4 Things to Factor into an Office Move

4 Things to Factor into an Office Move Moving house is said to be one of the most stressful things a person will do in their life, so it’s no surprise moving your entire business can be just as problematic. To be able to meet constantly changing business needs, companies now need to move offices on average every seven years. While this can be daunting, careful preparation and early planning can help avoid setbacks, extra cost and alleviate much of the pressure. Express has put together its top tips to help you to ensure a hassle-free relocation… 1. Nominate a project leader As the move is going to take multiple hired professionals and a team of employees to facilitate, you should initially identify an internal project leader. This person will act as a single point of contact for external parties and keep all central stakeholders in the loop. This should be an organized and senior individual who has the authority to make decisions quickly and drive the project forward. A dedicated scheme leader will keep everything and everyone on target, focus on their individual tasks and diminish delays to ensure the main objectives set out at the start of the move are realized. 2. Think about location Through your relocation, you may be looking for easier access to the best talent, your target consumer market or clients, so readdress your reasons for moving before deciding on a site. Consider where your key employees live and whether the location is appropriate for them. While you’re never going to please everyone, it may be worth undertaking a survey to find the most commutable areas for the majority of staff. A long and expensive commute may push them to seek employment elsewhere, causing costly and avoidable recruitment fees. Setting up your office in a lively area with shops, restaurants, and cafes could have a positive impact on employee wellness and engagement, so ‘saving’ money on cheaper out-of-the-way office space could cost your business in the long run. In addition, consider the immediacy of public transport, staff and client parking, and accessibility. 3. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail Whether it’s for a prearranged development or reduction in overheads, make sure your purpose for the move is clear. Contemplate how you need the new premise to work for you now, in one, five or ten years to add longevity to your relocation plans. Before starting your relocation, gather all necessary information including the details of the existing lease and notice period and any outstanding obligations, to allow you to set out your relocation timeline. Set a moving date as far in advance as possible and avoid arranging any significant business activities on or around the date to avoid needless pressure. Once the project leader has been agreed, work should also begin on producing a budget. Estimate the full cost of the space, including rent, utilities, construction costs, moving expenses and include a buffer for any unexpected costs, which are sure to appear. A budget is vital to help you assess your costs, plan your finances and manage your expenditure throughout the relocation. It can also help you to gauge the success of your project and measure its ROI. 4. Deliberate your design Research suggests employees get distracted every three minutes. To help combat this, ensure there are areas where employees can take a proper break away from their desks. Employers should provide spaces which encourage social and informal connections between employees, as well as facilitate team meetings and flexible working, such as the Express HUB. However, you also need to provide areas where people can concentrate and work in private. If there are not enough secluded meeting spaces or quiet areas for employees, this can be a cause of stress, so ensure you offer variety to suit different preferences and activities. A move of the workplace is a chance to generate constructive change within your business. The move could improve performance, deliver better facilities and in turn, increase staff morale. Keep your staff informed and engaged throughout to make them feel part of the process and highly valued. About the author: Emma Davidson is the Area Retail Manager for  Express, a top five graduate employer amongst SME’s in the  UK and voted top graduate employer in the Consumer Goods Industry.  

