The first half of this article does a good job recognizing the need for content marketing. However, your content marketing strategy should include both creating and curating. This is where Lean Content marketing comes in. Don't waste time creating content that already exists. Curating relevant content and providing your insight is how you can save time and money while staying visible online. 

It makes so much sense!

The content marketing figures caught my attention

• The digital marketing industry is $118B/year
• Content marketing industry is on a meteoric rise (9.2% growth last year).
• B2Bs spend a whopping 30% of their marketing budget on content marketing.

#scrappy Marketing

I agree....

The 7 Essentials To Forming A Board Of Mentors #business #mentors

Attached are The 7 Essentials To Forming A Board Of Mentors - they are excellent when managing & advancing our Life, Work and Learning. When we have a Social Enterprise Platform as a mechanism to manage the cohort of mentors it makes for communicating our objectives much easier; a community of practice that consistently contributes to the options, directions and possibilities throughout our career.
LeaderTracker™ Powered by AP www.michaelrutherford.com

Running any business takes courage, and as business owners regularly face difficult situations they must overcome, they can learn how to improve their approach from the way police teams face their daily challenges.

Police officers need to exercise great judgement as they go about their daily work, so that they stay safe and work effectively, and they need to be able to prioritise the issues they are required to respond to as the calls are conveyed to them.

This good article, suggests that business owner can be more successful in solving problems and reducing their risks if they adopt police strategies, and it outlines five typical strategies that would help all business owners.

a luxury no SB can afford in such a highly competitive market

ola

I would define copy as the message that the audience wants or needs to hear, but other than that quibble, this is a quick and easy way to explain the difference between content marketing and messaging. 

Copywriting is the essential ingredient for effective content marketing – but you also need lots more ideas to make it irresistable. 

Une mine de documentaires à découvrir

Robin Good's insight:

 Docubase is a project of the MIT Open Documentary Lab that aims to create a collaborative, participatory community around a growing collection of innovative documentaries curated by experts and outsiders alike.

Documentaries can be searched and sorted easily in a number of ways (most recent, most viewed, alphabetical order / or as a list rather than a mosaic). The interface is slick, colorful and simple to use.

More than 140 documentaries are already available and a selected group of curators has put together a number of publicly available playlists designed aroound key themes connecting these clips. 

Playlists: http://docubase.upian.com/playlist/ 

The curators: http://docubase.upian.com/curator/ 

A fantastic resource for documentary lovers and a great example of how in an open and participatory project, curation can play a fundamental role.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://docubase.upian.com/ 

More info: http://docubase.upian.com/about/ 

Suggest projects to be included: http://docubase.upian.com/contact/ 

Read more about it: http://opendoclab.mit.edu/docubase_conversation 

#mitdocubase

Great one.

In order to keep any business at the forefront of customer awareness, it is becoming more and more important for business owners to be able to authentically communicate in writing, especially  when such communication is aimed at an online audience.

Building online communities on any platform, is only possible when the voice of the writer is deemed to be authentic, and the messages conveyed are consistent in terms of the language used and the emotions conveyed.

This excellent article, suggests that authentic written communication will cement your brand in the customers mind and establish a loyal base of customers for your business, and it offers five tips to follow to ensure that your written business communications come across as authentic and lead to greater connection with your chosen audience.

Wow

Amazing, what an incredible amount of information.

Need more tools...

This is a bit of an over-simplification when it comes to influencers and marketing.  Identification of the influencer is an extremely difficult task, but getting the influencer to influence for you and your business...ahhh...that may friends is the "Holy Grail".  

Think about your role as a librarian and aim to develop these habits.  It will keep us on the cutting edge of transformation.

Often times we are faced with the temptation to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution. However, a good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. If your leader lacks some level of peripheral vision, it can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. We need strategic leaders who will foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. Find out how to become the strategic leader your company needs!

We have several strategy consultants available in Canada and the US. Sales and strategic management dashboards. Sales accounts analysis; where to focus your sales efforts and glean revenue generating sales behaviors. Reach out to me at molly at fremontconsulting dot com

Sometimes i ask myself this same question. these were interesting questions that i would have thought of, i would have thought of compatibility and setup. i think i would have to agree with the picture and buy microsoft.

Buy a Mac.

I know what I would buy - after switching to a MAc :) but I still use  PC for a few programs - 

Maybe a tad too complex for our young students, but still a nice way of understanding the foundations of storytelling!!

Maybe a tad too complex for our young students, but still a nice way of understanding the foundations of storytelling!!

