January 28 is Data Privacy Day and February 7 is Safer
Internet Day -- two important events that remind us of our
responsibility to take special precautions with our online
activity and personal information.
Towards the end of 2011, the National Cyber Security Alliance,
which organizes Data Privacy Day, published its annual survey
of home-based Internet use, focusing on digital shopping.
In particular, the study, supported by Internet security
company McAfee, showed just how much the use of smartphones is
changing our shopping habits.
Click here for the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Friday, January 27, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Fourth Credit Bureau You Don't Know About
It sounds like some kind of intelligence agency but the
"fourth bureau" is actually a collection of organizations that do credit bureau type checks on financial records.
Unlike the well-known Big Three bureaus, these firms are what Consumer Reports magazine calls "under the radar companies" that collect and supply all kinds of personal information on which other firms make decisions about your financial worthiness.
They're a motley collection of businesses that are difficult to identify and communicate with, yet their operations could impact your financial life.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Unlike the well-known Big Three bureaus, these firms are what Consumer Reports magazine calls "under the radar companies" that collect and supply all kinds of personal information on which other firms make decisions about your financial worthiness.
They're a motley collection of businesses that are difficult to identify and communicate with, yet their operations could impact your financial life.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Friday, January 13, 2012
A Record Year for Death Hoaxes?
It's an unfortunate sign of the times that, in the world of
showbiz, sports and politics, you possibly can't be said to
have really made it until your name joins the growing list of
death hoaxes.
The era of social networking, especially the use of Twitter, enables death rumors to sweep around the world in no time at all. The stories become "fact" long before they turn out to be "fiction"!
Beneath the needless concern and grief these stories can cause, both for their alleged victims and for fans and others who read them, lie some sinister explanations of why these death hoaxes appear.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
The era of social networking, especially the use of Twitter, enables death rumors to sweep around the world in no time at all. The stories become "fact" long before they turn out to be "fiction"!
Beneath the needless concern and grief these stories can cause, both for their alleged victims and for fans and others who read them, lie some sinister explanations of why these death hoaxes appear.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Friday, January 6, 2012
Triple Threat of Robocall Torture
Robocall companies delivering automated, pre-recorded
messages can make our lives a misery. But watch out because
things are about to get worse.
Call firms who ignore the law, proposals to allow robocalls to be made to cell phones and a busy election year mean that 2012 could see more of these irritating calls than ever.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Call firms who ignore the law, proposals to allow robocalls to be made to cell phones and a busy election year mean that 2012 could see more of these irritating calls than ever.
Click here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
IS IT TIME TO STOP BLAMING THE ECONOMY?
Every
day, I hear self-employed professionals blaming the economy for their
business woes. "People aren't buying right now," they say. Or, "With the
economy this bad, I can't..." Or, "When the economy improves, I'll..."
But what if the economy doesn't improve any time soon? What if the conditions we are experiencing now are the new conditions for the foreseeable future? What might that suggest about how you should be marketing your business?
At the close of 2007, the U.S. and many other countries began experiencing recessionary conditions. According to the economists, the U.S. recession ended in 2009. But it seems that no one has noticed. And why should they? Unemployment is high, consumer confidence is low, home values have not recovered, and national debt now exceeds GDP in numerous countries, the U.S. included.
If a set of conditions persists for years, at what point do you simply accept them as the way things are? Perhaps that point should be right now. Instead of waiting for an economic recovery to turn your business around, you could begin to turn it around yourself. Here are some thoughts on how to get started.
1. Set sales goals and make a plan to reach them. This sounds simple, but I'm always surprised by how many professionals set a goal without making a plan, make a plan without setting a goal, or neglect both.
Establishing a goal is the only way to know what sort of plan you need. When you don't declare the level of sales you want to reach, your marketing can stray off track. Spending time online to sell a $29 ebook, for example, instead of pursuing leads for a $10,000 contract, because you keep hearing that "companies aren't buying."
When you err in the other direction, and set a goal without building a realistic plan, it's too easy to be deterred from going after what you want by thoughts like "I'll work toward that after the economy picks up." A slower economy indicates you should plan smarter and sooner, not later.
2. Sell got-to-haves instead of nice-to-haves. In lean times, people and organizations spend only to get what they need, rather than on what they want. To make sales, you have to sell what people are buying.
This doesn't necessarily mean you need to change what you sell, but you may need to change how you sell it. Get specific about the results you produce or value you provide. Help your prospects see how what you offer can help them earn more, spend less, or overcome their current challenges more readily.
An unemployed manager will hire a coach to improve interview skills when she wouldn't pay for coaching to build confidence. A downsized company will bring in an expert to increase efficiency when they wouldn't consider hiring someone to improve job satisfaction. In both these examples, the person being hired ‒ and the work being done ‒ may be exactly the same, but the client believes interview skills or efficiency are needs, while confidence or satisfaction are merely wants.
3. Take action on facts, not on fear. The next time someone tells you "no one is paying for marketing help right now," ask them how they know that. (A survey released by Doremus last month indicates global corporate spending on marketing was up 10% in 2011, and 29% of companies plan to increase their spending on marketing in 2012.)
Or if you hear that "people don't have money for alternative medicine these days," request to know the source for this claim. (A recent Deloitte study shows that U.S. families spent $28 billion on alternative medicine practitioners in 2009, in the middle of the recession.)
