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Make the most of your LinkedIn account. here are ten Top Tips to get you started. After that you just need to initiate and join in the conversation. If you are new to social networking you may be interested in our Social Media Course.
1. Create a Personal LinkedIn URL
A Personal URL looks better than the default one. You may want to add your LinkedIn URL to your email signature or your twitter profile etc. To change the default URL:
- Click Settings at the top right of the page
- Under Profile Settings Public Profile
- Edit your Public Profile URL to your name.
2. Personalise your Linkedin Website and Company Details
My Website/My Company etc are default titles in LinkedIn, you can change these:
- Select edit profile using the dropdown on your profile tab.
- Click websites, using the drop down, click “Other”
- Type in your website name etc.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Personal Development, Sales and Marketing, Social Media on December 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The first control we are going to get to grips with is your Aperture Priority control, the easiest way to control the aperture of your lens is by setting your camera to AV mode. In AV mode you can control the aperture value by turning the dial at the top right of your camera.
What is Aperture Priority – AV Mode?
When you change the aperture value you are increasing or decreasing the amount of light the lens lets in to hit the sensor of your camera.
Understanding Exposure
a wide aperture allows a small depth of field - you choose the bit that is in focus
A wide aperture can be set by choosing small numbers like F2.8 -F5.4 (the lowest value will depend on the quality or speed of your lens). Setting a wide apperture will let more light into your camera. If you have your camera in AV mode (aperture priority) you choose the aperture and the camera will calculate the right shutter speed to get a balanced exposure. A wide aperture (small numbers) also means that the amount of your image that will be in focus is limited. This is useful for portraits when you want your subject in focus and the background blurred. Or for picking out detail in a macro image like flower or insect photographs.
The out of focus background is sometimes called bokeh the above image is an example.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Personal Development, Photography, Photoshop on December 21st, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Are you a TwitternOOb who needs help understanding tweeps who twitterise everything? We’ve provided a mini twictionary of twitterisms for you:
If you are new to Social Newtworking you may be interested in our Social Media training course.
Please add your own using the comments.
Tweeps, Tweeple, Twittizens, Tweeters
People who tweet
Twitterjacking
Pretending to be someone else, usually a celebrity see Gordon Brown
Twitthore
Someone who follows anyone and everyone
Twitterholic, Twaddict
Someone with a tweeting problem see the Social Media Addicts Association
Tweetup
A real face to face meeting of people who twitter
Twittersona
A created twitter character, see God, Satan, and my personal favourite Alexanda Orlov founder of comparethemeerkat.com!
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Personal Development, Social Media on December 18th, 2009 | No Comments »
If you can’t decide what to blog about take a look at the last post ‘ Blog Post Ideas– 10 Top Tips for Blog Inspiration‘ for some blog post ideas. Now you have decided on the content of your post here are some top tips on how to write it. If you want to start blogging as part of your Social Media Marketing you may be interested in our Social Media Networking Course or our Wordpress Course.
Top Tips for Writing Blog Posts
1> Keep your sentences short and to the point.
2> Make your Headlines complete sentences, many people will see your headline in an RSS feed, they need to know what it’s about before they click.
Sum up your post in one small sentence.
3> Write a short clear introductory paragraph that sums up your content.
4> Include lots of keywords for the seach engines to pick up, particularly in headings and subheadings but don’t overdo it, read it back you’ll know when it’s overcooked.
5> Keep it light. If you are recommending a product think ‘How would I recommend this to a friend?’ not ‘How would I pitch this to a company?’
6> Include lots of relevant links, link to sites that clarify or back up your opinion, especially if you mention the content in your blog.
7> Read through and cut out any unnecessary words (be ruthless), restructure your sentences thinking ‘Can I say this using less words?’
8> Keep length to around 250 words if possible
9> Make your post easy to scan:
- Use short paragraphs with space inbetween, nothing is more offputting than big blocks of text.
- Use subheadings
- Make lists
- Use bullet points
10> Avoid long and ambiguous words or jargon, keep your language simple.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Personal Development, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Social Media on December 16th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Blog Post Ideas – 
Find inspiration for your blog posts
To keep your readers interested in your blog you need to post regularly. It’s not only important to keep your visitors comming back but is very important for improving your seach engine ranking especially in Google. If you are just setting up your blog you may be interested in our Wordpress Training or our Social Media Training. If you just need some great blog post ideas read in.
Posting Regularity
Whilst it’s best to post every day, you may not have the time to post daily so try at least to post three times a week. Once a week is the barest minimum. Coming up with new ideas all the time can be tricky so I have written some Top Tips for Bloggers to give you some blog post ideas.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in New Free Resources, Personal Development, Sales and Marketing, Social Media on December 14th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Johan Karremans and colleagues have published a report called Interacting with women can impair men’s cognitive functioning.
Men beware – talking to women can severly impair your memory!
Forty men took a memory test both before and after chatting for seven minutes with a female or male. They were then asked to paticipate in a simple memory test. Those who conversed with woman prior to the test showed a deterioration in performance, and that their impairment increased in line with how attractive they perceived the woman to be. Those who talked with a male experimenter showed no deterioration. Male participants who admitted they were more concerned by creating a good impression were the ones who were most impaired. Similar tests were conducted on women but they were unaffected whether they chatted between tests to a man or woman.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Brighton, Personal Development on November 30th, 2009 | No Comments »
Do you find it hard to switch off?
Do you spend hours going over past events or conversations in your head?
Do you worry about future events?
If you answered yes to any of these questions the chances are that you are inclined to over think things. Over thinking can prevent you from relaxing and enjoying the present moment. Sometimes you need to let your mind relax and recover. Thinking about what you should have done or said, is a wate of energy and will prevent you from relaxing or from simply feeling happy.
How to stop worrying
Some thing you can do to relax your mind:
- Think of all the time you waste worrying about stuff that hasn’t happened yet or things that have happened that you cannot change. Can you think of any benefit to yourself for having these thoughts?
- Learn some meditation techniques – you may think this is silly but just ty it, practice meditation when you find yourself obsessing about something.
- Imagine holding your troubles in you hand and then letting the wind take them, or putting them in a box and shutting the lid. If you put your troubles in draw in the morning, they’ll still be there when you go to bed!
- Think about your particular worry and ask yourself is it really true, if you have a tendency to over think you have probably imagined the problem to be bigger than it really is – put it back into perspective.
- Is there a small thing you can do that would make your problem easier – do it now or at least plan to do it in the near future.
Silicon Beach Training offer a Stress Management and Assertiveness training courses.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in New Free Resources, Personal Development on November 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“You can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.”
One of the hardest things about being a manager is managing yourself. Over 140 delegates per year come through our public Management Skills for New Managers training course here in Brighton, and before we teach them about managing a team we first cover a range of techniques for managing yourself .
One thing we’re often told by attendees is that they find it easier to give advice to other people than to think about their own approach to problem solving and to give themselves advice.
This short article describes a simple but highly effective 3-step process to reaching objective solutions for yourself. Visit our Free Resources section for a range of other Management Skills Resources and Leadership Resources
What Advice Would You Give?
To quote Albert Einstein, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.” We all know what it feels like to give others good advice, but when it comes to giving ourselves advice it doesn’t seem to be as simple. It can be difficult at times to employ clear thinking when we are so personally involved. Especially in emotionally charged situations such as dealing with personality clashes, handling conflict and managing stress. However, I believe that people do have the resources within them to meet their own needs – it’s just a matter of accessing them.
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Management and Leadership, New Free Resources, Personal Development on November 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
