Improve Sleep to Cause a Lifestyle Change and Work Productivity
April 15, 2013 by The Anywhere Office · 1 Comment
This guest post was submitted to The Anywhere Office by Jay Ackers of safetyservicescompany.com
Fatigue at the workplace isn’t just a health and safety issue for office managers – it drains productivity. When you are healthy and alert you are happier and motivated to give your best efforts.
I lived this when I lost 60 pounds in the last year through better nutrition, exercise and yes better sleep. After looking at my personal situation, I moved to a quieter neighborhood closer to my office, invested in a sleep mask, ear plugs, white noise machine, regulated my sleep-wake schedule (even on the weekends) and stayed hydrated. I even bought a special alarm clock that gradually wakes me up with light and a phone app that monitors my sleep cycles and waits to wake me up when I’m no longer in deep sleep.
What I learned was my entire day hinged on having a refreshing night’s sleep. I would start working early and was more productive , no longer nodding off at my desk. When my work was over I was more willing to meet friends for a group run; which led to weight loss, a better diet, less stress and even better sleep.
Each positive change made other changes easier and more effective. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, look at your own situation and decide what changes you need to make. Read more
How Politeness Can Ruin Your Team’s Meetings
April 9, 2013 by The Anywhere Office · Leave a Comment
Once again Wayne Turmell has gotten right down to the core of a common problem. Sometimes it seems like most meetings are so dreadful because everyone is just smiling and nodding; that moves nothing forward and improves no one’s morale. As you know, these ‘time and energy suck’ issues are often exacerbated when taken virtual. And that can be enough to make you want to go, as Turmell would say, ‘full Captain Bligh on people’… lol.
This is not to say you go full Captain Bligh on people, humiliating them at will and whipping them into shape, but it does mean that both meeting leaders and participants have expectations on them that need to be met.
Read this excellent article at the link below.
How politeness can ruin your team’s meetings.
Can Social Media Marketing Work For Your Business (Or Is It Yet Another Service Marketers Want to Promote)?
March 25, 2013 by The Anywhere Office · 1 Comment
This guest post was submitted to The Anywhere Office by Gean Biffulco of Idea180.com
Can Social Media Marketing Work For Your Business (Or Is It Yet Another Service Marketers Want to Promote)?
The short answer to both questions is, ‘YES.’ Social Media Marketing (SMM) can generate brand awareness (locally, nationally or globally), it can influence purchases (give your brand “social endorsements”) and can even generate a return on investment if set up and measured properly. The problem many businesses run into is they set the wrong expectations about SMM right from the start and then consider they have wasted marketing dollars paying for “fans”, “subscribers” or an “amazing Facebook app/game” that didn’t seem to do anything for sales. This is not only the marketer’s fault for setting the wrong expectations, but also the businesses’ for lacking the proper knowledge.
We have seen the expressions of many business owners who just don’t get what social media is (they call it the Twitter, the Facebook, the YouTube, and others like it), and the truth is that some authors or pseudo-experts can make any internet marketing subject too complex. This is why idea180 has prepared this article, intended for small or medium business owners who want to understand social media in laymen’s terms, and to help determine just how much social media their business needs.
Why Are You Considering Social Media?
If your interest in social media is to have the same high number of Facebook fans as your friend’s page, you can buy a few thousand fans from India or some other countries for a couple of hundred dollars and be done with it. This is not really cheating, it’s just plain stupid. A couple of hundred dollars used in Facebook ads can give your business a few thousand impressions from the right pair of eyes. You can choose if you want your promotional ad to be seen by males or females, specific age ranges, run it in specific towns, cater to people with specific interests, and based your campaign on any other demographic data Facebook collects. You can also decide if you want to create fans for your page or drive traffic to a landing page on your site. If you compare creating “fake fans” made in Pakistan to “targeting the right people”, the choice is obvious – social media is quality over quantity. The right people are more likely to buy than some “fake fan” that could care less about you or your products.
The example above shows how setting the right expectations in SMM matter a lot, thousands of fans means nothing – SMM it’s all about interaction. Some small businesses have only a few clients, not thousands, who generate 100% of their revenue; the relationship with these clients is based in quality interactions.
Lin Humphrey: Mobile and Social Technology
March 4, 2013 by The Anywhere Office · 1 Comment
If you are interested in some heady conversation about the intersection of mobile technology, social networks, and marketing – give a minute to this Lin Humphrey article where he offers his informed opinion about Amber Case’s discussion (and Tedtalk) “We Are All Cyborgs Now”. I think I lean toward agreeing with Humphrey on the point that mobile technology and social networks actually enhance human relationships which might not otherwise exist or be developed. Then again, I also want an army of robots… I think we’ll have a whole lot more insight to gain from Lin as he pursues his PHD and ruminates on these topics.
…we must remember that this technology facilitates rich connections to a network we might not be able otherwise to maintain. Much work remains on the research I discuss here; through future waves of the online study, a rich, academically sound understanding of how social media and mobile technology consumers use the technology, how they interact with their network, and how they make purchase decisions based on social media input will be developed. At the end of this project, I will defend my dissertation to earn my Ph.D. in marketing. But beyond that, the goal is to provide a rich contribution on how social media and mobile technology usage by “Connected Consumers” is associated with psychological and technology factors.
Read More:
Lin Humphrey: Mobile and Social Technology: Emergence of a Shared Consumption Experience.
Virus Protection For The Mobile Office
February 18, 2013 by The Anywhere Office · 2 Comments
This guest post was submitted to The Anywhere Office by Kaito Mori of TrendMicro.com
For many of us trapped behind the walls of a cubicle for 40 hours a week, having a mobile office just seems like a faraway fantasy, like retiring on a desert island, or decent gas prices. For those of us who do have the luxury to be able to work from home or anywhere else, we know that it’s not all roses relaxation. There are risks inherent to having a mobile office that can be devastating and can result in a loss of time and income or both. The danger paramount to one’s mobile office is the threat of a malicious virus. A successful virus in your system can spell doom to your entire mobile office setup; even your whole company due to identity theft, damage to equipment, or a compromised bank account. Luckily, all of these doomsday scenarios can be prevented through free or inexpensive programs that you can install on all of your mobile devices.
A tenet of modern business psychology is to give your customer a price on your products that they think is more than a good deal. If the customer thinks that they are getting such a good deal by purchasing your product that they are GLAD to do it, then you are doing a good job as a business. Antivirus software is a prime example of this pricing model. Most antivirus software out there is available for free or close to it, which means that protecting your mobile office easy and economically feasible. You just have to pick the right software. We’ll go over some of the best options available on the market today.
For those of you who include a smartphone or two as part of your “mobile office,” there are some great security and antivirus programs that you can use to keep your devices secure.
