good scare moved a lackluster employee into action, the effect was usually short lived. If fear becomes the over riding emotion in the company's culture, morale will fall to very low levels. Instead of innovation and creativity, employees will turn their attention to holding onto their jobs.

Happy Holidays to My Fellow Web Geeks

This past year I purchased a little, but powerful program called RSS2HTML from PHPJabbers.com. The program allows you to display RSS feeds on your site with very little effort. Oh, yeah, and the code it produces is SE friendly too.

This week I got an email from PHPJabbers.com announcing a Holiday Sale on it's software: BOGO (Buy one, get one free). Let me tell you I was all over that like stink on a monkey!

These scripts are awesome, easy to use, inexpensive and you can use them on as many sites as you like. Support from PHPJabbers.com is top-notch too, I found out from personal experience.

So, happy holidays, fellow geeks: go cash in on the offer. Enjoy!

12 Simple Steps to Explode Your Site Traffic Using Online Social Media

This article is a good one especially for the end of the year. Web site owners really need to get into the social media marketing mode for 2008. It's what web visitors expect.

Just two REALLY SIMPLE ways that are my favorites:

1. Set up a profile at Flickr and add photos of products, events, staff whatever you take pictures of for your business. People LOVE photos and if you take good ones, they'll follow your links back to your web site.
2. Add interactivity to your web site: let visitors vote on their favorite (whatever) on your web site. I just yesterday added a rating system to my web design portfolio. Allow visitors to write reviews of your products and services-and publish them on your site for all to see.

What these social things allow your visitors to do is feel like they are participating. Not everyone using the Internet wants to be isolated. We, as humans need to connect to each other and any site that shares of itself and allows its visitors to participate will come out ahead in 2008. The static site will soon be dead.

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Key Marketing Methods For 2008

Here's a good article outlining the differences between "Old World" marketing methods and the new. Here is an excerpt:

Isn't online marketing by definition, expensive? Not
necessarily. Online businesses are coming to the realization
that in an organic environment like the Internet, organic
marketing is required; paying for traditional or static
marketing only gets you so far before it becomes ineffective.
The consumer now controls your marketing.

This is an important read if you're looking at being more aggressive in your online marketing for the new year. What you're not going to like about it is the fact that the web site owner must participate to make this work. There is no "auto-magic" way for a webmaster to achieve results without your participation. The last sentence in the above paragraph is absolutely crucial to understand: "The consumer now controls your marketing."

Hmmm.

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CD WebMaker Makes Elves of Themselves

Just for FUN...my family made elves of ourselves....

Happy, happy holidays everyone!