If 9% of the workforce is unemployed, then 91% of workers still have jobs. Corporate spending may be lower than before, but that doesn't mean it's nonexistent. Do your own research on who is hiring and spending, and take your guidance from data, not doomsayers. Then target the people and organizations who can pay.
4. Eliminate blame from your vocabulary. The state of the economy may indeed be someone else's fault, but spending time blaming politicians or bankers or real estate speculators can stop you from taking responsibility for your own success. It doesn't matter to your business who else may be at fault for the way things are. What matters is what you plan to do about the situation at hand.
In Nov 2008, I wrote: In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his inaugural speech, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He described that fear as the "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR's message was that the real danger was not the economic conditions themselves, but the prospect that we would become immobilized by our fear of them.
Is it possible that your own fear of failure or rejection, or blame of conditions you can't control, or resentment of the people responsible for this mess, has in some ways immobilized you?
It's time to let all of that go. Take charge of your marketing, find out who is buying, determine what they need, set a clear goal, and make a plan to get there. The sooner you do this, the sooner your own economy will improve.
But what if the economy doesn't improve any time soon? What if the conditions we are experiencing now are the new conditions for the foreseeable future? What might that suggest about how you should be marketing your business?
At the close of 2007, the U.S. and many other countries began experiencing recessionary conditions. According to the economists, the U.S. recession ended in 2009. But it seems that no one has noticed. And why should they? Unemployment is high, consumer confidence is low, home values have not recovered, and national debt now exceeds GDP in numerous countries, the U.S. included.
If a set of conditions persists for years, at what point do you simply accept them as the way things are? Perhaps that point should be right now. Instead of waiting for an economic recovery to turn your business around, you could begin to turn it around yourself. Here are some thoughts on how to get started.
1. Set sales goals and make a plan to reach them. This sounds simple, but I'm always surprised by how many professionals set a goal without making a plan, make a plan without setting a goal, or neglect both.
Establishing a goal is the only way to know what sort of plan you need. When you don't declare the level of sales you want to reach, your marketing can stray off track. Spending time online to sell a $29 ebook, for example, instead of pursuing leads for a $10,000 contract, because you keep hearing that "companies aren't buying."
When you err in the other direction, and set a goal without building a realistic plan, it's too easy to be deterred from going after what you want by thoughts like "I'll work toward that after the economy picks up." A slower economy indicates you should plan smarter and sooner, not later.
2. Sell got-to-haves instead of nice-to-haves. In lean times, people and organizations spend only to get what they need, rather than on what they want. To make sales, you have to sell what people are buying.
This doesn't necessarily mean you need to change what you sell, but you may need to change how you sell it. Get specific about the results you produce or value you provide. Help your prospects see how what you offer can help them earn more, spend less, or overcome their current challenges more readily.
An unemployed manager will hire a coach to improve interview skills when she wouldn't pay for coaching to build confidence. A downsized company will bring in an expert to increase efficiency when they wouldn't consider hiring someone to improve job satisfaction. In both these examples, the person being hired ‒ and the work being done ‒ may be exactly the same, but the client believes interview skills or efficiency are needs, while confidence or satisfaction are merely wants.
3. Take action on facts, not on fear. The next time someone tells you "no one is paying for marketing help right now," ask them how they know that. (A survey released by Doremus last month indicates global corporate spending on marketing was up 10% in 2011, and 29% of companies plan to increase their spending on marketing in 2012.)
Or if you hear that "people don't have money for alternative medicine these days," request to know the source for this claim. (A recent Deloitte study shows that U.S. families spent $28 billion on alternative medicine practitioners in 2009, in the middle of the recession.)
If 9% of the workforce is unemployed, then 91% of workers still have jobs. Corporate spending may be lower than before, but that doesn't mean it's nonexistent. Do your own research on who is hiring and spending, and take your guidance from data, not doomsayers. Then target the people and organizations who can pay.
4. Eliminate blame from your vocabulary. The state of the economy may indeed be someone else's fault, but spending time blaming politicians or bankers or real estate speculators can stop you from taking responsibility for your own success. It doesn't matter to your business who else may be at fault for the way things are. What matters is what you plan to do about the situation at hand.
In Nov 2008, I wrote: In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his inaugural speech, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He described that fear as the "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR's message was that the real danger was not the economic conditions themselves, but the prospect that we would become immobilized by our fear of them.
Is it possible that your own fear of failure or rejection, or blame of conditions you can't control, or resentment of the people responsible for this mess, has in some ways immobilized you?
It's time to let all of that go. Take charge of your marketing, find out who is buying, determine what they need, set a clear goal, and make a plan to get there. The sooner you do this, the sooner your own economy will improve.
| Copyright © 2012, C.J. Hayden Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter. |
M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All
For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition,
here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free
college education regardless of your academic performance or
background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online
learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching
of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.
The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material. According to the New York Times, in order to prevent confusion, the certificate will be a credential bearing the distinct name of a new not-for-profit body that will be created within M.I.T.
Click here to read the full article.
by Forbes
The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material. According to the New York Times, in order to prevent confusion, the certificate will be a credential bearing the distinct name of a new not-for-profit body that will be created within M.I.T.
Click here to read the full article.
by Forbes
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