Create a Winning Social Media Strategy For Your Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Create a Winning Social Media Strategy For Your Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke with Dave Evans, who is a social media marketing expert, author, business owner and columnist. We talk about what its like to convince people of the importance of social media, how to answer the dreaded ROI question, which social networks you should join and avoid and how to be a great community member. This post will give you more insight in what it takes to use social media within a company, as well as answer some questions youve probably been pondering lately. How would you convince someone (a manager, teacher, even a parent) to participate in social media? Without a doubt, the simplest and most effective way to do this is to bring the Social Web to them. My initial activityacross a range of clients, community leaders (in the physical sense), educators and even skeptical parentsis to show them what is being said about them or about things that matter to them on the Social Web. So many people think of social media, the Social Web, and MySpace as being the same thing. Of course, they are not at all the same thing, and showing people first hand what “social media” is remains the most effective way of getting their attention. Tools that facilitate this include Google Alerts (free), several self-serve platforms, and full service offerings from industry pioneers like Buzzmetrics, Cymfony, and Umbria. My personal tool of choice for initial social discovery is Techrigy’s SM2 social media measurement platform. It’s low cost and self-serve, so it’s perfect for quick, precise tactical work. Regardless of the platformany of those I’ve listed are well suited for social media discoverythe best first step is to see what’s out there. Not only is it less scary than people think, the information found on the Social Web can be genuinely interesting and quite informative when applied to a business. I know youre dreading this question, and so am I because I do social media for a large corporation, but how does one measure ROI in social media? Dreading? How about “loving this question!” It’s one of the most important with regard to the practice of social media, at least as far as a marketer is concerned. My approach to establishing an ROI is decidedly practical, and grows out of my background as a scientist and the experience I gained working for the space agency. I suggest first establishing a baseline: In fact, this is largely accomplished through the process I outlined in the preceding question, with some quantitative benchmarking applied. In other words, let’s confirm or otherwise ascertain exactly where we are now, before we do anything new. With a baseline established, we can look for changes that are reasonably attributed to the work we do through the application of socially based marketing programs. This can actually be quite rigorous: For example, if we use social media measurement techniques to uncover a market opportunity which we then pursue, we can measure the results using an entirely conventional approach. It’s not rocket science, and believe me when I say I know rocket science when I see it. Instead, the determination of a defensible ROI is a matter of first committing to the process of establishing one, and then doing the work (and applying the common sense) required to tease apart the various components of an integrated marketing program. On this last point, understand that very few marketers measure adequately now. In a Forrester Research report a few years agoand I certainly haven’t seen any huge shift toward real measures of actual effectives since thenabout 40% of marketers measured individual channel effectiveness, about 32% measured overall marketing effectiveness, and only about 28%less than one thirdmeasured both channels and the overall impact. So, my question is What’s the ROI on any marketing program? Relatively few marketers can actually answer this question quantitatively. What most will pull out instead are measures of exposure per dollar spent or a similar measure of ad awareness as a result of marketing investment. Social media doesn’t work at the awareness level: it works at the consideration level. Social media is a purchase intention enhancement (or challenger, if the content is negative). To measure social media effectiveness you have to look at overall business results in the context of what you are doing differently as a result of what you’ve learned or participated in as a brand on the Social Web. But guess what? That’s exactly what marketers should be doing with all efforts, and as a result determining an ROI that relates to their business objectives rather than an arbitrary set of marketing objectives. What social networks should people join and which ones should they stay away from? I’ll answer this by simply flipping the question around! As a brand, you should join and participate in the networks that matter to you, and stay away from the ones that don’t. Here’s what I really mean by this: First, take a look at “Groundswell,” by Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. Point number one is understand your business objectives; point number two is understand your audience. Put these together and look back at this question and my answer: Pay attention and participate in the networks whose audience matters to you in the context of your business objectives. Don’t waste time in the networks that fail either test. Here’s a real example: Slingshot Sports sells wakeboards, boards for kiting, and wake skates. They should be participating in focused niche sites like Wakesites, and in communities that contain meaningful numbers of wake enthusiasts, like Facebook and MySpace. For the purpose of selling more gear, they probably don’t need to be in LinkedIn, or in mass appeal properties with only a vague connection to action sports. Platforms like Friend2Friend’s ProductPulse that facilitate social conversations on MySpace and Facebook are ideal tools for this application. DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor and share holder in both Wakesites and Friend2Friend. Is social media for everyone? What are the benefits and drawbacks associated with getting involved? Social media is probably not for everyone, but only in the sense that nothing is truly for everyone. At a practical level, social media applies to far more people and is therefore an appropriate tool for far more marketers than most would realize. Again, citing Forrester’s “Groundswell” profile tool, while it’s true that a much smaller share of people 55 and over generate social content as compared with people under 25, almost 60% of people 55 and over consume social content, compared with just under 80% of those under 25. 60% is a big share, and it’s important to recognize this: Marketers often think (somewhat correctly) that “it’s mostly kids generating social content.” That may or may not be true (more and more, it isn’t) but in any event it misses the real point: Regardless of age or gender, the majority of nearly any sizeable market is paying attention to (consuming) social media. Social media ought to be top of mind for all marketers. How do you define a genuine Social Web participant? There’s a new-ish term emerging: It’s actually been around for a few years but is just now starting to gain real traction. It’s “Generation C” and it refers not to an age group but rather to the cross section of people who are creating, sharing, and consuming digital social content. It’s your daughter creating her profile on MySpace, and your parent or grandparent creating an e-blast or video alert for AARP’s e-activist efforts. In short, a genuine participant is someone who creates, shares, or re-purposes social content. An alternate way of defining “genuine”: is to think of this in terms of “who has the right” to participate. I make this point in my book, “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.” Essentially, if you have something to say that adds to the conversation, or is relevant to the people you are talking with, you have the right to say it. This applies to marketers as well as end consumers. While this is not without controversysome believe that marketers ought be banned from the Social WebI think this is a reasonable way to think about who is and isn’t genuine. The big key is disclosure: It is never OK for a marketer to enter a conversation without declaring his or her association with the brand, product, or service. This can be tough for marketers because they aren’t used to it. On TV, ads don’t need to be disclosed because it is obvious to everyone that they are ads. On the social web, absent any note or disclosure to the contrary, a voice is a voice. In summary, in this context there are two tests for “genuine” an invited, relevant cause for participation, and disclosure of any material connection to the conversation that extends beyond participation out of simple interest. Everyone else is suspect. - Dave Evans is the author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, a practical, hands-on guide to implementing and measuring social media as part of an integrated marketing program. Dave cofounded Digital Voodoo in 1994. Digital Voodoo provides strategic marketing services for clients wanting to tap the power of the social Web. In 2005, he cofounded HearThis.com, a podcasting service firm focused on social media and marketing. Dave holds a BS in physics and mathematics from the State University of New York/College at Brockport and has served on the Advisory Board with ad:tech and the Measurement and Metrics Council with WOMMA.