Writing endings for our stories could be the easiest thing in the world or the hardest. The best way to begin is to ponder on what kind of ending is expected for the genre in which you are writing. If you are writing a category romance, readers are going to expect the love interests to finally get together and have a happy ending. There have been exceptions (Romeo and Juliet or Love Story). If you are a reader anticipating a romantic story and happy ending, do you want to read a tragic ending? I don't.

The 10 tips presented should give you a great beginning to write your own ending. Check out the article for all the details.

1. Always keep in mind what is EXPECTED in the genre.

2. Avoid the dreaded DEUX EX MACHINE (gods taking care of it).

3. Think APPROPRIATE ending rather than satisfying ending.
4. NO MISERABLE ENDINGS for characters to no real purpose
5. Struggling? Compose an EVENT. Bring most characters together
6. REALLY struggling—go back to the BEGINNING.
7. When the story is over—STOP.
8. BEWARE of TOO MUCH BUILD UP with too quick a resolution.
9. No need to tie up every little plot string, but TIE UP MOST of them
10. EPILOGS: I kind of like them (peek into the future)

***This review was written by Penelope Silvers for her curated content on "Writing Rightly"***

Link to the original article: http://debravega.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/10-tips-for-writing-endings-to-your-story/

Character creation within a novel can be a most arduous task, in my humble opinion. Maybe you have a great gal or guy in mind as you begin, but it can tax the patience of even the most experienced novelist to mold and shape them into fully fleshed out people.

If your characters are in need of some life resuscitation, this article could be the life preserver you need to throw your Dick or Jane stick figure, so they don't drown the story.

Explore the character's back story and come up with some unique flaws that are not clichéd. Explore the positive side of traits, and vice versa. Don't forget quirks and add an inner goal. The excellent article gives you the steps to get it done.

***This review was written by Penelope Silvers for her curated content on "Writing Rightly"***

Link to the original article:  http://writershelpingwriters.net/2014/04/killed-4-cliched-characters/

Penelope

5 Quick Tips For Improving Customer Service

Local Community-based Small Businesses across North America, do not leverage  the true value that consistent great customer service, provides to  bottom line profitability.

The Big Box Stores Customers are constantly complaining about the poor customer service they receive virtually everywhere they go, this offers the independent local small business owner an advantage to capitalize on.  This is an excellent article, use the tips in your business and watch your profit margins improve...

Make it a great day!

Marshall Van Fleet

We ALL provide customer service.  Whether you are a mail clerk, admin, manager, or CEO your success depends on another.

Here are some tips you should know and if you don't - learn NOW!

Great 7 step process to define a market:

1. Make a wish list.

2. Focus.

3. Describe the customer's worldview.

4. Synthesize.

5. Evaluate.

6. Test.

7. Go for it.

A great article reminding us all that Smaller is bigger in business, and smaller is not all over the map; it's highly focused.

There is power in focus and it makes it easier for the consumers to identify you company with the one thing you do best. Consumers are so overwhelmed with messages that having a clear message about what your company does helps you to stand out#brand#influence#marketing

14 ways to add value when curating content

SyReach Notes now offers a full coverage of personal KM needs: Seek with integrated watch module and search engines, Sense with note and article edition, linking and knowledge building. Share by email or publish to Scoop.it selected resources linked to your articles!

Really thought provoking

Interesting 

Worth taking a look at.  How many times have you heard people ask what their students can "do" on the ipad to submit their work.  This will walk you through using the ipad for writing.

Google+ Hangouts: 7 Tips to Boost Your Business's Communication

Google+ Hangouts: 7 Tips to Boost Your Business's Communication

"Small business owners are often reluctant to embrace new approaches to tried and proven ways of doing business, however the speed with which innovation is proceeding these days, can see those who adopt a wait and see approach being left far behind.

Business communications are one area where innovation is constant, and business owners need to be aware of the capabilities of new offerings, as well as being prepared to rapidly implement low cost and highly efficient means of improving the way in which any business communicates with its stakeholders.

This excellent article, introduces all of the tremendous benefits that Google + Hangouts can deliver to any business, and it provides seven tips on how a business can make the most of this free service  that does not require great technical expertise to deploy."

Undeniably, one of the arising problems that most employers are dealing nowadays is about their employees getting distracted at work because these personnel are spending much time on their mobile phones. 

Maybe a tad too complex for our young students, but still a nice way of understanding the foundations of storytelling!!

Maybe a tad too complex for our young students, but still a nice way of understanding the foundations of storytelling!!