Good plans feel unsteady

Good plans feel unsteady Cullen left. Its unclear if he has dumped Melissa. I think he has. (If you missed earlier installments on this story, heres where I find Cullen in Melissas bed.) This photo is from when Cullen was excited to be in lots of photos on my blog. It was the day that a TV writer emailed me about adapting my blog for the big screen. Or semi-big screen. Or whatever we are calling TV now, but I have to say, as an aside, that TV is the new hipster medium because episodes allow for more character development than a single movie. I heard this from the Farmer, and hes not a guy who could make this stuff up. And we are watching Breaking Bad and I want to be absurd and funny like those writers. This is what happened with Cullen. He agreed to redesign my blog in exchange for free room and board. And then he realized he didnt have time to do that, because he has a full time job. Meanwhile, we were having big Facebook drama on the farm because Melissa does not feel like she has a boyfriend unless the guy puts in on his Facebook status. So Cullen did that. And then, the day after the status changed I told them that I think they need to live together as boyfriend and girlfriend somewhere else because its not working for us here on the farm. So Cullen went back to Austin. He told Melissa that she can come back with him, but he doesnt want to live with her. Melissa said, How come you want to live with me on the farm but you dont want to live with me in Austin? Cullen said, I dont know. Thats a good question. Melissa decided to stay on the farm. Cullen decided to go. But they decided that neither of them will change their Facebook status. Cullen said, Ill be back. And maybe to show that, or maybe because they were so cheap, he left his green rubber boots behind. We said goodbye to Cullen at 6am when he left to catch an 8:30 am plane. Melissa drove him to the airport. But not really. Because five minutes after Cullen says to me, Okay. See you soon. Ill be back, he said to Melissa in the car, I actually dont have a plane ticket. I have a train ticket. I just didnt want to tell Penelope. Im not sure why. I do not have anything against trains. Three days pass. Cullen writes an email to Melissa explaining why he had to leave. We read it at lunch even though I told Melissa she is not allowed to bring her iPhone to lunch. The Farmer reads the email and says, Guys should never send stuff to girls in writing. They just show it to all their friends. Melissa tells me she is going to die if I dont write on my blog that Cullen and Melissa are not together. I need closure, she says. I tell her I have to write about careers. Melissa says, Why? You never write about careers. Anyway, look at James Altucher. Hes a finance blogger who doesnt force himself to focus on finance. And we love reading his blog. When I am independently wealthy like James Altucher then Ill write about your love life. The Farmer says, Penelopes career advice chapters are like the whaling chapters in Moby Dick. You like the storyline about psychotic behavior, but you need the whaling chapters to keep things based in reality. I wish there were something on Facebook for me to quantify how much I am in love with the Farmer. I give him a ten for his combination of intellect and strength to hold my goat down so I can milk her. I think maybe I can make a plan for my blog that is a little scary because I feel secure with the Farmer. You need to feel secure in one place to create instability in another. Melissa gives me more blogging instructions: I want to make sure you write that Im sad. The Farmer shakes his head. No. You cant do that. Why? I ask. Do you two know anything about playing hard to get? I laugh. The Farmer broke up with me about 50 times. Twenty-five of those times were because he thought he should be the one doing the chasing. Guys do the chasing, he would tell me. And then Id kiss him. No, I say. Melissa and I have no idea how to play hard to get. The Farmer says, You cannot email Cullen to tell him you miss him. That gives him an opening. He left, and he has to make his own opening to come back. People care more about their plans if they make the plan themselves. This seems true. It seems true for all plans. For all departures. For all entrances. And you can tell if its your own plan by how lost you feel. People who do their own plans feel lost most of the time. People who do other peoples plans feel on track most of the time. Melissa says, Fine. Is that going to be your post? Fine. But I want to take a picture for the blog post about being sad.

Four dream career success stories and FAQs...live tomorrow night! - Classy Career Girl

Four dream career success stories and FAQs...live tomorrow night! Hi friend! I am so thrilled about all of the new ambitious women who are joining  Love Your Career Formula 2.0!  Its shaping up to be the most amazing year yet and I cant wait to get started! As you can imagine, its definitely an exciting and busy time here at CCG  (currently running out of our Des Moines, Iowa #runyanroadtrip office) and we are fielding lots of questions from women who are curious about  Love Your Career Formula 2.0. So heres what I decided to donot only am I going to answer the most frequently asked questions below, but also I have invited FOUR  of my previous clients on a live webinar tomorrow night to share their success stories and answer your questions. I cant wait to introduce you to these ladies so you can hear and then do exactly what they did to make your dream career happen. Make sure you get registered for the live webinar. Now onto our frequent questions! Many of the questions that are coming in are similar so hopefully the answer to your question is also below. If not, just hit reply and send us an email. Q: What is the difference between self-study and VIP? A: Both versions of the program offer the exact same curriculum and modules. However, with the VIP track, you are committing to mastery of designing and creating your dream career and  making it happen faster with more support from a community and Anna. VIP offers an extra layer of accountability and support. Your resumes will be reviewed and you will receive feedback on your work so you can improve even further. You will also be required to attend at least one coaching call per month and participate in the Facebook group community so you have a chance to apply the skills youve learned. At the end, youll graduate as a Love Your Career Formula Certified Professional. Bottom line: If you are committed to launching your very best life and career, and you want to make a difference in this world, then VIP is definitely for you. If you are a self-disciplined go-getter and would rather do all the modules alone with no direct support  from Anna, the self-study course is perfect for you! Q: I’m going on vacation, planning a party, traveling, getting married or moving in the next 90 days. Should I join now or wait? A: Join now. It is expected that everyone in the program  will go at their own pace and move at different speeds. We also understand that life will come up and that is why we offer a full year to complete the program. Work through it at your own pace. No stress! If you wait, you run the risk of the spots filling up and the program closing for an entire year. Whatever you do, dont make excuses for NOT making your dreams happen. Life will always be busy.  There will always be another excuse if you arent careful! Q: What type of person is right for this program? A: The Love Your Career Formula  works for all levels of women and all types of  interests and passions. I have coached executives, unemployed women, stay-at-home moms, recent graduates, mid-level professionals and entrepreneurs. I have coached lawyers, doctors, teachers, marketing experts and personal trainers.  My system  is for everyone.   Our alumni network is home to ambitious women working in dream careers in everything from florists to consultants. Senior Pharmaceutical Managers to second grade teachers. Content developers to executive recruiters. And so much more. Our alumni have been taken the course and landed dream jobs in Hong Kong, Australia, London, the Philippines, Chile, Canada and of course all over the United States too.   Q: What are some results I might expect? A: The main results for  previous graduates have been  clear direction, confidence and new career opportunities.  Click here to read success stories.  The last time I held this program I heard my clients at the end say, “I am finally excited to get out of bed in the morning!” and “I know exactly where I am headed and what I need to do next!”   Over the year you can definitely expect your life and career to change quite a bit because of all of the personal development you will be doing. Once you start taking action, amazing things are bound to happen. Ready to get started? Join us in Love Your Career Formula 2.0! Still have questions? We have posted answers to many more FAQs here  or you can ask your questions on tomorrows live webinar here.   I very much look forward to helping you launch your dream career or business,  friend! Love, Anna P.S. Four dream career success storieslive tomorrow night. Register here.

How to Write a Personal Statement - A Guide For Resume Writers

How to Write a Personal Statement - A Guide For Resume WritersPersonal statements are generally a personal introduction to yourself, but there are a few pros and cons that you need to consider when choosing to use them. It's important to remember that they are not a way to write your resume.A good way to start is to create a summary of your qualifications and accomplishments, including your education, work experience, and educational and vocational training. Take some time to be objective and unbiased, including who is in the room and what works best for everyone. The goal is to make a statement about your qualities and abilities so that others can see how well you can apply those things to an interview.A good beginning is to make sure you address the overall value of your skills and experience. This is the way to make sure that your job search is not only about you but also an opportunity to demonstrate how you would fit into an organization. Use the question, 'What is most importan t to you?'Each section should begin with an assessment of the skill or qualification needed, followed by an explanation of why it is needed in all of the different aspects of the job. Write down where you believe it will be most useful, whether as a competency, ability or quality. Be honest and precise in your answers, and follow up with a couple of bullet points that support the statement.Generalize. As with everything else in life, don't assume that it has to be perfect or that it must be just right. It's your resume, so use it as a starting point to show what you have done and showcase your skill set.Personal statements should be brief and direct. Make sure you include your qualifications and experience but don't go into great detail.If you are writing this for an employer, you want to be clear about the type of position you are applying for and tailor your statement to the job description. Write about your skills and experiences that relate to the job and give the specific infor mation that they ask for.A personal statement can be a great way to show employers why you are the best choice for the job. Use them as an effective resume writing tool, but avoid writing your resume cover letter or body directly from your personal statement.